Distributed video coding (DVC) is a new video coding methodology that shifts the highly complex motion search components from the encoder to the decoder, such a video coder would have a great advantage in encoding speed and it is still able to achieve similar rate-distortion performance as the conventional coding solutions. Applications include wireless video sensor networks, mobile video cameras and wireless video surveillance, etc. Although many progresses have been made in DVC over the past ten years, there is still a gap in RD performance between conventional video coding solutions and DVC. The latest development of DVC is still far from standardization and practical use. The key problems remain in the areas such as accurate and efficient side information generation and refinement, quality control between Wyner-Ziv frames and key frames, correlation noise modelling and decoder complexity, etc.

Under this context, this thesis proposes solutions to improve the state-of-the-art side information refinement schemes, enable consistent quality control over decoded frames during coding process and implement highly efficient DVC codec.

This thesis investigates the impact of reference frames on side information generation and reveals that reference frames have the potential to be better side information than the extensively used interpolated frames. Based on this investigation, we also propose a motion range prediction (MRP) method to exploit reference frames and precisely guide the statistical motion learning process. Extensive simulation results show that choosing reference frames as SI performs competitively, and sometimes even better than interpolated frames. Furthermore, the proposed MRP method is shown to significantly reduce the decoding complexity without degrading any RD performance.

To minimize the block artifacts and achieve consistent improvement in both subjective and objective quality of side information, we propose a novel side information synthesis framework working on pixel granularity. We synthesize the SI at pixel level to minimize the block artifacts and adaptively change the correlation noise model according to the new SI. Furthermore, we have fully implemented a state-of-the-art DVC decoder with the proposed framework using serial and parallel processing technologies to identify bottlenecks and areas to further reduce the decoding complexity, which is another major challenge for future practical DVC system deployments. The performance is evaluated based on the latest transform domain DVC codec and compared with different standard codecs. Extensive experimental results show substantial and consistent rate-distortion gains over standard video codecs and significant speedup over serial implementation.

In order to bring the state-of-the-art DVC one step closer to practical use, we address the problem of distortion variation introduced by typical rate control algorithms, especially in a variable bit rate environment. Simulation results show that the proposed quality control algorithm is capable to meet user defined target distortion and maintain a rather small variation for sequence with slow motion and performs similar to fixed quantization for fast motion sequence at the cost of some RD performance.

Finally, we propose the first implementation of a distributed video encoder on a Texas Instruments TMS320DM6437 digital signal processor. The WZ encoder is
efficiently implemented, using rate adaptive low-density-parity-check accumulative (LDPCA) codes, exploiting the hardware features and optimization techniques to improve the overall performance. Implementation results show that the WZ encoder is able to encode at 134M instruction cycles per QCIF frame on a TMS320DM6437 DSP running at 700MHz. This results in encoder speed 29 times faster than non-optimized encoder implementation. We also implemented a highly efficient DVC decoder using both serial and parallel technology based on a PC-HPC (high performance cluster) architecture, where the encoder is running in a general purpose PC and the decoder is running in a multicore HPC. The experimental results show that the parallelized decoder can achieve about 10 times speedup under various bit-rates and GOP sizes compared to the serial implementation and significant RD gains with regards to the state-of-the-art DISCOVER codec.


We report the discovery of the first hot Jupiter in the Hyades open cluster. HD 285507b orbits a V = 10.47 K4.5V dwarf (M* = 0.734 M☉; R* = 0.656 R☉) in a slightly eccentric () orbit with a period of days. The induced stellar radial velocity corresponds to a minimum companion mass of MPsin i = 0.917 ± 0.033 MJup. Line bisector spans and stellar activity measures show no correlation with orbital phase, and the radial velocity amplitude is independent of wavelength, supporting the conclusion that the variations are caused by a planetary companion. Follow-up photometry indicates with high confidence that the planet does not transit. HD 285507b joins a small but growing list of planets in open clusters, and its existence lends support to a planet formation scenario in which a high stellar space density does not inhibit giant planet formation and migration. We calculate the circularization timescale for HD 285507b to be larger than the age of the Hyades, which may indicate that this planet's non-zero eccentricity is the result of migration via interactions with a third body. We also demonstrate a significant difference between the eccentricity distributions of hot Jupiters that have had time to tidally circularize and those that have not, which we interpret as evidence against Type II migration in the final stages of hot Jupiter formation. Finally, the dependence of the circularization timescale on the planetary tidal quality factor, QP, allows us to constrain the average value for hot Jupiters to be .


The aim of this thesis is to incorporate luminescent labels in nanoparticles and study their optical properties under various conditions. This helps in the development of new luminescent labels for nanoparticles that can be used to trace the distribution of nanoparticles in the environment and organisms. Lanthanide ions incorporated into a nanocrystalline host are promising as luminescent label since the narrow emission lines at specific energies can be used to create a variety of unique luminescent labels by changing and combining the nature of the lanthanide ion incorporated into the nanocrystalline host lattice. In addition, the stability of the lanthanide doped crystals is high which makes the labels robust. For this reason, lanthanide ions doped into a variety of nanocrystalline host lattices with different sizes are synthesized and their optical properties are investigated under various conditions to obtain a better insight in the optical properties of lanthanide ions in nanocrystals. First, a method is described to grow silica around LaPO4 nanocrystals. The LaPO4 nanocrystals have sizes ranging from 4 to 8 nm and are doped with europium or cerium and terbium. After silica growth, monodisperse silica spheres are obtained with a LaPO4 nanocrystal in the center. The size of the silica spheres can be tuned between 25 and 55 nm by addition of small volumes of methanol during the silica growth reaction. Next, the influence of the size of the host material on the optical properties of lanthanide doped crystalline materials is investigated. The influence of disorder in nanocrystals on the optical properties of lanthanide dopants is investigated by studying the inhomogeneous linewidth and luminescence decay curves for LaPO4:Eu3+ samples of different sizes (4 nm to bulk) and core-shell configurations (core, core-isocrystalline shell and core-silica shell). The emission linewidths increase strongly for nanocrystals. Luminescence decay curves reveal an increased non-radiative decay rate for Eu3+ in nanocrystals. The effects are strongest in core and core-silica shell nanocrystals and can be reduced by growth of an isocrystalline LaPO4 shell. Moreover, the role of phonon confinement in lanthanide doped nanocrystals is investigated. High resolution emission spectra at temperatures down to 2.2 K are reported for various Ln3+ ions (Er3+, Yb3+, Eu3+) doped into monodisperse 10 nm NaYF4 nanocrystals and compared with spectra for microcrystalline material. No evidence for phonon bottleneck effects is found in the emission spectra. Emission from closely spaced higher Stark levels is observed only at elevated excitation powers and explained by laser heating. Finally, the robustness of various types of nanoparticles that can be used in correlative microscopy is investigated. The luminescence of 130 nm dye-labelled silica, 15 nm quantum dots and 230 nm Y2O3:Eu3+ are measured for (single) nanoparticles after various cycles of electron beam exposure. The dye-labelled silica nanoparticles and quantum dots are quenched after exposure to low doses, while Y2O3:Eu3+ NPs are robust and continue to show luminescence after five times the low doses. In addition, it is shown that the intensity loss does not depend on the electron flux, but on the total electron dose.


Emanating from the proceedings of CIGRE 2004, a new idea for higher power transmission by recycling and up rating high voltage alternating current transmission lines for high voltage direct current application was presented at the HYDC working group session. To date, there is no known application of the idea. Globally, transmission congestion, power transfer bottlenecks with restricted and limited power transfers and unobtainable servitudes challenge electric power utilities. The literature review shows that since the early sixties, several authors have studied this proposal. However, no applications were done. Admittedly, early HYDC technology was troubled by problems with multi-terminal designs, external insulation breakdown in the presence of DC stress and mercury valve rectifiers struggled with arc backs. To date, power electronic and external insulation technology has grown and matured for confident application both in point to point and multi-terminal application. The economic costs of introducing the DC technology are also more affordable given reducing prices due to higher volume of purchases. With promising developments in insulation and power electronic technology and driven by South Africa's surging growth in the consumption of electrical energy; the subject of upgrading HYAC transmission for HYDC application is revisited. For the research, the emphasis is beyond FACTS and towards a solution that could develop into a new supergrid that could overlay the existing national grid. Thus, the solution is prepared specifically for the case of recycling existing assets for higher power transfers. The working environment is defined by the difficulty in acquiring new powerline servitudes, transmission congestion in complex networks, the need for electrical islands within complex interconnections, and the need for enhanced power system stability and to promote new ancillary services energy management. The focus of this research study was to determine the technical feasibility of upgrading of existing HYAC circuits for HYDC application. It is assumed that the transmission line will remain as is in structure, layout and mechanical design. The changing of external line insulators using live line technology is an accepted modification to the original HYAC line, ifrequired. From the study, we conclude that not all HYAC lines are recommended for upgrade to HYDe. We introduce boundary conditions as a first step towards checking on the suitability of the proposed upgrade from HVAC to HYDC mode. Emanating from this study, the first paper published introduced the initial boundary conditions as being only those lines where the "unused gap" between surge impedance loading and conductor current carrying capability is appreciable and large; generally three to four times surge impedance loading. In the case where the unused gap is the smallest or negligible, then we do nothing. In between, where the unused gap is about two to three times the surge impedance loading, then we can consider active or passive compensation using the HVAC FACTS technology options as proposed by EPRl. Having determined the candidate transmission line configuration for the proposed upgrade to HYDC application, we select the DC operating voltage as based on the voltage withstand capability of external insulation for varying environmental conditions. In addition, the DC voltage will generate allowable electrical fields and corona effects within and outside the transmission servitude. The optimum DC operating voltage would satisfy the conditions of minimum transmission power losses and volt drop for the case of maximum power transfers; within the limits of electrical fields and corona effects.


