Lactose intolerance is a non-immune food adverse reaction due to a deficiency in lactase, an enzyme secreted by the intestinal epithelium. There are genetic and acquired forms. The congenital form of infantile type with birth onset is rarisime. The genetic form of adult-type lactase deficiency, or the primary lactase deficiency, is attributable to relative or absolute absence of lactase that develops in childhood at various ages in different racial groups and is the most common cause of lactose intolerance. In pediatrics, the most commonly diagnosed lactase deficiency is secondary to inflammatory, allergic, autoimmune or infectious diseases that affect intestinal mucosal integrity. The correct differential diagnosis of malabsorption syndrome avoids the unnecessary explorations, inappropriate hospitalizations and restrictive regimens.


In the site-specific installation A Room Full of Lovers, Wentworth develops his ongoing investigation into the readymade, draping industrial steel chains across the gallery walls and entangling spatial awareness with support structures. Wentworth's meticulous attention to points of contact between an object and its environment focuses the architectural dimension of the readymade; these structural intersections form a multilayered exploration of the way objects are assigned meaning.

The use of steel chains and their narrative structuring in A Room Full of Lovers was first explored in Wenthworth's earlier sculpture 'Heiroglyph' (2010); one of thirteen new works for his solo exhibition at Peter Freeman Gallery, New York. Critic Barbara A. MacAdam's review in Art News describes the sculptures as "poetry translated into images", a direct response to Wentworth's claim that objects are 'read'. He has continually stretched the conditions of the ready-made to incorporate architectonic, social and cultural readings. In relationship to his solo exhibition at Nelson-Freeman, Paris in 2011, Donatien Grau writes in Flash Art that Wentworth's "sculpture isn't a readymade in the provocative sense; it is an artwork that reflects the complexity of an artistic reality".

An earlier exploration of the function and meaning of everyday objects is evident in Wentworth's year long inaugural Cabinet of Curiosities commission for the Research and Education Center at the Whitechapel Gallery. Titled a 'Confiscation of String' (2009), Wentworth reconsidered the function and meaning of an everyday object, namely string, through his compilation of a collective material archive and a focus on the emotional resonances that everyday objects trigger. Wentworth organized a series of related events with participants including Andrew Jaffe, astrophysicist, Imperial College London, Mark Miodownik, materials engineer, King's College London and Priyesh Mistry, Founder, The Knit Crowd, The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University.


Hydrothermally altered basaltic lava-units in the northern Kerguelen Archipelago contain a wide variety of secondary silicate and carbonate minerals, including zeolites, hydrothermal calcite, dolomite and magnesite, as well as celadonite, orthoclase (adularia) and quartz. Petrography, fluid-inclusion microthermometry, trace-elements geochemistry, Sr isotopes and stable-isotope compositions indicate hydrothermal fluid cells derived from meteoric water interacting with basalts and Rb-rich subvolcanic peralkaline rocks at temperatures ranging from 50 to 200 °C associated with the cooling of the lava pile. The calculated δ 18 O values of meteoric-hydrothermal waters in fossil hydrothermal systems are identical to those in present-day hot springs, suggesting that meteoric recharge was continuous throughout the igneous cooling cycles of the 28–23 Ma older host basalts and the younger 15–5 Ma old peralkaline intrusions. The Kerguelen northern coastline hydrothermal system in the basaltic pile demonstrates that much of the silicate mineralogy and almost all carbonate secondary minerals in altered basalts were derived from meteoric-hydrothermal fluids, rather than products of seawater interaction, or even magmatic-hydrothermal fluids associated with peralkaline intrusions.


A simple and sensitive spectrophotometric method for the determination of butylated hydroxyanisole was developed. This method is based on oxidative coupling reaction between butylated hydroxyanisole with orcinol in the presence of hydrogen peroxide and enzyme horseradish peroxidase to produce colored product, which is measured spectrophotometrically at 420 nm. The color was stable for 15 minutes. Beer's law was valid within a concentration range of 5-25 μg/ml. All the variables were studied to optimize the reaction conditions. No interference was observed in the presence of common excipeints. The validity of the method was tested by analyzing butylated hydroxyanisole in oils. Good recoveries were obtained. This method is successfully employed for the determination of butylated hydroxyanisole in oils.


Objective: Intensive care unit (ICU)–acquired delirium has been associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Prevention strategies including modification of delirium risk factors are emphasized by practice guidelines. No study has specifically evaluated modifiable delirium risk factors in trauma ICU patients. Our goal was to evaluate modifiable risk factors for delirium among trauma patients admitted to the ICU. Design: Prospective observational study. Setting: Two level 1 trauma ICU centers. Patients: Patients 18 years of age or older admitted for trauma including mild to moderate traumatic brain injury were eligible for the study. Interventions and Measurements: Delirium was assessed daily using the confusion assessment method for the ICU (CAM-ICU). The effect of modifiable risk factors was assessed using multivariate Cox regression analysis adjusting for severity of illness and significant nonmodifiable risk factors. Main Results: A total of 58 of 150 recruited patients (38.7%; 95% confidence interval [CI] 30.9-46.5) screened positive for delirium during ICU stay. When adjusting for significant nonmodifiable risk factors, physical restraints (hazard ratio [HR]: 2.13; 95% CI: 1.07-4.24) and active infection or sepsis (HR: 2.12; 95% CI: 1.18-3.81) significantly increased the risk of delirium, whereas opioids (HR: 0.35; 95% CI: 0.13-0.98), episodes of hypoxia (HR: 0.55; 95% CI: 0.31-0.95), access to a television/radio in the room (HR: 0.26; 95% CI: 0.11-0.62), and number of hours mobilized per day (HR: 0.77; 95% CI: 0.68-0.88) were associated with significantly less risk of delirium. Conclusion: We have identified modifiable risk factors for delirium. Future studies should aim at implementing strategies to modify these risk factors and evaluate their impact on the risk of delirium.


Benthic invertebrates are a well-established target in environmental quality status evaluations. The AMBI (AZTI's Marine Biotic Index) was developed to determine the impacts and the quality status of soft-bottom marine benthic communities. The aim of this study was investigating multivariate pattern of benthic invertebrate community and application of AMBI (AZTI's Marine Biotic Index) for determining quality of health status in Khuzestan coastal waters. Seasonal samplings were collected from eight creeks over one year study by Peterson grab sampler, beginning from October 2005. All creeks are characterized by muddy bottom. According to sensitivity to environmental stress, macrobenthic animals classified into 5 ecological groups. Among 28 identified faunal groups the most abundant groups were polychaets, molluscs, crustaceans and nematodes, respectively. Two way ANOVAs showed only seasonal significant differences in mean abundance (P<0.05) and Margalef richness index values (P<0.05), while all of studied creeks shows similar biological characters based on benthic communities. According to annual mean of AMBI value all creeks were in ecological group III with slightly polluted condition, except for Darvish that was in unpolluted category. In the present study, although the number of species initially increased, but due to appearance of dominant species such as Capitella sp. and nematods (as opportunist species), diversity values reduced. In general, according to AMBI and Biotic index values, the most creeks are classified into unpolluted and slightly polluted categories except for Zangy, Doragh and Patil in summer and also Zangy and Bihad in winter which was in moderate to heavily polluted category. Different types of exploitation, industrial and shipping activities in this area could result in unbalanced to polluted status in benthic animals (as the best indicators in sediment quality assessment) so these results can be acceptable.


We review a recent development in high-accuracy non-Born–Oppenheimer calculations of atomic and molecular systems in a basis of explicitly correlated Gaussian functions. Much of the recent progress in this area is due to the derivation and implementation of analytical gradients of the energy functional with respect to variational linear and non-linear parameters of the basis functions. This method has been used to obtain atomic and molecular ground and excited state energies and the corresponding wave functions with accuracy that exceeds previous calculations. Further, we have performed the first calculations of non-linear electrical properties of molecules without the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for systems with more than one electron. The results for the dipole moments of such systems as HD and LiH agree very well with experiment. After reviewing our non-Born–Oppenheimer results we will discuss ways this method can be extended to deal with larger molecular systems with and without an external perturbation.


The increasing diffusion of smart devices, along with the dynamism of the mobile applications ecosystem, are boosting the production of malware for the Android platform. So far, many different methods have been developed for detecting Android malware, based on either static or dynamic analysis. The main limitations of existing methods include: low accuracy, proneness to evasion techniques, and weak validation, often limited to emulators or modified kernels. We propose an Android malware detection method, based on sequences of system calls, that overcomes these limitations. The assumption is that malicious behaviors (e.g., sending high premium rate SMS, cyphering data for ransom, botnet capabilities, and so on) are implemented by specific system calls sequences: yet, no apriori knowledge is available about which sequences are associated with which malicious behaviors, in particular in the mobile applications ecosystem where new malware and non-malware applications continuously arise. Hence, we use Machine Learning to automatically learn these associations (a sort of "fingerprint" of the malware); then we exploit them to actually detect malware. Experimentation on 20000 execution traces of 2000 applications (1000 of them being malware belonging to different malware families), performed on a real device, shows promising results: we obtain a detection accuracy of 97%. Moreover, we show that the proposed method can cope with the dynamism of the mobile apps ecosystem, since it can detect unknown malware.


Hardware ventures are emerging entrepreneurial firms that create new market offerings based on development of digital devices. These ventures are important elements in the global economy but have not yet received much attention in the literature. Our interest in examining hardware ventures is specifically in the role that information system (IS) resources play in enabling them. We ask how the role of IS resources for hardware ventures can be conceptualized and develop a framework for assessment. Our framework builds on the distinction of operand and operant resources and distinguishes between two key lifecycle stages of hardware ventures: start-up and growth. We show how this framework can be used to discuss the role, nature, and use of IS for hardware ventures and outline empirical research strategies that flow from it. Our work contributes to broadening and enriching the IS field by drawing attention to its role in significant and novel phenomena.


