Little consensus has emerged regarding how proximate and ultimate drivers such as productivity, disturbance, and temperature may affect species richness and other aspects of biodiversity. Part of the confusion is that most studies examine species richness at a single spatial scale and ignore how the underlying components of species richness can vary with spatial scale. We provide an approach for the measurement of biodiversity (MoB) that decomposes changes in species rarefaction curves into proximate components attributed to: 1) the species abundance distribution, 2) density of individuals, and 3) the spatial arrangement of individuals. We decompose species richness by comparing spatial and nonspatial sample- and individual-based species rarefaction curves that differentially capture the influence of these components to estimate the relative importance of each in driving patterns of species richness change. We tested the validity of our method on simulated data, and we demonstrate it on empirical data on plant species richness in invaded and uninvaded woodlands. We integrated these methods into a new R package (mobr). The metrics that mobr provides will allow ecologists to move beyond comparisons of species richness in response to ecological drivers at a single spatial scale towards a dissection of the proximate components that determine species richness across scales.


The first public orphanage in America, the Charleston Orphan House saw to the welfare and education of thousands of children from poor white families in the urban South. From wealthy benefactors to the families who sought its assistance to the artisans and merchants who relied on its charges as apprentices, the Orphan House was a critical component of the city's social fabric . By bringing together white citizens from all levels of society, it also played a powerful political role in maintaining the prevailing social order. John E. Murray tells the story of the Charleston Orphan House for the first time through the words of those who lived there or had family members who did. Through their letters and petitions, the book follows the families from the events and decisions that led them to the Charleston Orphan House through the children's time spent there to, in a few cases, their later adult lives. What these accounts reveal are families struggling to maintain ties after catastrophic loss and to preserve bonds with children who no longer lived under their roofs. An intimate glimpse into the lives of the white poor in early American history, The Charleston Orphan House is moreover an illuminating look at social welfare provision in the antebellum South.


Abstract : We extend the input transformation approach for adapting hybrid connectionist speech recognizers to allow multiple transformations to be trained. Previous work has shown the efficacy of the linear input transformation approach for speaker adaptation [1][2][3], but has focused only on training global transformations. This approach is clearly suboptimal since it assumes that a single transformation is appropriate for every region in the acoustic feature input space, that is, for every phonetic class, microphone, and noise level. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm to train mixtures of transformation networks (MTNs) in the hybrid connectionist recognition framework. This approach is based on the idea of partitioning the acoustic feature space into R regions and training an input transformation for each region. The transformations are combined probabilistically according to the degree to which the acoustic features belong to each region, where the combination weights are derived from a separate acoustic gating network (AGN). We apply the new algorithm to nonnative speaker adaptation, and present recognition results for the 1994 WSJ Spoke 3 development set. The MTN technique can also be used for noise or microphone robust recognition or for other nonspeech neural network pattern recognition problems.


IMPORTANT REMINDER Medical Policies are developed to provide guidance for members and providers regarding coverage in accordance with contract terms. Benefit determinations are based in all cases on the applicable contract language. To the extent there may be any conflict between the Medical Policy and contract language, the contract language takes precedence. PLEASE NOTE: Contracts exclude from coverage, among other things, services or procedures that are considered investigational or cosmetic. Providers may bill members for services or procedures that are considered investigational or cosmetic. Providers are encouraged to inform members before rendering such services that the members are likely to be financially responsible for the cost of these services.


We investigated the interface between scientific knowledge of commercial sheep farming and local communities of practice. Through combining socio-cultural and cognitive theories of learning, we applied a concept of community of practice to analysing the importance of the local Goat and Sheep Society for family-based sheep farming in Lyngen after the Second World War. A point of departure for this investigation was the extraordinary results in national rankings and competitions by some of these Lyngen sheep farmers. This paper empirically documents the dynamic, multi-faceted interaction between "barn floor" breeding practices and national-level breeding science. We thoroughly analysed this domain of knowledge as a practice-driven process that involves a particular configuration of practitioners, including newcomers and old-timers, households, local sheep breeding societies and national scientific knowledge institutions. Based on this notion of a community of practice, the relations between masters and apprentices are given particular attention. One particular characteristic of this community of practice is the institutional enmeshment between the local Goat and Sheep Breeding Society and the local Laestadian congregations. We argue that certain focal normative notions of the family and of the order of creation (Norwegian skaperordning) to care for the creation and to survive (Norwegian a berges) provide the motivational force to these knowledge innovations.


Impaired respiratory functions during general anesthesia are commonly caused by lung atelectasis more in morbidly obese patients. This occurs more frequently with laparoscopic surgery due to trendelenburg position and pneumoperitoneum. Preemptive recruitment maneuver + PEEP results in the prevention of these changes.

 To quantitate the effects of RM and PEEP on intraoperative hypoxemia and respiratory mechanics during laparoscopic gastric banding in obese patients.

 A randomized, double-blinded, controlled study.

 Fifty adults ASA I-II, BMI (40-50 kg/m2) for elective laparoscopic gastric banding were randomized into, groups C, and RM, 25 patients each. Group C patients received standard ventilation, VT 6 ml/kg, I: E ratio 1: 2 PEEP 5 cm H2O, and respiratory rate 10-12 breaths/ min. RM patients received standard ventilation with one alveolar recruitment maneuver after mechanical ventilation with PEEP of 15 cm H2O till the end of the surgery. Heart rate, mean blood pressure, respiratory mechanical parameters: peak airway pressure, plateau pressure and end-expiratory lung volume, PaO2, PaO2/FiO2 and (SpO2) were assessed.

 PaO2 and PaO2/FiO2 ratio increased significantly in the RM group after RM from T2 (before pneumoperitoneum) to T6 (end of surgery) compared with group C (P < 0.001). Peak and plateau airway pressures increased significantly in group C from T2 till T5 (60 min after pneumoperitoneum) compared with the RM group (P < 0.001). End-expiratory lung volume increased significantly in the RM group after RM compared with group C (P<0.001).

 Preemptive RM with PEEP of 15 cm H2O was effective in preventing pneumoperitoneum-induced intraoperative hypoxemia and respiratory mechanics changes.


The recent development of high spatial resolution analytical methods for inorganic element imaging enables the sensitive determination of inorganic and organometallic-based pesticides, at the cellular and subcellular levels. Some organic agrochemicals can also be investigated providing they contain one or more hetero-element, such as the halogens fluorine or bromine. Several micro-chemical imaging methods are currently available and will be reviewed in this article: Electron Microscopy combined to Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectrometry (EM-EDS), PIXE (Particle Induced X-ray Emission), SXRF (Synchrotron Radiation X-ray Fluorescence) combined to micro-XAS (X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy), and Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS). Although these methods offer a high potential in the understanding of the cellular mechanisms of pesticides toxicity, they have not been much used yet in this domain of investigation. The aim of this article is to make known these imaging methods to the scientific community interested in the toxicology of pesticides. Some examples of applications taken from our own investigations, and from other researchers, will be presented to illustrate the kind of information can be gathered from these methods. In particular, the subcellular distribution of Maneb in neuronal cells will be discussed, as well as the subcellular chemical speciation of arsenic in human ovarian cells.


Background Chlamydia trachomatis is the most common curable sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the UK. Prevalence of the infection in different health care settings has been found to be between 2% and 29% and diagnoses of the infection continue to rise significantly. It is estimated, however, that only 10% of all chlamydial infections are seen and treated in genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinics. Few data exist about the actual practice patterns of primary care providers in the management of chlamydia. The management of patients identified with the infection within this setting warrants attention. Aims To determine general practitioners' (GPs') and nurses' reported clinical practice in the management of genital chlamydial infection. To design a needs-based education guideline on the management of chlamydia in rural primary care. Design An anonymous, confidential, self-administered postal questionnaire was sent to all GPs and cervical cytology practice nurses in 84 practices in Dyfed Powys Health Authority (DPHA) area, Wales, UK. Results Following two mailings of the survey, responses were obtained from 75/84 practices (response rate 89%). A total of 130/307 GPs (response rate 42%) and 72/152 nurses (response rate 47%) in these practices responded. The data demonstrated that few tests for chlamydia are being carried out in general practice: 42% (55/130) of GPs and 54% (37/72) of nurses reported carrying out between one and four tests a month, and 35% (46/130) of GPs and 29% (21/72) of nurses reported performing less than one test a month. Very few positive results are being obtained. The majority of GPs (72%) and nurses (68%) routinely use the appropriate endocervical swab when testing for chlamydia, however 19% of GPs and 20% of nurses are using either an incorrect wooden-stemmed swab or are taking an inappropriate high vaginal swab. Conclusions Few chlamydia tests are being performed in primary care in DPHA, Wales. Health professionals in general practice are in need of, and are in favour of, up-to-date training on all aspects of chlamydial identification and management in primary care. Attention needs to be focused upon resources and the paucity of GUM services and their access within the DPHA area.