EFFECTIVENESS OF NUTRITION EDUCATION AND FITNESS TRACKING IN A LARGE CORPORATE HEALTHCARE WELLNESS PROGRAM by Jess Tyrrell May 2019 In the United States, greater than two-thirds of adults are considered overweight or obese – making the treatment and prevention of overweight/obesity a public health priority. In response, employers are recognizing that promoting and maintaining employee health is beneficial, so the implementation of corporate wellness programs is on the rise. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a ten-month multicomponent employee corporate wellness program on two health-related outcomes: weight loss and step count. The study was used to determine how active utilization of program components would affect the achievement of health-related outcomes among participants. This retrospective chart review compared data within two wellness tracks (BMI and healthy) that were assigned to participants based on BMI findings from their Health Risk Visit assessment with their primary care provider. Participants in both tracks were offered four campaigns and a nutrition-focused series delivered by a registered dietitian. A positive relationship was observed among Healthy Track participants, as those who were active participants in at least one campaign (76.4%) reached an incentive level versus those who were not active participants (37.9%). Participants in the nutrition series had a mean loss of 1.46% BMI percentage change versus a mean gain of 0.10% BMI percentage change among those who did not participate (p = .0475). Additionally, no relationship was found between the use of a fitness tracker and changes in BMI percentage for participants in either track (p = .962).


Semiconductor devices that are not generally thought of as light sources do emit radiation in the visible and the near infrared as they operate. Observation of this electroluminescence furnishes insight into the operation of the devices and of the circuitry that they constitute but it requires an extremely sensitive light detector and picosecond time resolution. This can be achieved using a Mepsicron photodetector system that enables single photon counting time-correlated imaging with a spatial resolution of about 1 µm and a time resolution approaching 10 ps. Information extracted from the time-resolved imagery can be compared with circuit layout and topology and individual device structures and with electrical measurements that are performed concurrently. These time-correlated measurements allow signal waveforms to be determined optically, much as the waveforms measured electronically with an oscilloscope and microprobing, but with the advantage that the acquisition is entirely non-invasive. Images can be dissected in both space and time to provide information for individual components of a circuit or regions of a device. This imaging equipment has been used in our laboratory for measurements on Si, GaAsP and GaN technologies and analyses will be presented.


Previously, we showed that the size of the nuclear genome, measured cytophotometrically in Feulgen-stained fusiform cambial cells of Abies balsamea (L.) Mill., oscillates annually between a maximum in spring and a minimum in late summer, the labile, extra DNA being synthesized during the fall. To determine it the oscillation is induced by the concomitant seasonal changes in temperature and photoperiod, genome size was measured in cambial cells obtained from one-year-old branches of 6-year-old potted trees at the beginning and end of 9 weeks of exposure during the fall, spring and summer to either the natural environment or one of 4 controlled environments, viz. (1) WS, warm temperature (24/20°C in day/night) and short photoperiod (8 h). (2) WL, warm temperature (24/20°C) and long photoperiod (8 h + 1 h night break), (3) CS, cold temperature (9/5°C) and short photoperiod (8 h). and (4) CL, cold temperature (9/5°C) and long photoperiod (8 h + 1 h night break). Overall, genome size (2C) varied between 20 and 34 pg. In the fall, when the cambium was initially dormant, the genome size increased in the natural environment, did not change under short days (WS and CS), and decreased under long days (WL and CL). The cambium reactivated in both WS and WL conditions. In the spring, while the cambium reactivated, the size of the genome decreased in the natural, WS and WL conditions, but not in the CS environment. In the CL conditions, the genome size started to decrease at the end of the 9-week exposure period. The decrease apparently occurred between prophase and telophase, which suggests that the extra DNA is extrachromosomal. In the summer, while the cambium ceased activity, the genome size did not change in the WS, WL and natural environments, whereas it decreased in the CS and CL conditions. The results indicate that increasing temperature and lengthening photoperiod in the spring induce the loss of the extra DNA. However, the environmental conditions that promote DNA synthesis in the fall remain unknown. Genome size varied independently of cambial growth potential and frost hardiness measured previously in the same experimental trees, indicating that the regulation of these processes does not directly involve the extra DNA. However, the finding that cambial cells cycled in the CS and CL environments only in the spring, when their genome size was large, suggests that the extra DNA is important for cambial growth at low temperatures.


The potential to modulate the activity of the immune system by interventions with specific nutrients is termed immunonutrition. This concept may be applied to any situation in which an altered supply of nutrients is used to modify inflammatory or immune responses. However, immunonutrition has become associated most closely with attempts to improve the clinical course of critically ill and surgical patients, who will often require an exogenous supply of nutrients through the parenteral or enteral routes. Major surgery is followed by a period of immunosuppression that increases the risk of morbidity and mortality due to infection. Improving immune function during this period may reduce complications due to infection. Critically ill patients are at greater risk of adverse outcomes than surgical patients. In these patients complex variable immune and inflammatory changes occur that are only now being well defined. A biphasic response with an early hyperinflammatory response followed by an excessive compensatory response associated with immunosuppression is seen in many such patients. Here, early treatment is aimed at decreasing the inflammatory response rather than enhancing it, to abrogate the hyperinflammation and prevent the compensatory immunosuppression.


Purpose

Information professionals are increasing called upon to provide access and services for information that, by its nature, must be restricted to certain uses or classes of individuals. This paper aims to explore the six major compliance regulations in the USA that information professionals should have a basic understanding of to manage a restricted information environment effectively.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is a general review of laws and requirements in the USA related to information security that may affect information professionals in their work.

Findings

The world of information security is complex and there are multiple laws, guidelines and standards that apply. For information professionals managing or deploying digital repositories or information archives, all of these need to be considered because plans and systems are being developed. Information professionals will increasingly be called upon to lend their expertise to emerging preservation problems related to restricted data, so understanding the basics of information security law is a requirement to successful information practice.

Originality/value

This is the first general overview of this area of information practice.


The violent conflict in Northern Ireland that led to some 3700 deaths was tied to opposing ethno-sectarian groups and the state and the disputation between them over that country's constitutional future. Republicans such as the Irish Republican Army used violence in order to 'gain' a united Ireland. Whereas loyalists such as the Ulster Volunteer Force and the British state utilised violence in order to maintain Northern Ireland's constitutional link with the United Kingdom. Geographers writing on this conflict have, via various forms of spatial analysis studied the consequences of that violence with regard to territoriality, the construction of ideological space and the perpetuation of ethno-sectarian boundaries. In more recent times, the analysis of conflict and post-conflict Northern Ireland has evaluated the governance of a divided society, the role paramilitaries have played in embedding peace and also the paradoxical role of reproducing conflict by other non-violent means. Northern Ireland remains as a divided society but there is a prominent role for geographers who study such a complex place to add to wider international scholarship regarding resistance and domination, revanchism, discourse construction, post-conflict and the impact upon place and also the role of agency in both perpetuating and removing violence.


This study examines how sellers respond to changes in the design of reputation systems on eBay. Specifically, we focus on one particular strategic behavior on eBay's reputation system: sellers' explicit retaliation against negative feedback provided by buyers to coerce buyers into revoking their negative feedback. We examine how these strategic sellers respond to removal of their ability to retaliate against buyers. We utilize one key policy change of eBay's reputation system, which provides a natural experimental setting that allows us to infer the causal impact of the reputation system on seller behavior. Our results show that coercing buyers to revoke their negative feedback through retaliation enables low-quality sellers to manipulate their reputations and masquerade as high-quality sellers. We find that these sellers reacted strongly to eBay's announcement of a proposed ban on revoking. Interestingly, after the power of these strategic sellers is curtailed, we find evidence that they exert more efforts to improve their reputation scores. This study provides valuable insights about the relationship between reputation system and seller behavior, which have important implications for the design of online reputation mechanisms.


In this paper we look at three important resources for philosophy: the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an online encyclopaedia of philosophy, Google Scholar, a search-engine for academic literature, and the PhilPapers project, a site that allows one to keep track of new publications. We will be examining why exactly they are so essential for academic philosophy, and what factors contributed to their success. We begin by briefly explaining what made us choose these three resources, and by pointing out the limits of the approach taken in this paper. Then we will give a short introduction to each of the projects, in which we explain what they are. Following this we have a look at their common, and possible use by philosophers. Finally we will get to the gist of the matter and explain why these resources are, and have become, essential.


We present an intuitive and efficient method for editing the appearance of complex spatially-varying datasets, such as images and measured materials. In our framework, users specify rough adjustments that are refined interactively by enforcing the policy that similar edits are applied to spatially-close regions of similar appearance. Rather than proposing a specific user interface, our method allows artists to quickly and imprecisely specify the initial edits with any method or workflow they feel most comfortable with. An energy optimization formulation is used to propagate the initial rough adjustments to the final refined ones by enforcing the editing policy over all pairs of points in the dataset. We show that this formulation is equivalent to solving a large linear system defined by a dense matrix. We derive an approximate algorithm to compute such a solution interactively by taking advantage of the inherent structure of the matrix. We demonstrate our approach by editing images, HDR radiance maps, and measured materials. Finally, we show that our framework generalizes prior methods while providing significant improvements in generality, robustness and efficiency.


