This thesis describes the results of an investigation into the Physics of Magnetic Particle Inspection. This is a non destructive technique used to detect the presence of surface breaking cracks in ferrous metals. On applying a magnetic ink to the surface of the part being magnetised, particles will be attracted towards any regions of flux discontinuity. This allows the defect to be visible to the eye. The main areas of study were the magnetic properties of the inks used, a computer simulation of the indication process and work of a more practical nature concerning MPI. From the magnetic measurements it was found that field induced agglomeration of the particles imparts the ink with a coercivity and remanence which varies with concentration. Low field time decay measurements show the existence of two reversal mechanisms within the magnetic ink, i.e. Brownian and Neel. The effect interparticle interactions have on a single aggregate has been studied by the use of remanence curves and this was found to lower the aggregates' magnetisation. This therefore lowers the magnetic force on a particle during the inspection process. The spin reversal mechanism has also been determined. The computer simulation of the indication mechanism originally written by McCoy has been improved to accommodate time varying waveforms. Results from this investigation indicate that the rms of the waveform is the important parameter when specifying field values for magnetisation levels for low remanence steels. This is contrary to the British Standard BS 6072 but in agreement with the draft European Standard. It was also found that increasing the paint layer thickness decreased the number of particles at a crack. This variation was found to be similar to the variation of the magnetic leakage field from the crack with increasing paint thickness. From a study of the effects of viscosity and radii on the number of particles arriving at a crack, we find that for particles whose radius is greater than 10 microns no change is observed as the viscosity is altered. Thyristor controlled power supplies are increasingly being used to magnetise inspection pieces and for this reason the relationship between the mean and rms of the waveform has been determined. It was found that the relationship between the two is non linear. This has implications if the user wishes to remain within BS 6072. Experimental verification of the simulation results is also presented. An offshoot of this is a possible method of determining the crack width using MPI, this is also presented. Finally it was noted that upon increasing the applied magnetic field, particles present at the crack rotated through 180 degrees. This also occurred upon decreasing the magnetic field. Investigation of this unusual effect are reported as well as a possible mechanism for it.


Currently it is highly important for detectors to be able to achieve efficiency, reliability, and faultless operation, and to be ergonomic thanks to their assembly and being easy-to-fit. In the case of a proposal for the placement of detectors it is naturally important to determine position of the detector and the type of detector being used, but also to guarantee their capability to be able to detect anything when in use and their user and installation-friendliness. The problem of passive infrared (PIR) detectors affects a large proportion of intrusion and hold-up alarm systems (I&HAS). In a time of increasing property crime, it is highly important for PIR detector to actually be able to detect break-in attempts within the guarded area on a reliable basis and free of error. In the case of the installation of PIR detectors, it is naturally important not only to ensure correct installation, to gauge the external influences which may impact upon the detector and to ensure proper maintenance, but also to guarantee the capability of detection under more arduous conditions. The tests and comparisons which have been conducted examine both the normal operation of the PIR detectors and the ergonomics of these detectors. These tests are important both from an informative perspective and due to the opportunities to be able to develop potential counter-measures which could lead to their improvement.


Constantin Erbiceanu stood out, at the end of the 19th century, as one of the first scholars who deemed right to accept the Phanariote Regime as part of the Romanians' history, bringing out to light, at the same time, its pluses. To this purpose, he investigated and partly published documents and ancient manuscripts discovered in the archives and the libraries, trying to understand in depth the relations between the two cultures, as well as the contribution of the Greek teachers and schools to the Romanians' education at that time. This titanic effort is the reason why the scholar climbed the professional ladder quite quickly, from the position of teacher at the Socola Seminary, to that of Professor and Dean of the Theology Faculty of the University of Bucharest, Academy member and even vice-president of the Romanian Academy. He was himself perfectly aware of the role played in his career by the researches made in the field of the cultural Greek-Romanian interferences, mentioning in his autobiography: "This special work on the Greek manuscripts made my future, I admit that. I was a theologian, and no matter how hard I would have worked in this field, I could not have become a member of our Academy, of the Syllogos in Constantinople, of the Medieval History Society from the same place, etc. […] I was also naturally inclined to scrutinizing and researching in detail ancient things, in order to find out new things. And I succeeded." Following a number of published papers and scientific preoccupations we have had over the last years, where we were mainly concerned with the scholar's thorough education starting with his first days in school and finishing with the graduation from the Faculty of Theology of the University of Athens, the present paper will deal with Constantin Erbiceanu's return home, with his period as a teacher at the school where he had been a pupil years before ("Veniamin Costachi" Seminary of Socola) and with his first scientific preoccupations during the "Iasi period" of his career. In the summer of 1868, Constantin Erbiceanu came back home from his studies abroad, with a degree of prolytas (bachelor) granted by the Faculty of Theology of the University of Athens and with a very short Parisian experience as well. After a short stay at the "Sf. Sava" High school of Bucharest, where he occupied, by competitive examination, the Philosophy chair, he accepted in October 1868 the transfer to the chair of Universal and Ecclesial History of the Theological Seminary of Socola (post-secondary). Because of some pressure coming from the Church hierarchy for him to become a monk, which he rejected, the young teacher tries to find alternatives, participating in 1870 in the competitions for the chair of Universal History at the Military School and for the chair of Greek Language at the High School of Iasi, but he fails. Meanwhile, he gets married (1873), he and his wife, Aglae Negrescu, will make a beautiful family with four children: Constanţa, Laurenţiu, Constantin and Eduard, the last two with tragic destinies. He continued to do, with much responsibility, his work at the Seminary, so he is transferred in 1871, with his consent, to the chair of Dogmatic, Moral, Pastoral Theology and Canon Law (the former teacher, Clement Nicolau, had attempted to kill the Metropolitan, so he had been fired and sent to court), one of the fundamental subjects of theological study; here he remained until his leaving for Bucharest, in December 1886. Constantin Erbiceanu participated in all the aspects of the Seminary's life of those years: he thoroughly taught his subject, he also ensured some other courses for different chairs for lower and higher grades, he was a member of the examination boards of the Seminary and of the baccalaureate boards in Iasi, he joined the Committee for the Church Books, who had the mission to analyse the textbooks used in the theological educational system, etc. His destiny changed in 1883, when Metropolitan Iosif Naniescu chose him to edit a church periodical publication, Revista Teologică [The Theological Journal], by means of which he could circulate his ideas and which was supposed to defend him against the attacks of the group of priests gathered around the Desteptarea newspaper [The Awakening], who insistently asked for the modernization and the democratization of the Church. Revista Teologică stood out as the main body in Iasi to fight the new ideas that started to emerge in the cultural and social life of the city in the 8th-9th decades, quite influential among the high school and university students: evolutionism, materialism and socialism. Besides the efforts made to defend the Church, the work in the editorial segment of the new publication occasioned for the teacher a contact with the old documents and manuscripts, including those of the Greek schools that existed in the Principalities in the Phanariote Regime, which he partly published or commented in the journal. This way, he asserted himself not only as a teacher and a preacher in the Church, as he used to say, but also as a contributing editor and a scientist. The diligence and competence he had demonstrated in the investigation of the educational institutions of Iasi brought forward, pretty soon, his appointment as a member of the organization committee for the celebration of 50 years of Higher Education in Iasi (counted since the establishment of the Academia Mihăileană, in 1835, although the higher education had been established much later, at the end of the 6th decade). Thus, on 27 June 1885, in the central amphitheatre of the University of Iasi, he presented a warmly welcomed scientific communication about schools of the Phanariote Regime. His discourse impressed the public – he was then just a teacher of the Seminary, sitting near famous academic personalities – and especially the minister of Cults and Public Instruction, Dimitrie A. Sturdza, who in a private meeting proposed him to be transferred, in a near future, to the Central Theological Seminary of Bucharest. Constantin Erbiceanu accepted the invitation and, taking advantage of the favourable circumstances, he obtained, besides the chair of Dogmatic Theology at the Central Seminary (therefore the same subject he had taught in Iasi), the position of supply teacher at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Bucharest, and that of director of the Printing House of the Church Books and of editor in the staff of the Saint Synod's publication, Biserica Ortodoxă Română [The Romanian Orthodox Church]. So started, rather suddenly and late, but following a titanic sustained work, his professional and social ascension, taking him to the top of the cultural-scientific hierarchy, being co-opted first as a corresponding, than as a full member of the Romanian Academy, whose vice-president he would eventually become, in the twilights of his life.


We compute non-LTE Mg II line profiles for Be stars by considering 12 energy-level atoms and supposing that the circumstellar medium can be described by an expanding, spherically symmetric flow in which we assume the presence of a chromosphere. The line radiative transfer equation was solved rigorously in spherical coordinates and in the comoving frame. The Mg II line profiles predicted by this model coincide with those observed in some Be stars. The calculation was performed for a range of effective temperatures representative of the B spectral type. We have also analyzed the influence on the line profiles of different temperature and velocity distributions in the circumstellar material. The line spectrum variability of a Be star is interpreted as the result of a variable outward mass flux.


