We discuss a new cloud algorithm that retrieves an effective cloud pressure, also known as cloud optical centroid pressure (OCP), from oxygen dimer (O2-O2) absorption at 477 nm after determining an effective cloud fraction (ECF) at 466 nm, a wavelength not significantly affected by trace-gas absorption and rotational Raman scattering. The retrieved cloud products are intended for use as inputs to the operational nitrogen dioxide (NO2) retrieval algorithm for the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) flying on the Aura satellite. The cloud algorithm uses temperature-dependent O2-O2 cross sections and incorporates flexible spectral fitting techniques that account for specifics of the surface reflectivity. The fitting procedure derives O2-O2 slant column densities (SCDs) from radiances after O3, NO2, and H2O absorption features have been removed based on estimates of the amounts of these species from independent OMI algorithms. The cloud algorithm is based on the frequently used mixed Lambertian-equivalent reflectivity (MLER) concept. A geometry-dependent Lambertian-equivalent reflectivity (GLER), which is a proxy of surface bidirectional reflectance, is used for the ground reflectivity in our implementation of the MLER approach. The OCP is derived from a match of the measured O2-O2 SCD to that calculated with the MLER method. Temperature profiles needed for computation of vertical column densities are taken from the Global Modeling Initiative (GMI) model. We investigate the effect of using GLER instead of climatological LER on the retrieved ECF and OCP. For evaluation purposes, the retrieved ECFs and OCPs are compared with those from the operational OMI cloud product, which is also based on the same O2-O2 absorption band. Impacts of the application of the newly developed cloud algorithm to the OMI NO2 retrieval are discussed.


In many theories of meter inference (e. g., Benjamin, 1984; Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983), the cues that serve as markers for major metrical accent locations are the basis from which one infers or determines a meter. However, phrase and metrical structure often support one another with phrase boundaries coinciding with metrically important locations. Thus, it becomes difficult to determine which cues, if any, are used predominantly as the basis for meter inference. Three experiments are presented in which different time spans defined by harmonic, melodic, and temporal accents, and their coincidences were systematically pitted against one another. Musicians and nonmusicians were requested to identify the meter of the stimuli as belonging to a category of either a triple (e. g., 6/8 or 3/4 time), or a duple meter (e. g., 2/4 or 4/4 time). It was found that musicians use harmonic information much more often and reliably than do nonmusicians, who also use the temporal accent to define a metrical structure. Nevertheless, across all experiments, when a harmonic accent was present, subjects used that accent to define the meter. Furthermore, the coincidence of melodic accents was used more often than a temporal accent to determine a metrical structure. The implications of these findings in light of other research that shows that a temporal accent is heard as initiating major metrical locations (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983; Longuet-Higgins & Lee, 1982, 1984; Longuet-Higgins & Steedman, 1971; Steedman, 1977) are discussed.


Tristan Manco, perhaps the worlds most influential commentator on street art, showcases the work of 38 truly innovative and inspirational artists who use low-cost, low-tech media and often totally original techniques to produce work that defies categorization and pushes the boundaries of art itself. Many of them repurpose utilitarian or scrap materials, from unglamorous items of domestic waste, found wood and even organic detritus such as skin and nails to recycled toys, books, skateboards, firecrackers and lights. Others show creative approaches to traditional or proven media such as paper, stone, concrete and steel. The ingeniously crafted and thought-provoking results range across a broad spectrum, from intimate paper collages to large public sculptures constructed from discarded wood. Anyone fascinated by the extraordinary creativity currently emerging at the raw edge of contemporary art will find this book compelling reading.


The aim of this chapter is to present a broad overview of the main clean generation methods existing today in microgrids. Since a complete and detailed analysis of each of them would become impractical for a single chapter in a book, and also considering that there exist advanced technical literature addressing these types of generation, the clean generation systems are succinctly described, and the main characteristics, including current market status and some advantages and disadvantages, are presented. Conventional centralised power generation, such as nuclear and fossil-fuel-based power centralised power plants, are not included in this chapter. Following the sections presenting the different generation systems, the last section presents a case study of a microgrid covering a small city located in a cold region in Japan showing that in a given microgrid interconnected with a larger centralised grid, its annual total demand can be supplied with 100% of clean energy and renewable energy.


The Technology Localisation Implementation Unit (TLIU) is an initiative of the Department of Science and Technology, established by and hosted at the CSIR. The unit has been supporting manufacturing companies since 2012. To date, more than 150 South African manufacturing companies have benefited from the unit's interventions. It has primarily supported companies that are linked to the localisation objectives of Transnet and Eskom. The unit has a national footprint and supports industry in five provinces : Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga.


Monoclonal gammopathy is increasingly recognized as a cause of kidney injury. These renal conditions behave differently than ones without monoclonal gammopathy and require specific treatment. To avoid misdiagnosis, testing for paraprotein should be performed in addition to vasculitis and autoimmune diseases serologies in adults with unexplained AKI or proteinuria. Because the prevalence of monoclonal gammopathy is much more common than glomerular diseases, the nephrotoxicity of the monoclonal protein must be confirmed before cytotoxic therapy is initiated. This can only be done by a kidney biopsy. After a monoclonal gammopathy of renal significant is verified, the evaluation should then focus on the identification of the pathologic clone, because therapy is clone specific. We present this patient to illustrate the clinical presentation of a patient with renal dysfunction and a monoclonal gammopathy. This patient is also used to discuss the diagnostic process in detail when monoclonal gammopathy-associated renal disease is suspected.


During the summer of 2006, the standing in-use stocks and associated discards of copper, centered about the year 2000, were quantified for the State of Connecticut. The methodology, results, and discussion are published here in three parts: Part A. In-Use Stocks of Copper in the State of Connecticut Part B. Discard Flows from In-Use Stocks of Copper in the State of Connecticut Part C. Recycling Rate of Old Scrap Copper in the State of Connecticut Among the most important and interesting results are as follows: 1) A "bottom-up" assessment of the in-use stocks of copper in the State of Connecticut, circa 2000, yields an overall result of approximately 540 Gg (thousand metric tons) of copper, or 157 kg for every person in the State. Buildings make up the largest category with 53% of the total, with residential buildings as the largest sub-category. 2) The discard flows of copper from in-use stocks were quantified by applying a lifetime analysis to the in-use stock estimates of copper in Connecticut. A total copper mass of 17 Gg/yr (thousand metric tons per year), or 5.1 kg/(capita*year), was discarded from inuse stocks at the beginning of the 21st century. Renovation and demolition debris make up the largest category with 36% of the total, followed by waste from electronic and electrical equipment (26%), transportation (23%), and infrastructure (14%). 3) The recovery rate, recycling efficiency, and recycling rate for copper from in-use stock discards were quantified for the State of Connecticut for the year 2000. With a recovery rate of 84%, and recycling efficiency of 75%, the overall recycling rate was found to be 63%. Neglecting sewage sludge, the lowest recycling rate occurred in end of-life vehicles and waste from electronic and electrical equipment (45%). A rough estimate combining this old scrap recycling rate with that of new scrap puts the overall recycling rate of copper in Connecticut at approximately 70%. *Center for Industrial Ecology, Yale University **Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University 01 Copper – Front Matter 1/28/07 9:32 PM Page 2 2 copper in-use stock and copper scrap in the state of connecticut


The World Wide Web (WWW) has become a convenient may to access information on the net because the WWW browser integrates different network services into a common easily accessible user interface. These features coupled with low investment cost are especially suited for accessing information of the SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system. This paper describes a unique Web-based application which is implemented based on the client/server architecture. The user can view the real-time data superimposed on one-line diagrams generated automatically using the VLSI's placement and routing techniques. In addition, the user can also control the operation of the substation at the server site. The choice of the Java language offers unique and powerful features such as zero client installation, on-demand access and platform independence to the design of the SCADA display system.


As software evolves, developers usually introduce deviations from the planned architecture, due to unawareness, conflicting requirements, technical difficulties, deadlines, etc. This occurs in systems with an explicit division of responsibility between groups of classes, such as modules and layers. Although there are architectural conformance tools to identify architectural violations, these tools are underused and detected violations are rarely corrected. To address these shortcomings, this article introduces an architectural conformance process into continuous integration. Thus, the conformance process is triggered by every code integration and, when no violations are detected, the code is integrated into the repository. The implemented tool, called ArchCI, supports the proposed solution using DCL (Dependency Constraint Language) as underlying conformance technique and Jenkins as the Continuous Integration server. We also evaluated the applicability of our proposed solution in a real-world Java project where we incrementally introduced 44 constraints through six releases. As the result, our process was able to detect 42 violations, which have always been fixed before the ensuing release.