The technique of secret handshake is used as a fundamental building block for anonymous peer-to-peer communications over untrusted networks. However, the fact that most existing schemes fail to meet unlinkability causes the use of schemes to limit for practical use. In this paper, we provide new constructions for unlinkable secret handshake, allowing arbitrary two communication parties with the same role in either one single group or multiple groups to privately authenticate each other. Compared to previous works, our techniques have much better performance in terms of both computational and communication cost, while they obtain good security results.


This article addresses the relationships between Percy Bysshe Shelley's non-violent politics and the gothic drama of Joanna Baillie. Both authors see violence as an inherent part of masculinity. For Baillie, this takes the form of what Anne Mellor calls the domestic sublime. The sublime places transcendent value on masculine violence, bracing for the male subject when the threat of violence is distanced. Writing in the tradition of feminine romanticism that Mellor outlines, Baillie sees this violence as directed at women and terrifying rather than awe-inspiring for its victims. Influenced by her work, Shelley seeks to critique violence against women. Unable to imagine a masculinity that is non-violent, he turns instead to a passive femininity that he viewed as innocent of the excesses of masculine violence, and in such heroines as Cythna, this passivity holds out the hope of effective political and social reform. In writing The Cenci, however, he finds the feminine ineffectual in dealing with the actualities of the experiences of a victim of violence. The situational nature of stage drama emphasizes the intimacy and reality of violence and its terror for women as its victims. As Beatrice's passive endurance fails to overcome her oppressive father, she actively resists. Shelley is not able to create an effective resistance to violence that is not itself violent, so he instead has Beatrice turn to a masculinizing violence that he then condemns. Through his identification with Beatrice, he reconciles himself to the violence of his own masculinity not by practicing non-violence, but by condemning a violence he accepts as part of his masculinity.


A completely colour-banded population of these small, sociable, multi-brooded passerines of the sub-family Malurinae was studied for more than four years at Gungahlin, Canberra, A.C.T. Their plumage, behaviour, song, breeding biology and population dynamics are discussed with particular reference to the persistence of the young-of-the-year within the family group throughout the winter, the consequent problems of dispersion and, ultimately, the frequent occurrence of more than one mature mule in the breeding group. It is suggested that this apparent polyandry enables the species to be reproductively more successful within the limits of a variable climate.


In a multidisciplinary effort, uppermost Cretaceous and lower Tertiary Laramide synorogenic strata in the Denver Basin have been dated using biostratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy, and radioactive isotopes. The resulting calibrated framework permits biotic and stratigraphic events to be examined in a spatial and temporal context. Synorogenic sediments accumulated in two distinct pulses separated by about eight million years. Faunal changes are evident across time and, to a lesser extent, space. In addition to evolutionary changes through time, floras show distinctive distributional patterns that reflect the ancient landscape and indicate the presence of Paleocene monsoons on eastern flanks of the Rocky Mountains. Observations by the Denver Basin Project team have been used to create a series of rigorously documented paintings reconstructing ancient Denver Basin landscapes. As a result of our stratigraphic work, bedrock aquifer patterns in the Denver Basin are better quantified. The Arapahoe aquifer is comprised of a series of buried alluvial fans and does not form a uniform layer across the Denver Basin.


It is too often forgotten that every Assyrian "historical" inscription functioned in a very specific context. This context influenced its content and the way in which it was perceived by ancient viewers and readers. Russell's goal is to address the reconstruction of the context of these inscriptions in order to elucidate their original impact. In the past, the palace inscriptions, including Assyrian palace inscriptions, have been published in composite editions with little or no reference to the provenience of the individual exemplars; in addition, the original excavation reports often were more interested in the content of the inscriptions than in their locations. To achieve the objective of placing these inscriptions in their original contexts and thereby provide a base for further study of them, and stimulated by two seasons of renewed excavations at Nineveh during which he studied many inscriptions in situ, Russell returned to the British Museum and Layard's original, handwritten notes from the 19th century excavations at Nineveh--the goal being to catalogue fully and as completely as possible the individual inscriptions and their locations. The results of Russell's labors are here published, including the first publication of several shorter inscriptions. The book is lavishly illustrated, both with museum photos and with photos by the author of many of the inscriptions in situ. The book will no doubt be the basis of all further study of the relationship between inscription and context in the palaces of the Assyrian kings.... Download ebook, read file pdf Studies in the Architectural Context of Late Assyrian Palace Inscriptions


To date, critical examinations of smart cities have largely ignored their temporality. In this article, I consider smart cities from a spatiotemporal perspective, arguing that they produce a new timescape and constitute space–time machines. The first half of the article examines spatiotemporal relations and rhythms, exploring how smart cities are the products of and contribute to space–time compression, create new urban polyrhythms, alter the practices of scheduling, and change the pace and tempos of everyday activities. The second half of the article details how smart cities shape the nature of temporal modalities, considering how they reframe and utilize the relationship among the past, present, and future. The analysis draws from a set of forty-three interviews conducted in Dublin, Ireland, and highlights that much of the power of smart urbanism is derived from how it produces a new timescape, rather than simply reconfiguring spatial relations.


Injuries and deaths from falls due to slipping on walking surfaces have been recognized as a major accident problem in many countries. The safety of walking depends primarily on the surface slip resistance, which is defined as the ratio of (a) the minimum shear force necessary to initiate slipping of a body over the surface to (b) the body's normal force. Several kinds of devices are currently in use to measure slip resistance. In this paper three slip resistance measuring devices are evaluated: the National Bureau of Standards-Brungraber Tester, the Horizontal Pull Slipmeter, and the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute Drag Sled Tester. The testing program consisted of two phases. In the first phase each tester was used to measure the slip resistance of selected surfaces representing a wide range of frictional characteristics of typical indoor and outdoor surfaces. All tested materials were in actual use on walking surfaces. In the mechanical tests the testers were evaluated with respect to their applicability, precision, repeatability, and sensitivity to the operator's measuring technique. The correlation was determined between the results produced by the testers on the same surfaces. In the second phase of the testing program a series of experiments was conducted with human subjects walking over surfaces having relatively low slip resistance. The objective was to determine whether people will slip more often on surfaces which are measured as having lower slip resistance. In general, the agreement between the results of slip resistance measurements and the results of the biomechanical tests was high. It was observed, however, that the process of slipping involves a considerable randomness.


This study examined the hypothesized relationship between social adjustment, as measured by perceived social support, self-concept, and social skills, and performance on academic achievement tests. Participants included 27 teachers and 77 fourth- and eighth-grade students with diverse academic and behavior competencies. Teachers were asked to select one student for each of the three participant nomination categories: undeveloped academic competence, undeveloped behavior competence, and proficient academic and behavior competence. Multivariate analysis of variance results indicated that each participant group differed significantly on social skills, and students with proficient academic and behavior competence demonstrated significantly greater levels of self-concept than did those with an undeveloped behavior competence. None of the groups differed significantly on perceived social support. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that the model predicting academic achievement from selfconcept, social skills, and academic competence adequately fit the data. Indicators of social adjustment were discussed as intervention targets for programs intended to improve students' social competence and academic achievement.


Ten people with dementia (PWD) and their family carers participated in a Singing Together Group for 10 weeks and measures of mood, quality of life, PWD's behavioural and psychological problems, activities of daily living and cognitive status were measured at pre, post and 10-week follow-up. Engagement levels were monitored during the sessions and care partners asked to rate each session. Additional qualitative information was obtained through interview pre-post and at follow-up and subjected to thematic analysis. The results showed that PWD were deteriorating slowly over the course of the study on all measures but that they and their carers' quality of life remained relatively stable. Engagement levels during the group were very high and attendance excellent. Qualitative data gave strong support to the group having promoted wellbeing of all participants and Nolan's 'Senses Framework' was used to explore this further. Future research directions are suggested.


This study evaluated the principals' instructional supervision practices as key to Kiswahili academic performance in public day secondary schools in Nairobi County, Kenya. Secondary school principals' instructional practices are paramount in enhancing academic performance among secondary school students. Quality and relevant instruction ensures excellent academic Kiswahili achievement of students. Through instructional supervision offered by the principals, teachers are stimulated, supported and motivated to instruct the students well. For instructional supervision to fully benefit schools, both the principals and the teachers need to play a meaningful and effective role. The improvement of school through instructional supervision has been a concern for education stakeholders in Kenya during colonial and after colonial periods. As a result, Education Commissions which were formed to evaluate the education system in Kenya addressed the status of Kiswahili. The education Commissions included Phelps Commission of 1924 which recommended the use of vernacular and Kiswahili for teaching practical subjects, and Presidential Working Party for the Establishment of Second University of 1981 which called for teaching of Kiswahili as a compulsory and examinable subject in both primary and secondary schools. The current study targeted 26 public day secondary schools, 26 principals, 26 heads of department of Kiswahili and 2664 students. Both probability and nonprobability sampling techniques were used in the study. The objectives of the study included: What instructional materials are used by Kiswahili teachers to ascertain performance in Kiswahili; what measures are put in place by secondary school principal to realize performance in Kiswahili; what are the strategies directed towards enhancing Kiswahili teachers' skills in public day secondary schools in Nairobi County. Descriptive research design was adopted for the study. Data analysis techniques included stratified random sampling, proportional allocation, simple random sampling design and purposive sampling designs. Instruments for data collection included two sets of questionnaires and interview guide. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to calculate frequencies and percentages. The key findings of the study were that lack of the instructional materials may have contributed to poor performance in Kiswahili; school principals executed their duties properly as concerns Kiswahili teachers' lesson attendance and that lack of concern of principals in what students learn in school may have led to poor performance in Kiswahili.