Seven species belonging to Radula subg. Radula are accepted for Australasia. Radula oreopsis M.A.M.Renner is described as new, while R. kurzii, R. multiflora, R. reflexa and R. sharpii are excluded from the region. Molecular and morphological data provide evidence suggesting that the broad species concepts recently applied to subg. Radula in Australia and across the Pacific are not useful. Many subtle yet consistent differences in size and shape, and in micromorphological and anatomical characters potentially inform species circumscription. However, most differences between species are virtually impossible to apprehend independent of molecular data corroborating their significance. Herbarium-based studies and the interpretation of type material are therefore challenging. However, the molecular phylogeny based on three chloroplast markers unites a morphologically heterogeneous array of individuals from across Australasia and the Pacific into a single fully supported clade containing individuals corresponding to the type of R. javanica as well as individuals from Australia, New Zealand and Fiji attributed by various workers to R. erigens, R. javanica, R. multiflora and R. reflexa. There is a general lack of congruence between morphological and molecular groups across the phylogeny. Morphologically similar individuals are resolved in different clades where they are more closely related to morphologically dissimilar species, which may hint at morphological convergence. Morphologically different individuals are nested within each other. The unique cell ornamentation in R. oreopsis, but not in other individuals (here attributed to other species) within the same clade is one example hinting at rapid morphological evolution. The dispersed nature of land within island archipelagos means spatial isolation could contribute to origin and maintenance of species diversity across the Pacific. Every habitat may be effectively peripherally isolated by dispersal limitation. If rates of dispersal and divergence are equivalent across the region, the Pacific and bounding lands including the Wet Tropics Bioregion could maintain species paraphyly in perpetuity.


Ubiquity of mobile devices with rich sensory capabilities has given rise to the mobile crowd-sensing (MCS) concept, in which a central authority (the platform) and its participants (mobile users) work collaboratively to acquire sensory data over a wide geographic area. Recent research in MCS highlights the following facts: 1) a utility metric can be defined for both the platform and the users, quantifying the value received by either side; 2) incentivizing the users to participate is a non-trivial challenge; 3) correctness and truthfulness of the acquired data must be verified, because the users might provide incorrect or inaccurate data, whether due to malicious intent or malfunctioning devices; and 4) an intricate relationship exists among platform utility, user utility, user reputation, and data trustworthiness, suggesting a co-quantification of these inter-related metrics. In this paper, we study two existing approaches that quantify crowd-sensed data trustworthiness, based on statistical and vote-based user reputation scores. We introduce a new metric—collaborative reputation scores—to expand this definition. Our simulation results show that collaborative reputation scores can provide an effective alternative to the previously proposed metrics and are able to extend crowd sensing to applications that are driven by a centralized as well as decentralized control.


In order to isolate the major perceptual dimensions involved in the recognition of selected English consonants, four experiments were conducted. The first experiment attempted to characterize the nature of the perceptual space for English consonants, while the second was a replication and extension of the first, with the results being analyzed using multidimensional scaling (MDS). The third experiment attempted to test the predictive validity of the original MDS interpretation. The fourth experiment was a preliminary investigation of the impact of the method of measuring perceptual proximity upon the scaling solution using a proximity measure derived from a number of verbal rating scales. Two major perceptual dimensions were clearly isolated, and a third dimension also appeared, although with less consistency than the first two.


The prehistories of Britain and Ireland are inescapably entwined with continental European narratives. The central aim here is to explore 'cross-channel' relationships throughout later prehistory, investigating the archaeological links (material, social, cultural) between the areas we now call Britain and Ireland, and continental Europe, from the Mesolithic through to the end of the Iron Age. Since the separation from the European mainland of Ireland (c. 16,000 BC) and Britain (c. 6000 BC), their island nature has been seen as central to many aspects of life within them, helping to define their senses of identity, and forming a crucial part of their neighbourly relationship with continental Europe and with each other. However, it is important to remember that the surrounding seaways have often served to connect as well as to separate these islands from the continent. In approaching the subject of 'continental connections' in the long-term, and by bringing a variety of different archaeological perspectives (associated with different periods) to bear on it, this volume provides a new a new synthesis of the ebbs and flows of the cross-channel relationship over the course of 15,000 years of later prehistory, enabling fresh understandings and new insights to emerge about the intimately linked trajectories of change in both regions


The use of convolutional neural networks improved greatly data synthesis in the last years and have been widely used for data augmentation in scenarios where very imbalanced data is observed, such as land cover segmentation. Balancing the proportion of classes for training segmentation models can be very challenging considering that samples where all classes are reasonably represented might constitute a small portion of a training set, and techniques for augmenting this small amount of data such as rotation, scaling and translation might be not sufficient for efficient training. In this context, this paper proposes a methodology to perform data augmentation from few samples to improve the performance of CNN-based land cover semantic segmentation. First, we estimate the latent data representation of selected training samples by means of a mixture of Gaussians, using an encoder-decoder CNN. Then, we change the latent embedding used to generate the mixture parameters, at random and in training time, to generate new mixture models slightly different from the original. Finally, we compute the displacement maps between the original and the modified mixture models, and use them to elastically deform the original images, creating new realistic samples out of the original ones. Our disentangled approach allows the spatial modification of displacement maps to preserve objects where deformation is undesired, like buildings and cars, where geometry is highly discriminant. With this simple pipeline, we managed to augment samples in training time, and improve the overall performance of two basal semantic segmentation CNN architectures for land cover semantic segmentation.


European guidelines recommend offering an HIV test to individuals who display HIV indicator conditions (ICs). UK guidelines recommend performing a 'routine offer of HIV testing' in primary care where HIV prevalence exceeds 2 in 1000. Implementation of new provider-initiated HIV testing strategies in general practice is limited, while the numbers of undiagnosed and late for care HIV patients remain high. We have explored Dutch general practitioners' barriers to and facilitators of both strategies. We combined semi-structured in-depth interviews with focus groups. Nine general practitioners – key informants of sexually transmitted infection/HIV prevention and control – were selected for the interviews. Additionally, we organised focus groups with a broad sample of general practitioners (n = 81). Framework analysis was used to analyse the data. Various barriers were found, related to (1) the content of the guidelines (testing the right group and competing priorities in general practice), (2) their organisational implementation (lack of time, unclear when to repeat the HIV test and overlong list of ICs) and (3) the patient population (creating fear among patients, stigmatising them and fear regarding financial costs). Multiple general practitioners stated that performing a sexual risk assessment of patients is important before applying either strategy. Also, they recommended implementing the IC-guided approach only in high-prevalence areas and combining HIV tests with other laboratory blood tests. General practitioners tend to cling to old patterns of risk-based testing. Promoting awareness of HIV testing and educating general practitioners about the benefits of new provider-initiated HIV testing strategies is important for the actual uptake of HIV testing.


Knowing the impact of bad programming practices or code smells has led researchers to conduct numerous studies in software maintenance. Most of the studies have defined code smells as bad practices that may affect the quality of the software. However, most of the existing research is heavily focused on detecting traditional code smells and less focused on mobile application specific Android code smells. Presently, there is a few papers that focus on android code smells a catalog for Android code smells. This catalog defines 30 Android specific code smell that may impact maintainability of an app. In this research, we plan to introduce a detector tool called BadDroidDetector for Android code smells that can detect 13 code smells from the catalog. We will also conduct an empirical study to know the distribution of 13 smell that we detect and know the severity of these smells.


Forests offer an important basis for creating and safeguarding more climate-resilient communities over Hindu Kush Himalayan region. The forest ecosystem vulnerability assessment to climate change and developing knowledge base to identify and support relevant adaptation strategies is realized as an urgent need. The multi scale adaptation strategies portray increasing complexity with the increasing levels in terms of data requirements, vulnerability understanding and decision making to choose a particular adaptation strategy. We present here how such complexities could be addressed and adaptation decisions could be either directly supported by open source remote sensing based forestry products or geospatial analysis and modelled products. The forest vulnerability assessment under climate change scenario coupled with increasing forest social dependence was studied using IPCC Landscape scale Vulnerability framework in Chitwan-Annapurna Landscape (CHAL) situated in Nepal. Around twenty layers of geospatial information on climate, forest biophysical and forest social dependence data was used to assess forest vulnerability and associated adaptation needs using self-learning decision tree based approaches. The increase in forest fires, evapotranspiration and reduction in productivity over changing climate scenario was observed. The adaptation measures on enhancing productivity, improving resilience, reducing or avoiding pressure with spatial specificity are identified to support suitable decision making. The study provides spatial analytical framework to evaluate multitude of parameters to understand vulnerabilities and assess scope for alternative adaptation strategies with spatial explicitness.


BACKGROUND
Gefitinib is active in patients with pretreated non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We evaluated the activity and toxicity of gefitinib first-line treatment in advanced NSCLC followed by chemotherapy at disease progression.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
In all, 63 patients with chemotherapy-naive stage IIIB/IV NSCLC received gefitinib 250 mg/day. At disease progression, gefitinib was replaced by cisplatin 80 mg/m(2) on day 1 and gemcitabine 1250 mg/m(2) on days 1, 8 for up to six 3-week cycles. Primary end point was the disease stabilization rate (DSR) after 12 weeks of gefitinib.

RESULTS
After 12 weeks of gefitinib, the DSR was 24% and the response rate (RR) was 8%. Median time to progression (TtP) was 2.5 months and median overall survival (OS) 11.5 months. Never smokers (n = 9) had a DSR of 56% and a median OS of 20.2 months; patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation (n = 4) had a DSR of 75% and the median OS was not reached after the follow-up of 21.6 months. In all, 41 patients received chemotherapy with an overall RR of 34%, DSR of 71% and median TtP of 6.7 months.

