Fireworks algorithm (FWA) is a novel swarm intelligence algorithm recently proposed for solving complex optimization problems. Because of its powerful global optimization ability to solve classification problems, we first present an optimization classification model in this paper. In this model, a linear equation set is constructed according to classification problems. This optimization classification model can be solved by most evolutionary computation techniques. In this paper, a self-adaptive FWA (SaFWA) is developed so that the optimization classification model can be solved efficiently. In SaFWA, four candidate solution generation strategies (CSGSs) are employed to increase the diversity of solutions. In addition, a self-adaptive search mechanism has also been introduced to use the four CSGSs simultaneously. To extensively assess the performance of SaFWA on solving classification problems, eight datasets have been used in the experiments. The experimental results show that it is feasible to solve classification problems through the optimization classification model and SaFWA. Furthermore, SaFWA performs better than FWA, FWA variants with only one CSGS, particle swarm optimization, and differential evolution on most of the training sets and test sets.


It has been suggested that parental responses to adult children with schizophrenia may involve feelings of loss and grief, centred around loss of the pre-morbid version of their child. In this exploratory study, an in-depth case study analysis of four parental accounts of their responses was undertaken in order to obtain insights into whether these responses can be conceptualized in terms of loss and grief, with the aim of informing therapeutic practice with parents in this position. Information was also obtained on how parents coped with the reactions that their child's condition elicited in them. Data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. In relation to the central research question, it was found that the perception of loss was not uniform amongst participants. Three acknowledged a sense of loss, at least to some extent, but one parent resisted such an interpretation because she perceived a continuity over time in her son's behaviour and she also challenged her son's diagnosis. One parent acknowledged a loss of his daughter's pre-morbid self but qualified this by pointing to her continued physical presence. The usefulness of existing models of grief is examined in light of the findings. The implications for the practice of counselling psychology are discussed.


Global currency markets have remained unsettled. The dollar hit record lows against both the yen and the mark in 1995. The Mexican crisis led to a free fall of the peso. Renewed tensions in the European Monetary System required devaluations in Spain and Portugal. It is thus fortuitous that the world s major countries, starting with the G-7 summit in Italy in June 1994, have agreed to reexamine the world monetary system and the role of its chief institutional custodian the International Monetary Fund. Yet there is little agreement on what should be done. Sweeping change in the form of explicit, binding exchange rate targets for the United States, Japan, and Europe does not seem to be in the cards. More limited reforms might gain more acceptance. But what should be the nature of those reforms? Would they be worth the effort? This study sets out a modest agenda for managing the exchange rate system, improving the system s early warning capabilities, and strengthening the IMF s oversight responsibilities. It could help improve functioning of the world economy and global financial stability.


Real-time crowd motion planning requires fast, realistic methods for path planning as well as obstacle avoidance. The difficulty to find a satisfying trade-off between efficiency and believability is particularly challenging, and prior techniques tend to focus on a single approach. In this paper, we present a hybrid architecture to handle the path planning of thousands of pedestrians in real time, while ensuring dynamic collision avoidance. The scalability of our approach allows to interactively create and distribute regions of varied interest, where motion planning is ruled by different algorithms. Practically, regions of high interest are governed by a long-term potential field-based approach, while other zones exploit a graph of the environment and short-term avoidance techniques. Our method also ensures pedestrian motion continuity when switching between motion planning algorithms. Tests and comparisons show that our architecture is able to realistically plan motion for many groups of characters, for a total of several thousands of people in real time, and in varied environments.


The Furstenstein granite massif is the largest late Variscan granitoid body exposed in the Moldanubian basement of the Bavarian Forest. The granite massif comprises different rock types, ranging from diorite to granite in composition. This study provides precise zircon and titanite ages, obtained by the U-Pb isotopic dilution and Pb-Pb evaporation methods, and Nd-Sr isotopic data on this massif. Zircon dating constrains an intrusive sequence as following: Dioritic rocks crystallised about 334 to 332 Ma ago, earlier than the high-temperature peak stage of the Variscan metamorphism of the Moldanubian basement (325 to 320 Ma) in the Bavarian Forest. The medium- to coarse-grained Tittling granite was emplaced about 10 Ma later, between 324 and 321 Ma, while the medium-grained Eberhardsreuth granite crystallised between 316 and 312 Ma, contemporaneously with the coarse-grained porphyritic Saldenburg granite. Titanites from the dioritic rocks give U-Pb ages of about 321 ± 4 Ma, indicating thermal resetting or crystallisation due to the intrusion of the Tittling granite. The diorites have initial ϵ Nd values of −1.3 to −2.9 and relatively low initial 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios of 0.7056 to 0.7067, which suggest mantle contribution to melts or melting of young mafic lower crust. The granites have similar initial ϵ Nd values of −3.6 to −4.1 but show some variation in their Sr isotopic composition (initial 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios of 0.7063 to 0.7074), probably indicating the involvement of crustal material in their genesis.


