In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. Looking at ideas such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and illustrating each topic with a passage taken from a classic or modern novel, David Lodge makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the general reader. He provides essential reading for students, aspiring writers and anyone who wants to understand how fiction works.


Recent literature on trade has emphasized the role of firms' heterogeneities in export performance and trade specialization of countries (Melitz, 2003; Melitz and Ottaviano, 2005). Exporting seems to be a strategy available only to most efficient and productive firms even in a framework with transport costs and no reciprocal dumping. We do not know much about the internal organization of these smarter companies which are exporting part of their production. However, from related theoretical (Helpman, 2006) and empirical (Rossini and Ricciardi, 2005) literature we know that more efficient firms tend to be more vertically integrated than the average population on both a domestic and a crossborder basis. Themain purpose of this paper is to link the two streams of literature on firms heterogeneities and export, on one side, and vertical integration and export, on the other side. Then, we try to answer the question: is the exporting activity going to affect the degree of vertical integration making exporting firms more vertically integrated than non exporting firms? And, if so, why? We investigate these matters at a theoretical tier and through a set of econometric tests on firm level data for 25 EU countries. At the theoretical level we consider a model with two countries each possessing one or two firms: one in case of vertical integration and two in case of vertical disintegration. We compare large and small vertically disintegrated or integrated firms in an environment with transport costs and home bias. Larger firms tend to be more vertically integrated and to engage in export activity. The theoretical conclusions are consistent with the empirical analysis which says that for larger firms exporting activity tends to boost the degree of vertical integration. This provides some link between the two literatures, the first maintaining that only more productive firms export and the second stating that more productive firms are more vertically integrated. The emphasized link dictates that the more enterprises export the more vertically integrated they are. Why? It is mostly a matter of size and R&D commitment which enhances productivity.


A primary aim of this book (and the Conference on which it is based) was to generate an academically well grounded comparative study of the use and misuse of fiscal measures – especially green taxation: to encourage environmental protection and improvement in particular jurisdictions (and across jurisdictional borders); and to discourage behavior leading to environmental damage and degradation in particular jurisdictions (and across jurisdictional borders). We were also interested in the revenue outcomes of such measures – and the way such outcomes can, in turn, shape later tax and related policy – and social behavior. The book seeks to explore the scope – and limits – of green taxation in depth.


Number of empirical studies seem to reject the additive separability of preferences that is assumed in most theoretical models of the life cycle. We show that, when additive separability is abandoned, and interactions between consumptions at different dates are taken into account, an interesting relation emerges between risk aversion and length of planning horizon. Specifically, we show that when consumptions at different dates are specific substitutes, risk aversion increases with horizon length. This may explain the surprising empirical finding that individuals seem to increase the share of wealth held in risky assets as they become older.


Building simulation requires a large number of uncertain inputs and parameters. These include quantities that may be known with reasonable confidence, like the thermal properties of materials and building dimensions, but also inputs whose correct values cannot be known with absolute certainty, notably weather and occupancy. A simulation run is not, strictly, a prediction. Since the parameters and calculations are approximations of real-world phenomena and materials, the exercise is essentially uncertain. Regardless of whether simulation is interpreted as a prediction or an approximation indicative of average behaviour, including explicit bounds of uncertainty is more informative for a decision-maker than a single point estimate. This thesis presents results for two related but independent proposals for sensitivity and uncertainty analyses in building simulation, particularly to weather. The first is a novel, generalisable procedure for generating synthetic weather data to carry out a Monte Carlo experiment with a building simulation model. The second is a technique for training emulators or response surfaces to rapidly obtain estimates of performance outputs from simulation models, using Gaussian Process regression on small training data sets. The two parts, together and separately, enable the quantification of the lack of knowledge about an input, and the impact of this uncertainty on the final results. The synthetic weather time series developed are an ensemble of realistic hourly data whose mean statistical characteristics are close to the typical year used to generate them. The procedures developed are generalisable with minimal expert input. We avoid presenting a unified model for all climates, leaving some tuning parameters like the extent of correlation, and the unknown coefficients of stationary time series models, to be calculated empirically (based on the typical file of a given climate). The emulators are created using regression, comparing the performance of classical parametric regression with a non-linear technique based on Gaussian random processes. Our proposal trains reliable models on small samples, reducing the computational burden, and gives an explicit estimate of the uncertainty for a prediction, since the response at any sampled point is modelled as a Normally-distributed random process. Once again, we avoid a unified emulator or regression model because the response from one building (defined by its geometry and usage in this case) is not necessarily an appropriate description of the response of another. This work is a step towards practical tools for the use of building simulation in a stochastic paradigm. Both elements of the thesis contribute toward explicitly estimating the uncertainty in the results of building simulation, using empirical or data-driven techniques. The types of the time series and emulator models are general enough to work on any climate or building, with parameters obtained from the simulated/typical sample at hand, but the importance of different aspects and the nature of a building's response are determined uniquely (i.e., parameter values). The work is easily extensible to the analysis of the sensitivity of a building, or groups of buildings, to any inputs. The concepts proposed in this thesis may also be used for stochastic optimisation and models to predict performance metrics other than the annual sum of energy.


Expatriates with young families who work for multinational companies are an expanding population (Finaccord, 2014). These families move countries frequently due to one or both parents' unique skillsets, which are in demand internationally. Multinational companies who require these skillsets across countries frequently transfer employees and their families with little notice. Much of the literature surrounding this population is influenced by the seminal work of sociologists Useem and Downie (1976). In alignment with this, this thesis draws on and extends Useem's body of work by presenting a contemporary, theoretical perspective of young children in the family and school context who experience multiple international moves during their early childhood years. This study looks at families moving to reside in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. For young children, these international moves necessitate transitions between countries, cultures, international schools and social situations. These transitions are explored through Vygotsky's (1987a, 1994, 1997a,b, 1998) cultural–historical theory as the children enter new environments and situations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The focus of this study is the unity of affect and intellect, including the learning and developmental conditions created by significant adults and peers who support the transitioning child (Vygotsky, 1994). This thesis presents an in-depth qualitative study of young expatriate children's everyday life across institutions. The participants included five mothers, seven focus children (aged between 3.9 and 7.9 years, with a mean of 5.4 years), seven teachers and three principals of international schools. The data generated included video data, video and iPhone recordings of interviews, still images and field notes in the home and school settings. The mothers, educators and principals were interviewed using semi-structured interview techniques (Hviid, 2008a). Ninety hours of video data were collected; however, due to the scope of this thesis, not all findings could be reported in this study. The data analysis began with Hedegaard, Fleer, Bang and Hviid's (2008) dialectic–interactive approach, consisting of common-sense interpretation, situated-practice interpretation and thematic interpretation. Due to the large volume of data, further methods were used to complement this analysis, including horizontal and vertical analysis for individuals, which was then implemented across the data sets, where themes and outliers were tagged and analysed (Li, 2012, 2014; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Yin, 2004, 2012). This thesis is presented in the format of a thesis that includes published works. New understandings and findings are presented in the original publication formats (see Chapters 4, 5, 7 and 9), which support the existing literature that highlights the importance of reciprocity and communication between the home and school. Further, the findings offer new understandings during the processes of transition: • the heightened emotions experienced individually and collectively as a consequence of the initial absence of routines (Publication 1, Chapter 4) • entering a school midway through the semester during an assessment period, and the effects this has on inclusion and exclusion for the new child, existing children in the class and teacher (Publication 2, Chapter 5) • reuniting with belongings and the affective relations between the international shift and the micro-movements of everyday life (Publication 3, Chapter 7) • the importance of temporality when forming a new friendship, and the effect this has on a child's developing identity (Publication 4, Chapter 9). Through its empirical findings, this thesis contributes to the under-researched area of young expatriate children and their experience of learning and developmental processes during a transition, adding to existing knowledge by using Vygotsky's cultural–historical theory, in which cultural transmission through institutions (from social to individual understanding) is considered the foundation for learning and development. This thesis proposes theorisation of young expatriate children's experiences, which is a new area of research in learning and development. Methodologically, this thesis adds to the existing literature by using Vygotsky's concept of perezhivanie as the unit of analysis, employed alongside empirical data, which adds to the limited studies that use this method of analysis in early childhood education. Further, the use of perezhivanie as the unit of analysis is extended through using Gonzalez Rey's (2004) work on subjective sense and subjective configuration, and advancing this theory with the term 'future subjective sense'. Pedagogically, this thesis adds to the limited existing literature to support current understandings of home and school pedagogy, and advances this knowledge through analysis across and between the home and school settings as the child in a family settles into everyday life in institutions in a new country. These findings lead to various recommendations for parents, educators, children and policymakers that may provide support for young expatriate children and families undergoing learning and developmental processes as they enter everyday life in a new country.


Thermistor bolometers are fast, sensitive infrared detectors with good responsivity from 1 to 15 microns. The detectors consist of a thin flake of thermistor material mounted on a thermal sink. The time constant of the detectors is determined by the type of thermal sink on which the flakes are mounted. By cementing thermistor flakes to quartz or glass thermal sinks, detectors with time constants ranging from 3 to 5 and 5 to 8 milliseconds, respectively, are obtained.Experimental results are given for quartz- and glass-backed thermistor detectors having sizes of sensitive areas ranging from 0.2 to 12.5 square millimeters. Performance criteria for these detectors are tabulated and plotted as a function of size of sensitive area. Typical frequency response and relative spectral responsivity data are given.Detector flakes have to be mounted in sealed housings for noise-free operation. Two types of housings are described.


