Santurismo ( Santeria + Turismo ) refers to the popular formula of Afro-Cuban religions and tourism and initially served the Cuban government in the 1960s to promote Santeria as a folkloric product of Cuban identity through staged performances in touristic surroundings. Gradually, it became a coping strategy by Cuban people to deal with political and economic hardship during the Special Period in the 1990s which led to the emergence of diplo-santeria by so-called jinetero-santeros . While the continuous process of commodification of Cuban Santeria is marked by local social, economic and political influences, it also relates to current tendencies in comparable religious and spiritual phenomena at a global level. This research paper is based on an extensive literature review as well as on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cuba in 2016. It aims at showing in which ways Afro-Cuban religions have worked their way up from a stigmatized and persecuted religious system to a widely valorized religion in the spiritual and touristic sphere. While warning for the consequences of its commodification, it also shows that, over time, Santeria has proved to serve as a weapon for resistance and struggle, which is still ongoing in Cuban society today.


We introduce novel algorithms for the quantum simulation of fermionic systems which are dramatically more efficient than those based on the Lie–Trotter–Suzuki decomposition. We present the first application of a general technique for simulating Hamiltonian evolution using a truncated Taylor series to obtain logarithmic scaling with the inverse of the desired precision. The key difficulty in applying algorithms for general sparse Hamiltonian simulation to fermionic simulation is that a query, corresponding to computation of an entry of the Hamiltonian, is costly to compute. This means that the gate complexity would be much higher than quantified by the query complexity. We solve this problem with a novel quantum algorithm for on-the-fly computation of integrals that is exponentially faster than classical sampling. While the approaches presented here are readily applicable to a wide class of fermionic models, we focus on quantum chemistry simulation in second quantization, perhaps the most studied application of Hamiltonian simulation. Our central result is an algorithm for simulating an N spin–orbital system that requires  ˜ ( N 5 t ) ?> gates. This approach is exponentially faster in the inverse precision and at least cubically faster in N than all previous approaches to chemistry simulation in the literature.


1. Early British Railways 1800-1844 [1925] H.G. Lewin 2. Railway Problems [1887] J.S. Jeans 3. English Railways: Their Development and Relation to the State [1915] E. Cleveland Stephens 4. Elements of Railway Economics [1905] W.M. Acworth 5. Studies in the Economics of Overhead Costs [1923] J.M. Clark Economics of Railway Transport [1909] S.C. Williams 6. Rise of Rail Power in War and Conquest 1833-1914 [1915] E.A. Pratt 7. Transport Co-ordination [1929] K. Fenelon


NUMERICAL MODELING OF BLAST-INDUCED LIQUEFACTION Wayne Y. Lee Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Doctor of Philosophy A research study has been conducted to simulate liquefaction in saturated sandy soil induced by nearby controlled blasts. The purpose of the study is to help quantify soil characteristics under multiple and consecutive high-magnitude shock environments similar to those produced by large earthquakes. The simulation procedure involved the modeling of a three-dimensional halfspace soil region with pre-defined, embedded, and strategically located explosive charges to be detonated at specific time intervals. LS-DYNA, a commercially available finite element hydrocode, was the solver used to simulate the event. A new geo-material model developed under the direction of the U.S. Federal Highway Administration was applied to evaluate the liquefaction potential of saturated sandy soil subjected to sequential blast environments. Additional procedural enhancements were integrated into the analysis process to represent volumetric effects of the saturated soil's transition from solid to liquid during the liquefaction process. Explosive charge detonation and pressure development characteristics were modeled using proven and accepted modeling techniques. As explosive charges were detonated in a pre-defined order, development of pore water pressure, volumetric (compressive) strains, shear strains, and particle accelerations were carefully computed and monitored using custom developed MathCad and C/C++ routines. Results of the study were compared against blast-test data gathered at the Fraser River Delta region of Vancouver, British Columbia in May of 2005 to validate and verify the modeling procedure's ability to simulate and predict blast-induced liquefaction events. Reasonable correlations between predicted and measured data were observed from the study.


Western law schools are suffering from an identity and moral crisis. Many of the legal profession's problems can be traced to the law school environment, where students are taught to reason and practice in ways that are often at odds with their own personalities and values and even with generally accepted psychologically healthy practices. The idealism, ethic of care, and personal moral compasses of many students become eroded and even lost in the present legal education system. Formalism, rationalism, elitism, and big business values have become paramount. In such a moment of historical crisis, there exists the opportunity to create a new legal education story. This paper is a conceptual study of both my own Canadian legal education and the general legal education experience. It examines core problems and critiques of the existing Western legal education organizational and pedagogical paradigm to which Canadian law schools adhere. New approaches with the potential to enrich, humanize, and heal the Canadian law school experience are explored. Ultimately, the paper proposes a legal education system that is more interdisciplinary, theoretically and practically integrated, emotionally intelligent, technologically connected, morally accountable, spiritual, and humane. Specific pedagogical and curricular strategies are suggested, and recommendations for the future are offered. The dehumanizing aspects of the law school experience in Canada have rarely been studied. It is hoped that this thesis will fill a gap in the research and provide some insight into an issue that is of both academic and public importance, since the well-being of law students and lawyers affects the interests of their clients, the general public, and the integrity and future ofthe entire legal system.


We study an eruptive X1.1 circular-ribbon flare on 2013 November 10, combining multiwavelength observations with a coronal field reconstruction using a non-force-free field method. In the first stage, a filament forms via magnetic reconnection between two mildly twisted sheared arcades, which are embedded under the fan dome associated with a null point (NP). This reconnection seems to be driven by photospheric shearing and converging flows around the inner two arcade footpoints, consistent with the flare-related changes of the transverse field. The southern portion of the filament rises upward due to torus instability and pushes against the NP. The induced NP reconnection then generates the circular ribbon and the initial remote brightening in the west, as accelerated electrons precipitate along the fan and propagate outward along quasi-separatix surfaces with high values of the squashing factor (Q) in the envelope fields, which have a curtain-like shape here. In the second stage, the southern end of the flux rope breaks away from the surface, sequentially disrupts the dome and overlying fields, and erupts in a whipping-like fashion to become a partial halo coronal mass ejection. This leads to an enhanced flare emission and fast-moving remote brightenings at the footpoints of the magnetic curtain, which span a remarkably broad region and are also associated with coronal dimmings. This is a rare example of eruptive circular-ribbon flares, in which the evolution of a flux rope from its formation to successful eruption out of the dome and the resulting unusually extended remote brightenings are completely observed.


Abstract of the book: While there is growing recognition that understanding knowledge is at the very heart of economics, little work has thus far been forthcoming representing in a comprehensive and coherent way its fundamental nature and wide-ranging consequences for economic analysis. The editors are to be commended for having filled this critical gap by providing a well-organized collection of outstanding contributions. This rich and greatly needed Handbook is comprised of contributions about the role knowledge plays in the history of the discipline as well as the most significant current developments as we witness them, particularly in the branches of evolutionary, institutional and complexity economics.'


The design and selection of a suitable drive unit for use in mechatronic systems is a process that can be demanding not only in terms of the time required but also in terms of the demands placed on the knowledge and experience of development workers. The development aimed to create algorithms for the selection of compact electric power units based on data from dynamic analyses of the proposed system, with the help of which it would be possible to shorten and simplify the drive unit selection process significantly. The result of the development is a software tool called DrivePicker. Its functions and benefits are demonstrated in the design of drive units for a robotic arm with an angular structure and 5 degrees of freedom. Comparing selected units from two manufacturers (Spinea DS and HarmonicDrive CanisDrive) shows that by using this software tool, we can significantly speed up and streamline the design of mechatronic devices. DrivePicker also has an interface for connection to simulation and CAD systems, which opens up the possibility of further autonomy.


Ischemic stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability throughout the world.
One important aspect of stroke pathophysiology are immunological changes after stroke, especially a combination of post stroke immunodepression, leading to
infectious complications after stroke and an activation of the immune system, leading to cerebral injury. Adipose tissue has several immunological functions and obesity
leads to immunological complications and is accompanied by a chronic immune activation.
To study the effects of body weight and obesity on the immune system and measure weight and fat tissue changes after ischemic stroke we conducted the LIPS Trial and enrolled 50 stroke patients and 16 control subjects between July 2015 and July 2016. On the day of admission and on the days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 30, 90 and 180 after admission stroke patients were weighed with an in-bed scale, body composition was measured with BIA, the triceps-skin fold thickness was measured, the NIHSS scale was obtained and blood was drawn. FACS-analysis was performed and triglycerides,cholesterol, CRP and PCT were measured at the central laboratory facility of the Universitatsmedizin Greifswald. Luminex-multiplex analysis for multiple cyto- and chemokines was performed at the Multiplex Facility at the University Leiden. A cerebral MRI and an abdominal MRI were performed shortly after admission and on days 5-7 for most patients and the infarct volume, abdominal fat and hepatic fat percentage were measured. On days 30, 90 and 180 after stroke Bartel Index and mRS were obtained.
After stroke our patients showed the typical immunological changes described previously as stroke induced immune alterations, namely a post stroke immunodepression as well as signs of an activated immune system and an acute
phase response. Our patients lost weight, but only 1.7 ± 0.5 kg. Skinfold thickness did not change during the course of our trial and abdominal fat measurement did not change in stroke patients. Immunological parameters (leukocytes, neutrophils,CRP, PCT, IL-6) did not differ between BMI subgroups (normal weight: BMI < 25,overweight: BMI ≥ 25, < 30, obese: BMI ≥ 30) and in this trial we could not detect a
difference in patients with normal weight, overweight or obesity in the post stroke periode. In an additional analysis we could show that rapid clinical improvement
did result in a rapid improvement of post stroke immune alterations, especially for leukocytes, neutrophils, IL-6 and CRP.