In three of the manipulations in a 2009 dual-task performance study, virtual auditory cues were used to alert participants to the onset of three kinds of decision events in the secondary, but more demanding of the two tasks. Two aural parameters, the manner in which the cues were spatially presented and the level of taskrelated information they carried, were systematically altered to compare the impact of these factors on performance. In the work presented here, we focus on performance measures that can be correlated with participants' use of aurally-based task-related information in the study. Although secondary task decision response times were nominally the same in each manipulation, an analysis of head tracking data shows that, when they were cued, participants turned their attention from the primary to the secondary task significantly sooner when a single sound (always the same) was used to announce decision events. In contrast, when a different sound was used to signal each kind of decision event, participants, after being cued, spent less time (but not significantly so) examining the secondary task before entering their responses. The nature of this tradeoff and its implications for information design in auditory cueing is discussed.


Agent-based approaches to manufacturing scheduling and control are attractive because they offer increased robustness against the unpredictability of factory operations. Previously, we introduced a new approach to coordinating factory routing and scheduling based on a computational model of wasp behavior. The natural multi-agent system of the wasp colony is highly effective in selforganizing the allocation of tasks necessary to fulfill the needs of the nest and has proven useful as an effective model upon which to base our distributed approach to factory control. In this paper, we improve upon our original formulation of the routing wasp with the addition of a tournament of dominance contests among routing wasps competing for the same job. We experimentally evaluate this improved performance.


Clad tracks/layers with good geometry, desirable dilution, and hardness can be produced using optimal process parameters. However, cracking and deformation can occur in the laser cladded products. The tensile residual stress is mainly responsible for the failure of the cladded products. Therefore, different residual stresses' control strategies during laser cladding were investigated, such as preheating the substrate, using an intermediate layer, and using different energy inputs. The residual stresses in clad layers were measured with layer removal and hole drilling techniques. The depth residual stress distributions obtained from both techniques show a good agreement. The residual stresses acting along the cladding direction σx and the maximum residual stresses within the clad layer were analyzed. The cooling rate and thermal gradient were simulated from our previously developed 2D thermal model. The relationships among the cooling rates, thermal gradients, maximum residual stresses, and absorbed energy were investigated and the results are discussed. Thermal gradients, cooling rates, and the maximum residual stresses decrease with energy input. The decay factors between maximum residual stress and absorbed energy and between the cooling rate and absorbed energy are close to each other indicating that a correlation between the maximum residual stress and cooling rate exists. An empirical relation is used to describe such a correlation.Clad tracks/layers with good geometry, desirable dilution, and hardness can be produced using optimal process parameters. However, cracking and deformation can occur in the laser cladded products. The tensile residual stress is mainly responsible for the failure of the cladded products. Therefore, different residual stresses' control strategies during laser cladding were investigated, such as preheating the substrate, using an intermediate layer, and using different energy inputs. The residual stresses in clad layers were measured with layer removal and hole drilling techniques. The depth residual stress distributions obtained from both techniques show a good agreement. The residual stresses acting along the cladding direction σx and the maximum residual stresses within the clad layer were analyzed. The cooling rate and thermal gradient were simulated from our previously developed 2D thermal model. The relationships among the cooling rates, thermal gradients, maximum residual stresses, and absorbed energy...


Thomas Haigh is working with Paul Ceruzzi of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., on an expanded and completely reorganized version of Ceruzzi's classic monograph A History of Modern Computing. Haigh discusses the challenges involved in producing a one volume history of a uniquely flexible technology. Since the first edition of the book was published twenty years ago our sense of what the computer is for has shifted utterly, to encompass media consumption, personal communication, and shopping as well as the traditional activities of business administration and scientific number crunching. To reflect this, Ceruzzi and Haigh are adopting a new structure, in which each chapter of the book tells the story of how "the computer" becomes something different through its interaction with a particular set of users and applications. Haigh connects this structure to the work of historian Michael S. Mahoney, and his discussion of the "Histories of Computing(s)." He ponders theparticular difficulty of avoiding a simplistic narrative of historical progress, often called a "whig history," in summarizing the evolution of a technology whose spectacular technical improvement has come to define our idea of modernity. Haigh also discusses Ceruzzi's text in relation to other comprehensive histories of computing, the production process of the new edition, and some of the editorial choices involved in a project of this kind.


A new traffic-responsive feedback control strategy, heuristic ramp-metering coordination (HERO) that coordinates local ramp-metering actions in freeway networks is presented. The proposed coordination scheme is simple and reactive [i.e., based on readily available real-time measurements without the need for real-time model calculations or external disturbance (e.g., demand) prediction]. HERO employs an extended version of the feedback regulator ALINEA at the local level. The new strategy overcomes the problem of uncertain freeway capacity by targeting the critical occupancy for maximum throughput. HERO outperforms uncoordinated local ramp metering and approaches the efficiency of sophisticated optimal control schemes. HERO has been implemented by VicRoads, the road authority for the state of Victoria, Australia, at six consecutive inbound on-ramps on the Monash Freeway in Melbourne, Australia. This pilot project is part of the Monash–CityLink–West Gate (MCW) upgrade. The obtained results show a significant increase of traffic throughput and a reduction of travel times compared with the previously used ramp-metering system. To maximize performance across the entire 75-km route of the MCW upgrade, HERO is currently under implementation at 63 on-ramps.


We analyze the investment behavior of affiliated funds of mutual funds (AFoMFs), which are mutual funds that can only invest in other funds in the family, and are offered by most large families. Though never mentioned in any prospectus, we discover that AFoMFs provide an insurance pool against temporary liquidity shocks to other funds in the family. We show that though the family benefits because funds can avoid fire-sales, the cost of this insurance is borne by the investors in the AFoMFs. The paper thus uncovers some of the hidden complexities of fiduciary responsibility in mutual fund families.


OBF (orthonormal basis function) fuzzy models have shown to be a promising approach to the areas of nonlinear system identification and control since they exhibit several advantages over those dynamic model topologies usually adopted in the literature. A more general architecture, called generalized OBF Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model, was introduced in previous work and provided the mathematical interpretation that was missing to the former OBF fuzzy models. In spite of its clear mathematical meaning, however, the identification of this new generalized model is not a trivial task. This paper discusses the use of a genetic algorithm (GA) especially designed for this task, where a fitness function based on the Akaike information criterion plays a key role by considering both model accuracy and parsimony aspects. The hybridization of the GA with classical estimation algorithms is also investigated. Specifically, two different hybridization approaches (with global and local least squares) are evaluated in the modeling of a real nonlinear magnetic levitation system.


Commercial heavy vehicles using urban curbside loading zones are not typically provided with an envelope, or space adjacent to the vehicle, allocated for loading and unloading activities. While completing loading and unloading activities, couriers are required to walk around the vehicle, extend ramps and handling equipment and manoeuvre goods; these activities require space around the vehicle. But the unique space needs of delivery trucks are not commonly acknowledged by or incorporated into current urban design practices in either North America or Europe. Because of this lack of a truck envelope, couriers of commercial vehicles are observed using pedestrian pathways and bicycling infrastructure for unloading activities, as well as walking in traffic lanes. These actions put them and other road users in direct conflict and potentially in harm's way. This article presents our research to improve our understanding of curb space and delivery needs in urban areas. The research approach involved the observation of delivery operations to determine vehicle type, loading actions, door locations and accessories used. Once common practices had been identified by observing 25 deliveries, simulated loading activities were measured to quantify different types of loading space requirements around commercial vehicles. This resulted in a robust measurement of the operating envelope required to reduce conflicts between truck loading and unloading activities with adjacent pedestrian, bicycle, and motor vehicle activities. From these results, commercial loading zone design recommendations can be developed that will allow our urban street system to operate more efficiently, safely and reliably for all users.


Diffusion MRI remains the most comprehensive reference for understanding this rapidly evolving and powerful technology and is an essential handbook for designing, analyzing, and interpreting diffusion MR experiments. Diffusion imaging provides a unique window on human brain anatomy. This non-invasive technique continues to grow in popularity as a way to study brain pathways that could never before be investigated in vivo. This book covers the fundamental theory of diffusion imaging, discusses its most promising applications to basic and clinical neuroscience, and introduces cutting-edge methodological developments that will shape the field in coming years. Written by leading experts in the field, it places the exciting new results emerging from diffusion imaging in the context of classical anatomical techniques to show where diffusion studies might offer unique insights and where potential limitations lie. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Offline handwriting recognition with deep neural networks is usually limited to words or lines due to large computational costs. In this paper, a less computationally expensive full page offline handwritten text recognition framework is introduced. This framework includes a pipeline that locates handwritten text with an object detection neural network and recognises the text within the detected regions using features extracted with a multi-scale convolutional neural network (CNN) fed into a bidirectional long short term memory (LSTM) network. This framework achieves comparable error rates to state of the art frameworks while using less memory and time. The results in this paper demonstrate the potential of this framework and future work can investigate production ready and deployable handwritten text recognisers.