In this study, the effects of seven pure plant secondary metabolites (PSMs) on rumen fermentation, methane (CH4 ) production and rumen bacterial community composition were determined. Two in vitro trials were conducted. In trial 1, nine concentrations of 8-hydroxyquinoline, α-terpineol, camphor, bornyl acetate, α-pinene, thymoquinone and thymol were incubated on separate days using in vitro 24-hr batch incubations. All compounds tested demonstrated the ability to alter rumen fermentation parameters and decrease CH4 production. However, effective concentrations differed among individual PSMs. The lowest concentrations that reduced (p < .05) CH4 production were as follows: 8 mg/L of 8-hydroxyquinoline, 120 mg/L of thymoquinone, 240 mg/L of thymol and 480 mg/L of α-terpineol, camphor, bornyl acetate and α-pinene. These concentrations were selected for use in trial 2. In trial 2, PSMs were incubated in one run. Methane was decreased (p < .05) by all PSMs at selected concentrations. However, only 8-hydroxyquinoline, bornyl acetate and thymoquinone decreased (p < .05) CH4 relative to volatile fatty acids (VFAs). Based on denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis analysis, different PSMs changed the composition of bacterial communities to different extents. As revealed by Ion Torrent sequencing, the effects of PSMs on relative abundance were most pronounced in the predominant families, especially in Lachnospiraceae, Succinivibrionaceae, Prevotellaceae, unclassified Clostridiales and Ruminococcaceae. The CH4 production was correlated negatively (-.72; p < .05) with relative abundance of Succinivibrionaceae and positively with relative abundance of Ruminococcaceae (.86; p < .05). In summary, this study identified three pure PSMs (8hydroxyquinoline, bornyl acetate and thymoquinone) with potentially promising effects on rumen CH4 production. The PSMs tested in this study demonstrated considerable impact on rumen bacterial communities even at the lowest concentrations that decreased CH4 production. The findings from this study may help to elucidate how PSMs affect rumen bacterial fermentation.


Porous rocks in the subsurface are now used for carbon capture and storage (CCS), to help ameliorate the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. These porous reservoir rocks require a caprock to retain the CO2. It is important to characterize caprock quality and its stability in the presence of elevated partial pressures of CO2. Lower Triassic sandstones are common in the UK and NW Europe and are being considered for future CCS projects. The caprock to these sandstones is the Middle and Upper Triassic Mercia Mudstone Group. We have studied the Mercia Mudstone using mineralogy, petrology and mercury injection porosimetry to assess its caprock quality. Detrital minerals are dominated by quartz, K-feldspar, illite and chlorite; diagenetic pore-filling minerals are dominated by calcite, dolomite and gypsum. In samples with abundant clay minerals, there are only small quantities of pore-filling diagenetic cements. Porosity is broadly uniform for both clay-rich and clay-poor samples. The cleaner (clay-poor) samples had their initial pore spaces filled with early diagenetic pore-filling carbonates and gypsum. Despite the broadly uniform porosity, mean pore throat diameter displays a strong inverse correlation with clay content whereas threshold capillary entry pressure shows a strong positive correlation with clay content. The more clay-rich samples represent much better caprock than the coarser-grained samples that contain abundant pore-filling cement. The samples could support potential column heights of supercritical CO2 between 70 and 540 m and have calculated permeabilities between 10−20 and 10−19 m2; leakage would occur only on geological time scales, assuming that these samples are representative of the whole caprock. Because caprock quality correlates with illite content and illite will be relatively immune to elevated partial pressures of CO2, the Mercia Mudstone probably represents a durable caprock for future Lower Triassic sandstone CCS projects.


The 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant highlighted the promise and shortcomings of robots. Had robots been able to quickly enter the plant and vent accumulated hydrogen, a meltdown could have been averted, but training requirements and technology limitations delayed their deployment. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency launched the DARPA Robotics Challenge to catalyze development of semi-autonomous robots capable of operating in dangerous, degraded environments so society is prepared to respond to future disasters. The challenge brings together robotics systems and software experts from around the world in a series of competitions to overcome technological obstacles related to robotic mobility, manipulation, perception, human–robot interface, and actuation. Over a period of less than three years, DARPA expects the field of robotics to undergo a historic transformation that could drive innovation in robots for defense, health care, agriculture, and industry. DARPA outlines its objectives for the challenge, addresses the ethics and present realities of robotics, and charts the development path to capable, cost-effective systems.


The paper traces the intertwined evolution of financial risk management and the financial derivatives markets. Spanning from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, this paper reveals the social, political and organizational factors that underpinned the exponential success of one of today's leading risk management methodologies, the applications based on the Black-Scholes-Merton options pricing model. Using empirical data collected from primary documents and interviews, the paper argues that the remarkable success of today's financial risk management should be attributed primarily to the communicative and organizational aspects of the methods rather than to their accuracy or validity. The analysis claims that financial risk management became a boundary object - a set of instructions and practices that served as a common ground and as a basis for discussion and operation despite having quite different meanings to the different communities of practice involved. As risk management became an integral part of common organizational market practices (e.g. margin calculation and intra-portfolio coordination) the actual content of the predictions that risk management systems produced became less relevant. In fact, a seemingly paradoxical shift took place: as the consensus around risk management systems was established, the accuracy and validity of the predictions produced by them became less important.


Multiple imputation (MI) is a commonly used approach to impute missing data. This thesis studies missing covariates in recurrent event data, and discusses ways to include the survival outcomes in the imputation model. Some MI methods under consideration are the event indicator D combined with, respectively, the right-censored event times T , the logarithm of T and the cumulative baseline hazard H 0 p T q . After imputation, we can then proceed to the complete data analysis. The Cox proportional hazards (PH) model and the PWP model are chosen as the analysis models, and the coefficient estimates are of substantive interest. A Monte Carlo simulation study is conducted to compare different MI methods, the relative bias and mean square error will be used in the evaluation process. Furthermore, an empirical study based on cardiovascular disease event data which contains missing values will be conducted. Overall, the results show that MI based on the Nelson-Aalen estimate of H 0 p T q is preferred in most circumstances.


With the development of power system deregulation and smart metering technologies, price-based demand response (DR) becomes an alternative solution to improving power system reliability and efficiency by adjusting the load profile. In this paper, we simulate an electricity market with DR from different types of commercial buildings by using agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) techniques. We focus on the consumption behavior of commercial buildings with different levels of DR penetration in different market structures. The results indicate that there is a noticeable impact from commercial buildings with price-responsive demand on the electricity market, and this impact differs with different scales of DR participation under different levels of market competitions.


Water markets provide one of the most promising institutional mechanisms for increasing access to irrigation from groundwater, particularly for tenants and small farmers. While water markets are found in all provinces of Pakistan, they are most prevalent in canal irrigated areas of Punjab and in NWFP. This study reviews the emerging literature on water markets and uses farm-level survey data to examine the performance of groundwater markets, with particular emphasis on Faisalabad District in Punjab and Dir District in NWFP.


Monsters. Real or imagined, literal or metaphorical, they have exerted a dread fascination on the human mind for many centuries. They attract and repel us, intrigue and terrify us, and in the process reveal something deeply important about the darker recesses of our collective psyche. Stephen Asma's On Monsters is a wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters-how they have evolved over time, what functions they have served for us, and what shapes they are likely to take in the future. Asma begins with a letter from Alexander the Great in 326 B.C. detailing an encounter in India with an "enormous beast-larger than an elephantthree ominous horns on its forehead." From there the monsters come fast and furious-Behemoth and Leviathan, Gog and Magog, the leopard-bear-lion beast of Revelation, Satan and his demons, Grendel and Frankenstein, circus freaks and headless children, right up to the serial killers and terrorists of today and the post-human cyborgs of tomorrow. Monsters embody our deepest anxieties and vulnerabilities, Asma argues, but they also symbolize the mysterious and incoherent territory just beyond the safe enclosures of rational thought. Exploring philosophical treatises, theological tracts, newspapers, pamphlets, films, scientific notebooks, and novels, Asma unpacks traditional monster stories for the clues they offer about the inner logic of an era's fears and fascinations. In doing so, he illuminates the many ways monsters have become repositories for those human qualities that must be repudiated, externalized, and defeated. Asma suggests that how we handle monsters reflects how we handle uncertainty, ambiguity, insecurity. And in a world that is daily becoming less secure and more ambiguous, he shows how we might learn to better live with monsters-and thereby avoid becoming one.


