Deformation in a microcomponent is often constrained by surrounding joined material making the component under mixed loading and multiple stress states. In this study, molecular dynamics (MD) simulation are conducted to probe the effect of stress states on the deformation and fracture of nanocrystalline Cu. Tensile strain is applied on a Cu single crystal, bicrystal and polycrystal respectively, under two different tension boundary conditions. Simulations are first conducted on the bicrystal and polycrystal models without lattice imperfection. The results reveal that, compared with the performance of simulation models under free boundary condition, the transverse stress caused by the constrained boundary condition leads to a much higher tensile stress and can severely limit the plastic deformation, which in return promotes cleavage fracture in the model. Simulations are then performed on Cu single crystal and polycrystal with an initial crack. Under constrained boundary condition, the crack tip propagates rapidly in the single crystal in a cleavage manner while the crack becomes blunting and extends along the grain boundaries in the polycrystal. Under free boundary condition, massive dislocation activities dominate the deformation mechanisms and the crack plays a little role in both single crystals and polycrystals.


The purpose of this evaluation is to show how Accelerated Math implementation
affects student achievement and attitudes towards mathematics. Accelerated Math is a
computer based curriculum management program. The program provides both the
teacher and student with a database of math practice, testing, and intervention. This
study looked at teacher and student attitudes in relation to student achievement, with
respect to math success in students. It also looks closely at effective levels of proper
implementation through professional development of the program and those effects on
student achievement. Surveys were taken and End of Grade standardized test results of
third and fourth grade students were compared in order to determine the impact of the
program on student achievement. It was found that students in the group who spent much
more time using the program scored lower on standardized tests, as students in another
group who used the program as a less significant compliment to their instructional
program scored higher. Teachers in both groups had a similar lack of training and
information about the program during it original implementation in their school. Student
attitudes were positive about math ability and achievement during the use of Accelerated
Math.


In recent years materials with porous architecture and high surface area are being developed for numerous potential applications in nanotechnology, catalysis and separation science, molecular sieves, zeolites, hybrid optics, bio ceramics etc. We have synthesized porous wollastonite (CaSiO3) and Cu2+ doped (0.1, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3 and 5 mol%) ceramic powders by a novel low-temperature initiated, self-propagating, gas producing solution combustion process. The ceramic powders have been studied by XRD, TG/DTA, SEM, EDS and EPR spectroscopic techniques. The effect of temperature on crystalline phase formation, amount of porogens and particle size of porous wollastonite have been investigated. The XRD patterns confirms that the ceramic powders undergoes a clear single phase formation of \beta-CaSiO3 and \alpha-CaSiO3 at 950 °C and 1200 °C respectively. These formation temperatures were lower than those using other methods by the conventional solid-state reaction method. It is observed that the average particle size of the annealed wollastonite samples are in the range 29-50 nm. The samples calcined to 950 °C has low porosity (17.5 %), however the porosity increases with calcination, and at 1200 °C has a large porosity of (31.6 %). The surface areas of as formed, 950 °C and 1200 °C calcined wollastonite samples were 31.93 m2/g, 0.585m2/g and 3.48 m2/g respectively. The EPR spectra of all the investigated samples exhibit resonance signals characteristic of the Cu2+ ions. Various spin-Hamiltonian parameters have been evaluated from the EPR spectra and it is found that the ground state for paramagnetic electrons is dx2-y2 orbital (2B1g state), implying that the Cu2+ ion being located in tetragonally distorted octahedral sites (D4h) elongated along z-axis. The number of spins participating in resonance (N) and the paramagnetic susceptibilities (\chi) have been evaluated from EPR data as a function of Cu2+ content. The effect of alkali ions (Li, Na and K) on the EPR spectra, have also been studied and it is interesting to observe that they exhibit a marked alkali effect. The results obtained from these studies have been discussed in detail.


As part of Nebraska Mosaic, a senior-level journalism capstone course, students are tasked with interviewing, writing and producing stories for and about refugees and immigrants in Nebraska. But students face a steep learning curve in this experiential learning class. Their knowledge about refugees and immigrants is limited, and they have little understanding of the issues refugees and immigrants face in their new country. Students also have little experience interacting with them, much less interviewing them and writing about them. Using an experiential learning assignment that mimics the journalism practice of embedding, students have an opportunity to develop empathy, gain confidence and improve their reporting, interviewing and writing skills. This inquiry portfolio explores the effectiveness of embedding students in refugee agencies in order to prepare them to report on diverse audiences.


The team, led by Dr. Abhijit Patel, assistant professor of therapeutic radiology at the Yale School of Medicine, created a tool that takes advantage of new highthroughput DNA sequencing technologies to make it easier to simultaneously measure gene activity in large numbers of cells or tissues. While DNA is considered the blueprint of life, knowledge of which genes are activated or de-activated under different conditions is fundamental to our understanding of biology and disease. Gene expression profiling is commonly used in clinical tests. For example, in patients with breast cancer, gene expression is often measured within tumor specimens to predict the likelihood of recurrence and to determine whether chemotherapy would be beneficial. With additional validation, Patel said, this highthroughput approach could be used to measure gene expression from many patients' tumors simultaneously. Ultimately, the method could reduce the cost of such tests, making them more broadly accessible. "To make meaningful conclusions about complex gene expression patterns, it is usually necessary to perform statistical analysis on large numbers of clinical or experimental samples. We believe that this new technology will facilitate such work," said Patel, senior author on the paper. "We are excited because this method makes large-scale RNA profiling studies more practical and accessible to most researchers and clinical labs."


This paper will deal primarily with Thomson's interesting dual perspectives employed in portraying the Victorian life's crises depicted in his masterpiece The City of Dreadful Night. Each of these perspectives will be analyzed according to its face value first, and then according to what might a gifted writer, like Thomson, had in mind and yearned symbolically to declare by adopting such a method in writing the poem. The City of Dreadful Night has earned justly the Victorian poet James Thomson (B. V.) a distinct place in English literature. It is a unique poem in its insightful earnestness, force of thought and its pointed verses; that turned it into a truly remarkable poem, deserving to be considered a predecessor to T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland. The City of Dreadful Night is an extremely intriguing poem; not just for the dark vision of humanity and its future the poem presents, but precisely for the multiplicity of levels with which its poet handles such an enigmatic topic.


Dementia is a syndrome characterized by multiple cognitive deficits, that are sufficient to interfere with daily living and social and occupational functioning (Gabrowski & Damasio, 2004). Alzheimer's Dementia (AD) is the most common cause of dementia in adults and the risk of developing the disease increases with age. Alzheimer's Dementia is a disease that is misunderstood in Nigeria because of the nature and time of onset of the condition; memory loss associated with Alzheimer's Dementia is assumed to be a normal part of aging. This report investigates the quality of care that is provided to older adults with Alzheimer's Dementia in Nigeria and offers recommendations for improved rehabilitation services.


It is an open issue whether blood biomarkers serve to diagnose Alzheimer's disease (AD) or monitor its progression over time from prodromal stages. Here, we addressed this question starting from data of the European FP7 IMI-PharmaCog/E-ADNI longitudinal study in amnesic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients including biological, clinical, neuropsychological (e.g., ADAS-Cog13), neuroimaging, and electroencephalographic measures. PharmaCog/E-ADNI patients were classified as "positive" (i.e., "prodromal AD" n = 76) or "negative" (n = 52) based on a diagnostic cut-off of Aβ42/P-tau in cerebrospinal fluid as well as APOE ε 4 genotype. Blood was sampled at baseline and at two follow-ups (12 and 18 months), when plasma amyloid peptide 42 and 40 (Aβ42, Aβ40) and apolipoprotein J (clusterin, CLU) were assessed. Linear Mixed Models found no significant differences in plasma molecules between the "positive" (i.e., prodromal AD) and "negative" groups at baseline. In contrast, plasma Aβ42 showed a greater reduction over time in the prodromal AD than the "negative" aMCI group (p = 0.048), while CLU and Aβ40 increased, but similarly in the two groups. Furthermore, plasma Aβ42 correlated with the ADAS-Cog13 score both in aMCI patients as a whole and the prodromal AD group alone. Finally, CLU correlated with the ADAS-Cog13 only in the whole aMCI group, and no association with ADAS-Cog13 was found for Aβ40. In conclusion, plasma Aβ42 showed disease progression-related features in aMCI patients with prodromal AD.


Objective: We report a rare case of laryngeal myxoma.Case report: Laryngeal myxomas are rare benign tumors of mesenchymal origin, to our knowledge only six have been reported in the English-language literature. We present the case of a woman seen in the ENT outpatient clinic with a lifelong history of dysphonia. On examination she was found to have bilateral swollen vocal cords. This was thought to represent Reinkes oedema. Pathological analysis after routine microlaryngoscopy showed this to be a vocal cord myxoma. Conclusion: We recommend excision of this lesion and long term follow-up.


Excerpt] Unlike many critics of the AFL-CIO's foreign policies, and especially of its International Affairs Department, Paul Garver speaks with a reasonable, almost academic voice. Only the stonehearted can fail to be moved by his call for "serious dialogue and open discussion" to replace the "sporadic swapping of charges and counter-charges" as well as "denunciations, red-baiting and innuendo." "The differences between us, at home and abroad," he says, "are not as deep as our need to stand united in the global workplace." Amen. The foreign policy debate initiated at the AFL-CIO convention four years ago was entirely healthy. It needs to be broadened and better informed if the Federation is to act abroad with the understanding and support of its membership. Assuming Brother Garver means what he said, I decided his article deserved a response and that the resulting debate might indeed promote rational dialogue, diminish demagoguery, and dispel misinformation. Regrettably, Brother Garver's article falls short of the standards he proclaims. He hurls charges that must provoke counter-charges, indulges in the denunciations he denounces, dispenses misinformation unconducive to serious dialogue, and stoops to innuendos that are not helpful to open discussion.