CONCLUSIONS
First-line gefitinib monotherapy led to a DSR of 24% at 12 weeks in an unselected patients population. Never smokers and patients with EGFR mutations tend to have a better outcome; hence, further trials in selected patients are warranted.


Diaspora studies have tended to privilege urban landscapes over rural ones, wanting to avoid the racial homogeneity, conservatism, and xenophobia usually associated with the latter. In "Second Arrivals: Landscape and Belonging in Contemporary Writing of the Americas", Sarah Phillips Casteel examines the work of writers such as Derek Walcott, V. S. Naipaul, Jamaica Kincaid, Philip Roth, and Joy Kogawa, among others, to show how it expresses the appeal that rural and wilderness spaces can hold for the diasporic imagination. Casteel proposes an alternative to postmodern celebrations of rootlessness, bringing together writers from the Caribbean and North America who uniquely reimagine the New World landscape from the vantage point of cultural and geographical dislocation. As represented in a range of genres and media - fiction, poetry, garden writing, and installation art - these alternative forms of belonging reinterpret New World nature as infused with history and as subject to competing claims, generating a new poetics of American place. The author's transnational approach also gives significant attention to Canadian material, which has largely been overlooked in hemispheric studies of the literature of the Americas. Contributing to the growing movement of comparative American studies, "Second Arrivals" will appeal to scholars and students of inter-American studies, Caribbean studies, Canadian studies, diaspora studies, postcolonial studies, and ecocriticism.


The coefficients of a power series $A(x)$ are smooth if $a_{n-1}/a_n$ approaches a limit. If $A(x)=F(G(x))$ and $f_n^{1/n}$ approaches a limit, then the coefficients of $A(x)$ are often smooth. We use this to show that the coefficients of the exponential generating function for graphs embeddable on a given surface are smooth, settling a problem of McDiarmid.


Since I have already published a lengthy academic article on antitrust and wealth inequality, I have the freedom of using this piece to present the key arguments unvarnished by dense citations or technical details (readers interested in those things should consult my earlier article) and to respond to some of the criticisms of my article that have since been levied. My thesis, before and now, is this: claims that antitrust enforcement advances income or wealth progressivity are overstated and rest on simplistic and unrealistic understandings of how antitrust actually operates. While some enforcement actions may generate progressive results, others will generate regressive results, and the net effect is largely unknowable. Therefore, with a few limited exceptions, it would be unwise to cast antitrust as a policy lever for advancing wealth equality.


Severe Acute Respiratory Disease (SARS) is caused by a coronavirus, and as of this writing has no known vaccine or cure. Generally, the disease starts with a high fever, headaches, body aches, and mild respiratory symptoms. SARS spreads through respiratory droplets produced by an infected person when he or she coughs or sneezes or through physical contact.The disease was first identified in a southern province of China in November of 2002, and quickly spread to twenty-seven different countries. In March of 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared SARS a global health threat. In China, the economic and social costs of the outbreak were enormous. By June of 2003, 5,327 people were infected, and 329 died as a result of these infections.In the 2003 outbreak, the global effort to combat SARS hinged on how effectively China dealt with the crisis. Unfortunately, initial information about the outbreak in China was concealed for fear of damaging local image and trade. As a result, the epidemic quickly gained momentum and erupted into a national health threat. After the SARS epidemic devastated Beijing in April of 2003, the Chinese government began a transparent approach and openly launched a national campaign against SARS. Newly enacted SARS laws played a crucial role in establishing the SARS reporting system, allocating medical resources, and administering quarantine and isolation. The epidemic was brought under control in June of 2003.Despite this eventual success, however, examination of the legal aspects of the Chinese government's reaction to the SARS epidemic and in-depth analysis of the new SARS laws shows that SARS could have been much better contained. Further, it reveals that changing China's traditional indifference toward existing laws would be far more effective in preventing epidemics than its current approach of enacting new laws for the same purpose.


A new method is introduced for interference excision in spread-spectrum communications that is conducive to software-radio applications. Spare processing capacity in the receiver permits the use of time-frequency techniques to synthesize a nonstationary interference from the time-frequency domain using least squares methods. The synthesized signal is then subtracted from the incoming data in the time domain, leading to jammer removal and increased signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio at the input of the correlator. The paper focuses on jammers with constant modulus that are uniquely described by their instantaneous frequency characteristics. With this a priori knowledge, the jammer signal amplitude is restored by projecting each sample of the synthesized signal to a circle representing its constant modulus. With the phase matching provided by the least squares synthesis method and amplitude matching underlying the projection operation, a significant improvement in receiver performance/bit-error rates is achieved over the case where no projection is performed. Software-radio aspects including computational complexity and processing modes are also discussed.


ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to analyze concepts of diversity when applied at the level of such large entities as race, ethnicity, society, nation, empire, state, and civilization as compared to groups integrated by common values and/or interests, such as castes, elites, classes, and nets. Such social ideologies as nationalism, racism, and others will also be analyzed from the point of view of their roles in the evolution of civilization. This evolution will be analyzed in the stages of Early, Colonial, Imperial, Post-Imperial, Globalizing, and Universal Civilizations, which terms will be defined in the course of this paper. Furthermore, benefits and costs of historic diversity solutions will be estimated as a base to create challenging diversity and multiculturalism-oriented policies in the 21st century. The latter will be analyzed in the context of these policies in the current nine civilizations (Western, Eastern, Japanese, Chinese, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, African, Global) in order to define an optimal solution (balancing assimilation and isolation tendencies) which eventually may eliminate the negatives of multiculturalism and address the concepts of state, global and world citizenships within a hybrid culture. Recommendations are offered to improve the current civilization's social dynamics. Key words: clash of people, race, ethnicity, castes, classes, elites, nets, society, nation, empire, civilization, multiculturalism, diversity, nationalism, racism, hybrid culture, global citizenship. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this study is to analyze concepts of diversity and evaluate their applications in the evolution of civilization. Furthermore, benefits and costs of historical diversity solutions will be defined as a base to create challenging diversityand multiculturalism-oriented concepts in the 21st century. The latter will be analyzed in the context of the current nine civilizations in order to define an optimal solution which will eliminate the negatives of the current state of multiculturalism and address the issues of state, global and world citizenships. It is important to notice that the United Nations declared on December 10, 1948 a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): "Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law...." The ideas and values of human rights can be traced through history to ancient times and in religious beliefs and cultures around the world. European philosophers of the enlightenment period developed theories of natural law that influenced the adoption of documents such as the Bill of Rights of England, the Bill of Rights in the United States, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in France. During the Second World War the allies adopted the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from fear and freedom from want, as their basic war aims. However, after 60 years of applying the UN UDHR, it is still true that the world is not free from the clash of people triggered by human ethnicity and diversity. This study will investigate (at the level of synthesis) the reasons for such a situation and the repercussions of multiculturalism through the development of civilization. UNDERSTANDING DIVERSITY Diversity is the foundation of life forms for the entire Earth. Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the health of biological systems. Biodiversity found on Earth today consists of many millions of distinct biological species, the product of four billion years of evolution. Hence, sociodiversity is one of the dimensions of biodiversity. …


Abstract The U.S. Census Bureau conducted a series of experiments to evaluate alternative contact strategies. We hoped to identify effective mail strategies that increase timeliness of response and reduce the number of cases receiving more-costly follow-ups. These experiments were incorporated into the collection of several annual business surveys and one quarterly survey. This article summarizes results from five experiments whose designs are based on business survey decision-making and response processes. We obtained clear, positive results from tests involving manipulation of mail sequences, but only modest results from tests in which we varied messages and envelope appearance, whose effects were seen only in specific industry subgroups.


Abstract:Dominant global narratives on sustainability have a tendency to reinforce precisely the conditions that have produced the crisis. This is because an appropriate response would undermine the whole system. Unsustainable behaviour is framed in terms of 'them' (the unsustainable and badly behaved global South) and 'us' (the wealthy countries who are 'helping' them becoming sustainable - defined in terms of the adoption of western norms). Such narratives take attention away from over-consumption, especially of fossil fuels, in the wealthy north. The way the issue of deforestation in Indonesia has been framed illustrates this. The process of deforestation began in the colonial period, and continued in the post-colonial era with newer capitalist forms of resource extraction. Yet contemporary international intervention has been based on the notion that the fault lies within Indonesia itself. Deforestation is understood in terms of market functions and market failures, a framing which assumes delinquent local behaviour, and focuses on internal institutions, corruption and ineffective law enforcement - while ignoring the powerful global factors that are in reality driving environmental destruction.


Alien Ink is the first in a series of online graphic novels designed to tackle everyday teen issues, and provides a great resource of PSHE/ citizenship and media studies teachers keystage 3, 4 and higher. It is based around the lives of Trinity and Ryder, who curiously arrive in Camden at the same time as UFO sightings on Primrose Hill, and subsequently open a tattoo parlour that becomes a hang-out for local teens.

See more at: http://www.alienink.co.uk
Alien Ink raises a series of teen pressures, including relationship issues, sexual health and drug use, through the popular and accessible medium of graphic novels. Readers can interact with the comic via Facebook, MySpace, quiz apps, YouTube and the Pressure blog, and are encouraged to get involved in the Alien Ink world, discussing the issues raised or by submitting examples of their own creativity, be it artwork, graphic design, writing, poetry, or even their own tattoo design. Alien Ink will also be available to view on Facebook and, in a partially animated format, on YouTube. The comics are a great way to reach teens with stories that matter and to point them to information that will genuinely help. New chapters appear every week, with all chapters eventually available in a hardback in autumn 2010.