The slope-area method is a technique for estimating the peak discharge of a flood after the water has receded (Dalrymple and Benson, 1967). This type of discharge estimate is called an "indirect measurement" because it relies on evidence left behind by the flood, such as high-water marks (HWMs) on trees or buildings. These indicators of flood stage are combined with measurements of the cross-sectional geometry of the stream, estimates of channel roughness, and a mathematical model that balances the total energy of the flow between cross sections. This is in contrast to a "direct" measurement of discharge during the flood where cross-sectional area is measured and a current meter or acoustic equipment is used to measure the water velocity. When a direct discharge measurement cannot be made at a gage during high flows because of logistics or safety reasons, an indirect measurement of a peak discharge is useful for defining the high-flow section of the stage-discharge relation (rating curve) at the stream gage, resulting in more accurate computation of high flows. The Slope-Area Computation program (SAC; Fulford, 1994) is an implementation of the slope-area method that computes a peak-discharge estimate from inputs of water-surface slope (from surveyed HWMs), channel geometry, and estimated channel roughness. SAC is a command line program written in Fortran that reads input data from a formatted text file and prints results to another formatted text file. Preparing the input file can be time-consuming and prone to errors. This document describes the SAC graphical user interface (GUI), a crossplatform "wrapper" application that prepares the SAC input file, executes the program, and helps the user interpret the output. The SAC GUI is an update and enhancement of the slope-area method (SAM; Hortness, 2004; Berenbrock, 1996), an earlier spreadsheet tool used to aid field personnel in the completion of a slope-area measurement. The SAC GUI reads survey data, develops a plan-view plot, water-surface profile, cross-section plots, and develops the SAC input file. The SAC GUI also develops HEC-2 files that can be imported into HEC–RAS.


Traffic in telecom networks is increasing rapidly, and it has been a challenging task to plan and upgrade network capacities for this increasing traffic, keeping the cost of resources within a targeted budget. Besides handling this drastic growth in traffic, future optical networks are also expected to be increasingly heterogeneous with respect to services supported and underlying technologies employed. To support this heterogeneous volume of traffic, mixed-line-rate (MLR) optical networks with line rates of 10, 40, and 100 Gbps have been shown to be effective. In the case of a greenfield network design, i.e., when planning capacities for a new network, MLR networks have been shown to be cost efficient as well as energy efficient in some recent studies. The concept of an MLR network is evolutionary, starting from a 10G single-line-rate network to a coexistence of multiple line rates in the same network as capacities on some links are periodically upgraded from 10G per wavelength to 40G and 100G per wavelength with traffic growth. Therefore, from a network-upgrade perspective, an important issue is to devise a cost-optimized migration strategy from 10G to 40G to 100G and beyond, given a traffic growth model. However, energy consumption in different elements in the network, especially in those elements whose energy consumption depends on the bandwidth of the traffic that they are handling, is also an important parameter to consider. Therefore, the ultimate question is: Can an MLR be a good candidate for energy-efficient and cost-efficient upgrade? In this study, we investigate the energy-efficient and cost-efficient MLR network-upgrade problem. In this context, we also study the effect of network connection disruption on energy-efficient and cost-efficient MLR network upgrade. In general, the service provider's aim would be to have as few disruptions as possible during capacity upgrade, as disruptions may induce service degradation. Our results show that the amount of disruptions has a conflicting effect on energy-efficient and cost-efficient upgrade in MLR networks, and we develop an optimized upgrade strategy so that both cost and energy are kept within a certain limit.


An algorithm to extract the arbitrary unknown phase shift and then reconstruct the complex object wave in generalized phase-shifting interferometry (GPSI) without the iteration process and measurement of object wave intensity is proposed. This method can be used for GPSI of any frame number >or=2. Both computer simulations with smooth and diffusing object surfaces and optical experiments have verified the effectiveness of this method over a wide range of phase shifts with very satisfactory results.


Panulirus homarus (Linnaeus, 1758) being a species of great commercial
importance fetches high demand in the international market. The demand of live
lobsters depends on the health status of the animals. Study on the defence
mechanisms in P. homarus showed three cell types in the haemolymph: hyaline
cells, semi granular cells and large granular cells. The haemocy1es are produced
from the haematopoetic tissue located in the epigastric region, they are lobular
with a size range of 30-875 jJm. The immune status of healthy lobsters showed
that the total haemocy1e count was 8.7 ± 3.8 x 106 cell mr l and the phenoloxidase
activity 30.61 ± 5.6 IU mg protein- 1
• Studies on physiological stress like moulting,
eyestalk ablation showed variation in the immune parameters (P < 0.05) . Upon
starvation the THe and PO activity was found to decrease drastically. Feed trials
showed that mussels, the preferred diet of lobsters was found to show better
immune response over those fed with fish diet. Environmental stress factors like
salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen and ammonia showed significant effect on the
immune system of P. homarus. Live transportation of lobsters by dry method was
found to suppress the PO activity but no change was seen in THe. Injection
studies with bacteria showed the lowest peak during 30 minutes incubation for
THe whereas it showed highest peak for PO activity for the same incubation time.
Both THe and PO levels came back to normal after 24 hours. On injection with
laminarin an immunostimulant similar result was obtained. Farm made artificial
feed supplemented with chitosan was found to enhance the activity of the immune
system . Satisfactory result for immune enhancement was not observed with
commercial immunostimulant supplement. Analysis of serum PO activity and total
haemocy1e count can be used as indicators of the health in crustaceans, which
can be monitored, even in farm conditions. Routine monitoring of health status is
of great importance with regard to successful aquaculture practices.


In the 21st century, it is inappropriate to have to ask whether criticising a political regime or exercising freedom of speech could lead to criminal charges and criminal punishment. In contrast, a hundred years ago the restriction of people's freedom of speech, especially in relation to political matters, was quite extensive, both in autocratic Russia and elsewhere. The article addresses the legal situation in the Estonian territory of the Russian Empire until 1918, when insubordination to state authority and inciting mutiny were punishable by law. On 17 April 1905, the so-called Freedom Manifesto gave people freedom of speech, and the Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire entered into force one year later, wherein fundamental rights were enumerated, among them the right to express one's convictions, both orally and in writing. At the same time, however, restrictions continued to apply to the fundamental rights declared, which at times were very strict in the tsarist state and rendered the space for exercise of those rights extremely narrow. The article provides an overview of the penal legislation that was applicable within the Estonian territory at the dawn of the 20th century, which set boundaries to freedom of speech and of the press. Considered separately is the case law of the Tallinn Circuit Court pertaining to charges of instigation of mutiny, with the aim of showing how these provisions were applied in judicial practice and the context in which the state restricted people's fundamental rights. In the Tallinn Circuit Court, it was primarily newspaper editors who were charged with incitement to mutiny, because they allowed the publishing of various calls to action in relation to workers' movement propaganda and demands for better conditions and rights for workers. At the beginning of the 20th century, class warfare was considered a crime against the state, and the case law demonstrates how the constitutional freedoms of speech and the press were restricted via strict penal-law measures.


Statistical methods for indirectly observed network data Tyler H. McCormick Social networks have become an increasingly common framework for understanding and explaining social phenomena. Yet, despite an abundance of sophisticated models, social network research has yet to realize its full potential, in part because of the difficulty of collecting social network data. In many cases, particularly in the social sciences, collecting complete network data is logistically and financially challenging. In contrast, Aggregated Relational Data (ARD) measure network structure indirectly by asking respondents how many connections they have with members of a certain subpopulation (e.g. How many individuals with HIV/AIDS do you know?). These data require no special sampling procedure and are easily incorporated into existing surveys. This research develops a latent space model for ARD. This dissertation proposes statistical methods for methods for estimating social network and population characteristics using one type of social network data collected using standard surveys. First, a method to estimate both individual social network size (i.e., degree) and the distribution of network sizes in a population is prosed. A second method estimates the demographic characteristics of hard-to-reach groups, or latent demographic profiles. These groups, such as those with HIV/AIDS, unlawful immigrants, or the homeless, are often excluded from the sampling frame of standard social science surveys. A third method develops a latent space model for ARD. This method is similar in spirit to previous latent space models for networks (see Hoff, Raftery and Handcock (2002), for example) in that the dependence structure of the network is represented parsimoniously in a multidimensional geometric space. The key distinction from the complete network case is that instead of conditioning on the (latent) distance between two members of the network, the latent space model for ARD conditions on the expected distance between a survey respondent and the center of a subpopulation in the latent space. A spherical latent space facilitates tractable computation of this expectation. This model estimates relative homogeneity between groups in the population and variation in the propensity for interaction between respondents and group members.


The effect of geomagnetic storms on O + ( 2 D - 2 P) 732.0 nm dayglow emission is studied using recently updated photochemical model of Thirupathaiah et al. 1 . Three geomagnetic storms which occurred on 23-27 August 2005, 13-17 April 2006 and 1-5 February 2008 are chosen in the present study. A negative correlation is found between the volume emission rate (VER) and the Dst index for all the three geomagnetic storms. The present study shows that the relative variation of VER with respect to the initial value of VER (before the onset of a geomagnetic storm) during the main phase increases above 260 km. It is also found that the altitude of the peak emission rate does not show any appreciable variation with the activity of geomagnetic storm. A positive correlation is found between the zenith intensity and the atomic oxygen number density. The atomic oxygen number density obtained from NRLMSISE-00 model is compared with the measurements of Earle et al. 2 during a geomagnetic storm. This comparison shows that the atomic oxygen number density as provided by NRLMSISE-00 model is significantly lower than the measured value. Consequently, the atomic oxygen number density is treated as a variable parameter in the photochemical model and its effect on the VER of 732.0 nm dayglow emission is further studied. The zenith intensity is found to increase about 70% even in the case of weakest storm when the atomic oxygen number density is doubled.


