I. INTRODUCTION Since the Supreme Court's opinion in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins,1 the judicial system has been rife with confusion over the correct evidentiary standard to apply in "mixed-motive"2 cases of employment discrimination.3 Price Waterhouse was a plurality decision with Justices O'Connor and White issuing concurring opinions. This amalgam presented three distinct explanations of a plaintiffs evidentiary burden in establishing a prima facia case of employment discrimination under Title VII. While many courts have determined that Justice O'Connor's opinion requiring a plaintiff to establish its case by proving that illegitimate factors played a "substantial role" in the defendant's employment decision with "direct evidence," other courts have held plaintiffs to a much lesser burden.4 In 2003, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Desert Palace, Inc. v. Costa? Costa provided the Court with a golden opportunity to resolve the confusion plaguing Title VII cases. In a short eight-page opinion, the Court concluded that "direct evidence" of discrimination was not required in order to bring a case under the "mixed-motive" analysis.6 Unfortunately, as evidenced by subsequent decisions applying Costa, this area of law remains unsettled. This Note examines the inability and what appears to be resistance to resolving the confusion surrounding the disparate treatment7 cause of action. Part II outlines the evolution of individual employment discrimination and provides a detailed history of how the judicial system has attempted to deal with this "quagmire."8 Part III details the Court's holding and reasoning in Costa to provide a basis for its effect on Title VII. Part IV identifies and interprets the opinion's effect and points out areas where confusion remains. This Part also analyzes the lower courts' subsequent treatment of the Costa decision. Part V attempts to identify the reasons for the courts' inability and resistance to clarification of this area of law with a special emphasis on economic factors. Finally, Part VI suggests several "clear cut" alternatives to the current system, hypothesizes on whether these alternatives are necessary, and speculates on whether these alternatives would encounter resistance. II. BACKGROUND A. The Evolution of Modern Employment Discrimination Law As part of its effort to deal with the "pervasive problem"9 of employment discrimination, Congress ratified Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.10 Title VII made it illegal for an employer to "fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual . . . because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."11 Enacted for the purpose of maintaining stable, productive work environments, Title VII protects employees by providing a civil remedy for workplace discrimination.12 This protection is hampered, however, because of the judicial system's inability to devise a clear test to resolve the statutory requirement that, to be in violation of Title VII, an adverse employment action must have occurred "because of the plaintiff-employee's membership in a protected class.13 Specifically, since employers rarely act with blatant discriminatory intent, the courts have been unable to resolve the amount and type of evidence necessary to establish a discriminatory animus.14 The result of this confusion is that employees are left without a clear understanding of the evidentiary requirements necessary to prove the existence of discrimination and satisfy the requirements to survive summary judgment.15 B. Circumstantial Evidence and the Pretext Analysis In the 1973 landmark case of McDonnell Douglas Corporation v. Green,16 the U.S. Supreme Court attempted to allay this confusion by creating the pretext analysis for litigating employment discrimination cases based on circumstantial evidence.17 The pretext analysis consists of shifting evidentiary burdens between the plaintiff, who is attempting to prove a prima facie case of discrimination, and the defendant, who is trying to show a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for the adverse action. …


With the deregulation of the electricity and telecommunications markets, a great deal of new operators providing some innovative services have appeared. In the telecommunications' field, the promise of broadband Internet access with easy installation procedure at low cost may help to win new customers. The Power Line Communications (PLC) technology is a way to fulfil this function. PLC uses the low voltage (LV) and the medium voltage (MV) networks as communication support. It consists in an additional signal carrying data information and superimposed to the 50 Hz power wave. As PLC is easy to install, it can be used to extend the Internet coverage to areas that are still badly covered by the other broadband technologies, or to provide high speed Internet access to every power socket of a building. This thesis, done as a part of research project called Digital Power Line Access, is devoted to the study of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) aspects involved with the PLC. There are still a certain number of problems due to the fact that PLC, which is a quite recent technology, has not been regulated yet. Among these problems, all the aspects associated with the radiation created by the transmission of PLC signals over unshielded conductors and their potential disturbances are very significant. The aim of this thesis is the analysis of PLC data transmission over the low voltage network and the related EMC problems, mainly the radiation due to the transmission of PLC signals. The measurement and the analysis of these radiations lead us to develop a method to reduce these radiations. The mitigation of radiation created by the use of PLC within buildings is still an important EMC challenge, because there are no possibilities for network conditioning. The first two chapters of this thesis present a state of the art of PLC, its regulation and the related EMC problems. The second chapter describes the working of PLC and emphasizes the hostile nature of its environment. The problems (filtering, attenuation, generation of noise,...) caused by the use of a signal in the [1 – 30 MHz] band over a channel designed for a 50 Hz power wave are presented. On the other hand, the various technologies used to allow the PLC to work (suitable modulation scheme, use of repeater,...) are illustrated. An analysis of the different PLC concepts and of the successful and unfruitful commercial deployment ends this chapter. In the third chapter, we present the technical criterion (use of the PLC as a multi-purpose port: as a main port and as a telecommunication port) that we have to consider and the evolution of the conducted and radiated limits that we have to respect. The pollution of the radio amateur band, which could be the result of a massive deployment of PLC, is the subject of tremendous discussions and proves that if according to some persons the current limits are too permissive, for the PLC manufacturer they are already too restrictive. The coexistence of the PLC with other broadband technologies (xDSL, CA-TV, Wireless,...) is also addressed and we show that only the coexistence with an alternative of the DSL – VDSL – could be problematic. The main original contributions of this thesis are presented in chapters 4 to 6. We concentrated on the problems related to the electromagnetic radiations associated with PLC signals, especially in indoor environment. The reason for this is that the emission of electromagnetic noise, which can interfere with services such as public and amateur radio, remains an obstacle to the development of PLC. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, the mitigation of indoor radiation has not been addressed in the literature. In chapter 4, we present a complete characterization of the problems resulting from the use of PLC in an indoor environment. Two approaches are presented for the measurement of electromagnetic fields. The first one consists in the injection of a reference signal in the network and the measurement of the resulting radiations. The second one deals with the measurements of interferences due to the work of real PLC equipments. These two approaches enlight several aspects. The main aspect is the strong dispersion of the measurements, resulting from the influence of the position of the observation point and of the power network load. Measurements on real PLC networks show excessive radiations, which confirm that the limits are, at this time, too restrictive. We also present and discuss PLC radiated emissions in typical indoor environments. In particular, we analyze the field levels resulting from PLC signals with magnitudes given by EN55022/CISPR22 limits and compare them with various proposals for PLC radiated field limits. Thus, we show that the resulting fields exceed, for a wide range of frequencies, some of the current emission limits such as the German NB30, which is considered as a very strict limit. In this same chapter, we present a technique for the analysis of power line communication (PLC) signals, based on the formalism of the scattering parameters. This technique allows an efficient and fast characterization of any transmission medium of a power network. The analysis of the variations of the magnitude and phase of the scattering parameters gives useful insights on the increasing of the losses with frequency and confirm the need of a technique to reduce impedance mismatch at both injection and reception ports. The chapter 5 presents the modelling of the PLC environment and the computation of its radiations using a commercial code, the Numerical Electromagnetics Code (NEC), which solves the electric field integral equation in the frequency domain using the method of moments. We present some comparisons between the NEC simulations and the experimental data for the total magnetic field presented in the previous chapter. The simulations of simple models give results in good agreement with the experimental data and therefore allow the validation of certain principles. Unfortunately, the simulations on a model of increasing complexity give less satisfactory results. Because of the difficulty to respect the topology of the network and to take into account all of the components of the network coupled with the constraints of NEC, it is extremely difficult to obtain accurate results on the complete PLC band. The strong electromagnetic radiations appeared as the major problem of this technology. Therefore, the development of a method of mitigation was the logical continuation of this work, especially because there is still no solution to this problem. We developed a technique, which is presented in chapter 6, aiming at reducing the electromagnetic field radiated by indoor PLC signals. This technique is the major original contribution of this thesis and led us to file a patent. The central idea is to take advantage of the additional ground conductor and inject a signal similar to the PLC signal into the ground-neutral line, but with a reversed phase. As a result, the overall antenna mode current is significantly reduced, as well as the radiated electromagnetic fields. The method is specifically developed for indoor applications and applies to uni-directional and bi-directional data transmission systems with an implementation using switches. Experimental data obtained on a test network have shown that the use of the proposed technique implies a significant reduction (up to 20 dB) of the PLC electromagnetic radiation in the considered frequency range. It is also shown that the performance of the proposed technique increases when the ground-neutral line is terminated by an impedance equal to the one of the PLC modem. Other tests performed on 230 V network confirm this trend but show that further work is needed in this direction. This work could consist in the development of a system allowing the synchronisation of the real PLC signal and the auxiliary signal according to the behavior of the PLC channel, in order to optimise the performances for any frequency used by the PLC.


Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) has been recognized as a public-health issue in developing countries. Economic constraints, sociocultural limitations, insufficient dietary intake, and poor absorption leading to depleted vitamin A stores in the body have been regarded as potential determinants of the prevalence of VAD in South Asian developing countries. VAD is exacerbated by lack of education, poor sanitation, absence of new legislation and enforcement of existing food laws, and week monitoring and surveillance system. Several recent estimates confirmed higher morbidly and mortality rate among children and pregnant and non-pregnant women of childbearing age. Xerophthalmia is the leading cause of preventable childhood blindness with its earliest manifestations as night blindness and Bitot's spots, followed by blinding keratomalacia, all of which are the ocular manifestations of VAD. Children need additional vitamin A because they do not consume enough in their normal diet. There are three general ways for improving vitamin A status: supplementation, fortification, and dietary diversification. These approaches have not solved the problem in South Asian countries to the desired extent because of poor governmental support and supervision of vitamin A supplementation twice a year. An extensive review of the extant literature was carried out, and the data under various sections were identified by using a computerized bibliographic search via PubMed, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. All abstracts and full-text articles were examined, and the most relevant articles were selected for screening and inclusion in this review. Conclusively, high prevalence of VAD in South Asian developing countries leads to increased morbidity and mortality among infants, children, and pregnant women. Therefore, stern efforts are needed to address this issue of public-health significance at local and international level in lower- and middle-income countries of South Asia.


Effective and fast osseointegration is important for the survival of titanium-based orthopaedic implants. Previous studies confirmed that topographic features combined with inorganic ions showed positive effects on the biological functions of osteoblastic cells. In this study, we report an approach for fabricating Fe-incorporated micro-nano hierarchical structures on titanium substrates, which was realized by dual acid etching and subsequent hydrothermal treatment. The surface morphology, surface chemistry and wettability of the titanium substrates were characterized using scanning electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and contact angle measurements, respectively. The Fe-incorporated micro-nano hierarchical titanium substrates were probed to be biocompatible and positively improved protein adsorption, cell proliferation and cell differentiation of osteoblasts in vitro. Furthermore, the Fe-incorporated titanium substrates significantly enhanced the expressions of osteogenic genes (such as Runx2, Col I, OPN, and OCN), which were attributed to the synergistic effects of micro-nano structures and Fe ions. More importantly, the Fe-incorporated titanium implants with micro-nano hierarchical structures promoted new bone formation in vivo. This study provides an alternative for the development of orthopaedic implants with improved osseointegration for potential clinical applications.


We analyze the intergenerational transmission of education focusing on the
interplay between family and neighborhood effects. We develop a theoretical model
suggesting that both neighborhood quality and parental effort are of importance for the
education attained by children. This model proposes a mechanism explaining why and how
they are of importance, distinguishing between high- and low-educated parents. We then
bring this model to the data using a longitudinal data set in Britain. The available
information on social housing in big cities allows us to identify the role of neighbourhood
in educational outcomes. We find that the better is the quality of the neighborhood, the
higher is the parents� involvement in their children�s education. A novel finding with
respect to previous US studies is that family is of importance for children with highlyeducated
parents while it is the community that is crucial for the educational achievement
of children from low-educated families.


Dr Morris Tidball-Binz is a forensic doctor who joined the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 2004 and has since worked for the organization in numerous contexts, helping to develop its novel forensic capacity. Having begun his career with forensic and human rights organizations, he helped pioneer in his native South America the application of forensic science to human rights investigations, particularly the search for the disappeared. He helped create the ICRC's Forensic Unit, of which he was the first Director until early 2017; he then headed the forensic operation for the Humanitarian Project Plan. He is currently the Forensic Manager for the ICRC's new Missing Persons Project. He spoke with the Review to share his insights on the development of humanitarian forensic action and its role in protecting the dead and clarifying the fate of missing persons.


The development of technology over the recent years has led to tremendous changes in the finance and banking industry. One of the self-service technologies (SSTs) that has triggered a revolutionary impact is Internet banking. The majority of Internet banking users are adults and youths, as these target groups have risen with the emergence of this service. Hence, many seniors have been excluded to adopt Internet banking services since they have not grown up with these new technologies. This is a problem since the senior population of Sweden is increasing and so are the technological improvements at an even greater speed. Most of the previous research on the subject of Internet banking adoption has been tested with models such as: Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Technological Acceptance Model (TAM). However, Internet banking adoption of seniors has not been examined before in the context of Sweden, or in Umeå. The authors believed that there is a research gap in this area which can be further investigated. The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding of what factors influence the elders' adoption of Internet banking. In order to do so, data will be collected through qualitative interviews to members of senior associations in Umeå. The determinants for Internet banking usage based on the TAM are perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease-of-use (PEOU) while the TPB is more related towards behavioral factors. These elements of theories will establish the groundwork for the empirical results, as this study will be accomplished with an inductive approach. Based from previous research, education and technological behavior proved to be significant factors on the adoption of the service and were added to model. The authors extended the TAM by developing the Internet Banking Acceptance Model (IBAM), which is more suitable to explain the seniors' adoption of Internet banking. The findings of the research showed that most of the seniors' lacked education in Internet banking and their technological behavior affected their willingness to adopt IT services. The seniors should also be more open to new technologies, in this case, Internet banking instead of relying on external assistance. With this research the authors have realized there is a gap in Internet banking adoption, and that is, the seniors. They have demonstrated an interest in the service if provided with proper education and training either by the banks or relatives. The banks should look into this aspect because it would make the bank errands more practical for the seniors and cut down costs for the banks.


Understanding the physical and hydraulic properties of the vadose zone is important for modeling land use effects on groundwater quality. This study used a variety of characterization methods to derive conceptual understanding and estimates of hydraulic properties of a coarse alluvial gravel vadose zone in New Zealand. Sandy gravel (SG) material constituted approximately 90% of the vadose zone, with the remainder comprising sand lenses and open‐framework gravels. The gravel content of the SG material was approximately 70% (v/v) (range 68–73%). The water content of the bulk SG material (43 samples) ranged from 3.5 to 13.9%. The average bulk density of the SG material was 2.20 g/cm3 (range 2.00–2.33 g/cm3) giving an average calculated porosity of 17%. The average porosity of the open‐framework gravels was 34% and these gravels were often coated with 2‐ to 3‐mm‐thick deposits of amorphous Fe and Mn oxides. Neutron probe (NP) depth profiles indicated unsteady conditions, with variable water contents with depth and time reflecting the vertical heterogeneity and the variably saturated state of the vadose zone. Time series NP data to 3 m indicated water content in the alluvial gravels responded quickly to soil drainage events, and saturation variability was greater in the sand lenses and the SG material immediately underlying. When compared with derived water retention curves, variability in the water content equated to significant fluctuation in unsaturated hydraulic conductivity (Kunsat). Tension infiltrometer measurements were variable but were within the range of the Kunsat estimates from site‐average particle size distribution data. The gravel‐transformed, texture‐based models used to estimate saturated water content values in this study appeared to underestimate the measured values.


Automatically evaluating the quality of dialogue responses for unstructured domains is a challenging problem. ADEM (Lowe et al. 2017) formulated the automatic evaluation of dialogue systems as a learning problem and showed that such a model was able to predict responses which correlate significantly with human judgements, both at utterance and system level. Their system was shown to have beaten word-overlap metrics such as BLEU with large margins. We start with the question of whether an adversary can game the ADEM model. We design a battery of targeted attacks at the neural network based ADEM evaluation system and show that automatic evaluation of dialogue systems still has a long way to go. ADEM can get confused with a variation as simple as reversing the word order in the text! We report experiments on several such adversarial scenarios that draw out counterintuitive scores on the dialogue responses. We take a systematic look at the scoring function proposed by ADEM and connect it to linear system theory to predict the shortcomings evident in the system. We also devise an attack that can fool such a system to rate a response generation system as favorable. Finally, we allude to future research directions of using the adversarial attacks to design a truly automated dialogue evaluation system.


Recent works have shown the effectiveness of randomized smoothing as a scalable technique for building neural network-based classifiers that are provably robust to $\ell_2$-norm adversarial perturbations. In this paper, we employ adversarial training to improve the performance of randomized smoothing. We design an adapted attack for smoothed classifiers, and we show how this attack can be used in an adversarial training setting to boost the provable robustness of smoothed classifiers. We demonstrate through extensive experimentation that our method consistently outperforms all existing provably $\ell_2$-robust classifiers by a significant margin on ImageNet and CIFAR-10, establishing the state-of-the-art for provable $\ell_2$-defenses. Moreover, we find that pre-training and semi-supervised learning boost adversarially trained smoothed classifiers even further. Our code and trained models are available at this http URL .