William Pitt's 1785 proposal for a free trade area between Britain and Ireland attempted to use free trade as a mechanism of imperial integration. It was a response to the agitation for political reform in Ireland and followed the attainment of legislative independence in 1782. The proposal aimed at co-ordinating economic and fiscal policy between the kingdoms without imposing explicit political controls. This article establishes that the measure failed because of the lack of consensus around the idea of free trade. Three contrasting ideas of free trade became apparent in the debates around the propositions of 1785: imperial or neo-Mercantilist free trade, Smithean free trade, and national or neo-Machiavellian free trade. Imperial free trade was critical of monopolies but sought to organise trade to the benefit of the imperial metropole; Smithean free trade saw open markets as a discipline that assured efficiency but required imperial institutional frameworks, legally secured, to function. Neo-Machiavellian free trade asserted the right of every political community to organise its trade according to its interests. The article establishes the genealogy of these three positions in pamphlet debates and political correspondence in Britain and Ireland from 1689 to 1785. It argues that majority political opinion in Ireland, with exceptions, understood free trade in a neo-Machiavellian sense while Pitt was committed to a Smithean ideal. The propositions collapsed because these internal tensions became more evident under the pressure of criticism. Liberal political economy did not of itself offer a route to a British exceptionality that finessed the tensions inherent in empire.


This essay examines the alehouse and alehouse communities as these are represented in the black-letter broadside ballad. In particular, concentrating on the texts found under the category 'Drinking and Good Fellowship' in the Pepys collection of ballads, this essay sets out to explore how the broadside ballad registers an often ambivalent set of attitudes both towards the practice of communal drinking, as well as towards the element of 'good fellowship'. Importantly, these texts often celebrate the alehouse as a space of companionship that strengthens male homosocial bonds through the element of communal drinking. The alehouse community may thus be seen to provide an affirmation of the enduring significance of communal values, social stability and cohesion. However, any attempt to affirm or celebrate the element of social stability through communal drinking is often heavily fraught with anxiety about the exact opposites: alienation, fragmentation and social displacement. Adding to the challenging work of Peter Clark and, more recently, Patricia Fumerton, my discussion concentrates, in particular, on the ways in which alehouse communities register the anxiety of social dislocation, by looking at various gestures of social self-definition in the broadside ballad. As I will argue, alehouse communities are here defined through various gestures of social exclusion that serve to dissociate them, both from an upper-class ethos of idleness, but also from the idleness often associated during this period with vagrancy. As these gestures of social self-definition suggest, vagrancy is often countenanced with a considerable amount of horror and abhorrence, not merely because of the alleged idleness and deceit of those who 'basely loyter up and downe', but because of the susceptibility of the 'good fellowes' themselves to that condition.


Global indicators on human rights (HRs) aim to measure HRs scores against HRs standards. In other words, they aim to measure legal phenomena against legal benchmarks. Despite HRs indicators' reliance on legal knowledge, lawyers have so far neither made substantial contributions to their production, nor studied in depth the legal implications of their uses. The current state-of-the-art in the world of HRs indicators is the result of an ongoing process led by bureaucrats, economists, statisticians, and activists with limited legal training. It is these actors who are developing a new body of professional knowledge, and a new technology of governance based on knowledge.In the field of indicators on women's HRs – on which the paper focuses – lawyers' absence is particularly striking.On the one hand, lawyers are missing the opportunity to analyze who produces the indicators, under what pressures, and for what purposes – that is to say, the opportunity to understand the regulatory environment in which indicators' producers and users operate, and to identify the accountability mechanisms that are (and should be) applicable to them. On the other hand, lawyers' participation in the substantive discourse underlying the production of indicators on women's HRs has until now been minimal, if any. Lawyers have so far kept themselves away from acting as translator from local practices and global HRs standards. Yet the production and use of these indicators badly need lawyers at ease with the legal cultures under examination, as well as with the international HRs legal discourse which is supposed to be applied to them. The aim of the paper is therefore to explore what contribution law and lawyers can make to the world of indicators on women's HRs, with regard to both its institutional landscapes in which, and the legal methodologies through which these indicators are produced and used.


This paper proposes modifications to the existing EU set-aside policy which are designed to alleviate the problem of output slippage associated with heterogeneous land quality by using "incentive-compatible" mechanisms drawn from principal-agent theory. Specifically, it is suggested that there should be differential reference yields based on land quality to discourage the "adverse selection" of lower quality land for set-aside, and that the scope of set-aside monitoring should be expanded to include both the quantity and the quality of land set-aside so as to discourage "moral hazard" problems. The potential of these modifications is illustrated using a numerical analysis, which is also used to evaluate the role of a range of factors which determine the set-aside decision. Finally, an estimate of the "benefits" from reducing slippage required to justify the costs of including these modifications is provided.


Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre is identified more with his novel Paul et Virginie, than with the Études de la nature. However, the publication of the Études in 1784 established him as a serious student of the natural world. Study of the work reveals a multifaceted personality: a classical scholar; a mathematician; a trained military engineer/geographer; a resolute character, who pursued, and achieved his literary aims despite years of financial insecurity; an obdurate character, who never deviated from his sincerely held, but erroneous, scientific beliefs; one of the most widely travelled men of his age, whose observations and experiences added interest and authority to his descriptions; an avid reader, especially of accounts by other voyagers, evidence of which, is seen frequently in the Études; a philosopher, whose opinions revealed a close study of established, eminent thinkers; an enthusiastic, amateur botanist, who was inspired by Pierre Poivre on the Île de France and by his later friendship with Rousseau. Other studies have addressed diverse aspects of Bernardin's life and work, but by concentrating mainly on the Études de la nature, and with reference to the manuscripts, I propose in this thesis to examine how an apparently random, disordered text, with fourteen Études of disproportionate lengths, many digressions, and a plethora of stylistic devices, proved such a resounding success and transformed Bernardin's fortunes. I hope to explain this accomplishment by investigating Bernardin's method of working, and how far the structure and content of the Études conform to, or diverge from, his stated plan at the beginning of the Étude première: 'Je formai, il y a quelques années, le project d'écrire une histoire générale de la nature, à l'imitation d'Aristote, de Pline, du chancelier Bacon, et de plusieurs modernes célèbres.' My analysis will concentrate primarily on the use he made, for various purposes, of contemporaneous sources, and those of the preceding two centuries.


Abstract The rate and mechanism of zircon coarsening in quartzite ±H2O at 1.0 GPa and 1000 ℃ were characterized by performing time-series experiments in a piston-cylinder apparatus. Anhydrous experiments show no significant growth of zircon or textural modifications after 24 h. In the presence of 1-2 wt% H2O, zircon (2 wt%) in coarsely powdered quartz recrystallized in the first 8 hours so that mean crystal size decreased relative to the starting material. After 8 h zircon grew by Ostwald ripening and by coalescence of crystals, and maintained its position on quartz grain boundaries, even while quartz crystals coarsened, by recrystallizing in the fluid. Fitting the experimental data produced the growth-rate equation log (n - n) = log (2 - 2) = log (t - t0) + log Kn = log (t - t0) - 5.9, where  is mean diameter in micrometers, the subscript 0 denotes initial value at time zero, t is experiment duration in seconds, and Kn is the growth-rate constant with units of μm2/s (five experiments, r2 = 0.988). A value of n = 2 suggests that growth is interface controlled, with the rate limited by dissolution and precipitation on the crystal surface. An equivalent growth-rate equation is  -  = K1/n t1/n = K1/nn t1/n = (1.12 × 10-3 μm/s1/2) t1/2, a parabolic rate law equation that can be used to demonstrate that zircon in the presence of H2O at 1000 ℃ grows fast enough by Ostwald ripening to produce micrometer-thick overgrowths in <10 y. Rapid coarsening of zircon by Ostwald ripening will occur during thermal metamorphism when fluid is present. Addition of fluid (and possibly melt) greatly increases the rate of coarsening, suggesting that most metamorphic rims form nearly instantaneously during fluid influx (or anatexis), and that U-Pb rim ages date such events.


The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently argued that immigrants who have not been legally admitted to the United States have no right to claim protections under the First Amendment. This Essay explores the complicated and conflicted case law governing immigrants' free speech rights, and argues that, contrary to the DOJ position, all people in the United States are protected by the First Amendment. Moreover, it argues that for reasons that have not been widely appreciated, Citizens United v. FEC offers significant doctrinal support for immigrant speech rights because it articulates a strong rule against speech discrimination based on identity rather than content.