Patients with classic galactosemia, an inborn error of metabolism, have speech and language production impairments. Past research primarily focused on speech (motor) problems, but these cannot solely explain the language impairments. Which specific deficits contribute to the impairments in language production is not yet known. Deficits in semantic and syntactic planning are plausible and require further investigation. In the present study, we examined syntactic encoding while patients and matched controls overtly described scenes of moving objects using either separate words (minimal syntactic planning) or sentences (sentence-level syntactic planning). The design of the paradigm also allowed tapping into local noun phrase- and more global sentence-level syntactic planning. Simultaneously, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs). The patients needed more time to prepare and finish the utterances and made more errors. The patient ERPs had a very similar morphology to that of healthy controls, indicating overall comparable neural processing. Most importantly, the ERPs diverged from those of controls in several functionally informative time windows, ranging from very early (90–150 ms post scene onset) to relatively late (1820–2020 ms post scene onset). These time windows can be associated with different linguistic encoding stages. The ERP results form the first neuroscientific evidence for language production impairments in patients with galactosemia in lexical and syntactic planning stages, i.e., prior to the linguistic output phase. These findings hence shed new light on the language impairments in this disease.


Octopuses play key ecological roles within coastal marine environments around the world. Their short-lived, rapid-growing lifecycle commands high feeding rates, which has the potential to impose strong top-down controls on the benthic communities where they are found. This Thesis investigated two major questions on the predatory role of octopuses on an abalone sea ranch in south-western Australia: (i) does the distribution of octopus on the sea ranch affect the mortality of Greenlip Abalone, Haliotis laevigata (Chapter 2), and (ii) what is the diet and nutrient assimilation (δ13C and δ15N) of Octopus cf. tetricus in this ecosystem (Chapter 3).

Data were collected by commercial divers over a 27-month period on octopus abundance and the number of empty abalone shells at ~fortnightly to monthly intervals, and the number of abalone surviving on artificial abalone habitats ("Abitats") every six months. These data were used to examine whether the number of empty shells, and the counts of surviving abalone were related to the presence of octopus. Negative binomial generalised linear models showed that the presence of octopus had a significant impact on the number of empty abalone shells collected and estimated that the shell counts are 78% higher when O. cf. tetricus is present when adjusting for location ("Line") and Season. The Abitats provide an ideal habitat for octopuses, offering shelter and an abundant food supply. The relationship between octopus and shell counts was also influenced by the spatial position of the Abitats (Line) and Season, which may be linked to environmental variability and the time at which abalone are seeded. The results from time series (AR1) models for the relationship between octopus presence and abalone survival were not significant, contradicting those from the negative binomial models. This result is likely an artefact of the random sampling design for counting abalone to estimate survival and uncertainty in the number of abalone seeded onto each Abitat. A subsample of 110 shells collected by the divers was examined for evidence of octopus predation. Twenty shells (18%) had a small, slightly ovoid hole with a bevelled edge, consistent with the holes made by octopuses. These results confirm that octopuses are a major source of mortality on the sea ranch, supporting the results of the negative binomial models.

 Gastric tract and stable isotope analyses were undertaken to determine the dietary composition of different sizes of O. cf. tetricus, and its significance as a predator of H. laevigata on the abalone sea ranch. The crops and stomachs of 44 individuals were examined to assess whether diet differed between these digestive organs, or with increasing body size ( 1,000 g were available for analysis.

The nitrogen (δ15N) and carbon (δ13C) isotope signatures of octopus, fish, abalone, and benthic primary producers were examined to understand the assimilation of nitrogen and carbon by O. cf. tetricus, and the trophic position of this species within the Flinders Bay sea ranch food web. Examination of δ15N values revealed that O. cf. tetricus (8.08 ± 0.19) occupies a mid-trophic level, slightly below teleosts (10.10 ± 0.22) and loliginid squids (9.47 ± 0.27). The δ13C signature of O. cf. tetricus (-23.63 ± 0.42) was similar to three benthic teleosts, Coris auricularis and Opthalmolepis lineolatus, and Upeneichthys vlamingii, highlighting the overlap in use of benthic food resources by several consumers in this system. While gastric tract analyses suggest that O. cf. tetricus is an important predator of H. laevigata, stable isotope analyses show a less obvious trend. This is indicated by the enrichment of δ13C by ~4‰ between abalone and octopus. The results from this Thesis provide information on the predatory role of O. cf. tetricus, their significance as predators of H. laevigata, and their trophic positioning within this coastal marine system.


Depending on concentration, agonists of the γ-aminobutyric acid type B (GABAB) receptor can either potentiate or inhibit the activity of dopaminergic neurons arising in the ventral tegmentum (a pathway involved in addiction). Labouèbe et al.--researchers who provided a plausible mechanism for these opposing effects by showing that the coupling efficiency of GABAB receptors to G protein-activated inwardly rectifying potassium (GIRK) channels was greater in inhibitory GABAergic neurons than in dopaminergic neurons--explored regulation of GABAB-GIRK coupling. Immunoelectron microscopy of transgenic mice lacking different GIRK subunits showed that GIRK2 and GIRK3 were present in both ventral tegmental neurons in which they could detect tyrosine hydroxylase (TH, the rate-limiting enzyme for dopamine synthesis) and in neurons lacking TH, whereas GIRK1 was not found in TH-containing neurons. Both GIRK2 and GIRK3 contributed to currents evoked in dopaminergic neurons by the high-affinity GABAB agonist baclofen. Pharmacological analysis indicated that inhibition of regulator of G protein signaling proteins (RGS proteins, which act as GTPase-activating proteins) increased coupling efficiency (lowered EC50) of GABAB to GIRK. Furthermore, RGS2 was preferentially expressed in dopaminergic neurons and coupling efficiency was increased in mice lacking RGS2. Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) analysis, as well as electrophysiological analysis of knockout mice, indicated that RGS2 interacted directly with GIRK3 but not GIRK2. Repeated exposure of mice to γ-hydroxybutyrate (GHB, an addictive, low-affinity GABAB receptor agonist) or morphine over several days led to an increase in coupling efficiency between GABAB receptors and GIRK in dopaminergic neurons, as well as a decrease in RGS2 mRNA in the ventral tegmentum. Intriguingly, chronic exposure to GHB caused mice to lose their preference for solutions containing it and instead to avoid them. The authors suggest that these data may provide insight into new approaches to targeting dopaminergic activity in the ventral tegmentum to treat addiction. G. Labouèbe, M. Lomazzi, H. G. Cruz, C. Creton, R. Luján, M. Li, Y. Yanagawa, K. Obata, M. Watanabe, K. Wickman, S. B. Boyer, P. A. Slesinger, C. Lüscher, RGS2 modulates coupling between GABAB receptors and GIRK channels in dopamine neurons of the ventral tegmental area. Nat. Neurosci. 10, 1559-1568 (2007). [PubMed]


Power quality is a critical issue in distribution systems, where a dynamic voltage restorer (DVR) is commonly used to mitigate the voltage disturbances for loads. This paper deals with a nonlinear control for the three-phase four-wire (3P-4W) DVR under a grid voltage unbalance and nonlinear loads in the distribution system, where a novel control scheme based on the feedback linearization technique is proposed. Through feedback linearization, a nonlinear model of a DVR with a PWM voltage-source inverter (VSI) and LC filters is linearized. Then, the controller design of the linearized model is performed by applying the linear control theory, where the load voltages are kept constant by controlling the d-q-0 axis components of the DVR output voltages. To keep the load voltage unchanged, an in-phase compensation strategy is employed, where the load voltages are recovered to be the same as the previous voltage without a change in the magnitude. With this strategy, the performance of the DVR becomes faster and more stable even under unbalanced source voltages and nonlinear loads. The validity of the proposed control strategy has been verified by simulation and experimental results.


A Thesis in the Department of Physics Submitted to the Faculty of Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Ibadan


Raja Ampat (Indonesia) is a remote archipelago west of Papua mainland and situated at the eastern edge of the Coral Triangle. The archipelago is considered one of the species-richest and most pristine localities and home to the world's most diverse coral reefs. For centuries, reefs of Raja Ampat have enjoyed natural protection and remained largely untouched due to their isolated location. The region represents a key area for evaluating richness and biogeographic patterns of tropical shallow-water organisms, yet the foraminiferal fauna of Raja Ampat is virtually unexplored. Benthic foraminifera are an integral part of the reef fauna, prolific carbonate producers and essential for reefal accretion and substrate stability. Previous studies on Indo-Pacific benthic reef foraminifera indicate that diversity is highest in the Central Indo-Pacific and broadly correlates with diversity patterns of other tropical marine taxa. This report presents the first illustrated catalog and comprehensive analysis of the structure, composition, and diversity of the species-rich benthic foraminiferal biotas of the Raja Ampat Archipelago including an assessment of local reef vitality with the Foraminifera in Reef Assessment and Monitoring (FoRAM) Index. We examined shallow-water sediment samples from fringing reefs, reef platforms, sheltered bays and reef-associated environments to cover the full range of existing micro- and macrohabitats. Atotal number of 421 species were recovered, among them five new species and one newly described genus of the porcelaneous Miliolida. The fauna is dominated by hyaline taxa but the Miliolida represent the species-richest order and are especially diverse in fine-grained sediments of deep fore-reef slopes. Extraordinary high diversity of the benthic foraminiferal communities indicates that the waters of Raja Ampat probably represent one of the world's biologically richest locations in reefs.We identified a total of 35 species of larger symbiont-bearing benthic foraminifera, a number that is among the highest reported so far for reefs in modern oceans. The analysis of the FoRAM Index revealed that water quality at all sites examined is suitable for reef growth and recovery. The results of our study show that the Raja Ampat Archipelago harbors unique and particularly diverse assemblages of modern benthic foraminifera and provides a protistan perspective for the hotspot of diversity in the Central Indo-Pacific.