The creep behaviour of three pressure diecast commercial zinc-aluminium based alloys: Mazak 3, corresponding to BS 1004A, and the new alloys ZA.8 and ZA.27 with a series of alloys with compositions ranging from 0% to 30% aluminium was investigated. The total creep elongation of commercial alloys was shown to be well correlated using an empirical equation. Based on this a parametrical relationship was derived which allowed the total creep extension to be related to the applied stress, the temperature and the time of test, so that a quantitative assessment of creep of the alloys could be made under different conditions. Deviation from the normal creep kinetics occurred in alloys ZA.8 and ZA.27 at very low stresses, 150°C, due to structural coarsening combined with partial transformation of e -phase into T' phase. The extent of primary creep was found to increase with aluminium content, but secondary creep rates decreased in the order Mazak 3, ZA.8 and ZA.27. Thus, based on the above equation, ZA.8 was found to have a substantially better total creep resistance than ZA.27, which in turn was marginally better than Mazak 3 for strains higher than 0.5%, but inferior for smaller strains, due to its higher primary creep extension. The superior creep resistance of ZA.8 was found to be due to the presence of strictly-orientated, thin plate-like precipitates of e(CuZn4) phase in the zinc matrix of the eutectic and the lamellarly decomposed β phase, in which the precipitation morphology and orientation of e in the zinc matrix was determined. Over broad ranges of temperature and stresses, the stress exponents and activation energies for creep were found to be consistent with some proposed creep rate mechanisms; i.e. viscous glide for Mazak 3, dislocation climb over second phase particles for ZA.8 and dislocation climb for ZA.27, controlled by diffusion in the zinc-rich phase. The morphology of aluminium and copper-rich precipitates formed from the solid solution of zinc was clearly revealed. The former were found to further increase the creep rate of inherently low creep resistant zinc, but the latter contributed significantly to the creep resistance. Excess copper in the composition, however, was not beneficial in improving the creep resistance. Decomposition of β in copper-containing alloys was found to be through a metastable Zn-Al phase which is strongly stabilised by copper, and the final products of the decomposition had a profound effect on the creep strength of the alloys. The poor creep resistance of alloy ZA.27 was due to the presence of particulate products derived from decomposed β-phase and a large volume of fine, equiaxed products of continuously decomposed α-dendrites.


ranges of streamflow. In the agricultural area, atraWater and bed-sediment samples from streams draining an urban and an agricultural area in the Trinity River Basin, Texas, were analyzed. The samples were collected during March 1993–September 1995 by the Trinity River Basin study-unit team of the National Water-Quality Assessment Program. A comparison of pesticide data for water samples from seven streams in the Dallas-Fort Worth urban area with five streams in an agricultural area in the west-central part of the Trinity River Basin showed detections of 24 herbicides in urban-area streams and 19 herbicides in agricultural-area streams and 10 insecticides in each area. Atrazine, a herbicide, was detected in all samples from both areas. Diazinon, an insecticide, was detected in all samples collected in urban-area streams and in about 60 percent of the samples collected in agricultural-area streams. Concentrations of alachlor, atrazine, fluometuron, metolachlor, and pendimethalin (herbicides) were always greater in agricultural-area streams, and prometon and simazine concentrations were always greater in urban-area streams. Atrazine was the only herbicide with concentrations greater than a health advisory limit of 3 micrograms per liter. Concentrations were greater in about 20 percent of the samples; all were in the agricultural area and occurred during spring and during higher streamflow. Diazinon was the only insecticide with concentrations greater than the health advisory of 0.6 microgram per liter. Concentrations were greater in about 15 percent of the samples from the urban area. All exceedances were during spring through early fall and during all zine and metolachlor concentrations peaked during spring and early summer and increased with increasing streamflow; in the urban area, carbaryl, chlorpyrifos, and diazinon peaked in April and remained relatively high during the summer and increased with increasing streamflow. A comparison of pesticide data for bedsediment samples from five urban streams and five agricultural streams showed detections of 11 organochlorine insecticides in the urban area and 1 in the agricultural area. All compounds were either DDT-related or one of the components of chlordane except for mirex and dieldrin.


Among other regions of the world, the Arctic is
strongly affected by climate change. Globally, it is
the region with the most pronounced warming, leading
to permafrost warming and thawing. Part of the
1,300 Pg soil organic carbon currently stored in the
frozen ground is already and might be further released
as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). CO2
is released through aerobic soil respiration and from
plant roots, but also sequestered through photosynthesis.
CH4 emission can be attributed to either recent
microbial activity or to past microbial or thermal decomposition
and is spatially heterogeneous. To our
knowledge, regional assessments of the total carbon
flux (CO2 and CH4) based on high frequency airborne
measurements do not exist.
Here we determine the regional pattern of CO2 and
total carbon emissions (CO2 + CH4) of the Mackenzie
Delta region, Canada, based on the Airborne Measurements
of Methane Fluxes Campaign (AIRMETH)
in July 2013 [Kohnert et al., 2014].
The Mackenzie Delta is the second largest arctic
delta (13,000 km2). Our measurements covered an
area extending 320 km from west to east (140°58'
W to 133°22'W) and of 240 km from north to south
(69°33'N to 67°26'N). The study area is heterogeneous
and comprises the delta itself, the adjacent Yukon
coastal plain, and Richards Island north east of the
delta. Part of the delta is located north of the treeline.
The area surrounding the delta is described as continuous
permafrost zone where the permafrost reaches
a thickness of 300 m along the coastal plain and 500
m on Richards Island. In the delta itself the discontinuous
permafrost reaches a maximum thickness of
100 m.
For the AIRMETH campaign we used the research
aircraft Polar 5. Equipped with a 5-hole probe, the
usual meteorological sensors, and a fast greenhouse
gas analyser (GGA 24EP, Los Gatos Research Inc.)
we flew at 30 - 60 m above ground at a true airspeed
of 60 m s−1.
CO2 and CH4 fluxes were calculated with a timefrequency
resolved version of the eddy-covariance technique
[Metzger et al., 2013]. We calculated flux topographies
[Mauder et al., 2008] to resolve the fluxes
along a linear flight track to the area within the footprint
of the measurements. The result is a 100 m resolved
gridded carbon flux map within the footprints
of the flight tracks. Based on the flux topographies
we produce a map of the regional pattern of peak
growing season carbon fluxes.
References
Kohnert, K.; Serafimovich, A.; Hartmann, J. and
Sachs, T. [2014]: Airborne measurements of methane
fluxes in alaskan and canadian tundra with the
research aircraft "polar 5". In Reports on Polar
and Marine Research, volume 673. Alfred Wegener
Institue Bremerhaven, pp. 81.
Mauder, M.; Desjardins, R.L. and MacPherson, I.
[2008]: Creating surface flux maps from airborne
measurements: Application to the Mackenzie area
GEWEX study MAGS 1999. Boundary-Layer Meteorology,
129:431–450, 2008.
Metzger, S.; Junkermann, W.; Mauder, M.;
Butterbach-Bahl, K.; Trancon y Widemann, B.;
Neidl, F.; Schafer, K.; Wieneke, S.; Zheng,
X. H.; Schmid, H. P. and Foken, T. [2013]:
Spatially explicit regionalization of airborne flux
measurements using environmental response functions.
Biogeosciences, 10(4):2193–2217, 2013.
doi:10.5194/bg-10-2193-2013.


Abstract
The once flourishing small-scale poultry industry in Ghana has over the past two decades undergone a severe deterioration as a result of fortunes that has diverted the industry from near self-sufficiency in the early 1990s to a net importer of poultry products. Since the later part of 1990s the Ghana market has followed a steep and uncontrolled influx of cheap poultry meat from subsidized poultry producers from advanced countries (Osei, unpublished) including USA and EU, not to mention countries such as Brazil and Canada.
A multiplicity of factors have accounted for the decline and mortalities of the domestic poultry industry. These include unfair competition from subsidized poultry producers from advanced countries, unfavourable and indifferent government policy direction, escalating costs of production, inefficient methods of production, lack of funds and credit, inadequate knowledge in poultry management, socio-cultural factors, lack of information needs on the part of small-scale poultry farmers, inadequate access to market, lack of processing facilities, and high rates of perishability.
Therefore, the present study examines the factors that affect the growth of the small agribusiness in Ghana, focusing mainly on the small-scale poultry industry. The purpose of the study is to provide guidelines and recommendations for improving poultry farming at the level of small-scale poultry farmers in Ghana through the organized social movement (new generation cooperative movement). The study further seeks to solicit government interventions through political arguments so as to sustain and strengthen the failing small-scale poultry industry in Ghana.
The purpose of the organized social movement is to bundle competencies and resources that are more valuable in joint effort than when kept separate by the small-scale poultry farmers in racing against competitors who are driving them out of business. This is due to an on-going severe competition as a result of unprotected market and political bias of trade liberalization, structural adjustment policies and deregulations on the part of the government.
A sample of 120 poultry farmers was selected by a stratified random sampling approach. This was followed by 75 stakeholders through a snowball approach and data was collected by using a semi-structured interviews.
The findings of the study shows that the organized social movement (SM) of small-scale poultry farmers, provision of government subsidies, placing a ban or increase tariffs on imports of poultry meat, access to cheap loans, provision of infrastructure, access to incentives and awards, training and education of poultry farmers, advertising campaign, and dissemination of information, had positive and significant impact on the competitiveness and growth of the small-scale poultry industry.


Regarding to discourses of Economic Globalization such as economic, foreign trade and investment liberalization, production and monetary transfer; the role of State-Nations and the importance of geographical frontiers are in reducing. So, many countries and regions in the world intend to profit of Global Economy advantages and its opportunities for enhancing their economic power and geo-economic position in the very high competitive economic globalization era. In this article, we study the defiance of the Oil-rich Countries of the Persian Gulf in a positive interaction to economic globalization process. We also study some weakness of these countries in their geo-economic situation despite the very important geo-politic position. In theses countries because of its huge petroleum incomes, State has a crucial and high role in economy and its expenses are rising. Also, a real privatization has not been made and the competitiveness that is a necessary and important substance of the Market Economy is very weak and non-transparent. Some of them have not been so severe in the questions of economic liberalization and tariff reduction. Therefore, they have confronted some important difficulties in foreign investments attraction and some others defiance in interaction to Economic Globalization. In this article: 1) we study some important elements of Economic Globalization; 2) review the political economy of petrol and some features of economic and political structures in the Oil-rich Countries of the Persian Gulf; 3) explain some globalization standards upon the dates in this countries for studying their geo-economic situation in interaction to Economic Globalization.