The spider silk is one of the most interesting bio-materials investigated in the last years. One of the main reasons that brought scientists to study this organized system is its high level of resistance if compared to other artificial materials characterized by higher density. Subsequently, researchers discovered that the spider silk is a complex system formed by different kinds of proteins, organized (or disorganized) to guarantee the required resistance, which is function of the final application and of the environmental conditions. Some spider species are able to make different silks, up to twelve, having a composition that seems to be function of the final use (i.e. dragline web, capture web, etc). The aim of this paper is to analyze the properties of the spider silk by means of a thermodynamic approach, taking advantage of the well-known theories applied to polymers, and to try to underline and develop some intriguing considerations. Moreover, this study can be taken as an example to introduce and discuss the importance of the concept of optionality and of the anti-fragile systems proposed by N. N. Thaleb in his book "Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder".


Abstract When Spirulina platensis filaments were exposed to 0.75 mW.m-2.s-1 of ultraviolet-B radiation (the ultraviolet-B radiation under clear sky condition is ~1.0 mW.m-2.s-1), an inhibition in photosystem II activity was observed, the inhibition being 90% after 90 min exposure. Upon exposure to ultraviolet-B, the room temperature emission characteristics of Spirulina cells were altered when excited with light primarily absorbed by chlorophyll a or phycobilisomes. When the cells were exposed for 3 h the emission at 685 nm (F685), when excited at 440 nm (primarily chlorophyll a absorption), was enhanced compared to 715 nm (F 715) band of photosystem I suggesting a decrease in energy transfer from photosystem II to photosys tem I. Similarly, when the cells were excited at 580 nm (primarily the phycobilisomes), the ratio of emission intensity at 685 nm (F685) to that of 655 nm (F655) was decreased in the exposed cells. This change in emission characteristics seems to be linked with the uncoupling of the energy transfer from allophycocyanin to chlorophyll a of photosystem II. A small shift in emission peak positions was also indicated when excited either at 440 nm or 580 nm. Analysis of the fast induction of chlorophyll a transients in the presence and absence of 10 μm 3-(3,4-dichlorophenyl)-l,l-dimethylurea (DCMU) indicated that ultraviolet-B expo sure initially affects Qᴀ, the primary stable acceptor of photosystem II, and then the plastoquinone (PQ) pool. Our results on the loss in photosystem Il-catalyzed Hill activity with p-benzoquinone or dichlorobenzoquinone as electron acceptors also supports the contention that ultraviolet-B, even at low dose, initially alters the Qᴀ of photosystem II and subsequently PQ pool. The analysis of functional pool size of Spirulina suggests a substantial decrease in the functional pool size after 2 h UV-B exposure. These results indicate that in Spirulina low intensity of ultraviolet-B initially damages the reaction centre of photosystem II.


A metabolism study was conducted to evaluate the interactive effects of daily pST injections and the Î2agonist salbutamol on the lysine requirement of finishing pigs based on nitrogen retention. Sixteen finishing pigs (137 lbs initially) were exposed to one of four biological treatments for 32 d. These treatments were: 1) non-treated control; 2) 4 mg/d pST; 3) 2.75 ppm of dietary salbutamol; 4) both salbutamol and pST. Pigs were kept on the same biological treatment and offered one of four diets for an 8 d period in a Latin square arrangement. Diets were formulated to contain .8, 1.2, 1.6, and 2.0% dietary lysine, the assumed first-limiting amino acid. Pigs were acclimated to each diet for a 4 d period, after which feces and urine were collected for 4 d to evaluate nitrogen retention. Results indicate that the Î2agonist salbutamol increased the daily feed consumption, daily gain, and the efficiency of gain; whereas pST injection reduced feed consumption and increased efficiency of gain. No interaction occurred between pST and salbutamol for percent nitrogen retention; however, pigs injected with pST and fed salbutamol had a higher daily nitrogen retention because of an increased nitrogen intake and improved nitrogen utilization. Pigs treated with pST had leaner carcasses with a higher percent muscle than nontreated controls or pigs fed salbutamol. These data suggest that pigs injected with pST have a dietary lysine requirement between 1.2 and 1.6%, whereas those fed salbutamol have a requirement similar to that of non-treated pigs, which may be confounded with increased daily feed intake. Pigs treated with both pST and salbutamol appear to have a lysine requirement slightly lower than that of pigs injected with pST alone, which appears to be due to increased feed intake.; Swine Day, Manhattan, KS, November 21, 1991


Melbourne Law School, Melbourne, Australia Email: email@example.com ABSTRACT Constitutions have been made or changed in major ways in more than half the countries of the world in recent decades. This article deals with contemporary approaches to constitution-making, organising the analysis around three key phases: setting the agenda, in terms of both substance and process; design, drafting and approval; and implementation. It argues that, while all constitutionmaking processes are different, there are some distinctive features of constitution-making in the 21st century that include popular participation, the need to build trust, internationalisation in its various forms and the importance of process. The article canvasses examples of constitution-making practices that have been or are likely to be influential. It identifies and briefly explores some of the key tensions in constitution-making between, for example, international involvement and domestic ownership of a Constitution and public participation and leadership.


The big question for today's international monetary system is: will the Euro survive? I believe that it will, and that Euro-land will muddle through its current serious difficulties. The common currency in Europe has run into two problems. One was well understood by skeptics of the entire plan of a monetary union in Europe, while a second was less anticipated. The first is the fact that countries with very different levels of productivity growth are tied together by a common exchange rate and monetary policy. Countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy would benefit, at least temporarily, from a devaluation of their currencies to help them overcome their economic stagnation, which seems to have followed the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Other means of adjustment certainly exist, but those would imply lower growth or even a reduction in monetary wages to compensate for the relatively strong Euro and the low productivity growth in these countries. Such adjustments are also politically difficult, and devaluations would, at least in the short run, help. In addition, the European Central Bank will have to follow a monetary policy not only specifically targeting the needs of these countries, but also considering the needs of the Euro area as a whole, which includes other economies on more solid ground like Germany. The second problem emerged from the ability of many countries to borrow at very low rates during the first decade of the Euro. Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal could borrow abroad at rates close to those of Germany because the exchange risk was removed. These countries thus went on borrowing sprees and became intoxicated by the temptation of low interest rates in world markets. Ultimately, however, the market woke up, realized that Greece is not Germany in terms of fiscal solidity, and demanded compensation for risk. The system then unraveled, and the higher interest rates demanded by markets increased the fiscal problem of these indebted countries. The worse the finances of these countries became, the more the market demanded compensation for risk and higher interest rates. This demand, in turn, caused deficits to rise, ultimately creating a vicious circle that started with Greece, went to Ireland and Portugal, and marginally touched even Spain and Italy. At this point, a third problem of a political nature surfaced: the lack of an institutional process to deal with crises of this nature. Europe was like a town hall deciding how to organize its fire department while several houses burned. …


Different arguments about the viability of underdeveloped farmers are going around. Many researchers and stakeholders were involved in projects aimed at improving the underdeveloped farmers' enterprises. Very few of the private or Government initiated projects paid any dividends to those involved. It appears that farmers lack the capability to incorporate the five components (biological viability, resources availability and viability, economic viability, social / community orientated viability and risk factors) necessary to manage a sustainable agribusiness. This study looks at present agricultural enterprises, the socio-economic components needed for a sustainable enterprise and how a sustainable enterprise should be managed by underdeveloped farmers. The study area was Driefontein which is situated in the north eastern part of the North West Province (25o55' E: 25o45' S). The average yearly rainfall over the period 2000 to 2007 was 325 mm. Of the 218 respondents 27% is involved in animal husbandry and 42% is involved in crop production. The remaining 31% is subsistence farmers and/or are involved within the farming community. The 218 farmers produce a total of 18 t of maize, 20 t sorghum and 7 t sunflower on a total of ± 660ha, which proves the situation to be unsustainable according to the five pillars criteria for sustainable agriculture. The three input parameters representing the highest expenditure levels are fuel (R3 216), seed (R1 794) and labour (R1 335). Given the income they obtained from their crop production it is evident that the profit (per farmer) was R63 (maize), R235 (sorghum) and R64 (sunflower) per production season, respectively. The farmers indicated that the main reason for crop losses is drought, and to a minor extent damage caused by birds, stray animals, theft, diseases and pests. Damage caused by incompetency and monoculture practises are not considered a risk. However, if the potential farmers (semi-commercial and share croppers) receive training regarding sustainable agriculture, they will become accustomed to the complicacy regarding managing a sustainable agribusiness and can develop the needed skills necessary to manage a sustainable agribusiness.


In this study, sea surface skylight spectral reflectance ρ(λ) was retrieved by means of the non-linear spectral optimization method and a bio-optical model. The spectral variability of ρ(λ) was found to be mainly influenced by the uniformity of the incident skylight, and a model is proposed to predict the ρ(λ) spectral dependency based on skylight reflectance at 750 nm. It is demonstrated that using the spectrally variable ρ(λ), rather than a constant, yields an improved agreement between the above-water remote sensing reflectance R(rs)(λ) estimates and concurrent profiling ones. The findings of this study highlight the necessity to re-process the relevant historical above-water data and update ocean color retrieval algorithms accordingly.