OBJECTIVE Flow diversion has proven to be an efficacious means of treating cerebral aneurysms that are refractory to other therapeutic means. Patients with tandem aneurysms treated with flow diversion have been included in larger, previously reported series; however, there are no dedicated reports on using this technique during a single session to treat this unique subset of patients. Therefore, the authors analyzed the outcomes of patients who had undergone single-session flow diversion for the treatment of tandem aneurysms. METHODS The authors conducted a retrospective review of flow diversion with the Pipeline embolization device (PED) for the treatment of tandem aneurysms in a single session at 2 participating medical centers: University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Barrow Neurological Institute, Phoenix, Arizona. Patient demographic data, aneurysm characteristics, treatment strategy and results, complications, and follow-up data were collected from the medical record and analyzed. RESULTS Between January 2011 and December 2015, 17 patients (12 female, 5 male) with a total of 38 aneurysms (mean size 4.7 ± 2.7 mm, mean ± SD) were treated. Sixteen patients had aneurysms in the anterior circulation, and 1 patient had tandem aneurysms in the posterior circulation. Twelve patients underwent only placement of a PED, whereas 5 underwent adjunctive coil embolization of at least 1 aneurysm. One PED was used in each of 9 patients, and 2 PEDs were required in each of 8 patients. There were 2 intraprocedural complications; however, in both instances, the patients were asymptomatic at the last follow-up. The follow-up imaging studies were available for 15 patients at a mean of 7 months after treatment (216 days, range 0-540 days). The mean initial Raymond score after treatment was 2.7 ± 0.7, and the mean final score was 1.3 ± 0.7. CONCLUSIONS In this series, the use of flow diversion for the treatment of tandem cerebral aneurysms had an acceptable safety profile, indicating that it should be considered as an effective therapy for this complicated subset of patients. Further prospective studies must be performed before more definitive conclusions can be made.


Background: Imperatives for digital inclusion mean there is growing demand for graduates with the knowledge and skills to produce digital services that are accessible to disabled people and older populations. Accessibility is mandated by a body of laws that constitute digital disability rights, and internet use among disabled people is increasing (ONS, 2019). However, a lack of progress in the delivery of accessible mobile web-based services, tools and resources mean disabled and older people face persistent digital barriers. There is a pressing need to develop accessibility capacity in the digital workforce. To this end, this systematic literature review seeks to establish what is empirically known about the effective teaching and learning of digital accessibility through the lens of pedagogy.
Methods/Design: The review will consider research (1999-2019) which focuses on the teaching and learning of digital accessibility in higher education and the workplace. The focus is on how pedagogy is enacted - the pedagogic practice of teaching - rather than curriculum development or other activities that relate to planning or governance. Two databases will be searched, using identified keywords. To identify further papers, backward- and forward- citation analysis is used. Researchers will work iteratively with the data, to ensure no loss of context through data extraction. A narrative synthesis of the findings will be presented.
Discussion: The review will collate literature on the pedagogy of accessibility education, reporting on how the teaching or learning of digital accessibility is effectively undertaken. It will identify the empirical basis for accessibility pedagogy.


The banks' response to their changes in leverage ratios is examined and evaluated in this paper. This reaction can be interpreted as if the coefficient of total debts to equity (lev1) and total assets to equity (lev2) are positive as anticipated in the banking network of Iran. The paper uses data from 31 Iranian banks' annual databases during the course of 2006-13 in order to estimate an empirical panel data model of banks' balance sheet adjustment. We identify the leverage ratio degree to show that both equity and liabilities tend to adjust to move leverage positively without considering the state of the Iranian economy. On the other hand, the index of leverage coefficient conditioned by the state of the economy is negative which replicates that banks tend to experience a negative impact of leverage on the return to equity as a result of cost push due to higher ratio of assets to equity in the bust and inappropriate return on investment. Furthermore, the non-performing loans ratio coefficient is negative and significant which proves that one percent increase in the nonperforming loans has led to a less than one percent decrease in the return on equity ratio as expected, but the total loans to total deposits ratio depicts a negative-significant coefficient which denotes the higher non-performing loans have caused that loans ratio increase will not necessarily give rise to higher returns for the banks. Besides, the leverage ratio (lev2) is positive as expected and banks gain higher returns through higher leverage. However, the leverage measure's coefficient conditioned by the state of the economy (dummy) is negatively significant owing to cost push from lower return on investment and higher ratio of assets to equity in the bust.


Reliable damage tolerant design of airframe structures relies on the accurate life prediction of fatigue cracks propagating from a detectable size to the critical size, which is challenging due to the complex load sequence effect under spectrum loading. This paper aims at gaining a further understanding of the complex influence of the loading history on fatigue damage through a detailed numerical simulation of the near-tip crack behaviour using the crack closure concept. The spectrum loading is broken down into a number of simple yet representative loading scenarios with overload/underload superimposed onto the baseline constant amplitude fatigue loading. Detailed finite element (FE) simulation of the plasticity-induced crack closure (PICC) has been carried out to catch the transient behaviour of PICC and link it to the fatigue damage. The load interaction effect has been analysed with the aim to identify the possible dominant loading cycle which could simplify the fatigue life prediction process in the industry. It is concluded that more reliable damage tolerant design can be achieved if the load sequence effect on fatigue damage can be taken into account more accurately for a structure under spectrum loadings.


Manufacturing integration has been sought out for a number of years. Standardised
information sharing has been an issue to guarantee computational systems interoperability
across the product life cycle, but particularly in the manufacturing phase. The International
Standard that supports product information namely ISO 10303 has supported computer
aided systems in the product information exchange and sharing. However, standards for
manufacturing information have been a problem waiting for solutions. In recent years
product and manufacturing models have been used to support computational systems.
However, the lack of an International Standard to represent the manufacturing information
was an obstacle to have interoperable systems in the so-called CAx process chain.
This thesis reports research on information support for computer aided process planning
and manufacture with the basis on the new NC standards that support information
exchange between CAD and CNC. A novel brand of product and manufacturing model has
been explored to represent information necessary to support the process planning activity
that uses new parts of ISO 10303 standard and the evolving ISO 14649 standard. The work
also focuses on the understanding and development of the aforementioned standards with
the aim to support and to integrate computer aided design, process planning and
manufacture. The structure of the manufacturing model is based on three classes namely
workingstation capability, process capability and resources capability. These provide the
necessary infrastructure for interoperable computational systems that support the CAx
process chain.
The models have been tested through a case study using a proposed computational
prototype entitled the STEP-TM CAPP system. This prototype shows this research
approach provides significant potential for the future interoperable process planning of
parts for the next generation of CAPP/CAM systems to make effective use of the future
IS014649 intelligent CNC controllers.


Scour around bridge piers is one of the main causes of bridge failures and is of great importance for hydraulic engineers and scientists. Prediction of the scour depth around piers is complicated, and accurate results are rarely achieved by the existing models. Recently, data mining approaches such as artificial neural networks and fuzzy inference systems have been applied successfully to predict scour depth around hydraulic structures. In this study, an alternative robust data mining approach was used for the predictions of the scour depth around piers, and the results were compared with those of three empirical approaches. Performances of developed models were tested by experimental data sets collected in laboratory experiments and field measurements, together with existing empirical approaches. Statistical measures indicate that the proposed M5′ model provides a better prediction of scour depth than the empirical approaches.


The paper analyses the ecological properties of taiga topsoil during its commercial development and assesses the consequences of impact which will be made by the future facilities on the environment (taking into account the types of impact, their characteristics, the tendencies of transformation in the nature systems growing with the increase of service life, which were detected at the producing fields), sanitary and socioeconomic aspects of the facilities operation under the conditions of specific geographical complexes. The object of study included waspodzolic and swamp-podzolic soils located in the Uvat district in Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Region of Tyumen region, in the area of potential impact of industrial facilities. The method of study implied the selection of soil specimens and their examination according to the standard practices. Ten specimens were taken from each of three areas of sampling. The specimens were subjected to office study in order to determine eleven parameters. The sources of impact made by the oil and gas facility on the environment were the material objects (buildings, constructions etc.), elements and assemblies of basic and auxiliary technologies which result in pollutants emission. The major impact on topsoil at the stage of preparatory works and construction of facilities was the mechanical damage to the natural state of soils. It is primarily connected with sites stripping from forestry and ground leveling. The paper reviews the issues of ecological condition of topsoil and forecast of possible changes while commercial development of the studied area. A negative load on soil may be decreased through planning and implementation of organizational measures on assessment of current state of the topsoil within the field and environmental threat from basic and auxiliary industrial facilities.


The experiment that was conducted to examine the advanced oxidation of the black liquor effluent obtained from the pulp and paper industry using the dark Fenton reaction in a lab-scale experiment based on Central Composite Design. The three factors along with their range values in that experiment were temperature (298; 333, K), H2O2 concentration (29.4; 58.8, mM), and Fe(II) concentration (0.36; 8.95, mM). The range of the factors were examine at fixed phase pH=3. Three response variables studied in the experiment, namely, COD removal after 90 min(%), UV254 removal after 90 min(aromatic content,%), and UV280 removal after 90 min (lignin content, %). The most widespread application of the RSM is in the situation where input variables potentially influence some quality characteristics of a process. Due to the fact that the experiment has several response variables, we employed a desirability function approach to optimize the responses simultaneously at one best setting of available factors. The resulted simultaneous optimization of an experiment is, in fact, the real situation where the experimenter should deal with since in an experiment, there is certainly a single input setting. After analyzing the data, both separated for each response variable and simultaneous for all response variables provided the same terms (factors) which are significantly contribute to the quadratic model (H2O2 and Fe(II) concentration). Nevertheles, they produced different factor settings. Through desirability function approach, we found that the best settings are 46.84 mM and 6.771 mM of H2O2 and Fe(II) concentration, respectively. Those setting can be obtained at desirability function's value of 0.782.