Objective To assess the impact of fast food restaurants adding calorie labelling to menu items on the energy content of individual purchases. Design Cross sectional surveys in spring 2007 and spring 2009 (one year before and nine months after full implementation of regulation requiring chain restaurants' menus to contain details of the energy content of all menu items). Setting 168 randomly selected locations of the top 11 fast food chains in New York City during lunchtime hours. Participants 7309 adult customers interviewed in 2007 and 8489 in 2009. Main outcome measures Energy content of individual purchases, based on customers' register receipts and on calorie information provided for all items in menus. Results For the full sample, mean calories purchased did not change from before to after regulation (828 v 846 kcal, P=0.22), though a modest decrease was shown in a regression model adjusted for restaurant chain, poverty level for the store location, sex of customers, type of purchase, and inflation adjusted cost (847 v 827 kcal, P=0.01). Three major chains, which accounted for 42% of customers surveyed, showed significant reductions in mean energy per purchase (McDonald's 829 v 785 kcal, P=0.02; Au Bon Pain 555 v 475 kcal, P<0.001; KFC 927 v 868 kcal, P<0.01), while mean energy content increased for one chain (Subway 749 v 882 kcal, P<0.001). In the 2009 survey, 15% (1288/8489) of customers reported using the calorie information, and these customers purchased 106 fewer kilocalories than customers who did not see or use the calorie information (757 v 863 kcal, P<0.001). Conclusion Although no overall decline in calories purchased was observed for the full sample, several major chains saw significant reductions. After regulation, one in six lunchtime customers used the calorie information provided, and these customers made lower calorie choices.


The study's primary purpose was to investigate servant leadership practices among secondary schools' teachers in East Darfur state Sudan. The sample consists of 650 teachers and ten principals. Teachers were selected using simple random sampling; the school principals were selected using purposive sampling. The questionnaire was distributed to 284 teachers, and the interview was administered to 8 principals, 284 teachers, and eight principals who filled in the questionnaire and returned them. Descriptive statistics, one-sample t-test, and ANOVA test were employed in this study using SPSS to analyze the quantitative data. The qualitative data were analyzed utilizing the thematic analysis method and interview. The study's main findings indicated that there is statistical significance since it is P <0.5. There is a lower level of servant leadership practices in Eldaien secondary schools. One-Way ANOVA showed that were statistically significant differences between groups about the practices of the variables. In conclusion, the practice of servant leadership requires continuous practices to raise the level of school principals. The paper proposed research recommendations and significant suggestions. Since this study was delimited only to education in Eldaien within a single locality, in East Darfur State, the findings lack comprehensive and generalizability of the area. As a result, researchers are recommended to undertake similar research secondary schools at the national level and develop all-embracing and superior findings.


This paper is a summary of my 700-page very academic thesis, in Danish, to be published by Aarhus University Press (AUP). A shorter booklet based on it was published by AUP too (November 2014, 250 pages) and so were a number of shorter articles in English, French and German. In Luhmann's systems theory and in sociology at large there is a missing link consisting in the lack of a sociology of war. A number of German systems theoreticians use Luhmann's theory to fill that gap. Yet Luhmann (born 1927), who was a soldier and a prisoner of war from age 15-17, would not write a "Der Krieg der Gesellschaft". The attempt to narrow this lacuna is indeed a heavy burden and a difficult task, in which it is decisive firstly to get the basic distinctions right about a second order observation of war as a conflict system – to be distinct from a military organisational system. This, I do by beginning with a reconceptualization of Carl von Clausewitz' form analysis and self-description of war from Vom Kriege (1832). The central point is to observe the self-reference of war, or how war became war about war. Conflict is basically a problem of essentially contested communication. Once this historical self-reference established around the 17th century was in place, war became delimited by its structural couplings to religion, mass media (propaganda), finance, welfare for victims and veterans, law, politics and other functional systems. The costs of war increased, reconstituted and transformed modern society in a way that has formed a range of risks and – of course – neglected blind spots.


GPUs have recently evolved into very fast parallel co-processors capable of executing general purpose computations extremely efficiently. At the same time, multi-core CPUs evolution continued and today's CPUs have 4-8 cores. These two trends, however, have followed independent paths in the sense that we are aware of very few works that consider both devices cooperating to solve general computations. In this paper we investigate the coordinated use of CPU and GPU to improve efficiency of applications even further than using either device independently. We use Anthill runtime environment, a data-flow oriented framework in which applications are decomposed into a set of event-driven filters, where for each event, the runtime system can use either GPU or CPU for its processing. For evaluation, we use a histopathology application that uses image analysis techniques to classify tumor images for neuroblas-toma prognosis. Our experimental environment includes dual and octa-core machines, augmented with GPUs and we evaluate our approach's performance for standalone and distributed executions. Our experiments show that a pure GPU optimization of the application achieved a factor of 15 to 49 times improvement over the single core CPU version, depending on the versions of the CPUs and GPUs. We also show that the execution can be further reduced by a factor of about 2 by using our runtime system that effectively choreographs the execution to run cooperatively both on GPU and on a single core of CPU. We improve on that by adding more cores, all of which were previously neglected or used ineffectively. In addition, the evaluation on a distributed environment has shown near linear scalability to multiple hosts.