Continuous rapid economic growth has made China one of largest economies in the world. Chinese women have been playing an important role in many aspects of socio-economic activities. However, in recent decades overall women's political participation in China has not been significantly improved. The spindled shape of women's representation in the power structures will not support a sustainable improvement in women's political participation in China. This paper argues that high-profile women politicians would contribute to political gender equity, but a broader participation in politics from the grassroots female population is more important and fundamental. Therefore, a proactive policy in women's political participation will only work well when it not only focuses on the middle level of power structures but also on the participation of grassroots groups.


The use of increased levels of insulation within masonry veneer walls places increased demands on the gravity support systems including slab edge, edge-connected steel angles, and discretely connected steel angles. In addition to structural and durability criteria, designers need to assess masonry gravity support systems for thermal bridging. This paper summarizes the essential thermal design criteria related to masonry veneer gravity support systems. The results of three-dimensional thermal modelling are presented to illustrate the impact of thermal bridging and the inherent benefits of de-coupling masonry supports from the building structure. This paper will assist both masonry contractors and designers responsible for thermally efficient masonry veneer gravity support systems. A companion paper at this conference by Finch, Wilson, and Higgins (2013) has been prepared which specifically deals with thermal bridging issues at brick masonry veneer connectors.


Sugarcane industry in Egypt goes back to the year 710 AD. Cane plantations are concentrated in the area of Upper Egypt. The total amount of cane cultivated in Upper Egypt is about 16 million tons per year. There are eight sugarcane producing factories in Egypt, most of them located close to the cultivations. Sugarcane production generates considerable amount of waste during the harvesting phase of cane plantation and during the industrial phase of sugarcane milling. The sugarcane industry in Egypt can be currently defined as an open industrial system that consumes material and energy and creates products and wastes. For sugarcane industry to become a sustainable industry or a green industry, its production process has to be closed over its lifecycle in order to reach zero waste. Its wastes, residues and by-products should not be burned or disposed but should be rather treated as raw material for other industries. The sugarcane industry in Egypt needs to introduce the concept of industrial ecology or environmentally balanced industrial complex (EBIC) to close the material's loop. This paper gives a background of sugarcane industry in Egypt for the different stages of production of sugar. It also reviews the different options for reuse of the produced by-products and residues as practiced in Egypt -. It then proposes an approach for introducing the concept of environmentally balanced industrial complex to sugar cane industry in Egypt to approach zero pollution.


Fluorescent in situ hybridization is used to determine the number and position of 45S nuclear ribosomal DNA (45S‐nrDNA) clusters in members of the Gesneriaceae: Aeschynanthus, Agalmyla, and Streptocarpus (including Colpogyne, Hovanella, Saintpaulia, and Schizoboea). All sites detected are terminal in position. Species of Agalmyla analyzed are uniformly diploid and possess one 45S‐nrDNA locus per genome; those of Streptocarpus are diploid, with one or two loci per genome; and Aeschynanthus species are diploid or tetraploid, possessing one or two loci in each genome. In relating the nrDNA loci to the respective generic phylogenetic trees, contrasting patterns of 45S‐nrDNA locus evolution become apparent. In Streptocarpus, gain of loci is intragenomic, i.e., within haploid genomes, whereas in Aeschynanthus, it involves duplications by polyploidization as well as intragenomic changes. The latter appears to have occurred early in the diversification of the genus but relatively recently in Streptocarpus. The relevance of this investigation to the study of evolution of nrDNA loci is discussed.


Aims Cardiac hybrid imaging by fusing single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) myocardial perfusion imaging with coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) provides important complementary diagnostic information for coronary artery disease (CAD) assessment. We aimed at assessing the impact of cardiac hybrid imaging on the choice of treatment strategy selection for CAD. Methods and results Three hundred and eighteen consecutive patients underwent a 1 day stress/rest 99mTc-tetrofosmin SPECT and a CCTA on a separate scanner for evaluation of CAD. Patients were divided into one of the following three groups according to findings in the hybrid images obtained by fusing SPECT and CCTA: (i) matched finding of stenosis by CCTA and corresponding reversible SPECT defect; (ii) unmatched CCTA and SPECT finding; (iii) normal finding by both CCTA and SPECT. Follow-up was confined to the first 60 days after hybrid imaging as this allows best to assess treatment strategy decisions including the revascularization procedure triggered by its findings. Hybrid images revealed matched, unmatched, and normal findings in 51, 74, and 193 patients. The revascularization rate within 60 days was 41, 11, and 0% for matched, unmatched, and normal findings, respectively (P< 0.001 for all inter-group comparisons). Conclusion Cardiac hybrid imaging with SPECT and CCTA provides an added clinical value for decision making with regard to treatment strategy for CAD.


Is it possible to constrain a human society in such a way that self-organization will thereafter tend to produce outcomes that advance the goals of the society? Such a society would be self-organizing in the sense that individuals who pursue only their own interests would none-the-less act in the interests of the society as a whole, irrespective of any intention to do so. I sketch an agent-based model that identifies the conditions that must be met if such a self-organizing society is to emerge. The model draws heavily on an understanding of how self-organizing societies have emerged repeatedly during the evolution of life on Earth (e.g. evolution has produced societies of molecular processes, of simple cells, of eukaryote cells and of multicellular organisms). The model demonstrates that the key enabling requirement for a self-organizing society is 'consequence-capture'. Broadly this means that all agents in the society must capture sufficient of the benefits (and harms) that are produced by the impact of their actions on the goals of the society. If this condition is not met, agents that invest resources in actions that produce societal benefits will tend to be out-competed by those that do not. This 'consequence-capture' condition can be met where a society is managed by appropriate systems of evolvable constraints that suppress free riders and support pro-social actions. In human societies these constraints include institutions such as systems of governance and social norms. If a self-organizing society is to emerge, consequence-capture must occur for all agents in the society, including those involved in the establishment and adaptation of institutions. By implementing consequence-capture, appropriate institutions can produce a self-organizing society in which the interests of all agents (including individuals, associations, firms, multi-national corporations, political organizations, institutions and governments) are aligned with those of the society as a whole.


One of the rapidly growing instrumentation technologies of late has been Surface Probe Microscopy. Since the award of the Nobel Prize in 1986, this form of instrumentation has expanded into various fascinating forms and is successfully enabling investigations at a nano-scale. A particular type of SPM method, Magnetic Force Microscopy, (MFM) enables visualization of magnetic domain structures of various materials at several nano to micron scale. However, obtaining quantitative information about magnetic properties of materials is difficult since this method is cantilever tip-surface interaction dependent and calibration is not straightforward. The purpose of this thesis work is to fill the gap, and exploit it to investigate many functional properties of novel materials. Experimental development takes time and if it is to be patented, then clearly no public disclosures on related studies are possible until the patents have been filed. Thus this thesis contains the following as yet unpublished work.: • Invention of a new Sensor Head and development of the next generation Desk-top Local Magnetic Susceptometer (DLMS) Reasonable description of the sensor head and its operation are included in this section – more details not included in this thesis are a part of the US Patent Document (Filed on May 27, 2005.) The DLMS instrumentation is one of its kind and there exists no commercial equivalent today. • Demonstration of the applications of above new DLMS to investigate local magnetic phenomena in a variety of advanced materials like: 1) First observation of Deformation induced Ferromagnetism, DILM, in Iron Aluminide sheets. We know of no other material which exhibits this unique property of developing local ferromagnetism upon deformation. ..more details than in the thesis are a part of the US Patent application entitled 'Iron Aluminde Readable Medium' (Filed on May 27, 2005.) 2) Micro-indentation and its consequence on the local magnetic properties, with magnetic imaging of the local structure of these indents in the Iron Aluminide Sheets in the thickness range 180 to 200 μm. 3) Strain induced dislocations, their propagation, formation of magnetic precipitates of phase separated compounds in high performance Stainless Steel, and even the development of martensitic transformations in cast steels (in collaboration with Prof. Takagi at Tohoku University). 4) Monitoring magnetic particles and aggregates and their evolution in space and time from targeted drugs labelled with magnetic particles; 5) Invention of a method to develop patterned ferromagnetic entities in flexible Kapton and imaging the local magnetic structure – study towards the media enabling future transparent electronics • In addition following studies have been carried out and reported: 1) Tailored Bulk Glassy material to produce materials with unusually high mechanical hardness property known so far in any metallic system, and 2) A comparison of Physical Properties of melt-spun and bulk glassy materials 3) The co-existence of Superconductivity and Ferromagnetism in NiBi alloys.


Comparative study of algal communities in acidic and alkaline waters from Tinto, Odiel and Piedras River basins (SW Spain) The distribution patterns of benthic algal assemblages in the Tinto, Odiel and Piedras rivers were analyzed during the winter of 2005 in 18 sampling stations. The main objective was to assess and compare the algal communities and parameters affecting them both in the zones affected by acid mine drainage (AMD) and in naturally alkaline waters. A total of 108 benthic diatom taxa and 31 non-diatom taxa were identi ed. Results showed large differences between algal communities in the two environments: Pinnularia acoricola, P. subcapitata and Eunotia exigua were the most frequent diatom taxa in regions affected by acid mine drainage, along with algae like Klebsormidium and Euglena mutabilis were the most relevant non-diatom taxa. In alkaline waters the dominant diatom taxa were Planothidium frequentissimum, Gomphonema angustum, Fragilaria capucina, and some species of Navicula (N. viridula, N. veneta or N. radiosa), accompanied by Oscillatoria and Anabaena as well as by streptophytes of the group of zygnemataceae and desmidiaceae.