Several recent in-vitro data have revealed that CYP2C19, in addition to CYP2C9, is also involved in the 4-methylhydroxylation of tolbutamide. We evaluated the relative contribution of CYP2C9 and CYP2C19 genetic polymorphisms on the disposition of blood glucose lowering response to tolbutamide in normal healthy Korean subjects in order to reappraise tolbutamide as a selective in-vivo probe substrate of CYP2C9 activity. A single oral dose of tolbutamide (500 mg) or placebo was administered to 18 subjects in a single-blind, randomized, crossover study with a 2-week washout period. Twelve subjects (of whom six were CYP2C19 extensive metabolizer (EM) and six were CYP2C19 poor metabolizer (PM) genotype) were of the homozygous wild-type CYP2C9*1 genotype; the other six subjects were of the CYP2C9*1/*3 and CYP2C19 EM genotype. Pharmacokinetic parameters were estimated from plasma and urine concentrations of tolbutamide and 4-hydroxytolbutamide. Serum glucose concentrations were measured before and after oral intake of 100 g dextrose. In subjects heterozygous for the CYP2C9*3 allele, C(max) and AUC of tolbutamide were significantly greater and the plasma half-life significantly longer than those in homozygous CYP2C9*1 subjects. No pharmacokinetic differences were found between CYP2C19 EM and PM genotype subjects. The estimated AUC of the increase in serum glucose after oral intake of 100 g dextrose was 2.7-fold higher in subjects with the wild-type CYP2C9 genotype than in those with CYP2C9*1/*3, but CYP2C19 genetic polymorphism did not alter the blood glucose lowering effect of tolbutamide. The plasma AUC of 4-hydroxytolbutamide and the ratio of 4-hydroxytolbutamide/tolbutamide did not differ significantly between CYP2C19 PM and EM genotype subjects, while these parameters were about twice as high in subjects with the wild-type CYP2C9 genotype than in heterozygous CYP2C9*3 subjects (P < 0.05). Our results strongly suggest that the disposition and hypoglycemic effect of tolbutamide are affected mainly by CYP2C9 genetic polymorphism, but not by CYP2C19 polymorphism. The in-vivo contribution of CYP2C19 to tolbutamide 4-methylhydroxylation appears to be minor in humans. This suggests that, at least in vivo, tolbutamide remains a selective probe for measuring CYP2C9 activity in humans.


The distribution of economic education among US college graduates is quite unequal: female and underrepresented minority undergraduates, collectively, major in economics at 0.36 the rate that white, non-Hispanic male students do. This paper makes a four-part contribution to address this imbalance. First and foremost, we provide detailed comparative data at the institution level to provoke and inform the attention of economists and senior administrators at colleges and universities, among others. Second, we establish a definition of full inclusion in economic education on college and university campuses and use that definition to evaluate the status quo and to compare institutions. Third, we illuminate the reasons why the need to improve the distribution of economic education is urgent, including the imperative to support economic policymaking. Lastly, we point the way forward, identifying both currently available resources and reasonable next steps for all involved parties to take.


The paper questions common assumptions in the dominant representational framings of information systems success and failure and proposes a performative perspective that conceives IS success and failure as relational effects performed by sociomaterial practices of IS project actor-networks of developers, managers, technologies, project documents, methodologies, and other actors. Drawing from a controversial case of a highly innovative information system in an insurance company--considered a success and failure at the same time-- the paper reveals the inherent indeterminacy of IS success and failure and describes the mechanisms by which success and failure become performed and thus determined by sociomaterial practices. This is explained by exposing ontological politics in the reconfiguration and decomposition of the IS project actor-network and the emergence of different agencies of assessment that performed both different IS realities and competing IS assessments. The analysis shows that the IS project and the implemented system as objects of assessment are not given and fixed, but are performed by the agencies of assessment together with the assessment outcomes of success and failure. The paper demonstrates that by reframing IS success and failure, the performative perspective provides some novel and surprising insights that have a potential to change conversations on IS assessments in both the IS literature and IS practice.


In 2009 ICRW published Girls Speak: A New Voice in Global Development as the fourth report of the Girls Count report series. Four years later researchers supported by the Nike Foundation asked more than 500 girls from 14 countries to share their insights and perspectives with global decision-makers. This report synthesizes girls' voices from around the world and argues that girls' insights are crucial to designing effective global development policies.


What is sin? Is it simply wrongdoing? Why do its effects linger over time? In this sensitive, imaginative, and original work, Gary Anderson shows how changing conceptions of sin and forgiveness lay at the very heart of the biblical tradition. Spanning nearly two thousand years, the book brilliantly demonstrates how sin, once conceived of as a physical burden, becomes, over time, eclipsed by economic metaphors. Transformed from a weight that an individual carried, sin becomes a debt that must be repaid in order to be redeemed in God's eyes. Anderson shows how this ancient Jewish revolution in thought shaped the way the Christian church understood the death and resurrection of Jesus and eventually led to the development of various penitential disciplines, deeds of charity, and even papal indulgences. In so doing, it reveals how these changing notions of sin provided a spur for the Protestant Reformation. Broad in scope while still exceptionally attentive to detail, this ambitious and profound book unveils one of the most seismic shifts that occurred in religious belief and practice, deepening our understanding of one of the most fundamental aspects of human experience.


As evidenced in the digital divide literature, various and diverse sets of indicators and analytical techniques have been applied that have contributed to different purposes. Some investigations try to measure the gap of digital divide, while others have attempted to explain its determinants. However, certain facets are yet to be addressed in the literature. This study uses an individual-level multi-nation approach to study both developed and developing nations with the aim of identifying factors of digital divide that separate the digitally deprived and the intense users of internet. This unique research examines the two extreme sides of the inequality—citizens with no access to the internet and frequent users of the internet. We empirically test conventional (e.g., age, education, and income) and novel (e.g., income perception, media channels, and religion) factors. We find some interesting significant results that are later outlined in the study.


Abstract This report deals with the Upper Jurassic (lower and middle Oxfordian) Radiolaria of the Sula Islands, Indonesia. The radiolarian assemblage, though abundant and extremely well preserved, is poorly diversified and includes ∼ fifty species level taxa. The presence of common Praeparvicingula and rare pantanelliids within the faunal assemblage in association with Austral ammonites suggests that the Sula Islands were situated in the Northern Austral Province (>30° south) during the Oxfordian. This paleolatitude is in keeping with the Gondwanaland origin proposed by some workers. The Sula Island middle Oxfordian assemblage is strikingly similar to that described from the Galice Formation (Smith River subterrane, Klamath Mountains, North America). Some faunal elements described from the Sula Island assemblage are characteristic of the Southern Hemisphere and are only known elsewhere from New Zealand (Aita and Mackie 1992). Three radiolarian taxa were originally described from the Galice Formation in the Northern Hemisphere. No ammonite taxa are in common between the Sula Islands and the Galice Formation.


Statistical structure abounds in language. Human infants show a striking capacity for using statistical learning (SL) to extract regularities in their linguistic environments, a process thought to bootstrap their knowledge of language. Critically, studies of SL test infants in the minutes immediately following familiarization, but long-term retention unfolds over hours and days, with almost no work investigating retention of SL. This creates a critical gap in the literature given that we know little about how single or multiple SL experiences translate into permanent knowledge. Furthermore, different memory systems with vastly different encoding and retention profiles emerge at different points in development, with the underlying memory system dictating the fidelity of the memory trace hours later. I describe the scant literature on retention of SL, the learning and retention properties of memory systems as they apply to SL, and the development of these memory systems. I propose that different memory systems support retention of SL in infant and adult learners, suggesting an explanation for the slow pace of natural language acquisition in infancy. I discuss the implications of developing memory systems for SL and suggest that we exercise caution in extrapolating from adult to infant properties of SL. This article is part of the themed issue 'New frontiers for statistical learning in the cognitive sciences'.


An HD video incorporating specially-commissioned reconstructive acoustics work from the University of York.

Falkland Palace and Falkland Estate including the House of Falkland, Fife, Scotland with
published catalogue, three peer-reviewed texts and conference proceedings And a mention in
award-winning bbc radio 4 documentary Hearing the Past?!
A multi-media art project undertaken by David Chapman and I on the Falkland Estate in Fife,
Scotland between 2008 – 10. The various sound, video and live works we made over this
time drew on personal responses to the site as well as the testimonies of others with a
specific relationship to Falkland and its rich vein of intriguing geological and archaeological
features and historical narratives. The works applied innovative acoustical research from the
University of York.
The works produced were: Arcadia (2008) an eight-channel audio work for the Tapestry
Gallery in Falkland Palace; Falkland Audiowalk (2009) a downloadable mp3 audio piece;
Temple of Decision, (2010) an HD video incorporating specially-commissioned reconstructive
acoustics work from the University of York; the six-channel audio installation Cascading
(2010) and the live work Chase a Yard Worse than Last (2010).
Additionally a catalogue entitled Resounding Falkland was produced which included
commissioned texts by Christopher Woodward, Eric Laurier, Damian Murphy, David Jones,
REF Outputs Feedback
the artists and an introduction by Ninian Stuart. This is downloadable from:
http://www.resoundingfalkland.com/.
In the text Sept 2011 'The Caress of the Audio: Re-sounding Falkland', Social Semiotics Vol.
21, No. 4, pp: 517-529 we asked what the role of touch is in the creation and experience of
audio-visual media. This project and the methodologies employed we believed opened up
issues in relation to the use of media technologies to investigate and re-interpret historical
actions, processes, the senses and memory. The special issue "Touch" of Social Semiotics
was guest edited by Australian academic Dr Anne Cranny-Francis whom we first met when
we gave a joint paper on the Falkland project at an early stage at the conference Sounding
Out 4 (an international symposium on Sound in the Media in Sunderland in September 2008).
We were interviewed in her guest-edited and refereed issue of the Australian online journal
Scan: a journal of media arts culture. We also wrote 'Falkland: a Sonic Investigation of Place',
for the Journal of Media Practice, Vol.11, No.3. pp: 231-242 (December 2010). In May 2011
David Chapman and I attended the 5th International FKL Symposium on Soundscape in
Florence, Italy to give a paper entitled Falkland: a sonic investigation of place. The
proceedings from the Keep an Ear On Symposium (including a reworked 2000 word text
based on our paper) have now been published.
Arcadia was cited in a BBC Radio 4 documentary entitled Hearing the Past (2011), produced
by Jane Reck. This won the Royal Society Radio Prize for the best scripted/ edited radio
programme or podcast. This is one of the annual ABSW Science Writer's Awards for Britain
and Ireland (ASBW – Association of British Science Writers).
This multidisciplinary work was made in collaboration with David Chapman (Senior Lecturer in
Media Production at the University of East London). It reflects our shared interest in sound –
and was built on our differing expertise. My background is in Fine Art with a particular interest
in relational, participatory and site-based practice. David has a background in broadcast
documentary, film studies and music.