The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has recognized that its activities in the countries of the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region have significant potential to be impacted by the effects of climate change. This is particularly the case for projects in the water and sanitation (WSA) sector that are currently in planning and execution stages in the region. Most adaptation experiences in the WSA sector have been developed at a global scale, with limited experience existing at a local level (e.g., at the basin scale). This gap presents the challenge of developing on-the-ground knowledge that deepens the IDB's expertise on adaptation to climate change in the WSA sector and helps to define policies and better practices in adaptation at the regional and country levels. This is specifically applicable to countries in Central America. The objective of this Technical Cooperation project is to support the process of increasing climate change adaptation capacity in communities in Central America. By taking into consideration the range of possible risks and vulnerabilities, plans for future investments in water and sanitation infrastructure can integrate concepts that reduce vulnerability and increase resilience to climate risks, leading to more sustainable development outcomes. Forecasts of climate change for Central America suggest increased climate variability in the future, which is expected to translate into more severe droughts in the dry season, and increased frequency and intensity of rainfall events during the rainy season. The latter is a particular issue in Managua, Nicaragua, where recent events highlight the existence of significant stormwater drainage challenges, resulting in impacts to communities and the economy. This case study exemplifies a potential approach that may be used to understand the impacts that increased precipitation intensity would have in a relatively large populated area, and identify the corresponding infrastructure and policy-based adaptation measures that can be implemented in response. The outcome of this adaptation experience has yielded useful elements for the definition of an alternative strategy to conventional stormwater management, one that places the focus on reducing runoff rather than managing its conveyance. Lessons learned in Managua are likely to be applicable to other efforts in the region where addressing flood-prone areas in urban settings is a top priority. Going forward, the results of this Technical Cooperation project will be used to inform the design of local and targeted adaptation measures to address climate change impacts in the WSA sector.


The way the criminal policy of Iran deals with the preservation of agricultural and horticultural lands use is currently among the hot topics of the country. Unfortunately, with a lack of careful study as well as a concentration on criminalization and penal reaction, this policy seeks keeping these lands. However, the scientific criminal policy contains importa nt points that should be considered as a whole – and not separately–and besides the penal measures, adherence to active social and cultural activities as well as creation of the needed infrastructures should be exercised so as to achieve the intended goals. Otherwise, stressing the preservation of these lands, while the people under this law don't know the consequences of their activities, together with a lack of support for agriculture sector and insufficient revenues of agricultural works in Iran, lack o f NGO activities to support this sector, and lack of territorial planning, seems to be in vain. Instead of criminalization in suchlike cases, Iranian policymakers should legitimize the constructions in Iran and pay more attention to the respective commissions (i.e. the commission under acts 92 and 100 of the Municipalities Law), which are about the unauthorized constructions.


Research aim was to test the tolerance of a range of wheat cultivars to infectious pressure of the pathogen Pseudocercosporella herpotrichoides in climatic conditions from Timisoara Didactic Research Station. Stage of research is being characteristic for partial interpretation of experimental data after the first experimental year, in preparation the doctoral thesis. Materials and methods. Experimental field was located in climatic conditions from Timisoara. Technology was the standard applied to this area. The experience was bifactorial. First factor was the cultivar with three graduations (Ciprian, Ariesan and Kristina). Factor B was the nitrogen amount with three graduations (N 50, N 100 and N 150) all three doses were applied on a constant background elements of P 60 K 60. The novelty is relatively high, work providing important data for agricultural practice in the experimental area, taking in consideration the implications of fungus Pseudocercosporella herpotrichoides in yield amount and harvesting problems in some years. Achievements stage in this field. In this work were carried out research including one of authors, known as the reference and possible reactions of the pathogen depending on local biocoenosis factors, including the competiotin between stem base pathogens. Limits of the research are that data from the fungus Pseudocercosporella herpotrichoides are just after one year bonitation. Practical implications of the research consisted of playing a part of a complex study of strategy in the of wheat protection reference experience. The originality of the work comes from the fact that data are relevant in view of cultivars behaviour under specific conditions. These data are only part of the data submitted for interpretation in the preparation of the doctoral experience of the author. Importance of the paper became from bringing in front of the specialists of one of the topics in the experiences of the author's doctoral preparing, to evaluate the accuracy of techniques addressed. The relevant data, experimental results give an overview of pathogen behavior in relation to experimental conditions.


The time reversibility of a plane wave packet interacting with a closed crack subject to non-dissipative contact nonlinearity is investigated numerically through a finite element model. It is shown that time reversibility holds for this type contact acoustic nonlinearity, provided that the additional frequency information generated during the forward propagation, such as higher harmonics, subharmonics and zero-frequency component, is fully included during the retro-propagation. Alternatively, a loss of information due to a frequency filtering leads to a breakdown of the time reversal invariance. Therefore, a damage index based on the degradation of the time reversal invariance using filtered back-propagation is proposed to evaluate the nonlinear response generated by a closed crack as an alternative to higher or sub-harmonics measurement.


Squamate reptiles (lizards and snakes) are one of the most diverse groups of terrestrial vertebrates. Recent molecular analyses have suggested a very different squamate phylogeny relative to morphological hypotheses, but many aspects remain uncertain from molecular data. Here, we analyse higher-level squamate phylogeny with a molecular dataset of unprecedented size, including 161 squamate species for up to 44 nuclear genes each (33 717 base pairs), using both concatenated and species-tree methods for the first time. Our results strongly resolve most squamate relationships and reveal some surprising results. In contrast to most other recent studies, we find that dibamids and gekkotans are together the sister group to all other squamates. Remarkably, we find that the distinctive scolecophidians (blind snakes) are paraphyletic with respect to other snakes, suggesting that snakes were primitively burrowers and subsequently re-invaded surface habitats. Finally, we find that some clades remain poorly supported, despite our extensive data. Our analyses show that weakly supported clades are associated with relatively short branches for which individual genes often show conflicting relationships. These latter results have important implications for all studies that attempt to resolve phylogenies with large-scale phylogenomic datasets.


Quality of service (QoS) is an important consideration in networking, but it is also a significant challenge. Providing QoS guarantees becomes even more challenging when you add the complexities of wireless and mobile networks. This paper discusses the challenges and solutions involved in providing QoS in wireless data networks. Multiple techniques for providing service guarantees are presented, including data link layer QoS schemes, network layer schemes, integrated (multiple layer) approaches, QoS routing, dynamic class adaptation, and techniques for reservation and admission control.


Abstract A twin type thermal conduction calorimeter has been specially designed and constructed for absolute measurement of tritium, and then its performance was examined using two kinds of tritium samples, i.e., ZrNi alloy powders loaded with a given amount of tritium. Total amounts of tritium in the ZrNi alloy powders were previously estimated by a small ionization chamber. Changes in radioactivity of two samples were followed for three years, and it was seen that the activity changes obeys the half-life of 4505 days. The initial tritium amounts estimated by the small ionization chamber agreed well with the extrapolated values from the activity changes evaluated by the calorimeter. Namely, it was suggested that the small ionization chamber is able to be used as a secondary standard of the tritium measuring devices. The β-ray-induced X-ray counter was also calibrated for non-destructive measurements of high-level tritium by using the present small ionization chamber.


type="main"> Focusing on the case of Senegal under the former President, Abdoulaye Wade, this article examines the impact party politics has on service delivery in urban areas controlled by opposition parties. Senegal's decentralisation process provided opportunities for the central government to deliberately reduce the autonomy of local government under conditions in which the latter could be held accountable for good service delivery and increase autonomy when local government could be targeted for poor performance – actions manifested through backtracking on political decentralisation, undermining fiscal decentralisation, and augmenting administrative ambiguity. The case offers useful implications for donors involved in decentralisation and urban service-delivery projects in opposition-controlled cities.


Low-income and ethnic minority women have been described as at risk for experiencing depression during and around the time of pregnancy, a finding complicated by low levels of mental health service use within this population. This study retrospectively examined data from a community-based perinatal depression project targeting low-income women in which many barriers to care were removed and a range of services could be elected from social work, specialty mental health, primary care, and peer support. The study focused on 206 women who self-referred to the project after community-based screening. In this sample, the mean age was 25.49 years, with 53% of participants identified as women of color, and 76% had income at or below 185% of the poverty level. The characteristics within this sample most strongly associated with service use varied among sectors of care. Women of color and women with elevated psychosocial risk were significantly more likely to use social work home visiting, whereas current depressive symptom level predicted specialty mental health sector treatment but not other sectors of care. Findings from this study compel future research to consider the complex factors influencing women's use of mental health services among multiple sectors of care. KEY WORDS: community-based research; depression; mental health services; service utilization; women ********** An estimated 15% or more of all women who become pregnant experience depression (Edwards et al., 2006; Evans, Heron, Francomb, Oke, & Golding, 2001). Reviews of both medical and social-behavioral research in this area have placed a needed emphasis on emerging clinical trends in identification and treatment (that is, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 2008; Bledsoe & Grote, 2006). However, elevated risk for mental health challenges for pregnant women may also collide with barriers to full use of mental health services and, thus, jeopardize the receipt of accessible, affordable, and culturally congruent care (Alegria et al., 2002; Anderson et al., 2006; Song, Sands, & Wong, 2004). Currently, there is a gap in knowledge about where and why low-income pregnant and newly parenting women with depression choose to seek mental health services when services are made available to them across sectors of care. The present study begins to address this gap by examining demographics, current symptoms, and psychosocial risk factors and their influence on service use patterns within one specific community program serving low-income, rural women during and around the time of pregnancy. This study supports Abrams and Curran's (2007) assertion that social work's research agenda for perinatal and maternal depression must be positioned to highlight the experiences of diverse groups of women within a biopsychosocial context. DOMAINS OF RISK FOR DEPRESSION A substantive body of literature illustrates demographic risk factors for perinatal and maternal depression. Elevated rates of depressive symptoms, for example, have been detected early in the postpartum period for African American and Latina women (Howell, Mora, Horowitz, & Leventhal, 2005), as have both-prevalence and continuity of elevated symptoms for African American mothers through 18 months postpartum (Beeghly et al., 2003). In addition, low socioeconomic status reportedly increases the risk for ethnic minority women (Beeghly et al., 2003; Miranda et al., 2003; Rosen, Tolman, & Warner, 2004). Life stressors and psychosocial challenges also contribute to increased risk for depression. In a recent meta-analysis, depression or anxiety during pregnancy, prior mental health history, stressful life events, and lack of adequate social support were identified as moderate to strong predictors of elevated risk for postpartum depression (Robertson, Grace, Wallington, & Stewart, 2004). Several specific forms of stress have been identified as potentially affecting the emotional well-being of women during and around pregnancy, including perinatal loss (Price, 2008), family violence and abuse (Martin et al. …


The TT100 awards programme that has been fronted by the Da Vinci brand for the last 18 years, began, in the early 1990's, with an emphasis on discovering and awarding the technological and innovative excellence in the South African market place. The findings were outstanding and the experience of the annual awards process has left an enduring legacy regarding the entrepreneurial spirit and the appropriate commercial realisation of that spirit in a wide range of industrial sectors and applications.