Location check-ins contain both geographical and semantic information about the visited venues, in the form of tags (e.g., "restaurant"). Such data might reveal some personal information about users beyond what they actually want to disclose, hence their privacy is threatened. In this paper, we study users' motivations behind location check-ins, and we quantify the effect of a privacy-preserving technique (i.e., generalization) on the perceived utility of check-ins. By means of a targeted user study on Foursquare (N = 77), we show that the motivation behind Foursquare check-ins is a mediator of the loss of utility caused by generalization. Using these findings, we propose a machine learning method for determining the motivation behind each check-in, and we design a motivation-based predictive model for utility. Our results show that the model accurately predicts the loss of utility caused by semantic and geographical generalization; this model enables the design of utility-aware, privacy-enhancing mechanisms in location-based social networks.


Reductions of its natural populations have led to recent efforts in small-scale aquaculture of the freshwater prawn Cryphiops caementarius, either for conservation or commercial purposes. However, the lack of knowledge about its nutritional requirements has been one of the major obstacles for its successful culture. Given its importance, this study determines and compares the chemical composition (moisture, ash, crude protein, total lipids and nitrogen free extract) of whole animals and main storage tissues (gonad, hepatopancreas and muscle), of C. caementarius adult prawns from two natural populations. Moreover, the relation of this composition with reproductive and environmental parameters (sex, maturation and habitat) is discussed. The specimens were collected in Limari and Choapa rivers (Coquimbo, Chile) during reproductive season, and divided into six categories according to capture location, gonad maturation stage, and gender. The chemical composition of whole animals and storage tissues was compared among categories. Significant differences were observed between tissues, sexes, maturity stages and locations. Regarding tissues, the muscle and the gonads were rich in protein, whereas the hepatopancreas had high lipid content. According to results, factors such as sex, habitat and stage of gonad maturation can modify the biochemistry of C. caementarius. Nonetheless, the main chemical variations were observed in tissues involved in regulatory processes (hepatopancreas and gonads), and to a lesser extent in structural tissues (muscle). This is the first study known that reports information about the biochemistry of C. caementarius and its findings may be useful to improve feeding practices in aquaculture.


In a transportation and distribution system, the shipment decisions, fleet capacity, and storage capacity are interrelated in a complex way, especially when uncertainty of the demand rate and shipment lead time are taken into account. In this paper the effect of various factors on total costs and service level of a distribution system are investigated. The objective is to obtain a better policy related to a number of issues in transportation and distribution under uncertain situation and to obtain insights on which factor affect the performance significantly. This research develops a simulation model that mimics transportation and distribution of bulk cement by the use of ships in a large cement company in Indonesia. The system consists of a storage at the depot and storage at two port of destinations, which then referred to as packing plants. Several numbers of scenario related to storage capacity at port of origins as well as port of destinations, number of ships employed, operating hours of ports, and rules for ship dispatching are then developed. Each scenario is evaluated in terms of shipment costs and service level. A factorial experiment has been conducted and ANOVA has been used to analyze the results. The results suggest that all factors have significant effects on both total costs and service level. However, the use of different number of ships appear to have the most substantial impacts on those two performance measures. It is also observed that a strong correlation exists between total costs and service level and an efficient frontier of cost and service level has been presented. This paper brings an important recommendation to the company as well as insight for maritime logistics in general. Cost is a very important competitive factor for bulk items like cement, and thus the proposed scenarios could be implemented by the company for substantial transportation and distribution cost reduction. In addition, the efficient frontier graph resulted from this study can be used as an internal target or performance benchmark.


Discretionary appeals currently play a limited role in federal appellate jurisdiction. But reformers have long argued for a larger role. And any wholesale reform of the current appellate-jurisdiction system will likely involve additional or expanded opportunities for discretionary appeals. In this essay, I offer three ideas for the future of discretionary appeals — what form they might take in a reformed system of federal appellate jurisdiction and how we might learn about their function. First, remove any limits on the types of decisions that can be certified for immediate appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). Second, give parties one opportunity in a civil action to directly petition the court of appeals for an immediate appeal. And third, experiment with these and other possible reforms in a few circuits to see how they work. These ideas are admittedly preliminary. But we should start thinking about what discretionary appeals might look like in the future and how we might move towards that future.


The thesis deals with various ways of utilization of biomass. Chapter 1 compares three biomass types: birch wood Betula sp., marine brown alga Fucus vesiculosus, and terrestrial moss Pleurozium schreberi, as precursors for preparation of biosorbents for removal of copper ions from diluted water solutions. Small sample doses (0.5 g/100ml) of the biosorbents prepared from alga and moss enabled more than 90 % removal of Cu (II) ions from diluted water solutions (5-20 mg/l). The sample from birch wood was less effective. The maximum sorption capacities (Xm) determined from the experimental equilibrium isotherms by applying the Langmuir model showed that the alga had the best copper-binding ability (Xm = 23.4 mg/g), followed by the moss (Xm = 11.1 mg/g), and the sawdust (Xm = 4.9 mg/g). The performance of the biosorbent prepared from birch was not satisfactory. The regeneration of the sorbents from alga and moss was performed using diluted HCl as eluent. No visible damages or performance losses were detected after five sorptiondesorption cycles. Chapter 2 deals with MnOx-Pd/Alumina-La catalysts for abatement of the emissions from wood combustion. Of primary interest is the calcination temperature used in preparation of the catalysts. Several catalysts are prepared using various calcination temperatures, 500, 600, 700 and 800 oC for 4 h in air and their activities and stabilities are compared. The activity tests were performed using gaseous mixtures containing combustibles representative for the flue gases from wood combustion, carbon monoxide (2500 ppm), methane (200 ppm) and naphthalene (50 ppm). The catalytic oxidation tests were performed in presence of 10 % O2, 12 % H20, 12 % CO2 and N2 (balance). The concentrations of the components in the gaseous mixture and the total flow of the mixture correspond to those in the flue gases from combustion (gas flow 2.5 l/min corresponding to a space velocity of approximately 20000 h-1). In presence of the catalysts carbon monoxide (CO) and naphthalene (C10H8) ignite almost simultaneously in the interval 150-200 oC and are totally converted at temperatures a little above 200 oC. The light-off temperatures of methane (CH4) are in the interval 600-650 oC, and total conversion is reached at around 700 oC. The most suitable calcination temperature for the catalysts prepared here is 700 oC. Lower temperatures, 500 and 600 oC, seem to result in formation of less stable catalysts. The catalysts calcined at higher temperature, 800 oC, have stable performance in repeated tests, but lower activity. Chapter 3 presents results from literature study on corrosion and deposit formation in combustion of biofuels. Contributing to understanding the reasons for corrosion and the methods for its abatement are the primary goals. The scope is limited to deeper insight of the role of chlorine and alkali in combustion of biomass and the possibilities for hampering their corrosive effects. The role of additives decreasing the corrosion and deposit formation as well as the effect of water and the prospective for availability of low-chlorine biofuels have also been examined.


We discuss the nature and genesis of high involvement management (HIM) in Britain. Although an increasing proportion of British workplaces have adopted HIM practices over the last quarter century only a minority of managements have a strong high involvement orientation. HIM is associated with Total Quality Management and other lean production methods but is no more likely to be adopted in a context of enriched jobs than where jobs are more routinized. HIM usage is linked with the characteristics of the organization itself, such as whether the organization is family-owned, and the size and the composition of the workforce. External factors are much less important. There is little evidence that HIM is driving trade unionism out, as suggested by the union substitution hypothesis. Although there is recent evidence that it is associated with higher workplace productivity there is no evidence to suggest that HIM improves worker well-being. If anything, it is associated with higher levels of anxiety. Work enrichment, on the other hand, is correlated with positive outcomes for workers and employees alike.


Lagging youth participation rates threaten participatory democracy and undermine the representation of young people's interests in elected government. However, the percentage of registered youth who actually cast ballots is very high. The correlation between registration and actual voter participation suggests that when given assistance and greater opportunities to register, young citizens will vote. This Note proposes a national pre-registration law that would allow voter registration to begin at age sixteen. Such a law would be feasible, constitutional, and politically viable and may increase not only the voter participation of young people, but also the socioeconomic diversity of the electorate.


Layered double hydroxide has been used in a variety of areas, including but not limited to catalysis, energy storage, drug or gene delivery, water treatment, etc. Herein, we report a new simple hydrothermal method to prepare a high surface area flower-like Ni-Fe layered double hydroxide (LDH) assembled by nanosheets by using nickel alkoxide and FeSO4 as the only starting materials. It is free of alkaline solution and other additives for directing or supporting in the synthesis procedure. The formation mechanism of this flower-like LDH formed by ultrathin nanosheets is also discussed. Moreover, the as-obtained LDH material shows increased electrocatalytic activity and stability toward WOR in alkaline media compared with the materials prepared without a Ni alkoxide precursor or Fe precursor, namely α-Fe2O3 and Ni(OH)2, respectively. In addition, the electrocatalytic activity is demonstrated to be related to the molar ratio of Fe and Ni in the final Ni-Fe material, and the best activity is achieved when the ratio reaches 0.52 : 1. The phase compositions of the resulting Ni-Fe(x) are discussed. Furthermore, the Ni-Fe LDH material reported herein might be employed as a promising noble-metal-free water oxidation catalyst to replace the IrOx material-the state-of-the-art water oxidation catalyst.