Spring is the season of most pronounced changes of biotic and abiotic parameters in boreal marine plankton communities. In order to establish a basis for the interpretation of trophic interactions and succession processes we monitored a set of ecological key parameters around the island of Helgoland (North Sea, German Bight) in 2004. We focussed our interest on the ability of copepods to utilize food during the development of the phytoplankton bloom when food quantity and quality are changing.Water temperature rose from 3 to 4°C in early March to more than 10°C at the end of May. Phytoplankton started to bloom in early April. The nitrogen content of seston increased concomitantly. The size of the dominant copepod species (Acartia clausii and Temora longicornis) increased from March to April. Their dry masses almost doubled. Variations in gross biochemical parameters and digestive enzyme activities were evident in both species. Grazing of females of either species on natural seston under in-situ conditions was selective.In spring 2004 phytoplankton bloomed comparatively late and may have been controlled by grazers. Food quantity and quality increased and enhanced the copepods physiological condition and reproductive success. The ability of copepods to efficiently utilize food was reflected by high digestive potentials. Species specific enzyme patterns indicate different traits of food utilization. The comprehensive knowledge about nutritional demands and catalytic potential may help to better understand the driving forces of food selection and, consequently, the succession of plankton communities.Acartia clausii, Temora longicornis, grazing, seston quality, digestive enzymes


Design study of the magnetic configuration and divertor geometry for the "advanced divertor" in a Demo tokamak reactor is summarized. Equilibrium calculation code, TOSCA, was developed for the super-X divertor (SXD) design by introducing two parameters, i.e. location of the super-X null and a ratio of the poloidal magnetic fluxes at the super-X null to that at the separatrix. SXD has an advantage to increase connection length from the divertor null point to the divertor target (L//div), which is 1.6-1.8 times larger with increasing fSX, compared to that in the conventional long-leg divertor. Whereas flux expansion near the super-X null was increased, increase in the target wet area (Awet) was small. Snowflake divertor (SFD) magnetic configuration was produced by adjusting PFC locations and the current distribution. L//div was largely increased near the SF null in the conventional divertor size. Key issues remain: control scenario for SFnull and high plasma shaping should be developed, and appropriate SFD design is necessary. For the advanced divertor design, divertor coils inside TFC are preferable due to the maximum current and size.


Accessibility is a concept central to integrated transport and land use planning. The goal of improving accessibility for all modes, for all people, has made its way into mainstream transport policy and planning in communities worldwide. This unique and fascinating book introduces new accessibility approaches to transport planning across Europe and the United States.


Tree plantations and forest restoration are leading strategies for enhancing terrestrial carbon (C) sequestration and mitigating climate change. While it is well established that species-rich natural forests offer superior C sequestering benefits relative to short-rotation commercial monoculture plantations, differences in rates of C capture and storage between longer-lived plantations (commercial or non-commercial) and natural forests remain unclear. Using a natural experiment in the Western Ghats of India, where late-20th century conservation laws prohibited timber extraction from monodominant plantations and natural forests within nature reserves, we assessed forests and plantations for aboveground C storage and the magnitude and temporal stability of rates of photosynthetic C capture (gross primary production). Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that species-rich forests show greater temporal stability of C capture, and are more resistant to drought, than monodominant plantations. Carbon stocks in monodominant teak (Tectona grandis) and Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus spp.) plantations were 30%–50% lower than in natural evergreen forests, but differed little from moist-deciduous forests. Plantations had 4%–9% higher average C capture rates (estimated using the Enhanced Vegetation Index–EVI) than natural forests during wet seasons, but up to 29% lower C capture during dry seasons across the 2000–18 period. In both seasons, the rate of C capture by plantations was less stable across years, and decreased more during drought years (i.e. lower resistance to drought), compared to forests. Thus, even as certain monodominant plantations could match natural forests for C capture and storage potential, plantations are unlikely to match the stability–and hence reliability–of C capture exhibited by forests, particularly in the face of increasing droughts and other climatic perturbations. Promoting natural forest regeneration and/or multi-species native tree plantations instead of plantation monocultures could therefore benefit climate change mitigation efforts, while offering valuable co-benefits for biodiversity conservation and other ecosystem services.


FOSTERING CREATIVITY IN CHILDREN'S learning is prioritised in a number of early childhood education framework documents across the world. Despite this emphasis, the educator's role in supporting children's creativity is often mitigated due to lack of understanding about the nature of creativity and how to appropriately provide support. This paper presents a practitioner-based case study of children's graphic-narrative-embodied play experiences through interlocutor–child interactions in one early childhood setting in Melbourne, Australia. The study aimed to investigate how one-to-one creative dialogues support children's drawing, talking and gesturing. Three children's graphic-narrative-embodied play and interlocutor–child interactions were video-recorded, transcribed and analysed using an interpretivist paradigm. The analysis process was guided by sociocultural theories and pre-existing frameworks on children's creative dispositions, thinking styles and creative processes in multimodal meaning-making. Key findings include conditions that favour creativity in children's graphic-narrative-embodied play and approaches to co-creating this with children.


Incentivized exploration in multi-armed bandits (MAB) has witnessed increasing interests and many progresses in recent years, where a principal offers bonuses to agents to do explorations on her behalf. However, almost all existing studies are confined to temporary myopic agents. In this work, we break this barrier and study incentivized exploration with multiple and long-term strategic agents, who have more complicated behaviors that often appear in real-world applications. An important observation of this work is that strategic agents' intrinsic needs of learning benefit (instead of harming) the principal's explorations by providing"free pulls". Moreover, it turns out that increasing the population of agents significantly lowers the principal's burden of incentivizing. The key and somewhat surprising insight revealed from our results is that when there are sufficiently many learning agents involved, the exploration process of the principal can be (almost) free. Our main results are built upon three novel components which may be of independent interest: (1) a simple yet provably effective incentive-provision strategy; (2) a carefully crafted best arm identification algorithm for rewards aggregated under unequal confidences; (3) a high-probability finite-time lower bound of UCB algorithms. Experimental results are provided to complement the theoretical analysis.


At the center of the United States' economic and social development, according to conventional wisdom, are industry and technology-while craftspeople and handmade objects are relegated to a bygone past. Renowned historian Glenn Adamson turns that narrative on its head in this innovative account, revealing makers' central role in shaping America's identity. Examine any phase of the nation's struggle to define itself, and artisans are there-from the silversmith Paul Revere and the revolutionary carpenters and blacksmiths who hurled tea into Boston Harbor, to today's "maker movement." From Mother Jones to Rosie the Riveter. From Betsy Ross to Rosa Parks. From suffrage banners to the AIDS Quilt.

Adamson shows that craft has long been implicated in debates around equality, education, and class. Artisanship has often been a site of resistance for oppressed people, such as enslaved African-Americans whose skilled labor might confer hard-won agency under bondage, or the Native American makers who adapted traditional arts into statements of modernity. Theirs are among the array of memorable portraits of Americans both celebrated and unfamiliar in this richly peopled book. As Adamson argues, these artisans' stories speak to our collective striving toward a more perfect union. From the beginning, America had to be-and still remains to be-crafted.


This study examined the extent and manner in which college and career readiness (CCR) is emphasized in Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) state accountability plans. We analyzed 52 plans (50 states, DC, Puerto Rico) using frameworks developed by Cook-Harvey, Darling-Hammond, Lam, Mercer, and Roc (2016) and Dowd and Bensimon (2015). Findings disclose significant variation, with CCR featuring prominently in some plans and receiving cursory mention in others. Most states identified CCR components as part of their school quality or student success indicators but few used ESSA to restructure their state initiatives to address persistent inequities. Even states making CCR a central feature typically applied color-blind approaches, addressing CCR for all students rather than developing CCR plans to address inequitable outcomes for student subgroups.