The reuse of industrial buildings and the functional rehabilitation of dismantled
structures are part of a consolidated operational practice which has generated, over the last decades,
all over Europe, a considerable number of auditoria and theatres of small to medium size.
In Italy, the constellation of special and experimental structures of the Turin-based theatre system,
can be considered amongst the most vital and innovative in the European Union scenario. The
practice of consolidation and functional activation of so-called "theatre ruins" includes many excellent
examples in the architectonic and preservation field. The rehabilitation case of the former
"Cinema-Teatro Astra" [Bonicelli, 1930 | Magnaghi, 2006] is a good example of philological restoration
techniques intertwine with original technological solutions. The adoption of so-called
"technological shells" is a factual answer to the requirement of harmonizing the preserved asset
and reversibility criteria with contemporary architectonic expression.


Context: The ongoing change of work life by digital technologies requires vocational education and training (VET) to adapt constantly. This "digital transformation" of work life gives therefore rise to the question how to advance the use of digital technologies in VET. A possible answer may be found by considering that VET should be transferable to work life. This goal may be achieved by coupling educational activities with examples of work situations. Such situated education may be accomplished by using digital technologies. Until five years ago this mainly consisted in using digital photos, videos, and the internet for educational scaffolding or learning tasks. In research this situated digital VET taxonomy is currently expanding. Hence, the use of digital technologies in VET may be advanced by considering current research literature on situated digital VET.Method: Here, we have searched and reviewed scientific publications on situated digital VET published in the past five years. In the peer-reviewed publications that we had selected, we first identified which digital technologies were used for situated VET and which educational activities were coupled with work situation examples. Subsequently, we identified the categories to which the publications could be grouped together by analyzing the content of their full texts. Results: Situated digital VET was accomplished in about half of the reviewed publications by a digital video on a work situation, and in almost half of the publications by a work situation presented in a 3D virtual environment. Digital videos on work situations mostly served all types of learning tasks and rather rarely educational scaffolding. Work situations presented in 3D virtual environments mostly served cognitive or behavioral learning tasks and never educational scaffolding. Situated digital VET was moreover accomplished by using the digital representation of a work situation that either had occurred previously or that was immediately taking place. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that retrospectively and immediately situated digital VET may be the two categories of an up-to-date basic taxonomy of situated digital VET. Hence, an important question to investigate for advancing the use of digital technologies in VET is the following: Which of the two identified types of situated digital VET can facilitate which kind of vocational learning? Based on the reviewed publications we are not able to give any answers to this. Hence, there is a massive need to investigate which kind of vocational learning can be facilitated by retrospectively, and which by immediately situated digital VET.


The inter-beat-interval (time period of the cardiac cycle) changes slightly for every heartbeat; this variation is measured as Heart Rate Variability (HRV). HRV is presumed to occur due to interactions between the parasym- pathetic and sympathetic nervous system. Therefore, it is sometimes used as an indicator of the stress level of an individual. HRV also reveals some clinical information about cardiac health. Currently, HRV is accurately measured using contact devices such as a pulse oximeter. However, recent research in the field of non-contact imaging Photoplethysmography (iPPG) has made vital sign measurements using just the video recording of any exposed skin (such as a person's face) possible. The current signal processing methods for extracting HRV using peak detection perform well for contact-based systems but have poor performance for the iPPG signals. The main reason for this poor performance is the fact that current methods are sensitive to large noise sources which are often present in iPPG data. Further, current methods are not robust to motion artifacts that are common in iPPG systems. We developed a new algorithm, CameraHRV, for robustly extracting HRV even in low SNR such as is common with iPPG recordings. CameraHRV combined spatial combination and frequency demodulation to obtain HRV from the instantaneous frequency of the iPPG signal. CameraHRV outperforms other current methods of HRV estimation. Ground truth data was obtained from FDA-approved pulse oximeter for validation purposes. CameraHRV on iPPG data showed an error of 6 milliseconds for low motion and varying skin tone scenarios. The improvement in error was 14%. In case of high motion scenarios like reading, watching and talking, the error was 10 milliseconds.


I. INTRODUCTIONMillions of Americans rest assured that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act1 ("ACA") provides tax credits for health insurance to individuals earning 100-400% of the federal poverty line.2 The tax credits will be accessible through state insurance exchanges, also known as Marketplaces,3 which are government-regulated organizations designed to create more competition in the health insurance industry.4 But a gap in the unwieldy, two-thousand-plus-page statute-either a scrivener's error or an overlooked loophole-is raising questions about whether citizens in certain states are eligible for the tax credits. This "quirk" could be a serious blow to an already contentious healthcare-reform effort.5The ACA, deemed constitutional by a divided Supreme Court in June 2012,6 requires all residents of the United States to retain minimum essential health coverage and imposes a tax penalty for failure to do so.7 The individual mandate, as this requirement is known, is softened by tax credits, or subsidies, made available to eligible individuals purchasing insurance through one-stop-shop exchanges.8 Either the state or federal government will establish an American Health Benefit Exchange in each state; however, the ACA, read literally, does not make tax credits available through federally established exchanges.9 Was the omission of tax credits through federal exchanges intentional? Or is this a would-be amendment that slipped through the cracks of the massive bill-a manifestation of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's infamous comment that "we have to pass this bill to find out what is in it"?10The Internal Revenue Service ("IRS"), the agency charged with administering the tax credits, is looking beyond the seemingly plain text of the statute: in a final rule, the agency interpreted the statute as making tax credits available through both state and federal exchanges.11 There are two important questions to ask regarding this interpretation: (1) Does the IRS have the authority to interpret the text in this way? (2) Who would have standing to challenge such a reading?This Note explores these two questions and explains, from an advocacy standpoint, why traditional tools of statutory interpretation suggest that the IRS acted within its prescribed bounds in construing the statute broadly. Significantly, subsequent legislation shows that the agency is implementing the statutory scheme Congress envisioned. Part II outlines the state of health insurance prior to the changes instituted by the ACA, explains the role of the exchanges in healthcare reform, and details why Congress amended the statute to include the option of federal exchanges. Part III argues that large employers might have standing to challenge the IRS's rule because they would be injured by the statutory provision that grants tax credits to those who use federal exchanges. Part IV analyzes the gap in the statute by considering the plain text, the other provisions of the Act, the legislative history, and the postenactment legislation. Finally, Part V suggests the appropriate framework for judicial review of the current IRS rule; it walks through the two-step test found in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the controlling case requiring deference to an agency's statutory interpretation,12 by asking whether the statute is ambiguous and whether the IRS interpretation is reasonable. Answering both these questions in the affirmative, this Note concludes that a court will likely defer to the IRS interpretation of the statute.II. BACKGROUND ON THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT AND EXCHANGESThe ACA, amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 ("HCERA"), seeks to improve the navigability of the health insurance marketplace.13 Pursuant to this legislation, an exchange in each state will facilitate the purchase of qualified health plans, acting as a central portal for consumers to find and compare health insurance options. …


Since the end of the Uruguay Round, Brazil has become a protagonist in the multilateral trade system and in its dispute resolution mechanism. This work analyzes the Brazilian experience, and explains how a greater participation in trade disputes was provoked by institutional and political changes that took effect in the country during the last two decades. These changes include an active participation from the private sector and the political relevance that trade disputes have acquired.


Volume 1 Empire or Democracy [1939] Leonard Barnes 303pp Volume 2 The War of Steel and Gold [1914] Henry N. Brailsford 320pp Volume 3 Patriotism and the Empire [1899] J.M. Robertson 208pp Volume 4 Democracy after the War [1917] J.A. Hobson 215pp Volume 5 Liberalism and the Empire [1907] F.W. Hirst 240pp Volume 6 Africa and the Peace of Europe E.D. Morel 150pp Volume 7 Empire and Commerce in Africa [1920] Leonard Woolf 382pp Volume 8 Labour and the Empire [1907] J. Ramsey Macdonald 127pp


OF DISSERTATION INVESTIGATING THERAPEUTIC OPTIONS FOR LAFORA DISEASE USING STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY AND TRANSLATIONAL METHODS Lafora disease (LD) is a rare yet invariably fatal form of epilepsy characterized by progressive degeneration of the central nervous and motor systems and accumulation of insoluble glucans within cells. LD results from mutation of either the phosphatase laforin, an enzyme that dephosphorylates cellular glycogen, or the E3 ubiquitin ligase malin, the binding partner of laforin. Currently, there are no therapeutic options for LD, or reported methods by which the specific activity of glucan phosphatases such as laforin can be easily measured. To facilitate our translational studies, we developed an assay with which the glucan phosphatase activity of laforin as well as emerging members of the glucan phosphatase family can be characterized. We then adapted this assay for the detection of endogenous laforin activity from human and mouse tissue. This laforin bioassay will prove useful in the detection of functional laforin in LD patient tissue following the application of therapies to LD patients. We subsequently developed an in vitro readthrough reporter system in order to assess the efficacy of aminoglycosides in the readthrough of laforin and malin nonsense mutations. We found that although several laforin and malin nonsense mutations exhibited significant drug‐induced readthrough, the location of the epitope tag used to detect readthrough products dramatically affected our readthrough results. Cell lines established from LD patients with nonsense mutations are thus required to accurately assess the efficacy of aminoglycosides as a therapeutic option for LD. Using hydrogen‐deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (DXMS), we then gained insight into the molecular etiology of several point mutations in laforin that cause LD. We identified a novel motif in the phosphatase domain of laforin that shares homology with glycosyl hydrolases (GH) and appears to play a role in the interaction of laforin with glucans. We studied the impact of the Y294N and P301L LD mutations within this GH motif on glucan binding. Surprisingly, these mutations did not reduce glucan binding as expected, rather enhancing the binding of laforin to glucans. These findings elucidate the mechanism by which laforin interacts with and acts upon glucan substrates, providing a target for the development of therapeutic compounds.