For the purposes of achieving Autonomous Air-to-Air Refuelling (AAAR) in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), this paper presents the use of a visual tracking algorithm based on direct methods and image registration techniques, with the aim of solving the drogue tracking problem in order to obtain vision-based relative position estimations of the aircrafts for the probe and drogue refuelling method. Proposed vision-based AAAR approaches to date have explored the use of features (such as corners, painted marks, or LEDs) to detect and estimate the relative motion of either the receiver or the tanker aircraft, with the drawback that sometimes this requires the installation of specific hardware on-board. Conversely, the strategy we propose to use does not require the installation of additional hardware on-board. The strategy is based on a hierarchical implementation of an image registration technique: the Inverse Compositional Image Alignment ICIA. Real images and real flight hardware (probe and drogue) are used to test the algorithm using a robotic testbed that simulates the motion of the aircrafts (the tanker and the receiver) during the refuelling task. Results show that the tracking algorithm is robust to fast motion, changes in appearance, and situations where part of the drogue is occluded or is outside of the field of view of the camera. Additionally, results show that robust position estimations at real-time frame rates are obtained, proving that the technique is fast enough to form the basis for automated aerial refuelling sensing capabilities.


Due to the advancement in robotics and computer technology, having access to sophisticated robot hardware is becoming common. An increase in the number of robots allows one to achieve different kind of tasks by exploiting cooperation, such as: robot swarms, object manipulation using multiple degrees of freedom of different robots. It is quite challenging for the human operator to coordinate multiple robots to achieve a task in an efficient manner. The channels available to receive feedback information from the robot system can vary from simple encoder reading to video stream acquisition of the robot system performing tasks. It is important for us to make use of and coordinate as many sensing modalities as it is required to perform necessary tasks. On the other hand, we would want to keep the number of modalities utilized optimal just to maintain usage intuitiveness for human operators and efficiency.
In this dissertation, we have investigated 3 different modalities of interaction with robots. Physical sensing: we present a novel approach to enhance human-robot interactivity through the use of artificial skin and the Extended Kalman filter. Visual sensing: we present a novel approach to enhance interaction of humanoid robot actor through the use of pose estimation and visual servoing. Interface devices: we present a work on combining dynamic gestures based commands from an interface device to improve the intuitiveness of control / planning of multiple degrees of freedom robot system through reinforcement learning.
We propose an efficient way to coordinate multiple modalities sensing as generalized interface for multiple robots manipulation / planning. In addition, performance metrics are proposed so that we have the quantitative way to identify our interaction efficiency. Eventually, the outcome of this research is a reconfigurable multiple interfaces system that can be used with different multiple robots system in a way that it is easy and intuitive for the human operator to learn to operate.


In this study, we used a large data set on nitrogen (N) and carbon (C) from Swedish boreal soils and lake waters to investigate N and C interactions between soils and lake waters. To link thousands of soils sites with hundreds of lake sites distributed all over Sweden, we gridded the data and found a significant relation between gridded C:N ratios of the organic soil layer and the ones of lake waters. We also found evidence of N deposition having depressed the C:N ratios of lake waters more than the ones of organic soil layers. In lake waters N strongly increased toward southern Sweden, mainly in the form of nitrate‐nitrogen (NO3−‐N) which we primarily attribute to an increased NO3−‐N input from the boreal soils into the lakes. In contrast to N we found a much weaker direct relationship for C between soils and lake waters over Sweden. Instead, lake C was strongly related to lake morphometry and catchment characteristics. Our results indicate that large‐scale variations in soil C content are not directly linked to C concentrations in lake waters, whereas soil N seems to leach in small amounts from the soils directly into the lakes in form of NO3−‐N. Such differences in N and C interactions between soils and lake waters give important insights into the global biogeochemical cycling of N and C.


Technology assessment (TA) is an important component of effective management of technology. It is therefore important for technology managers to have a range of technology assessment techniques in order to obtain meaningful information for making decisions and maintaining a viable position in the globally competitive marketplace. The purpose of this article is to compile and present a comprehensive toolkit of TA techniques that can lead to improved and more effective management of enterprise product, process, and supporting technologies. The numerous methods and techniques of TA are organised in this paper into nine different categories: economic analysis, decision analysis, systems engineering/analysis, technological forecasting, information monitoring, technical performance assessment, risk assessment, market analysis, and externalities/impact analysis. Specific assessment techniques in each of the nine categories are presented and discussed, and applications from the literature are provided. The role of the manager of technology in the TA process is emphasised.


ABSTRACT The way women's issues have been conceptualised and acted on in the context of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) has changed over the past four decades. The discourses and trends in development studies – from the Women in Development approach of the 1970s to Gender and Development in the 1980s – were mirrored in the WASH sector. The WASH sector has contributed to, and been shaped by, debates on women's needs and, latterly, on gender perspectives based on a combined argument for equity and efficiency. In addition, in the last decade, the WASH sector has developed its own distinctive initiatives, such as menstrual hygiene management and, recently, specific WASH considerations relating to gender-based violence. This paper assesses whether the result of this sector-specific response has been a dilution or distillation of gender issues. It concludes that the WASH sector has not disregarded the goals of women's empowerment and gender equality; rather, it has contributed to understandings of how resources – such as infrastructure and services – underpin that empowerment. This allows an important recognition of the value and impact of WASH-sector priorities and actions for the wider well-being of women.


Introduction Across the centuries, Croatian national identity has undergone countless transformations, struggles and wars in an attempt to preserve its sense of self. The Balkan Peninsula has endured the brutish oppression of several empires, countless conquerors, two world wars and devastating civil wars. The result of this turmoil has produced cultural, political and economic changes that have all contributed to the erosion of each nation's sense of individual, regional and national identities. It was in the late 1980's when the six republics comprising the Yugoslav Federation confronted the prospect of achieving national sovereignty. That is, the possibility of reconstructing a pure national identity in order to separate themselves from one another and essentially creating a clear image of the "other." Importantly, this possibility of national differentiation was quickly becoming recognized as an absolute necessity. This unofficial, yet powerful mandate in Croatia took many forms ranging from reconstructing the language to influencing the culture and traditions of all Croatians. Rarely do such contemporary examples of national identity formation exist providing potential sites for understanding this complex process. Thus, it is our goal to use Croatia as a case study, to supplement the understanding of identity generally and nationalism specifically as the primary focus on this research. As such, we will, first, examine identity development as an ethnic and nationalistic influence on one's sense of self, and, second, locate and consider those forces used to establish and develop the identity of a nation in crisis. In order to achieve these goals, we will begin with a historical overview of what is known as modern day Croatia. This overview will be followed by a presentation of literature pertaining to identity of one's self as well as national identity. Next, the exercise of grounding this theoretical framework relating to identity will be employed. This application will occur by appropriating Croatia as a case study of both personal and national identity. This paper concludes with the weaving of the development of Croatian national identity together with the larger interdisciplinary theoretical framework on identity formation and nationalism. Based on the process described above, we will argue that music was used as a primary tool in a conscious effort to achieve the political and nationalistic goals separating Croatia from the larger Yugoslav Federation. Historical Overview Croatia is a small and underpopulated country. It is a nation that has held onto its existence by a thread. Because of its precarious geographic location and diverse geophysical area, the territory of modern day Croatia has been well sought after all through history. Hrvatska, or Croatia, encompasses the majority of the Adriatic coast to the south and shares borders with four Eastern European countries: Slovenia to the west, Hungary to the north, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia and Montenegro to the east. All in all, 56,000 square kilometers of widely diverse landscape (1) make up the countries' current geographical composition The Balkan Peninsula, (2) for more than a thousand years, has been held, and accordingly regarded, as a crossroads between the East and West. The Balkans--of which Croatia is a significant constituent--having been a part of the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Habsburg empires, has been devastated, rebuilt and continuously influenced by the confluence of divergent imperial forces and opposing tenets. In the summer of 1991, the self-proclaimed independent Republic of Croatia and the Yugoslav Federation found themselves in a war divided on ethnic lines; Serbs versus Croats, Catholics against Orthodox Christians, and neighbors killing neighbors. Although the worldwide general public, including the people of former Yugoslavia, seem convinced that Serbs and Croats are age old enemies, the fact remains that, until a series of events in the late 1920s (3)--which resulted in ethnic warfare during the Second World War--the South Slavs have lived peacefully and contemporaneously throughout history. …


An appraisal of the potential performance of different Low Energy Cooling (LEC) systems in nonresidential buildings in California is being conducted using computer simulation. The paper presents results from the first phase of the study, which addressed the systems that can be modeled, with the DOE-2.1E simulation program. The following LEC technologies were simulated as variants of a conventional variable-air-volume system with vapor compression cooling and mixing ventilation in the occupied spaces: Air-side indirect and indirect/direct evaporative pre-cooling. Cool beams. Displacement ventilation. Results are presented for four populous climates, represented by Oakland, Sacramento, Pasadena and San Diego. The greatest energy savings are obtained from a combination of displacement ventilation and air-side indirect/direct evaporative pre-cooling. Cool beam systems have the lowest peak demand but do not reduce energy consumption significantly because the reduction in fan energy is offse t by a reduction in air-side free cooling. Overall, the results indicate significant opportunities for LEC technologies to reduce energy consumption and demand in nonresidential new construction and retrofit.