We developed a surface-associated activity trap (SAT) for sampling aquatic invertebrates in wetlands. We compared performance of this trap with that of a conventional activity trap (AT) based on nondetection rates and relative abundance estimates for 13 taxa of common wetland invertebrates and for taxon richness using data from experiments in constructed wetland. Taxon-specific non-detection rates for ATs generally exceeded those of SATs, and largest improvements using SATs were for Chironomidae and Gastropoda. SATs were efficient at capturing cladocera, Chironomidae, Gastropoda, total Crustacea, and multiple taxa (taxon richness) but were only slightly better than ATs at capturing Dytiscidae. Temporal differences in capture rates were observed only for cladocera, Chironomidae, Dytiscidae, and total Crustacea, with capture efficiencies of SATs usually decreasing from mid-June through mid-July for these taxa. We believe that SATs may be useful for characterizing wetland invertebrate communities and for developing improved measures of prey available to foraging waterfowl and other aquatic birds.


An ensemble of identically charged particles is distributed around the origin as vertices of a regular polygon. The resulting trajectories due to the Coulomb repulsion are curved by a perpendicular magnetic field. Two cases were considered. In the first case, the charges of each particle is Q while in the second case, the total charge Q is divided among the N particles. The trajectory for the case N = 4 was plotted. It was found that for both cases, the maximum radial distance attained by the charges increases as the number of particles increases.


Entropy and absolute temperature, both in volved in Carnot's cycle, imply that time and social constructivism of thermodynamic processes produce sufficient support for reconciling the threefold time emergence: (i) time as a 1D manifold, (ii) the asymmetric thermodynamic, and (iii) the evolutionary asymmetric time. Is time whether emerging from entropy as reality wi th three different faces or does it mean that we have to manage three different realities emerging from heat transformation? We put forward three steps. Firstly, we start f rom a triad of time. Secondly, we make room for social constructivism to examine h ow this time triad concept involves a threefold emergence of temporal reality. In the third step we articulate the deep role of scientific observation and the under determination of any physical theory to give answer on mentioned contradictions and parad oxes by putting forward a new uncertainty relation based on entropy and absolute temperature.


Standard New Keynesian models have often neglected temporary sales. In this paper, we ask whether this treatment is appropriate. In the empirical part of the paper, we provide evidence using Japanese scanner data covering the last two decades that the frequency of sales was closely related with macroeconomic developments. Specifically, we find that the frequency of sales and hours worked move in opposite directions in response to technology shocks, producing a negative correlation between the two. We then construct a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that takes households' decisions regarding their allocation of time for work, leisure, and bargain hunting into account. Using this model, we show that the rise in the frequency of sales, which is observed in the data, can be accounted for by the decline in hours worked during Japan's lost decades. We also find that the real effect of monetary policy shocks weakens by around 40% due to the presence of temporary sales, but monetary policy still matters.


The digital printing of imagery has caused speculation in regard to originality of image both in conception and in conservation. It has recreated the old arguments constantly cited over the authenticity of the artist original print, because the subject is never straightforward. The same arguments in relation to originality still hold true and are parallel within conservation. The concept that digital process is used for image storage or reproduction is no longer the case, currently digital capture and process is integral to most methods of printing. This paper demonstrates various methods of digital integration. It follows three case studies, where questions regarding conservation correction and content can be referred to the artist. First Leo Baxendale's need to exhibit his original Bash Street Kids and Little Plum drawings made in the 1950s and early 1960s for the Beano comic. Secondly Joe Tilson's Clip o Matic series created in the late 1960s for Editions Alecto in which the acetate layer within his prints has deteriorated beyond repair, thus rendering the original prints un-exhibitable. Finally the recent digital print, Typo-Typorama by Richard Hamilton, itself a translation and recreation of Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass made using notes from the Green Box.

This research was first presented at the Preservation and Conservation Issues Related to Digital Printing and Digital Photography Conference, Institute of Physics, April 2006.

Proceeding published as Conference held on 24th and 25th April 2006 at the Institute of Physics, London, UK.
"Organised by the Printing, Papermaking and Packaging Group of the Institute of Physics, and MATAR Research Centre of the University of the Arts London."


Machine Comprehension (MC) is one of the core problems in natural language processing, requiring both understanding of the natural language and knowledge about the world. Rapid progress has been made since the release of several benchmark datasets, and recently the state-of-the-art models even surpass human performance on the well-known SQuAD evaluation. In this paper, we transfer knowledge learned from machine comprehension to the sequence-to-sequence tasks to deepen the understanding of the text. We propose MacNet: a novel encoder-decoder supplementary architecture to the widely used attention-based sequence-to-sequence models. Experiments on neural machine translation (NMT) and abstractive text summarization show that our proposed framework can significantly improve the performance of the baseline models, and our method for the abstractive text summarization achieves the state-of-the-art results on the Gigaword dataset.