End-users tend to lose their way in the maze of information within hypertext. Much work done to address the "lost in hyperspace" problem is reactive, that is, doing remedial work to correct the deficiencies within hypertexts because they are (or were) poorly designed and built. What if solutions are sought to avoid the problem? What if we do things well from the start?
This thesis reviews the "lost in hyperspace" problem, and suggests a framework to understand the design and usability issues. These issues cannot be seen as purely psychological or purely computing, they are multi-disciplinary. The proactive, multi-disciplinary approach undertaken in this thesis is drawn from current technologies in sub-disciplines of hypertext, human-computer interaction, cognitive psychology and software engineering, and they include investigations into:
" good design principles and guidelines for the building of hypertexts in the first place;
" task analysis and user modelling techniques for end-users' tasks to be carefully defined;
" effective hypertext structures to ensure usability of hypertexts; and
" designer tools to create hypertexts with a reduced tendency for the "lost in hyperspace" problem to arise.
To demonstrate these ideas, this thesis presents HyperAT, a hypertext research authoring
tool, developed to help designers build usable web documents on the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web is chosen as a hypertext example since it is the most widely used and largest hypertext system ever. The approach taken in HyperAT is novel: multi-disciplinary approaches are integrated and implemented with a practical authoring tool.
Evaluation of HyperAT indicates that it does address the "lost in hyperspace" problem, particularly for the World Wide Web by: (i) helping designers manage the complexity of the design and validation processes; and (ii) helping hypertext end-users navigate hypertexts produced by HyperAT without getting "lost".


ICT sector in Serbia, during the period of post-socialist transition, emerged as one of the most dynamic, productive and propulsive parts of the economy. By absorbing labour surplus, especially highly skilled workers, attracting foreign investments, and by increasing exports, productivity and competitiveness of the economy, ICT is considered to be a key element of the recovery and progress of transition economies. However, expansion of ICT is generally limited to larger cities in Serbia, especially Belgrade. Small or no presence of ICT services considerably weakens economic potential and inhibits economic development, thus uneven spatial distribution of ICT is becoming a new factor of spatial polarization. The aim of this paper is to understand the mechanisms behind the uneven spatial development of ICT sector in Serbia. For this purpose we used geographically weighted regression method to examine the impact of various socioeconomic factors on the employment growth of ICT services in Serbian municipalities. The results of this study are important for spatial economic policy aimed to provide environment for further, but more evenly distributed, development of this strategic sector in the Serbian economy.


This paper discusses technology solutions that may be used to mitigate potential threats and security risks arising from small vessels operating in a busy urban maritime domain such as the New York / New Jersey maritime domain. The solutions focus on persistent surveillance by detecting, tracking, and classifying small vessels, and address the risk posed by these vessels. In a series of experiments conducted in the Hudson River, we collected and analyzed data from various sensors and evaluated several potential technology solutions for detecting these security threats. The threats are addressed across multiple scenarios, ranging from man-made threats to coastal hazards, using assets including radars; acoustic and infrared sensors; vessels and vehicles; and oceanographic and meteorologic prediction tools focused on the water surface, underwater, and urban environments. The results of our experiments show that the combination of sensors provides a valuable means to identify small vessels that may pose a threat in a busy harbor.


This is the third in a series of three papers exploring the connection between the multiwavelength properties of AGN in nearby early-type galaxies and the characteristics of their hosts. Starting from an initial sample of 332 galaxies, we selected 116 AGN candidates requiring the detection of a radio source with a flux limit of � 1 mJy, as measured from 5 GHz VLA observations. In Paper I we classified the objects with available archival HST images into "core" and "power-law" galaxies, discriminating on the basis of the nuclear slope of their brightness profiles. We used HST and Chandra data to isolate the nuclear emission of these galaxies in the optical and X-ray bands, thus enabling us (once combined with the radio data) to study the multiwavelength behaviour of their nuclei. The properties of the nuclei hosted by the 29 core galaxies were presented in Paper II. Core galaxies invariably host a radio-loud nucleus, with a median radio-loudness of Log R = 3.6 and an X-ray based radio-loudness parameter of Log RX = -1.3. Here we discuss the properties of the nuclei of the 22 "power-law" galaxies. They show a substantial excess of optical and X-ray emission with respect to core galaxies at the same level of radio luminosity. Conversely, their radio-loudness parameters, Log R � 1.6 and Log RX � -3.3, are similar to those measured in Seyfert galaxies. Thus the radio-loudness of AGN hosted by early-type galaxies appears to be univocally related to the host's brightness profile: radio-loud AGN are only hosted by core galaxies, while radio-quiet AGN are found only in power-law galaxies. The brightness profile is determined by the galaxy's evolution, through its merger history; our results suggest that the same process sets the AGN flavour. In this scenario, the black holes hosted by the merging galaxies rapidly sink toward the centre of the newly formed object, setting its nuclear configuration, described by e.g. the total mass, spin, mass ratio, or separation of the SMBHs. These parameters are most likely at the origin of the different levels of the AGN radio-loudness. This connection might open a new path toward understanding the origin of the radio-loud/radio-quiet AGN dichotomy and provide us with a further tool for exploring the co-evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes.


Traffic accident is a serious problem for developed countries. The rapid economic growth, the increasing income, and urbanization caused huge demand of transportation. It caused the rapid growth of motor vehicle owed. Death caused by traffic accident was assumed to be increased as the accident increased. The huge number of accidents caused by several factors like street condition, vehicle condition, and environment condition like heavy rain, fog, smoke, etc. PT. Badak NGL was not also paid attention to the work safety in environment neighborhood, but also paid attention to the vehicle safety in environment or location of PT. Badak NGL. Companies and several stakeholders like VICO, TOTAL, E&P Indonese, and Cevron had placed Key Performance Index (KPI) of 14 times traffic accident in one year length.
The research was qualitative descriptive research. The location was on LNG Company. It was PT. Badak NGL (Natural Gas Liquefaction) Bontang. Research subject used was street user who did traffic violation in PT. Badak NGL (Natural Gas Liquefaction) region. They were employee, contractor employee, outside party and family. In the research, the writer collected data through interview, observation, and documentation. In data analysis, there used qualitative descriptive method which aimed to give description to the research result.
According to data analysis, there could be concluded that driving behavior caused traffic accident was maximum speed violation, that was 40 km/hour in rush hour or activity like endwork hour at 15.45-16.15, also rest hour at 11.45-12.15 also lack of management policy to reduce the traffic accident, lack of sanction so that the street user didn't consider their safety in traffic using. Management also gave short time in rest so that the car has driven in speed above 40 km/hours.


Following on the development of several prototypes, we have built a semi-automated Deaf Telephony prototype on the SoftBridge platform. This prototype relays text and speech between Deaf users on the Internet and hearing users on the telephone system. Previous work with a pilot trial in the laboratory revealed several opportunities for enhancement. We added a Wizard of Oz (WoOz) to replace the poorly performing automatic speech recognition functionality as well as H.323 breakout, more extensive logging and advanced call initiation functionality. In order to trial the current prototype, we initiated an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) training programme with the Deaf Community of Cape Town. Twenty Deaf users participated in the training. In addition to the training, much baseline user data was collected to give an indication of how Deaf users communicate with hearing users as well as how familiar they are with ICT devices and services. The work for the rest of this year requires us to recruit and train a WoOz operator. Subsequent trials will essentially consist of monthly cycles of prototype introduction, training, automated metric and log collection, user feedback and then feature enhancement. Linguistic analyses of the text output of the Deaf users will be analyzed. We hope to refine the SoftBridge prototype to fit the needs of the Deaf and hearing users, from both technical and social viewpoints. We expect that these iterative cycles will continue for some time and will teach us many lessons regarding multi-modal semi-synchronous IP-based communications systems. Index Terms — Action Research, Deaf Telephony, Usercentred, Information and Communication Technology Training.


This paper focuses on a recent public consultation to criminalise trespass in England and Wales. Through an analysis of the consultation discourse and documentary evidence, we argue that the government has used this process to manufacture a mandate for criminalisation. We show how the construction of democratic support has been achieved by: Pre-coding responses in the initial call for evidence; distorting evidence in the response; and utilizing 'state simplifications' which foreground hostile and racist sentiments whilst presenting sedentarisation as in the 'best interests' of nomadic communities. While the 2018/19 consultation is only the most recent in a long history of civilising offensives against Gypsy-Travellers, as well as other 'unfixed' communities, this particular move to criminalise trespass and attack nomadic heritage is also further evidence of the UK government's steady formalization of property ownership: moving away from considering property 'use' on the ground towards an abstracted registration system de-rooted from place. This denies long-standing rights to roam and non-normative modes of inhabitation, thereby pushing property relations in a direction that rarely benefits those on the housing margins. We foreground an alternative to criminalisation, pointing towards a recent pragmatic, bottom-up policy of 'negotiated stopping' in Leeds in northern England. This builds upon dialogue and cooperation in avoiding costly and disruptive eviction and criminalisation processes, but also potentially creates spaces and opportunities for more positive urban encounters with difference.