This paper proposes how ecological dynamics, a theory focusing on the performer-environment relationship, provides a basis for understanding skill acquisition in sport. From this perspective, learners are conceptualized as complex, neurobiological systems in which inherent self-organisation tendencies support the emergence of adaptive behaviours under a range of interacting task and environmental constraints. Intentions, perceptions and actions are viewed as intertwined processes which underpin functional movement solutions assembled by each learner during skill acquisition. These ideas suggest that skill acquisition programmes need to sample information from the performance environment to guide behaviour in practice tasks. Skill acquisition task protocols should allow performers to use movement variability to explore and create opportunities for action, rather than constraining them to passively receiving information. This conceptualisation also needs to characterize the design of talent evaluation tests, which need to faithfully represent the perception-action relationships in the performance environment. Since the dynamic nature of changing task constraints in sports cannot be predicted over longer timescales, an implication is that talent programmes should focus on developing performance expertise in each individual, rather than over-relying on identification of expert performers at specific points in time.


While the benchmark of trademark infringement traditionally has been a demonstration that consumers are likely to be confused by the use of a similar or identical trademark to identify the goods or services of another, a court-created doctrine called initial interest confusion allows liability for trademark infringement solely on the basis that a consumer might initially be interested, attracted, or distracted by a competitor's, or even a non-competitor's, product or service. Initial interest confusion is being used with increasing frequency, especially on the Internet, to shut down speech critical of trademark holders and their products and services, to prevent comparative advertisements and to otherwise limit information and choices available to consumers. Contemporary trademark law is at a crossroads and the initial interest confusion doctrine stands at the center of this intersection. This article uses the troublesome doctrine as a prism to analyze three crucial issues that will decide the future of trademark law: The first is whether it is ever acceptable to trade off of the goodwill established by another. The second is whether trademark protection primarily serves to protect consumers from being duped by unethical competitors, or instead primarily serves to bolster the business of individual trademark holders. Finally, the article considers the fundamental question: are trademarks and trademark infringement actions about protecting property rights or about providing more limited rights akin to tort and unfair competition actions? The answers to these questions lead to the conclusion that the initial interest confusion doctrine must be eliminated and trademark infringement returned to its origins as a narrow cause of action primarily directed at protecting consumers from deceptive business practices.


Introduced animals impact ecosystems due to predation, competition and disease transmission. The effect of introduced infectious disease on wildlife populations is particularly pronounced on islands where parasite populations are characterised by increased intensity, infra-community richness and prevalence (the "Island Syndrome"). This thesis studied parasite and bacterial pathogens of conservation and zoonotic importance in feral cats from two islands (Christmas Island, Dirk Hartog Island) and one mainland location (southwest Western Australia), and in black rats from Christmas Island. The general hypothesis tested was that Island Syndrome increases the risk of transmission of parasitic and bacterial diseases introduced/harboured by cats and rats to wildlife and human communities.

To investigate the Island Syndrome, necropsies were performed on feral cats and black rats and the macro parasites identified were collected and quantified to ascertain parasite prevalence, infra-community richness and intensity. On Christmas Island, it was determined that 92% of feral cats and 84% of rats harboured helminth parasites with an infra-community richness of 0-6, and 0-7, species in cats and rats, respectively. A high intensity (number of individual parasites recovered per host) was observed for some parasite species. These findings demonstrated that three epidemiological characteristics (high prevalence, infra-community richness and intensity/abundance) conformed to the characteristics of the Island Syndrome. However, contrary to the Island Syndrome hypothesis, a high regional richness of parasites was observed on Christmas Island, with nine species of helminth recorded in cats and 10 species in rats). The parasite community characteristic observations were repeated on Dirk Hartog Island, which also exhibited the same three characteristics of Island Syndrome (high prevalence, infra-community richness and intensity/abundance), but where no difference in regional richness was observed compared with the mainland environment. Specifically, the overall prevalence was significantly higher (p≤0.01) on Dirk Hartog Island (100%) compared to southwest WA (79.6%), as was mean infra-community richness (p≤0.001) (3.61±1.41 on Dirk Hartog Island and 1.57±1.29 from southwest WA). For those parasite species occurring on Dirk Hartog Island and in southwest WA, the prevalence and abundance was found to be significantly higher on Dirk Hartog Island than the southwest WA (p≤0.019 and p≤0.003, respectively). These findings suggest that not all facets proposed by the Island Syndrome hypothesis apply to all island environments, particularly for parasite communities harboured by invasive species.

Parasites of both zoonotic and conservation significance were detected in the cats and rats from both islands and from mainland Western Australia. Pathogenic bacteria of public health importance were identified; two species of Bartonella in rats (Bartonella phoceensis and an unidentified Bartonella species) on Christmas Island, two species Bartonella in cats (B. henselae and B. koehlerae) from southwest Western Australia, and Leptospira interrogans from both cats and rats on Christmas Island. The presence of Trypanosoma in cats and rats (from all three locations) and Leishmania (Christmas Island only) were investigated, with neither of these vector-borne protozoans identified at any of the locations.

In summary, this thesis presents new data pertaining to parasite community structures in two invasive mammalian pest species of global importance following their introduction to islands, and the potential relationship between their parasite community structures and parasite biology, prevailing physiographic factors and faunal biology. The observations suggest that cats and rats are important in contributing to and maintaining artificially elevated parasite species' richness within both insular and mainland environments. The findings also highlight potential threats that invasive animals pose with respect to disease transmission to susceptible ecological communities, in particular insular ecosystems, as reservoir hosts for parasitic and bacterial organisms.


Anthropogenic fires in Indian forests probably date back to the arrival of the first hominids on the Indian subcontinent.However, with our continuing dependence on forests for a variety of resources, but with shrinking forested areas, forests are being subjected to more intensive use than before. As a result, fires are occurring more frequently today than at any time in the past. This altered fire regime is probably qualitatively different from historical fire regimes in its impact on forests at multiple spatial scales. Present-day fires have possibly led to forest degradation, increasing susceptibility to invasion by alien species such as lantana (Lantana camara). We hypothesise that there may be a positive feedback between present-day fires and invasion by lantana, leading to a fire- lantana cycle that can have deleterious compositional and functional consequences for forest ecosystems and the commodities and services that society derives from them. Despite the widespread nature of the problem, we lack good empirical information on the effects of varying fire frequency and severity in Indian dry forests. So also, we lack a sound understanding of the mechanistic underpinnings of lantana's success and barriers to its control in Indian forests. Without such information we have little hope of a way out of the fire-lantana cycle.


Did the Court's procedural decision in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes undermine the substance of the systemic disparate treatment theory of employment discrimination? The answer to that question hinges on understanding the theoretical foundation for what one scholar calls the "most potent and least understood of the various Title VII causes of action." The current scholarly efforts to understand systemic disparate treatment law can be sorted into two distinct strands – methodological and contextualist. Scholars in the methodological strand question whether statistical techniques currently used by courts are sufficient to support an inference of discrimination. In the contextualist strand, scholars urge a conceptual expansion of the systemic disparate treatment theory that would impose liability on employers for wrongdoing located at the organizational level, rather than simply aggregating individual-level claims. These two strands have advanced independently, with scholars in each strand often overlooking the implications of progression in the other. This Article is the first attempt to unify these two scholarly strands. It does so by exposing the inescapable role of hidden Bayesian priors – preconceptions about background rates of discrimination – in the interpretation of statistical evidence. Taking a Bayesian view, the shortcomings of traditional statistical evidence identified by methodologists are not fatal. Yet, the Bayesian view also provides the conceptual space needed for further development of the organizational approach advanced by contextualists. The Wal-Mart decision presents an opportunity to radically rethink this misunderstood area of antidiscrimination law, and this Article takes the first step in developing of a coherent theory of systemic disparate treatment that embraces Bayesian priors.


This work examines the impact of land cover composition and pattern on catchment hydrologic response in an ungauged suburban catchment in Baltimore, MD. Field data collected by the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) are integrated with the Regional Hydro-Ecologic Simulation System (RHESSys) to develop models of the study catchment and a nearby reference catchment. A proxy-catchment calibration method is applied to calibrate model parameters, and the Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) method is applied to assess model uncertainty. To examine the impact of urban tree canopy on catchment hydrologic response, four vegetation management scenarios are simulated. Results suggest that parameter transfer from a forested reference catchment to an ungauged suburban catchment is viable for lightly urbanized catchments, and indicate that the extent of the urban tree canopy is a key determinant of streamflow response. Results also demonstrate the importance of preserving upland as well as riparian forest in maintaining ecosystem function.