Thirty‐eight dated packrat middens were collected from upper desert (930–1357 m) elevations within Joshua Tree National Park near the ecotone between the Mojave Desert and Colorado Desert, providing a 30 ka record of vegetation change with remarkably even coverage for the last 15 ka. This record indicates that vegetation was relatively stable, which may reflect the lack of invasion by extralocal species during the late glacial and the early establishment and persistence of many desert scrub elements. Many of the species found in the modern vegetation assemblages were present by the early Holocene, as indicated by increasing Sørenson's Similarity Index values. C4 grasses and summer‐flowering annuals arrived later at Joshua Tree National Park in the early Holocene, suggesting a delayed onset of warm‐season monsoonal precipitation compared to other Sonoran Desert and Chihuahuan Desert localities to the east, where summer rains and C4 grasses persisted through the last glacial–interglacial cycle. This would suggest that contemporary flow of monsoonal moisture into eastern California is secondary to the core processes of the North American Monsoon, which remained intact throughout the late Quaternary. In the Holocene, northward displacement of the jet stream, in both summer and winter, allowed migration of the subtropical ridge as far north as southern Idaho and the advection of monsoonal moisture both westward into eastern California and northward into the southern Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Service providers sometimes face mass service failures. These problems occur across service industries, ranging from severe Internet outages to major delays for airlines or trains. The literature has not yet addressed the following key question: How do service crises affect perceived service quality (PSQ) over time? To answer this question, the authors introduce a Double-Asymmetric Structural Vector Autoregressive model. It captures not only the short- and long-term effects of objective service performance on PSQ but also the differential effects of service crises versus service restoration. The authors analyze a unique data set from a major European railway company, spanning seven years of monthly observations. During this period, severe winter weather caused dramatic service crises. The authors find that performance losses loom larger than gains in the short run and also have permanent negative effects on PSQ in the long run. Consequently, a crisis followed by a restoration will result in a net negative long-term effect on PSQ. The impact of a crisis also depends on the prior trend in objective service performance.


Although recently several studies have addressed the required skills of effective CIOs, little is known of the actual behavior successful CIOs. In this study, we explore the behavior of highly effective CIOs by video-recording CIOs at work. The two CIOs videotaped were nominated as CIO of the year. We analyze the data in an innovative and systematic way by developing and using a behavioral leadership coding scheme. The analysis indicates that highly effective CIOs are good listeners. They also often verify previously made agreements; structure the conversation; and provide subordinates with factual information. We also compare the behavior of the highly effective CIOs to a sample of 25 highly effective middle managers. Whereas the CIOs spend little time defending themselves against their subordinates and are mostly involved in steering, middle-managers spend much more time defending themselves and show more support for their subordinates. We conclude that our new video observation-and-coding method is viable to analyze and better understand the behavior of CIOs.


A real-time multiprocessor synchronization problem is studied herein that has not be extensively studied before, namely, the management of replicated resources where tasks may require multiple replicas to execute. In prior work on replicated resources, k-exclusion locks have been used, but this restricts tasks to lock only one replica at a time. To motivate the need for unrestricted replica sharing, two use cases are discussed that reveal an interesting tradeoff: in one of the use cases, blocking is the dominant lock-related factor impacting schedulability, while in the other, lock/unlock overheads are. Motivated by these use cases, three replica-allocation protocols are presented. In the first two, the lock/unlock logic is very simple, yielding low overheads, but blocking is not optimal. In the third, blocking is optimal (ignoring constant factors), but additional lock/unlock overhead is incurred to properly order lock requests. Experiments are presented that examine the overhead/blocking tradeoff motivated by these protocols in some detail.


What happens when an expert on grief is faced with the slow decline of her beloved mother? Like A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, Singing Mother Home offers an inside look at the struggles of an "expert" in coping with loss. Donna S. Davenport was forced to rethink the traditional academic approach to the process, which implied that the goal of grief resolution was to end the attachment to the loved one. Instead, she embarked on a personal exploration of her own anticipatory grief. This intimate narrative forms the core of her book. It is emotionally wrenching, but it also provides hope for those going through similar experiences. Just as Davenport used her family's tradition of singing to comfort her mother, readers will be encouraged to find their own sources of comfort in family and legacy. The book concludes by describing psychological approaches to grief and recommending further reading. "This is a unique book by a professional who understands the field of loss and grief. . . . Poignantly heartbreaking."--Melba Vasquez, President, American Psychology Association's Division on Counseling Psychology


Audience history poses a methodological as well as an intellectual challenge. Everyday practices of readers, viewers and listeners are typically beyond the remit of sources found in institutional archival collections, and the researcher is often left with a plethora of sources that only marginally address the object of study, and rarely amount to a clear-cut, homogeneous understanding of audiences and their historical practices. Contemporary audience surveys, documents produced by governmental, administrative and legal bureaucracies, professional testimonies, oral history interviews and other sources each offer their own vision of the audience. How does one move beyond these multiple, often contradictory visions, to a reasonably coherent history of the actual everyday practices and thoughts of media users? Given the overwhelming variety, yet in some sense also paucity of relevant sources, it is of no surprise that media historiography has often given preference to safer fields: the history of institutions and media content. Recent years have of course seen some notable advances in the field of audience historiography – most prominently Richard Butsch's (2000) path-breaking study of American audiences in the 19th and the 20th century, Butsch and Livingstone's (2013) the edited collection exploring the variegated meanings of audiences historically and globally, as well as the fast growing body of historical studies of film reception and movie-going (e.g. Staiger 1992, Stacey 1994, Maltby et al. 2007, Kuhn 2004). Nonetheless, it is fair to say that historical research on media audiences is still in its infancy. There have been only very few attempts to systematically address its key concerns and methodological principles (see Biltereyst et al. 2012 for an exception), and the empirical focus of existing work has been somewhat uneven, with most research focusing on film and cinema-going and much less on broadcasting, for instance. Furthermore, despite the growth of single country case studies from beyond the western world, we have yet to develop a more synthetic and explanatory account of the differences and similarities between audience histories globally.


As the focal point of numerous high-profile exhibitions, the sculpture of Richard Serra (b. 1939) has drawn international acclaim. Yet even those who have marveled at Serra's intellectually rigorous and large works of sculpture may not be familiar with his equally intriguing drawings. This handsome book brings together for the first time Serra's drawn work, considering the artist's investigation of medium as an activity both independent from and linked to his pioneering sculptural practice. First working in ink, charcoal, and lithographic crayon on paper, Serra originally used drawing as a means to explore form and perceptual relations between his sculpture and the viewer. Over time, his drawings underwent significant shifts in concept, materials, and scale and became fully realized and autonomous works of art. The grand, bold forms he created with black paintstick in his monumental Installation Drawings were designed to disrupt and complement existent spaces and eventually began to occupy entire rooms. In the late 1980s, Serra explored the tension of weight and gravity through layering, and his most recent work experiments with surface effects, using mesh screens as intermediaries between the gesture and the transfer of pigment to paper.


Suriname gained autonomy from Holland in domestic affairs in 1955 and full political independence in 1975. "Self-sufficiency" -particularly in economic terms- became a strong motif in Suriname politics thereafter. Yet the inward-looking development policies pursued by successive governments after independence proved to be self-defeating and, after some initial growth, helped bring about a steady decline in national income. Between 1980 and 1988, GDP declined by 1.2 percent a year on average, per capita income dropped by over 2 percent a year, and foreign debt rose from 3 percent to 27 percent of GDP. Although rising bauxite prices brought temporary relief to the economy at the end of the decade, it became increasingly clear that prolonged growth required fundamental changes in the country?s development strategy. After civilian control was restored in 1991, Suriname thus began taking concrete steps to open its economy, emerge from its isolation, and forge a new regional identity. Suriname?s efforts in this respect are the subject of this paper. Some concrete initiatives undertaken by Suriname to broaden and diversify its economic links are briefly identified, and the many barriers that remain to be overcome in that area are highlighted. Then the authors examine from a theoretical point of view, the costs and benefits of regional integration, which has been one of the key components of Suriname?s increasingly outward-oriented development agenda. Subsequent sections provide a more detailed analysis of Suriname?s recent integration efforts, and how these may influence its future development prospects.


Net form of net blotch, caused by the fungal pathogen, Pyrenophora teres f. teres (Ptt), is an important foliar disease present in all barley (Hordeum vulgare) producing regions of the world. This fungus is a heterothallic haploid ascomycete and reproduces both sexually and asexually. Sexual recombination in Ptt can produce new combinations of pathogen virulences and lead to changes in disease expression in the host. Changes in virulence can be devastating to the barley industry especially if a limited number of barley varieties with common resistances are grown. Knowledge of the genetic structure and genes involved in virulence is vital to researchers and breeders to increase the durability of Ptt resistance in barley varieties. We have used a genome-wide association mapping approach to characterise genomic regions associated with virulence in Australian barley varieties. One hundred and eighty-seven Ptt isolates collected from five Australian states were genotyped using DArTseq (Diversity Arrays Technology Pty Ltd) markers and phenotyped across ten different barley genotypes. Association mapping analysis identified eleven unique genomic regions associated with virulence. The majority of these genomic regions were located on Ptt chromosomes 3 and 5. Four of the regions identified were confirmed via bi-parental quantitative trait loci mapping analysis in two different Ptt/Ptt populations. Knowledge of the virulence genes present in the Australian Ptt pathogen population will provide barley breeding programs with valuable information for future breeding of Ptt resistant barley varieties.


The changes on metropolitan areas characterized by the dispersion and
concentrated decentralization of both employment and population has lead to a
specialized research line addressed to analyze polycentrism. In this line there
are two families of subcentre identification: the first based on the analysis of density, and other based on the analysis of mobility flows. Huge efforts have
been paid, in the first family, to get robust models in statistical terms.
Nevertheless, very little attention has been paid to the very object of analysis:
employment density. In this paper a different approach to density calculus is
proposed, it allows for prioritize, as subcentres, those municipalities that have
features close to the urban paradigm of central cities in Southern Europe: have
residents, are attractive in labor terms because retain resident employed population, and at the same time, attract commuters; and impact on the overall density function and have functional relations with other municipalities. The efficacy of the proposed density is tested in the metropolitan areas of Barcelona and Madrid. The analysis suggest that the municipalities prioritized as subcentres using this "compound density" excels in modifying both the employment and demographic metropolitan density functions, and are more diverse, concentrate more central activities, and strengthen functional relations with other municipalities in comparison to the results of standard density.