From a humanitarian point of view, the ANC declaration to the Red Cross, made on 20 October 1980 is commendable. However, there is no prospect that South Africa will consent to the applicability of article 1(4) to the ANC's war of liberation, no matter what proportions it may assume. The fear of the author is that in time the conflicts to this article 1(4) refers will have been fought without the implementation of any humanitarian law. Such conflicts will be fought in a vacuum of humanitarian law which could possibly have been avoided if a more realistic and practical approach based upon the consensus of all parties had been adopted. Article 1(4) is detrimental not only in constituting a "built-in non-applicability clause" but also in its exclusiveness; while it stands it excludes any other formal basis for a negotiated agreement on the humanitarian safeguards to be applied in article 1(4) type conflicts.


In response to the growth of a critical perspective on contemporary issues of terrorism, this edited volume brings together a number of leading scholars to debate the new subfield of 'critical terrorism studies'. In the years since the 9/11 attacks, terrorism studies has undergone a major transformation from minor subfield of security studies into a large stand-alone field, and is probably one of the fastest expanding areas of research in the Western academic world. However, much of the literature is beset by a number of problems, limiting its potential for producing rigorous empirical findings and genuine theoretical advancement. In response to these weaknesses in the broader field, a small but increasing number of scholars have begun to articulate a critical perspective on contemporary issues of terrorism. This volume brings together a number of leading scholars to debate the need for and the shape of this exciting new subfield.The first part of the volume examines some of the main shortcomings and limitations of orthodox terrorism studies, while the second examines exactly what a 'critical' terrorism studies would look like. Contributors from a variety of methodological and disciplinary perspectives give this volume diversity, and it will lay the foundations for, and provoke debate about, the future research agenda of this new field. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, terrorism studies and IR theory in general.


This paper reports a diary-based qualitative study on college students' reading habits with regard to print and electronic media. Students used a form to record information about their reading practices for twelve days, including length of reading event, location, format used, and the purpose of reading. Students tended to use print for academic and long-form reading and to engage with it more deeply. Although electronic resources were sometimes used for academic purposes, students often used them for shorter and nonacademic reading. Students found electronic media convenient, but most of them did not wish to switch to electronic media for their academic reading.


The Dinkey Creek Project will be located in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains 40 miles north-east of Fresno, California, and will develop about 4000 ft of gross head with a maximum flow of 480 cfs. Two powerhouses, each containing a single 60MW Pelton unit will be connected in series. The topography of the area around the first powerhouse is so steep that there is virtually no storage available in the afterbay for Unit 1. This small storage volume coupled with the long tunnels and penstocks further complicates the startup, flow balancing, and control problems for the system hydraulics. The analysis for and development of the control logic is presented in this paper.


Fat bodies are discriminated against in a variety of individual and structural ways. On an individual level, the experiences of fat stigma are debilitating. On a societal level, the "war on obesity" is a focal point for social policy in both Canada and the United States. Social work, as a profession that considers individual experiences and contextualizes these experiences within systems and structures, must thus consider the implications of bodies that are perceived as deviant on the basis of size. Yet there is a dearth of scholarship that positions fat stigma and the size acceptance movement as allied with other realms of activist social work. This article addresses this omission by considering the need for an incorporation of size acceptance and fat activism into social work scholarship and practice. This is accomplished through three main themes. First, I consider the nature of fat oppression and the need for antioppressive social work practitioners and scholars to give credence to the real implications of fat. Second, I examine the rhetoric of the "obesity epidemic" and consider why social workers need to be critical of social policies that stem from this discourse. Finally, I suggest that the tones of social control and moral panic that underpin much of the discourse around fat bodies are reminiscent of other concerning trends within the history of the social work profession.


BACKGROUND
Recess and physical education time continue to diminish, creating a need for additional physical activity opportunities within the school environment. The use of school gardens as a teaching tool in elementary science and math classes has the potential to increase the proportion of time spent active throughout the school day.

METHODS
Teachers from 4 elementary schools agreed to teach 1 math or science lesson per week in the school garden. Student physical activity time was measured with ActiGraph GT3X accelerometers on 3 garden days and 3 no-garden days at each school. Direct observation was used to quantify the specific garden-related tasks during class. The proportion of time spent active and sedentary was compared on garden and no-garden days.

RESULTS
Seventy-four children wore accelerometers, and 75 were observed (86% participation). Children spent a significantly larger proportion of time active on garden days than no-garden days at 3 of the 4 schools. The proportion of time spent sedentary and active differed significantly across the 4 schools.

CONCLUSIONS
Teaching lessons in the school garden may increase children's physical activity and decrease sedentary time throughout the school day and may be a strategy to promote both health and learning.


Abstract The decline of the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) as an estuarine resource is well documented for many estuaries on the United States east coast. This decline is often associated with a decline in the shell resource and ultimately the disappearance of the shell bed. We develop a model that expressly and conjointly evaluates oyster abundance and surficial shell quantity and examine whether stability in the stock and the habitat can be simultaneously achieved. Simulations suggest that a steady-state shell content exists for any set of recruitment and natural mortality rates and that the amount of shell present at steady state varies over a wide range as recruitment and natural mortality vary. Shell mass is maximized at a natural mortality rate near the rate observed in unfished populations unimpacted by disease. A species dependent on the maintenance of hard substrate for survival, as is the oyster, might have a life span adapted to maximize the accretion of carbonate; thereby sustaining the substrate on which it depends. Relatively small changes in the recruitment rate produce large changes in abundance and consequently shell mass and the scale of variation dwarfs that of natural mortality or fishing. Only variations in the rate of shell loss or the average size of animals at death produce equivalent excursions in shell mass. In comparison, the ambit of natural mortality imposed by the disease process fortuitously occurs in a range that restrains the change in carbonate mass, probably because increased mortality reduces abundance but also increases the death rate, thus adding more shell. Simulations covering a range of fishing rates indicate that no fishing rate exists that is likely to be sustainable of the shell resource over the long term. Fishing will always abet the taphonomic and depositional processes conspiring to debilitate the oyster bed. Successful management of the oyster shell resource is obstructed by the simple fact that no additional mortality, whether imposed by disease or through fishing, can occur that will not result in habitat loss at some rate. The shell resource is maximized when the population is at predisease natural mortality rates and unfished. Thus, if fishing is to be permitted or if disease has increased persistently the natural mortality rate, the only recourse of the manager is the perpetual addition of shell in compensation to the loss or the acceptance of the degradation of the shell bed.


The aim of the study described herein was to explore the relationships between the practices of HRM used in organisations, in order to inform the development of effective HRM systems. Our exploratory study assumed that staffing, training, performance evaluation and compensation are the most prominent practices in HRM, and used Snell and Dean's (1992) questionnaire to investigate these practices. Using correlation analysis to characterise the relationships, we identified the signs of the correlations involved, and we thereby identified the significant and positive relationships among the HRM practices studied. Strong, positive and significant correlations were observed among the elements of staffing, training, performance evaluation and compensation. These results are important for understanding the inter-relationships between HRM practices, in order to enhance the effect of HR systems on employee-related organisational outcomes.


From the mid-1980s to the turn of the 1990s the international HR field was considered to be in its infancy. There continues to be both an evolution of territory covered by the field – a series of successively evolving cultural, geographical and institutional challenges faced by the multinational corporation (MNC) – as well as more critical questioning whether this has created an expanded or a fragmented field. This book brings together the latest research on important "issues-driven" concerns that the field of IHRM now has to face, absorb, interpret then reanalyse through international lenses. This volume gives attention to those aspects of MNC behaviour – choices about location, how they organize local subsidiaries, choices made about technology, capital and labour, and choices made about investments and strategies – that are subject to institutional influences. It also gives voice to a number of contemporary issues – reverse knowledge flows, skill supply strategies, employer branding, e-enablement, outsourcing, global networks – that now need to be accommodated within the field. Broadens the IHRM field to cover comparative and institutional perspectives Provides a multi-level analysis of globalization phenomena at the individual, organization, and macro level Focuses on the current problems and issues driving the attention of IHRM Directors


Vaccination is one of the most effective ways to protect people from being infected by infectious disease. However, it is often impractical to vaccinate all people in a community due to various resource constraints. Therefore, targeted vaccination, which vaccinates a small group of people, is an alternative approach to contain infectious disease spread. To achieve better performance in targeted vaccination, we collect student contact traces in a high school based on wireless sensors carried by students. With our wireless sensor system, we can record student contacts within the disease propagation distance, and then construct a disease propagation graph to model the infectious disease propagation. Based on this graph, we propose a metric called connectivity centrality to measure a node's importance during disease propagation and design centrality based algorithms for targeted vaccination. The proposed algorithms are evaluated and compared with other schemes based on our collected traces. Trace driven simulation results show that our algorithms can help to effectively contain infectious disease.