A Concentrating Solar Power (CSP)/Solar Thermal Electric (STE) power plant is a substantial long-term investment. To evaluate the opportunities and risks associated with such a long-term investment requires careful technical and economic analysis. Usually, the results of such analysis are presented in what are known as feasibility studies. Traditional CSP/STE feasibility studies start by defining an economic model to estimate the eco-nomic metrics that characterize the quality and attractiveness of the investment project associated with the building and exploitation of the CSP/STE power plant. Typical economic metrics are the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), the Internal Rate of Return (IRR), the Net Present Value (NPV), and the Debt Coverage Ratio (DCR). Once the model is defined, the main challenge is to accurately estimate the technical and econom-ic variables and parameters that informs the model, such as the project's Total Investment, the Annual O&M costs, the Annual Electricity Generation, the Discount Rates, the Equity-to-Debt ratio, etc. Of all of these variables and parameters, the Annual Electricity Generation is the one that characterizes the quality of the solar resource at the CSP/STE plant site and the technical performance of the CSP/STE technology selected to build the solar power plant. To estimate it, one should first develop or acquire a year of relevant solar radiation and other meteorological data that is representative of the long-term meteorology at the solar plant site, and use it, together with the technical parameters that define the plan technology, configuration and operation strategy, to feed a technical model of the plant and estimate the Annual Electricity Generation estimate. Often, only one yearly data set is used that is representative of the average meteorological year to be expected at the site in the long-term. Sometimes this is supplemented by estimates of the production in a bad year that will be exceeded with a certain probability. While the above approach, combined with a sensitivity analysis of the economic variables and parameters of the economic model is useful to banks and other potential investors in the decision making process related to the decision of carrying out the investment, there are other more sophisticated approaches that can be pursued.The one we think is worth exploring is a full stochastic approach, in which the following aspects are explicitly modeled and taking into account: - The intrinsic variability of the solar resources and other meteorological variables. - The intrinsic variability of the price of commodity-like plan components, such as molten salt. - The uncertainty of the technical model used to determine the annual electricity yield. - The uncertainty associated with all the different component costs and other costs that determine the aggregate values of the plan investment and the Annual O&M cost. In such a model, all the input variables and parameters are considered probability distributions. The challenge is to determine these distributions. How to determine the probability distribution of the Annual Electricity yield of the CSP/STE plant is the overarching theme of this document. Obviously, it starts with how to model the probability distribution of the solar radiation and other relevant meteorological variables. In this report we discuss the factors affecting this distribution.


"Avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws." (1) I. INTRODUCTION Adolf Eichmann's evasion of arrest and prosecution after World War II until he was located, captured, and brought to Israel for prosecution by Mossad agents is one of the most famous and earliest examples of state-sanctioned kidnapping. (2) Israel ignored the proper channels for obtaining custody of Eichmann and violated the sovereignty of Argentina by sneaking into the country, overpowering Eichmann, and dragging him to Israel to stand trial for his crimes against the Jewish people. (3) Sixty years later the U.S. Supreme Court sanctioned this kind of transborder abduction and found it a proper method for obtaining jurisdiction over a defendant located abroad. (4) In United States v. Alvarez-Machain, (5) DEA agents abducted Alvarez-Machain and brought him to the United States to stand trial for the torture and murder of a DEA agent. (6) Alvarez-Machain challenged jurisdiction, asserting that he was illegally before the California court, but the Supreme Court held that absent explicit language in the extradition treaty between Mexico and the United States withdrawing jurisdiction resulting from transborder kidnapping, circumventing an extradition treaty does not itself violate the treaty. (7) The Supreme Court's decision in Alvarez-Machain set a dangerous precedent for circumventing extradition law, which could be exploited when the United States seeks to prosecute a criminal physically present in a state with an unfavorable extradition treaty. (8) This risk is most prominent for states that assert an exception to the duty to extradite for capital offenses in their extradition treaties. (9) This death penalty exception is written into many of the extradition treaties to which the United States is party. (10) In the context of the United Nations Convention Against Torture as codified by the United States, the Alvarez-Machain precedent would allow the United States to prosecute torturers domestically and to subject them to the death penalty upon conviction, despite any death penalty exception that would otherwise prevail. (11) The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the domestic law of most of the rest of the countries of the world prohibit the death penalty, so domestic prosecution under 18 U.S.C [section] 2340, in conjunction with the Alvar ez-Machain precedent, would be the only way to implement the death penalty in torture prosecutions. (12) This Note will argue that the potential for severe exploitation of this precedent in the context of 18 U.S.C. [section] 2340 warrants protecting against it, and will suggest two methods for doing so. Part II of this Note will address the history of extradition law and the death penalty exception, the Alvarez-Machain case, and the ramifications of U.S. codification of the Convention Against Torture. Part III of this Note will describe the reaction to Alvarez-Machain, and its effect on extradition law. Part IV will identify how the Alvarez-Machain and 18 U.S.C. [section] 2340 precedents create a mechanism for circumventing the ICC in order to punish torture defendants with the death penalty, and will suggest two methods for preventing this circumvention. II. HISTORY A. Extradition Law Requirements and Procedures This note concerns extradition to the United States, which is the formal surrender of a person by a foreign state of refuge to a requesting state for prosecution or punishment. (13) Because extradition is a function of treaty, bilateral or multilateral, it requires compliance with several specific procedures and doctrines. (14) The United States relies almost exclusively on bilateral extradition treaties that enumerate, inter alia, extraditable offenses, exceptions to the duty to extradite, and the required protocol for extradition. (15) Because a valid extradition request carries with it an affirmative duty to either extradite or prosecute the individual domestically, several criteria precede invocation of an extradition treaty. …


Abstract Generators installed for backup power during blackouts could help satisfy peak electricity demand; however, many are diesel generators with nonnegligible air emissions that may damage air quality and human health. The full (private and social) cost of using diesel generators with and without emission control retrofits for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) were compared with a new natural gas turbine peaking plant. Lower private costs were found for the backup generators because the capital costs are mostly ascribed to reliability. To estimate the social costs from air quality, the changes in ambient concentrations of ozone (O3) and PM2.5 were modeled using the Particulate Matter Comprehensive Air Quality Model with extensions (PMCAMx) chemical transport model. These air quality changes were translated to their equivalent human health effects using concentration-response functions and then into dollars using estimates of "willingness-to-pay" to avoid ill health. As a case study, 1000 MW of backup generation operating for 12 hr/day for 6 days in each of four eastern U.S. cities (Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and New York) was modeled. In all cities, modeled PM2.5 concentrations increased (up to 5 µg/m3) due mainly to primary emissions. Smaller increases and decreases were observed for secondary PM2.5 with more variation between cities. Increases in NOx emissions resulted in significant nitrate formation (up to 1 µg/m3) in Atlanta and Chicago. The NOx emissions also caused O3 decreases in the urban centers and increases in the surrounding areas. For PM2.5, a social cost of approximately $2/kWh was calculated for uncontrolled diesel generators in highly populated cities but was under 10 ¢/kWh with PM2.5 and NOx controls. On a full cost basis, it was found that properly controlled diesel generators are cost-effective for meeting peak electricity demand. The authors recommend NOx and PM2.5 controls.


Abstract Schmidt-hammer exposure-age dating (SHD) was applied at 15 sites with glacially-transported granite boulders in parts of northern and western Ireland and southwest Scotland that had been exposed by retreat of the last British-Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS) or Younger Dryas (YD) ice masses. Seven of these surfaces had previously been dated using terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) exposure-age dating. Application of the granite calibration equation of Tomkins et al. (2018c) indicated a close correspondence between the SHD ages and the TCN ages (within 1σ or 2σ uncertainties). These findings demonstrate that SHD ages can be of comparable accuracy, precision, and reliability to TCN ages and are a strong argument for the more extensive use of SHD in some Quaternary dating projects. However, surface ages obtained by both SHD and TCN dating should not be accepted uncritically; they must be assessed in relation to the wider geological, geomorphological, and geochronological evidence. Evaluation of eight SHD ages, for which corresponding TCN ages are not available, indicate that most are consistent with current theory and field evidence, but some anomalous age estimates occur.


While proponents of adaptive user interfaces tout potential performance gains, critics argue that adaptation's unpredictability may disorient users, causing more harm than good. We present a study that examines the relative effects of predictability and accuracy on the usability of adaptive UIs. Our results show that increasing predictability and accuracy led to strongly improved satisfaction. Increasing accuracy also resulted in improved performance and higher utilization of the adaptive interface. Contrary to our expectations, improvement in accuracy had a stronger effect on performance, utilization and some satisfaction ratings than the improvement in predictability.


Blogs, alongside being an increasingly visible part of the contemporary public sphere, are
spaces of communication that offer insights into the motivations and practices of political
enthusiasm. Based on the analysis of the one hundred most commented on, most recommended and most 'hotlisted' blogs per week on the popular progressive blog Daily Kos during a 22 week period from September 2012 to January 2013, this paper argues that political enthusiasm is best conceptualised as a form of media fandom, in which blogging and commenting on blogs constitute forms of enunciative and textual productivity
motivated by the affective bond between citizens and politicians as fans and fan objects.
This study offers no support for recent suggestions that blogging leads to general political polarisation, and instead indicates that polarisation effects vary among different political fan cultures and across the political spectrum. However, its findings suggest that the affective basis of political fandom – fans' self-reflective investments in given symbolic forms (such as politicians and parties) rather than substance (values and beliefs) – problematises the
efficacy and legitimacy of indirect, representative democracies in the digital age.