This article describes a laboratory experiment that used a convenience sample of 225 Medicare beneficiaries to test the effects of comparative quality information on plan choice. Providing information about quality did not significantly influence the choice between Original Medicare and a health maintenance organization (HMO), but did affect the choice of HMO. Results from this experiment suggest that information about plan quality may not be effective in encouraging beneficiaries to leave Original Medicare and join HMOs that are rated high in quality. Furthermore, beneficiaries choosing among HMOs were not inclined to select a low-cost HMO, even when it was rated higher in quality. Implications for policy are discussed.


GaN-based LEDs with a p-InGaN layer was proposed and fabricated. By inserting the 50-nm-thick p-In0.01Ga0.99N layer, it was found that we could reduce the 20 mA forward voltage from 3.34 to 2.99 V. It was found the inserted p-InGaN layer could also reduce the efficiency droop from 36.7% to 23.8%.


To achieve security in wireless sensor networks, it is important to be able to encrypt and authenticate messages sent between sensor nodes. Before doing so, keys for performing encryption and authentication must be agreed upon by the communicating parties. Due to resource constraints, however, achieving key agreement in wireless sensor networks is nontrivial. Many key agreement schemes used in general networks, such as Diffie-Hellman and other public-key based schemes, are not suitable for wireless sensor networks due to the limited computational abilities of the sensor nodes. Predistribution of secret keys for all pairs of nodes is not viable due to the large amount of memory this requires when the network size is large.In this paper, we provide a framework in which to study the security of key predistribution schemes, propose a new key predistribution scheme which substantially improves the resilience of the network compared to previous schemes, and give an in-depth analysis of our scheme in terms of network resilience and associated overhead. Our scheme exhibits a nice threshold property: when the number of compromised nodes is less than the threshold, the probability that communications between any additional nodes are compromised is close to zero. This desirable property lowers the initial payoff of smaller-scale network breaches to an adversary, and makes it necessary for the adversary to attack a large fraction of the network before it can achieve any significant gain.


Modeling Radial Bernstein Modes in a Finite-Length Axisymmetric Non-Neutral Plasma Mark Hutchison Department of Physics and Astronomy, BYU Master of Science Axisymmetric radial Bernstein modes are known to exist in non-neutral plasmas and have been studied theoretically and computationally in 1D, but detection of these modes has still proven to be difficult due to self-shielding. To help advance the work on this front we created a 2D particlein-cell (PIC) code that simulates a non-neutral plasma in a Malmberg-Penning trap. A detailed description of the PIC code itself has been included that highlights the benefits of using an r2–z grid and how it can be tested. The focus of the PIC simulation was to discover how best to drive and detect these modes. While it is improbable that radial Bernstein modes will be detected in long plasmas, we show that it may be a possible due to the axial nodal structure in the potential and electric field generated by confining plasmas of any finite-length. Additionally, we find that for a short plasma the strongest detection signal along the trap wall occurs at the plasma's midpoint rather than near the ends. Results show that oscillating the confinement potentials is sufficient to excite the fundamental radial Bernstein mode, but not any of the higher order modes. The higher order modes can be seen in the simulation, however, by sinusoidally driving the radial electric field. Unfortunately, the individual modes are difficult to isolate which we suspect is due to mode mixing. Finally, we report frequencies and mode shapes for the fundamental mode and the (lower) first higher order mode.


Firms frequently experience service failures, wherein performance is below customer
expectations. Seeking to address service failures, firms deliver service recovery. Extant
research suggests that service recovery leads to customer satisfaction and repatronage
when perceived to be fair (or just). Prior studies emphasise the role played by employees
in delivering fair service recovery. By contrast, the literature overlooks situations where
organisational policies such as service guarantees pose a constraint to employee recovery
efforts. Service guarantees are widely used across several service sectors, and these
policies are invoked when services fail. Hence, service guarantees can be employed as
recovery strategies along with employee behaviour, both influencing customer
perceptions of fairness, post-recovery attitudes and behaviour. Empirical research that
explores customer perceptions of service guarantee and employee behaviour used as
recovery strategies is, therefore, topical.
This thesis examines the impact of two guarantee terms – payout and ease of invocation
– and two types of employee behaviour – concern and communication – on customer
post-recovery trust in the firm and in the employee, and in turn, commitment and loyalty.
The thesis is theoretically underpinned by three well-established theories – Justice and
Attribution Theories from social psychology, and Signaling Theory from information
economics. Justice Theory explains how service guarantee and employee behaviour elicit
perceptions of recovery fairness. Signaling Theory elucidates how fair service guarantee
and employee behaviour influence post-recovery trust, by signaling the trustworthiness
of the firm and of employees. The dual lens of Signaling and Attribution Theories
explains how a firm's characteristic of reputation for fairness, and customer attribution
of inferred motive influence perceptions of service guarantee and employee behaviour
employed as recovery strategies.
A scenario-based experiment was conducted in two service contexts – banking and car
repair. The data were collected via an online self-completion questionnaire embedding
hypothetical scenarios of service failure and recovery. The sample was randomly selected
from a consumer panel owned by a reputed UK-based market research agency. The
conceptual framework of the thesis was tested by using Partial Least Squares Structural
Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The moderating effects of firm reputation for fairness
and inferred motive were tested by using the product indicator approach in PLS-SEM.
Two pre-tests and a pilot study established the ecological validity of findings and the
psychometric properties of the measures. In the main study, 658 valid responses were
obtained.
Results show that procedural fairness elicited by the ease of invoking the guarantee leads
to post-recovery trust in the firm, but distributive fairness elicited by guarantee payout
does not. Further, the effects of guarantee payout and ease of invocation are contingent
upon the firm's reputation for fairness. Interpersonal and informational fairness elicited
by employee concern and communication at the recovery stage lead to post-recovery trust
in the employee. The effects of employee treatment and communication on post-recovery
trust are contingent upon inferred motive. Post-recovery trust in the firm and in the
employee, in turn, impact customer commitment and loyalty. Consistency of results
across banking and car repair enhances the generalizability of findings.
This thesis extends knowledge in the domain of service recovery research and broadens
understanding of the employed theoretical precepts. First, the thesis establishes that
service guarantees employed as recovery strategies elicit perceptions of recovery fairness.
Such knowledge offers conceptual development of the Justice Theory framework by
enhancing understanding of what fair service recovery constitutes. Second, the thesis
introduces a new perspective to signaling research that considers how service guarantee and employee behaviour, with related interplay with firm reputation for fairness, signal
the trustworthiness of the firm and of employees, and thus influence customer trust. Third,
the thesis contributes to the understanding of the impact of perceived recovery fairness
on trust by distinguishing between two trust referents - firm and employee. Fourth, the
thesis demonstrates how customer perceptions of service recovery are contingent upon
the firm's reputation and inferred motive.


Neuroscience always has been a heavily
technology-starved field that has been often revolutionized with
the rise of a new technology; and arguably the future advancement
of neuroscience will also depend largely on the development of new
technologies that allow acquiring new data sets that can provide
deeper insights into the brain. While there is no universal
agreement as to what data sets are needed to fully reveal the
underlying principles of brain computation, neurons will certainly
serve as an important layer to study the brain considering their
discreteness and electrical characteristics. In other words, seeing
a brain as a circuitry that is made of the neurons, it is important
to study the relation between the brain's structure and its
function at the neuronal level. Unfortunately, a brain is a huge
network that consists of a huge number of neurons which makes it
difficult to see the "big picture" while retaining the single
neuron resolution. The aim of this study is to the develop such
technologies that allow to see and analyze the large network's
structure and dynamics with the single neuron resolution. The core
strategy is to use optical microscopy to acquire the raw data and
to infer the information of our interests with computational
techniques with designing both optical and computational parts with
each other in mind to maximize the synergy. The first part of the
thesis describes the development and application of computational
imaging techniques to monitor the brain activity in 3-D which
allowed us to see how the neurons interact at an unprecedented
speed. The second part describes a computational approach to
extract a wiring diagram of a brain from an optical image of the
brain rather than an electron microscopy image, as optical
microscopy is undergoing rapid development and is likely to
outperform electron microscopy in terms of scalability which will
be an important criterion to map the whole brain. These will be the
tools of great utility in neuroscience that can generate rich data
sets that will be of wide interests to system neuroscientists as
well as cellular/molecular neuroscientists.


PURPOSE
The objective of this study is to determine whether rural residence is associated with trauma exposure or posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms among military veterans seeking treatment for substance use disorder (SUD) through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Delivering mental health services to veterans in rural areas is a challenge, so identifying differences in the causes and outcomes of trauma exposure would assist in effectively targeting service delivery.

METHODS
Veterans (N = 196) entering SUD treatment at 3 Midwestern VA treatment centers were designated as either urban or rural, based on rural-urban commuting area (RUCA) codes. The veterans completed the Life Events Checklist, the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist, and the Addiction Severity Index's psychiatric status subscale. Hypothesized relationships between rural-urban residence and both trauma exposure and symptomology were tested using independent samples t tests, chi-square tests, and ordinary least squares regression.

FINDINGS
The range of traumatic experiences was similar between rural and urban veterans, and rural-urban residence was not significantly associated with the overall array of traumas experienced or the symptom measures' overall scores or subscores. Of 17 possible traumatic lifetime experiences, rural veterans differed from urban veterans on only 2, reporting significantly lower rates of transportation accidents and unwanted sexual experiences.