Production systems are widely used in artificial intelligence to capture the notion of expertise in modeling expert systems. Production systems are computationally intensive programs spending most of the execution time in their MATCH or recognise phase. Efforts have been made by the research in this dissertation to minimize the production system's execution time by optimizing the MATCH phase. Goal oriented deterministic production systems are commonly used for robotics applications and formed the main class of production systems that were studied in this dissertation.
The main motivation for the research was to provide a better MATCH algorithm and use the multiprocessing capabilities of existing parallel computer hardware. The dissertation realizes these goals by transforming a traditional production system's scalar equivalence operations into C arithmetic hashing function to generate an indexing variable for the switch-case construct of the C language. Partitioning of the working memory into homogeneous blocks and distributing production memory over the multiprocessors enhanced the MIMD operation of the production system.
A scheme is formulated and implemented to identify a few key condition elements that may be used as an indexing variable and reduce the number of condition elements used in the MATCH phase. The complete translation from OPS5 code to C and the implementation scheme is presented in this dissertation. Various issues regarding the distribution of the inference engine over the multiprocessor environment and other related synchronization topics for distributed systems are covered in the dissertation. A detailed description of the parallel computer's simulator is also provided in the dissertation.
The dissertation identifies other research topics and problems related to parallelization of production systems, the most significant being the ability to incorporate LEARNING in production systems by using one or all of the idle processors that are waiting for the active processor to complete it's activities.


Soil remediation process by heated soil vapor extraction system has drawn considerably attention for the last few years. The areas around chemical companies or waste disposal sites have been seriously contaminated from the chemicals and other polluting materials that are disposed off. Our present study is concentrated on modeling one transient Heated Soil Vapor Extraction System and predicting the time required for effective remediation. The process developed by Advanced Remedial Technology, consists of a heating source pipe and the extraction well embedded in the soil. The number of heat source pipes and the extraction wells depends on the type of soil, the type of pollutants, moisture content of the soil and the size of the area to be cleaned. The heat source heats the soil, which is transported in the interior part of the soil by means of conduction and convection. This heating of soil results in vaporization of the gases, which are then driven out of the soil by the extraction well. The extraction well consists of the blower which would suck the vaporized gases out of the system. A three-dimensional meshed geometry was developed using gambit. Different boundary conditions were used for heating and suction well and for other boundaries. Concentrations of different chemicals were collected from the actual site and this data was used as an initial condition. The analysis uses the species transport and discrete phase modeling to predict the time required to clean the soil under specific conditions. This analysis could be used for predicting the changes of chemical concentrations in the soil during the remediation process. This will give us more insight to the physical phenomena and serve as a numerical predictive tool for more efficient process.Copyright © 2004 by ASME


Abstract The Cambrian–Ordovician metasedimentary rocks of the Meguma terrane (Canadian Appalachians) were extensively intruded by silicic plutons during Middle Devonian to Early Carboniferous times. Syn-plutonic but volumetrically minor mafic-ultramafic intrusions were also emplaced. In most localities, the silicic plutons and mafic-ultramafic intrusions do not appear to be petrogenetically related and are likely derived from different sources. The Attwoods Brook gabbronorite of SW Nova Scotia yielded an in situ zircon weighted-mean 206Pb–238U age of 357.9 ± 3.3 Ma that is within the uncertainty of the age of the neighbouring Wedgeport pluton (357 ± 1 Ma). The Wedgeport pluton is a rare example of a mantle-derived, peraluminous A-type granite within the Meguma terrane. The similar ages and Nd isotopes of the Attwoods Brook gabbronorite (εNd(t) = +1.1 to +4.0) and Wedgeport pluton (εNd(t) = +2.1 to +3.3) suggest the two intrusions are petrogenetically related. Fractional crystallization modelling demonstrates that a parental magma similar to the Attwoods Brook gabbronorite can produce residual silicic liquids that resemble the granites of the Wedgeport pluton, indicating that they could be members of the same intrusive complex. The emplacement of the gabbronorite and Wedgeport pluton occurred during a period of tensional plate stress that was contemporaneous with rifting of the Maritimes Basin that produced the Fountain Lake continental flood basalts and A-type granites of the Cobequid Highlands within the Avalon terrane. It is possible that the Early Carboniferous rocks of SW Nova Scotia are related to the rifted-related magmatism within the Maritimes Basin.


The pelagic foraminifer Neogloboquadrina pachyderma (Ehrenberg, 1861) occurs in new ice, congelation ice, and the underlying water column of the Weddell Sea. Neogloboquadrina pachyderma is incorporated into the ice in large numbers at the time of its formation. The average number of foraminifers per liter of ice was 87 and numbers ranged between 0 and 1,075. Sea ice contained 70 times more foraminifers per unit volume than the underlying water column and on an areal basis the sea ice cover has approximately the same number of specimens as 60 m of underlying water column. The foraminifera are usually incorporated into the ice when it is being formed dynamically and are thus subsequently associated mainly with granular ice. Many foraminifers are able to survive and grow in the ice where algal biomass in winter is high compared to the water column, perhaps indicating an overwintering strategy. Arctic sea ice, on the other hand, is practically devoid of foraminifers. These observations may have implications for paleoceanographers who use N. pachyderma as a tool to reconstruct past surface water conditions.


Enhanced feedback provided by a virtual reality system has been shown to promote motor learning in normal subjects. We evaluated whether this approach could be useful for treating patients with motor deficits following brain lesions. Fifty subjects with mild to intermediate arm impairments due to stroke were selected for the study. The patients received treatment daily for one month, consisting of an hour of virtual-environment therapy with enhanced feedback. Before and after the therapy, we assessed the degree of motor impairment and autonomy in daily living activities using the Fugl-Meyer scale for the upper extremities and Functional Independence Measure, respectively. We also analyzed the velocity, duration, and morphology of a sequence of reaching movements, finally comparing the kinematic measures with the scores obtained on the clinical scales. The rehabilitation therapy yielded significant improvements over baseline values in the mean scores on the Fugl-Meyer and Functional Independence Measure scales. The mean Fugl-Meyer score correlated significantly with the duration and velocity of reaching movements. The collated data indicate that motor recovery in post-stroke patients may be promoted by the enhanced feedback provided in a virtual environment and that kinematic analysis of their movements provides reliable measures of motor function changes in response to treatment.


Available methods for measuring pesticide residues in soils usually have not been tested for tropical soils nor do they cope with the spectrum of pesticides used in the tropics. An accurate and efficient method for the simultaneous determination of 14 corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] pesticides in Oxisols is presented in this study. The quantification of the pesticides was achieved using gas chromatography coupled with mass selective detection. For the extraction of aged pesticide residues from soil samples, combinations of acetone, ethylacetate, hexane, methanol, water, and salt solutions were tested. Of the 20 different solvent systems evaluated, the mixture of acetone-ethylacetate-water 2:2:1 (v/v/v) was most efficient for the extraction of all pesticides except metribuzine [4-amino-6-(1,1-dimethylethyl)-3-(methylthio)-1,2,3-triazine-5(4H)-one]; this herbicide was recovered best by ethylacetate-water 4:1 (v/v). Different sample aging-times (5-30 d) did not affect the recovery of pesticides from incubated samples. Extraction of pesticides from field-soil samples also was best with acetone-ethylacetate-water. No differences in extraction efficiency were observed between a simple shake extraction (4 h) and batch extractions with an additional rise in temperature (60°C) or a sonication (30 min). The elimination of the water from the soil extract was achieved by a liquid-liquid extraction with dichloromethane, which recovered the whole polarity spectrum of pesticides quantitatively. The method recovery from soil samples of freshly spiked pesticides averaged 94.8 ± 2.4%. The method was validated for Oxisols of contrasting clay and organic C content.


This thesis consists of two parts. The first part reports on the development of a fringe tracking system for LINC-NIRVANA, the near-infrared homothetic imaging camera for the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). LINC-NIRVANA allows for a coherent combination of the light entering the two primary mirrors. The fringe pattern in the focal plane is required to be stable in time to preserve the high spatial frequency information in long exposure images. Atmospheric differential piston causes the position of the fringes to change with time. A fringe tracker is a servo system that measures and corrects for atmospheric differential piston in real-time. In the first part, numerical simulations of atmospheric turbulence are used to investigate the problem of angular anisoplanatism of differential piston. The fringe tracking concept and the top-level requirements are introduced, followed by a presentation of the mechanical design of the system. This design includes a solution for a device that is capable of positioning a detector with high precision within a cryogenic environment. A fitting algorithm determines the amount of differential piston in the point-spread function of a reference target. The performance of this algorithm under different signal-to-noise conditions is investigated. First polychromatic fringes obtained with a testbed interferometer conclude the first part. Measurements of millimeter CO transitions in extragalactic targets are the basis for the two observational studies in the second part of this thesis. The molecular gas content in low-luminosity QSO host galaxies is investigated and discussed together with far-infrared data. Unlike in most published studies, a far-infrared selection criterion was not applied. It is shown that the majority of low-luminosity QSO host galaxies is rich in molecular gas. These objects show different CO emission properties, depending on their central activity. The second study deals with a potential dependency of the molecular gas content in cluster galaxies on their distance to the center of the cluster. A deficiency of molecular gas in galaxies that are located in the vicinity of the center is indicated in a sample of Abell 262 galaxies. A model is presented that predicts a drop of gas and dust and explains it with the stripping of cirrus-like clouds.