The aim of this work is to investigate the intrinsic parameters that control the puncture resistance of materials used in protective clothing. The effect of various probe geometries and sample holder sizes on puncture tests results were investigated. Medical needles of different diameters and tip angles were also used as puncture probes. Various available commercial rubbers used in protective gloves were characterized. The findings of this study will be useful for recommendations for standard test method protocols to characterize the puncture resistance of protective clothing materials. When cylindrical probes with flat and rounded tip geometries are used, material puncture occurs when the strain reaches one material failure value independent of tip geometry. The failure strain is also independent of sample thickness, probe tip diameter, and the sample holder size. The results demonstrated that the tip angle of conical probes has a dramatic effect on puncture test results. The material puncture resistance obtained with conical probes with different tip angles having a tip diameter d1 and a rod diameter d2 can be interpolated from the corresponding values obtained with cylindrical probes having the same d1 and d2 diameters. On the other hand, cylindrical probes provide a more straightforward characterization of puncture and also eliminate the complex effect of conical probe-tip geometry. Test results with medical needles showed that the puncturing mechanism is different from that of conical and cylindrical probes. Puncture by medical needles involves cutting and fracture energy, whereas puncture by conical and cylindrical probes relates to failure strain.


The studies in this project have investigated the ongoing neuronal network oscillatory activity found in the sensorimotor cortex using two modalities: magnetoencephalography (MEG) and in vitro slice recordings. The results have established that ongoing sensorimotor oscillations span the mu and beta frequency region both in vitro and in MEG recordings, with distinct frequency profiles for each recorded laminae in vitro, while MI and SI show less difference in humans. In addition, these studies show that connections between MI and SI modulate the ongoing neuronal network activity in these areas. The stimulation studies indicate that specific frequencies of stimulation affect the ongoing activity in the sensorimotor cortex. The continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) study demonstrates that cTBS predominantly enhances the power of the local ongoing activity. The stimulation studies in this project show limited comparison between modalities, which is informative of the role of connectivity in these effects. However, independently these studies provide novel information on the mechanisms on sensorimotor oscillatory interaction. The pharmacological studies reveal that GABAergic modulation with zolpidem changes the neuronal oscillatory network activity in both healthy and pathological MI. Zolpidem enhances the power of ongoing oscillatory activity in both sensorimotor laminae and in healthy subjects. In contrast, zolpidem attenuates the "abnormal" beta oscillatory activity in the affected hemisphere in Parkinsonian patients, while restoring the hemispheric beta power ratio and frequency variability and thereby improving motor symptomatology. Finally we show that independent signals from MI laminae can be integrated in silico to resemble the aggregate MEG MI oscillatory signals. This highlights the usefulness of combining these two methods when elucidating neuronal network oscillations in the sensorimotor cortex and any interventions.


This paper presents a numerical simulation of the flow field on a one-dimensional pneumatic actuator. Unlike conventional actuators, this model uses dynamic pressure instead of friction to drive a slider. The objective of this simulation is to find the detail of the flow field under the slider as well as the influence of its levitation on the horizontal transportation. Secondary vortices to be formed under the slider may cause an instability of the slider movement. To further assure a stable transportation of the slider, absence of secondary vortices in the gap is desirable, which can be achieved by narrowing the gap width. However, a too narrow gap might cause a significant increase of flow impedance and thus sacrifice the horizontal transportation. Here, two cases with gap width of 100 and 50 /spl mu/m were investigated. With a gap width of 50 /spl mu/m, there was no secondary vortex formed; however, the horizontal transportation was greatly sacrificed. In contrast, with a gap width of 100 /spl mu/m, several secondary vortices of a size one to two times the gap width were formed. However, the horizontal driving force was about eight times larger than that in the case of a gap width of 50 /spl mu/m.


This attractive novel is, ostensibly, the English translation of an ancient Japanese manuscript with an introduction and footnoted commentary by the translator. Leonard Walker is an archaeologist who has discovered The Pillow Book of Lady Kasa , a diary-like manuscript dating from the Nara Period (AD 710-794). In his work as translator and commentator, Mr. Walker is not as rigorously objective nor as truthful as one might expect of a respected scholar. His own history intrudes the pillow book, bringing up questions as to its authenticity and the role it may be playing in revealing the details of his own life. This particular, peculiar, and charming arrangement for a novel is, in a sense (though theirs was a Siamese evolution), necessitated by Walker's character. Only in the interplay between his slipping devotion to scholarship and his unsettling nostalgia is his personality revealed.


Introduction: Dysthyroidism is more commonly found in pregnant women, especially diabetic parturients. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of thyroid pathologies in diabetic pregnant patients. Patients and methods: A descriptive study that included 204 diabetic parturients (type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes) who received a systematic TSH and FT4 assay. Results: Mean age of the population = 31.4 ± 4.6 years. Type 1 diabetes = 16.12%; Type 2 diabetes = 38.25% and gestational diabetes = 45.63%. The total prevalence was 28.43%. Subclinical hypothyroidism was present in 16.67% of cases, true hypothyroidism in 5.88%, transient gestational thyrotoxicosis in 4.90% and hyperthyroidism in 0.98%. Conclusions: The most common pathology is mild hypothyroidism and type 1 diabetics are those with the most dysthyroidism. There remains the question of systematic screening among other diabetic parturients.


The goal of this research project was to develop a methodology to assist the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) in the evaluation of effectiveness of teen driver education programs over the short and long terms. The research effort was divided into two phases. Phase I focused on the development of an evaluative methodology that was based upon a review of the relevant literature and Wisconsin-specific policies and available data sources. This review culminated in a program assessment tool focused on four contributing areas of teen driver training and education: 1) Guardian Involvement; 2) Driver Education and Training Curricula Requirements; 3) GDL Coordination; and 4) Instructor Qualifications. The proposed methodology was presented to the Project Oversight Committee and was validated through two rounds of pilot testing using materials provided by programs and schools under the oversight of both WisDOT and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. The resulting methodology informed the Phase II implementation plan recommendations. Work products included within this report are an annotated bibliography; a knowledge base documenting best practices and Wisconsin-specific data sources; a methodology that may be used to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of driver-training programs as they relate to the demonstrated safety and behavior of teen drivers in Wisconsin; and a three-phase implementation plan.


(a) NEPA analyses must assess cumulative effects, which are the impact on the environment resulting from the incremental impact of the action when added to other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions. Actions by federal, non-federal agencies, and private parties must be considered (40 CFR 1508.7). (b) The scoping process should be used to identify possible cumulative impacts. The proponent should also contact appropriate off-post officials, such as tribal, state, county, or local planning officials, to identify other actions that should be considered in the cumulative effects analysis. (c) A suggested cumulative effects approach is as follows: (1) Identify the boundary of each resource category. Boundaries may be geographic or temporal. For example, the Air Quality Control Region (AQCR) might be the appropriate boundary for the air quality analysis, while a watershed could be the boundary for the water quality analysis. Depending upon the circumstances, these boundaries could be different and could extend off the installation. (2) Describe the threshold level of significance for that resource category. For example, a violation of air quality standards within the AQCR would be an appropriate threshold level. (3) Determine the environmental consequence of the action. The analysis should identify the cause and effect relationships, determine the magnitude and significance of cumulative effects, and identify possible mitigation measures.


Early Burrowers Direct fossil evidence of animals from Ediacaran period—the time in Earth's history just before extensive animal diversification in the Cambrian—is scant. However, the remains of animal activity in sediment, which remain intact through geologic time can provide clues about animal behavior and evolution. Pecoits et al. (p. 1693; see the Perspective by Droser and Gehling) found a suite of fossil animal burrows in sedimentary rocks in Uruguay. Radiometric dating places the age of the structures at ∼585 million years old, coinciding with the likely emergence of stem-group bilaterians. The complex morphologies of the fossil burrows suggest that these animals actively grazed and had the ability to burrow deep within sediments. Neoproterozoic trace fossils from Uruguay indicate that early animals appeared at a time between global glaciations. Based on molecular clocks and biomarker studies, it is possible that bilaterian life emerged early in the Ediacaran, but at present, no fossils or trace fossils from this time have been reported. Here we report the discovery of the oldest bilaterian burrows in shallow-water glaciomarine sediments from the Tacuarí Formation, Uruguay. Uranium-lead dating of zircons in cross-cutting granite dykes constrains the age of these burrows to be at least 585 million years old. Their features indicate infaunal grazing activity by early eumetazoans. Active backfill within the burrow, an ability to wander upward and downward to exploit shallowly situated sedimentary laminae, and sinuous meandering suggest advanced behavioral adaptations. These findings unite the paleontological and molecular data pertaining to the evolution of bilaterians, and link bilaterian origins to the environmental changes that took place during the Neoproterozoic glaciations.