Scalp recorded electroencephalogram signals (EEG) reflect the combined synaptic and axonal activity of groups of neurons. In addition to their clinical applications, EEG signals can be used as support for direct brain-computer communication devices (Brain-Computer Interfaces BCIs). Indeed, during the performance of mental activities, EEG patterns that characterize them emerge. If actions executed by the BCI, are associated with classes of patterns resulting from mental activities that do not involve any physical effort, communication by means of thoughts is achieved. The subject operates the BCI by performing mental activities which are recognized by the BCI through comparison with recognition models that are set up during a training phase. In this thesis we consider a 2D object positioning application in a computer-rendered environment (CRE) that is operated with four mental activities (controlling MAs). BCI operation is asynchronous, namely the system is always active and reacts only when it recognizes any of the controlling MIAs. The BCI analyzes segments of EEG (EEG-trials) and executes actions on the CRE in accordance with a set of rules (action rules) adapted to the subject controlling skills. EEG signals have small amplitudes and are therefore sensitive to external electromagnetic perturbations. In addition, subject-generated artifacts (ocular and muscular) can hinder BCI operation and even lead to misleading conclusions regarding the real controlling skills of a subject. Thus, it is especially important to remove external perturbations and detect subject-generated artifacts. External perturbations are removed using established signal processing techniques and artifacts are detected through a singular event detection algorithm based on kernel methods. The detection parameters are calibrated at the beginning of each experimental session through an interactive procedure. Whenever an artifact is detected in an EEG-trial the BCI notifies the subject by executing a special action. Features that are relevant for the recognition of the controlling MIAs are extracted from EEG-trials (free of artifacts) through the statistical analysis of their time, frequency, and phase properties. Since a complete analysis covering all these aspects, would result in a very large number of features, various hypotheses on the nature of EEG are considered in order to reduce the number of needed features. Features are grouped into feature vectors that are used to build the recognition models using machine learning concepts. From a machine learning point of view, low dimensional feature vectors are preferred as they reduce the risk of over-fitting. Recognition models are built based on statistical learning theory and kernel methods. The advantage of these methods resides in their high recognition accuracy and flexibility. A particular requirement of BCI systems is to continuously adapt to possible EEG changes resulting from external factors or subject adaptation to the BCI. This requirement is fulfilled by means of an online learning framework that makes the parameters of the recognition models easily updatable in a computationally efficient way. After the completion of a series of training sessions, the feature extraction methods are chosen (according to an optimality criterion based on the recognition error), the initial recognition models are built for each controlling MA, and the action rules are set. In these sessions, the subject is asked to perform the controlling MAs, in accordance to a training protocol which determines the training schedule. In posterior training sessions, the BCI provides feedback indicating the subject how well the asked MA was recognized by the BCI. Thus, the subject can modulate his brain activity so as to obtain positive feedback. Furthermore, at the end of each session the BCI updates its recognition models. Such updating is straightforward as the recognition models can be dynamically updated, i.e. their parameters can be updated as new training data becomes available while progressively forgetting the contribution of old data. Because of the adaptation of the recognition models, the action rules must be adapted as well. This is achieved by considering, in the definition of the action rules, variables that change along with the recognition model parameters. The training schedule is decided based on the recognition error associated with each controlling MA, thus those MAs with large recognition errors are trained more often. The BCI developed in this thesis was validated by experiments on six subjects who participated in nine training sessions. The first three training sessions served to select the feature extraction methods, build the initial recognition models, and set the action rules. In the last six sessions, in addition to the training with feedback, positioning tests were carried out to measure the controlling skills acquired by them during each session. The evaluation was done following two criteria, namely the computation of the theoretical information transfer rate using estimates of the average recognition errors over the controlling MAs, and an experimental measure of the information transfer rate corresponding to the positioning tests. The latter has the advantage of corresponding to a real controlling situation and consequently reflects more closely the actual controlling skills of a subject. Both information transfer rates increased during the last six sessions and reached an average, over subjects of 126 and 25 bits per minute respectively.


We study the resolution of financial distress in shipping, where the ex-territorial nature of assets has distanced the industry from on-shore bankruptcy legislation. We demonstrate how contracts and private institutions have adapted to the industry's special circumstances so as to deliver an effective resolution of financial distress. We investigate three costs of distress: coordination failures leading to the arrest of ships, the direct costs of arrest and auction, and the fire sale discount. We find that most arrests are not caused by coordination failures but rather are precipitated by debtors whose equity is far out of the money and where the ships are close to their break up values. The direct costs of arrest and auction are 8% of a vessel's value, and there is an average fire sale discount of 26%. However, when we control for the low quality of such ships (due to under-maintenance), their low value, and corrupt versus non corrupt ports, the discount virtually disappears. The results suggest that bankruptcy laws that are justified by coordination failures between creditors and large fire sale discounts, may not be necessary, at least for some industries.


Ventricular arrhythmias commonly arise from the right (RVOT) and left ventricular outflow tracts (LVOT) in patients without structural heart disease. Heart failure (HF) significantly increases the risk of ventricular arrhythmias. The regional differences and how HF affects the electrophysiological characteristics of RVOT and LVOT cardiomyocytes remain unclear. The whole-cell patch-clamp technique was used to investigate the action potentials and ionic currents in isolated single RVOT and LVOT cardiomyocytes from control rabbits and rabbits with HF induced by rapid ventricular pacing. Comparison with control LVOT cardiomyocytes showed that control RVOT cardiomyocytes have a shorter action potential duration (APD), smaller late Na+ currents (INa-late), larger transient outward (Ito) and larger delayed rectifier K+ currents (IKr-tail), but had similar L-type Ca2+ currents (ICa-L) and Na+/Ca2+ exchanger (NCX) current. HF increased APD, INa-late and NCX, but decreased ICa-L and Ito in RVOT cardiomyocytes. In contrast with this, HF decreased APD and ICa-L, but increased Ito and IKr-tail in LVOT cardiomyocytes. In conclusion, RVOT and LVOT cardiomyocytes had distinctive electrophysiological characteristics. HF differentially modulates action potential morphology and ionic currents in RVOT and LVOT cardiomyocytes.


The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem John M. Coski. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. This book traces the evolution of the Confederate battle flag in American history and politics both in terms of it being a "widely and carelessly used symbol" (97) as well as an emblem "born of and nurtured by American impulses ..." that "is not therefore simply going to disappear" (293). John Coski, the Library Director of the Museum of the Confederacy, has written this book to be "explicitly relativist" (viii). Rather than a polemic against the flag or a defense of it, this well argued, clearly written, and impeccably researched book presents the evolving historical context of the battle flag in order to elucidate what the symbol has meant to different people at different times. Coski maintains an admirable emotional detachment from the flag and fairness in his presentation of historical and contemporary events. This strengthens his approach and lends credence to his argument about the appropriate place and limits of display in the modern United States, where he believes "Confederate national flags belong in publicly sponsored displays of historical flags, just as they do not belong on contemporary symbols of sovereignty" (303). Part one of the book traces the use, emotional power, and "symbolic triumph" (19) of the battle flag during and after the Civil War, when it was regarded as the unifying symbol of the Confederacy and a vigorous symbol of postwar Southern pride, honor, defiance, and memory. The Stars and Bars initially approved by the Confederate Provisional Congress as the national flag was a design of three stripes with a circle of stars in the upper left corner, not the more familiar flag that is wrongly referred to today as the Confederate flag. That alternative flag featured a diagonal St. Andrews cross design introduced by William Porcher Milnes of South Carolina, who wanted a truly distinctive flag from that of the Union. Introduced on November 28, 1861, to the Army of Northern Virginia, the St. Andrews cross was used as a battle flag through the war. Coski credits its rapid adoption and diffusion through the Southern armies to Brigadier Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston. The many associations of the battle flag with the battlefield successes of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia solidified its dominance. The Confederate navy used it exclusively, although there remained numerous flags in the western Confederate commands. Coski examines the thorny connections between the battle flag and the question of the Southern defense of slavery, an ongoing historical and political controversy that lends the flag such continued potency in the American mind. He offers a balanced discussion of the combination of Southern sense of the legitimacy of secession and the defense of home against invasion with the unassailable truths that the South was fighting in defense of slavery and that the battle flag is therefore "inherently associated with slavery" (26). However, the flag also had other meanings and great resonance in Southern culture. Coski details the powerful symbolic and practical roles of the flag in battle, during Reconstruction, and during the surge of Southern veneration, remembrance, and celebration of the war and its heroes at the turn of the twentieth century. …


The plasmonic properties of silver-based alloy thin films were studied. Silver-ytterbium (Ag-Yb) and silver-magnesium (Ag-Mg) prepared by thermal co-evaporation were investigated extensively for various thin film properties. The optical properties were intensively analyzed and discussed because the dielectric response of a material is particularly significant in terms of its plasmonic properties. The study of silver-based alloy thin films has been mostly about Ag alloying with other transition metals, but the results of Ag-Yb and Ag-Mg in this work showed that the intensity of plasma resonance is tunable, in which the idea may also apply to other silver-rich binary alloy thin films regardless of the kind of second metal components. In our research, the Ag plasma resonance was weakened with respect to the concentration of Yb and Mg in the alloy thin films. The change in the optical characteristics around Ag plasma resonance frequency was attributed to an increase in "resonance damping". This is confirmed from modeling using classical free-electron theory. The increase in the damping was experimentally corroborated by the concentration dependence of electrical conductivity and estimated average crystallite size of Ag-Yb and Ag-Mg thin films. The reduction in electrical conductivity was not only caused by introducing less conductive Yb or Mg but also through disturbing the Ag lattice structure to promote additional electron scattering at grain boundaries. The Ag-Yb and Ag-Mg alloys carried intermediate properties between their pure components despite the presence of Yb or Mg oxides. Besides optical and electrical properties, changes in the electronic work function were also assessed since it is also important in applications. Plasmonic nanostructures and transparent organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) were fabricated to demonstrate their potential applications. Two-dimensional disc-arrays nanostructures composed of pure Ag and Ag-Yb were implemented to evaluate the plasmonic properties. The damping loss in Ag-Yb caused weakened coupling of incident photons and surface plasmons when compared to pure Ag without altering the coupling wavelengths, suggesting potential plasmonic materials for tuning the coupling strength of surface plasmons by controlling the concentration of Yb which may also apply to Ag-Mg. Ultrathin Ag-Yb and Ag-Mg films were used as cathodes in transparent OLEDs for demonstration, which was beneficial by virtue of overall device transmittance though sacrificing electrical conduction leading to poor light emission unless inserting additional ultrathin lithium fluoride to modify the ultrathin cathodes.