One of the most important source of noise and vibrations associated with vehicles is the vibration of driveline systems. Such phenomena are subjectively associated with
customer complaints. In this study the torsional vibrations of driveline systems were investigated using discretised and lumped mass models of the system.

In the literature, many of the problems associated with torsional vibrations and refinement in drivelines have been tackled through relatively simple, lumped mass models combinedw ith experimentalm easurements. However, some problems remain particularly where instabilities occur or complex coupling with other vehicle vibration modes exists. The review of previous work showed that although it is important to understand the dynamic behaviour of the individual driveline components; for example, engine, clutch, gearbox, etc., the whole system must be analysed together because of all the coupling which occurs.

The main source of excitation for torsional vibration of the driveline system is the engine fluctuating torque. A computer program using MATLAB subroutines was developed to obtain this fluctuation torque for different engine parameters for subsequent use in the modelling.

A substructure approach, using stiffness coupling technique with combined use of residual flexibility and modal synthesis, was used to analyse free and forced vibrations
of the system, as a linear system. A computer program using MATLAB subroutines was designed to facilitate application of this technique. Good agreement between results for the overall system model and substructure model was found even for a few considered modes. This substructure technique offers significant computational advantages over other methods.

The effect of non-linear sources in the driveline system such as backlash, non-linear spring stifffiess, Hooke's joint and angularity of the propeller shaft on the system
torsional vibrations was investigated. The effect of backlash in the driveline system was significant and, as expected, vibration levels increased as backlash increased.

Hooke's joints caused an additional complex source of excitation but their significance is dictated by the details of the particular driveline design.

The modelling showed that instabilities commonly referred to a shunt or shuffle could occur during clutch engagement. The stick slip frictional properties of the clutch were
crucial in this behaviour and the relative importance of various design features was quantified.

A mathematical model including torsional motion of the driveline system and other vehicle body motions was developed to analyse the ways in which the driveline
couples with other dynamic components. Two running conditions were considered; steady state running and transient during clutch engagement. It was shown that the
complete system was capable of self-excited oscillations under certain conditions during normal running as well as the instability which could occur during clutch engagement.

This comprehensive model represents an important contribution of the work in this area of research in two ways. First, it clarifies understanding of the dynamic coupling between the rotational and translational components of the whole vehicle system. Second, it provides design information to tackle instability problems and to lead to reductions in overall vibration levels.


This study intended to illustrate and compare the specific existential elements
such as absurdity and alienation portrayed by Hedayat and Kafka in The
Metamorphosis and The Blind Owl. Elucidating how the two authors portrayed
these notions in similar or different ways led to the idea that the selected works
were similar to each other in terms of existential notions such as absurdity and
alienation.
The method utilized in this thesis was based on the comparative literature and
the two works were treated as the surreal fictions since the characters and
incidents were not real. In addition, this study delineated the fact that Hedayat and Kafka employed philosophy of existentialism to testify the perplexed
situation of human being's condition in the contemporary world. Both authors,
Kafka and Hedayat, suffered from the modern society's complexities and
tortures that captured their daily lives and also they endured the lack of mutual
love and relationship among the members of their families and societies;
thereby, they reflected all these concerns in the same way showing how
contemporary man tolerates hardships imposed by alienation and world
absurdity in a similar way and on the basis of existentialism.


Despite an increasing recognition of the impor- tance of extreme rainfall events for organic carbon export to inland waters, little attention has been paid to the export and reactivity of particulate organic carbon (POC) and dis- solved organic C (DOC) in mountainous headwater water- sheds under monsoon climates. To investigate environmental implications of storm-enhanced export of POC and DOC in mountainous headwater streams, we examined the relation- ships between storm magnitude and C export from a forested watershed in the Haean Basin, South Korea, during 13 storm events over 4 years and compared potentials of DOC and POC for biodegradation and disinfection byproduct (DBP) formation during an extreme rainfall event with a total rain- fall of 209 mm. Event mean concentrations and export of POC increased nonlinearly above thresholds of precipitation and discharge, far exceeding the relatively small increases of DOC. The export of POC during a few storm events with a total rainfall above 200 mm per event exceeded the annual organic C export during dry years. During the 209 mm storm event, concentrations of total trihalomethanes formed by POC-derived dissolved components changed synchronously with POC concentrations, exhibiting lower levels than those formed by DOC. During a 30-day incubation at 25 C, DOC exported during peak flow exhibited rapid biodegradation of labile components within 7 days. In contrast, the concentra- tions of DOC leached from POC gradually increased fol- lowing the initial decline. Gradual transformation of POC- derived dissolved materials resulted in greater increases in the intensity of fulvic- and humic-like fluorescent compo- nents compared to the DOC treatment. The results highlight the significance of extreme rainfall events as "hot moments" for POC export from mountainous watersheds and also sug- gest that storm pulses of POC can provide potential sources of reactive organic components that can rapidly biodegrade and form DBPs after being released into headwater streams.


Evaluating the outcomes achieved by service providers who assist people with intellectual disabilities is extremely important in terms of ascertaining whether service providers achieve their goals. Furthermore, knowledge of the outcomes achieved by service providers better equips those charged with managing them to make strategic decisions to fulfill their accountability obligations for the best use of limited resources. The authors provide support for the emerging view that quality of life is an outcome measure that can be utilized to assess service providers' performance. To do this they modified a performance measurement framework to illustrate how quality of life can be incorporated in a comprehensive analysis of the outcomes achieved by various stakeholders of the service provider. They then used three examples drawn from the literature (relating to employment services, the U.S. state of Nebraska, and family quality of life), to highlight how this framework could be applied. Ideas are also presented on other areas where a comprehensive stakeholder analysis, incorporating quality of life measures, could form part of a service provider's performance evaluation. The authors review some issues that should be considered in relation to the implementation of a comprehensive performance measurement system that incorporates quality of life as one of the outcome measures.


A novel approach to clustering cooccurrence data poses it as an optimization problem in information theory which minimizes the resulting loss in mutual information. A divisive clustering algorithm that monotonically reduces this loss function was recently proposed. We show that sparse high-dimensional data presents special challenges which can result in the algorithm getting stuck at poor local minima. We propose two solutions to this problem: (a) a "prior" to overcome infinite relative entropy values as in the supervised Naive Bayes algorithm, and (b) local search to escape local minima. Finally, we combine these solutions to get a robust algorithm that is computationally efficient. We present experimental results to show that the proposed method is effective in clustering document collections and outperform previous information-theoretic clustering approaches.


Anthropogenic disturbances have led to the degradation of coral reef systems globally, calling for proactive and progressive local strategies to manage individual ecosystems. Although restoration strategies such as assisted evolution have recently been proposed to enhance the performance of coral reef populations in response to current and future stressors, scalability of these concepts and implementation in habitat or ecosystem-wide management remains a major limitation for logistical and financial reasons. We propose to implement these restoration efforts into an ecotourism approach that embeds land-based coral gardening efforts as architectural landscape elements to enhance and beautify coastal development sites, providing additional value and rationale for ecotourism stakeholders to invest. Our approach extends and complements existing concepts integrating coral reef restoration in ecotourism projects by creating a participatory platform that can be experienced by the public, while effectively integrating numerous restoration techniques, and providing opportunities for long-term restoration and monitoring studies. In this context, we discuss options for pre-selection of corals and systematic, large-scale monitoring of coral genotype performance targeting higher resilience to future stressors. To reduce operating costs during out-planting, we suggest to create coral seeding hubs, clusters of closely transplanted conspecifics, to quickly and efficiently restore/enhance active reproduction. We discuss our land-based coral gardening approach in the context of positive impacts beyond reef restoration. By restoring and strengthening resilience of local populations, we believe this strategy will contribute to a net positive conservation impact, create a culture on restoration and enhance and secure blue economical investments that rely on healthy marine systems.