Conversations about the constitutionality of prohibitions on marriage for same-sex couples invariably reduce to the question of whether a meaningful analogy can be drawn between restrictions on same-sex marriage and antimiscegenation laws. In an effort to refocus this debate, this article considers the California Supreme Court's 1948 decision in Perez v. Sharp and its use by advocates in recent litigation to secure marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples. Opponents of marriage rights for members of the LGBT *840 community frequently assert that dispatching Perez in these cases distorts the meaning of that decision and other similar precedents by drawing a false analogy between bans on interracial and same-sex marriage. Professor Lenhardt argues that, instead, Perez's appearance in recent cases helps to clarify the nature of the marriage rights at stake in Loving v. Virginia. She also contends that the strategic use of Perez serves to underscore the extent to which state antimiscegenation laws established not only racial, but also gender-based identity norms.Finally, Professor Lenhardt asserts that Perez's use in recent marriage cases offers a way out of the "analogy" debate, focusing discussion on the nature and substantive effect of race and gender bars on marriage, rather than on a comparison of the groups seeking judicial redress for such restrictions. Professor Lenhardt concludes that a deeper appreciation of the extent to which state-imposed obstacles to marriage have operated to police identity, restrict opportunities for self-definition, and impede belonging can elucidate the true implications and citizenship effects of prohibitions on marriage for same-sex couples.


Association for Art History 2019, Brighton
Session Convenors:
Robyne Calvert, The Glasgow School of Art;
Sally-Anne Huxtable, National Museums Scotland

Inspired by the repeated deployment of designers and architects such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Carlo Bugatti in in science fiction films like Blade Runner (1982), Inception (2010), Alien Covenant (2017), this session explores the interaction of histories of design and architecture with the genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy, within the expanded fields of film and television. Although these genres have long taken visual inspiration from the art world, this session looks beyond artistic influences to examine particular objects and spaces, which, having not been designed specifically for film, are then used for the visual expression of fantastic narratives. Does the materiality of such objects express properties of 'the other', or convey subconscious narratives that help set the visual tone (such as discomfort, or anthropomorphism)? Can their use disrupt traditional narratives of time and space?

The papers in this session examine the work of specific designers, designs and design styles that frequently appear in science fiction and fantasy. The themes which will be explored are the referencing of the medieval Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries in the Harry Potter films, the corporate design futurism of 2001: A Space Odyssey, deployment of contemporary jewellery in Sci-Fi films such as Star Wars and Barbarella, as well as the inspiration taken from the architecture and design of Frank Lloyd Wright by film production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas.

Speakers and Abstracts

'Immobilis in Mobile: Harry Potter's Unicorn Tapestries and the Role of Tapestry in Fantasy Films'

Xavier Dectot (National Museums Scotland)

When Harry Potter enters the Gryffindor common room in the film version of The Philosopher's Stone, the first thing the new students (and the spectators) see is the Lady and the Unicorn tapestry spreading across the walls. Up to then, true to the book, these young people had mostly been confronted to paintings, which cover the walls of the stairwell (including, and ending with, the Fat Lady). To the modern viewer, though, the tapestries, whilst absent from the book, play an essential (and recurring) role in setting the alternative medieval ambience that dominates the franchise. In fact, as if in response, when the viewer, in the following episode, The Chamber of Secrets, is introduced in the Slytherin common room, they are confronted to the much gloomier Killing of the Unicorn, the sixth tapestry from the Metropolitan's Hunt of the Unicorn series. Tapestries often play an essential, although discreet, role in establishing not only the ambience of a room but, often, more widely, the feel of a film, from and the Diane tapestry series in Thunderball to the Bayeux Tapestry in Shrek the Third (and many others). This paper aims to explore how, through their sheer physical dimensions, their specific materiality and their essential narrativity, tapestries not only encases the scenic action, but it often give it an additional depth. In fact, as the aforementioned Harry Potter scene demonstrates, they are often the mean through which the viewer is made to accept the alternate reality of the Fantasy world.

''just-enough otherness': The Use of Frank Lloyd Wright's Work in Inception and Passengers'

Ersi Ioannidou (Kingston School of Art, Kingston University)

Production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas observed that spaceships in film are aesthetically coherent. And, in the name of originality, in Passengers (2016) he decided on plurality and disjunction. Dyas drew from a rich compendium of references outside the science fiction genre. Key sources of inspiration were Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese architecture –which Dyas also used as references for the sets of Inception (2010).Dyas explains, 'These are wonderful styles of architecture …lend themselves very well when you are trying to tell a story that is of a futuristic nature, and you want to immerse the audience in something that looks futuristic, but perhaps not so outlandish that you're taken out of the film.' Dyas does not elaborate on how he used Wright's work in the interiors of Passengers; but his quote suggests that Wright has become one of the go-to architect when a set designer would like to produce 'just-enough otherness'. Fellow production designers of science fiction films seem to agree; THX1138 (1971), Gattaca (1997) and, most famously, Blade Runner (1982) use buildings by Wright to locate the plot in the not-so-distant future. Abstraction, monumentality, repetition of forms and patterns, geometric austerity together with references to 'exotic' civilizations remove Wright's buildings from their historic context and create a sense of timelessness. This paper discusses the 'just-enough otherness' that Wright's work brings to science fiction sets focusing on its use by Dyas in Passengers and Inception.

'Jewellery in Space; Its Influence, and Inspiration, within Sci-Fi Cinematography'

Sarah Rothwell (National Museums Scotland)

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a Princess wore a necklace that became so iconic, that the very Earthly design was renamed Planetoid Valley's. This was not merely a prop, or "costume jewellery", nor the necklace that was designed for her; but was bought from the London store of Lapponia, a Finnish jewellery house, whose head of design Bjorn Weckstrom had created revolutionary designs since the 1950's, that was inspired by the natural environment of the Nordic landscape, and unlike anything that anyone had seen before.

From cult classic Barbarella where Jane Fonda is seen wearing a wonderful sinus organic bracelet designed by Paco Rabanne; to the aforementioned necklace gracing the neck of Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia in Star Wars: New Hope, contemporary jewellery design of the day has often been used to evoke a feeling of the future, or create an illusion of an alien or alternative universe within Science Fiction cinematography and television production.

This paper looks to highlight those jewels which have become iconic within the Sci-fi community, pieces that sometimes were not commissioned specifically, but were to be found within the studios of the emerging new wave jewellery designers from the late 1950's onwards. And how their experimentation with new materials and techniques, and influenced by a wide range of subjects from the natural environment, artistic movements of the day, to archaeology and ethnography, led them to create these 'otherworldly' jewels.

Roundtable Discussion: Retrofuturism: Design History meets Science Fiction


The Devonian was a peculiar period, characterized by simplified plate tectonic configurations, climatic overheating and widely flooded continents. The bloom of fishes and ammonoids, extensive reef complexes, and the conquest of land indicate major biosphere innovations, punctuated by many global events, including two of the biggest mass extinctions. The Devonian was the first system for which subdivisions were formally defined. This was achieved by significant advances in pelagic biostratigraphy. The chronostratigraphic framework and interdisciplinary techniques allow us to correlate intervals or sudden events across facies boundaries, in order to reconstruct the sedimentary and evolutionary history of the system with highest precision.

This volume honors the lifetime stratigraphic achievements of Michael Robert House (1930-2002). Based on case studies from Europe, North Africa and North America, it shows how the combination of biostratigraphy, chemostratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy, sequence stratigraphy and event stratigraphy can contribute to a much deeper understanding of both regional and global environmental change.


The spin and orbital configuration of magnetic metal phthalocyanines (MPcs) deposited on metallic substrates are strongly influenced by the rehybridization of the molecular states with the underlying metal. FePc, CoPc, and CuPc isolated molecules are archetypal systems to investigate the interrelationship between magnetic moments and orbital symmetry after deposition on a metallic substrate. MPcs form long-range ordered chains self-assembled along the reconstructed channels of the Au(110) surface. X-ray magnetic circular dichroism from the ${L}_{2,3}$ absorption edges of Fe, Co, and Cu shows that the orbital and spin configuration are strongly modified upon adsorption on the Au(110) surface if the orbitals responsible of the magnetic moment are involved in the interaction process. The magnetic moment for a single layer of molecular chains is completely quenched for the CoPc molecules, fully preserved for the CuPc and reduced for the FePc ones. The modified magnetic configuration is confined to the very interface layer, i.e., to the MPc molecules bound to the metal substrate up to the compact packing of the single layer. The different response can be rationalized in terms of the symmetry/orientation of the metal-ion $d$ states interacting with the substrate states, as indicated by density functional theory calculations in agreement with experimental findings.