Abstract The effects of serial episodes of fatigue and recovery on volitional and magnetically evoked neuromuscular performance of the knee flexors were assessed in 20 female soccer players during: (i) an intervention comprising 4 × 35 s maximal static exercise, and (ii) a control condition. Volitional peak force was impaired progressively (∼16% vs. baseline: 235.3 ± 54.7 to 198.1 ± 38.5 N) by the fatiguing exercise and recovered to within ∼97 % of baseline values following 6 min of rest. Evoked peak twitch force was diminished subsequent to the fourth episode of exercise (23.3%: 21.4 ± 13.8 vs. 16.4 ± 14.6 N) and remained impaired at this level throughout the recovery. Impairment of volitional electromechanical delay performance following the first episode of exercise (25.5%: 55.3 ± 11.9 vs. 69.5 ± 24.5 ms) contrasted with concurrent improvement (10.0%: 24.5 ± 4.7 vs. 22.1 ± 5.0 ms) in evoked electromechanical delay (P < 0.05), and this increased disparity between evoked and volitional electromechanical delay remained during subsequent periods of intervention and recovery. The fatiguing exercise provoked substantial impairments to volitional strength and volitional electromechanical delay that showed differential patterns of recovery. However, improved evoked electromechanical delay performance might identify a dormant capability for optimal muscle responses during acute stressful exercise and an improved capacity to maintain dynamic joint stabilty during critical episodes of loading.


This study examines the effect of intra-household property rights on household members' well-being by exploiting the 2011 Chinese divorce reform. This reform transfers ownership of the family home to the registered buyer, most often the husband, in the event of a divorce. Prior to this legal change, the family home was considered joint property. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), a nationally representative survey of Chinese households, I implement a difference-in-differences strategy to compare the outcomes of married individuals in households where only the husband's name is on the deed and in those where the husband and the wife have equal house ownership status. My findings reveal that in the short term, the 2011 Chinese divorce reform leads to diminished well-being for women in a typical Chinese household where the deed to the marital home is in the husband's name only. This adverse effect is particularly large for women with perceptions of high divorce risks. No significant effects are found for either women or men living in a household where only the wife's name is on the deed. The findings provide some evidence supporting the argument that gender constraints override the pattern of how intra-household property rights affect household members' well-being. In addition to gender-neutral theories, more theories based on gender are needed to describe family dynamics. The findings demonstrate how a seemingly gender-neutral policy can generate gendered consequences. It is critical that policy makers consider implications for intra-household inequality.


Agency regulations on sexual and reproductive health easily provoke religious conflict while failing to demonstrate convincing medical excellence.

This is a consequence of two agency characteristics—political partisanship and agencies' claims to superior expertise—intersecting with U.S. churches' commitments respecting sexual morality. More and more, U.S. cultural and political norms respecting sex and reproduction diverge from those held by traditional religions. Furthermore, the two major national political parties are increasingly committed to starkly opposed views of sexual and reproductive health, and the place of religion in the nation's life. Consequently, the Agency charged with rulemaking on sexual and reproductive health—the Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS")—regularly issues poorly crafted policies that incite charges of religious establishment or violations of the free exercise of religion.

This Article will consider two of the most prominent policies. First, it will consider the Trump administration's decision to fund primarily those youth sex education programs committed to avoidance or delay of sexual intercourse versus programs instructing teens about reducing the risks of sex by means of contraception. The sex education programs endorsed by the Trump Administration are called Sexual Risk Avoidance ("SRA") by their creators, but were formerly known as "abstinence" education. These are distinguished from programs involving contraception, which the administration calls Sexual Risk Reduction programs ("SRR"), but proponents call Comprehensive Sex Education ("CSE"). This Article will use the terms for both programs preferred by their supporters, thus SRA for the first, and CSE for the latter.

This Article will also consider the Obama administration's rule requiring religious institutions to offer health insurance guaranteeing free contraception. This is usually called the "contraception mandate," although the HHS Secretary and the Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") have acknowledged that some of the required drugs and devices can terminate already formed human embryos, and are thus more accurately understood to be abortifacients.


We extend Lie's classical method for finding group invariant solutions to the case of non-transverse group actions. For this extension of Lie's method we identify a local obstruction to the principle of symmetric criticality. Two examples of non-transverse symmetry reductions for the potential form of Maxwell's equations are then examined.


Organizational development is conceived as growth and creation of value in companies, growth can be seen from several angles: company size, improvement of productive capacity, greater capacity of workers and adaptation of safe work environments. For its part, creating value in companies goes beyond the financial concept, refers to generate value administratively, this implies, human talent, management models, the work environment and organizational structure.From this perspective, the book contributes to the concept of business development by addressing key factors so that such development can be generated, such as organizational culture, innovation management and corporate responsibility, considered of great importance at this time given the demands of the environment and the characteristics of the markets where they are operated.Said in this way, to speak of organizational culture, but of agents external to the organizations, shows the cultural characteristics of territory that could affect it. Likewise, treating the management of innovation as an element that would help an economic sector to grow, denotes the preponderance of companies in modern society. Similarly, social responsibility reflects the commitment of companies that have managed to grow with corporate principles, to contribute to the respect of a locality from the view of the environment and standards.Given this way, the book that the authors present to the academic community constitutes a significant contribution for future research and constitutes an instrument to understand how organizational development favors the development of the surrounding localities.


It is well known that the leaching of chalcopyrite under ambient conditions is extremely slow even under highly oxidizing conditions. This has been attributed to so-called passivation of the mineral that occurs at potentials above about 0.65 V (SHE).

A study has been made of the rate of leaching of copper in dilute chloride solutions from a low-grade ore which contained chalcopyrite as the only copper sulfide mineral. Leaching has been carried out in batch stirred reactors using milled ore and in 1 m columns using crushed ore in solutions of chloride at various potentials. It has been observed that enhanced rates of dissolution of copper from chalcopyrite in chloride media can be achieved at ambient temperatures by the application of controlled potentials in a "potential window" between 560 and 600 mV (SHE). These results generally confirm the results presented in Part 1 of this series of papers which detailed the results obtained on the dissolution of a concentrate from the same ore. A reduced sensitivity of the rate of leaching in columns to the potential has been observed which is interpreted in terms of a potential distribution at the surface of chalcopyrite grains. This potential distribution can vary both locally due to mineralogical effects and vertically due to potential variations down the column as observed in the differences of the potential in the column inlet and outlets.

A linear rate of approximately 0.1% copper dissolution from a low grade chalcopyrite ore under typical heap leach conditions has been measured in a solution of 50 g/L chloride at a pH of 1 and a potetitia1 of about 600 mV for the feed solution.


Molybdenum cofactor deficiency (MoCD) is an autosomal recessive inborn error of metabolism characterized by neurodegeneration and death in early childhood. The rapid and progressive neurodegeneration in MoCD presents a major clinical challenge and may relate to the poor understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved. Recently, we reported that treating patients with cyclic pyranopterin monophosphate (cPMP) is a successful therapy for a subset of infants with MoCD and prevents irreversible brain damage. Here, we studied S-sulfocysteine (SSC), a structural analog of glutamate that accumulates in the plasma and urine of patients with MoCD, and demonstrated that it acts as an N-methyl D-aspartate receptor (NMDA-R) agonist, leading to calcium influx and downstream cell signaling events and neurotoxicity. SSC treatment activated the protease calpain, and calpain-dependent degradation of the inhibitory synaptic protein gephyrin subsequently exacerbated SSC-mediated excitotoxicity and promoted loss of GABAergic synapses. Pharmacological blockade of NMDA-R, calcium influx, or calpain activity abolished SSC and glutamate neurotoxicity in primary murine neurons. Finally, the NMDA-R antagonist memantine was protective against the manifestation of symptoms in a tungstate-induced MoCD mouse model. These findings demonstrate that SSC drives excitotoxic neurodegeneration in MoCD and introduce NMDA-R antagonists as potential therapeutics for this fatal disease.


The halal industry is still in its early stages of development, and efforts to chart the way forward in compliance with Islamic principles are desirable and necessary. As with Islamic banking in the early years, this industry has also been largely driven by market demands and realities. It would be advisable to enrich the achievements of the halal industry with research efforts that advance a better understanding of Islamic principles and the scientific knowledge relevant to our concerns. The article begins with a review of evidence in the Qur'an and hadith on the halal or mubah, and then proceeds to address the haram. The later part of the article covers the reprehensible (makruh) and the recommendable (mandub) respectively, as well as fiqh and the relationship between Islam and science.


This study analyzes and compares colour emotions of people with respect to the difference in illuminance and wall colour at a full scale test room, without daylight. 20 undergraduate students from the Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design evaluated the visual appraisal of the wall colours and lighting design separately through a semantic differential scale. Statistical test results indicated that, colour emotions are consistent across men and women. It was also observed that a 200 lx gradual increase in the illuminance leads to positive impressions. The results show that when wall colour is the dependant variable, while illuminance is constant, light yellow room is associated with positive factors with respect to light blue room. Light yellow room is more "stimulating" than light blue room while mean of the responses are same under both of the rooms for the impression of "intimate".