Traditional Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) systems mainly relied on the
extraction of features globally. The drawback of this approach is that it cannot
sufficiently capture the important features of individual regions in an image which
users might be interested in. Due to that, an extension of the CBIR systems is
designed to exploit images at region or object level. One of the important tasks in
CBIR at region or object level is to segment images into regions based on low-level
features. Among the low-level features, colour and location information are widely
used.
In order to extract the colour information, Colour-based Dominant Region
segmentation is used to extract a maximum of three dominant colour regions in an
image together with its respective coordinates of the Minimum-Bounding Rectangle (MBR). The Sub-Block technique is then used to determine the location of the
dominant regions by comparing the coordinates of the region's MBR with the four
corners of the centre of the location map. The cell number that is maximally covered
by the region is supposedly to be assigned as the location index. However, the Sub-
Block technique is not reliable because in most cases, the location index assigned is
not the cell number that is maximally covered by the region and sometimes a region
does not overlap with the cell number assigned at all. The effectiveness of this
technique has been improved by taking into consideration the total horizontal and
vertical distance of a region at each location where it overlaps. The horizontal
distance from the left edge to the right edge of a region and the vertical distance
from the top edge to the bottom edge of a region are calculated. The horizontal and
vertical distances obtained for that region are then counted. The cell number with the
highest distance would be assigned as the location index for that region. The
individual colour and location index of each dominant region in an image is
extended to provide combined colour-spatial indexes. During retrieval, images in the
image database that have the same index as the query image is retrieved.
A CBIR system implementing the Improved Sub-Block technique is developed. The
CBIR system supports Query-By-Example (QBE). The retrieval effectiveness of the
improved technique is tested through retrieval experiments on six image categories
of about 900 images. The precision and recall is measured. From the experiments it
is shown that retrieval effectiveness has been significantly improved by 85.86%
through the Improved Sub-Block technique.


The classical point-vortex model for a Kármán vortex street is linearly stable only for an isolated case. This property has been shown numerically to hold for other, more complicated, models of the same flow. It is shown here that it is a consequence of the Hamiltonian structure of the model, related to the codimension of the set of matrices with a particular Jordan block structure in the space of Hamiltonian matrices, and that it can be expected to hold generically for any two-dimensional inviscid array of vortices that has back-to-fore symmetry, and that is 'close enough' to the point-vortex model.


Diapause, a developmental suspension in insects often occurring in the winter, is induced by temperature and light conditions, which for the fruit fly Drosophila vary significantly over its European range (see the Perspective by Bradshaw and Holzapfel). In Drosophila, the circadian rhythm gene timeless affects diapause, and Tauber et al. identify an allelic variant of timeless that can generate only one of the two known alternative forms of this protein. The coding variant, which affects the time when insects enter diapause, is found at higher frequencies at its putative origin and decreases in frequency in all directions along a latitudinal cline throughout Europe, which suggests the influence of environmental selection. Sandrelli et al. show that this variant results in more stable protein-protein interactions between timeless protein and its partners, which may explain the selective difference in the timing of diapause among individuals of different genotypes. E. Tauber, M. Zordan, F. Sandrelli, M. Pegoraro, N. Osterwalder, C. Breda, A. Daga, A. Selmin, K. Monger, C. Benna, E. Rosato, C. P. Kyriacou, R. Costa, Natural selection favors a newly derived timeless allele in Drosophila melanogaster. Science 316, 1895-1898 (2007). [Abstract] [Full Text] F. Sandrelli, E. Tauber, M. Pegoraro, G. Mazzotta, P. Cisotto, J. Landskron, R. Stanewsky, A. Piccin, E. Rosato, M. Zordan, R. Costa, C. P. Kyriacou, A molecular basis for natural selection at the timeless locus in Drosophila melanogaster. Science 316, 1898-1900 (2007). [Abstract] [Full Text] W. Bradshaw, C. Holzapfel, Tantalizing timeless. Science 316, 1851-1852 (2007). [Summary] [Full Text]


Most of the recent developments in the field of music indexing and music information retrieval are focused on western music. In this paper, we present an automatic music transcription system dedicated to Tabla a North Indian percussion instrument. Our approach is based on three main steps: firstly, the audio signal is segmented in adjacent segments where each segment represents a single stroke. Secondly, rhythmic information such as relative durations are calculated using beat detection techniques. Finally, the transcription (recognition of the strokes) is performed by means of a statistical model based on Hidden Markov Model (HMM). The structure of this model is designed in order to represent the time dependencies between successives strokes and to take into account the specificities of the tabla score notation (transcription symbols may be context dependent). Realtime transcription of Tabla soli (or performances) with an error rate of 6.5% is made possible with this transcriber. The transcription system, along with some additional features such as sound synthesis or phrase correction, are integrated in a user-friendly environment called Tablascope.


Summary Isolates of Phytophthora cambivora, P. cinnamomi, P. citricola, P. europaea, P. quercetorum and two unidentified species were tested for their pathogenicity to eastern US oak species by root and stem inoculations. Experiments were conducted during two different periods and included 1-, 2- and 20year-old oaks grown under greenhouse and field conditions. Species of Phytophthora were pathogenic in varying degrees to the oak species tested. All species were pathogenic to fine and taproots of at least one oak species. The fine root damage caused by the species of Phytophthora ranged from 9 to 55% when compared to the controls. Roots were more susceptible during the fall inoculation period than the summer. With exception of Phytophthora sp1 and P. quercina-like, all species of Phytophthora were pathogenic to oak stems with P. cinnamomi and P. citricola being the most aggressive. Quercus montana and Q. rubra were the most susceptible oak species to stem inoculation. Lesion sizes were considerably larger when 20-year-old trees were inoculated. Generally, no significant differences in lesion sizes were detected in greenhouse tests when the summer and fall inoculation periods were compared. However, on 2-year-old field-grown seedlings, lesion sizes were considerably smaller or not significantly different from controls during the fall inoculation period, suggesting lower, late season temperatures may restrict lesion development.


It is generally accepted that the lack of dimensional stability in knit structures is a problem to manufacturers, retailers, and consumers. Extensive use of knit structures in a greater variety of garments has increased the need for knowledge and understanding of the dimensional behavior of such fabric. The dimensional stability of any textile material depends on its microscopic and macroscopic properties. Microscopic properties are those inherent physical properties of textile fiber polymers which depend on their chemical nature and morphological structure. Macroscopic properties include fabric geometry, fiber surface characteristics, and friction between fibers and yarns.


: This research focuses on dehydration / hydration of magnesium hydroxide as a chemical heat storage material. Previous studies have reported that the use of additives in magnesium hydroxide improved the dehydration / hydration reactivity. However, additives used in previous studies have had problems in terms of environmental impact and cost. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to search for safe and inexpensive additives. We have selected citrate compounds as an inexpensive and safe additive. The effect of the additive was verified by measuring the dehydration / hydration reaction of magnesium hydroxide using a thermogravimetric instrument. Furthermore, XRD was used for sample characterization. As a re-sult, the most improved reactivity was confirmed in the sample using sodium citrate as an additive. SC5 (molar ratio, magnesium hydroxide : sodium citrate dihydrate = 100 : 5) decreased the dehydration peak temperature by about 31ºC compared to pure magnesium hydroxide. Sodium citrate dihydrate was found to undergo thermal degradation during sample heating. Then, when the repeated reaction test was imple-mented, the improvement of the dehydration rate after the 2nd time was confirmed. These results indicate that the product of thermal decomposition of sodium citrate dihydrate is effective as an additive.


Abstract Objective To measure the association of China's universal two child policy, announced in October 2015, with changes in births and health related birth characteristics. Design National, descriptive before-and-after comparative study. Setting Every county in 28 of 31 provinces of mainland China. Participants Births included in two national databases: 67 786 749 births from county level monthly aggregated data between January 2014 and December 2017; and 31 786 279 deliveries from individual level delivery information records between January 2015 and December 2017. Main outcome measures Monthly mean number of births and mean proportion of multiparous mothers and mothers aged 35 and over, preterm deliveries, and caesarean deliveries. Results The study had two phases: the baseline period (up to and including June 2016, nine months after the policy announcement) and the effective period (from July 2016 to December 2017). The estimated number of additional births attributable to the new policy between July 2016 and December 2017 was 5.40 million (95% confidence interval 4.34 to 6.46). The monthly mean percentage of multiparous mothers and mothers aged 35 and over increased by 9.1 percentage points (95% confidence interval 6.4 to 11.7) and 5.8 percentage points (5.2 to 6.4), respectively. This increase in older mothers, however, was not associated with a concurrent increase in the overall rate of preterm birth. The monthly mean caesarean delivery rate among multiparous mothers increased by 1.2 percentage points (0.8 to 1.6) from 39.7% to 40.9%, and decreased by 3.0 percentage points (−3.5 to −2.5) among nulliparous mothers from 39.6% to 36.6%. Conclusions Since its announcement in October 2015, the universal two child policy has been associated with a rise in births in China and with changes in health related birth characteristics: women giving birth have been more likely to be multiparous, and more likely to be aged 35 and over. No evidence of concurrent worsening outcomes (that is, premature births) was seen.