The B cell activating factor BAFF (BlyS/TALL-1/zTNF4) is a tumor necrosis factor (TNF)–related ligand that promotes B cell survival and binds to three receptors (BCMA, TACI, and the recently described BAFF-R). Here we report an absolute requirement for BAFF in normal B cell development. Examination of secondary lymphoid organs from BAFF-deficient mice revealed an almost complete loss of follicular and marginal zone B lymphocytes. In contrast, mice lacking BCMA had normal-appearing B lymphocyte compartments. BAFF therefore plays a crucial role in B cell development and can function through receptors other than BCMA.


This paper provides a convenient method for fabricating architectures of Au nanoparticles on solid substrate,with precise position and density control. Our strategy is to modify Au substrate with self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) terminated with different functional groups. They were chosen to be −CH3/−NH2 or −CH3/−SH according to their affinities to Au nanoparticle. Au nanoparticles assemble selectively on −NH2 or −SH terminated locations, the −NH2 functional group binding electrostatically to the nanoparticles whereas the −SH groups bonding chemically. The SAMs, acting as guiding templates for Au nanoparticles, were fabricated by the microcontact printing (μCP) technique. A patterned or unpatterned SAM was prepared by using patterned or unpatterned poly(dimethyl)siloxane (PDMS) stamp, respectively. The coverage of −CH3 terminated SAM in the contact region is controlled by changing the concentration of "ink" solution for the stamp. After immersing the printed SAM into −SH or −NH2 thiol solutions for 2 h, ...


During a 720-d experiment in a Holstein and Brown Swiss herd, two feeding regimens were compared during the grazing phase of dry cow management until confinement before expected calving.The two treatments involved rotational grazing (24-d cycles) at a stocking rate of 2.5 animals per hectare in; (A) all-grass swards or (B) all-grass plus 3 h daily access to swards of Leucaena leucocephala and grasses, Large heifers were added as needed to maintain constant group size at pasture. A daily supplement of 2 kg/head of bulky concentrate was fed. During the first 19 mo of the study, while rainfall was adequate, dry cows in treatments A and B gained live weight (LW) satisfactorily (0.69 ± 0.26 and 0.67 ± 0.23 kg/d) and increased in body condition score (BCS) on a scale of 1 to 5 at rates of 0.40 and 0.34 point/100 d, respectively. During the final 5 mo, pasture conditions and LW gains were poor because of prolonged drought. Monthly rainfall of 50 mm or more maintained grazing conditions adequate for use with the present level of supplemental feeding. There were no differences (P > 0.05) between treatments. Under common postpartum management, standard 305-d lactational milk yields were unaffected by previous treatments A or B. However, a positive trend (P < 0.10) was associated with higher prepartum BCS. Cows that scored 3.5 produced 4,013; 4,111; 4,367; 4,627 and 4,450 kg, respectively. Postcalving reproductive performance was not affected by previous treatment or by BCS prepartum or BCS at 6 wk postpartum.


He Kōrero Whānau is a component of a wider whānau and hapū development project within Te Rarawa, an iwi located in the Far North of Aotearoa. It aimed to prepare and support whānau and hapū to record their own histories, and in doing so to develop research methods and strategies to suit Te Rarawa purposes and realities. The innovation of the approach is the inclusion of oral and life histories in any interview-based research Te Rarawa might undertake, and the training of community interviewers in the skills of research and oral history interviews. The approach is grounded in iwi and hapū development and responsive to needs and aspirations. It also works to demystify research and focuses on research making a difference in Te Rarawa communities. This paper discusses our experience of developing Te Rarawa research methods and applying them in ways that harmonise with the goals of Te Rarawa iwi development.


Memory corruption vulnerabilities not only allow modification of control data and injection of malicious payloads; they also allow adversaries to reconnoiter a diversified program, customize a payload, and ultimately bypass code randomization defenses. In response, researchers have proposed and built various leakage-resilient defenses against code reuse. Leakage-resilient defenses use memory protection techniques to prevent adversaries from directly reading code as well as pointer indirection or encryption techniques to decouple code pointers from the randomized code layout, avoiding indirect leakage. In this paper, we show that although current code pointer protections do prevent leakage per se, they are fundamentally unable to stop code reuse. Specifically, we demonstrate a new class of attacks we call address-oblivious code reuse that bypasses state-of-the-art leakage-resilience techniques by profiling and reusing protected code pointers, without leaking the code layout. We show that an attacker can accurately identify protected code pointers of interest and mount code-reuse attacks at the abstraction level of pointers without requiring any knowledge of code addresses. We analyze the prevalence of opportunities for such attacks in popular code bases and build three real-world exploits against Nginx and Apache to demonstrate their practicality. We analyze recently proposed leakage resilient defenses and show that they are vulnerable to address oblivious code reuse. Our findings indicate that because of the prevalence of code pointers in realistic programs and the fundamental need to expose them to "read" operations (even indirectly), diversity defenses face a fundamental design challenge in mitigating such attacks. DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT A. Approved for public release: distribution


Tanja Bosak, Nicolas Dauphas, Arlene M. Fiore, Adam C. Maloof, and Christian Schoof were awarded the 2011 James B. Macelwane Medal at the AGU Fall Meeting Honors Ceremony, held on 7 December 2011 in San Francisco, Calif. The medal is for "significant contributions to the geophysical sciences by an outstanding young scientist."


BACKGROUND
The aim of this paper was to investigate the cardiovascular effects, body composition, quality of life and pain after a 12-week Zumba fitness program in a group of overweight women through an observational study, community physical activity program involving twenty-seven overweight women (38.9±9.7 years).

METHODS
Cardiometabolic profile, body composition, quality of life and pain were assessed after a 12-week Zumba fitness program.

RESULTS
Significant improvements in body weight and BMI (71.5 vs. 74.2 kg, 28.02 vs. 29.1 kg/m²), in circumferences (arm: 27.9 vs. 30.3, waist: 80.1 vs. 83.9, hip: 102 vs. 107.4 cm), in fat and muscular mass (25.2 vs. 26.9, 34.4 vs. 27.2 kg), in intracellular (19 vs. 17.5 kg), and in extracellular water (14.9 vs. 16.8 kg) were recorded. A decrease in blood pressure was observed (118.3/69.4 vs. 125/75.5 mmHg). Cardiovascular response to the maximal exercise test showed a decrease in heart rate and in systolic blood pressure with an increase of work (118.9 vs. 116.7 watt). SF-36 showed variations in physical functioning (99.4 vs. 92.8) and in the limitation on the emotional role (88.9 vs. 66.6). With regards the Brief Pain Inventory-SF, a decrease in pain severity and pain interference score was seen (0.5 vs. 1.6, 0.06 vs. 0.5).

CONCLUSIONS
Results demonstrate that Zumba fitness can be an effective way to obtain beneficial health effects and that it can also be recommended for overweight women.


In the tumor microenvironment, soluble molecules play important role in the establishment of a pre-metastatic niche. The S100 calcium-binding protein family are inflammatory molecules that contribute to the development of a pro-inflammatory tumor microenvironment. S100B belongs to the S100 family and serum S100B (also known as S100beta) serves as a marker for metastasis in lung cancer, ovarian cancer and melanoma. However, the association between S100B and the metastasis of breast cancer is not yet well understood. In the present study, a relatively low S100B expression was observed in the tumor samples compared to normal breast tissue among online microarray datasets. When the estrogen receptor (ER)-negative breast cancer cell lines, MDA-MB-231 and Hs578T, were treated with recombinant human S100B, cell migration was significantly inhibited and epithelial cadherin expression was increased. Our results revealed that a high S100B expression predicted a good overall survival in patients with ER-negative breast cancer, and good distant metastases-free survival in all patients with breast cancer via the analysis of the KM plotter and SurvExpress databases. Although previous studies have indicated that the interaction of S100B with wild-type p53 inhibits p53 function, a high S100B expression is associated with a good prognosis in patients with p53 mutant and p53 wild-type breast cancers. On the whole, our findings demonstrate that S100B treatment suppresses the migratory capacity of ER-negative breast cancer and that S100B expression may serve a predictive marker for metastasis in breast cancer.


Development of improved fertilizer management practices has the potential to increase fertilizer use efficiency and improve environmental quality. The objectives of this study were (i) to characterize the within field spatial variability of N uptake across irrigated corn production fields, (ii) to quantify and compare N uptake and grain yield across three site specific management zones (SSMZs), and (iii) to compare grain yield response to applied N between management zones. This study was conducted on continuous corn (Zea mays L.) in irrigated fields in northeastern Colorado. Fields were classified into high, medium, and low site specific management zones. Treatments consisted of a control and two uniform N application rates over 2 siteyears (one field over 2 consecutive yr and another field over 1 yr). Nitrogen fertilizer rates varied with site-year and ranged from 56 to 268 kg N ha -1 . Aboveground biomass samples were collected at physiological maturity and analyzed for total N. Between management zones, N uptake, grain yield, and grain yield response to applied N were found to be statistically different (p < 0.05). Management zones were found to be less spatially variable than the whole field. The SSMZs accurately characterized variability in N uptake as well as grain yield response to applied N. Thus, variation in N uptake and grain yield can potentially be managed using SSMZs.


This paper provides evidence that interbank markets are tiered rather than flat, in the sense that most banks do not lend to each other directly but through money center banks acting as intermediaries. We capture the concept of tiering by developing a core-periphery model, and devise a procedure for tting the model to real-world networks. Using Bundesbank data on bilateral interbank exposures among 1800 banks, we find strong evidence of tiering in the German banking system. Econometrically, bank-specific features, such as balance sheet size, predict how banks position themselves in the interbank market. This link provides a promising avenue for understanding the formation of financial networks.