The Terrorism Research Initiative (TRI) seeks to stimulate and coordinate high-quality research in the field of (Counter-)Terrorism Studies. One of TRI's instruments are national and (sub-)regional networks of post-graduate students working on their doctoral theses. TRI networks, led by a local coordinator who is usually her- or himself working on a dissertation, exist in more than a dozen countries/regions. Two of the most active networks are two be found in Canada and the Netherlands (including the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium). The two lists below originate from these networks


This paper introduces a new enumeration technique for (multi)parametric linear programs (pLPs) based on the reverse-search paradigm. We prove that the proposed algorithm has a computational complexity that is linear in the size of the output (number of so-called critical regions) and a constant space complexity. This is an improvement over the quadratic and linear computational and space complexities of current approaches. Current implementations of the proposed approach become faster than existing methods for large problems. Extensions of this method are proposed that make the computational requirements lower than those of existing approaches in all cases, while allowing for efficient parallelisation and bounded memory usage


Asthma is the most common pediatric condition in the United States, and a child's home environment plays an impactful role in the triggering of asthma exacerbations (Harper et al., 2015). Current emergency department (ED) ideology focuses on symptoms management, with little time spent on education, and virtually no attention paid to the home environment. Evidence shows that programs which incorporate home environmental assessments into asthma patient education produce a reduction in annual ED visits, fewer missed school days, decreased use of rescue medications, and improvements in quality of life (Gruber K.J., et al, 2016, Hollenbach J.P. & Cloutier M.M., 2015, and McClendon & Babino, 2015). This project therefore introduced a home environmental health assessment tool into the discharge teaching of pediatric ED patients at a level-one trauma, research, teaching medical center. Supporting evidence, project design, and educational theories are discussed. The primary clinical nurse leadership theme addressed is CNL as Educator. One year post implementation a chart review will be conducted, comparing the number of pediatric ED asthma presentations for the three years prior to, and then during, the use of the environmental assessment tool. Expected results will show a decrease in the projected number of visits related to asthma exacerbations.


Nothing has so radically transformed the world as the distinction between true and false religion. In this nuanced consideration of his own controversial Moses the Egyptian, renowned Egyptologist Jan Assmann answers his critics, extending and building upon ideas from his previous book. Maintaining that it was indeed the Moses of the Hebrew Bible who introduced the true-false distinction in a permanent and revolutionary form, Assmann reiterates that the price of this monotheistic revolution has been the exclusion, as paganism and heresy, of everything deemed incompatible with the truth it proclaims. This exclusion has exploded time and again into violence and persecution, with no end in sight. Here, for the first time, Assmann traces the repeated attempts that have been made to do away with this distinction since the early modern period. He explores at length the notions of primary versus secondary religions, of "counter-religions," and of book religions versus cultic religions. He also deals with the entry of ethics into religion's very core. Informed by the debate his own work has generated, he presents a compelling lesson in the fluidity of cultural identity and beliefs.


Ecosystem process models provide unique insight into terrestrial ecosystems by employing a modern understanding of ecophysiological processes within a dynamic environmental framework. We apply this framework to deep-time ecosystems made up of extinct plants by constructing plant functional types using fossil remains and simulating—as close as possible—the in vivo response of extinct taxa to their paleoclimatic environment. Ecosystem process models provide unique insight into terrestrial ecosystems by employing a modern understanding of ecophysiological processes within a dynamic environmental framework. We apply this framework to deep-time ecosystems made up of extinct plants by constructing plant functional types using fossil remains and simulating—as close as possible—the in vivo response of extinct taxa to their paleoclimatic environment. To accomplish this, foliar characteristics including maximum stomatal conductance, distance from leaf vein to stomata, and cuticular carbon and nitrogen were input as model parameters derived from measurements of well-preserved Pennsylvanian-age fossil leaves. With these inputs, we modeled a terrestrial tropical forest ecosystem dominated by "iconic" plant types of the Pennsylvanian (∼323–299 Ma) including arborescent lycopsids, medullosans, cordaitaleans, and tree ferns using a modified version of the process model BIOME-BGC, which we refer to as Paleo-BGC. Modeled carbon and water—and, for the first time, nitrogen—budgets of a tropical ecosystem from Euramerica driven by daily meteorology are simulated using the Global Circulation Model GENESIS 3.0. Key findings are: lycopsids have the lowest daily leaf water potential, soil water content, surface runoff, and degree of nitrogen leaching indicating an intensive water use strategy compared to medullosans, cordaitaleans, and tree ferns that have increasingly lower simulated water use, greater surface, and nitrogen loss in this order; modeled vegetation response to aridification, which was caused by reduced precipitation and intensified through the close of the Carboniferous and into the Permian shows that lycopsids and medullosans have the lowest tolerance for precipitation decrease compared to cordaitaleans and tree ferns, consistent with the paleobotanical record of occurrence of floral turnovers through the Middle Pennsylvanian through earliest Permian; elevated atmospheric pO2, hypothesized as characteristic for the latter half of the Pennsylvanian and early Permian (∼299–272 Ma), caused higher atmospheric pressure reducing plant transpiration, higher surface water runoff rates, and increased nitrogen export for all plant types simulated, manifested most strongly in the lycopsid dominated ecosystems—with overall only a small reduction in net daily assimilation (≈1 μmol CO2 m−2 s−1). Both aridification and elevated atmospheric oxygen reduced transpiration, increased water retention in soils, with higher surface runoff. With more discharge, enhanced and higher short-term surface soil loss and silicate weathering would have been possible in broad regions of the paleotropics during the late Carboniferous and early Permian. These results are only obtainable by integrating multiple, fossil-derived measurements into the simulation framework of an ecosystem model that utilizes daily meteorology.


Influence of different maturity stages and treatments of ethephon, exogenous ABA, and fluridone on the ripening and hormone level of 'Zhonghuashoutao' peach during development and post-harvest storage were investigated. The accumulation of endogenous ABA appeared at the onset of ripening and peaked at two weeks before harvest. Fruit firmness decreased, while ethylene release and SSC/TA increased sharply after a maximum peak of ABA, which have triggered the initiation of the fruit ripening. The fruits, harvested at 170 d when fruits have ripened and stored at 20 °C, showed an ethylene climacteric peak, and the pulp started softening normally, and the SSC/TA value increased. Compared with them, the immature green fruits harvested at other dates, could not mature normally due to the lack of normal reciprocity between ABA and ethylene. The ethylene release was promoted by the treatment of exogenous ABA and ethephon during ripening until the endogenous ABA reached a maximum value. However, fluridone treatment showed an inhibitory effect. The above-mentioned changes occurred again in the peach fruits after harvest. The results indicated that both ABA and ethylene play important roles in peach ripening, and their action depended on the ripening stage of peach.


Given evidence from other domains that peripheral feedback can influence emotional experience, two experiments are reported that investigate the role of physiological arousal in determining the intensity and valence of emotion experienced when listening to music. In the first experiment, two groups of participants, with different levels of induced physiological arousal, rated four excerpts of music on 10 emotion scales in terms of the emotion they felt while listening to the music and the emotion they thought the music was intended to express. Participants who had exercised immediately before making the emotion judgments reported more intense experiences of emotion felt while listening to the music than did participants who had relaxed. Arousal manipulation had no effect on ratings of the emotion thought to be expressed by the music. These results suggest that arousal influences the intensity of emotion experienced with music and therefore that people use their body state as information about the emotion felt while listening to music. A second experiment investigated this effect in more detail. Independent groups were used to test three different types of induced arousal, with separate groups for ratings of emotion felt and emotion expressed by the music. Participants who had exercised reported intensified experience of positive emotions, in response to pieces that were positive in valence, than did a control group. The article concludes that body state can influence emotional experience with music and presents this as evidence for the role of personal and situational factors in the emotional experience of music.


In this thesis I will be examining the claim that American student-athletes are exploited, and I will begin by motivating the issue as one worthy of philosophical inquiry. After then looking at the legitimacy of the moral claim that the governing body of American college athletics uses to deny payment to student-athletes, I will look at different theories of exploitation and how they might apply to college athletics. Then, using Alan Wertheimer's theory of exploitation, I will argue that student-athletes are exploited in a morally significant way by their schools. Finally, I will outline an initial proposal for a new system of college athletics that avoids the exploitation of student-athletes. I will argue that despite some practical and theoretical issues, we can design a system that avoids the exploitation of student- athletes.


ABSTRACT Conventional paragenesis analysis commonly fails to describe the subtleties of regional variation found in carbonate cement sequences. Application of the concept of sequence stratigraphy to diagenetic studies allows grouping of the products of depositional (precipitation or crystallization) events into sequences. The boundaries to these sequences are surfaces reflecting erosion (dissolution), non-deposition (renucleation), compaction or imposed fracture events. The pattern of chemical changes within a diagenetic sequence provides a fingerprint which allows that sequence to be recognized among others. Diagenetic sequences may be grouped into temporal series to provide an overall view of the diagenesis of the unit which takes account of local unconformities. The belief that lateral stra igraphical equivalence can serve as a proxy for diagenetic time equivalence is evidently mistaken; diagenetic boundaries may cross stratigraphic boundaries. The application of sequence stratigraphy concepts provides a valuable tool for interpreting regional diagenesis in carbonates and potentially offers insight into the pathways of hydrocarbon or ore fluid migration.