Landed missions to the surface of Mars have long sought to determine the material properties of rocks and soils encountered during the course of surface exploration. Increasingly, emphasis is placed on the study of materials formed or altered in the presence of liquid water. Placed in the context of their geological environment, these materials are then used to help evaluate ancient habitability. The Mars Science Laboratory mission—with its Curiosity rover—seeks to establish the availability of elements that may have fueled microbial metabolism, including carbon, hydrogen, sulfur, nitrogen, phosphorus, and a host of others at the trace element level. These measurements are most valuable when placed in a geological framework of ancient environments as interpreted from mapping, combined with an understanding of the petrogenesis of the igneous rocks and derived sedimentary materials. In turn, the analysis of solid materials and the reconstruction of ancient environments provide the basis to assess past habitability.


The fifth edition of a work that defines the field of cognitive neuroscience, with entirely new material that reflects recent advances in the field. Each edition of this classic reference has proved to be a benchmark in the developing field of cognitive neuroscience. The fifth edition of The Cognitive Neurosciences continues to chart new directions in the study of the biological underpinnings of complex cognition—the relationship between the structural and physiological mechanisms of the nervous system and the psychological reality of the mind. It offers entirely new material, reflecting recent advances in the field.
 Many of the developments in cognitive neuroscience have been shaped by the introduction of novel tools and methodologies, and a new section is devoted to methods that promise to guide the field into the future—from sophisticated models of causality in brain function to the application of network theory to massive data sets. Another new section treats neuroscience and society, considering some of the moral and political quandaries posed by current neuroscientific methods.
 Other sections describe, among other things, new research that draws on developmental imaging to study the changing structure and function of the brain over the lifespan; progress in establishing increasingly precise models of memory; research that confirms the study of emotion and social cognition as a core area in cognitive neuroscience; and new findings that cast doubt on the so-called neural correlates of consciousness.


Background: Hamstrings muscles are large, long muscle located on back of the thigh which acts upon two joints, the hip and knee. The functions of the hamstring muscles are knee flexion and hip extension. Lack of hamstring flexibility and strength is the most important characteristic of hamstring injuries in athlete's. Purpose of this study was to investigate compare the effectiveness of Muscle Energy techniques and eccentric training to improve Hamstring muscle performance and flexibility tightness in college male athletes. Methods: sixty subjects with age group 18-25 were recruited in this study.The subjects were divided into two groups Group A (Experimental1) and Group B (Experimental2). Group A underwent muscle energy technique and Conventional treatment, Group B underwent eccentric training and Conventional treatment. Interventions were conducted over a period of 5 days. All subjects were assessed for pain flexibility using hand active knee extension test and performance using single leg hop test before and after intervention period. Results: The data was analyzed through paired test for comparing pre and posttest values of the active knee extension and single leg hop within both group and Independent t test for comparison of data between the two groups. Results of this study show that Muscle Energy techniques and eccentric training improves Hamstring muscle flexibility and performance in college male athlete's. Conclusion: Muscle energy technique is more effective than eccentric training in improving hamstring muscle tightness and performance in college male athletes.


Background: This research is part of the RCUK funded Digital Human Project and proposes the development of a quantifiably articulated skeletal model of the hand. The research explores interactivity technologies used in virtual environments. It is proposed this model will inform the development of a new clinical measuring tool, initially for application with arthritic patients.Methods: Literature reviews concerning articulation, range of motion for the hand, and interactivity with virtual environments were carried out. Contemporary interaction technologies traditionally applied within the gaming and entertainment industries were reviewed in relation to how these may be used for measurement quantification. We wish to explore how these technologies can be used to directly interact and manipulate our digital model within a virtual environment. Results: A basic articulated model using simplified geometry and a technical animation hierarchy was constructed. It consists of all 27 hand and wrist bones as well as the arm's radius and ulna..The model was based on data from studies by Chao 1989, Nordin and Frankel 2001, for Range of motion only but does not include coupled motion patterns or natural limitations of articulation due to soft tissue. For example, the affect of adductor pollicis on adduction of the thumb. An Innovation award (HEIF 2008) was secured to bring together expertise from Creative Arts, Computing Science and Rheumatology. With this fund the team will explore the development of an innovative measurement tool for application with arthritic patients using a motion capture DataGlove which also allows patients to interact with the digital model within a virtual environment. Conclusion: Research exists to inform the creation of an articulated digital model of the human hand which has made it possible to apply a predictable hierarchy of articulation within the skeletal model. The present research was based on literature for a normal population and thus further research is required to understand the implications on articulation patterns caused by typical morphological and biomechanical conditions of arthritis.