ABSTRACT The world-class Middle–Upper Devonian carbonate outcrops of the Lennard Shelf, Canning Basin, Western Australia, offer a unique opportunity to examine reefal carbonate shelf-to-basin evolution in response to multiple coeval extrinsic and intrinsic drivers. Variable styles of carbonate stratigraphic architecture and heterogeneity developed as a function of the interplay between long hierarchical accommodation trends, global biological crises, greenhouse-to-transitional climatic changes, and syndepositional tectonics. The linkage of reservoir-scale, shelf-to-basin carbonate expression to regional, seismic-scale architectures made possible by these pristine exposures allows the generation of conceptual models and predictive relationships that are relevant to steep-sided carbonate hydrocarbon reservoirs and plays. Furthermore, exquisite exposure of syndepositional fracture systems and their association with carbonate facies and position along the depositional profile provide templates for characterization of subsurface nonmatrix flow. In particular, the Lennard Shelf outcrops are excellent analogs for the age-equivalent Canadian Alberta Basin and Carboniferous reservoirs of the Pricaspian Basin in Kazakhstan; however, the breadth of insight contained within the Lennard Shelf outcrop belt is applicable to the greater understanding of reefal carbonate systems in general.


Globally, the number of deaths of children under 5 (U5) decreased substantially from 12 million in 1990 to about 6.9 million in 2011; during the same period under five mortality (U5M) decreased steadily in Mozambique as a result of the implementation of several interventions. This study aimed to determine the role of health systems strengthening and HIV in U5 mortality trends in Mozambique. We performed an exploratory analysis with U5M as the outcome variable. First, we conducted a univariate analyses by provinces over time periods, as well as Pearson correlations between each independent predictor and the outcome; second a bivariate analysis was performed to determine the association between each independent variable and the outcome variable followed by a multivariate analysis. Model selection was achieved by using backward selection where in each step were removed the variable with the highest p-value, The final significance level selected was 0.05. Overall the U5M in Mozambique dropped substantially during 2000 to 2010 and for each additional year we predicted a decrease of 7.4 per 1000 live births of the U5M on average across all provinces (95% CI: -9.4 , -5.3). After adjusting for time trend population per health facility with β= 2.7 (95% CI 0.19, 5.2), health work force density with β= -0.41 (95% CI: -0.81, -0.01) and institutional birth attendance β= -0.45 (95% CI:-0.77, -0.14) remained significantly associated to U5M. These results suggest that improvements on health human resources particularly with maternal and child nurses and interventions which resulted in improvements of institutional birth attendance were important in the reductions of the U5M rates in Mozambique during the period of the study. If these results are confirmed with other studies, investments on health should prioritize innovative interventions to accelerate human resources trainings, health infrastructure buildings and better access and quality of services for pregnant women.


This paper discusses various particulate emission control strategies that can be employed for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), Municipal Sewage Sludge, and Industrial Waste Incineration facilities. An example will be given of a particulate control installation that successfully cleans off-gases from an incinerator at a large photographic products plant. Data supporting a theoretical model of Wet Electrostatic Precipitator (WESP) performance at a reduced flow will be presented. It is proposed this model could be used in adjusting EPA reporting parameters for reduced plant operation.


There are many facets of managing security in information systems. Although there are prior studies that focus on how to build secure code from an architectural standpoint, an often overlooked aspect of security is the relationship between the systems development policies and procedures and the security of the systems developed. We focus on this relationship and draw from a general software quality model to provide a foundation for testing this relationship. This study discusses ideas that follow from prior research and develops a survey instrument for exploring the relationship between policies and procedures during systems development life cycle and the security quality of the system developed.


The key question addressed in this paper is in what ways strategies at the community level make a difference to urban governance and for whom? The research on which it draws was concerned with two issues of relevance. The first was what poor people and communities do for themselves when city governments are unable or unwilling to extend resources to them. The second was to understand the institutional relationships, both formal and informal, between people in poverty and the organizations of city governance. In addition to local government, business and NGOs, these are understood to include associations of mutuality and community level organizations, particularly households, social networks, and political and developmental CBOs (see also Beall and Kanji, 1999). Drawing on research conducted in the nine case study cities, evidence of local level networks and associational life is examined to assess where benefits accrue when they are harnessed in the interests of city governance. These are very different cities and livelihood strategies and patterns of public action and urban governance are undoubtedly context-specific. However, patterns emerge that are comparable and worthy of comment. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


In this paper, the optimal controller structure problem is investigated with finite word length (FWL) consideration. Based on the polynomial operator concept, a new sparse controller structure is proposed. This structure is efficient in terms of implementation and can be optimized to reduce FWL .effects. A pole modulus sensitivity based stability measure is derived and the optimal controller structures are defined as those that maximize the proposed measure. The problem of finding optimal sparse structures is solved using exhaustive searching with a practical'consideration. A design example is given, which shows that the newly developed structure can beat the fully parametrized optimal statespace realization in terms of both computation efficiency and stability performance.


In a wireless sensor network (WSN) setting, this paper presents a distributed decision-making framework and illustrates its application in an online structural health monitoring (SHM) system. The objective is to recover a damage severity vector, which identifies, localizes, and quantifies damages in a structure, via distributive and collaborative decision-making among wireless sensors. Observing the fact that damages are generally scarce in a structure, this paper develops a nonlinear 0-norm minimization formulation to recover the sparse damage severity vector, then relaxes it to a linear and distributively tractable one. An optimal algorithm based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) and a heuristic distributed linear programming (DLP) algorithm are proposed to estimate the damage severity vector distributively. By limiting sensors to exchange information among neighboring sensors, the distributed decision-making algorithms reduce communication costs, thus alleviate the channel interference and prolong the network lifetime. Simulation results in monitoring a steel frame structure prove the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.


PURPOSE
The measurement of depth dose profiles for range and energy verification of heavy ion beams is an important aspect of quality assurance procedures for heavy ion therapy facilities. The steep dose gradients in the Bragg peak region of these profiles require the use of detectors with high spatial resolution. The aim of this work is to characterize a one dimensional monolithic silicon detector array called the "serial Dose Magnifying Glass" (sDMG) as an independent ion beam energy and range verification system used for quality assurance conducted for ion beams used in heavy ion therapy.

METHODS
The sDMG detector consists of two linear arrays of 128 silicon sensitive volumes each with an effective size of 2mm × 50μm × 100μm fabricated on a p-type substrate at a pitch of 200 μm along a single axis of detection. The detector was characterized for beam energy and range verification by measuring the response of the detector when irradiated with a 290 MeV/u 12 C ion broad beam incident along the single axis of the detector embedded in a PMMA phantom. The energy of the 12 C ion beam incident on the detector and the residual energy of an ion beam incident on the phantom was determined from the measured Bragg peak position in the sDMG. Ad hoc Monte Carlo simulations of the experimental setup were also performed to give further insight into the detector response.

RESULTS
The relative response profiles along the single axis measured with the sDMG detector were found to have good agreement between experiment and simulation with the position of the Bragg peak determined to fall within 0.2 mm or 1.1% of the range in the detector for the two cases. The energy of the beam incident on the detector was found to vary less than 1% between experiment and simulation. The beam energy incident on the phantom was determined to be (280.9 ± 0.8) MeV/u from the experimental and (280.9 ± 0.2) MeV/u from the simulated profiles. These values coincide with the expected energy of 281 MeV/u.

CONCLUSIONS
The sDMG detector response was studied experimentally and characterized using a Monte Carlo simulation. The sDMG detector was found to accurately determine the 12 C beam energy and is suited for fast energy and range verification quality assurance. It is proposed that the sDMG is also applicable for verification of treatment planning systems that rely on particle range.


Personalised nutrition is a novel public health strategy aiming to promote positive diet and lifestyle changes. Tailored dietary and physical activity advice may be more appropriate than a generalised 'one-size-fits-all' approach as it is more biologically relevant to the individual. Information and computing technology, smartphones and mobile applications have become an integral part of modern life and thereby present the opportunity for novel methods to encourage individuals to lead a healthier lifestyle. This article introduces the European Union-funded PROTEIN project ( PeRsOnalised nutriTion for hEalthy livINg ) consortium and introduces the associated work packages. The primary objective of the PROTEIN project is to produce a novel adaptable mobile application suite based on sound nutrition and physical activity advice from experts in their field, accessible to all population groups, with differing health outcomes, whose behaviour can be tracked with a variety of sensors and health hazard perception. The mobile application 'ecosystem' that will be developed by the consortium includes a platform, mobile suite, cloud services, artificial intelligence advisor, game suite, modelling of expert's knowledge, users' behaviour data collection, data analysis and a dashboard for healthcare professionals. It is proposed that users will find the provision of personalised nutrition advice and real-time data capture through a smartphone application useful, and importantly, will be encouraged by this to make positive health behaviour changes.


This paper reports from a longitudinal study of a Swedish manufacturer in the automotive industry, where a series of studies have explored the potential and limitations of computer-based training of assembly operators. The study is focusing on two supplementing sets of target variables â?? operatorsâ?? attitudes and the quality output from operators in real production. Starting with small-scale studies where proof-of-concept for virtual training is established, the research moves on to comparative studies where different computer-based learning models are contrasted and evaluated. The research design ends with large-scale field experiments assessing the effects of computer-based training in terms of quality output. The results clearly demonstrate that computer-based training, when integrated with training of standardized work procedures, outperforms traditional methods for operator training, regardless of the content and the context of the assembly operation. The findings of the study are synthesized into a design framework for virtual training where cognitive and craftsmanship training is contrasted to the learning of product, process, sequence and finesse of assembly.