The cover shows tensile failure of a sample of pure polystyrene (left), and a polystyrene sample with greater impact strength containing 1% by weight of dispersed nanoribbons (right), as reported in work by Stupp and co-workers on p. 487. The nanoribbons are formed by self-assembly of molecules known as dendron rodcoils (DRCs) in styrene monomer, resulting in the formation of a gel. This gel can then be polymerized thermally.

We have previously reported that small quantities of self-assembling molecules known as dendron rodcoils (DRCs) can be used as supramolecular additives to modify the properties of polystyrene (PS). These molecules spontaneously assemble into supramolecular nanoribbons that can be incorporated into bulk PS in such a way that the orientation of the polymer is significantly enhanced when mechanically drawn above the glass-transition temperature. In the current study, we more closely evaluate the structural role of the DRC nanoribbons in PS by investigating the mechanical properties and deformation microstructures of polymers modified by self-assembly. In comparision to PS homopolymer, PS containing small amounts (≤ 1.0 wt.-%) of self-assembling DRC molecules exhibit greater Charpy impact strengths in double-notch four-point bending and significantly greater elongations to failure in uniaxial tension at 250 % prestrain. Although the DRC-modified polymer shows significantly smaller elongations to failure at 1000 % prestrain, both low- and high-prestrain specimens maintain tensile strengths that are comparable to those of the homopolymer. The improved toughness and ductility of DRC-modified PS appears to be related to the increased stress whitening and craze density that was observed near fracture surfaces. However, the mechanism by which the self-assembling DRC molecules toughen PS is different from that of conventional additives. These molecules assemble into supramolecular nanoribbons that enhance polymer orientation, which in turn modifies crazing patterns and improves impact strength and ductility.


Abstract Background: Universities in many countries increasingly deliver outreach programmes to raise aspirations and encourage participation in higher education. At the University of Canberra in Australia, these programmes target schools that have been identified as having a large number of students from rural/regional, financially disadvantaged and/or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds – groups that continue to be underrepresented in higher education. Involved in the delivery of these programmes are current university students – at the University of Canberra termed 'Aspiration Agents' – many of whom come from similar backgrounds to the students with whom they work. Although not the focus of the outreach programmes, the Aspiration Agents themselves also derive benefits from the experience. Purpose: This research aimed to explore the reasons why students choose to become Aspiration Agents, and the perceived benefits of the mentoring/ambassador role. Sample, Design and Methods: The data collection comprised two small-scale exploratory questionnaire studies (N = 12; N = 20). Qualitative methods were used to investigate participants' self-reported motivations for, and experiences of being Aspiration Agents. Findings: Findings suggest that students perceived benefits in personal, student-related and future professional domains. Dominating all these areas, however, was the recurring theme that the students were both motivated to, and derived satisfaction from, helping others. These findings are discussed in terms of the specific role of the Aspiration Agent and how this form of employment can positively, rather than negatively, impact on the student's own university experience.


In clinics, especially in the emergency department, carbon dioxide (CO2) is considered as the sixth vital sign in evaluating a patient's medical status. However, its wide applications in developing countries are dissatisfactory due to their high cost compared to their economic growth. In order to develop a practical system for concentration detection of human exhaled CO2 gas for our own, we studied the detection principle based upon the non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) measuring technique and related Lambert-Beer's equation carefully, gave out our functional circuit design of the system, and provided the corresponding graphical user interface (GUI) for CO2 detection. Finally, the experiment shows that it may be a practical system, and will give benefits for the development of our medical care in the future.


Blended/hybrid learning is dominating news in higher education as a training and educational delivery method of choice. It is seen as a link between instructors, learners and classrooms located in different places to enhance learning. Based on the interviews with 15 faculty members and one administrator that had direct experience with this form of delivery at the University of Botswana (UB) the findings suggested two major themes that dominated faculty members 'accounts: potential benefits and challenges of blended learning. The study was guided by the Diffusion of Innovation theory. The potential benefits of blended learning included improved pedagogy; engagement in learning; and added flexibility in the teaching and learning to mention a few. Faculty members perceived complexities such as lack of students' readiness to use the course management system, slow network and breakdowns; lack of computers for students and lack of time. The article concludes by suggesting future directions for blended learning (BL) at the UB.


"Succinctly locating three decades of innovative feminist epistemological challenges in relation to Western philosophy and sexual politics, [this book] is a boldly erudite tour de force, invaluable and indispensable for specialist scholars and general readers alike."-Judith A. Allen, professor of gender studies and history, Indiana University "Feminist Inquiry accomplishes what many texts claim to, but few achieve, namely, a truly interdisciplinary approach. By explicating the philosophical, political, and empirical concerns that enliven feminist epistemology, Mary Hawkesworth provides a rich resource for anyone interested in answering the question 'how do feminists know?'"-Nancy A. Naples, author of Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research Over the past three decades, feminist scholars have rocked the foundation of academia by challenging long-established beliefs, contesting dominant research paradigms, and identifying new strategies of analysis. How are we to understand these feminist interventions? Do they capture a truth about race and gender that mainstream scholarship has missed? Do they provide important insights into the politics of knowledge? How do feminist uses of traditional research methods differ from their deployment by nonfeminist scholars? What is distinctive and innovative about feminist research? Feminist Inquiry provides scholars and students with a comprehensive guide to methodological issues within feminist scholarship. Mary Hawkesworth presents lucid introductions to key philosophical debates about the nature of knowledge, an original account of feminist scholarship's contributions to these debates, and a sophisticated assessment of the analytical tools that feminist scholars have created to improve understandings of the world. Drawing upon contentious debates concerning the incidence of rape, public support for reproductive rights, affirmative action, and welfare reform, Hawkesworth demonstrates how seemingly abstract questions about the nature of knowledge have palpable effects on the lives of contemporary women and men. Feminist Inquiry makes epistemological debates-previously the exclusive preserve of philosophers-accessible to a wider audience, and demonstrates the practical and academic importance of these issues. Mary Hawkesworth is a professor of women's and gender studies at Rutgers University and the editor of Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society.


Several events in the past few years have dramatically shown how the interests of European citizens are directly affected by the stability, security and prosperity of their neighbouring regions. At the same time, the European Union and its member states face many challenges and dilemmas in designing and pursuing policies that not only effectively promote these interests, but also build stronger partnerships with neighbouring countries based on the values on which the Union is founded.

First the Arab revolts and then Russia's assertiveness in the eastern neighbourhood prompted reviews by the EU of its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), in 2011 and 2015, respectively. These reviews, in turn, have renewed scholarly interest in the ENP. By deliberately focusing on the recent literature (since 2011), this new book by CEPS identifies the factors that explain the (lack of) effectiveness and coherence of the ENP. The study identifies where there is consensus among scholars and where perspectives and judgements differ. It also identifies important gaps in the literature where further research is needed.

This study was commissioned by the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. It was edited by Hrant Kostanyan, with contributions from Steven Blockmans, Artem Remizov, Linda Slapakova and Guillaume Van der Loo.


During the past six years Henley Business School South Africa has helped more than 30 NGOs with free business support worth in excess of R20 million through its MBAid programme. How? Each year a group of MBA students from Henley Business School UK spend a week in South Africa working directly with NGOs. In these six years more than 150 students have undertaken the challenge. This year, in September, 30 students were split into five groups to help five very different organisations; St George's Home for Girls, Zip Zap Circus School, AIDS Response, Ikamva Labantu, and FARR Foundation for Alcohol Related Research.


Removal of detrimental contaminants from paper machine circulation waters is known to benefit process runnability and paper quality. The applicability of selective flotation to remove substances of a hydrophobic nature from paper machine circulation waters was investigated in laboratory-scale experiments. The separation efficiency of ink, stickies, and wood extractives was studied by using a flotation scheme in which the froth was generated by the white water's inherent surface active components without any chemical addition. The removal efficiency of detrimental contaminants was considered in relation to total losses of solid materials. The results showed that while not all white waters were able to produce stabile froth, those that generated froth also exhibited substantial separation of contaminants in the froth. With a moderate removal of 10% of total solids from white waters, removal of 45% of stickies, 27% of ink, and 20 to 50% of wood extractives was observed. Higher removal of contaminants resulted in solids losses at levels that are not economically feasible in paper production. The results showed that selective white water flotation can have beneficial results for papermaking processes.


Frailty is increasingly recognized as a better predictor of adverse postoperative events than chronological age. The objective of this review was to systematically evaluate the effect of frailty on postoperative morbidity and mortality. Studies were included if patients underwent non-cardiac surgery and if frailty was measured by a validated instrument using physical, cognitive and functional domains. A systematic search was performed using EMBASE, MEDLINE, Web of Science, CENTRAL and PubMed from 1990 - 2017. Methodological quality was assessed using an assessment tool for prognosis studies. Outcomes were 30-day mortality and complications, one-year mortality, postoperative delirium and discharge location. Meta-analyses using random effect models were performed and presented as pooled risk ratios with confidence intervals and prediction intervals. We included 56 studies involving 1.106.653 patients. Eleven frailty assessment tools were used. Frailty increases risk of 30-day mortality (31 studies, 673.387 patients, risk ratio 3.71 [95% CI 2.89-4.77] (PI 1.38-9.97; I2=95%) and 30-day complications (37 studies, 627.991 patients, RR 2.39 [95% CI 2.02-2.83). Risk of 1-year mortality was threefold higher (six studies, 341.769 patients, RR 3.40 [95% CI 2.42-4.77]). Four studies (N=438) reported on postoperative delirium. Meta-analysis showed a significant increased risk (RR 2.13 [95% CI 1.23-3.67). Finally, frail patients had a higher risk of institutionalization (10 studies, RR 2.30 [95% CI 1.81- 2.92]). Frailty is strongly associated with risk of postoperative complications, delirium, institutionalization and mortality. Preoperative assessment of frailty can be used as a tool for patients and doctors to decide who benefits from surgery and who doesn't.