With society's growing population and the earth's limited resources, the current world food system is unsustainable. Slow Food USA (SFUSA) is an existing food-related Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) focusing on the expansion of Good, Clean, and Fair food. This research aims to help SFUSA to strategically support society's move towards sustainability. To do this, the authors used the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) to examine the current reality of SFUSA, where the opportunities and challenges for the organization to strategically plan toward sustainability were identified. The authors then used Leverage Points (LPs) to identify opportunities for how SFUSA can strategically intervene in the world food system to create change and the challenges that exist in doing so. The results of this research allowed the team to create a list of recommendations. Of these results, five were picked as the most strategic recommendations for SFUSA: 1) Co-create a shared common vision of sustainable food for society 2) Define a common language and branding among chapters that are in alignment with SFUSA 3) Implement a strategic planning process founded in a principle-based definition of sustainability 4) Expand educational outreach to specific targeted groups at the chapter level 5) Advocate for policy changes to remove barriers to widely available and affordable, sustainably produced agriculture.


Retinal degenerative diseases resulting in photoreceptor death, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinitis pigmentosa (RP) lead to incurable vision loss in millions of patients worldwide. When photoreceptors are lost, the resulting visual deficit is permanent. Currently, there are no effective therapies for these diseases except to delay degeneration in early disease stages. A potential approach in regaining vision for more advanced disease is to replace the degenerated photoreceptors. Particularly, this is a viable strategy for AMD as it has been shown that ganglion cells can survive in a degenerate retina even when there is severe underlying photoreceptor loss (1). Finding a suitable source of transplantable cells to replace the dying host tissue is the main challenge.


In this paper, a three-factor model of operations capability is presented which, unlike previous studies that view capability as an outcome, examines the drivers of capability acquisition. The model proposes that capability acquisition is a function of an organization's commitment to the principles of quality management, just-in-time practices, and effective new product development processes. Furthermore, the paper proposes that these underlying facets of capability acquisition are common across geographic boundaries. The model is tested using data drawn from US and European companies. Results not only provide support for the three-factor model, but also for the invariance of the model and its underlying components between US and European firms.


Sexual Harassment At Work: What Is The Problem? As judicial decisions gradually expanded the Title VII Civil Rights Act prohibiting sex discrimination to include sexual harassment, the number of articles discussing this workplace problem also expanded. At present it would be difficult to find a volume of any personnel-related journal that did not contain at least one article addressing this topic. Indeed, with the Meritor vs. Vincent Supreme Court decision affirming employees' protection from harassment beyond the previously held legal position that no harassment can exist without some form of economic consequence to include the more vague concepts of "hostile environment" and "unwelcomed sexual advances," a new surge in sexual harassment claims, studies, and articles is inevitable. While the issue creates interest and debate from academics and practitioners alike, these discussions have not yet led either to much agreement in definition or, surprisingly, much empirical research seeking to document what behaviors actually constitute sexual harassment or how pervasive it really is. From thenow classic Harvard Business Review-Redbook[4] survey to a more recent survey of American Society for Personnel Administration (ASPA) members[8], the call for more clarification of the nature and pervasiveness of sexual harassment at work stands as a reminder of how much empirical work remains to be done on this complicated topic. Indeed, in a review of various studies, court decisions, and legislative actions, Wesman[35] concludes that there are several major unresolved questions about sexual harassment in need of further research including identifying what behaviors are perceived as harassment, whether different employees define it differently, and how extensive it really is. Wesman's[35] conclusions illustrate an important aspect of the sexual harassment debate that warrant considerably greater clarification than can be currently found in the literature. This is that sexual harassment is a multidimensional topic that includes behaviors that are partly objective in measurement and definition and partly perceptual. To some extent, then, the debate over sexual harassment tends to get lost in the term's use in describing a wide variety of behaviors ranging from sexual assualt to telling offensive jokes to a variety of behaviors and actions[24]. PURPOSE Since much of the popular literature discussing this important topic tends to obsure and sensationalize the problem by generalizing all behaviors under this emotionally loaded term, it has been difficult for managers to design and implement policies and procedures that might eliminate or diminish sexual harassment in their organizations. The purpose of this paper is to begin consolidating what is known about the nature and extent of sexual harassment in order to initiate more specific discussions and research investigations into exactly what behaviors are sexual harassment and how frequently each of these behaviors occurs in the workplace. The method for reaching this purpose is to review the available literature reporting empirical studies of sexual harassment, compare the results of those that report reasonably similar methodologies or research designs, and attempt to draw some conclusions on the basis of these data that can allow better insight into the nature and pervasiveness of this problem than is currently available in the sexual harassment literature. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE There have been a number of studies conducted on the extent and nature of sexual harassment over the past decade. These utilize a wide variety of research methodologies and designs ranging from a relatively casual airport survey[25] and Redbook[29] reader responses by 9,000 women to the extensive survey work of Barbara Gutek and others[9, 10, 11, 12]. Beyond the typical difficulty in comparing data across a wide variety of studies in any field of active intellectual inquiry, the problem in this area is aggravated by the continuing lack on consensus on exactly which behaviors constitute sexual harassment. …


By increasing the spatial resolution of remote sensing imaging sensors, the image analyzing paradigm is moving towards the object based image analysis approaches, instead of single pixels. Among the common segmentation algorithms, super-pixel methods are presenting themselves as the new tools in computer vision. In this paper, the capabilities of a state-of-the-art super-pixel algorithm, namely called SLIC, is investigated for creating image segments from ultra-high resolution remote sensing images. In our proposed method, square and hexagonal super-pixels were formed and then DBSCAN clustering algorithm is employed to build image segments from these pixels. The results were compared to image segments obtained from FNEA algorithm, a well-known method for remote sensing image segmentation. Visual and quantitative evaluations demonstrate the efficiency of proposed method.


Summary
A key task for native grassland managers is to assess when biomass reduction is necessary to maintain plant and animal diversity. This requires managers to monitor grassland structure. Parks Victoria and La Trobe University developed a method for rapid assessment of grassland structure using golf balls. Baker-Gabb et al. (Ecological Management & Restoration, 17, 2016, p235) provide an example of where the method has been used to manage grassland structure to favour an endangered bird, the Plains-wanderer (Pedionomus torquatus). In this study, we provide further critical analysis of the method using three data sets collected across different parts of Victoria that relate golf ball scores to various habitat attributes. We demonstrate how the golf ball score provides a good surrogate for key aspects of grassland structure. We show that the method does not provide a reliable surrogate for above-ground biomass or vegetation cover, although we discuss how biomass and cover are not particularly good indicators of grassland structure. We argue that elements of grassland structure may be better correlated with desired conservation outcomes (e.g. plant species diversity or the presence of a particular species) than biomass or cover alone. We discuss examples of how the golf ball method has been used, and how it can be improved. The method will be particularly useful where a link can be demonstrated between golf ball scores and desired conservation outcomes, such as in the case of the Plains-wanderer.


By determining the composition in muropeptides of the murein of a number of strains of Escherichia coli, purified from cells at various states of growth, the sacculus was found to be considerably modified when cells stop active growth. Murein from resting cells becomes hypercross-linked and richer in covalently bound lipoprotein, whereas the mean length of the glycan chains is considerably reduced. The alteration of the sacculus occurs progressively during the transitions from active growth to stationary phase and vice versa.


Summary The purpose of this study was to gain more information on the structure of different layers of renal artery and comparing these structures in post-natal male and female sheep. To do so, right and left renal arteries of 6 adult and 6 newborn animals were dissected; the middle parts of arteries were only collected. After tissue processing using paraffin embedding method, 5–6-µm sections were cut and stained with haematoxylin and eosin, green Masson's trichrome and Verhoeff's elastic fiber methods. Three layers were identified in the wall of artery in both sexes. In tunica media the number of rows of circular smooth muscle cells was 15–25 rows in newborn and 30–40 in adult sheep. External elastic membrane was visible in adult and was structurally thinner than the internal membrane. Tunica adventitia was visible in all samples and collagen fibers and smooth muscles bundle were distinguished. The existence of these muscle bundles in external layer of renal artery was not reported previously in domestic animals and regarded as a new finding in the present study. These muscle bundles were thicker in adult than in newborn animals and probably have a relationship with the function of kidney's vascular system. It was concluded that these bundles may potentiate the tunica media muscle cells to prevent hypertension crisis.


This paper introduces a new watermarking modulation technique, which we call improved spread spectrum (ISS). Unlike in traditional spread spectrum (SS), in ISS the carrier signal does not act as a noise source; leading significant performance gains. In typical examples, the gain of ISS over SS is 20 dB or more in signal-to-noise ratio or 20 orders of magnitude or more in error probability. The proposed method achieves roughly the same noise robustness gain as quantization index modulation (QIM). Nevertheless, while QIM is quite sensitive to amplitude variations, ISS is as robust in practice as traditional SS.


OBJECTIVE
The gonadotropin-releasing hormone-agonist (GnRH-a) treatment during in vitro fertilization (IVF) sometimes causes a functional ovarian cyst during the administration period before gonadotropin stimulation, as an undesired event. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of these cysts on the IVF outcomes.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Out of 981 IVF cycles, 78 with ovarian cysts were retrospectively analyzed with respect to the demographic characteristics, hormonal outcomes, and fertilization, implantation and clinical pregnancy rates.

RESULTS
The metaphase II oocyte ratio, fertilization rate and percentage of high quality embryos (grade 1) were significantly higher in the cyst-negative group (p<0.0001; p<0.0001; p≤0.05). These same three parameters were also significantly higher in the cyst-aspirated group (p<0.01; p<0.05; p<0.05). Cyst diameters of the aspiration group were significantly higher (p<0.05). No statistically significant differences in implantation and clinical pregnancy rates were determined between the groups.