Abstract Myanmar is a country in political and economic transition. Facing a wide-variety of natural hazards and ongoing conflict, the country's under-developed infrastructure has resulted in high disaster risk. Following the devastation of Cyclone Nargis in 2008 and increased global focus on disaster management and risk reduction, Myanmar has begun development of national disaster policies. Myanmar's Action Plan for Disaster Risk Reduction addressed multiple stages of disaster development and has made progress towards national projects, however, has struggled to implement community-based preparedness and response initiatives. This article analyses Myanmar's disaster strategy, though the use of a disaster development framework and suggests areas for possible improvement. In particular, the article aims to generate discussion regarding methods of supporting objective evaluation of risk reduction initiatives in developing countries. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;12:422–426)


Abstract The fragmentary pterosaur material from the Campanian Grünbach Formation (Gosau Group) of Muthmannsdorf (Austria), previously identified as Ornithocheirus buenzeli Bunzel, 1871, is revised. A lower jaw fragment shows a helical type of articulation, which is known in several families of pterosaurs, and cannot be identified with great accuracy. The proximal part of a humerus shows distinctive features that allow it to be referred to as a member of the family Azhdarchidae, which is widespread in the Late Cretaceous Period of Europe. Ornithocheirus buenzeli is considered a nomen dubium. The pterosaur material from the Grünbach Formation cannot be used as evidence for the presence of ornithocheirids in the Late Cretaceous of Europe.


A key challenge to the successful application of the data modeling, storage and retrieval is the processing of relevant media to determine the events that are represented by them. Towards this goal, we are developing a heterogeneous media events processing system that combines human expertise with algorithmic processing capabilities. In doing so, we seek to leverage the fact that computers are good at fast low level processing and humans are good at high level analysis and understanding. Our approach to bridging the "signal-to-symbol" barrier is based on a 3-layered event-processing architecture composed of a lower data event layer, higher domain event layer, and an elemental event layer in the middle, which links data and domains with symbolic indices (see [3] for details). Two important challenges in this context are providing humans with an interactive interface to do a domain level event tagging, and providing computers with methods to construct computational causality models based on tagged events. Towards this, in our demonstration, we first show how our system detects events and we provide user-tagging environment on top of these detected events. Later, we will introduce our distributed media processing networks and specific domain based event search system, which will show a way to change existing limited PowerPoint like presentation methods.


The term 'displacement' has a strong connection with diaspora literature that studies the experiences of pain and pleasure of the people in the diaspora. People in the diaspora do not have comfortable life. Since they are away from their homeland, it is not easy for them to get integrated into the new main stream society. Because of several variations such as language, culture, custom, religion, belief etc., they are to face difficulties in the host-land. They come across the feeling of displacement through alienation, homelessness, identity crisis etc. that are interconnected in the diaspora. Being a generation of indentured labor immigrant family, V. S. Naipaul himself has gone through such paining experiences that are indirectly expressed through the life experiences of the characters in his writing. While reading about Naipaul's life story and of Mr. Biswas in the novel A House for Mr. Biswas, it can be understood that they sound similar strongly. In the novel, Naipaul shows how Mr. Biswas more importantly along with other people as the generation of indentured labour immigrant parents in Trinidad suffer from homelessness, displacement, alienation etc. This paper mainly focuses on the experiences of displacement along with homelessness, alienation etc. faced by Mr. Biswas and other characters as they are from Indian diasporic community.Crossing the Border: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 5(2) 2017: 25-30


"Once, the Dayaks say, there was only the sky and space. Not even earth or sea was there. One day, a spider on its silken string dropped from the sky ever so slowly, spinning its web as it descended into the emptiness. It hung there, swinging, the only living thing in space. Then a red stone fell from the sky and was caught in the web. This red coral stone grew and spread until it filled the space beneath the sky and formed a mat like a floor." And so the land of the Dayaks, a people of Borneo, emerged. This myth is one of several creation stories included in Alice Terada's collection of folktales from the islands of Indonesia. Hundreds of language and cultural groups, each with its own myths and legends, make Indonesia an unusually rich source of stories. Selected to give young readers an understanding of the Indonesian people through their folklore, twenty-nine tales reveal the islands from west to east - from the cunning of the moon in "One Sun, " a legend from Sumatra, to the kindness and wisdom of Watuwe, "The Magic Crocodile" of ancient Irian. The notes following each folktale explain the beliefs and customs mentioned in the story.


This paper demonstrates how the concept of focalization, as defined by Gerard Genette (1980), can be used to analyze experiences of subjectivityin digital games. Strategies to create internal focalization are identifiedin games' audiovisual presentation, provision and restriction of private knowledge, and ludic affordances. This provides a framework for games that seek to present diverse or distinctive perspectives, to allow players to access modes of thinking that accord with a mind other than their own. This framework can assist researchers, critics, and designers to identify ways in which digital games express elements of internal focalization that communicate the mental patterns of a perspective character.


Since 1992, the United States has provided more than $26 billion in assistance to the 12 states of the former Soviet Union (FSU). It continues to provide nearly $2 billion annually. This report describes the broad framework of U.S. assistance programs and policies in the region and then focuses on the FREEDOM Support Act (FSA) account under the foreign operations budget which, encompassing all U.S.
objectives in the region, has often been the means by which Congress has expressed its views and sought to influence policy.


Muslim schools in Britain have emerged as a highly salient issue that at times reinforces, and at other times cuts across, political and philosophical divides. It therefore comes as some surprise to learn that despite a general proliferation of literature on Muslims in Britain very little research has explicitly investigated how increasingly salient articulations of Muslim identities connect with the issue of Muslim schooling. To be sure, and notwithstanding sustained Muslim mobilizations for Muslim schools within and across diverse Muslim communities, surprisingly little is known of how these mobilizations are being undertaken, what is being sought, and, more generally, why Muslim schools are deemed to be an important issue for different Muslim communities. By drawing upon two years of fieldwork, this article addresses these questions through the use of primary interviews with Muslim educators and stakeholders concerned with voluntary aided schooling, including teachers and Muslim educational associations, alongside other case study instruments including field notes, and documentary and policy analysis. The article concludes that through an engagement with a range of established educational conventions, norms, regulations and precedents, the testimonies of Muslim educators betray emerging syntheses between faith requirements and citizenship commitments that are seeking out negotiated, and reciprocal, British Muslim identities.


Abstract. Rock fall hazard assessment and hazard mapping are essential for the risk management of vulnerable areas. This paper analyses some issues concerning fragmental rock fall hazard mapping methodologies. Two Swiss approaches based on rock fall trajectory simulations results are presented. An application to a site in Switzerland emphasises the differences in the results, uncertainties related to hazard zoning procedures and the influence of some factors on the mapping process. In particular, the influence of a change in the temporal rock fall frequency, of the longer propagation along the slope of only a few computed blocks (defined in this sense as "extreme blocks") and of the number of runs performed in trajectory modelling have been studied. Results are discussed with the purpose of achieving a more reliable and objective hazard analysis. The presented considerations are based on the Swiss Federal Guidelines, but many of them could be extended to other countries that evaluate rock fall hazard using an intensity-frequency diagram.


Abstract. Mesh models generated by multi view stereo (MVS) algorithms often fail to represent in an adequate manner the sharp, natural edge details of the scene. The harsh depth discontinuities of edge regions are eventually a challenging task for dense reconstruction, while vertex displacement during mesh refinement frequently leads to smoothed edges that do not coincide with the fine details of the scene. Meanwhile, 3D edges have been used for scene representation, particularly man-made built environments, which are dominated by regular planar and linear structures. Indeed, 3D edge detection and matching are commonly exploited either to constrain camera pose estimation, or to generate an abstract representation of the most salient parts of the scene, and even to support mesh reconstruction. In this work, we attempt to jointly use 3D edge extraction and MVS mesh generation to promote edge detail preservation in the final result. Salient 3D edges of the scene are reconstructed with state-of-the-art algorithms and integrated in the dense point cloud to be further used in order to support the mesh triangulation step. Experimental results on benchmark dataset sequences using metric and appearance-based measures are performed in order to evaluate our hypothesis.


Nonnegative systems are dynamical systems with nonnegative states for random nonnegative initial conditions. A subclass of nonnegative systems are compartmental systems characterized by conservation laws.Nonnegative and compartmental systems have widespread applications in biological systems, medical systems, thermodynamic systems, network systems, economic systems, etc. In this dissertation we have investigated the applications of nonnegative systems in biological and network systems. The specific focus in biological systems has been in the area of pharmacokinetics and we have addressed the consensus problem in network systems. We have specifically focused on the time-delay present in compartmental systems and have investigated the behavior of these systems in the presence of timedelay. This dissertation describes necessary and sufficient conditions that guarantee monotonic decline of the drug concentration after drug administration to the patient has been discontinued. Results are presented for the cases when there is no delay in the transfer of the drugs between the body compartments and when there are multiple delays present in the system. We developed an adaptive controller for uncertain linear nonnegative systems. The adaptive controller framework developed guarantees set-point regulation of the system in addition to guaranteeing nonnegativity of the control signal. We demonstrated the framework on a drug delivery model for general anesthesia. Nonnegative and compartmental models are also widespread in agreement problems in networks with directed graphs and switching topologies. We use compartmental dynamical system models to characterize dynamic algorithms for linear and nonlinear networks of dynamic agents in the presence of inter-agent communication delays that possess a continuum of semistable equilibria, that is, protocol algorithms that guarantee convergence to Lyapunov stable equilibria. In addition, we show that the steady-state distribution of the dynamic network is uniform, leading to system state equipartitioning or consensus. Finally, we incorporated the inertial effects into the dynamics of the multiagent system and have extended existing results in the literature to develop time-domain sufficient conditions in order to achieve consensus of the agents in the presence of time-delay.