Clinical amyopathic dermatomyositis (CADM) is a special spectrum of dermatomyositis; there is prominent skin disease, but minimal or absent muscle disease.1 Rapidly progressive interstitial pneumonia (RPIP) in CADM has been reported predominantly in Asia. In contrast, Cottin et al 2 reported a benign course of interstitial pneumonia in European patients with CADM. The treatment of CADM accompanied with RPIP is challenging, complicated by its rarity and heterogeneity. Generally, this condition is resistant to therapy and commonly fails to respond to aggressive therapy, such as high-dose corticosteroids and immunosuppressants and has a very poor outcome and prognosis.3–⇓⇓6 Interleukin 2 receptor α chain (IL-2Rα, or CD25), a high affinity receptor, is expressed on T and B lymphocytes after their activation. Little IL-2Rα is expressed on unstimulated lymphocytes or is found as soluble IL-2 receptor (sIL-2R) in the serum of healthy people, however, increases in sIL-2R are seen in the setting of autoimmune diseases. …


A critical component in commercial poultry production is to ensure birds are provided clean, quality water. Multiple disinfectants can be utilized to optimize a good water quality program. The goal of these water disinfectants is to greatly reduce or eliminate the presence of all bacteria. In recent years, the oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) meter has been a tool utilized by the poultry industry to monitor chlorine efficacy in drinking water. An ORP reading of 650-750 millivolts (mV) has become the industry standard for assuring an acceptable sanitizing residual of free chlorine is present for controlling microbial contamination regardless of the actual amount of total or free chlorine or the water pH. A recent bench top evaluation of a new chlorine product revealed microbial contamination even when the oxidation-reduction potential read 650 mV. Given these results, it is beneficial for the poultry industry to re-evaluate the relationship between total chlorine residual, free chlorine residual, ORP value, and microbial levels. Additionally, the study determined if a new ORP standard should be the target and if this standard consistently correlates to free chlorine residual (ppm) even under scenarios of different water quality parameters. This study evaluated the efficacy of two different forms of chlorine, a liquid product (sodium hypochlorite) and a crystalline dry product (sodium dichloro-S-triazinetrione) at three concentrations (2, 4, and 8 oz/gal) commonly used for drinking water sanitation in the poultry industry. The objective was to determine the relationship between total and free chlorine residual, ORP, pH, and microbial content of the water when the chlorine products are utilized in water with a high microbial level typically found in unclean poultry drinking water lines. Results indicated both forms of chlorine were effective disinfectants for reducing aerobic bacteria present in the water. Additionally, the results of this experiment showed under field conditions where microbiologically challenged water is present, an ORP reading of 700 mV is required to achieve an efficient microbial reduction/elimination and this is supported by at least 3 ppm of free chlorine.


A randomised survey in Texas found that 22 per cent of the public identified themselves as consumers of New Age media. Despite widespread recognition of the 'spiritual supermarket' there has been little sustained analysis of the production of spiritual commodities and related issues of cultural property. This article presents a case study of the bestselling spiritual self-help book and DVD The Secret , which features various teachers and sacred wisdom traditions seen to hold the key to the meaning of life—but which has also been the subject of copyright disputes. Through this example the article examines ways informational commodities are produced by transforming freely available spiritual traditions into intellectual property for a contemporary market in self-help products. Two related tensions raised by this reconstruction are explored. The first is between cooperation and competition in the liberal New Age milieu where entrepreneurs present marginally differentiated goods and services side-by-side. In contrast with exclusionary organisation of religious doctrine, freedom to adapt the lingua franca of holistic spirituality allows for coefficiency among providers, but also new forms of ownership distinction, as exemplified by The Secret . The second tension is between these private property relations and the corporate cultural property of the custodians of knowledge traditions that are commodified. The Secret , as with much New Age syncretism and multiculturalism, depends upon particular processes of transvaluation that inscribe diversity as positive by rendering selected instantiations of it equivalent—in this case through universalising the therapeutic value of specific traditions have for modern life. Drawing in particular upon debates about New Age use of Indigenous Australian knowledges, the author questions how the reworking of wisdom into a commodity may bear upon the ethnocultural significance of sacred traditions and upon other attempts to fashion their roles in contemporary public spheres


The human electroretinogram (ERG) was elicited by an abrupt replacement of a chromatic adaptation stimulus with a long duration test stimulus. It was found that the relative spectral sensitivity of the ERG was strongly dependent upon the color and luminance of the adaptation stimulus with adaptation to a particular color lowering sensitivity to the same part of the spectrum. Clear-cut responses were produced by test luminances below an adaptation luminance only when the two were far apart in the spectrum. Analysis of the data gave definite evidence for two spectral processes with maxima near 500 and 620 mμ. There was evidence for other possible processes in the green and blue but their maxima were not well defined.


Abstract Thalli of the lichens Pseudevernia furfuracea, Usnea longissima, Lobaria pulmonaria, and Peltigera praetextata were taken from unpolluted areas and transplanted to a downtown site in Erzurum, Turkey. Heavy metals copper (Cu), chromium (Cr), zinc (Zn), lead (Pb), nickel (Ni), and iron (Fe) were measured after an 8 month exposure period. Changes in the heavy metal concentrations were observed during the exposure period in lichen species and in both locations. Heavy metal concentrations were significantly higher in Peltigera praetextata than the other species at the location nearest to the junction crossroads. Peltigera praetextata may be considered a good indicator. These results can be attributed to the effect of atmospheric pollutants on the transplanted lichens.


The value of cultural and serological procedures in diagnosing gonococcal and chlamydial infections was investigated in 85 women who had provisional diagnoses of pelvic inflammatory disease. The correlation between certain clinical variables and the absence or presence of such infections was also studied. In 46 the diagnosis of acute salpingitis was verified by laparoscopy. The laboratory and clinical findings in the patients with acute salpingitis were compared with those in the remaining 39 women in whom laparoscopy did not show signs of inflammation. Salpingitis was considered to be gonococcal if Neisseria gonorrhoeae was isolated or a fourfold or more change in titre of antibodies to gonococcus pilus antigen was found. The diagnosis of chlamydial salpingitis was based on the isolation of Chlamydia trachomatis, a fourfold or more change in titre of IgG antibodies to or from a titre of greater than or equal to 1/256, or the presence of IgG antibodies at a titre of greater than or equal to 1/512. Patients with chlamydial salpingitis had less severe symptoms but a more protracted course of disease than patients with gonococcal salpingitis or with acute salpingitis not associated with the two pathogens.


Introduction Preoperative functional capacity is considered an important risk factor for cardiovascular and other complications of major non-cardiac surgery. Nonetheless, the usual approach for estimating preoperative functional capacity, namely doctors' subjective assessment, may not accurately predict postoperative morbidity or mortality. 3 possible alternatives are cardiopulmonary exercise testing; the Duke Activity Status Index, a standardised questionnaire for estimating functional capacity; and the serum concentration of N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT pro-BNP), a biomarker for heart failure and cardiac ischaemia. Methods and analysis The Measurement of Exercise Tolerance before Surgery (METS) Study is a multicentre prospective cohort study of patients undergoing major elective non-cardiac surgery at 25 participating study sites in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. We aim to recruit 1723 participants. Prior to surgery, participants undergo symptom-limited cardiopulmonary exercise testing on a cycle ergometer, complete the Duke Activity Status Index questionnaire, undergo blood sampling to measure serum NT pro-BNP concentration and have their functional capacity subjectively assessed by their responsible doctors. Participants are followed for 1 year after surgery to assess vital status, postoperative complications and general health utilities. The primary outcome is all-cause death or non-fatal myocardial infarction within 30 days after surgery, and the secondary outcome is all-cause death within 1 year after surgery. Both receiver-operating-characteristic curve methods and risk reclassification table methods will be used to compare the prognostic accuracy of preoperative subjective assessment, peak oxygen consumption during cardiopulmonary exercise testing, Duke Activity Status Index scores and serum NT pro-BNP concentration. Ethics and dissemination The METS Study has received research ethics board approval at all sites. Participant recruitment began in March 2013, and 1-year follow-up is expected to finish in 2016. Publication of the results of the METS Study is anticipated to occur in 2017.


There has long been a politics around the way in which women are represented, with objection not so much to specific images as to a regime of looking which places the represented woman in a particular relationship to the spectator's gaze. Artists have sometimes avoided the representation of women altogether, but they are now producing images which challenge the regime. How do these images succeed in their challenge ? The Emptiness of the Image offers a psychoanalytic answer. Parveen Adams argues that, despite flaws in some of the details of its arguments, psychoanalytic theory retains an overwhelming explanatory strength in relation to questions of sexual difference and representation. She goes on to show how the issue of desire changes the way we can think of images and their effects. Throughout she discusses the work of theorists, artists and filmmakers such as Helene Deutsch, Catherine MacKinnon, Mary Kelly, Francis Bacon, Michael Powell and Della Grace. The Emptiness of the Image shows how the very space of representation can change to provide a new way of thinking the relation between the text and the spectator. It shows how psychoanalytic theory is supple enough to slide into and transform the most unexpected situations.


The variety of fish species found at the archaeological sites indicates the exploitation of local and regional ecosystems. The focus of the fisheries varies from site to site. The study is based on the analyses of faunal materials from 10 archaeological sites from Eastern Middle Sweden, Gotland, and Aland dating to approximately 3800 – 1850 B.C. The mainland assemblages are mainly burnt and highly fragmented. When comparing burnt and unburnt bone materials, results showed a marked predominance of fish specimens within the unburnt assemblages. The burnt bone materials showed a striking preponderance of marine mammals. The burning process impairs identification and quantification of fishbone. Species presence per context complemented summary data and showed that low and medium frequency species were handled more often than summary data indicate. Intra-site studies of burnt bones demonstrated the importance of detailed studies of the taphonomic history of the faunal assemblages. At Ajvide on the island of Gotland, large amounts of well preserved unburnt faunal remains, and ca. 600 bone fishhooks have been unearthed. Replicas of fishhooks from this assemblage were subjected to strength test, osteometric, morphological, and breakage studies. Results point to an elaborated fishing technology for capturing medium sized cod. Incremental studies of cod otoliths (ear stones) from Ajvide showed that most cod were captured in fall and winter. A comparison with the contemporaneous Jettbole site on the Aland islands, showed that in general smaller cod and herring were captured there. The ecological conditions were somewhat different during the Neolithic. The growth pattern for cod indicate a more rapid growth for young cod but with a lower asymptotic length compared to modern cod.