Electrically conductive adhesives (ECAs) are an environmentally friendly alternative to tin/lead (Sn/Pb) solders in electronics packaging applications. However, current conductive technology is still in its infancy and limitations do exist. One of the critical reliability issues is that contact resistance of silver flake-filled ECAs on nonnoble metals increases in elevated temperature and humidity environments. The main objective of this study is to investigate the contact resistance behaviors of a class of conductive adhesives, which are based on anhydride-cured epoxy systems. Curing profiles, moisture pickup, and shifts of contact resistance of the ECAs on a nonnoble metal, tin/lead (Sn/Pb), during aging are investigated. Also, two corrosion inhibitors are employed to stabilize the contact resistance. The effects of these corrosion inhibitors on contact resistance are compared. It is found that: (1) this class of ECAs shows low moisture absorption, (2) the contact resistance of the ECAs on Sn/Pb decreases first and then increases slowly during 85/spl deg/C/85% relative humidity (RH) aging, (3) one of corrosion inhibitors is very effective to stabilize contact resistance of these ECAs on Sn/Pb, and (4) the corrosion inhibitor stabilizes contact resistance through adsorption on Sn/Pb surfaces. From this study, it can be concluded that ECAs based on anhydride cured epoxy systems are promising formulations for electronics packaging applications.


In Xenopus gastrula stage embryos, four isoforms of Tcf1 (B, C, D and E) are present with high amino acid sequence conservation compared to fish, mice and human. We studied possible functional differences between these Tcf1 isoforms during early Xenopus development. After overexpression of single Tcf1 isoforms, two distinct phenotypes were observed. Overexpression of the B or D isoforms of Tcf1, which both lack a C-clamp, enhances early canonical Wnt signaling and induces ectopic dorsal mesoderm at the expense of ventrolateral mesoderm prior to gastrulation, causing severe antero-dorzalization of embryos. Overexpression of the E-isoform, which contains a complete C-clamp, does not induce ectopic dorsal mesoderm, but rather leads to severe caudal truncation. Overexpression of the C-isoform, which contains a partial C-clamp, induces a similar phenotype. Mutation of a single amino acid in the C-clamp, known to produce a hypomorphic mutant in D. melanogaster, led to a gain of function in inducing ectopic organizer tissue, as observed after overexpression of the B or D isoforms of Tcf1. Depletion of the C-clamp exon from the zygotic mRNA pool, by injection of a morpholino oligo that targets the splice acceptor site of the exon containing the C-clamp, caused a severe shortening of the AP-axis. Furthermore, embryos showed poor development of the CNS, paraxial mesoderm and primary blood vessels. In situ hybridization analysis showed that Lef1 expression was downregulated at the mid-hindbrain boundary, in the otic vesicles and the branchial arches. The results indicate that in post-gastrula stage Xenopus embryos, the E-tail of Tcf1 is required for expression of Lef1 and for blood vessel formation.


The recent advances in Internet of Things (IoT), computational analytics, processing power, and assimilation of Big Data (BD) are playing an important role in revolutionizing maintenance and operations regimes within the wider facilities management (FM) sector. The BD offers the potential for the FM to obtain valuable insights from a large amount of heterogeneous data collected through various sources and IoT allows for the integration of sensors. The aim of this article is to extend the exploratory studies conducted on Big Data analytics (BDA) implementation and empirically test and categorize the associated drivers and challenges. Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), the researchers aim to bridge the current knowledge gap and highlight the principal factors affecting the BDA implementation. Questionnaires detailing 26 variables are sent to the FM organization in the U.K. who are in the process or have already implemented BDA initiatives within their FM operations. Fifty-two valid responses are analyzed by conducting EFA. The findings suggest that driven by market competition and ambitious sustainability goals, the industry is moving to holistically integrate analytics into its decision making. However, data quality, technological barriers, inadequate preparedness, data management, and governance issues and skill gaps are posing to be significant barriers to the fulfillment of expected opportunities. The findings of this study have important implications for FM businesses that are evaluating the potential of the BDA and IoT applications for their operations. Most importantly, it addresses the role of the BD maturity in FM organizations and its implications for perception of drivers.


Abstract 2014–2015 were years of turmoil for strategic relations, with Sino-Russian relations emerging as a particularly interesting set of ties to observe. This article asks whether recurrent Sino-Russian exhortations of friendship are mirrored by their strategic alignment in the defence and security realm, half a century after the end of the Sino-Soviet pact during the communist era. We examine the arms trade between the two countries and with regional partners, but also the recent pattern of bilateral and multilateral military exercises, as a combined test of the security and defence relationship. We are able to show that the image of friendship that both Moscow and Beijing like to promote, while apparent at the UN Security Council and within the BRICS group, remains constrained by rivalry in high-tech segments of the arms industry and by lingering concerns about the prospects of peer interference in their shared regional vicinity.


A widely respected legal scholar, Islamist activist, and renowned host of al-Jazeera's most popular religious program, Sharia and Life, Yusuf al-Qaradawi is an extremely controversial figure in contemporary Islamism. When he was a young man, Qaradawi attended a lecture by Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and immediately joined the organization's youth wing. After earning his degree in theology at al-Azhar University in Cairo, Qaradawi settled in Qatar, where he played a pivotal role in establishing a system of Islamic higher education. When the Muslim Brotherhood was forced underground in the 1960s, Qaradawi eschewed a formal position with the movement, opting instead to pursue a career as a major writer and ideologist of contemporary Islamist thought. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Qaradawi became one of a handful of Islamist ulama (Muslim scholars) who were accepted as authorities on doctrinal and political matters, both by Islamists and within the wider Islamic resurgence. Bettina Graf and Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen provide the first book-length treatment of Yusuf al-Qaradawi in English. Since the 1990s, Qaradawi has cleverly exploited new media to reach a global audience. He was one of the first Sunni scholars to launch his own Web site and is heavily involved with Islam Online. Having just celebrated the ten year anniversary of Sharia and Life, Qaradawi is unquestionably the most important Sunni religious figure in the world today, and these essays initiate readers into his immensely influential speeches and thought.


By means of a Homeric reference Alain Kamdom's text already signals in its subtitle that it belongs to an epic register. In this reading, the work depicts a heroic trek in the following sense. Its protagonists, at least during their migration from south to south, are confronted by difficulties, which are characteristic of the archetypal sort of action of a Ulysses whose extraordinary quest determines, through its stereotypes (courage, power, swindle, glory, etc.), the perception of what are the essential qualities of an exceptional man. Migration is here the element that puts the hero to the test and by which he becomes a figure meandering on the chess board of economic globalization.


Seasonal temperature change in temperate forests is known to trigger the start of spring growth, and both interannual and spatial variations in spring onset have been tied to climatic variability. Satellite dates are increasingly being used in phenology studies, but to date that has been little effort to link remotely sensed phenology to surface climate records. In this research, we use a two‐parameter spring warming phenology model to explore the relationship between climate and satellite‐based phenology. We employ daily air temperature records between 2000 and 2005 for 171 National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration weather stations located throughout New England to construct spring warming models predicting the onset of spring, as defined by the date of half‐maximum greenness (D50) in deciduous forests as detected from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer. The best spring warming model starts accumulating temperatures after March 20th and when average daily temperatures exceed 5°C. The accumulated heat sums [heating degree day (HDD)] required to reach D50 range from 150 to 300 degree days over New England, with the highest requirements to the south and in coastal regions. We test the ability of the spring warming model to predict phenology against a null photoperiod model (average date of onset). The spring warming model offers little improvement on the null model when predicting D50. Differences between the efficacies of the two models are expressed as the 'climate sensitivity ratio' (CSR), which displays coherent spatial patterns. Our results suggest that northern (beech‐maple‐birch) and central (oak‐hickory) hardwood forests respond to climate differently, particularly with disparate requirements for the minimum temperature necessary to begin spring growth (3 and 6°C, respectively). We conclude that spatial location and species composition are critical factors for predicting the phenological response to climate change: satellite observations cannot be linked directly to temperature variability if species or community compositions are unknown.