Drawing on the process of resource orchestration, we argue a co-alignment of multiple factors is needed for family firms to increase performance through entrepreneurship. Specifically, we posit that entrepreneurial orientation provides the mobilizing vision to use the heterogeneous yet complementary knowledge and experiences offered by increased generational involvement toward entrepreneurship. However, without a coordinating mechanism, generational involvement leads to conflict and negative outcomes. When, instead, it is also coordinated via a participative strategy, performance gains are achieved. In sum, results suggest that realizing the benefits from entrepreneurship in family firms is a complicated matter affected by the synchronization of entrepreneurial orientation, generational involvement, and participative strategy. Copyright © 2011 Strategic Management Society.


This essay was published in a special edition of History Workshop Journal marking the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave
Trade. The Journal is widely recognised internationally as the leading academic platform for radical historians, with an
established reputation for historical rigour and tight editorial standards. The essay draws on Rupprecht's AHRC-supported
research concerning the representation and cultural memory of slavery. The text combines original research on the history of
insurance with the contemporary political and ethical questions currently asked by the campaign for slavery reparations. It thus
engages with, and makes connections between, issues of representation, cultural memory, politics, and the ethics of
'compensation'.
This historical research was initiated by the passing of Slavery Era Bills in America as a result of reparations lawsuits, requiring
companies to disclose their involvement in slavery. The essay presents a detailed analysis of one such report by Royal Sun and
Alliance, and argues that the disclosure opens onto a hitherto occluded aspect of slave resistance. Eighteenth-century maritime
insurance policies on slaves in transit to the Americas initially developed from kidnap and ransom policies and thus played a
significant part in the development of modern life insurance. More significantly, the fact of consistent slave insurrection meant
that underwriters included clauses in their policies to compensate traders for their 'losses'. Thus, for the purposes of financial
insurance, Africans were never simply 'commodities'. By relating the details of insurance practices to existing empirical research
on the transatlantic slave trade, it is confirmed that slave resistance had a significant impact on the profitability of the trade.
The work advances a distinctive thesis that the reparations movement is re-activating the history of slavery by facilitating the
exposure of concrete connections between past and present.


Measuring and quantifying the diffusion of fission products in reactor materials is a critical element of the future success of Very High Temperature Reactors (VHTRs). While the extreme temperatures, which may be in excess of 1000 °C, allow for a potentially very high efficiency, they also can be problematic due to the increase in fission product transport. The aim of this work was to explore a repeatable, accurate, and cost effective process to measure the diffusion coefficients of fission products in VHTR materials. This work focuses on the diffusion of silver in graphite. We constructed graphite cells which could be filled with a silver diffusant. This diffusant may take the form of silver flakes, silver power, or a silver-laden graphite powder. The cells were hermetically sealed and heated to temperatures comparable to those found in VHTRs. These cells were imaged using microtomography and electron microscopy. Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) was used to determine actual diffusion profiles in the cells. Preliminary estimates of the diffusion coefficient are reported from these data.


When we talk today about women's art, we think about three phemonena, quite loosely related. We think about feminist art, about the way that the feminist's statements and demands were expressed in the creativity of Judy Chicago and Nancy Spero, Carolee Scheemann and Valie Export, Miriam Schapiro and Mary Kelly, and in Poland in the creativity of Maria Pinińska-Bereś, Natalia LL or Ewa Partum. We think about female art, the forgotten, abandoned, neglected artists brought back to memory by the feminists with thousands of exhibitions and reinterpretations. Lastly, we think about the art created by women – women's art. However, we do not know and will never know, whether the latter two phenomena would develop without the feminist movement. What is more, it is about the first wave of feminism called "the equality feminism", as well as the dominating in the second wave – "the difference feminism". The feminist art was in the beginning a critique of the patriarchal world of art. In a sense it remains as such (see: the Guerilla Girls), yet today we are more interested in the feminist deconstruction of thinking about art, and thus the question arises: should feminism create its own aesthetics – the feminist aesthetics, or should it develop the gender aesthetics, and as a result introduce the gender point of view to thinking about art? In this moment the androgynous feminism regains its importance, one represented by Virginia Woolf, and referring – in the theoretical layer – to Freud as read by Lucy Irigaray. Freudism, which the feminists became aware of in the 1970s, is the only philosophical movement, which assumes a dual subject, that is, in the starting point assumes the existence of two subjects – man and woman, even if the woman is defined in a purely negative way, by the deficit, as a "not a man". Freudism replaces the Cartesian thinking subject (consciousness) by the corporeal and sexual being, and forces us to re-think the Enlightenment beginnings of the European aesthetics.


UNLABELLED
In the last years notable steps have been done towards the understanding of the biology of Hepatitis B Virus (HBV), its natural history and immunopathogenesis, while succesful universal vaccination programs were implemented around the world and important advances in antiviral therapeuthics occurred. Nevertheless, HBV infection remains a public health problem with nearly 350 million carriers worlwide. The natural history of chronic hepatitis B and the spectrum of its clinical forms are complex and variable.We review the natural history of chronic HBV infection describing the early replicative phase and late or non-replicative (inactive carrier) in those patients who adquired the infection during adulthood and the immune tolerant phase, immune clearance and non-replicative in those who acquired the infection in the perinatal period. Emphasis is made in the course of HBeAg negative chronic hepatitis and occult hepatitis B. The complexity of the natural history of hepatitis B depends on viral features, hepatocyte behavior and patient immune response. The intrinsic and extrinsic HBV factors associated with the progression to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma are also reviewed.

KEYWORDS
Hepatitis B, Natural history, liver cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma.


Most new theorem provers implement strong and complicated type theories which eliminate some of the limitations of simple type theories such as the HOL logic. A more accessible alternative might be to use a combination of set theory and simple type theory as in HOL-ST which is a version of the HOL system supporting a ZF-like set theory in addition to higher order logic. This paper presents a case study on the use of HOL-ST to build a model of the-calculus by formalising the inverse limit construction of domain theory. This construction is not possible in the HOL system itself, or in simple type theories in general.


The Catalog of Worldwide Nuclear Testing is the first complete compilation of all nuclear tests. Containing vital information and data on all 2,049 nuclear tests conducted by the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, and China (and recent tests in India and Pakistan), the Catalog presents a uniform classification analysis of the five nuclear weapon states, including dynamics, yield, and methods of testing. This volume has been compiled by a team specialists from the Russian nuclear weapons establishment, headed by the former Minister of Atomic Energy of Russia, Victor Mikhailov, and including I.A. Andryushin, A.K. Chernyshev, R.I. Ilkaev, A.M. Matushchenko, L.D. Ryabev, V.G. Srukov, N.P. Voloshin, and Yu. A. Yudin. Distributed by Begell House, Inc. for Begell-Atom, LLC.


Since the publication (c. 1316) of the first anatomy textbook and dissection guide, Anothomia mundini by Mondino de Luzzi, the importance of illustrations has been recognised as essential to learning about body structure. The Anathomia was the main source of anatomy information for over two centuries until Vesalius produced a comprehensive atlas of human anatomy, published in 1543 as De humani corporis fabrica. This text contained over 200 illustrations and placed considerable emphasis on dissection and observation as the best method of studying anatomy, a departure from the long-standing tradition of following ancient texts which lacked illustrations. This empirical method was expanded by several artists, notably Leonardo da Vinci and George Stubbs, whose works laid the foundation for accuracy in anatomical illustrations. The current tendency among students to photograph their dissections has largely replaced drawing specimens. Some contemporary antidotes to this tendency are presented along with the associated educational benefits.


Globally, new forms of electromobility are challenging established transport technologies based on internal combustion engines. We explore how this transition is simultaneously unfolding in four countries, enabling us to shed some light on the dynamics and determinants of technological path creation. Our analysis covers two old industrialized countries (France and Germany) and two newly industrialized countries (China and India) with very different market conditions and policy frameworks. It reveals enormously different choices of technologies and business models and traces them back to four main drivers of divergence: technological capabilities, demand conditions, political priorities and economic governance.


Natural bacterial communities impact the motility of isotopes, such as radionuclides, in the environment. As a result of post glacial crustal rebound radionuclides may escape the deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel on Olkiluoto Island, Finland, and reach surface environments. Lastensuo Bog, a 5300-year-old raised bog in southwestern Finland, functions as analogue ecotope for bogs formed in Olkiluoto due to the crustal rebound. A core comprising the depth profile (0 - 7 m depth) of the bog including surface Sphagnum moss, peat and bottom clay was obtained using a stainless steel corer. High throughput sequencing was used to characterize the bacterial communities throughout the bog's depth profile. A total of 12,680 bacterial Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) (97% sequence similarity) were detected comprising altogether 40 different bacterial phyla. Of these, 13 phyla were present at all depths, accounting for 97% - 99% of the whole bacterial community. The bacterial communities differed notably through the bog's depth profile, dividing it into five distinct strata: 1) the Sphagnum moss layer; 2) 0.5 - 3.7 m; 3) 3.7 - 4.0 m; 4) 5.5 - 6.0 m deep peat; 5) the former seabed clay at 6.5 - 7.0 m depth. Acidobacteria, α- and γ-Proteobacteria dominated the surface community, but in the peat Acidobacteria contributed with up to 85% of the bacterial community. The estimated bacterial population density ranged between 2 × 109 and 5 × 1010 16S rRNA gene copies g-1 dry-weight peat. This study revealed that Lastensuo Bog had a highly diverse bacterial community. Most of the taxonomic groups belonged to thus far poorly characterized and uncultured bacteria with unknown physiological role. However, new insights into the distribution of bacterial taxa and their putative roles in organic carbon break down within the bog ecosystem have been obtained and an important baseline for further studies has been established.