CONCLUSIONS
In both the causes of trauma and the need for treatment, veterans residing in rural areas differ little from their urban counterparts.


LGBT/Q film festivals are an integral part of the social practice of queer film culture. They are places where social, political and economic discourses intersect and where LGBT/Q identities, representation through film, definitions of queer cinema, community and global queer politics are negotiated. The festivals themselves are constantly responding to the changing surroundings and demands from stakeholders such as their audience base, the communities they want to serve, and economic and political stakeholders. The versatile, ever evolving form of the festival speaks to its performative formation. Therefore, the concepts of performativity, the performative and performance lend themselves to the analysis of the mechanisms and processes at play there.
This study, situated at the intersection of film and media studies, sociology and queer theory, builds its arguments on the interdisciplinary field of film festival studies, and sets out to argue for the value of applying the concepts of the performative, performativity and performance to the study of film festivals in general, and LGBT/Q film festivals in particular. As the discussion of the concepts in chapter 1 show, the performative as developed by Austin in language philosophy and its further transposition to performativity in the theorizations of philosophy and literature by Derrida, for gender/queer theory by Butler, and performance for ethnography by Turner, and in theater/performance studies by Fischer-Lichte and McKenzie provides a versatile analytical arsenal for the analysis of film festivals. At the same time it is highly compatible with other existing concepts and theorizations such as event, public sphere, and networks and flows that have already been canonically applied to festival studies.
In chapter 2, I mobilize the historical dimension of the performative to discuss the formation of LGBT/Q film festivals and their circuit. There, I sketch out the historical development of the LGBT/Q film festival while paying attention also to the larger social, political, geographic, and economic contexts. The discursive historiography is accompanied by an empirical one, where I analyze the growth pattern and global spread of the LGBT/Q film festival circuit. Along with the global perspective, a discussion of US-American (Frameline, NewFest, MIX NYC), German (Lesbisch Schwule Filmtage Hamburg, Verzaubert, Berlinale Teddy Award) and Austrian (identities) case studies provides further depth in understanding the evolution of the festivals and the circuit.
Having drawn a broad picture of the circuit in chapter 3, I zoom in to look at a number of specific incidents of disruption and boycotts as case studies to unravel the different layers in which LGBT/Q film festivals as instances of queer film culture are performed (or failed). In this chapter I mobilize mainly perspectives of performativity and performance from ethnography and performance studies. These are put in synch with concepts such as public spheres, audience address, and event culture in three steps: selection, exhibition, and reception.
Under the heading of selection, I discuss the performance of queer cinema as it becomes visible in the practices of selection of films and their programming at LGBT/Q film festivals. There I discuss various processes involved in programming, ranging from pre-selection, to screening committees, to programming strategies. Two historical incidents from the history of Frameline, the "Lesbian Riot" and the "Genderator" incident, serve as examples of how programming directly interrelates with identity negotiations. In the section on exhibition, I turn to the performative architecture of an LGBT/Q film festival by shedding light on the event itself, which follows specific scripts and rituals.
In the last section on reception, I look at the corresponding side of these processes and look at the audience. Here, I discuss the formation of a counterpublic sphere, audience address, and the specific reception context of a festival. Two further festival boycotts are presented to analyze how LGBT/Q film festivals operate as queer counterpublic spheres that activists utilize for political intervention. The last section discusses the communal experience of collective viewing and the impact on the formation of a festival community. With this take on audiences, community and reception contexts, the chapter returns to the question of how LGBT/Q film festivals are an integral part of the practices of queer film culture, which was raised in the introduction.
In the concluding outlook to the study I propose three further research trajectories. While the study mostly relied on conceptions of performativity and performance in the sense developed in ethnography, gender/queer theory and performance studies, another aspect of performance can be productively brought to bear on the subject of (LGBT/Q) film festivals: performance in the economic sense of efficiency and achievement.


This paper reviews Chilean stabilization policy during the 1990s and argues that, while the merits of Chilean policy should be praised, there are four puzzles in conventional interpretations of the Chilean experience worth studying. First, the policy of targeting indexed interest rates does not coincide with a policy of targeting real interest rates. Second, there is no systematic link between the decline in inflation and the upward adjustments in indexed interest rates. Third, changes in the exchange rate and in the performance of the external sector help explain the decline in inflation. Fourth, the strong cyclical growth of the real economy was influenced in part by the large and persistent increase in the world price of Copper. We provide statistical evidence favoring these arguments using recursively-identified vector-autoregression models, and sketch a model of staggered pricing under indexation that sheds some light on the Chilean case.


The recent success of non-fullerene acceptors in organic photovoltaics also entails a change in the requirements to the polymer donor in terms of optical and morphological properties leading to a demand for novel conjugated polymers. Herein, we report on the synthesis of a 1,4-bis-(thiophene-2-yl)-pyrrolopyridazinedione based copolymer with 2-ethylhexyl substituents on the pyrrolopyridazinedione moiety. A 2D conjugated benzodithiophene (BDT) was chosen as comonomer. The resulting copolymer T-EHPPD-T-EHBDT showed a molecular weight of 10.2 kDa, an optical band gap of 1.79 eV, a hole mobility of 1.8 × 10−4 cm2 V−1 s−1 and a preferred face-on orientation with regard to the substrate. The comparably wide band gap as well as the determined energy levels (HOMO: −5.47 eV, LUMO: −3.68 eV) match well with the narrow band gap non-fullerene acceptor ITIC-F, which was used as the acceptor phase in the bulk heterojunction absorber layers in the investigated solar cells. The solar cells, prepared in inverted architecture, revealed power conversion efficiencies up to 7.4% using a donor:acceptor ratio of 1 : 1 in the absorber layer.


We describe the development of an enantioselective synthetic route to (+)-pleuromutilin (1), (+)-12-epi-mutilin, and related derivatives. A key hydrindanone was prepared in three steps and 48% overall yield from cyclohex-2-en-1-one. 1,4-Hydrocyanation provided a nitrile (53%, or 85% based on recovered starting material) that was converted to the eneimide 57 in 80% yield by the 1,2-addition of methyllithium to the nitrile function, cyclization, and in situ acylation with di-tert-butyldicarbonate. The eneimide 57 was employed in a 2-fold neopentylic coupling reaction with an organolithium reagent derived from the alkyl iodides (R)- or (S)-30, which contain the C11-C13 atoms of the target, to provide diastereomeric diketones in 60% or 48% yield (for coupling with (R)- or (S)-30, respectively). The diketone derived from (S)-30 contains the (S)-C12 stereochemistry found in pleuromutilin and was elaborated to an alkynylaldehyde. Nickel-catalyzed reductive cyclization of this alkynylaldehyde, to construct the eight-membered ring of the target, unexpectedly provided a cyclopentene (67%), which arises from participation of the C12-α-olefin in the transformation. The diketone derived from the enantiomeric C12-fragment (R)-30 underwent reductive cyclization to provide the desired product in 60% yield. This was elaborated to 12-epi-mutilin by a four-step sequence (39% overall). Installation of the glycolic acid residue followed by C12 epimerization (Berner et al. Monatsh. Chem. 1986, 117, 1073) generated (+)-pleuromutilin (1). (+)-12-epi-Pleuromutilin and (+)-11,12-di-epi-pleuromutilin were prepared by related sequences. This work establishes a convergent entry to the pleuromutilins and provides a foundation for the production of novel antibiotics to treat drug-resistant and Gram-negative infections.


In this paper, a monotone positive solution is studied for buckling of a distributed model of multi walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) cantilevers in the vicinity of thin and thick graphite sheets subject to intermolecular forces. In the modeling of intermolecular forces, Van der Waals forces are taken into account. A hybrid nano-scale continuum model based on Lennard–Jones potential is applied to simulate the intermolecular force-induced deflection of MWCNT. A positive monotone solution based on Green's function in the form of a nonlinear iterative integral is introduced to obtain a solution for deflection of MWCNT cantilevers. In order to determine the accuracy of the presented method, the results are compared with numerical results of a numerical method as well as other methods reported in the literature. The results show that the monotone iterative solution is stable and converged to numerical results with a few iterations. The results of the present work are useful to prove the stability and convergence of Green's function to deal with deflection of nano cantilever actuators in future works and simplifications.


Purpose: The study aimed to determine the effect of various donor factors on utilization pattern of donor corneal tissue. Methods: This was a cross-sectional, retrospective study. Data of 509 donors with 1007 eyes details from eye bank (EB) were reviewed from December 2012 to June 2017. Donor data was analyzed including the age, sex of the donor, cause of death, source of tissue, death to enucleation time (DET), death to preservation time (DPT), type of tissue collected, grades of the tissue, serology reports and various utilization parameters. Results: Tissue utilization of EB was 356 out of 1007 which made 35.35% with cumulative utilization to the tune of 512 out of 1007 (50.84%). 82.50% tissues utilized for surgical use were from donor>65 years of age. Type and grading of tissue influenced the utilization of the tissues significantly (P = 0.00) each. Maximum keratoplasties 179 (50.28%), 202 (56.74%) were done with DET>3 hrs and DPT ≤4 respectively. DET, DPT and serology showed significant influence on the utility of the tissue (P = 0.00) each. Major cause of exclusion of the tissue for utilization was poor quality of the tissue which was C grade. Grading of tissue was significantly affected by DET, DPT and mode of tissue procured. Donor age >65 years showed higher surgical utility. Conclusion: Various donor factors like DET, DPT, tissue grade and type and serology results affects the utility of harvested corneal tissue. Potential modifiable donor factors needs to be addressed such as attention must be paid to the cause of death, contraindications and time factors related to donor.