CONCLUSION
An ovarian cyst formation during the GnRH-a suppression period negatively affects oocyte quality. Cyst aspiration before gonadotropin stimulation does not improve the IVF outcome.


We propose a range estimation method for a short-range frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) sonar. Due to the slower sound wave and the greater Doppler effect of the FMCW sonar, the beat frequency of the FMCW sonar cannot keep the constant duration unlike the beat frequency of the FMCW radar. To cope with the drawback of the FMCW sonar, in the proposed method the rising edge and the falling edge of the beat frequency are utilized. This leads us to normally estimate the range of a high-speed underwater vehicle in short-range situation. Simulation results show that the proposed method can estimate the range from the measurements where the Doppler effect is exactly reflected according to the maneuver scenario of high-speed underwater vehicles.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The relationship between the local blood oxygen level–dependent (BOLD) signals caused by neural stimulation (fBOLD) and the global BOLD signals induced by hypercapnia (hBOLD) has not been fully investigated. In this study, we examine whether fBOLD is modulated by hBOLD signals, by means of experiments using a relatively wide range of inhaled carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) for a long duration of 5 minutes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Ten healthy volunteers were recruited, each undergoing 6 separate experiments by inhaling gas mixtures with different fractions of CO 2 (room air, 3%–7%). Each experiment contained 3 phases, prehypercapnic, hypercapnic, and posthypercapnic, during which boxcar visual stimulus was given. The local fBOLD signals were measured from areas showing activation patterns highly correlated with the visual stimulus paradigm, whereas the global hBOLD signals were measured from areas showing no visual activations. Percentage changes in fBOLD during transient-state hypercapnia and steady-state hypercapnia were both investigated in response to varying degrees of hypercapnic perturbations. RESULTS: The hBOLD signals increased with increase of inhaled CO 2 fractions. The duration for the hBOLD signals to reach steady state prolonged with increase of inhaled CO 2 fractions. Normalized fBOLD ratio was inversely related to the inhaled CO 2 during steady-state hypercapnia but showed positive association with hBOLD during transient-state hypercapnia. CONCLUSION: Our study concludes that the steady-state fBOLD signal intensity is dependent on and inversely related to the hBOLD signals. Previous reports documenting independent and additive relationships between hBOLD and fBOLD may likely be due to transient-state observations.


Reggio Emilia is a city of 130,000 people in the prosperous and progressive Emilia Romagna region of northern Italy. Its municipal early childhood system has been recognized and acclaimed as one of the best systems of education in the world ("Newsweek," December 2, 1991). Over the past 30 years, the system has evolved a distinctive and innovative set of philosophical assumptions, curriculum and pedagogy; method of school organization; and design environments which, taken as a unified whole, is called the Reggio Emilia approach. This approach fosters children's intellectual development through systematic focus on symbolic representation, as children are encouraged to explore their environment and express themselves through words, movement, drawing, painting, playing, and other natural modes of expression. "The Hundred Languages of Children" offers a comprehensive exploration of the Reggio Emilia approach. It provides a unique forum in which noted Italian and North American educators and administrators who are involved in or studying the program examine its origins, explain its rationale and practice, and demonstrate how its principles can be applied in American classrooms. ... This volume deserves careful reading, for it dispels the prevailing view of Reggio as an art-education curriculum and casts it as a comprehensive child development program. ... a comfortable, stimulating thought journey ..." -Carol Brunson Phillips, Executive Director, Council for Early Childhood Professional Recognition, Washington, D.C." ... a remarkable collection of essays which provide the reader with a much more thorough understanding of this approach to the education of young children ... If American educators read only one book on early childhood education this year, let it be this one. -Dimensions of Early Childhood. ... this book makes a unique and important contribution to early childhood education. It no doubt will be considered a valuable resource by early childhood educators everywhere ... -Holistic Education, Carol Seefeldt, Institute of Child Study, University of Maryland ... a rich resource ... a comfort and a challenge to anyone in the Expeditionary Learning Community ... -"Outward Bound, newsletter of Expeditionary Learning, Leah Rugen, "


Objectives: The objective of this research is to analyse the evolution and nature of published empirical research in the fields of medical ethics and bioethics. Design: Retrospective quantitative study of nine peer reviewed journals in the field of bioethics and medical ethics (Bioethics, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Hastings Center Report, Journal of Clinical Ethics, Journal of Medical Ethics, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Nursing Ethics, Christian Bioethics, andTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics). Results: In total, 4029 articles published between 1990 and 2003 were retrieved from the journals studied. Over this period, 435 (10.8%) studies used an empirical design. The highest percentage of empirical research articles appeared in Nursing Ethics (n=145, 39.5%), followed by the Journal of Medical Ethics (n=128, 16.8%) and the Journal of Clinical Ethics (n=93, 15.4%). These three journals account for 84.1% of all empirical research in bioethics published in this period. The results of the χ2 test for two independent samples for the entire dataset indicate that the period 1997–2003 presented a higher number of empirical studies (n=309) than did the period 1990–1996 (n=126). This increase is statistically significant (χ2=49.0264, p<.0001). Most empirical studies employed a quantitative paradigm (64.6%, n=281). The main topic of research was prolongation of life and euthanasia (n=68). Conclusions: We conclude that the proportion of empirical research in the nine journals increased steadily from 5.4% in 1990 to 15.4% in 2003. It is likely that the importance of empirical methods in medical ethics and bioethics will continue to increase.


Jesuit business schools have an obligation to develop ethical transformational leaders who seek a just and humane world. Whether it is addressing the needs of social justice or leading change to advance sustainability, these institutions have a unique ability to apply Ignatian concepts in developing responsible leaders. This article examines these concepts, including the insight of reflection, the gift from empowering others, the strength from building trust, and the rewards of silent servant leadership to help others rise. In examining the "modeling" of successful leaders, we will look at how the transparency of leadership is essential to lead change in areas such as social justice and sustainability. We will consider, for example, how Jesuitvalued education can fill the void of effective environmental leadership with regard to sustainability. We will establish the case that Jesuit schools are in a unique position to develop these leadership skills to facilitate this necessary environmental dialogue. Thus, in reflecting on the philosophy of developing leadership, we will see how Ignatian principles can form the core foundation for building great leaders. Finally, this article looks to the future of Jesuit business school education. What are the changes necessary in teaching leadership to advance social justice and lead sustainability change? What reflection on Ignatian concepts must faculty and administration pursue so that Jesuit business schools are at the forefront of leadership? We will conclude the "modeling" of leaders with how our institutions can foster principled leadership within every student through the application of Ignatian concepts.


Village- and central nucleus-based schemes were simulated and evaluated for their relative bio-economic efficiencies, using Ethiopia's Menz sheep as example. The schemes were: village-based 2-tier (Scheme-1) and 1-tier (Scheme-2) cooperative village breeding schemes, dispersed village-based nuclei scheme (Scheme-3), conventional 2-tier central nucleus-based scheme (Scheme-4), and schemes linking a central nucleus and village multiplier nuclei with selection in central nucleus (Scheme-5) or in both central and village nuclei (Scheme-6). Among village-based schemes, Scheme-1 gave the highest genetic progress, while Scheme-2 was economically the most efficient with genetic gain in the breeding objective of Birr 5.6 and a profit of Birr 37.2/ewe/year. The central nucleus schemes were more efficient than the village schemes. Scheme-4 was the most efficient with genetic gain in the breeding objective of Birr 13.5 and a profit of Birr 71.2, but is operationally more difficult as it requires a very large central nucleus. The choice between village and central nucleus-based schemes would depend on local conditions (availability of infrastructure, logistics and technical knowhow and support). Linking central nucleus with village-based nuclei (Scheme-6) would be a feasible option to overcome the operational difficulties of the conventional central nucleus scheme. If a village-based breeding program is envisaged as should be the 1st step in most low-input systems, then Scheme-2 is the most efficient. To scale out to an entire Menz breed level, Scheme-3 would be recommended.


Project TALENT is a US national longitudinal study of about 377,000 individuals born in 1942–1946, first assessed in 1960. Students in about 1,200 schools participated in a 2-day battery covering aptitudes, abilities, interests, and individual and family characteristics (Flanagan, 1962; www.projectTALENT.org). Follow-up assessments 1, 5, and 11 years later assessed educational and occupational outcomes. The sample includes approximately 92,000 siblings from 40,000 families, including 2,500 twin pairs and 1,200 other siblings of twins. Until recently, almost no behavior genetic research has been conducted with the sample. In the original data collection information was not collected with the intent to link family members. Recently, we developed algorithms using names, addresses, birthdates, and information about family structure to link siblings and identify twins. We are testing several methods to determine zygosity, including use of yearbook photographs. In this paper, we summarize the design and measures in Project TALENT, describe the Twin and Sibling sample, and present our twin-sib-classmate model. In most twin and family designs, the 'shared environment' includes factors specific to the family combined with between-family differences associated with macro-level variables such as socioeconomic status. The school-based sampling design used in Project TALENT provides a unique opportunity to partition the shared environment into variation shared by siblings, specific to twins, and associated with school- and community-level factors. The availability of many measured characteristics on the family, schools, and neighborhoods enhances the ability to study the impact of specific factors on behavioral variation.