ABSTRACT As the coronavirus crisis spreads swiftly through the population, it takes a particularly heavy toll on minority individuals and older adults, with older minority adults at especially high risk. Given the shockingly high rates of infections and deaths in nursing homes, staying in the community appears to be a good option for older adults in this crisis, but in order for some older adults to do so much assistance is required. This situation draws attention to the need for benevolent intervention on the part of the state should older adults become ill or lose their sources of income and support during the crisis. This essay provides a brief overview of public support and the financial and health benefits for older individuals who remain in the community during the pandemic. It reports the case example of Austin, Texas, a city with a rapidly aging and diverse population of almost a million residents, to ask how we can assess the success of municipalities in responding to the changing needs of older adults in the community due to COVID-19. It concludes with a discussion of what governmental and non-governmental leadership can accomplish in situations such as that brought about by the current crisis.


Reduced dietary methionine intake (0.17% methionine, MR) and calorie restriction (CR) prolong lifespan in male Fischer 344 rats. Although the mechanisms are unclear, both regimens feature lower body weight and reductions in adiposity. Reduced fat deposition in CR is linked to preservation of insulin responsiveness in older animals. These studies examine the relationship between insulin responsiveness and visceral fat in MR and test whether, despite lower food intake observed in MR animals, decreased visceral fat accretion and preservation of insulin sensitivity is not secondary to CR. Accordingly, rats pair fed (pf) control diet (0.86% methinone, CF) to match the food intake of MR for 80 weeks exhibit insulin, glucose, and leptin levels similar to control‐fed animals and comparable amounts of visceral fat. Conversely, MR rats show significantly reduced visceral fat compared to CF and PF with concomitant decreases in basal insulin, glucose, and leptin, and increased adiponectin and triiodothyronine. Daily energy expenditure in MR animals significantly exceeds that of both PF and CF. In a separate cohort, insulin responses of older MR animals as measured by oral glucose challenge are similar to young animals. Longitudinal assessments of MR and CF through 112 weeks of age reveal that MR prevents age‐associated increases in serum lipids. By 16 weeks, MR animals show a 40% reduction in insulin‐like growth factor‐1 (IGF‐1) that is sustained throughout life; CF IGF‐1 levels decline much later, beginning at 112 weeks. Collectively, the results indicate that MR reduces visceral fat and preserves insulin activity in aging rats independent of energy restriction.


The Canadian Federation of Municipalities has declared cities the "unofficial welcome wagon" for new Canadians. Research suggests, however, that they embrace settlement and integration policies to varying degrees. While scholarly examinations of municipal policies include analyses of corporate communications strategies, efforts by city governments to reach residents through ethnocultural news media have received little attention. To address that gap, this study investigates why the suburban community of Brampton, Canada adopted one of the most proactive ethnic media strategies in the country in 2015 when, just a decade earlier, it was for the most part unresponsive to the needs of its burgeoning immigrant population. As a starting point, the case study uses the determinants of municipal responsiveness identified by Kristin R. Good (2009) in Municipalities and Multiculturalism: The Politics of Immigration in Toronto and Vancouver. Employing a mixed methods approach, it concludes that rapid demographic change, the emergence of an activist political leadership, and efforts to reduce friction between newcomers and other residents influenced Brampton's communications policy over time. The case study identifies challenges associated with adopting an ethnic media strategy, including issues related to translation and the relative lack of sophistication of some ethnic media outlets. Furthermore, it demonstrates that reaching out to ethnocultural communities via ethnic media requires more than just distributing news releases in English. Translation of these releases has the potential to increase municipal news coverage in ethnic media, the paper suggests, if only because it makes it easier for smaller news organizations to report on such matters


The atmospheres of low mass pre-main sequence stars are extremely valuable tools for probing the composition of the star-forming interstellar medium. This thesis investigation uses photospheric abundance analysis techniques to determine metal abundances both for individual weakly active T Tauri stars and the molecular clouds with which these stars are associated. Using the high resolution echelle spectrographs of the Palomar 1.5m and the Las Campanas Observatory 2.5m telescopes, high signal-to-noise ratio spectra have been obtained for 53 low mass pre-main sequence stars in six major northern and southern hemisphere star formation regions. Spectra were also taken of 14 main sequence stars with known effective temperatures and metallicity to serve as spectral standards. Equivalent widths of a large number of Fe I absorption lines have been measured, as well as lines of Ca I, Al I, V I, Ni I, Ti I, K I, and Li I. Temperature-sensitive line ratios of neutral iron and vanadium calibrated against the spectral standards are used to derive effective temperatures for 30 weak-line T Tauri stars, which are much improved over the low resolution spectral classifications found for these objects in the literature. Micro-turbulent velocities have also been found for 16 of the pre-main sequence stars in the sample. Several stars with abnormally high microturbulences for their spectral type have been found. Using these improved stellar parameters, metallicities of a large number of T Tauri stars have been determined for the first time. Abundance analyses of iron, aluminum, calcium, nickel, and titanium are performed on 30 low mass, pre-main sequence stars. In the star-formation regions of Taurus-Auriga, Orion, Chamaeleon, and Ophiuchus, which each contributed five or more association members to the young star survey, bulk metallicities have been determined. The results indicate that the current metal abundances in these clouds are near or slightly above solar values. Cloud material metallicities are then used to calibrate ultraviolet line-ofsight metal depletion studies for the Orion and ρ Ophiuchi clouds. The final chapter of this work is a lithium abundance analysis for the entire sample of 53 pre-main sequence stars. Statistics performed on a subset of 37 T Tauri stars without veiling give a mean lithium abundance of 3.60 ± 0.07 on the logarithimic scale relative to log N(H) = 12, and a few stars have derived abundances in excess of 4.0. The mean lithium values among pre-main sequence stars are considerably higher than the maximum values of 3.1 - 3.2 derived for young main sequence cluster stars, indicating that the processes of lithium destruction are quite rapid for low mass stars during the transition onto the main sequence. Although an appreciable spread in lithium abundances are found among the stars in each pre-main sequence star association, no significant difference in mean or maximum lithium abundances are seen between the clusters.


Taken from the surviving contemporary documentary sources, Julian Granberry's volume describes the grammar and lexicon for the extinct 17th-century Timucua language of Central and North Florida and traces the origins of the 17th-century Timucua speakers and their language. Originally privately published in 1987, with limited circulation, this is the only available publication on the Timucuan language. It provides full grammatical analysis and complete lexical data, and it synthesizes both linguistic and archaeological data in order to provide a coherent picture of the Timucua peoples. Granberry traces the probable historical origins of Timucua speakers to a central Amazonian homeland at approximately 2,500 B.C. and proposes that Timucua speakers were responsible for introducing ceramic wares into North America.


Lysyl oxidase (LO) is an enzyme that catalyzes the oxidative deamination of peptidyl lysine and hydrolysine residues, which leads to the spontaneous formation of inter- and intrachain cross-links. LO is decreased in many tumors, and expression of LO is increased upon reversion of the tumorous phenotypes. Jeay et al. showed that overexpression of LO caused reversion of the Ras-transformed phenotype and was associated with inhibition of nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) signaling. Although Jeay et al. did not determine the target of LO or demonstrate that LO enzymatic activity was required, they did show that overexpression of LO inhibited NF-κB reporter gene expression and NF-κB DNA binding, stabilized the inhibitor of NF-κB (IκB), and inhibited the kinase activity of IKKα and IKKβ (kinase components of the IκB complex). Using Ras mutants that could only couple to either the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) pathway or the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway, the authors showed that overexpression of LO was most effective at inhibiting Ras activation of the PI3K pathway. LO inhibited the Ras-stimulated recruitment of Akt and phosphoinositide-dependent kinase (PDK) to the plasma membrane, which are early steps downstream of PI3K activation. Forced membrane association of Akt or PKD by myristylation overcame LO-mediated inhibition of NF-κB reporter gene expression. Thus, LO appears to inhibit an early step in the PI3K pathway. How LO achieves this inhibition remains an open question, but these results suggest that yet another lysine modification may be added to the posttranslational regulatory mechanisms controlling signaling events. S. Jeay, S. Pianetti, H. M. Kagan, G. E. Sonenshein, Lysyl oxidase inhibits Ras-mediated transformation by preventing activation of NF-κB. Mol. Cell. Biol. 23, 2251-2263 (2003). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The problem of testing a linear temporal logic (LTL) formula on a finite execution trace of events, generated by an executing program, occurs naturally in runtime analysis of software. We present an algorithm which takes an LTL formula and generates an efficient dynamic programming algorithm. The generated algorithm tests whether the LTL formula is satisfied by a finite trace of events given as input. The generated algorithm runs in linear time, its constant depending on the size of the LTL formula. The memory needed is constant, also depending on the size of the formula.}