The emergence of modern American dispute resolution is often traced to the 1960s. In the context of American courts, the movement was propelled significantly forward as a results of the "Pound Conference" of 1976, at which over 200 judges, scholars and leaders in the legal community gathered to examine concerns about the efficiency and fairness of the nation's court systems and their administration. One consequence of this movement was wider recognition of the use of mediation in legal and other settings. In the succeeding thirty years, the American dispute resolution field has grown, matured and become an increasingly important resource through which to address conflict, with mediation emerging as one of its core processes.Notwithstanding the explosion of mediation over the past four decades, it is not new. Rather, it is a form of conflict intervention with ancient and global roots. Moreover, the modern dispute resolution field is actually part of the broader peace and conflict studies field that dates at least as far back as the dawn of the twentieth century. Where the dispute resolution field had developed largely in the context of individual disputes, the broader peace and conflict studies field has focused primarily on large-scale social, often violent, conflict. As these two arenas of practice and scholarship have evolved, they have sometimes followed different intellectual and ideological paths. As a result, a variety of related – and yet distinct – conceptions of conflict and constructive conflict response have emerged.The different paths taken by scholars in the dispute resolution and the peace and conflict fields have also influenced the development of mediation in each arena. While this can lead to confusion, the breadth of perspectives on what mediation can mean also provides an important opportunity to learn from across fields of practice, enriching our understanding of this important process.The purpose of this article is to examine "mediation" and facilitated intervention from the perspective of the peace and conflict studied field. My hope is to provide deeper thinking and broader consideration of how we, as professionals, can be more informed and intentional interveners in the service of constructive conflict response.


Innovation is the process of developing new ideas and putting them into practice. Over the last decades, institutional theories combined with evolutionary theories have led to the Innovation System approach. One of the systemic approach is national innovation system. Understanding the determinants of national innovation system has been an important source of inquiry in the management and economics literatures. Regarding different types of definition of national innovation system we see that there are sort of resources that based on the interaction of institutions in public or private sectors, provide or modify new technologies inside a country. Furthermore, we use the concept of national innovation system as an analytical framework for policy instrument for the optimization of resource allocation. For this issue we use system dynamics method for analysis the dynamics of national innovation system and to find efficient way of allocating resources in this system for optimized level of output.


This paper presents a large-system analysis of the performance of joint channel estimation, multiuser detection, and per-user decoding (CE-MUDD) for randomly spread multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems. A suboptimal receiver based on successive decoding in conjunction with linear minimum mean-squared error (LMMSE) channel estimation is investigated. The replica method, developed in statistical mechanics, is used to evaluate the performance in the large-system limit, where the number of users and the spreading factor tend to infinity while their ratio and the number of transmit and receive antennas are kept constant. Joint CE-MUDD based on LMMSE channel estimation is compared to several methods of one-shot channel estimation, i.e., methods that do not utilize decoded data symbols to refine the initial channel estimates, in terms of spectral efficiency. Joint CE-MUDD is found to significantly reduce the rate loss caused by transmission of pilot signals when compared to the receivers based on one-shot channel estimation. This holds particularly for multiple-antenna systems. As a result, joint CE-MUDD can provide significant performance gains compared to the receivers based on one-shot channel estimation.


Thank you very much for reading therapists guide to learning and attention disorders. Maybe you have knowledge that, people have look numerous times for their favorite novels like this therapists guide to learning and attention disorders, but end up in harmful downloads. Rather than enjoying a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some harmful virus inside their laptop.


Searing Dispatches from the Urban Zones Where African American Men Have Become an Endangered Species To many in the age of Obama, America had succeeded in "going beyond race," putting the divisions of the past behind us. And then seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by a wannabe cop in Florida; and then eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and then Baltimore blew up; and then gunfire shattered a prayer meeting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Suddenly the entire country awakened to a stark fact: African Americans--particularly young black men--are an endangered species. Now the country's urban war zone is brought powerfully to life by a rising young literary talent, D. Watkins. The author fought his way up on the east side (the "beast side") of Baltimore, Maryland--or "Bodymore, Murderland," as his friends call it--surviving murderous business rivals in the drug trade and equally predatory lawmen. Throughout it all, he pursued his education, earning a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University, while staying rooted in his community. When black residents of Baltimore finally decided they had had enough--after the brutal killing of twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody--Watkins was on the streets when the city erupted. He writes about his bleeding hometown with the razor-sharp insights of someone who bleeds along with it. Here are true dispatches from the other side of America.


Alloy 718, ATI 718Plus® and Waspaloy have been investigated in terms of what their respective solidification process reveals. Differential thermal analysis was used to approach the task together with secondary electron and back scattered electron detectors equipped with an energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy detector. These experimental methods were used to construct pseudo binary phase diagrams that could aid in explaining solidification as well as liquation mechanisms in processes such as welding and casting. Furthermore, it was seen that Waspaloy has the smallest solidification range, followed by Alloy 718, and finally ATI 718Plus® possessing the largest solidification interval in comparison.


This paper looks at the relationship between venture capital (VC) funds and patent assertion entity (PAE). These two types of entities rely heavily on patents most particularly in the software industry. This paper analyzes this relationship and argues that VC funds have fed into the PAE phenomenon. This paper also argues that PAE have impacted how VCs behave. It offers an empirical analysis: as PAE have become more active, VCs provide more funds to the companies they back. This paper closes by discussing what VCs have done and could do to address PAEs and their activities.