Background: Research on functional water has revealed its physiological functions and health-beneficial effects. Accordingly, this study explored the effects of drinking an average dietary volume of functional coherent mineral water (FCMW) on blood pressure, short-term cardiovascular variables, fractal heart rhythm dynamics, and salivary immunoglobulin A. Methods: Fifteen healthy subjects were randomized in a pre-post crossover design, selected the morning after an overnight fast. Short-term electrocardiography (ECG) was measured before and after drinking either control mineral water (CMW) or FCMW on two separate occasions. Saliva was collected for four minutes before the start of each ECG measurement. Blood pressure was monitored in five-minute intervals for one hour. Results: Drinking 100 ml of FCMW temporarily increased arterial blood pressure at 20 to 25 minutes in the 60 minutes post-drinking. Drinking CMW led to a significant reduction in the heart rate, while all-time domain and Power Spectral Density parameters (PSD) were unaffected. Consumption of FCMW resulted in a highly significant difference and decrease in heart rate, and an increase in NN interbeat intervals, and in two of the PSD parameters. A large increase in total power had a significant increasing effect on 2–3-minute oscillations of the very low frequency (VLF) power, indicating a specific change in the heart's intrinsic cardiac rhythm that is fundamental to health and well-being. An extension in mono and multifractal scaling of heart rate dynamics defines a healthy function and non-local adaptability, indicating a higher capacity to respond to unpredictable stimuli and stresses, a function which improves autonomic stability. The effect on the heart rate and VLF power suggest an efficient cellular metabolism and a stabilizing effect on mucosal immunoglobulin A. Conclusions: Functional coherent mineral water with an apparent non-local electromagnetic identity triggered in healthy subjects a sustainable sympathetic response in cardiac VLF Functional Foods in Health and Disease 2016; 6(6): 388-413 Page 389 of 413 power, which is considered an intrinsic health-promoting rhythm produced by the heart itself that accompanies adaptive mono and multifractal heart rhythm dynamics.


Squeezing and its inverse magnification form a one-parameter group of linear canonical transformations of continuous signals in paraxial optics. We search for corresponding unitary matrices to apply on signal vectors in N-point finite Hamiltonian systems. The analysis is extended to the phase space representation by means of Wigner quasi-probability distribution functions on the discrete torus and on the sphere. Together with two previous studies of the fractional Fourier and Fresnel transforms, we complete the finite counterparts of the group of linear canonical transformations.


With the current trend towards Building Information Model (BIM), facility managers have a new tool for raising efficiency. This paper discusses the integration of the BIM software with a real-time monitoring (RTM) system, as a 4D+ dimension in BIM, to track the electrical usage at every location in a building. This ability could be invaluable in identifying what unnecessary loads are connected to a device and could be disconnected. This would result in elimination of needless loads and phantom loads during non-business hours, causing significant reduction in energy consumption. A prototype of the RTM was built and the results are in support of reduction in energy consumption. Real-time awareness is a major factor in facility management and essential to meet the strict guidelines presently being adopted.


We are generalizing to higher dimensions the Bavard-Ghys construction of the hyperbolic metric on the space of polygons with fixed directions of edges.
The space of convex d-dimensional polyhedra with fixed directions of facet normals has a decomposition into type cones that correspond to different combinatorial types of polyhedra. This decomposition is a subfan of the secondary fan of a vector configuration and can be analyzed with the help of Gale diagrams.
We construct a family of quadratic forms on each of the type cones using the theory of mixed volumes. The Alexandrov-Fenchel inequalities ensure that these forms have exactly one positive eigenvalue. This introduces a piecewise hyperbolic structure on the space of similarity classes of polyhedra with fixed directions of facet normals. We show that some of the dihedral angles on the boundary of the resulting cone-manifold are equal to \pi/2.


Participatory sensing is becoming more popular with the help of sensor-embedded smartphones to retrieve context-aware information for users. However, new challenges arise for the maintenance of the energy supply, the support of the quality-of-information (QoI) requirements, and the generation of maximum revenue for network operator, but with sparsely research exposure. This paper proposes a novel efficient network management framework to tackle the above challenges, where four key design elements are introduced. First is the QoI satisfaction index, where the QoI benefit the queries receive is quantified in relation to the level they require. Second is the credit satisfaction index, where the credits are used by the network operator to motivate the user participation, and this index is to quantify its degree of satisfaction. Third is the Gur Game-based distributed energy control, where the above two indexes are used as inputs to the mathematical framework of the Gur Game for distributed decision-making. Fourth is the dynamic pricing scheme, based on a constrained optimization problem to allocate credits to the participants while minimizing the necessary adaptation of the pricing scheme from the network operator. We finally evaluate the proposed scheme under an event occurrence detection scenario, where the proposed scheme successfully guarantees less than 7% detection outage, saves 80% of the energy reserve if compared with the lower bound solution, and achieves the suboptimum with only 4% gap if compared with optimal solution.


Path planning is one of the important autonomy abilities for autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), whose main purpose is to plan an optimized and safety path autonomously during long-range navigation in an unknown environment. This paper proposes two path planners based on quantum ant colony optimization (QACO) and hybrid QACO for AUV in real time based on a sensor detection window. When AUV detects unknown static obstacles, the online path planners are scheduled to plan out a new path to avoid obstacles in the optimization window. To limit the yaw angle, a nonlinear fitness function is defined. In the hybrid QACO, an adaptive quantum gate and improved rules of pheromone updating are proposed according to the movement characteristic of AUV in the process of obstacle avoidance. A local search method is combined with QACO to improve the quality of the path planned by QACO and obtain a smoother path. Finally, the simulation experiments compare the performance of the proposed path planning methods with ant colony optimization.


Abstract. Processing Earth observation data modelled in a time-series of raster format is critical to solving some of the most complex problems in geospatial science ranging from climate change to public health. Researchers are increasingly working with these large raster datasets that are often terabytes in size. At this scale, traditional GIS methods may fail to handle the processing, and new approaches are needed to analyse these datasets. The objective of this work is to develop methods to interactively analyse big raster datasets with the goal of most efficiently extracting vector data over specific time periods from any set of raster data. In this paper, we describe RINX (Raster INformation eXtraction) which is an end-to-end solution for automatic extraction of information from large raster datasets. RINX heavily utilises open source geospatial techniques for information extraction. It also complements traditional approaches with state-of-the- art high-performance computing techniques. This paper discusses details of achieving big temporal data extraction with RINX, implemented on the use case of air quality and climate data extraction for long term health studies, which includes methods used, code developed, processing time statistics, project conclusions, and next steps.


Several devastating conflicts have persisted in Sub-Saharan Africa for the past 20 years or more. Some countries are still emerging from the era of cold war politics, while debilitating internal struggles continue to plague others. Ethiopia, Namibia, South Africa, Uganda, and more recently, Angola and Mozambique are examples of the former. The latter is illustrated by the situation in countries such as Liberia, Somalia and the Sudan. This study, the transition from war to peace in Sub-Saharan Africa, offers practical guidance and examples of good practice for improving the design and implementation of programs for demobilization, reinsertion, and reintegration of ex-combatants and their dependents in client countries. It also provides a list of early warning signals that indicate whether the demobilization and reintegration programs (DRPs) process is not going according to plan and suggests preventive actions. Work on the ground, as well as case analysis in countries such as Ethiopia, Namibia, Uganda, Angola, Mozambique, and Rwanda form the basis of the suggested good practice in DRPs.


Background: Blood transfusion is an important part of management of patients undergoing orthopedic surgeries. However frequently perioperative anticipated blood requirements overshoot the actual need resulting in unnecessary cross matching of blood. Therefore, it is important to formulate a maximum surgical blood ordering schedule (MSBOS) for common orthopedic surgeries.
Objective: To evaluate our blood utilization in various orthopedic surgeries and to develop a blood ordering schedule for various orthopedic surgeries.
Methodology: A 12-month (January-December 2016) retrospective study was carried out on patients undergoing orthopedic procedures. Data collected included number of patients transfused, number of units cross-matched and number of units transfused. The cross matched to transfusion ratio (CTR), transfusion probability and transfusion index were calculated and from the calculated values a MSBOS was proposed.
Results: A total of 224 units of blood were cross matched for 105 patients out of which only 97 units of blood was transfused to 55 patients. Nine out of 15 surgical procedures had CTR higher than 2, 4 had a low TI <0.5 and 12 had a blood utilization of <50%. Fracture of the forearm, total knee replacement (unilateral), tibiofibular and ankle fractures all had blood utilization of <30% and thus Type & Screen policy was recommended for these procedures.
Conclusion: The overall CTR was high with low percentage blood utilization and resultant significant blood wastage. To prevent unnecessary blood wastage, we suggest the implementation of the recommended MSBOS schedule.