Literate Lahu, speakers of a Tibeto-Burman language in the ethnically and linguistically diverse uplands of Southeast Asia and southwest China, inscribe their language in an ecology of literacies shaped by the imbrication of a number of ideologies. As members of the larger category of chao khao or mountain people, the Lahu belong to a group which is persistently labeled as Other. (Laungaramsri 2001: 43-4). Lahu are also a people-without-writing (Pine 1999), despite the fact that at least three writing systems exist for Lahu, with a fourth in somewhat limited use and at least one other system in development. The ideological diversity of the entextualization of Lahu benefits seeing it within a particular historical and ecological context. This paper historicizes particular literacy practices within the context of the development of a particular form of written Lahu. It also traces the influence of a phenomenon termed "proprietary orthographies" which permeates the ecology of literacies in mainland Southeast Asia and, I argue, has a significant impact on Lahu language literacy practices. Focusing on a subtle issue of the representation of tone, and also drawing on self-reporting of literacy, as well as making use of Keane's concept of "semiotic ideologies", I argue that orthographies enjoy a complex form of indexicality in this region which differs in small, but important, ways from other areas.


In the U.S. legal system, litigants frequently retain counsel to represent their interest in civil cases, particularly when the stakes are high. Scholarly work and anecdotal evidence suggest that variation in the quality of advocacy has the potential to affect litigant success. We examine the relationship between attorney characteristics, case outcomes, and judicial voting in products liability decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Our analysis found some differences in the levels of experience and specialization of counsel, representing defendants and plaintiffs and that counsel expertise was, at times, related to litigant success. In a multivariate model of decision making, judge were less likely to support the position of plaintiffs when they were represented by counsel appearing for the first time before the circuit. When defendants were represented by attorneys who did not specialize in relevant areas of the law, judges were more likely to decide in favor of the plaintiff. These finding suggest that those attorneys who do not meet a minimum threshold of expertise will be less likely to find judicial support for their client than other attorneys. Such attorneys may be less successful as a result of their lack of familiarity with the law and appellate process or because they make poor choices regarding the likelihood of success on appeal.


Trichloroacetimidates are known to be excellent alkylating agents when activated by a catalytic amount of a Brønsted or Lewis acid. Work described herein involved taking advantage of the favorable reactivity of trichloroacetimidates to establish several different synthetic protocols, including the application of these reagents in the synthesis of pyrroloindoline based natural products, 3,3'-disubstituted indolenines and benzylic trichloroacetamides. Initial investigations on the utilization of the reactivity of trichloroacetimidates found that diphenylmethyl trichloroacetimidate, which is a precursor to a highly stabilized carbocation, undergoes facile displacement with carboxylic acids providing the ester product without the need of any exogenous catalyst. Both hindered and unhindered carboxylic acids were esterified with high yields, with no preference for aromatic or aliphatic carboxylic acids. Carboxylic acids with unprotected hydroxyl groups or β-lactam rings were esterified efficiently. Substrates that are highly prone to elimination or retro-aldol were also esterified in high yields. Carboxylic acids with highly enolizable α-stereocenters were esterified without any racemization. Mechanistic studies indicate that the carboxylic acid substrate itself is acidic enough to be effective at promoting the esterification reaction. During our studies on esterification with imidates it was found that these imidates also showed a tendency to undergo rearrangement to the corresponding trichloroacetamides. Two different sets of conditions, thermal and Lewis acid catalyzed, were established which provided these rearranged products with high yields. Various benzylic trichloroacetimidates were shown to undergo these transformations under the established conditions. Based on the observations discussed in this work a cationic mechanism is proposed. After the preliminary studies on alkylation of benzylic trichloroacetimidate with different nucleophiles, this chemistry was applied towards the synthesis of natural products and their analogs. The pyrroloindoline ring system is found in many alkaloids and cyclic peptides which mainly differ in the substitution at the C3a position. To provide rapid access to these natural products a diversity-oriented strategy was established via displacement of C3atrichloroacetimidate pyrroloindoline. Carbon, oxygen, sulfur and nitrogen nucleophiles were all shown to undergo substitution reactions with these trichloroacetimidates in the presence of a Lewis acid catalyst. In order to demonstrate the utility of this new method it was applied towards the synthesis of arundinine and a formal synthesis of psychotriasine. Current investigations involve the application of this method towards the synthesis of a complex pyrroloindoline natural product kapakahine C and the progress made therein has been discussed. The reactivity of trichloroacetimidates was also investigated for the selective C3alkylation of 2,3-disubstituted indoles to provide indolenines. Indolenines serve as useful intermediates in the synthesis of many complex alkaloids. Different benzylic and allylic trichloroacetimidates were shown to provide 3,3'-disubstituted indolenines with high yields in the presence of catalytic amounts of Lewis acids. Various substituted indoles were evaluated under these reaction conditions. This methodology was also applied towards the synthesis of the core tetracyclic ring system found in communesin natural products. In addition to the above work, synthesis of small molecule inhibitors of Src Homology 2 Domain-Containing Inositol Phosphatase (SHIP) has also been described. Aberrations in the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) cellular signaling pathway can lead to diseased cellular states like cancer. Herein we have reported stereoselective synthesis of two quinoline based small molecule SHIP inhibitors. The lead compounds and their analogs were tested for their activities against SHIP by Malachite green assay and the discoveries made therein are discussed. In addition to this synthesis of a tryptamine based SHIP inhibitor has also been reported. Trichloroacetimidates as Alkylating Reagents and Their Application in the Synthesis of Pyrroloindoline Natural Products and Synthesis of Small Molecule Inhibitors of Src Homology 2 DomainContaining Inositol Phosphatase (SHIP) by Arijit A. Adhikari B.Sc. (Chemistry), University of Mumbai, 2008 M.Sc. (Chemistry), University of Mumbai, 2010 M. Phil. (Chemistry), Syracuse University, 2013 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry Syracuse University June 2017 Copyright © Arijit A. Adhikari, 2017 All Rights Reserved


Motivated by suggested question generation in conversational news recommendation systems, we propose a model for generating question-answer pairs (QA pairs) with self-contained, summary-centric questions and length-constrained, article-summarizing answers. We begin by collecting a new dataset of news articles with questions as titles and pairing them with summaries of varying length. This dataset is used to learn a QA pair generation model producing summaries as answers that balance brevity with sufficiency jointly with their corresponding questions. We then reinforce the QA pair generation process with a differentiable reward function to mitigate exposure bias, a common problem in natural language generation. Both automatic metrics and human evaluation demonstrate these QA pairs successfully capture the central gists of the articles and achieve high answer accuracy.


'Honeycrisp' apples (Malus ×domestica) were harvested over 3-week periods in 2001 and 2002. Maturity and quality indices were determined at harvest. Fruit quality was evaluated after air storage [0.0 to 2.2 °C (32 to 36 °F), 95% relative humidity] for 10–13 weeks and 15–18 weeks for the 2001 and 2002 harvests, respectively. Internal ethylene concentrations (IEC), starch indices (1–8 scale), fi rmness and soluble solids content (SSC) did not show consistent patterns of change over time. Starch hydrolysis was advanced on all harvest dates, but it is suggested that a starch index of 7 is a useful guide for timing harvest of fruit in western New York. After storage, fi rmness closely followed that observed immediately after harvest, and softening during storage was slow. No change in SSC was observed during storage in either year. Incidence of bitter pit and soft scald was generally low and was not affected consistently by harvest date. The incidence of stem punctures averaged 18.5% over both years, but was not affected by harvest date. Development of stem end cracking in both years, and rot development in one year, increased with later harvest dates. A panel of storage operators, packers, growers, and fruit extension specialists evaluated the samples for appearance and eating quality after storage, and results suggested that a 2-week harvest window is optimal


The management of trust and quality in decentralized systems has been recognized as a key research area over recent years. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic computational approach to enable a peer in the system to model and estimate the quality and behaviors of the others subjectively according to its own preferences. Our solution is based on the use of graphical models to represent the dependencies among different QoS parameters of a service provided by a peer, the associated contextual factors, the innate behaviors of the reporters and their feedback on quality of the peer being evaluated. We apply the EM algorithm to learn the conditional probabilities of the introduced variables and perform necessary probabilistic inferences on the constructed model to estimate peer's quality and behaviors. Interestingly, our proposed framework can be shown as the generalization of many existing trust computational approaches in the literature with several additional advantages: first, it works well given few and sparse feedback data from the reporting peers; second, it also considers the dependencies among the QoS attributes of a peer, related contextual factors, and underlying behavioral models of reporters to produce more reliable estimations; third, the model gives outputs with well-defined semantics and useful meanings which can be used for many purposes, for example, it computes the probability that a peer is trustworthy in sharing its experiences or in providing a service with high quality level under certain environmental conditions.