Information systems, including their core databases need to meet changing user requirements and adhere to evolving business strategies. Traditional database evolution techniques focus on reacting to change to smoothly perform schema evolution operations and to propagate corresponding updates to the data as effectively as possible. Adopting such posterior solutions to such changes generates high costs in human resources and financial support. We advocate an alternate solution: a predictive approach to database evolution. In this approach, we anticipate future changes during the standard requirements analysis phase of schema development. Our approach enables potential future requirements to be planned for, as well as the standard, determining what data is to be stored and what access is required. This preparation contributes significantly in the ability of the database schema to adapt to future changes and to estimate their relative costs.


Urban heat island is a necessary issue in urban planning. However, there lacks a good way to study the heat island at the view of planning. This paper tries to combine Remote Sensing technology to establish an urban planning approach, which can study community scale of urban heat island and provide scientific way of heat environment study for urban planners. Tsinghua University is used as a case study to do the analyzing of heat environment using the approach mentioned above. It can be seen various surfaces have different contributions to the heat island in the campus and should be arranged premeditatedly. Therefore, the research of heat island is necessary for urban planning and a good planning project can reduce the heat island.


Non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) is responsible for the protection of the photosynthetic apparatus of plants from photodamage at high-light conditions. It is commonly agreed that NPQ takes place in the major light-harvesting complexes (LHCII), however, its exact mechanisms are still under debate. Valuable information about its molecular nature can be provided by measuring time-resolved fluorescence (TRF) spectra of LHCII complexes and their aggregates. Previously [Chmeliov et al., Nat. Plants 2, 16045 (2016)], we analysed the corresponding TRF spectra using the multivariate curve resolution method and proposed a three-state model to describe the spectroscopic data. Usually, such data is described in terms of global analysis resulting in decay or evolution-associated spectra. In this work, we apply such analysis to the TRF data of LHCII aggregates and show that, although mathematically feasible, it cannot be directly related to the physical kinetic model. Nevertheless, a careful examination supplemented with additional spectroscopic information still results in the same three-state model proposed before.


This article is devoted to the development of a compact optoelectronic device for recording images of remote objects while determining their geographical coordinates. The optical layout of the device is presented, with an algorithm for operating it. The operating principle is described, along with a technique for designing a collimating optical device that records on its photos and video images the geographical coordinates, the date, and the time that the picture of the object was taken.


This paper presents a new mathematical model for a redundancyallocation problem (RAP) withcold-standby redundancy strategy and multiple component choices.The applications of the proposed model arecommon in electrical power, transformation,telecommunication systems,etc.Manystudies have concentrated onone type of time-to-failure, butin thispaper, two components of time-to-failures which follow hypo-exponential and exponential distributionare investigated. The goal of the RAP is to select available components and redundancy level for each subsystem for maximizing system reliability under cost and weight constraints.Sincethe proposed model belongs to NP-hard class, we proposed two metaheuristic algorithms; namely, simulated annealing and genetic algorithm to solve it. In addition, a numerical example is presented to demonstrate the application of the proposed solution methodology.


Advanced human thyroid cancers are densely infiltrated with tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) and this correlates with a poor prognosis. We used BRAF-induced papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) mouse models to examine the role of TAMs in PTC progression. Following conditional activation of BRAFV600E in murine thyroids there is an increased expression of the TAM chemoattractants Csf-1 and Ccl-2. This is followed by the development of PTCs that are densely infiltrated with TAMs that express Csf-1r and Ccr2. Targeting CCR2-expressing cells during BRAF-induction reduced TAM density and impaired PTC development. This strategy also induced smaller tumors, decreased proliferation and restored a thyroid follicular architecture in established PTCs. In PTCs from mice that lacked CSF-1 or that received a c-FMS/CSF-1R kinase inhibitor, TAM recruitment and PTC progression was impaired, recapitulating the effects of targeting CCR2-expressing cells. Our data demonstrate that TAMs are pro-tumorigenic in advanced PTCs and that they can be targeted pharmacologically, which may be potentially useful for patients with advanced thyroid cancers.


Enterprise networks often have complex routing designs given the need to meet a wide set of resiliency, security and routing policies. In this paper, we take the position that minimizing design complexity must be an explicit objective of routing design. We take a first step to this end by presenting a systematic approach for modeling and reasoning about complexity in enterprise routing design. We make three contributions. First, we present a framework for precisely defining objectives of routing design, and for reasoning about how a combination of routing design primitives (e.g. routing instances, static routes, and route filters etc.) will meet the objectives. Second, we show that it is feasible to quantitatively measure the complexity of a routing design by modeling individual routing design primitives, and leveraging configuration complexity metrics [5]. Our approach helps understand how individual design choices made by operators impact configuration complexity, and can enable quantifying design complexity in the absence of configuration files. Third, we validate our model and demonstrate its utility through a longitudinal analysis of the evolution of the routing design of a large campus network over the last three years. We show how our models can enable comparison of the complexity of multiple routing designs that meet the same objective, guide operators in making design choices that can lower complexity, and enable what-if analysis to assess the potential impact of a configuration change on routing design complexity.