Adult brown trout were acclimated for 2–4 weeks to artificial, soft water (Ca 2+ 25μmoll −1 ) at neutral pH and at summer (15°C) or winter (5°C) temperatures. During this period they swam against a current of approximately 0.25 ms −1 . They were then exposed to neutral or sublethal pH for 4 days in still water. For fish with their dorsal aorta catheterized, sublethal pH was 4 at 5°C and 4.5 at 15°C. After 4 days of exposure to sublethal pH, resting oxygen uptake (M o 2 w a s 40 % higher than that at neutral pH for fish held at 15°C and 38 % higher for fish held at 5°C. Critical swimming speeds ( U crit ), in contrast, were 35% and 31% lower, respectively. These two phenomena may be related in as much as the 'metabolic cost' of exposure to low pH may increase as swimming speed increases, thus reducing the scope for activity. Another important factor could be an impairment of oxygen delivery to the red muscle fibres. Although arterial O 2 concentrations and heart rate are both similar for fish at U crit in neutral and acid water, there are signs of haemoconcentration in fish exposed to low pH, and the consequent increase in blood viscosity could disrupt the local circulation in the red fibres. Whatever its causes, an impairment of swimming activity resulting from exposure to acid water may have severe consequences for active fish such as salmonids. Exposure to sublethal pH caused significant reductions in plasma Na + and Cl − concentrations at both temperatures, although these were more substantial at 5°C than at 15°C. Swimming at U crit had no significant effect on plasma concentrations of Na + , K + and Cl − except at sublethal pH at 5°C, when there were significant reductions in all three. Seasonal temperature had significant but small effects on resting M O 2 and U crit , and these are discussed in terms of the possible effects of low temperature and continued swimming activity (training) on hypertrophy of skeletal and cardiac muscles and on the aerobic capacity of the 'red' muscle fibres.


Curcumin, a biologically active compound from turmeric, and vitamin C act as a natural antioxidant and potent chemopreventive agent. The objective of the study was to investigate whether the combined pretreatment with curcumin and vitamin C offers more beneficial effects than that provided by either of them alone in reversing cadmium (Cd)- induced hepatotoxicity. For this purpose, 64 adult male Wistar rats, equally divided into control and seven treated groups, received either Cd (as CdCl2 5 mg/kg), curcumin 400 mg/kg, curcumin 200 or 400 mg/kg + CdCl2, vitamin C 100 mg/kg + CdCl2, curcumin 200 or 400 mg/kg + vitamin C + CdCl2. All groups were treated by gavage for 27 days. The results showed that Cd treatment increased significantly lipid peroxidation levels,decreased significantly the glutathione levels, increased significantly on metallothionein (MT) expressions including the degenerative changes of liver histological tissues were observed. The treatment of Cd-exposed rats with curcumin or vitamin C alone could not reverse Cd-induced the above changes. The combined treatment with curcumin along with vitamin C before Cd intoxication was more effective than that with either of them alone in reducing such changes and reverse the changes almost similar to that of control. In conclusion, the results demonstrated that the combined pretreatment with curcumin along with vitamin C could recover the alterations and offer more protection than curcumin or vitamin C alone against Cd hepatotoxicity.


No one ever pretended that the conservation of biodiversity would be easy. Not only do conservation biologists and those responsible for implementing conservation programmes need to cope with the vagaries of a rapidly degrading global environment and the often poorly understood and unique requirements of a largely undescribed biota, they must also cope with human social systems and its plethora of minority interests. In an earlier issue of Pacific Conservation Biology, Leong Lim expressed his concerns about the operation and legitimacy of New South Wales' threatened species legislation. Partly he was concerned about the constitutional validity of the legislation and partly about difficulties for land owners, consultants, and government authorities in addressing the requirements of the legislation when information on individual threatened and listed species was incomplete. In this issue, the Scientific Committee set up under the legislation to determine listings of threatened species responds to Lim's criticisms. The Committee argues that they operate within the bounds of the legislation and are constrained by the requirements of the Act. The issue of "accountability" raised by Lim is important.


We explore the relationship between disaggregated trading flows, the Canada/U.S. dollar (CAD/USD) market and U.S. macroeconomic announcements with a novel data set of unprecedented breadth and length. Foreign financial trading flows appear to demand liquidity, contemporaneously driving the CAD/USD while commercial trading flows seem to be price sensitive, providing liquidity in response to exchange rate movements. Despite strong contemporaneous correlations with trading flows, exchange rate returns are generally not predictable, except for some intriguing success at long horizons. This failure contrasts with much, but not all, previous research on the topic. While two types of CAD trading flows and the CAD/USD appear to be cointegrated, such structure is probably spurious. There appear to be structural breaks in the order-flow-exchange rate VECM systems in 1994-1996 and 1998-1999.


The current electric power grid is a result of incremental growth over the past 100 years under assumptions that a grid provides reliable and controllable generation of energy cheaply and with limited environmental impact. Moving into the twenty-first century, many of these assumptions will no longer hold; the existing grid is ill-equipped to handle the new requirements that it is being subjected to. This paper presents a novel hybridization algorithm to upgrade the existing electric power network to feasibly achieve future renewable energy generation goals. The algorithm was integrated with state-of-the-art electric power analysis approaches to produce feasible transmission networks to accommodate 20% wind power by 2030 goals.


This article tentatively assesses the role of the 20 February Movement in current Moroccan politics. Drawing on social movement theory, the analysis focuses on the ways in which the movement has attempted to challenge the legitimacy of the system in place. The article first provides a thorough description of the movement's characteristics. Subsequently, the frame analysis in the main part studies how the movement has sought to deconstruct the self-portrayal of the incumbent regime. It argues that the relevance of the challenge mounted by the 20 February Movement derives from its transgressions of red lines formerly delimiting political discourses in the kingdom.


We study the question of whether parallelization in the exploration of the feasible set can be used to speed up convex optimization, in the local oracle model of computation. We show that the answer is negative for both deterministic and randomized algorithms applied to essentially any of the interesting geometries and nonsmooth, weakly-smooth, or smooth objective functions. In particular, we show that it is not possible to obtain a polylogarithmic (in the sequential complexity of the problem) number of parallel rounds with a polynomial (in the dimension) number of queries per round. In the majority of these settings and when the dimension of the space is polynomial in the inverse target accuracy, our lower bounds match the oracle complexity of sequential convex optimization, up to at most a logarithmic factor in the dimension, which makes them (nearly) tight. Prior to our work, lower bounds for parallel convex optimization algorithms were only known in a small fraction of the settings considered in this paper, mainly applying to Euclidean ($\ell_2$) and $\ell_\infty$ spaces. Our work provides a more general approach for proving lower bounds in the setting of parallel convex optimization.


ABSTRACT Ribosome biogenesis in eukaryotes depends on the coordinated action of ribosomal and nonribosomal proteins that guide the assembly of preribosomal particles. These intermediate particles follow a maturation pathway in which important changes in their protein composition occur. The mechanisms involved in the coordinated assembly of the ribosomal particles are poorly understood. We show here that the association of preribosomal factors with pre-60S complexes depends on the presence of earlier factors, a phenomenon essential for ribosome biogenesis. The analysis of the composition of purified preribosomal complexes blocked in maturation at specific steps allowed us to propose a model of sequential protein association with, and dissociation from, early pre-60S complexes for several preribosomal factors such as Mak11, Ssf1, Rlp24, Nog1, and Nog2. The presence of either Ssf1 or Nog2 in complexes that contain the 27SB pre-rRNA defines novel, distinct pre-60S particles that contain the same pre-rRNA intermediates and that differ only by the presence or absence of specific proteins. Physical and functional interactions between Rlp24 and Nog1 revealed that the assembly steps are, at least in part, mediated by direct protein-protein interactions.


This dissertation represents a product of research conducted in 2004-2005 examining the curriculum network of an elementary teacher education program at a large public university in the United States. Using ethnographic data (e.g., interviews with preservice teachers and faculty, observations in and outside of coursework, and other artifacts), I address the questions of how preservice teachers characterized relationships between teacher education program components, how those characterizations varied and changed, and how preservice teachers explained the value or relevance of program components to teaching. I discuss how preservice teachers shaped their understandings of main program emphases. I describe how they tended to experience closer correspondence between program recommendations and the policies and philosophies in certain schools and classrooms in suburban county schools near the university compared to the policies and philosophies in certain schools and classrooms they identified as having, for example, fewer resources (e.g., funds, manipulatives). I make the case that the program-based philosophies developed by and for the preservice teachers helped to coordinate contextspecific meanings and relevance for program components and further to construct failures of the kind where either (1) schools interfered with the accomplishment of program objectives or (2) program objectives proved unrealistic for schools. Without intending to, and perhaps even contrary to certain program intentions, program suggestions treating instruction as context-independent tended to favor middle-class White children and to marginalize urban or diverse schools and classrooms, or schools having more limited resources, as viable places to engage in program-recommended practices for good teaching. These results have potential implications for practice in teacher education and mathematics education and also have relevance to discussions of ongoing standardsbased teacher education and mathematics education reforms. I offer that these results help to reveal certain limitations of popular ways of defining and researching preservice teachers' learning and teacher education program coursework and fieldwork relationships. I raise the question of whether teacher educators or researchers might benefit from considering how to more substantively integrate curriculum and give greater attention to place and to the broader socio-political goals we aim to accomplish through our work.


New transport experiments on JET indicate that ion stiffness mitigation in the core of a rotating plasma, as described by Mantica et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 175002 (2009)] results from the combined effect of high rotational shear and low magnetic shear. The observations have important implications for the understanding of improved ion core confinement in advanced tokamak scenarios. Simulations using quasilinear fluid and gyrofluid models show features of stiffness mitigation, while nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations do not. The JET experiments indicate that advanced tokamak scenarios in future devices will require sufficient rotational shear and the capability of q profile manipulation.