We present the results of a study comparing density maps reconstructed by the Delaunay Tessellation Field Estimator (DTFE) and by regular SPH kernel-based techniques. The density maps are constructed from the outcome of an SPH particle hydrodynamics simulation of a multiphase interstellar medium. The comparison between the two methods clearly demonstrates the superior performance of the DTFE with respect to conventional SPH methods, in particular at locations where SPH appears to fail. Filamentary and sheetlike structures form telling examples. The DTFE is a fully self-adaptive technique for reconstructing continuous density fields from discrete particle distributions, and is based upon the corresponding Delaunay tessellation. Its principal asset is its complete independence of arbitrary smoothing functions and parameters specifying the properties of these. As a result it manages to faithfully reproduce the anisotropies of the local particle distribution and through its adaptive and local nature proves to be optimally suited for uncovering the full structural richness in the density distribution. Through the improvement in local density estimates, calculations invoking the DTFE will yield a much better representation of physical processes which depend on density. This will be crucial in the case of feedback processes, which play a major role in galaxy and star formation. The presented results form an encouraging step towards the application and insertion of the DTFE in astrophysical hydrocodes. We describe an outline for the construction of a particle hydrodynamics code in which the DTFE replaces kernel-based methods. Further discussion addresses the issue and possibilities for a moving grid-based hydrocode invoking the DTFE, and Delaunay tessellations, in an attempt to combine the virtues of the Eulerian and Lagrangian approaches.


Richard Gribble, CSC (Stonehill College) contributes our lead article, telling us of Father Nelson Baker (1842-1936), an iconic figure in Western New York, who administered an institution for orphan boys and an infant home for unwed mothers and their children, and found the inspiration for his ministry through his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Kyle E. Haden, OFM (St. Bonaventure University) explores works representative of the various methodologies used to explain AntiCatholicism in American history, and offers a proposal for a new approach using Human Identity Theory. Professor Emerita Mary Jo Weaver (Indiana University) recalls how a retreat in a cloistered Carmelite monastery in 1980 developed into a long relationship with special rewards. Our cover essay, "Solidarity and Spirit: The Rough-and-Tumble Faith of Ralph Chaplin" by Kevin J. Christiano (University of Notre Dame) shares the story of one of the most important writers, artists, and activists in the movement for the rights of workers in America, including his choice at age sixty-two, to enter the Catholic Church. The cover pictures are explained at the end of the essay. Eight book reviews continue our journal's commitment to offer the best and most extensive review section in American Catholic studies.


In this book, Shaul Mishal and Ori Goldberg explore the ways in which Shiite leaderships in Iran and Lebanon approach themselves and their world. Contrary to the violent and radical image of religious leaderships in the Islamic Republic of Iran and Lebanese Hizballah, the political vision and practice of these leaderships view the world as a "middle ground," shying away from absolutist and extremist tendencies. The political leadership assumed by Shiite religious scholars in Iran and Lebanon has transformed Shiite Islam from a marginalized minority to a highly politicized avant garde of Muslim presence, revitalized the practice and causes of political Islam in its struggle for legitimacy and authority, and reshaped the politics of both the Middle East and the globe in its image. Utilizing approaches from social theory, history, theology, and literary criticism, the book presents these leaderships as pragmatic, interpretative entities with the potential to form fruitful relationships between Shiite leadership and the non-Shiite world.


The study focused on the performance of a group of Swedish children with language impairment (LI) on a referential communication task as a step in the investigation of their pragmatic skills. The task entailed choosing a single card from a selection of 16 depicting a face and describing it well enough for the opponent in order for him/her to pick the correct one from his/her identical array of cards laid out behind a barrier. To give an adequate description, the player had to understand that four dimensions had to be described in order for the other person to choose the correct card. The participating children had been part of a previous study on narrative skills in children with LI. A few of them with rather poor language comprehension had shown utterances during story generation judged to be irrelevant to both the listener and the task. In the present study, language comprehension did not significantly correlate to performance on the referential communication task. The participants performed at the level of their peers without LI and there was no significant difference between the amount of relevant or irrelevant information when the children with LI interacted with an adult or with a friend. The results are discussed in relation to recent research.


Abstract Domestic products have a disproportionately high market share on many goods markets. We examine the contribution of preferences to such "home bias", using detailed data on wine sales in New Hampshire (weekly sales by brand by store for one year). In counterfactual simulations, where we use the same set of products as currently available, the U.S. market share falls from 58 percent to 38 percent if all country-of-origin effects are set equal. Home bias on this market is not explained by higher marginal costs for imports or by lesser store coverage of imported brands. The evidence rather points to higher foreign fixed costs of entry, coupled with a preference for U.S. wines, as the main sources for the high domestic market share. (JEL Classification: F12, F14, L13, L66)


A median, segmented, annelid nerve cord has repeatedly been compared to the arthropod and vertebrate nerve cords and became the most used textbook representation of the annelid nervous system. Recent phylogenomic analyses, however, challenge the hypothesis that a subepidermal rope-ladder-like ventral nerve cord (VNC) composed of a paired serial chain of ganglia and somata-free connectives represents neither a plesiomorphic nor a typical condition in annelids. Using a comparative approach by combining phylogenomic analyses with morphological methods (immunohistochemistry and CLSM, histology and TEM), we compiled a comprehensive dataset to reconstruct the evolution of the annelid VNC. Our phylogenomic analyses generally support previous topologies. However, the so far hard-to-place Apistobranchidae and Psammodrilidae are now incorporated among the basally branching annelids with high support. Based on this topology we reconstruct an intraepidermal VNC as ancestral state in Annelida. Thus, a subepidermal ladder-like nerve cord clearly represents a derived condition. Based on the presented data, a ladder-like appearance of the ventral nerve cord evolved repeatedly, and independently of the transition from an intraepidermal to a subepidermal cord during annelid evolution. Our investigations thereby question a common origin of the bilaterian median ganglionated VNC and propose an alternative set of neuroanatomical characteristics of the last common ancestor of Annelida or perhaps even Spiralia.


This Symposium is an outgrowth of our article, What Law Schools Can Learn from Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, 82 Tex. L. Rev. 1483 (2004). With the approaching twentieth anniversary of the first U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, it is a particularly propitious time to take a fresh look, to hear new voices, and to reconsider issues surrounding law school rankings. Many of America's most thoughtful law professors (as well as academics in other disciplines) gathered on April 15, 2005 at the Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington to discuss The Next Generation of Law School Rankings. The papers and commentary presented at the event and recorded in these pages reflect a wide array of creative, challenging, and captivating perspectives on the rankings tableau. In the pages that follow, we are confident that you will agree that we have fulfilled the goals we set for the Symposium: The goal of this Symposium is to deepen our understanding of rankings and their effects on legal education. The participants in this Symposium will examine the need for law school rankings; the effects of rankings on legal education; and the various new approaches to addressing the public's insatiable demand for ever more and increasingly sophisticated rankings, which permeate not only legal education but also all aspects of American life. We believe the Symposium papers and commentary make an enormous contribution to our understanding of rankings and their effects on legal education.


From the Publisher:
Mac OS X Unleashed is a complete guide and reference for Mac OS users. The power of OS X is largely in its underlying BSD implementation. For an average Mac user, experiencing a command line for the first time can be an unpleasant experience. This book will take the approach of demonstrating familiar actions and tools, and then provide the equivalent information within the BSD environment. For advanced users, this book will cover system administration ranging from advanced configuration of FTP servers, SSH tunneling, to installing secure E-mail and Web servers. The progression of the text is designed to move from simple "using" topics through advanced configuration - making it easier for beginners and experienced users to find what they're looking for.

In short, Mac OS books have never had to deal with issues beyond the Macintosh GUI. This book will bridge the gap between the user interface and the BSD subsystem in a way that is accessible to users who are unfamiliar with UNIX and other multi-user systems.


The new phase of North-South research collaboration was caught in a snapshot published recently in a popular weekly newsmagazine.1 The picture is that of a participant in an AIDS study in Guatemala City. He looks jaunty, even confident. In 1997, he participated in a "life-and-death lottery," as the article is entitled, and beat the odds to be entered into a Merck drug trial of different doses of a triple cocktail containing their new drug, Crixivan. He was one of only 59 patients who were lucky enough to be entered into a trial, among the many who join the "scramble for cutting edge medications in a country where there aren't nearly enough of them to go around." The clinic caring for him "takes up the slack—for example, by enlisting its patients in drug studies."

"I felt myself stabilizing [he said]. I had the energy to go back to work." However, his future, as well as the futures of the rest of the participants who participated in and benefited from the study, is uncertain. "The year long study ended last September, and the leftover medicine will run out in the fall. Participants say they were led to believe that the company would supply them the drugs for the rest of their lives. Merck and the clinic doctors say the only promise was that the company would try to offer more drugs after the study, and the company did agree to provide Crixivan for five years But the patients have to come up with the other two components of the cocktail on their own. That won't be easy. Participants worry that if they go off the drugs the virus will emerge stronger and more resistant to the drugs."

#### Summary points

North-South research collaboration is currently plagued by differing interpretations of ethical standards of doing …


This article describes the institutional role of Chinese financial news in the deepening process of financialization in China. It analyzes the 300 most viewed articles on Sina Finance to examine how the mainstream financial news choose topics, themes, and styles in reporting "Internet finance," a business category initiated by the Chinese state in 2013 to vitalize the finance sector and offset economic slowdown. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses reveals that the major Chinese media outlets aggressively promoted the technological advantages of Internet finance and its profit potential in stock markets while obscuring the risks, uncertainties, and regulatory constraints inherent in it. Drawing on the institutional theory in media studies, this article argues that the mainstream financial news in China functions as a political, economic, and cultural-cognitive institution supporting the informatization and marketization of the finance sector. Such an institutional role is both a corollary and propeller of the increasingly financialized economy and culture in China.