This thesis is about modeling, analyzing, and predicting errorful behavior in large vocabulary continuous speech recognition systems. Because today's state-of-the-art recognizers are not designed to be situated naturally in an error feedback loop, they are ill-positioned for inclusion in multi-modal interfaces, multi-media databases, and other interesting applications. I make improvements to the current approach to predicting and analyzing error behaviors, which is currently based only on the measurement of word error rate.
The speech recognizer's functionality is extended to include confidence annotations, which are "meta-level" markings that indicate how certain the recognizer is that it has decoded its input correctly. This is accomplished by feeding externally defined error conditions back to the recoginizer. Error feedback enables the construction of statistical models that map measurements of the recognizer's internal states and behaviors to externally defined error conditions.
The measuring and modeling techniques used for confidence annotation are extended to create a blame assignment system for utterances whose actual transcripts are known. Errors are classified into a set of categories, some of which are directly useful in automatic adaptation schemes while others are more suited for human interpretation.
This classification approach is enhanced when used in conjunction with a visual error analysis tool that was developed during the thesis project.


Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) caused by pneumonia in patients with hematologic malignancies can be life-threatening. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is the only temporary treatment for patients with ARDS who are refractory to conventional treatment. However, the immunosuppression and coagulopathies in hematological malignancies such as lymphoma and acute leukemia are relative contraindications for ECMO, due to high risks of infection and bleeding. Here, we report a 22-year-old man with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who developed pneumonia and ARDS during induction chemotherapy; he was treated with ECMO.


Relatively little is known about the existence and traits of a possible nucleus accumbens (Acc) region in non-mammals. The current project investigated a likely candidate for such a structure in pigeons, the medioventral (mvMSt) and mediodorsal (mdMSt) parts of avian medial striatum (MSt). The methods employed were threefold: 1) tract-tracing to determine anatomical connections of the MSt; 2) lesion studies to assess MSt's role in a cognitive task (reversal learning); and 3) measuring an immediate-early gene induced protein, ZENK, in striatal regions during courtship behavior in male pigeons. The MSt was found to have many forebrain (amygdala, hippocampus, dorsal thalamus) and midbrain (ventral tegmental area, substantia nigra) connections similar to those of Acc. In addition, differences in connection patterns between mvMSt and mdMSt indicated that mvMSt was comparable to the shell of Acc, while the mdMSt showed characteristics of Acc core.
Effects of MSt lesions on pattern discrimination and reversal learning were assessed. Both lesion subjects and controls performed similarly on original discrimination. Furthermore, there were no significant differences in MSt lesioned birds compared to controls. However, there was a tendency for the two groups to make different types of errors. Error patterns indicated that sham-lesioned birds had deficits due to key preference, whereas lesioned birds had fixation on previous reward contingencies (perseverative errors). The performance of the lesioned birds was consistent with Acc lesion effects on reversal learning in mammals. The expression of ZENK in the mvMSt, mdMSt, lateral MSt, and lateral striatum of male birds exposed to either an empty cage or a live female pigeon was quantified. Higher ZENK expression was found in the live pigeon condition for all the striatal structures.
However, the degree of difference between live and empty was much higher in the mvMSt and mdMSt than in the other areas. Therefore, mvMSt and mdMSt appear to play a role in anticipatory sexual behaviors, as has been shown in Acc. The anatomical and functional data from the current study indicate that avian mMSt has numerous similarities with mammalian Acc. These findings will contribute to understanding the evolution of mammalian Acc and identifying the functional significance of avian MSt.


Factitious disorder, often referred to as Munchausen's syndrome, is a condition in which sufferers present to healthcare professionals seeking investigation and treatment for signs and symptoms that they have consciously fabricated for no obvious reason. Factitious presentations have been described all over the world, in every medical specialty and in every age group, yet by its very nature factitious disorder is difficult to study. There is therefore a dearth of evidence in the literature relating to epidemiology, aetiology and therapeutics. The disorder is notoriously difficult to recognise in clinical practice and there are as yet no definitive treatment options available. This article provides a brief overview of the literature before offering guidance on the diagnosis and management of factitious disorder presenting in the general hospital. It also considers fabricated or induced illness, also known as Munchausen's syndrome by proxy.


In a beam of monochromatic unpolarized light the electric field vector at a point traces out an ellipse whose size, eccentricity, and orientation are slowly varying functions of time. The statistical properties of the parameters of this ellipse are investigated. It is shown that the quantity S which is defined as twice the product of the principle axes of the ellipse divided by the sum of the squares is uniformly distributed between zero and one. It therefore has median value 12 which corresponds to a ratio of minor to major axis equal to .268. Hence fairly thin ellipses predominate. The square root of the sum of the squares of the semi-major and semi-minor axes, R, is statistically independent of S and has the distribution function (r3/2p4) exp (−r2/2p2) where 2p2 is the average value of R2.


This study aims to understand why some children in rural Yemen stop
their basic schooling while others do not. Basic schooling is defined as
nine grades of compulsory schooling in Yemen. All of the children in the
study had access to basic resources such as nearby schools, female teachers
and piped water in their communities – all reasons identified in the
literature as potential barriers to basic school completion.
Despite improvements over the last two decades, Yemen continues to
show some of the worst education statistics in the region. The international
education development community has long identified Yemen as a
focus country for education aid, which started in earnest in the early
1990s. Having only initiated its mass schooling system in the late 1960s
and having only a handful of schools to start with, the initial focus of
education development was on access. Enrolment increased dramatically
in the system's early decades, but school completion lagged behind and
the gender gap remained wide. In the 2006/07 school year, gross enrolment
rates in basic schooling were 64 per cent for girls and 74 per cent
for boys. Only about half of the children who start also complete primary
school (the first six grades of schooling). Grade repetition rates are
high and many children start school later than the required age of six.
Both of these factors contribute to children stopping school before they
complete the nine grades.
International education development aid continues to play an important
role in Yemen's schooling system, although at present (2011) due
to recent changes in priorities of major donors and civil unrest, donor
investment in the schooling system has come to a near halt. Schooling
has also been disrupted by political turmoil, which has increased the
chance still further that children will stop school.


The side effects of sedation induced by antihistamine drugs are considered due to their occupation on cerebral H1 receptor. To evaluate the pharmacological effects of antihistamines on central nervous system quantitatively, PET scans on twelve healthy adults were performed on a GE Advance scanner after intravenous bolus injection of high specific activity [/sup 11/C]doxepin. Three representative antihistamine drugs used for the treatment of allergy-based diseases,, diphenhydramine, cetirizine, and fexofenadine, were selected in this study for evaluation. Each subject received at least two PET studies in one day, a baseline scan followed by a scan with a single oral therapeutic dose of a tested drug. A linear regression with spatial constraint (LRSC) algorithm derived from a 2-compartmental 3-parameter model was used to estimate the transport rate constant K, and distribution volume (DV). The images of binding potential (BP) were calculated as BP = DV(pixel)/DV(cerebellum)-1. Both PET-toPET intra-subject image registration and spatial normalization using PET template were based on K/sub 1/ images by using SPM99. The paired T mapping from parametric images were calculated for statistical analysis. Results showed that the model used in this study fits well to the brain tissue [/sup 11/C]doxepin kinetics measured by PET. The linear operational equations yield a reliable, computationally efficient, and robust LRSC algorithm to generate K/sub 1/ and DV images. There is no significant effects on K, for the 3 tested drugs. The percent occupancy of diphenhydramine on H1 receptors is 30 to 80% in most cortex regions, and its blocking on H1 receptor in caudate, putamen and thalamus is not significant. Cetirizine is of marginal occupation of H1 receptor in cortex regions in a range of 5 to 20%. Fexofenadine does not have any blockade effects on H1 receptor in brain tissue, and it should be classified as a third generation antihistamine drug.


Given the critical role of motion estimation (ME) in a video coder, testing such a module is of priority concern. While focusing on the testing of ME in a video coding system, this work presents an error detection and data recovery (EDDR) design, based on the residue-and-quotient (RQ) code, to embed into ME for video coding testing applications. An error in processing elements (PEs), i.e. key components of a ME, can be detected and recovered effectively by using the proposed EDDR design. Experimental results indicate that the proposed EDDR design for ME testing can detect errors and recover data with an acceptable area overhead and timing penalty. Importantly, the proposed EDDR design performs satisfactorily in terms of throughput and reliability for ME testing applications. Index Terms — Area overhead, data recovery, error detection, motion estimation, reliability, residue-andquotient (RQ) code.


In this paper I will discuss a art and design project called wander lost, were we through co-creation try to populate a virtual world with people, objects and architecture. In this project we have developed a method for gathering input and inspiration for early stages in the design process designing virtual worlds. I will through some example of work show how worlds, real and virtual are as much made as found, and how they can be used to challenged each other into new forms of experiences and expressions, of both physical and virtual spaces. Where the virtual space transformed into maps & instructions can challenge the physical with qualities that is very hard to achieve in the physical world itself, and in that conflict new insights and expressions can revealed. Today Hybrid creations have become a method for working with cultural production not only with different elements of form, but as blending identities of the creators as well, wander lost support that process. We show how we from the virtual settings of the city of Traora we have extracted a series of walks as instructions and invited different co-creators to explore these algorithmical walks in their everyday surrounding in order to be surprised by rediscovery, using a digital camera/smart phone to capture and later communicate their findings. Allowing the unfamiliar to co-exist with the comfortably familiar. To create a process where digital worlds challenge and inspire digital expressions, tools and models with physical play and exploration. Supporting our long-term aim with research in new media is to set up design methods that can be used in a creative and collaborative process. We show how these findings played a crucial role designing the virtual city Traora. The Traora Flaneur kit turns everyday walks into discoveries of both urban contexts as well as ideas for possible virtual worlds.