Description Logics (DLs) form a family of languages which correspond to decidable fragments of First-Order Logic (FOL). They have been overwhelmingly successful for constructing ontologies?conceptual structures describing domain knowledge. Ontologies proved to be valuable in a range of areas, most notably, bioinformatics, chemistry, Health Care and Life Sciences, and the Semantic Web.One limitation of DLs, as fragments of FOL, is their restricted ability to cope with various forms of uncertainty. For example, medical knowledge often includes statistical relationships, e.g., findings or results of clinical trials. Currently it is maintained separately, e.g., in Bayesian networks or statistical models. This often hinders knowledge integration and reuse, leads to duplication and, consequently, inconsistencies.One answer to this issue is probabilistic logics which allow for smooth integration of classical, i.e., expressible in standard FOL or its sub-languages, and uncertain knowledge. However, probabilistic logics have long been considered impractical because of discouraging computational properties. Those are mostly due to the lack of simplifying assumptions, e.g., independence assumptions which are central to Bayesian networks.In this thesis we demonstrate that deductive reasoning in a particular probabilistic DL, called P-SROIQ, can be computationally practical. We present a range of novel algorithms, in particular, the probabilistic satisfiability procedure (PSAT) which is, to our knowledge, the first scalable PSAT algorithm for a non-propositional probabilistic logic. We perform an extensive performance and scalability evaluation on different synthetic and natural data sets to justify practicality.In addition, we study theoretical properties of P-SROIQ by formally translating it into a fragment of first-order logic of probability. That allows us to gain a better insight into certain important limitations of P-SROIQ. Finally, we investigate its applicability from the practical perspective, for instance, use it to extract all inconsistencies from a real rule-based medical expert system.We believe the thesis will be of interest to developers of probabilistic reasoners. Some of the algorithms, e.g., PSAT, could also be valuable to the Operations Research community since they are heavily based on mathematical programming. Finally, the theoretical analysis could be helpful for designers of future probabilistic logics.


Kitasono Katue was a leading avant-garde literary figure, first in Japan and then throughout the world, from the 1920s to the 1970s. In his long career, Kitasono was instrumental in creating Japanese-language work influenced by futurism, dadaism, and surrealism before World War II and in contributing a Japanese voice to the international avant-garde movement after the war. This critical biography of Kitasono examines the life, poetry, and poetics of this controversial and flamboyant figure, including his wartime support of the Japanese state. Using Kitasono as a window on Japanese literature in the twentieth century, John Solt analyzes the relationship of Japanese writers to foreign literary movements and the influence of Japanese writers on world literature.


Henry N. Kobik The Renaissance Concept and the Effect of Positive Reinforcement on Student Performance 2000 Ronald L. Capasso, Ed.D. Educational Administration The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of extrinsic rewards on the extrinsic and intrinsic motivation levels of high school students. To complete this task, 118 students were chosen to complete a series of surveys which measured perceived levels of academic performance and motivation. This process allowed the students to not only respond in a multiple choice format but also provided the opportunity for written feedback as well. Further information on the topic was gathered from discussion with these students. All of the participants were chosen through random selection using the school roster and they represented the various ages, ethnic groups, and both genders which exist in Delsea Regional High School. Data between the initial survey which was administered before the Student Recognition Program was initiated was compared with information attained from a second survey which was completed after recognition activities were installed. Collected information from the data gathering process was analyzed and the intern concluded that extrinsic rewards do enhance extrinsic motivation. There is also evidence which suggests that intrinsic motivation may be increased as well. In the future, further study on influences on motivation will be required if the program's success is to continue.


Introduction Stimulating physical activity behaviour in persons with a physical disability is important, especially after discharge from rehabilitation. A tailored counselling programme covering both the period of the rehabilitation treatment and the first months at home seems on the average effective. However, a considerable variation in response is observed in the sense that some patients show a relevant beneficial response while others show no or only a small response on physical activity behaviour. The Rehabilitation, Sports and Active lifestyle (ReSpAct) study aims to estimate the associations of patient and programme characteristics with patients' physical activity behaviour after their participation in a tailored counselling programme. Methods and analysis A questionnaire-based nationwide longitudinal prospective cohort study is conducted. Participants are recruited from 18 rehabilitation centres and hospitals in The Netherlands. 2000 participants with a physical disability or chronic disease will be followed during and after their participation in a tailored counselling programme. Programme outcomes on physical activity behaviour and patient as well as programme characteristics that may be associated with differences in physical activity behaviour after programme completion are being assessed. Data collection takes place at baseline and 14, 33 and 52 weeks after discharge from rehabilitation. Ethics and dissemination The study protocol has been approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of the University Medical Centre Groningen and at individual participating institutions. All participants give written informed consent. The study results will provide new insights into factors that may help explain the differences in physical activity behaviour of patients with a physical disability after they have participated in the same physical activity and sports stimulation programme. Thereby, it will support healthcare professionals to tailor their guidance and care to individual patients in order to stimulate physical activity after discharge in a more efficient and effective way. Trial registration number NTR3961.


The relevance of the study is determined by the necessity of transition of the Russian economy to a new model and a new quality of economic growth, which is possible through introducing structural reforms in the economy, and is a component of economic development. The purpose of the study is in developing methodological and procedural foundations for estimating the quality and efficiency of structural changes in the economy. The objectives of the study are to give a brief evaluation of the industry in the Kostroma region as a control object of structural changes; to formulate the principles of structural changes management in the economy (industry); justify the selection criteria of the purpose, methods, and tools to manage structural changes in the economy (industry) and requirements for the subjects of management of structural changes; develop principles, criteria and indicators for assessing the quality of structural changes in the economy (industry); to propose criteria and system of indicators of an efficiency estimation of structural changes management in the economy (industry) for the controlled and controlling systems. The research methodology is based on a systematic approach. The method of study is economic analysis. It is possible to allocate the following features of the conducted research and the results obtained: principles, criteria and systems of indicators were developed on the basis of the principle of consistency as a core of system philosophy; the author offers a system of indicators to assess structural changes in the object, project, process and environmental systems on the basis of the classification of economic systems proposed by Kleiner; the structural changes themselves are considered as process and project systems with the appropriate features and specifications; the industrial complex as control object of structural changes is also considered as a set of systems of different types. The methodology and procedures for assessing the quality and effectiveness of the management of structural changes in the economy should act as a support for achieving the goals of state development programs and for improving the efficiency of state management of the economy of the region. Continuous monitoring of structural changes in the economy of the region and its industry will allow to timely identify structural problems and their aggravation, and to direct the available resources to resolve these problems. The proposed methodology and procedure will provide a systematic management of structural changes in the economy and industry of the region. The scope of application of the obtained results is the structural policy, the management of structural changes in national, regional economy, economic complexes, industry. MANAGEMENT OF STRUCTURAL CHANGE; REGIONAL INDUSTRY; EFFECTIVENESS EVALUATION OF MANAGEMENT; METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURE.


This is a report on a workshop held at Cambridge University Engineering Design Centre, 17-10 June 1992. This workshop was held to discuss the issue of 'function' and 'function-to-form' evolution in mechanical design. The authors organised this workshop as they felt that their understanding of these topics was incomplete and that discussions between researchers might help to clarify some key issues. The topic chosen for the workshop proved to be a stimulating one. The term 'function' is part of a designer's daily vocabulary, however there is poor agreement about its definition. In order to develop computer systems to support product evolution, a precise definition is required. Further the value of 'function' and 'function-to-form' evolution as a good choice of workshop topic is evident from the lack of firm conclusions that resulted from the sessions. This lack of consensus made for lively discussion and left participants questioning many of their preconceived ideas. Attendance at the workshop was by invitation only. A list of the participants (not all those invited could attend due to time and financial constraints) is given in Appendix 1.


This paper develops an economic criterion for scheduling timber stands for harvest when there are upper limits on the timber volume harvested in a period. The opportunity cost of delayed harvest is used to rank the harvest priority for stands: those with the highest opportunity cost are to be harvested first until the upper limit on volume is reached or there is no available wood with a positive opportunity cost of delay. The paper comapres the effect of ranking stands for harvest by opportunity cost per cubic metre (m^3) and by opportunity cost per hectare (ha). The opportunity cost per ha ranking in clearly inappropriate when periodic harvest colume constraints are used. However, because of the spatial orientation of forest management, it is tempting to use the opportunity cost her ha measure. This paper shows that when stands are ranked for harvest by opportunity cost per m^3, a wider variety of timber types and site classes are scheduled for harvest than when the opportunity cost per ha criterion is used. This mix of timber types and site classes corresponds with the observed harvest behavior of logging firms. Other authors have argued that the wide mix of timber actually harvested by logging firms is driven by non-economic considerations. It is argued here that this harvest variety can be attributed to economically rational behaviour.


This article provides a new insight into Marx's understanding of colonialism. In highlighting the method of dialectical inquiry used by Marx in an undelivered speech document (November 1867) it reveals how the essential structure of British colonial domination of Ireland was not just a condition of existence of economic or political dependency but a constantly evolving social process, which moved through differing phases of development. As a systematic process of colonial repression, it penetrated all aspects of the Irish social formation and to such an extent that the the colonized had to live under 'abominable conditions of existence'.