Islamic Banking is any banking activity performed on the basis of Islamic laws of jurisprudence. The two fundamental sources of Islamic law are the Quran, (which is the Holy Book of Muslims) and the Sunnah, (which are the Traditions of the final Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be upon Him)). Islamic methods of finance revolve around a few basic concepts, the most important of which is the prohibition of 'Riba' or interest. Although this concept is relatively new in the Indian context, the Islamic financial world is now a global force to reckon with and India might miss out if the opportunity is not capitalized. It is worth mentioning that the total value of Islamic business stands at $6.7 trillion and is growing at a rate of 16-20% a year. Also, the fact that many non-Muslim countries like UK have opened full-fledged Islamic banks point to the fact that Islamic finance or Islamic banking is not limited to Muslims alone. Therefore, India's ambitions of becoming an Asian financial hub cannot be met without capitalizing into the pool of Islamic Finance. The purpose of this paper is to study the level of awareness of students of private universities in Chennai and to study the cross cultural patronage factors towards Islamic Banking. The findings reveal that the respondents have a positive and favorable patronage towards Islamic Banking due to their perception about its success in other parts of the world.


The paper briefly describes the "free access" services of the 17th International Medlars Centre (Indian Medlars Centre – IMC) and highlights the transition of these service to an "open access' mode. IMC offers the medical professionals with free access to peer reviewed Indian biomedical journals through its databases, IndMED and medIND. IndMED, a bibliographic database of over 70 peer reviewed journals and its full-text version, medIND provides the professionals with an one-point access to Indian biomedical literature. IMC's OpenMED@NIC archive (http://openmed.nic.in) is the 1st phase of the transition to "open access". The paper then highlights issues for adopting Open Journal System (OJS) for medIND (http://medind.nic.in) that was evolved as an extension to IndMED to provide full-text "free access" through bibliographic information where ever possible. The database was designed to facilitate cross linking with IndMED and to retain this design in OJS various issues have to be resolved. These issues have been discussed in the paper and these primarily are involvement and training of journal staff; file organisation and naming policy that is being followed; medIND site design; content page layout; browsing and searching along with implication on IndMED database and cross linking.


This paper develops an analytical model of contagion in financial networks with arbitrary structure. We explore how the probability and potential impact of contagion is influenced by aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks, changes in network structure and asset market liquidity. Our findings suggest that financial systems exhibit a robust-yet-fragile tendency: while the probability of contagion may be low, the effects can be extremely widespread when problems occur. And we suggest why the resilience of the system in withstanding fairly large shocks prior to 2007 should not have been taken as a reliable guide to its future robustness.


Supervisors: Prof. Joseph Nyasani, PhD, University of Nairobi Prof. Solomon Monyenye, PhD, University of Nairobi This study is an attempt to establish the semiotic theory of Wittgenstein as it can be discerned in his two major works namely, the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations. The specific problem of the study is to investigate the theory of representation and communication in the philosophy of Wittgenstein. The core task of the study consists in determining the necessary and sufficient conditions for the adequacy of representation and efficacy of communication of a sign system in the philosophy ofWittgenstein. The study is based on three basic assumptions which hold that Wittgenstein's philosophical insights include a semiotic theory; that all semiotic systems can be formalized recursively from a finite set of components and rules and fmally that communication constitutes the pragmatic aspect of Wittgenstein's theory of language. Concomitant with these assumptions are three basic objectives that the study has attempted to achieve namely, determination of the semiotic theories in the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations, interpretation of the communicative theory of Wittgenstein and lastly, indication of the relevant areas where Wittgenstein's ideas can be applied relative to the chief philosophical goals of semiotic activity identified in the study which are representation and communication. Consequent to the analysis of the semiotic theories in the two chief works of Wittgenstein, the study has attempted to synthesise the two works by employing the theoretical framework of model-theory as proposed by Tarski but extended by Henry Hiz in order to formulate a unified semiotic theory ofWittgenstein. The study concludes that the philosophy ofWittgenstein gleaned from the two major works implies a semiotic theory in which signs are given a much richer conception as a four term relation whose variables are the users, the sign, the object signified and the context of use. This semiotic theory is further applicable as a basis for reconciling the logical and the social semiotics, elaboration of philosophy of communication as well as a framework for developing a methodology for multidimensional textual analysis.


In conventional wisdom on crowdsourcing, the number of people define the crowd and maximizing this number is often assumed to be the goal of any crowdsourcing exercise. However, we propose that there are structural characteristics of the crowd that might be more important than the sheer number of participants. These characteristics include (1) growth rate and its attractiveness to the members, (2) the equality among members, (3) the density within provisional boundaries, (4) the goal orientation of the crowd, and (5) the "seriality" of the interactions between members of the crowd. We then propose a typology that may allow managers to position their companies' initiatives among four strategic types: crowd crystals, online communities, closed crowd, and open crowd driven innovation. We show that incumbent companies may prefer a closed and controlled access to the crowd, limiting the potential for gaining results and insights from fully open crowd-driven innovation initiatives. Consequently, we argue that the effects on industries and organizations by open crowds are still to be explored, possibly via the mechanisms of entrepreneurs exploiting open crowds as new entrants, but also for the configuration of industries such as, e.g., finance, pharmaceuticals, or even the public sector where the value created usually comes from interpretation issues and exploratory problem solving.


The holistic and insightful nature of the (cultural-historical) Activity Theory has led to its use by several researchers as a suitable vehicle for understanding and analysis in many areas of IS research and practice. This paper demonstrates the application of Activity Theory to the study of socio-technical systems which mediate complex, collective activities in the modern workplace and in everyday life. Vignettes from five ongoing research projects are reported in order to illustrate not only the explanatory power of the Activity Theory research framework but also its use in determining appropriate methods used to manage the data collection and analysis processes as well as its interpretation., The paper demonstrates the variety of IS topics where an Activity Theory based approach is able to add richness and insight.


The Austrian School of Economics, pioneered in the late nineteenth century by Menger and developed in the twentieth century by Mises and Hayek, is poised to make significant contributions to the methodology, analytics, and social philosophy of economics and political economy in the twenty-first century. But it can only do so if its practitioners accept responsibility to pursue the approach to its logical conclusions with confidence and absence of fear, and with an attitude of open inquiry, acceptance of their own fallibility, and a desire to track truth and offer social understanding. The reason the Austrian school is so well positioned to do this is because (1) it embraces its role as a human science, (2) it does not shy away from public engagement, (3) it takes a humble stance, (4) it seeks to be practical, and (5) there remains so much evolutionary potential to the ideas at the methodological, analytical, and social philosophical level that would challenge the conventional wisdom in economics, political science, sociology, history, law, business, and philosophy. The author explores these five tenants of Austrian economics as a response to the comments on his lead chapter "What Is Still Wrong with the Austrian School of Economics?"


The year of construction (age) of a property, as well as the period of construction has an essential influence on the structure and the value of a building. Current automatic classification models of properties apply hedonic approaches that are mostly based on location (address). An additional automatic classification based on the age and/or period of construction in real estate valuations is still missing.Driven by this observation, the aim is to undertake fundamental research in the jointly interdisciplinary fields of image analysis and real estate evaluation in order to develop novel automatic visual analysis methods for the estimation of age/period of construction of buildings. We employ photographs that show the face of family houses to predict the period of construction and the coarse age as well as the region the building resides in.Image analysis has a long research tradition and is today applied in many different domains. In the domain of real estates, however, the major focus of image analysis lies in the area of satellite image analysis for the classification of land cover. Detained building information cannot be extracted from satellite images. In contrast to other existing approaches, we employ unconstrained photographs of buildings (e.g. by brokers, owners and real estate experts) as an input to visually extract information about the building. For this purpose our business partner provides a large database of real estate valuations. These valuations contain detailed object property descriptions such as year of construction, condition, amenities, address, value, etc., as well as several images per object in different views.In our presentation we will first give a literature overview bout existing papers which are in context real estate (building) an image analysis. In the following we would like to present first results from our research. Therefore we apply the method from (Lee, Maisonneuve, Crandall, Efros, & Sivic, 2015) and our first results are satisfactory.Source: Lee, S., Maisonneuve, N., Crandall, D., Efros, A. A., & Sivic, J. (2015, April 24). Linking Past to Present: Discovering Style in Two Centuries of Architecture. IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography.


Amygdalin is the major cyanogenic glycoside present in apricot kernels and is degraded to cyanide by chewing or grinding. Cyanide is of high acute toxicity in humans. The lethal dose is reported to be 0.5–3.5 mg/kg body weight (bw). An acute reference dose (ARfD) of 20 μg/kg bw was derived from an exposure of 0.105 mg/kg bw associated with a non-toxic blood cyanide level of 20 micro mol (μM), and applying an uncertainty factor of 1.5 to account for toxicokinetic and of 3.16 to account for toxicodynamic inter-individual differences. In the absence of consumption data and thus using highest intakes of kernels promoted (10 and 60 kernels/day for the general population and cancer patients, respectively), exposures exceeded the ARfD 17–413 and 3–71 times in toddlers and adults, respectively. The estimated maximum quantity of apricot kernels (or raw apricot material) that can be consumed without exceeding the ARfD is 0.06 and 0.37 g in toddlers and adults, respectively. Thus the ARfD would be exceeded already by consumption of one small kernel in toddlers, while adults could consume three small kernels. However, consumption of less than half of a large kernel could already exceed the ARfD in adults.


Craig Kluever 's Dynamic Systems: Modeling, Simulation, and Control highlights essential topics such as analysis, design, and control of physical engineering systems, often composed of interacting mechanical, electrical and fluid subsystem components. The major topics covered in this text include mathematical modeling, system-response analysis, and an introduction to feedback control systems. Dynamic Systems integrates an early introduction to numerical simulation using MATLAB®'s Simulink for integrated systems. Simulink® and MATLAB® tutorials for both software programs will also be provided. The author's text also has a strong emphasis on real-world case studies.