Cannabinoids have been increasingly gaining attention for their therapeutic potential in treating various cardiovascular disorders. These disorders include myocardial infarction, hypertension, atherosclerosis, arrhythmias, and metabolic disorders. The aim of this review is to cover the main actions of cannabinoids on the cardiovascular system by examining the most recent advances in this field and major literature reviews. It is well recognized that the actions of cannabinoids are mediated by either cannabinoid 1 or cannabinoid 2 receptors (CB2Rs). Endocannabinoids produce a triphasic response on blood pressure, while synthetic cannabinoids show a tissue-specific and species-specific response. Blocking cannabinoid 1 receptors have been shown to be effective against cardiometabolic disorders, although this should be done peripherally. Blocking CB2Rs may be a useful way to treat atherosclerosis by affecting immune cells. The activation of CB2Rs was reported to be useful in animal studies of myocardial infarction and cardiac arrhythmia. Although cannabinoids show promising effects in animal models, this does not always translate into human studies, and therefore, extensive clinical studies are needed to truly establish their utility in treating cardiovascular disease.


87Sr/86Sr ratios of marine carbonate samples collected from a sedimentary section of the Late Cretaceous in the south of Tibet were measured. Based on the absence of cathodo-luminescence and a very low Mn/Sr ratio (average 0.06) of the samples, it is thought that they contain information on the original seawater strontium isotope composition. The strontium isotope evolution curve of the Late Cretaceous in Tibet we established here, is consistent with other coeval curves from Europe, North America and Antarctica, supports the notion that the strontium isotope composition of seawater is governed by global events, which provides a new approach for the inter-continental and inter-basinal correlations of Late Cretaceous in the area and is a complementarity for biostratigraphy. In addition, we attempt to determine the age of the boundaries for Campanian/Santonian and Maastrichtian/Campanian by87Sr/86Sr ratios for Gamba section in southern Tibet. The two boundaries are located in the thickness of 217 m (83.5 Ma) and 291 m (71.3 Ma), respectively.


Zonally symmetric fluctuations of the midlatitude westerly winds characterize the primary mode of atmospheric variability in the Southern Hemisphere during all seasons. This is true not only in observations but also in an unforced 15 000-yr integration of a coarse-resolution (R15) coupled ocean‐atmosphere model. Here it is documented how this mode of atmospheric variability, known as the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), generates ocean circulation and sea ice variations in the model integration on interannual to centennial timescales that are tightly in phase with the SAM. The positive phase of the SAM is associated with an intensification of the surface westerlies over the circumpolar ocean (around 608S), and a weakening of the surface westerlies farther north. This induces Ekman drift to the north at all longitudes of the circumpolar ocean, and Ekman drift to the south at around 308S. Through mass continuity, the Ekman drift generates anomalous upwelling along the margins of the Antarctic continent, and downwelling around 458S. The anomalous flow diverging from the Antarctic continent also increases the vertical tilt of the isopycnals in the Southern Ocean, so that a more intense circumpolar current is also closely associated with positive SAM. In addition, the anomalous divergent flow advects sea ice farther north, resulting in an increase in sea ice coverage. Finally, positive SAM drives increases in poleward heat transport at about 308S, while decreases occur in the circumpolar region. Ocean and sea ice anomalies of the opposite sign occur when the SAM is negative. The ocean and sea ice fluctuations associated with the SAM constitute a significant fraction of simulated ocean variability poleward of 308S year-round. The robustness of the mechanisms relating the SAM to oceanic variability suggests that the SAM is likely an important source of large-scale variability in the real Southern Hemisphere ocean.


The prewar history of the Japanese intelligence community demonstrates how having power over much, but insight into little can have devastating consequences. Its postwar history—one of limited Japanese power despite growing insight—has also been problematic for national security. This book dissects the fascinating history of the intelligence community in Japan. Looking at the impact of shifts in the strategic environment, technological change, and past failures, it probes the reasons why Japan has endured such a roller-coaster ride when it comes to intelligence gathering and analysis, and concludes that the ups and downs of the past century—combined with growing uncertainties in the regional security environment—have convinced Japanese leaders of the critical importance of striking balance between power and insight. Using examples of excessive hubris and debilitating bureaucratic competition before the Asia-Pacific War, the unavoidable dependence on U.S. assets and popular sensitivity to security issues after World War II, and the tardy adoption of image-processing and cyber technologies, the book highlights the century-long history of Japan's struggles to develop a fully functioning and effective intelligence capability, and makes clear that Japanese leaders have begun to reinvent their nation's intelligence community.


Melaka International Trade Centre (MITC) is one of the great places which have organized various functions and events in Melaka. MITC always ensure that they have sufficient advertisement and publicity to enhance customers' awareness. But, MITC want to more ensure either the promotional tools used by the organization such as telemarketing, fax marketing and e-marketing and outdoor marketing is effective or not in order to enhance public awareness towards services provided by MITC. In this study, MITC seems to face several problems especially in ensuring either the promotional tools done by MITC will enhance level of public awareness or the other way round. The objective of this research is to examine whether the promotional tools done by MITC are effective, to determine the most effective promotional tools which may enhance public awareness towards services provided by MITC as well as to identify the level of public awareness towards MITC. In this research, the researcher uses exploratory and descriptive study. More over, the researcher also uses non-probability sampling technique and convenience sampling to obtain sample of convenience elements. The findings related to the promotional tools done by MITC is effective to enhance public awareness, but the organization should give more emphasize to outdoor marketing, since it is the most effective promotional tools which enhance public awareness. The level of public awareness is quite high as well since people are aware and desired to attend or organize event at MITC. They also agreed that they will use MITC services in the future even though they haven't used it before. By doing this research, MITC will alert the factor that increase their effort in the future to have more effective ways to make the public become more aware of what MITC has to offer.


The period from May 2003 through June 2004 was one of the most active periods for the law of self-incrimination since Miranda was decided in 1966. This Article focuses on three cases from that period - Missouri v. Seibert and United States v. Patane from 2004, and Chavez v. Martinez, decided in 2003. These cases, along with the blockbuster from 2000, Dickerson v. United States, demonstrate what has been happening to the Court's self-incrimination jurisprudence. It is the Article's thesis that although the Court is purporting to rest these decisions on the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment, what the Court is really doing when it decides whether to extend or limit Miranda is employing traditional due process analysis. The Article assesses Miranda's health as a result of these decisions and concludes that it is the traditional due process principles that have become central to keeping Miranda contained that also keep the decision alive. I. INTRODUCTION The Supreme Court decided five Miranda1 cases in 2003-2004, making this one of the most active fifteen-month periods for the law of self-incrimination since the controversial case was decided in 1966.2 In this Article, we consider three of those five cases-Chavez v. Martinez,3 Missouri v. Seibert4 and United States v. Patane5-along with the blockbuster decision four years ago in Dickerson v. United States.6 in an attempt to decipher what, if anything, this remarkable level of activity teaches us about the direction of the Court's self-incrimination jurisprudence. In the end, while these cases, like those before them, may not entirely clarify where the Court is going, they do make it plainly clear where the Court is not yet willing to go. As unsatisfactory as this may be to the purists on both sides of the Miranda controversy, this most recent set of self-incrimination cases demonstrates that a solid majority of the Court, anchored by Justices O'Connor and Kennedy, is willing to keep the Miranda rule pretty much where it has been mired for almost forty years: with its head in a constitutional never-never land but its feet firmly planted in a majority of the Court's apparently unshakable view of the realities of police interrogation. By continuing to treat Miranda's core as a decision under the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment, but analyzing its extensions and limitations using the tools of due process, these new cases also confirm that the Court intends to continue to confound these two very different constitutional principles. Ironically, that continued confounding will insure Miranda's continued survival, because, as these new cases illustrate, due process principles keep Miranda contained but they also keep it alive. II. BIRTH AND EARLY CHILDHOOD For 175 years, the Supreme Court interpreted the Fifth Amendment's Self-Incrimination Clause to mean nothing more than what it says: namely, that criminal defendants cannot be compelled to testify in their own criminal proceedings.7 "Proceeding" meant the criminal trial in question.8 "Compelled," in the context of testimony,9 meant that a defendant could not be held in contempt for refusing to testify; there was no "right to remain silent," only the right not to be held in contempt if one chose to remain silent.10 Both of these pillars of limitation came crashing down in 1966 with the Court's decision in Miranda v. Arizona.11 In a 5-4 decision, the Court held for the first time that the Self-Incrimination Clause operated in the stationhouse and not just in the courthouse.12 The Court also held for the first time that confessions would be deemed "compelled" for self-incrimination purposes, and therefore inadmissible, if they were obtained without first advising the suspects of their "right to remain silent," of a new Fifth Amendment right to counsel,13 and of the rest of the now famous litany of mandatory advisements.14 The Court's interpretation was not only an unprecedented stretch of the language of the Self-Incrimination Clause,15 it was also done in the face of a long history of judicial supervision of the problem of coerced confessions, first under the common law and then under the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. …


The measurement of a radar chirp waveform is critical to assessing its spectral compliance. The Fourier transform for a linear frequency-modulated chirp is a sequence of frequency-domain impulse functions. Because a spectrum analyzer measures the waveform with a finite-bandwidth intermediate-frequency (IF) filter, the bandwidth of this filter is critical to the power level and shape of the reported spectrum. Measurement results are presented that show the effects of resolution bandwidth and frequency sampling interval on the measured spectrum and its reported shape. The objective of the measurement is to align the shape of the measured spectrum with the true shape of the signal spectrum. This paper demonstrates an approach for choosing resolution bandwidth and frequency sampling interval settings using the example of a linear frequency-modulation (FM) chirp waveform.