Aims To investigate the therapeutic effect of recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (r-tPA) in patients with refractory toxic anterior chamber segment syndrome after cataract surgery with posterior chamber intraocular lens implantation. Methods This prospective cohort study was performed from May 2010 to November 2011 at a tertiary university-based medical centre. Forty patients (40 eyes) with an anterior chamber fibrin reaction after cataract surgery were treated with intracameral injection of r-tPA (25 µg/0.1 mL) following failure to respond to conventional treatment with intensive topical and subconjunctival steroids. Outcome measures were best-corrected visual acuity, clearance/recurrence of the fibrin reaction and complications. Corneal endothelial cell counts were evaluated before and after r-tPA injection (n=6). Results Intracameral r-tPA injection was administered 10–49 days after cataract surgery; mean was 20.3±9.6 days after surgery. At 1 day after treatment, complete clearance of the fibrin reaction was observed in 32 patients (80%) and partial clearance in 8 (20%). At the 1-month evaluation, the reaction had completely resolved in 95% of patients. Mean visual acuity improved from 0.61±0.38 logMAR before treatment to 0.45±0.37 logMAR 1 month later (p=0.06). There were no statistically significant differences in improvement in visual acuity and fibrinolysis rate by time of r-tPA injection after surgery (10–15 days, n=16 vs 16–49 days, n=24). There were no cases of increased intraocular pressure or endophthalmitis following the procedure. Conclusions Intracameral injection of 25 µg r-tPA is safe and effective for the treatment of refractory fibrin reaction after cataract surgery.


In late 1930, on a secluded mountain overlooking the rural paddy fields of British Burma, a peasant leader named Saya San crowned himself King and inaugurated a series of uprisings that would later erupt into one of the largest anti-colonial rebellions in Southeast Asian history. Considered an imposter by the British, a hero by nationalists, and a prophet-king by area-studies specialists, Saya San came to embody traditional Southeast Asia\u2019s encounter with European colonialism in his attempt to resurrect the lost throne of Burma.The Return of the Galon King analyzes the legal origins of the Saya San story and reconsiders the facts upon which the basic narrative and interpretations of the rebellion are based. Aung-Thwin reveals how counter-insurgency law produced and criminalized Burmese culture, contributing to the way peasant resistance was recorded in the archives and understood by Southeast Asian scholars.This interdisciplinary study reveals how colonial anthropologists, lawyers, and scholar-administrators produced interpretations of Burmese culture that influenced contemporary notions of Southeast Asian resistance and protest. It provides a fascinating case study of how history is treated by the law, how history emerges in legal decisions, and how the authority of the past is used to validate legal findings.


The term gender cleavage refers to imbalances in same- and cross-gender peer interactions and sociometric peer evaluations, favouring a same-gender (in-group) imbalance. The mechanisms underlying gender cleavage during childhood and adolescence are unclear, with several competing models encapsulating group-level and individual-level processes. In comparison to observational studies, sociometric investigations to date have contributed less substantially to an understanding of the roles of gender, age and maturational factors in gender cleavage, and to theoretical accounts of gender cleavage. On these bases, this thesis examined interlocking theoretical and methodological issues, focusing on middle childhood.
Studies 1, 2 and 3 examined method-related and naturally-occurring variations in gender cleavage effects, using sociometric responses &Om a group preference record and three-choice nomination tasks collected by individual interviews with 308 boys and girls in Grades 2 to 6. Results revealed significant gender cleavage effects in both positive and negative peer evaluations from each sociometric method. Nevertheless, the cleavage effect was much less marked in negative peer evaluations, providing evidence that same-gender preference is not necessarily accompanied by cross-gender disliking.
In Study 1, the strength of gender cleavage expressed in positive peer evaluations was similar in sociometric measures that encapsulated differing levels of intimacy in peer relationships. Gender cleavage expressed through negative peer evaluations was more pronounced for measures manifesting less intimate peer relationships.
In Study 2, sociometric criteria reflecting child-regulated playground interactions produced more extreme expressions of gender cleavage than criteria reflecting adult-regulated situations such as classrooms.
In Study 3, significant and strong gender cleavage effects were found in positive peer evaluations for male and female evaluators, and across all grade levels regardless of the sociometric method used. Negative peer evaluations exhibited more complex variations in gender cleavage effects, according to age, gender group and sociometric method. In-group preference evident in same-gender roster-based evaluations was more pronounced in girls than in boys. Out-group (cross-gender) evaluations became more positive and less negative with age in both gender groups.
Study 4 investigated the relative applicability of three contrasting theories as models of gender cleavage during middle childhood. Gender stereotyping of peers' behaviour was a stronger predictor of gender cleavage than was behavioural compatibility. This finding confirmed the greater relevance of social-cognitive models than those based on behavioural dissimilarity as explanations for the maintenance of gender cleavage during middle childhood. However, gender cleavage was more strongly and consistently predicted by class-based gender segregation than by either gender stereotyping or behavioural compatibility. Hence, group processes overall appear more important than individual-level processes in the maintenance of gender cleavage during middle childhood.
Gender cleavage was found to vary significantly ac-cording to both substantive and method-related factors, and consequently should not be viewed as a static aspect of peer relationships during middle childhood. Instead, gender cleavage should be seen as a dynamic and ever-changing social-developmental phenomenon, that can potentially be modified in school settings by interventions at a group level that involve everyday school practices and policies.


This paper examines whether firms with rating-based performance-priced loan contracts (PPrating firms) manage cash flow from operations (CFO) and accruals to obtain better firm credit ratings. I find that for PPrating firms, both CFO management and accruals management, are positively associated with firm credit ratings. In the cross-section, the relation of CFO management and accruals management with firm ratings is less pronounced when there is a larger benefit associated with inflated firm ratings. These results support the view that financial statement manipulation helps PPrating firms achieve more favorable ratings; when these firms are subject to more stringent rating-agency monitoring, such manipulation proves less effective.
 JEL Classifications: G18; G20; G28.


Fifty-seven alumni of a global Masters program participated in research into their use of mobile devices. Drawing on questionnaire and interview data, the paper examines how far the devices were embedded in the personal and professional lives of these alumni, most of whom were aged 35-54. All had experience of online and distance education, and most worked in education or training. The study revealed some innovative uses of mobile devices, a selection of which is reported in this paper. The paper links the findings to wider debates about the changing relationship between learners and educational institutions, and the role of mobile devices in enabling individuals to engage in learning conversations. Data are provided on which devices were used by the alumni and for what purposes, and the paper explores the implications of these findings for educators.


Despite the proposals developed by Birnbaum in 1968, rules and practices to establish authority records for Ottoman authors have gaps and / or are still not completely implemented. The diversity of ways in which reference is made to these authors, the lack ofpatronyms in the sense of a hereditary family name, the range of given names among Ottoman Muslims leading to many homonyms, all add to the confusion of people and their works. If we add to this the question of changing alphabets, of calendars and that of "nationality" as we understand it today, the challenges only increase. The online cataloguing of manuscripts in 2010 triggered the Turkish office of the French National Library (Bibliotheque nationale de France) to come up, once again, with some recommendations on the subject. If we expect thereby to achieve some resolutions via these recommendations, we hope to do so after having sparked a debate among the community of colleagues in Turkey and elsewhere. The aim being to establish a reliable and coherent Ottoman and Turkish name authority file.


The wind instrumentalist embouchure is probably one of the most demanding tasks that occurs during their musical performance. It is important to quantify the forces that are applied during the wind instrumentalist embouchure on the perioral structures.Quantify the force on the perioral structures involved during the embouchure mechanism of wind instrumentalists.Piezoresistive sensors of FlexiForceTMwere placed on the mouthpiece of 28 different wind instrumentalists, in order to obtain the applied forces transmitted to the upper lip or the lower lip. The application of the sensors were done according to the particular characteristics of the different types of wind instruments, single reed, double reed or metal. Each participant performed three times three different notes at different pitches: high, medium and low. The average medium and maximum pressure was obtained from the nine essays. The sensors were connected to a data acquisition board from National Instruments and the results displayed in LabVIEW 2011.Measurement values were obtained for the different groups of wind instruments. In an ascending order, the pressures registered where for the bassoon (6g-31g), the oboe (17g-125g), the saxophone (39g-120g), the clarinet (54g-106g), the trumpet, (63g-172g), the bisel flute (73g-245g), the French horn (56g-305g), the transversal flute (220g-305g) and the trombone (201g-325g).Metal instrumentalists seem to apply greater forces than woodwind musicians when performing the embouchure mechanism, being in this specific case the trombone the instrument from the metal group to exert more force, while on the contrary, the bassoon registered the lower values.


Since at least 2009, the Harris mud crab Rhithropanopeus harrisii (Gould, 1841) has been spreading in the northern Baltic Sea, an area with no native crab species. Thus far, this species has invaded muddy and rocky coastal areas, especially shallow habitats dominated by reeds and the brown macroalga Fucus vesiculosus Linnaeus, 1753. Here, we document the first sighting and recruitment of mud crabs in an eelgrass Zostera marina Linnaeus, 1753 meadow a critically important habitat for fish and invertebrate species. We found both adult and juvenile mud crabs in repeated sampling over the summer, suggesting continuous use of eelgrass as habitat for mud crabs and recruitment into the meadow. Given the simple food web structure of the Baltic Sea, this novel predator could lead to new energy pathways with unexpected consequences and potentially important effects on the functioning of the native eelgrass community.