Abstract. Plankton manipulation experiments exhibit a wide range of sensitivities of biogenic calcification to simulated anthropogenic acidification of the ocean, with the "lab rat" of planktic calcifiers, Emiliania huxleyi apparently not representative of calcification generally. We assess the implications of this observational uncertainty by creating an ensemble of realizations of an Earth system model that encapsulates a comparable range of uncertainty in calcification response to ocean acidification. We predict that a substantial reduction in marine carbonate production is possible in the future, with enhanced ocean CO2 sequestration across the model ensemble driving a 4–13% reduction in the year 3000 atmospheric fossil fuel CO2 burden. Concurrent changes in ocean circulation and surface temperatures in the model contribute about one third to the increase in CO2 uptake. We find that uncertainty in the predicted strength of CO2-calcification feedback seems to be dominated by the assumption as to which species of calcifier contribute most to carbonate production in the open ocean.


A variable-structure control system designed to enable a fuselage-heavy airplane to recover from spin has been demonstrated in a hand-launched, instrumented model glider airplane (see figure). It has long been known that the most effective spin recovery technique for fuselage-heavy aircraft involves the use of ailerons to roll the airplane into the spin. This technique might be considered counter-intuitive because the pro-spin aileron deflection tends to initially increase the roll-rate component of the angular momentum of the airplane. However, it restores some controllability, enabling the pilot to perform subsequent maneuvers to pull out of the spin. The design of the present model-airplane control system was inspired in part by recognition that the aforementioned (and conventional) spin-recovery technique mimics a variable-structure control law. Variable-structure control is a highspeed switching feedback control technique that has been developed for control of nonlinear dynamic systems. A variable-structure control law typically has two phases of operation, denoted the reaching-mode and sliding-mode phases. In the reaching-mode phase, a nonlinear relay control strategy is followed to drive the trajectory of the system to a pre-defined switching surface within the motion state space. The sliding-mode phase involves motion along the switching surface as the system moves toward an equilibrium or critical point. A theoretical analysis has led to the conclusion that the conventional spinrecovery technique can be interpreted as a variable-structure control law with a switching surface defined at zero yaw rate. Application of Lyapunov stability methods in the theoretical analysis showed that deflecting the ailerons in the direction of the spin helps to insure that this switching surface is stable. It was shown that during the reachingmode phase, a simple relay control law would drive the airplane to a critical point that would be characterized by almost pure rolling motion. The slidingmode-phase control law would then eliminate the rolling motion, leading to a complete recovery. For the demonstration of variablestructure control for spin recovery, the model airplane was equipped with attitude sensors and a microcontroller that drove servomechanisms for controlling the deflections of the ailerons, rudder, and elevator. A variable-structure control law incorporating a nonlinear model of the aerodynamic characteristics of the airplane was implemented in firmware. Flight tests have verified the stability of the reaching-mode phase. This work was done by Martin R. Waszak of Langley Research Center and Mark R. Anderson of Paper Pilot Research, Inc. Further information is contained in a TSP (see page 1). LAR-17106-1 This Model Glider Airplane, instrumented with sensors and control and data-acquisition systems, was used to demonstrate the use of variable-structure control for spin recovery.


Property enhances autonomy for most people, but not for all. Because it both empowers and disables, property requires constant vigilance. "A Liberal Theory of Property" addresses key questions: how can property be justified? What core values should property law advance, and how do those values interrelate? How is a liberal state obligated to act when shaping property law?

In a liberal polity the primary commitment to individual autonomy dominates the justification of property, founding it on three pillars: carefully delineated private authority, structural (but not value) pluralism, and relational justice. A genuinely liberal property law meets the legitimacy challenge confronting property by expanding people's opportunities for individual and collective self-determination while carefully restricting their options of interpersonal domination.

"A Liberal Theory of Property" shows how the three pillars of liberal property account for core features of existing property systems, provide a normative vocabulary for evaluating central doctrines, and offer directions for urgent reforms.


This paper discusses the roles of academicians in connection with the purposes and identities of higher education institutions (HEI), and the knowledge that is created and transmitted in those institutions. The outcomes presented in this exploratory study are based on one-to-one semistructures interviews done with 20 academicians (M=8, F= 12) working in a state university in Turkey. They were asked four questions, namely: (1) What are the roles of academicians in higher education institutions; (2) Do you think higher education institutions have identities? Why do you think they have? Why do you think they do not have? (3) What are the purposes of higher education institutions? (4) What are the characteristics of the knowledge that is transmitted in these institutions? According to the results of the study, academicians believed that the roles of teachers are threefold: to teach, to do research and to help students become active and conscientious individuals. They further agreed that universities should have an identity, a distinctive individual point of view. They think that the purpose of HEIs is not only to inform students about a certain topic but at the same time to shape their lives, their thinking and life styles. Lastly, they believed that knowledge that is currently offered in HEIs is mostly technical, but unfortunately not creative and/or experimental.