The free energies of transfer of some univalent cations from N,N-dimethylformamide to N,N- dimethylthioformamide at 25o are Li+, 64.0; Na+, 50.2; K+, 37.2; Cs+, 23.4; TI+, -4.2 and Ag+, - 87.0 kJ g-ion-1. The values are based on the assumption of negligible liquid junction potential in an electrochemical cell. Certain ones of these values can be interpreted in terms of general interactions of hard and soft cations with hard and soft basic solvents. A linear free energy relationship, ΔGtr(M+) = mΔGtr(K+), is roughly obeyed by many cations for transfer to a variety of solvents. Deviations from this relationship, for example ΔGtr(Ag2+) to acetonitrile, ΔGtr (Ph4As+) to water and ΔGtr (Ag+) to N,N-dimethylthioformamide, allow specific solvation mechanisms to be detected.


Design optimization of unshrouded rotor tip cavity of a high pressure turbine stage with low aspect ratio was carried out to maximize the turbine stage efficiency. Cavity shapes were parameterized with 4 design variables including rim thickness, cavity depth, cavity front blend radius and cavity aft blend radius. Initially the CCD method was utilized for sampling experimental points and the Kriging method was chosen to construct an approximation model. The optimum points derived from the approximation model were assessed by CFD analyses to verify the approximation model. The approximation model was refined repeatedly by adding more experiment points to minimize difference of CFD result and predicted value from the approximation model at the optimum point.The optimization result showed that there is an optimum ratio of cavity depth to tip clearance height, while the optimum design suggests cavity front blend radius and cavity aft blend radius be as small as possible within the design range. As the tip clearance height increases, the optimized tip cavity depth increases. However, the rim thickness has little effect on the optimum tip cavity depth. Without the tip cavity, leakage flow at fore part of the blade suction surface develops large vortex flow from the starting point of the unguided turning region due to adverse pressure gradient. The tip cavity prevents the early leakage flow from flow to the suction surface, which suppresses the leakage flow dissipation to the loss. It results in efficiency improvement. The effect of the tip cavity on the efficiency increases at the larger tip clearance.On the other hand, the cavity rim thickness effect on the efficiency becomes noticeable when the tip cavity depth is over than the optimum value. The rim thickness effect mainly appears on the tip leakage flow after the blade throat. The leaked flow after the blade throat generates a high loss region near the blade tip, especially when the rim thickness is small. The loss from the thick tip cavity rim gradually increases as the tip clearance increases. However, the rim thickness effect is most sensitive when the tip clearance is small. The loss generation mechanism due to the rim thickness is totally different to the tip cavity depth effects on the total pressure loss.Copyright © 2013 by ASME


Stateless persons are not recognized as citizens by any country, and as such, their enjoyment of fundamental human rights depends on the good faith of host countries, and their basic human security and dignity are often subject to the whims of immigration authorities. Despite this intense level of vulnerability, U.S. immigration law does not explicitly recognize statelessness, nor does it provide for humanitarian protection to relieve stateless persons of their suffering. Rather, stateless persons are treated like any other unauthorized migrants in the United States; when they are ordered removed, they are mandatorily detained while immigration officials undertake efforts to execute those orders. Such removal efforts are futile in the case of stateless persons, and when they are ultimately released from detention, they are cast into a legal limbo in which they spend the rest of their lives on immigration parole, uncertain as to what their future may hold. This article argues that it is imperative to establish a protection mechanism for stateless persons in the United States, and critically analyzes a proposal by the U.S. Senate to establish a mechanism for the protection of stateless persons under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) as part of its 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (SB 744). This article relies on the international law of statelessness as a benchmark for this critique, and argues that that the proposed mechanism may fail to meaningfully address the statelessness problem in the United States if it is not tethered to the international protection framework.


Knowledge-intensive services (KIS) are important activities for regional growth and considered to be located at the top of urban and regional hierarchies. However, the widespread use of information and communication technologies (ICT) may lead to a higher degree of decentralization. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the geographical distribution of KIS across European regions, highlighting some important patterns. Our results confirm that the location of KIS remains linked to regions with a high international profile but, contrary to what some previous studies have suggested, the relative concentration of KIS is rather low. However, important differences exist depending on the type of KIS, the country analysed and the comparative statistical level. Recent trends also present uneven results, but show a higher concentration of business services-related KIS. The importance of tacit knowledge may play a role in explaining this result.


Flash memory is widely used in consumer electronics products, such as cell-phones and music players, and is increasingly displacing hard disk drives as the primary storage device in laptops, desktops, and even servers. There is a rich microarchitectural design space for flash memory and there are several architectural options for incorporating flash into the memory hierarchy. Exploring this design space requires detailed insights into the power characteristics of flash memory. In this paper, we present FlashPower, a detailed analytical power model for Single-Level Cell (SLC) based NAND flash memory, which is used in high-performance flash products. We have integrated FlashPower with CACTI 5.3, which is widely used in the architecture community for studying memory organizations. FlashPower takes as input device technology and microarchitectural parameters to estimate the power consumed by a flash chip during its various operating modes. We have validated FlashPower against published chip power measurements and show that they are comparable.


Most scientists (ourselves included) headed off to graduate school eager to discover new things, test crazy ideas, and hopefully change the world, or at least explain a piece of it. Sadly, these days such aspirations are overshadowed by fierce competition for papers, grants, and the tenured positions trainees need to build independent careers in academic research. Even those who have attained one of those rare, coveted professorships are under intense strain: A preoccupation with funding and other career-related metrics crowds out real discovery among aspiring and established scientists alike. The result: Science has become a less desirable career. We can fix the problem, but only if we're willing to make fundamental changes to how academic science is structured and funded.

For decades, trainees—graduate students and postdocs—have performed most of the day-to-day work of academic science. Motivated by the promise of satisfying careers, they are willing to work long and hard for minimal pay. For science, that works out well in the short term but not the long: The distinction between trainee and employee blurs. When more is invested in science—a good thing—the ranks of graduate students and postdocs swell to meet the demand for temporary labor. Permanent positions don't keep pace, eroding the economic and intellectual value of scientific training. Trainees take ever longer—into their mid-30s and beyond—to accrue credentials sufficient to stand out and get hired for serious, long-term faculty jobs. With each passing year, scientists young and old spend more time worrying about their careers and less time making discoveries. As long as academic science is structured the way it is, we don't really have a choice.

![Figure][1]

"Career instability … turns some of the best talent away."

ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER

Some argue that intense competition strengthens science by allowing only the fittest to survive. But the incentives that arise from such competition run counter to creativity, openness, and innovation. We may even be selecting for undesirable traits, such as recklessness and a focus on self-marketing over scientific substance. The weight put on publishing papers in high-impact journals may encourage scientists to exaggerate their findings, or worse. In short, it is evident that hypercompetition is inconsistent with "affording the prepared mind complete freedom for the exercise of initiative," which Vannevar Bush, who devised our system of academic research funding in the 1940s, considered to be of "supreme importance."

So why do students even start down the road to science careers? We believe it's a combination of ignorance of the realities, overconfidence, and a punch-drunk passion for science. At some point during training, however, that enthusiasm starts to wear off. Every trainee has encountered exceptionally talented students who would have made major contributions but decided to leave science—its uncertain prospects, risk-averse funding, and incentives for distortion and dishonesty—in favor of more practical and lucrative careers.

To draw the best young minds to research and then keep them here, we need to change how we train scientists and how academic science gets done. More of the work should be done by staff scientists in stable positions and less of it by (fewer) trainees. We should move the career bottleneck from faculty to the postdoc or even to graduate school admissions. Training grants and fellowships should replace grant support for most trainees so that more can be invested in research grants without increasing the number of trainees and further glutting Ph.D.-level science labor markets. Such measures would have useful side effects: encouraging better training and intellectual independence. More important, they would improve young scientists' career prospects.

It is time to address the career instability that turns some of the best talent away from science. The effort and investment needed to make research careers more attractive will be handsomely repaid in the form of future discoveries.

 [1]: pending:yes


This article has been written as a response to two recent developments. First, as a response to the recent update of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines on 25 May 2011, which seem to have taken a form based on human rights due diligence. Second, as a response to the resolution by the European Parliament of 6 April 2011 on the future EU international investment policy in which it asks the Commission to include, in all future agreements, a reference to the updated OECD Guidelines. This article examines how human rights due diligence, as enshrined in the OECD Guidelines, could be incorporated in international investment agreements (IIAs). Therefore, the concept of human rights due diligence as introduced in the UN Guiding Principles and the OECD Guidelines was explored. It includes empirical research as to how multinationals (MNEs) currently incorporate the concept of human rights due diligence in their policies in order to facilitate investors and policymakers with the knowledge necessary to give an adequate response to this concept. It continues by providing several options as to how the OECD Guidelines could be incorporated in investment agreements, including the advantages and disadvantages of these options.


In previous work, a technique to measure the thermoacoustic properties of single pores was described [L. Wilen, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 101, 1388–1397 (1997)]. By modulating the volume of a pore and measuring the resultant pressure response, the complex compressibility is measured as a function of frequency. Measurements of different lengths of a given pore allow the end effects to be subtracted out. By working down to very low frequencies, a wide range of values for the ratio of the thermal penetration depth to pore size are accessible. This technique will be briefly reviewed, and recent experimental results for pores of various geometries will be compared to the known theory. Experimental results will also be shown for pores not easily treated by analytic theory. Finally, possible applications to full tests of thermoacoustics in a single pore will be discussed. [Work supported by ONR and NSF.]