The activity of the sodium-potassium (Na+-K+) pump in arterial tissue from rats with chronic DOCA-salt or one-kidney Grollman renal hypertension was assayed in ritro as the rate of ouabaln-sensltive MRb+ uptake. Estimates of total cell Na+ and tissue K+ were made by a lithium-substitution method on the same segment of arterial tissue. In both freshly excised tail arteries and aortas, and in aortas after overnight cold storage at 4°C and a 3-hour equilibration at 37°C in Krebs-Henseleit, cell Na+ content did not differ significantly between control and hypertensive groups. However, ouabain-sensitive MRb+ uptake was increased in arteries from DOCA-salt and renal hypertensive rats as compared to controls. In overnight-stored and 3-hour equilibrated aortic tissue, we then used low Na+ medium to reduce, or monensin, a Na+ ionophore, to increase total cell Na+, to study the relationship between cell Na+ and Na+-K+ pump activity. We observed a sigmold relationship between total cell Na+ and ouabain-sensitire MRb+ uptake in tissue from all groups of rats. However, in tissue from DOCA-salt and renal hypertensive rats, the relationship between cell Na+ and pump activity was shifted, indicating a greater pump activity for each level of total cell Na+ and greater maximal pumping. These data suggest that increases observed in pump activity in in vitro arterial tissue from hypertensive rats may not be solely attributable to elevated cell Na+ content and may also involve increases in number of active sarcolemmal pump molecules per unit tissue weight or in their turnover rate. (Hypertension 4 (suppl II): II-43-II-48, 1982)


We study the problem of minimising regret in two-armed bandit problems with Gaussian rewards. Our objective is to use this simple setting to illustrate that strategies based on an exploration phase (up to a stopping time) followed by exploitation are necessarily suboptimal. The results hold regardless of whether or not the difference in means between the two arms is known. Besides the main message, we also refine existing deviation inequalities, which allow us to design fully sequential strategies with finite-time regret guarantees that are (a) asymptotically optimal as the horizon grows and (b) order-optimal in the minimax sense. Furthermore we provide empirical evidence that the theory also holds in practice and discuss extensions to non-gaussian and multiple-armed case.


This paper presents an investigation into a population of robots that evolves through embodied evolution an evolutionary process that is not centrally controlled, but emerges from robot interactions just as natural evolution does. The robots select their partners randomly, without reference to any assessment of task performance, but the environment is biased to promote task behaviour by awarding additional life-time to robots that pick up pucks. The experiments show that the robots do learn to pick up pucks in such a setting. Contrary to what one might expect, increasing the amount of additional lifetime awarded decreases task performance for all settings considered. Closer analysis shows that this decrease is in part due to the fact that the increased lifespan decreases the number of opportunities to spread a robots genome, but that increasing the award level also negatively affects selection pressure when there is opportunity for robots to spread their genome. We conclude that higher rewards overly emph...


Staging has proved a successful technique for programmatically removing code abstractions, thereby allowing for faster program execution while retaining a high-level interface for the programmer. Unfortunately, techniques based on staging suffer from a number of problems — ranging from practicalities to fundamental limitations — which have prevented their widespread adoption. We introduce Quoted Staged Rewriting (QSR), an approach that uses type-safe, pattern matching-enabled quasiquotes to define optimizations. The approach is "staged" in two ways: first, rewrite rules can execute arbitrary code during pattern matching and code reconstruction, leveraging the power and flexibility of staging; second, library designers can orchestrate the application of successive rewriting phases (stages). The advantages of using quasiquote-based rewriting are that library designers never have to deal directly with the intermediate representation (IR), and that it allows for non-intrusive optimizations — in contrast with staging, it is not necessary to adapt the entire library and user programs to accommodate optimizations. We show how Squid, a Scala macro-based framework, enables QSR and renders library-defined optimizations more practical than ever before: library designers write domain-specific optimizers that users invoke transparently on delimited portions of their code base. As a motivating example we describe an implementation of stream fusion (a well-known deforestation technique) that is both simpler and more powerful than the state of the art, and can readily be used by Scala programmers with no knowledge of metaprogramming.


OBJECTIVE
This study assessed mental and health functioning in full versus partial posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among newly returning veterans from Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom [OIF]) and Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom [OEF]) who were referred by primary care providers for a behavioral health assessment and reported an emotional trauma.

METHOD
Participants included OEF/OIF veterans receiving care in 2 veterans' affairs medical centers and affiliated community-based outpatient clinics who reported behavioral health issues to their primary care providers. All veterans underwent a clinical behavioral health assessment of Axis I disorders and functioning via telephone between June 2007 and April 2008. Functioning was measured using the 12-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12). Those reporting a previous emotional trauma were subsequently assessed for PTSD using the PTSD Patient Checklist (PCL).

RESULTS
The final sample (N=201) was 88.1% male with a mean age of 34.2 years (SD=10.1). Individuals with full PTSD (n=120, 59.7%) reported worse mental health functioning compared to those with partial PTSD (n=37, 18.4%). Individuals with partial PTSD reported worse mental health functioning scores than the trauma exposed-only group (n=44, 21.9%). Compared to national norms, patients with partial PTSD reported mental health functioning scores that were worse than 75% of individuals within a similar age range. After controlling for other psychiatric factors, there was no difference between partial PTSD and the trauma-only group.

CONCLUSION
OEF/OIF veterans with partial PTSD referred for a behavioral health assessment may incur significant problems with functioning. These complaints may be better attributed to psychiatric comorbidity as opposed to symptoms specifically related to trauma.


In Legal Practice, Ulrich Lau and Thies Staack offer a richly annotated translation of criminal case records from the pre-imperial period of Qin (between 246 BC and 222 BC) and shed new light on the Qin administration of justice.


Under present climate conditions, convection at high latitudes of the North Pacific is restricted to shallower depths than in the North Atlantic. To what extent this asymmetry between the two ocean basins was maintained over the past 20 kyr is poorly known because there are few unambiguous proxy records of ventilation from the North Pacific. We present new data for two sediment cores from the California margin at 800 and 1600 m depth to argue that the depth of ventilation shifted repeatedly in the northeast Pacific over the course of deglaciation. The evidence includes benthic foraminiferal Cd/Ca, 18O/16O, and 13C/12C data as well as radiocarbon age differences between benthic and planktonic foraminifera. A number of features in the shallower of the two cores, including an interval of laminated sediments, are consistent with changes in ventilation over the past 20 kyr suggested by alternations between laminated and bioturbated sediments in the Santa Barbara Basin and the Gulf of California [Keigwin and Jones, 1990; Kennett and Ingram, 1995; Behl and Kennett, 1996]. Data from the deeper of the two California margin cores suggest that during times of reduced ventilation at 800 m, ventilation was enhanced at 1600 m depth, and vice versa. This pronounced depth dependence of ventilation needs to be taken into account when exploring potential teleconnections between the North Pacific and the North Atlantic.


Over the past 300 years New England's landscape has been transformed. The forests were cleared; the land was farmed intensively through the mid-19th century and then was allowed to reforest naturally as agriculture shifted west. Today, in many ways the region is more natural than at any time since the American Revolution. This fascinating natural history is useful background for anyone interested in New England's ecology, wildlife, or landscape. In "New England Forests Through Time" these historical and environmental lessons are told through the world-renowned dioramas in Harvard's Fisher Museum. These remarkable models have introduced New England's landscape to countless visitors and have appeared in many ecology, forestry and natural history texts. This first book based on the dioramas conveys the phenomenal history of the land, the beauty of the models, and new insights into nature.


You've made your mind up: you are going to leave your employer. Or maybe your mind has been made up for you: you've been fired or laid off. Your first impulse is to pick up the phone to call the recruiter who helped you a few years ago. Executive recruiters are an important part of any job search, but there are some strategies to make yourself as attractove as possible to potential employers and protect yourself from unscrupulous "headhunters." Many professionals, at virtually every level, place their entire trust and future with one executive recruiter. There are serious flaws to this kind of thinking. Executive recruiters are paid by the company or organization for which they recruit. They work for their clients, not you. Even under the most conservative ethical code, they owe you nothing more than honesty. But let's assume your recruiter does have an interest in your well-being. Why limit your contracts to one recruiter? You are not indebted to the recruiter at the early stages of a search. There are some excellent ethical recruiters who specialize in placing public relations practitioners. But once you contract the recruiters, or they contact you, it gets very murky. You hear the recruiter is working on a search for which you are perfect, but he won't return your call. Another tells you that their firm has the perfect job for you, and is certain his client will want to see you. But the recruiter never calls back. A third sends you on an interview for which you seem entirely unqualified. It's natural to ask, "What's going on here?" Search methods affect candidates If you understand the executive search business, the picture starts becoming a bit clearer. There are two ways search firms make money. In a contingency search, the recruiter only gets paid if the candidate presented by the search firm is hired. If the employer hires from within, finds a candidate that was not mentioned by the search firm, or decides not to hire, the recruiter does not get paid. Think of the contingency searcher as a real estate sales person: no deal, no cash. A recruiter doing a retained search will be paid whether the agency or the client finds the candidate, or even if the company hires no one. The retained recruiter will serve in more of an advisory role in a search, because the compensation is not directly affected by the final decision. Both methods generally net the recruiting firm a fee of about 30% of the candidate's annual salary. Ethical recruiters say they can't claim a fee unless they initiate their action on a genuine order from a client, have negotiated a fee before the placement and coordinated a meeting between the employer and candidate. At first glance, a recruiter's method of remuneration seems of little interest, but when you think through the ramifications for the job hunter, it makes a difference. Let's say a contingency firm presents you for an opening, and it comes to a dead heat between you and someone with equally impressive credentials. The other candidate introduced herself to the potential employer, but you have been "presented" by a contingency recruiter. The 30% cost differential might make a difference. On the other hand, a retained recruiter will help a client compare you and the other candidate more objectively. The retained recruiter may have some desire to have "found" the winning candidate for the client and demonstrate his knowledge of the field, but more likely he just wants his client to get the best person for the job. Don't avoid contingency recruiters entirely. The most valuable thing every recruiter has is access to potential employers. They work hard at this, and they deserve their fees when they present good candidates to their clients. In addition, they are aware of hiring trends in terms of job levels and specialties. Good recruiters, contingency or retained, can offer you valuable insights into what their clients are like, and what they are looking for. …