In plants, pattern formation is an ongoing process that starts during embryogenesis and lasts the entire life span. Most of the plant adult body is formed post-embryonically by continuous organogenic potential of the root and shoot meristems. Proper shoot apical meristem (SAM) function requires maintenance of a delicate balance between the depletion of stem cell daughters into developing primordia and proliferation of the central stem cell population. Mutations in the KNOX-class TALE HD protein SHOOTMERISTEMLESS (STM) cause defective initiation and maintenance of the SAM andresults in early developmental arrests.STM is able to physically interact with members of a distantly related second class of TALE HD transcription factors, the BELL class. Here we show that the BELL-class proteins ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA HOMEOBOX1 (ATH1) and PENNYWISE (PNY)interact with STM and fulfill functional redundant roles with STM during initiation and maintenance of the vegetative SAM. Loss of ATH1 and PNYresults in a stm mutant phenocopies during the embryonic and vegetativephases, whereas generative development appears unaffected. Finally, we present data implying that both KNOX and BELL proteinfunction are regulated through their subcellular distribution by amechanism highly conserved in animals and plants. Floral induction is controlled by a plethora of genes acting in different pathways that either repress or promote floral transition at the shoot apical meristem (SAM). During vegetative development high levels of floral repressors maintain the Arabidopsis SAM incompetent to respond to promoting factors. Among these repressors, FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) is the most prominent. The processes underlying down-regulation of FLC in response to environmental and developmental signals have been elucidated in considerable detail. However, the basal induction of FLC and its up-regulation by FRIGIDA (FRI) are less understood. Here we demonstrate that the BELL-class genes ATH1 and PNY act redundantly as positive regulators of FLC expression. Plants that constitutively express ATH1 display a vernalization-sensitive late flowering habit. Analysis of lines that differ in FRI and/or FLC allele strength show that this late flowering is caused by up-regulation of FLC as a result of synergism between ATH1 and FRI. Consistently, ath1 and pny mutants flower early in short days (SD) and display attenuated FLC levels. Moreover, ath1 and pny mutations partially suppress FLC-mediated late flowering of both a FRI-expressing line and that of autonomous pathway mutants. In contrast to the relatively weak effects of either single mutant, absence of both ATH1 and PNY almost fully impairs FRI-mediated late flowering. Intriguingly, no role for the BELL gene POUND-FOOLISH (PNF), an established redundant partner of PNY required for the competence of the SAM to respond properly to floral inductive signals, was found in FLC-mediated flowering time control. Taken together, this suggests that throughout plant development different BELL combinations control meristem maintenance and dictate developmental phase identity by controlling key components of phase identity.


The United States Supreme Court's decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly is creating quite a stir. Suddenly gone is the famous loosey-goosey rule of Conley v. Gibson "that a complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief." Now a complaint must provide "enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face." Decided in 2007, Bell Atlantic was cited in over 6,000 cases in just its first year. Already being described as a landmark decision, Bell Atlantic nonetheless has lawyers and judges scratching their heads over the precise pleading standard to apply in its wake. As the Second Circuit (mildly) put it, "Considerable uncertainty concerning the standard for assessing the adequacy of pleadings has recently been created by the Supreme Court's decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly." Just what is a plausible "showing that the pleader is entitled to relief" under Rule 8(a)(2)? I believe an answer lies in the 27-year-old decision of the Former Fifth Circuit in In re Plywood Antitrust Litigation. Plywood Antitrust requires, at a minimum, that "a complaint . . . contain either direct or inferential allegations respecting all the material elements necessary to sustain a recovery under some viable legal theory." Already used in more than half the circuits, this standard paraphrases advice found in Professors Wright and Miller's venerable Federal Practice and Procedure for nearly forty years. Properly applied, this "all . . . material elements" standard satisfies Bell Atlantic's "plausibility" requirement in all respects. The Plywood Antitrust pleading standard works well after Bell Atlantic, first, because the Supreme Court referred to the standard, albeit parenthetically, with approval in Bell Atlantic. Second, the standard does much to harmonize the Federal Rules' goal of dispensing with pleading technicalities while still requiring enough general factual information about a pleader's claim to make the notice in "notice pleading" meaningful. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it gives lawyers, litigants, and courts a standard they can actually use when drafting or assessing the sufficiency of pleadings.


This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study that examined two secondary schools: one from a big city in eastern China and the other from a middle-sized city in eastern Canada. Data were collected using a paper-based survey questionnaire that included multiple- choice, open-ended, and scaled questions. Responses indicate that ownership and access to ICT devices were quite similar between Canadian and Chinese participants, but the learning and use of ICT between the two groups of participants differed due to various reasons. Results seemed the Chinese participants relied more on classroom learning, and teachers of the Chinese participants did not integrate much use of ICT outside of the classroom. The findings of this paper support the literature about ICT integrated teaching that indicates the need for Chinese educators to make more efforts in making full use of available ICT for teaching and learning purposes when ICT access becomes a less critical issue.


A new vision of the future of games and game design, enabled by AI.Can games measure intelligence? How will artificial intelligence inform games of the future? In Playing Smart, Julian Togelius explores the connections between games and intelligence to offer a new vision of future games and game design. Video games already depend on AI. We use games to test AI algorithms, challenge our thinking, and better understand both natural and artificial intelligence. In the future, Togelius argues, game designers will be able to create smarter games that make us smarter in turn, applying advanced AI to help design games. In this book, he tells us how.Games are the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence. In 1948, Alan Turing, one of the founding fathers of computer science and artificial intelligence, handwrote a program for chess. Today we have IBM's Deep Blue and DeepMind's AlphaGo, and huge efforts go into developing AI that can play such arcade games as Pac-Man. Programmers continue to use games to test and develop AI, creating new benchmarks for AI while also challenging human assumptions and cognitive abilities. Game design is at heart a cognitive science, Togelius reminds us?when we play or design a game, we plan, think spatially, make predictions, move, and assess ourselves and our performance. By studying how we play and design games, Togelius writes, we can better understand how humans and machines think. AI can do more for game design than providing a skillful opponent. We can harness it to build game-playing and game-designing AI agents, enabling a new generation of AI-augmented games. With AI, we can explore new frontiers in learning and play.


Many  literary  critics  have  researched  and  conjectured  on  the  18 th   century  poets' connections  to  the  developing  landscape  gardens  of  the  time.  For  example,  Francesca  Orestano, in  "Bust  Story:  Pope  at  Stowe,  or  the  Politics  and  Myths  of  Landscape  Gardening,"  discusses  at length  the  presence  and  creation  of  Pope's  development  of  aesthetics  at  the  Stowe  landscape gardens.  However,  most  critics  have  focused  solely  on  the  idea  of  the  aesthetic  that  gardens create  and  their  relationship  to  the  human  experience  of  nature.  Markus  Poetzsch,  in  "From EcoPolitics  to  Apocalypse:  The  Contentious  Rhetoric  of  EighteenthCentury  Landscape Gardening,"  describes  the  heated  political  world  of  landscape  creation  and  critique.  Other  critics have  focused  on  the  politicized  nature  of  gardening  during  the  time  period.  Orestano  discusses the  changing  political  viewpoints  of  18 th   century  poets  based  on  their  writings  about  landscaping styles,  while  David  C.  Streatfield,  in  his  article,  "Art  and  Nature  in  the  English  Landscape Garden:  Design  Theory  and  Practice,  17001818,"  evaluated  Pope's  standards  and  methods  of judging  and  inventing  beauty  and  aestheticism  in  a  garden.  For  most  of  these  critics,  the aesthetic,  rather  than  the  productive,  nature  of  the  garden  has  been  their  focus.  Some  critics,  such as  have  written  about  the  prescriptive,  not  merely  the  descriptive,  nature  of  poetry  regarding gardens  at  that  time,  giving  the  poem  the  power  of  change  in  the  developing  strictures  of  what made  a  "good"  landscape  garden  in  the  18 th   century. In  my  research,  however,  I  have  not  yet  found  a  critic  that  has  explored  these  poets through  a  lens  of  environmental  morality.  This  paper  will  investigate  how  poets  looked  at gardens  in  the  18 th   century  and  how  they  create  a  way  of  looking  at  gardens  that  has  snowballed into  our  modern  day  obsession  with  organic  gardening.  The  paper  will  then  investigate  the rhetoric  of  organic  gardening  and  its  connection  to  the  writers  in  question.  It  will  explore  the concept  of  environmental  morality  as  a  moral  structure  that  finds  its  motivation  within  the relationship  between  human  and  nature.  In  other  words,  a  moral  system  that  is  based  on  the environmental  would  look  at  nature  and  how  humans  treat  and  use  nature,  otherwise  known  as gardening,  as  a  method  by  which  the  virtue  of  a  person  can  be  discovered.  These  authors,  unlike their  predecessors,  such  as  Andrew  Marvell  who  used  gardens  as  a  scene  or  object  of  description in  poetry,  used  poetry  as  a  way  to  analyze  and  moralize  gardens  and  the  act  of  gardening.  They create  a  discourse  of  garden  morality  that  has  morphed  over  time  into  the  discourse  surrounding organic  gardening  today.  This  ecocritical  analysis  of  the  poets  Alexander  Pope,  Stephen  Duck, and  William  Cowper  will  expound  upon  this  idea  and  explore  the  connection  between  their works,  18 th   century  landscape  gardening,  and  the  development  of  an  organicbased  garden morality  system  that  has  come  to  the  forefront  of  our  society  today.