In today's electrical scenario due to ever increasing demand of more power it is necessary to supply it at a certain voltage level economically, which restricts it to a certain value. Moreover there are other limitations on utilization side as well. The solution for this is use of multiphase systems. Nowadays multiphase systems are being thought of as a solution for the problem and research in this field is picking up pace. There is a need to obtain multiphase supply from the available three phase supply due to its inherent advantages. PWM Technique is most suitable for employing two-drive systems with variable frequency which is more complicated. Hence Special Transformer Connection method is used in applications requiring fixed voltage and fixed frequency supply. This model can be simulated by using 'SIM POWERSYSTEMS' block sets of MATLAB or SIMULINK Software


Ni2+-imprinted monolithic column was prepared for the removal of nickel ions from aqueous solutions. N-Methacryloyl-L-histidine was used as a complexing monomer for Ni2+ ions in the preparation of the Ni2+-imprinted monolithic column. The Ni2+-imprinted poly(hydroxyethyl methacrylate-N-methacryloyl-L-histidine) (PHEMAH) monolithic column was synthesized by bulk polymerization. The template ion (Ni2+) was removed with a 4-(2-pyridylazo) resorcinol (PAR):NH3NH4Cl solution. The water-uptake ratio of the PHEMAH–Ni2+ monolith increased compared with PHEMAH because of the formation of nickel-ion cavities in the polymer structure. The adsorption of Ni2+ ions on both the PHEMAH–Ni2+ and PHEMAH monoliths were studied. The maximum adsorption capacity was 0.211 mg/g for the PHEMAH–Ni2+ monolith. Fe3+, Cu2+, and Zn2+ ions were used as competitive species in the selectivity experiments. The PHEMAH–Ni2+ monolithic column was 268.8, 25.5, and 10.4 times more selective than the PHEMAH monolithic column for the Zn2+, Cu2+, and Fe3+ ions, respectively. The PHEMAH–Ni2+ monolithic column could be used repeatedly without a decrease in the Ni2+ adsorption capacity. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010


Implement an Effective Security Metrics Project or Program IT Security Metrics provides a comprehensive approach to measuring risks, threats, operational activities, and the effectiveness of data protection in your organization. The book explains how to choose and design effective measurement strategies and addresses the data requirements of those strategies. The Security Process Management Framework is introduced and analytical strategies for security metrics data are discussed. You'll learn how to take a security metrics program and adapt it to a variety of organizational contexts to achieve continuous security improvement over time. Real-world examples of security measurement projects are included in this definitive guide. Define security metrics as a manageable amount of usable data Design effective security metrics Understand quantitative and qualitative data, data sources, and collection and normalization methods Implement a programmable approach to security using the Security Process Management Framework Analyze security metrics data using quantitative and qualitative methods Design a security measurement project for operational analysis of security metrics Measure security operations, compliance, cost and value, and people, organizations, and culture Manage groups of security measurement projects using the Security Improvement Program Apply organizational learning methods to security metrics


Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) have been widely used as a representation of conditional independence in machine learning and statistics. Moreover, hidden or latent variables are often an important component of graphical models. However, DAG models suffer from an important limitation: the family of DAGs is not closed under marginalization of hidden variables. This means that in general we cannot use a DAG to represent the independencies over a subset of variables in a larger DAG. Directed mixed graphs (DMGs) are a representation that includes DAGs as a special case, and overcomes this limitation. This paper introduces algorithms for performing Bayesian inference in Gaussian and probit DMG models. An important requirement for inference is the specification of the distribution over parameters of the models. We introduce a new distribution for covariance matrices of Gaussian DMGs. We discuss and illustrate how several Bayesian machine learning tasks can benefit from the principle presented here: the power to model dependencies that are generated from hidden variables, but without necessarily modeling such variables explicitly.


This study aimed to design a bycatch reduction device (BRD) for shrimp beam trawl, which is manufactured by flexible materials to reduce bycatch for the gear in the South Sea of Korea. The model test was carried out to understand the shape of the gear in the water and to measure the variation of flow speed due to the BRD in a circulating water channel. Catches were compared between a shrimp beam trawl without BRD (control gear) and others with BRD (treatment gears) in the field. BRDs were two different types in this study. In the case of BRD (a), a square-shaped grid net and a funnel-shaped net were installed in the front part of the cod end to help fish sorting and expelling through the outlet at the bottom. BRD (b) has one more outlet which is added at the upper part of the BRD (a). On the model test, water speed was reduced a little in the gear by installing the BRD. At the results of comparing with a control gear, the bycatch (%) of fish excluding shrimp was reduced between 17 and 68% using BRD (a) and 5 and 66% for BRD (b) respectively. By the signed test of significant level 0.05, the quantity of shrimp catches for BRD (a) was not different in comparison to the control gear but it decreased for the gear installing BRD (b).


Objective: Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the most common inherited form of intellectual disability. The objective of this study was to determine the relative importance that caregivers place on improving different phenotypic traits observed in males with FXS to better understand the greatest medical needs for developing and evaluating FXS treatments. Method: Fragile X syndrome caregivers (n = 614) compared hypothetical treatments in a discrete-choice experiment. The treatments varied in their effects on 6 outcomes associated with FXS: learning and applying new skills, explaining needs, controlling behavior, taking part in new social activities, caring for oneself, and paying attention. The relative importance was calculated for improving severe or moderate levels of disability and transformed to a 10-point scale. Relative importance was also quantified by patient age group (child, adolescent, and adult). Results: Most important to caregivers were controlling behavior (10.0) and caring for oneself (9.9). Least important was taking part in new social activities (4.2). A partial improvement in controlling behavior or self-care was more important than full resolution of the least important disabilities. This was consistent across age groups. Improvements from severe to moderate disability were more important than from moderate to no disability. Conclusion: Caregivers expressed strong preferences for improvement in self-care and behavioral control, independent of the age of the individual with FXS. These data may be helpful when designing studies to test the efficacy of FXS treatments because small treatment effects on very important outcomes may be valued more than large treatment effects on less valued outcomes.


Abstract. Oxidized mercury (Hg(II)) is chemically produced in the atmosphere by oxidation of elemental mercury and is directly emitted by anthropogenic activities. We use the GEOS-Chem global chemical transport model with gaseous oxidation driven by Br atoms to quantify how surface deposition of Hg(II) is influenced by Hg(II) production at different atmospheric heights. We tag Hg(II) chemically produced in the lower (surface–750 hPa), middle (750–400 hPa), and upper troposphere (400 hPa–tropopause), in the stratosphere, as well as directly emitted Hg(II). We evaluate our 2-year simulation (2013–2014) against observations of Hg(II) wet deposition as well as surface and free-tropospheric observations of Hg(II), finding reasonable agreement. We find that Hg(II) produced in the upper and middle troposphere constitutes 91 % of the tropospheric mass of Hg(II) and 91 % of the annual Hg(II) wet deposition flux. This large global influence from the upper and middle troposphere is the result of strong chemical production coupled with a long lifetime of Hg(II) in these regions. Annually, 77–84 % of surface-level Hg(II) over the western US, South America, South Africa, and Australia is produced in the upper and middle troposphere, whereas 26–66 % of surface Hg(II) over the eastern US, Europe, and East Asia, and South Asia is directly emitted. The influence of directly emitted Hg(II) near emission sources is likely higher but cannot be quantified by our coarse-resolution global model (2° latitude  ×  2.5° longitude). Over the oceans, 72 % of surface Hg(II) is produced in the lower troposphere because of higher Br concentrations in the marine boundary layer. The global contribution of the upper and middle troposphere to the Hg(II) dry deposition flux is 52 %. It is lower compared to the contribution to wet deposition because dry deposition of Hg(II) produced aloft requires its entrainment into the boundary layer, while rain can scavenge Hg(II) from higher altitudes more readily. We find that 55 % of the spatial variation of Hg wet deposition flux observed at the Mercury Deposition Network sites is explained by the combined variation of precipitation and Hg(II) produced in the upper and middle troposphere. Our simulation points to a large role of the dry subtropical subsidence regions. Hg(II) present in these regions accounts for 74 % of Hg(II) at 500 hPa over the continental US and more than 60 % of the surface Hg(II) over high-altitude areas of the western US. Globally, it accounts for 78 % of the tropospheric Hg(II) mass and 61 % of the total Hg(II) deposition. During the Nitrogen, Oxidants, Mercury, and Aerosol Distributions, Sources, and Sinks (NOMADSS) aircraft campaign, the contribution of Hg(II) from the dry subtropical regions was found to be 75 % when measured Hg(II) exceeded 250 pg m−3. Hg(II) produced in the upper and middle troposphere subsides in the anticyclones, where the dry conditions inhibit the loss of Hg(II). Our results highlight the importance the subtropical anticyclones as the primary conduits for the production and export of Hg(II) to the global atmosphere.


Changes in metabolic protein levels in biopsies during the early post mortem period in the bovine longissimus thoracis muscle were investigated by 2-DE based proteome analyses. Nine NRF (Norwegian Red) dual purpose bulls were included in the study. Twenty-four proteins underwent changes between the two sampling times and were classified into two major groups: metabolic proteins and heat shock proteins. Of the metabolic proteins, 5 enzymes involved in the glycolytic pathway and the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, increased in intensities during the post mortem period. In addition, the NADP-dependent enzyme 3-hydroxyisobutyrate dehydrogenase, associated with the TCA cycle in muscle, was increased. This documents that an increased aerobic energy metabolism occurs immediately after slaughter, with the aim to replenish the ATP levels in the muscle.