This volume collects the recent published articles of Guglielmo Cinque of the University of Venice, one of the world's top linguists. The book is divided into two sections, the first on restructuring, a central topic in Romance syntax and with connections to other language groups as well. The second part focuses on the consequences of treating clausal functional heads as members of a universal hierarchy in the domain of morphpsyntax, offering a new perspective on many intricate problems arising in a variety of natural languages.


This study presents a new simulation-based local search approach for solving shop scheduling problems. Results for classical problems from the literature demonstrate the effectiveness and quality of the approach. Application is also shown for reentrant flexible job shop with sequence dependent setup times (RFJSSDS), a new, very general, class of problems. RFJSSDS is a generalization of the classical job shop, reentrant flow shop and flexible job shop problems. Multiple products (routes), sequence dependent setup times at the work centers and reentrancy of the jobs make RFJSSDS one of the more general and difficult shop scheduling problems. Examples of this type of problem include semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities and flexible machining systems. The solution methodology developed in this study features a new Simulation Based Local Improvement with Multi Start (SBLIMS) algorithm. The local search procedure modifies an initial feasible solution provided by the simulation module to generate promising neighbor solutions. A generated solution is considered to be better if there is a reduction in the total completion time or makespan. A unique filtering strategy is used to select and rank moves, using both task and resource views of a schedule. Multiple random starting points are generated in multistart fashion as part of the solution process. New theorems are presented that form the basis for SBLIMS. The SBLIMS algorithm was evaluated using test instances for several shop scheduling problems as well as RFJSSDS. A set of synthetic problems was generated to study RFJSSDS, because there were no RFJSSDS instances available from the literature. The SBLIMS algorithm was compared with various dispatch rules in the RFJSSDS domain and its performance was found to be better in most cases. SBLIMS was also tested with well known special cases of RFJSSDS: the classical job shop, reentrant flow shop and flexible job shop problems. The SBLIMS algorithm provided excellent results compared with those provided in the literature, establishing the generality of the approach for solving a broad class of shop scheduling problems.


Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships that consumers have with media characters (Horton & Wohl, 1956). This dissertation answers recent calls for more research into the role these relationships play in children's lives. More specifically, this research explores the impact parasocial relationships have on preschool students' interpersonal relationships – to see if these unique media bonds change whom children choose to have relationships with in school. Because of their tendency to overwhelmingly choose same sex children as friends, preschool age children were the participants. Results of this study found that girls are more likely than boys to select opposite-sex media characters as their favorite and that this selection impacts their friend choices in school. Specifically, girls with male parasocial partners are more likely to play with boys and have male best friends in school. Previously, Maccoby (1998) argued that the same-sex relationships one has in preschool create disparate cultures between the sexes and that this divide continues to influence adult life. Combining the present results with those of Maccoby, it is now clear that the media's increasing importance in the lives of toddlers and young children can have long lasting repercussions on future relationships, in particular, future opposite-sex interactions. PARASOCIAL & SCHOOL RELATIONSHIPS 2 Parasocial and School Relationships of Pre-school Children


""This paper uses longitudinal data from 15 villages in rural Ethiopia to explore the nature and consequences of these links. It addresses the following questions: (1) What are the links between rural households and local urban centers? (2) Does better access to local market towns affect household economic behavior? and (3) Does better access to local market towns make households better off? ...In our results, market towns and cities are an important source of demand for products produced in rural areas, and rural residents are a source of demand for goods sold in urban areas. Improving the presence of roads, their quality, and improved transport are important factors that willfurther bind these spaces together and improve rural welfare market towns." from Authors' Abstract


The biblical text of the « Prodigal Son », dealing with the father-son relation, allows us to situate this relation within several different mythical fields, among them the field of psychoanalysis. Like Christianity and Indo-European culture, the theme of Don Juan in the XVIIth century will produce a rupture and introduce something new into the order of transmission. The « nuptial home » emerges with the return of the feminine, in the figure of Abraham, who is both masculine and feminine.


Treatment/Procedure Rating Comments US duplex Doppler lower extremity 8 Plethysmography and pulse volume recording 6 CTA pelvis with runoff 7 MRA pelvis with runoff 7 Catheter directed angiography 5 This procedure should be performed only at the time of endovascular therapy. Risk factor analysis, lipid profile and ABIs 9 No further treatment or evaluation needed 1 Best medical management including supervised exercise program only 9 Anticoagulation adjunctive therapy 3 Antiplatelet adjunctive therapy 7


The purpose of this study is to analyse the transport and stirring of fluid that occurs owing to the formation and growth of a laminar vortex ring. Experimental data was collected upstream and downstream of the exit plane of a piston-cylinder apparatus by particle-image velocimetry. This data was used to compute Lagrangian coherent structures to demonstrate how fluid is advected during the transient process of vortex ring formation. Similar computations were performed from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) data, which showed qualitative agreement with the experimental results, although the CFD data provides better resolution in the boundary layer of the cylinder. A parametric study is performed to demonstrate how varying the piston-stroke length-to-diameter ratio affects fluid entrainment during formation. Additionally, we study how regions of fluid are stirred together during vortex formation to help establish a quantitative understanding of the role of vortical flows in mixing. We show that identification of the flow geometry during vortex formation can aid in the determination of efficient stirring. We compare this framework with a traditional stirring metric and show that the framework presented in this paper is better suited for understanding stirring/mixing in transient flow problems. A movie is available with the online version of the paper.


This paper reports the results of a study designed to determine how consumers "group" various products into categories. Specifically, it was determined that consumers clearly perceive two types of brands: (1) manufacturers' brands, and (2) distributors' brands. While manufacturers' brands were viewed as a distinct offering, consumers did not differentiate between private brands and generics.


The selection of internal standards for elements analyzed by a multielement direct-current argon plasma emission spectrometer was made by studying the elemental covariance of a multielement standard. Principal components factor analysis of many analytical determinations of this standard indicated that the elemental covariance clustered into two main groups. These groups were a function of instrumental variation, mainly plasma shape. The first principal factor accounted for 43.4% of the variance and had high loadings for strontium, barium, boron, manganese, nickel, titanium, silicon, calcium, and cadmium. The second principal factor accounted for an additional 36.7% of the variance and had high loadings for lithium, vanadium, magnesium, potassium, and aluminum. Compared with an external standard, internal standards dictated by the principal components factor analysis results gave improved precision. Internal standards not correlated with response variations degraded both the accuracy and the precision of the analysis.


In this first in-depth portrait of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel today, Samuel Heilman introduces a community that to many may seem to be the very embodiment of the Jewish past. To outsiders who stumble upon these neighborhoods and find bearded men in caftans, children with earlocks, and women in long dresses, black kerchiefs and stockings, it may appear that these people still hold fast to every tradition while turning their backs to the contemporary world. But rather than being a relic from the past, ultra-Orthodox Jews, or haredim, are very much part of the contemporary landscape and are playing an increasingly prominent role in the Jewish world and in Israeli politics. "Defenders of the Faith" takes us inside the world of this contemporary fundamentalist community, its lifestyle and mores, including education, religious practices and beliefs, sexual ethics, and marriage. Heilman explores the reasons why this group is more militant and extreme than its pre-Holocaust brethren, and provides insight into the worldview of this small but influential sector of modern Jewry.


Post-launch boresight of the IBEX-Lo instrument onboard the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is determined based on IBEX-Lo Star Sensor observations. Accurate information on the boresight of the neutral gas camera is essential for precise determination of interstellar gas flow parameters. Utilizing spin-phase information from the spacecraft attitude control system (ACS), positions of stars observed by the Star Sensor during two years of IBEX measurements were analyzed and compared with positions obtained from a star catalog. No statistically significant differences were observed beyond those expected from the pre-launch uncertainty in the Star Sensor mounting. Based on the star observations and their positions in the spacecraft reference system, pointing of the IBEX satellite spin axis was determined and compared with the pointing obtained from the ACS. Again, no statistically significant deviations were observed. We conclude that no systematic correction for boresight geometry is needed in the analysis of IBEX-Lo observations to determine neutral interstellar gas flow properties. A stack-up of uncertainties in attitude knowledge shows that the instantaneous IBEX-Lo pointing is determined to within ∼ 0.1◦ in both spin angle and elevation using either the Star Sensor or the ACS. Further, the Star Sensor can be used to independently determine the spacecraft spin axis. Thus, Star Sensor data can be used reliably to correct the spin phase when the Star Tracker (used by the ACS) is disabled by bright objects in its field-of-view. The Star Sensor can also determine the spin axis during most orbits and thus provides redundancy for the Star Tracker. Subject headings: ISM: atoms methods: obsevational methods: statistical space vehicles: instruments


Sample efficiency and risk-awareness are central to the development of practical reinforcement learning (RL) for complex decision-making. The former can be addressed by transfer learning and the latter by optimizing some utility function of the return. However, the problem of transferring skills in a risk-aware manner is not well-understood. In this paper, we address the problem of risk-aware policy transfer between tasks in a common domain that differ only in their reward functions, in which risk is measured by the variance of reward streams. Our approach begins by extending the idea of generalized policy improvement to maximize entropic utilities, thus extending policy improvement via dynamic programming to sets of policies and levels of risk-aversion. Next, we extend the idea of successor features (SF), a value function representation that decouples the environment dynamics from the rewards, to capture the variance of returns. Our resulting risk-aware successor features (RaSF) integrate seamlessly within the RL framework, inherit the superior task generalization ability of SFs, and incorporate risk-awareness into the decision-making. Experiments on a discrete navigation domain and control of a simulated robotic arm demonstrate the ability of RaSFs to outperform alternative methods including SFs, when taking the risk of the learned policies into account.