This thesis presents a detailed investigation into the potential of optimising the geometric profiles of macroscale grooves, to improve their drag reducing performance in internal laminar flow and spatially developing turbulent flow. The investigation explored whether the asymmetric profiles of naturally occurring sand ripples constitute an optimisation over the simple, symmetrical geometric profiles which have formed the typical focus for past investigations of macroscale grooves. In order to enable this analysis, the thesis developed and validated methodologies within the open source code OpenFOAM, which can overcome the bottlenecks associated with both modelling complex geometries in large-scale parametric studies, and implementing surface geometries into spatially developing turbulent flows. The first stage of the investigation developed a methodology for resolving laminar-turbulent transition in OpenFOAM using large-eddy simulation. To the authors knowledge, this work represents the first systematic validation and verification of resolved laminar-turbulent transition in OpenFOAM to investigate the combined effect of large-eddy simulation and controlled tripping. The results identify that a purely laminar boundary layer can be destabilised through imposing a period of psuedo-random, time-dependant fluctuations in the wall-normal velocity field at the wall. If the magnitude of these fluctuations match the maximum wall-normal velocity fluctuations in an equivalent boundary layer of equal thickness, then the initially period of two-dimensional instabilities is bypassed, and transition can be induced almost instantaneously downstream of the trip. Under these tripping conditions, the results expand the typical design criteria for large-eddy simulation spatial resolution, and show that typical design recommendations can sufficiently converge the flow resistance and shape factor by the start of the fully turbulent regime. Increasing this resolution by a factor of 2 achieve this convergence early on in the laminar-turbulent transitional regime. The second stage of the investigation involved an extensive parametric study of highly detailed sand ripple profiles within a periodic laminar channel flow. In all cases, the presence of both ripples and sinusoidal grooves had a negative impact on the flow resistance, typically due to a reduction in viscous forces being balanced out by the creation of a larger pressure force. The higher order details of the geometric profiles did not have a significant impact on the flow resistance, even when such details had a significant impact on promoting or delaying flow separation. The details of the geometric profile only became significant for three-dimensional ripples, when applied with a sufficient depth and and Reynolds number to manipulate the bulk flow field towards the centre of the channel, and direct high velocity flow from the centre towards the crests of the ripple profiles. The final stage of the investigation applied simplified sand ripple profiles into a wall-resolved spatially developing turbulent boundary layer, through the novel incorporation of a split-hexahedral mesh, through OpenFOAM's snappyHexMesh utility. Whilst ripples with a depth of $5\%$ of their wavelength had a negligible impact on flow resistance, deeper ripples ($15\%$) produced an increase in flow resistance which was independent of the growing ratio between boundary layer thickness and ripple depth. The local distribution of turbulent velocity fluctuations was consistent with known drag reducing phenomenon, with amplified spanwise velocity fluctuations over the shear stress spike approaching the crest, and amplified streamwise velocity fluctuations accompanying the free-shear region of flow separation downstream of the crest. It was in this free-shear region, that the streamwise resolution had the greatest impact on the accuracy of the local wall shear stress. The present approach confirms the capabilities of split-hexahedral meshes to efficiently balance the varying requirements of spatial resolution in near-wall and free-stream regions, regardless of the geometric surface profile.


The dramatic increase in public law and human rights cases coming before the UK Supreme Court (and the Appellate Committee before it) means that the UK's top court is more frequently determining essentially socio-political questions. In the light of this expanding judicial role, this paper asks whether new mechanisms for increasing political accountability, such as a parliamentary confirmation procedure, are needed for appointment to the most senior judicial offices (including, but not limited to, the UK Supreme Court). The research addresses the conceptual arguments for greater political accountability in the appointment process. It also considers the expanding ambit of judicial independence. Focusing on whether parliamentarians should have a role in the judicial appointments process, it asks what is meant by political accountability in the context of judicial appointments and considers what evidence there is that greater accountability is necessary. The research examines whether new methods of accountability could be introduced in the UK without impacting on judicial independence. It seeks to shed light on these questions by examining the recent move by the UK Parliament to introduce pre-appointment hearings for other senior posts and evaluates whether such processes are readily transferable and, if so, whether UK parliamentary committees are well placed to undertake this task.


Understanding and mimicking the hierarchical structure of mineralized tissue is a challenge in the field of biomineralization and is important for the development of scaffolds to guide bone regeneration. Bone is a remarkable tissue with an organic matrix comprised of aligned collagen bundles embedded with nanometer-sized inorganic hydroxyapatite (HAP) crystals that exhibit orientation on the macroscale. Hybrid organic-inorganic structures mimic the composition of mineralized tissue for functional bone scaffolds, but the relationship between morphology of the organic matrix and orientation of mineral is poorly understood. Herein the mineralization of supramolecular peptide amphiphile templates, that are designed to vary in nanoscale morphology by altering the amino acid sequence, is reported. It is found that 1D cylindrical nanostructures direct the growth of oriented HAP crystals, while flatter nanostructures fail to guide the orientation found in biological systems. The geometric constraints associated with the morphology of the nanostructures may effectively control HAP nucleation and growth. Additionally, the mineralization of macroscopically aligned bundles of the nanoscale assemblies to create hierarchically ordered scaffolds is explored. Again, it is found that only aligned gel templates of cylindrical nanostructures lead to hierarchical control over hydroxyapatite orientation across multiple length scales as found in bone.


The present paper probes the use of French grammatical accents by English-speaking learners of French in a multilingual country: Cameroon. Its aim is twofold. First, it highlights the extent to which the various appropriative uses of French by French-speaking Cameroonians influence the form of the language spoken by their English-speaking counterparts. Then, it checks the effect of the language spoken by these learners on their written language. The data were collected among 160 Form 3 and Form 4 pupils from two high schools in the town of Maroua, Far North Region, Cameroon. Six tests and fifty tape recordings were carried out among the target population. Also, four French teachers were tape recorded during the exercise. The analysis of the errors made by the informants revealed significant patterns of acute and grave accents in the spoken language of respondents. These patterns of oral usage were found to strongly correlate with their written production. It therefore appears that Cameroon French displays some specific phonological characteristics, which severely spoils the acquisition of grammatical accents by English-speaking Cameroonians. These findings may revive the debate over whether French in former colonies should adapt to its contexts or keep its native purity.
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Soil biodiversity and soil organic carbon are vital to the way ecosystems function and they largely determine the role of land in producing food, storing water, and mitigating climate change. This report highlights how soil organic carbon and soil biodiversity provide the foundation for terrestrial ecosystem services. Restoring or preserving soil biodiversity and soil organic carbon requires increased inputs of organic matter or a reduction of carbon losses, or both. Government strategies are needed to guide investments in drylands by local land users, private companies and other stakeholders, in order to fulfil their public responsibility for protecting and promoting the multifunctionality of land.


Nickel is an important component in many alloys, so reliable surface tension data in the liquid phase are essential for simulation processes in the metal industry. First results for surface tension of liquid nickel from our working group by Aziz et al. [1], which led to one of the first publication on the topic of our Electromagnetic Levitation (EML) setup, delivered unusual high values compared to the literature, which itself covers a wide range. To find the reason for this behaviour the aim of this work was to investigate the surface tension of nickel samples from different suppliers at similar purity grades by the Oscillating Drop (OD) technique using the EML setup of the Thermophysics and Metalphysics Group at Graz University of Technology. Since no significant deviations between samples from different suppliers have been found, an extensive literature research according to various experimental and evaluation parameters has been performed. In the course of this investigation, the earlier obtained experimental data of Aziz et al. were re-evaluated. Due to gained awareness in evaluating the translational frequency in vertical direction, the mystery of these elevated surface tension results could be solved, so that in the end the originally obtained results of Aziz have been drastically decreased through re-evaluation.


Estrogen receptor β and its coregulator SRC-1 interact with cytosolic proteins to inhibit apoptosome activation and promote inflammasome activation. Endometriosis is an often painful condition, resulting from the ectopic growth of endometrial stromal and epithelial cells outside of the uterus. Endometriosis depends on estrogen, and endometriotic tissue has increased amounts of estrogen. By analyzing surgically induced endometriosis, Han et al. identified nontranscriptional effects of estrogen that were mediated by estrogen receptor β (ERβ) and promoted ectopic growth and survival of endometrial tissue. In multiple mouse models that enabled monitoring ERβ activity through a reporter and endometrium-specific ERβ overexpression, pharmacological inhibition, or genetic knockout, increased ERβ activity resulted in larger ectopic endometrial lesions. In both the epithelial and stromal cells of ectopic tissue, ERβ activity promoted proliferation and reduced apoptosis. Analysis of proteins that coimmunoprecipitated with ERβ from ectopic tissue identified proteins associated with extrinsic apoptotic signaling mediated by tumor necrosis factor–α (TNF-α), including caspase 9 and caspase 8, the kinase ASK-1, and the ASK-1 inhibitors STRAP and 14-3-3. Proteins associated with the inflammasome, including caspase 1, NALP3, and interleukin-1β (IL-1β), also coimmunoprecipitated. The interaction of ERβ with ASK-1, STRAP, and 14-3-3 implied that ERβ may limit the activation of ASK-1 in response to TNF-α by inducing the formation of the inhibitory ASK-1, STRAP, 1-3-3 complex. Consistent with this model, the amounts of activating ASK-1 phosphorylation and cytochrome c, a protein involved in apoptosome formation, were reduced in ectopic lesions in ERβ-overexpressing mice compared with ectopic lesions in ERβ-knockout mice. Steroid receptor coactivator 1 (SRC-1) functions with ERβ in the nucleus to regulate transcription but also interacts with caspase 8, inhibiting caspase 8 cleavage and activation. The authors proposed that SRC-1, ERβ, and caspase 8 interacted to prevent caspase 8 cleavage; indeed, less cleaved caspase 8 was present in lesions from the ERβ-overexpressing mice than in lesions from control mice. Although apoptotic caspase activity was reduced by ERβ activity; active caspase 1 and its target, IL-1β, a cytokine that promotes cell adhesion and proliferation, were increased by ERβ activity. Combined inhibition of ERβ and SRC-1 resulted in synergistic reduction in ectopic lesion size in mice with endometriosis. These results suggest that ERβ functions in the cytosol, forming inhibitory complexes that reduce extrinsic apoptosis and forming activating complexes that promote inflammasome-mediated production of IL-1β. Thus, treatments for endometriosis should not only target the transcriptional activities of this steroid receptor. S. J. Han, S. Y. Jung, S.-P. Wu, S. M. Hawkins, M. J. Park, S. Kyo, J. Qin, J. P. Lydon, S. Y. Tsai, M.-J. Tsai, F. J. DeMayo, B. W. O'Malley, Estrogen receptor β modulates apoptosis complexes and the inflammasome to drive the pathogenesis of endometriosis. Cell 163, 960–974 (2015). [PubMed]