Although we often speak about a global increase in awareness and policy on street harassment, in France, the issue was incorporated into a gender-based violence policy subsector, while Dutch policymakers avoided vocabularies pertaining to structural male domination. Differences in governmental campaigns on street harassment were the result not only of policymakers' positive convictions, but also of their 'apprehensions'. Apprehension of 'moralising' led to resistance against and decline of feminism in the Netherlands, while apprehension of 'stigmatising' men of colour informed campaigns in France. This notion is proposed as an alternative to that of 'blame avoidance', which reduces policymakers' avoidance behaviour to the logic of instrumental strategy. An analysis of apprehensions is attentive to how ideas shape social action: policy implementation cannot be reduced to the mechanical reproduction of policy paradigms, but is often the product of policymakers' reflective choices in the policies they do and do not want to pursue.


Now available to the public for the first time, the Senate's landmark torture report delivers a damning indictment on CIA interrogation practices. Finally declassified and released after five years in the making, the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's torture program, which describes in excruciating detail what Obama has called "harsh methods ...inconsistent with our values as a nation," is now available to the American public--citizens who have a right to know the truth. Considered one of the most important government documents ever to be published, the torture report compiles the Senate committee's findings of the CIA's program to detain and interrogate terrorist threats in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, from 2001 to 2006 during the Bush administration. Among other controversial conclusions, the report has found that the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" were not effective in acquiring intelligence to avert terrorist threats. The study also shows that the CIA misled the public, Congress, the Department of Justice, and even the White House on the effectiveness and the scope and severity of their interrogation techniques. The exhaustive and disturbing account also provides grisly accounts on horrific practices that occurred in CIA black sites: prisoners experienced sleep deprivation in stressful positions for up to 180 hours; being stripped and shackled, hooded and dragged down a long corridor while being punched; waterboarding; and "rectal feeding." Based on six million CIA documents and requiring $40 million to complete, the entire 6,000-page report still remains classified. Only 525 pages of summary have been published, with 7 percent of its content redacted, and it is now at the disposal of American readers who have the opportunity to learn what occurred during this dark chapter in modern American history. The Senate report delivers a scathing, shocking, and controversial judgment, and gives us much to think about in terms of our longstanding position on freedom, democracy, dignity, and human rights.


Objective Many believe that hospital crowding manifesting in the ED with the boarding of admitted patients is a result of significant numbers of acute hospital beds being occupied by patients awaiting discharge to nursing homes, step-down facilities or home with or without additional support. This observational study was performed to establish the actual relationship between boarders in the ED and patients experiencing delayed discharge. Methods Data relating to the number of patients in the ED and their points in their patient pathway were entered into a logbook on a daily basis by the most senior doctor on duty. 630 days of observations of patients boarded in the ED were compared with the number of inpatients with delayed discharges, obtained from the hospital information system, to see if large numbers of inpatients with delayed discharges are associated with crowding in the ED. Results Two years of data showed an annual ED census of more than 47 000, with a daily mean ED admission rate of 29.85 patients and a daily mean ED boarding figure of 29 patients. A mean of 15.4% of the 823 hospital beds was occupied by patients with delayed discharges, and the hospital ran at, or near, full capacity (99%–105%) all the time. Results obtained highlighted a statistically significant relationship between delayed discharges in the hospital and ED crowding as a result of boarders (p value<0.001, with a regression coefficient of 0.16, 95% CI 0.12 to 0.20). The study also showed that the number of boarders was related to the number of ED admissions in the preceding 24 hours (p=0.036, with a regression coefficient of 0.14, 95% CI 0.05 to 0.28). Conclusions Delayed hospital discharges significantly contribute to crowding in the ED. Healthcare systems should target timely discharge of inpatients experiencing delayed discharge in an urgent and efficient manner to improve timely access to acute hospital beds for patients requiring emergency admission.


Catatonia, originally described by Karl Kahlbaum in 1874, may be regarded as a set of clinical features found in a subtype of schizophrenia, but the syndrome may also stem from organic causes including vascular parkinsonism, brain masses, globus pallidus lesions, metabolic derangements, and pharmacologic agents, especially first generation antipsychotics. Catatonia may include paratonia, waxy flexibility (cerea flexibilitas), stupor, mutism, echolalia, and catalepsy (abnormal posturing). A case of catatonia as a result of acute renal failure in a patient with dementia with Lewy bodies is described. This patient recovered after intravenous fluid administration and reinstitution of the atypical dopamine receptor blocking agent quetiapine, but benzodiazepines and amantadine are additional possible treatments. Recognition of organic causes of catatonia leads to timely treatment and resolution of the syndrome.


The object of this paper is to establish certain generalized fractional integration and differentiation involving generalized Mittag-Leffler function defined by Salim and Faraj [25]. The considered generalized fractional calculus operators contain the Appell's function $F_3$ [2, p.224] as kernel and are introduced by Saigo and Maeda [23]. The Marichev-Saigo-Maeda fractional calculus operators are the generalization of the Saigo fractional calculus operators. The established results provide extensions of the results given by Gupta and Parihar [3], Saxena and Saigo [30], Samko et al. [26]. On account of the general nature of the generalized Mittag-Leffler function and generalized Wright function, a number of known results can be easily found as special cases of our main results.


Because they have failed to address the fundamental economic imbalances within Europe obscured by the single currency, each effort by European leaders so far to resolve the euro crisis has only deepened it. Without a decisive move toward fiscal and political union, accompanied by policies that push productivity and competitiveness toward convergence while closing the democratic deficit, the Eurozone will disintegrate.

To discuss the way forward, the Nicolas Berggruen Institute's Council on the Future of Europe met in Rome on May 28 with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti. In this section we publish the contributions from that meeting by the former European leaders, scholars and Nobel laureates who are members of the Council.


Weaning covers the entire process of liberating the patient from mechanical support and from the endotracheal tube. Many controversial questions remain concerning the best methods for conducting this process. An International Consensus Conference was held in April 2005 to provide recommendations regarding the management of this process. An 11-member international jury answered five pre-defined questions. 1) What is known about the epidemiology of weaning problems? 2) What is the pathophysiology of weaning failure? 3) What is the usual process of initial weaning from the ventilator? 4) Is there a role for different ventilator modes in more difficult weaning? 5) How should patients with prolonged weaning failure be managed? The main recommendations were as follows. 1) Patients should be categorised into three groups based on the difficulty and duration of the weaning process. 2) Weaning should be considered as early as possible. 3) A spontaneous breathing trial is the major diagnostic test to determine whether patients can be successfully extubated. 4) The initial trial should last 30 min and consist of either T-tube breathing or low levels of pressure support. 5) Pressure support or assist–control ventilation modes should be favoured in patients failing an initial trial/trials. 6) Noninvasive ventilation techniques should be considered in selected patients to shorten the duration of intubation but should not be routinely used as a tool for extubation failure.


Background With the widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), there is a growing awareness of problems in EHR training for new users and subsequent problems with the quality of information present in EHR-generated progress notes. By standardizing the case, simulation allows for the discovery of EHR patterns of use as well as a modality to aid in EHR training. Objective To develop a high-fidelity EHR training exercise for internal medicine interns to understand patterns of EHR utilization in the generation of daily progress notes. Methods Three months after beginning their internship, 32 interns participated in an EHR simulation designed to assess patterns in note writing and generation. Each intern was given a simulated chart and instructed to create a daily progress note. Notes were graded for use of copy-paste, macros, and accuracy of presented data. Results A total of 31 out of 32 interns (97%) completed the exercise. There was wide variance in use of macros to populate data, with multiple macro types used for the same data category. Three-quarters of notes contained either copy-paste elements or the elimination of active medical problems from the prior days' notes. This was associated with a significant number of quality issues, including failure to recognize a lack of deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis, medications stopped on admission, and issues in prior discharge summary. Conclusions Interns displayed wide variation in the process of creating progress notes. Additional studies are being conducted to determine the impact EHR-based simulation has on standardization of note content.


[1] The sensitivity of the Arctic Ocean ice cover on the atmospheric poleward energy flux, D, is studied using a coupled column model of the ocean, ice, and atmosphere. In the model, the ice cover is described by a thickness distribution and the atmosphere is a simple two-stream gray body in radiative equilibrium. It is shown that the thickness distribution, in combination with the albedo function, gives a strong nonlinear response to positive perturbations of D. The response on D is sensitive to the albedo parameterization and the shape of the thickness distribution, controlled by ridging and divergence. An increase of about 9 W m−2 from a standard value of D = 103 W m−2 has a dramatic effect, reducing the ice thickness by more than 2 m, and generates a large open-water fraction during summer. The reduction of ice thickness is characterized by a clear transition between two regimes, going from a regime where first-year ice survives the next summer melt period to a seasonal ice regime where the first-year ice melts completely. It is shown that the existence of seasonal ice regime is dependent on the surface mixed layer thickness. The model enters a completely ice-free state if the thickness of the mixed layer is increased above a threshold value. The adjustment timescale for the ice cover is 6 years for small positive and negative perturbations in D. For larger positive perturbations of about 10 W m−2, the adjustment timescale is up to 20 years.