A. annamensis and A. roxburghii belong to Orchidaceae family that has medicinal and ornamental plant value. They are in extinct endangered plants in wild due to the over- collected and loss of the suitable habitats. Using the LED lighting source for culture these species in in vitro condition to optimize the culture conditions, reduction of the production cost, especially electric bill for air-corditionning, lighting. In recent years, the trial applied LED which has the feature of energy saving, small size and a longer operating life, for plant production has started. In this study, LED illumination sources are in four different wavelengths of λ= 430- 470 nm; λ= 470-510 nm; λ= 510-560 nm; λ= 560-600 nm and white fluorescent lamp as control with light intensity photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) of 40 µmol/m2/s photon used to study their effects on the growth and development of A. annamensis and A. roxburghii species. After 8 weeks of implementing, the results showed that the LEDs of λ= 470-510 nm were suitable for the growth and development for A. roxburghii shoots while for A. annamensis , λ = 430- 470 nm were most suitable for budding and λ= 470-510 nm for shoot growth. Citation: Phan Xuan Binh Minh, Bui Thi Thanh Phuong, Pham Huong Son, Tran Minh Hoi, Nguyen Thi Phuong Lan, Vu Thi Thao, 2018. The effects of linght emitting diode lighting on growth and development of A . annanesis and A . roxburghii in vitro cultured shoots. Tap chi Sinh hoc, 40(1): x-xx. DOI: 10.15625/0866-7160 /v40n1.10636. *Corresponding author: firstname.lastname@example.com Received 2 3 August 2017 , accepted 2 December 2017


To tackle the problem of limited annotated data, semi-supervised learning is attracting attention as an alternative to fully supervised models. Moreover, optimizing a multiple-task model to learn "multiple contexts" can provide better generalizability compared to single-task models. We propose a novel semi-supervised multiple-task model leveraging self-supervision and adversarial training—namely, self-supervised, semi-supervised, multi-context learning (S4MCL)—and apply it to two crucial medical imaging tasks, classification and segmentation. Our experiments on spine X-rays reveal that the S4MCL model significantly outperforms semi-supervised single-task, semi-supervised multi-context, and fully-supervised single-task models, even with a 50% reduction of classification and segmentation labels.


State and sovereignty are two words, which in XXI century are the most commonly used, as in internal plan as well as at in the international plan, the latter even more. But, while in the past centuries was talked about sovereignty as something that is strongly and indivisible connected to the state as a mother with her child, in this century-in globalized world, the state and sovereignty are being used as something that were strongly connected, but today this connection is softened. This is done for many different reasons, because we are living in the time, where state sovereignty is not considered anymore as something absolute and intangible, meanings that no longer exists literally, and this is being proven every day more and more. We have the cases of humanitarian intervention, where the sovereignty of a state is taken temporarily or is violated, then we have the creation of regional and international organizations that every day more and more have gained strength within their organization, as it is the European Union with supranationality powers, then the impact of globalization on softening this absolute sovereignty, etc.. This scientific paper will present to the reader and all other stakeholders, the important elements which argue the falling down of absolute sovereignty of states in XXI century in the era of globalization.


Abstract Objective: To assess the accuracy and precision of five currently available blood glucose meters in South Africa Background: Since the introduction of glucometers, there has been an ongoing, competition-driven development in both meter and strip technology, which has allowed for greater accuracy and reliability of results. Despite the advances in technology, there is significant variation amongst these glucometers necessitating a proper evaluation before use. Methods: Glucose levels in capillary blood samples from 115 patients attending the diabetic clinic at Tygerberg Hospital were measured with each meter, and compared with the laboratory reference method. Results: The coefficients of variation (CVs) (imprecision) of most meters were acceptable at less than 5%, with a bias ranging from 1.7 to 6.8%. None of the glucometers satisfied the American Diabetes Association (ADA) recommendation of less than 5% bias. Conclusions: The study highlights the need for an objective and independent comparison of all glucometers in South Africa, as the variability observed can impact on patient care.


We consider a dominant upstream firm selling an input to several downstream firms through observable, non-discriminatory two-part tariff contracts. Downstream firms can alternatively buy the input from a less efficient source of supply. In this setting, we analyze the relationship between the competitive effects of downstream mergers and the level of concentration at the upstream level. We show that a downstream merger leads to lower wholesale prices. This translates into lower final prices only when the upstream market is sufficiently concentrated. In this case, a downstream merger tends to be both procompetitive and profitable.


Atherosclerosis is characterized by lipid accumulation, inflammatory response, cell death and fibrosis in the arterial wall, and is major pathological basis for ischemic coronary heart disease (CHD), which is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the USA and Europe. Intervention studies with statins have shown to reduce LDL cholesterol levels and subsequently the risk of developing CHD. However, not all the aggressive statin therapy could decrease the risk of developing CHD. Many clinical and epidemiological studies have clearly demonstrated that the HDL cholesterol is inversely associated with risk of CHD and is a critical and independent component of predicting its risk. Elucidations of HDL metabolism give rise to therapeutic targets with potential to raising plasma HDL cholesterol levels, thereby reducing the risk of developing CHD. The concept of reverse cholesterol transport is based on the hypothesis that HDL displays an cardioprotective function, which is a process involved in the removal of excess cholesterol that is accumulated in the peripheral tissues (e.g., macrophages in the aortae) by HDL, transporting it to the liver for excretion into the feces via the bile. In this review, we summarize the latest advances in the role of the lymphatic route in reverse cholesterol transport, as well as the biliary and the non-biliary pathways for removal of cholesterol from the body. These studies will greatly increase the likelihood of discovering new lipid-lowering drugs, which are more effective in the prevention and therapeutic intervention of CHD that is the major cause of human death and disability worldwide.


The endocycle is a variant cell cycle comprised of alternating gap (G) and DNA synthesis (S) phases (endoreplication) without mitosis (M), which results in DNA polyploidy and large cell size. Endocycles occur widely in nature, but much remains to be learned about the regulation of this modified cell cycle. Here, we compared gene expression profiles of mitotic cycling larval brain and disc cells with the endocycling cells of fat body and salivary gland of the Drosophila larva. The results indicated that many genes that are positively regulated by the heterodimeric E2F1–DP or Myb–MuvB complex transcription factors are expressed at lower levels in endocycling cells. Many of these target genes have functions in M phase, suggesting that dampened E2F1 and Myb activity promote endocycles. Many other E2F1 target genes that are required for DNA replication were also repressed in endocycling cells, an unexpected result given that these cells must duplicate up to thousands of genome copies during each S phase. For some EF2-regulated genes, the lower level of mRNA in endocycling cells resulted in lower protein concentration, whereas for other genes it did not, suggesting a contribution of post-transcriptional regulation. Both knockdown and overexpression of E2F1–DP and Myb–MuvB impaired endocycles, indicating that transcriptional activation and repression must be balanced. Our data suggest that dampened transcriptional activation by E2F1–DP and Myb–MuvB is important to repress mitosis and coordinate the endocycle transcriptional and protein stability oscillators.


We formulate the problem of non-projective dependency parsing as a polynomial-sized integer linear program. Our formulation is able to handle non-local output features in an efficient manner; not only is it compatible with prior knowledge encoded as hard constraints, it can also learn soft constraints from data. In particular, our model is able to learn correlations among neighboring arcs (siblings and grandparents), word valency, and tendencies toward nearly-projective parses. The model parameters are learned in a max-margin framework by employing a linear programming relaxation. We evaluate the performance of our parser on data in several natural languages, achieving improvements over existing state-of-the-art methods.


The paper presents an approach for machine learning in a restricted first-order language with finite minimal Herbrand models by means of a search through a propositional representation space. The learning target is to find a set of goal clauses which can be used to define a target predicate. That is, we deal with single-predicate learning. For the search process we use the learning algorithm JoJo/ Frog which provides a flexible search strategy. The transition from the first-order representation to the representation in propositional logic is achieved by ground substitutions which transform clauses into ground clauses. Taking a closer look at this transition makes clear that the sufficiency condition which is used by algorithms like FOIL and LINUS as a criterion for judging the achieved learning results does not correspond to the completeness condition in the propositional case. Therefore, we use an extended completeness condition which captures all information given by the example knowledge. As a consequence we get a new definition of positive and negative examples. Instead of ground facts we regard ground substitutions as examples.


This essay considers the interaction between music and noise in Joyce's narrative texts, arguing that Joyce's increasing fascination with noise reflects a burgeoning skepticism about music's formal autonomy and an ear for music's ideological mystifications. Building on recent works in "sound studies," which examine sound as a site of anxiety about urbanization and mechanical reproduction, the essay explores Joyce's abandoned collaboration with the noise-music composer George Antheil on a staging of "Cyclops," using megaphones and "phoneygraphs." While "A Painful Case" reflects on the symbiotic relationship between solipsistic music and public noise, A Portrait struggles to detach musical rhythms from their symbolic associations. In unmooring sounds from their referents, however, Stephen leaves music open to the sort of musical misreadings found throughout Ulysses. The admixture of music and noise in Ulysses deflates the bombastic idealism of Wagnerian opera and defamiliarizes music as a "phoneygraph"—a medium and a form of false writing.