The purpose of this research was to compare the social representations of university students who are getting their degree in the technological, health and law areas, on the use of marijuana. Sixty (60) university students took part in this research, both sexes, aged from 22 to 30 years old. Semi-structured interviews were used and the collected material was categorized through the analysis of content by Bardin´s theme (1977). The collected data obtained among the university students made the consensual representations possible and particularity according to the  field of professional performance. The law students showed their representations based on legal and social questions; the health students on the organic-medical and psychosocial conception, and the technological ones their representations in psychosocial elements. It has been concluded that there is the necessity of formulating the strategies which give data (support/information) in the professional formation, mainly the health and law areas which will be applied in their future practices of intervention with drug users and their families, as well as the implementation of public policies of education and health promotion.


In many real-world applications, the simplified assumption of independent and identically distributed noise breaks down, and labels can have structured, systematic noise. For example, in brain-computer interface applications, training data is often the result of lengthy experimental sessions, where the attention levels of participants can change over the course of the experiment. In such application cases, structured label noise will cause problems because most machine learning methods assume independent and identically distributed label noise. In this paper, we present a novel methodology for learning and evaluation in presence of systematic label noise. The core of which is a novel extension of support vector data description / one-class SVM that can incorporate latent variables. Controlled simulations on synthetic data and a real-world EEG experiment with 20 subjects from the domain of brain-computer-interfacing show that our method achieves accuracies that go beyond the state of the art.


Subsequent to the least cost design problem of water distribution systems (WDSs), optimal operation is probably the most explored topic. Since 1970 a variety of methods have been developed to address this problem. Although the proposed methods give theoretic ways for solving optimal operation problems of WDSs, there are little successful application cases in practice, especially when the methods were used to large scale WDSs due to too many decision variables. In consideration of using fewer decision variables, the two-level optimal method is adopted in this paper. By abstracting pump stations into high level reservoirs, the water distribution system hydraulic model can be modified into a modality, which can be used in first optimal level of two-level optimal method. Also, by building on feasible pump combination database, a new optimal method in the second optimal level will be proposed, and the proposed new method in the second optimal level will be embedded into the first optimal level, so that the problem of results discordant in different levels will be solved. By introducing new concepts and improving present optimal methods, a more practical optimal operation method of water distribution system will be established. By applying in a large scale practical water distribution system, the proposed method has been evaluated.


Nukuteatri kunstilise eripara kasitlemine pakub unikaalse platvormi kunstide analuusimiseks. Arutelus tuuakse valja eel-lopetatud ja esituses muutuvate kunstivormide eristus, kasitletakse kunstinahtusi esemelisuse kaudu, selgitatakse kunstilise kehalisuse moistet ning nahtava ja nahtamatu kasitlemist kunstilises kontekstis. Nukuteatrikunsti universaalsuse voti peitub ratsionalistlikust maailmakasitlusest tuleneva nuudisaegse esemepohisuse ja nukuteatrikunsti reeglitest tuleneva esemepohisuse suhestamises. Sellest tulenevalt saab nukuteatrikunsti vaadelda kui universaalset kultuuritolke mehhanismi ning unikaalset meediumit vaimse ja materiaalse maailma kokkupuutepunktide uurimiseks.  The article is aimed at describing the possibilities of puppetry art in our cultural context. On the one hand, the article deals with puppetry art as a unique means for analyzing crossing points of the spiritual means and the material world. The uniqueness of puppetry art lies in the object-indulgence that offers a unique method for explaining invisible entities. Puppetry is a unique art form for analyzing mind and body questions because the object is the main means of expression and not simply an aid like it is in drama art. On the other hand, puppetry art represents a mechanism of cultural translation that can be disserted as a language phenomenon of the material world. The key of universality of the puppetry art lies in the relationship of contemporary object indulgence and object indulgence according to the rules of puppet thinking. The object connects eternal mythological time-and space to the contemporary materialistic world perception. Uniqueness of puppetry art – using objects as the main means of expression – assures the universality of the art form through the object as an interdisciplinary medium. Art phenomena can be analyzed on a different basis. At first, I highlight the differentia of the so-called pre-finished art forms and the art forms that change during the exposition. For instance if in architecture, in fine arts and in literature the artist finishes the artwork at a certain stage, then in histrionical art forms the creating process continues until there will be artists who act it out. Secondly, we can highlight the art forms originating from different rules of the genre. The third possibility for analyzing art gives us the analysis of object thingfulness. Music and drama art are different from other art forms that use objects with the meaning that the act of art is born under the eyes of spectators. Even if it is recorded, it is still born from the direct contact with performers. Disserting the topic of puppetry, I begin with explaining the terms 'doll art', 'puppetry art' and 'puppet thinking'. As puppetry flows from objects, its object indulgence relates to corporality. There are two aspects in corporality in art issues: one of them involves the person as a creator and perceiver with senses and the other type of corporal depicts artwork as a material. All kinds of physical entity can turn corporal on the theatre stage. It follows that noncorporal physical entities can turn to visible objects in the theatre art context and there can be objects without real physical materiality in the art context. I handle physical and artifical corporality as physically experienced forms of empirical materials. The depth of mind has been the object of interest throughout centuries in different religious, psychological and theoretical explanations. As the hearable and visible (i.e. measurable) parameters cannot assure the quality of art expression, people should have a kind of sense that can perceive and evaluate the art experience substantially. We can evaluate the quality of art with our content-sense that has any universaly measurable parameters. Puppetry uses a kind of special language, which consists of meaningful symbols. This system of independent rules can be called puppet thinking, puppet philosophy or puppetrism. Puppetrism is considered to be the way of seeing or showing objects where the objects are active through animating them. According to puppet-thinking principles, ideas and thoughts can be taken as realistic as objects. Personification of everything and every phenomenon in puppetry is an example of metaphorical thinking. Puppetry art is a universal mechanism for the act of cultural translation. Puppetry art can be disserted as a language phenomenon of the material world. Talking about the function of puppetry within the whole cultural system, one can say that puppetry serves in several purposes as a connecting link because as a symbolic genre it uses methaphorical thinking, puppetry commingles routine life and art life using objects to express a thought. As an object is the most important differentiating issue in puppetry, it highlights puppetry from all other performing art forms. Conclusively, we can say that puppetry art entails three interesting branches in our cultural system that can be objects of closer study in the future: 1. The puppetry art aesthetics as the explanation of mind and body topics is the homogenous structure of art. 2. Puppetry as the "laboratory" of material culture studies. 3. Puppet thinking is a discursive methodological platform for discussing the topics of philosophy of mind. Hence, puppetry has to fulfill a special role in contemporary rational world perception. There are a lot of unused possibilities in our cultural context for puppetry art that is able to cross borders of different subject fields.


Regional economic policy in developing countries is dominated by central government. The potential of local government has recently attracted more interest (Eisiger 1988; Fosler 1988; Beckeman 1996; Jones 1990 ; Elkins 1966; Kossy; 1966; Leicht 1994). The general consensus is that local business climate manifests either entrepreneurial conditions. Since the early 1970s, local governments in Korea confine their policies for its diversification due to an incomplete financial environment. There has been increased public awareness that regional economic policies should be designed to give local authorities raising local organizational capacity as well as ensuring a greater equality in the allocation of funding and priorities. This study discusses regional economic policy and can summarize as follows; First, most local governments in Korea tend to adopt supply-led policies than the demanded one because of limited local resources and inexperience in its policy formulation/ implementation. Local government leaders, however, are increasingly aware of the importance of demand-led regional economic policy. This means that the entrepreneurial approach to economic development at the local level is being gradually imbedded after initiating local governance as a result of 1997 financial crisis in Korea. Second, the more wealthy, urban and industrial regions are the most innovative in every policy domain promoting regional economic development; this can be interpreted the urban areas have better access to financial/ human resources along with urban government officials having more experience in policy planning and implementation from their favorable resources. Third, there is a high correlation between policy environment factors and regional economic policy tools, particularly with the participation of private sector. The entrepreneurial approach to regional economic development is a crucial element in a firm's capability along with creation of the favorable business climate. Local governments with diverse regional economic policies tend to be associated with high government level and have more financial resources, expertise and a strong local leadership available to them. By contrast, the local governments with weaker regional economic programs are likely to be noted for poorer relationships with low level of policy environmental factor. Therefore, the central government needs to play a coordinated role of resource allocation for less favored regions in order to be diversify/ intensify regional economic development.