The concerns of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission from transport sector elevate the technological development and introduction of electric vehicle (EV). Internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles are one of the largest contributors of GHG emission. However EV does not emit any such pollutant gases therefore global acceptance of EVs are increasing with time. Moreover electricity required for EV is readily available and efficiently produced from different sources. Technology of EV is not matured yet, charging facility is limited and also there has been no worldwide accepted standard for EVs. The introduction of EV requires distribution power network to facilitate charging facility at different convenient spots. However it is important to understand the consequences and possible impacts on distribution network by the introduction of a good number of charging facility for this new technology EVs. Therefore this paper presents the potential impacts of EVs on the distribution network and addresses recommendations for possible remedies. It was found that EVs could create voltage unbalance and can overload the low voltage network. Installation of charging station leads to upgrade the capacity of substations.


Although there was a time when the Benjamin Loan Mills were alive with activity, those days are now gone. They ended a century ago when the gristmill and the sawmill closed in 1901 after yet another fire. When the smoke cleared, Christian Deardorff, the mills' last owner, may have sighed with relief, for he had been trying sporadically to sell the mills for thirteen years, ever since he had rebuilt them after an earlier fire. In 1901, when again faced with fire-damaged mills, Deardorff decided not to rebuild them. In doing so, he also closed the last chapter in the history of these mills. [excerpt]


The end-Permian mass extinction (ca. 252 Ma) represents the most severe biotic crisis of the Phanerozoic, and it was accompanied by profound environmental perturbations, especially to the global carbon cycle, as indicated by sharp negative carbon isotope excursions (CIE) in both carbonates (δ13Ccarb) and organic matter (δ13Corg). To date, carbon isotope records are mostly from marine Permian-Triassic transitional sequences with relatively few high-resolution carbon isotope profiles having been generated for terrestrial facies. Terrestrial Permian-Triassic sequences suitable for high-resolution carbon isotope study are rare globally and are difficult to correlate with better-studied marine sequences. However, carbon isotope records from continental facies are essential to a full understanding of global carbon cycle changes during the Permian-Triassic transition. Here, we present bulk δ13Corg profiles for three terrestrial sections in North China representing Permian-Triassic transitional beds. These profiles exhibit similar patterns of secular variation defining three stages: (1) a pre-CIE interval, (2) a CIE interval, characterized by a rapid negative shift of 1.7‰–2.2‰ within the middle part of the Sunjiagou Formation, and (3) a post-CIE interval. The similarity of the CIE in all three study sections facilitates correlations among them, and its presence in the Permian-Triassic transitional beds suggests that it is equivalent to the negative CIE at the Permian-Triassic boundary in the Meishan global stratotype section and point (GSSP) and in coeval marine and terrestrial sections globally. The end-Permian CIE was probably triggered by a massive release of 13C-depleted carbon from volcanogenic sources leading to elevated atmospheric pCO2, although oceanic sources of CO2 cannot be ruled out at present.


As far as is known, CC-interop was the first project of its kind anywhere in the world and still is. Its basic aim was to test the feasibility of cross-searching between physical and virtual union catalogues, using COPAC and the three
functioning "clumps" or virtual union catalogues (CAIRNS, InforM25, and RIDING), all funded or part-funded by JISC in recent years. The key issues investigated were technical interoperability of catalogues, use of collection
level descriptions to search union catalogues dynamically, quality of standards in cataloguing and indexing practices, and usability of union catalogues for real users. The conclusions of the project were expected to, and indeed do, contribute to the development of the JISC Information
Environment and to the ongoing debate as to the feasibility and desirability of creating a national UK catalogue. They also inhabit the territory of collection level descriptions (CLDs) and the wider services of JISC's Information
Environment Services Registry (IESR). The results of this project will also have applicability for the common information environment, particularly through the landscaping work done via SCONE/CAIRNS. This work is
relevant not just to HE and not just to digital materials, but encompasses other sectors and domains and caters for print resources as well. Key findings are thematically grouped as follows: System performance when inter-linking COPAC and the Z39.50 clumps. The various individual Z39.50 configurations permit technical interoperability relatively easily but only limited semantic interoperability is possible. Disparate cataloguing and indexing practices are an impairment to semantic interoperability, not just for catalogues but also for CLDs and descriptions of services (like those constituting JISC's IESR). Creating dynamic landscaping through CLDs: routines can be written to allow collection description databases to be output in formats that other UK users of CLDs, including developers of
the JISC information environment. Searching a distributed (virtual) catalogue or clump via Z39.50: use of Z39.50 to Z39.50 middleware permits a distributed catalogue to
be searched via Z39.50 from such disparate user services as another virtual union catalogue or clump, a physical union catalogue like COPAC, an individual Z client and other IE services. The breakthrough in this Z39.50 to Z39.50 conundrum came with the discovery that the JISC-funded JAFER software (a result of the 5/99 programme) meets many of the requirements and can be used by the
current clumps services. It is technically possible for the user to select all or a sub-set of available end destination Z39.50 servers (we call this "landscaping")
within this middleware. Comparing results processing between COPAC and clumps. Most distributed services (clumps) do not bring back complete results sets from associated Z servers (in order to save time for users). COPAC on-the-fly routines could feasibly be applied to the clumps services. An automated search set up to repeat its query of 17 catalogues in a clump (InforM25) hourly over nearly 3 months returned surprisingly good results; for example, over 90% of responses were received in less than one second, and no servers showed slower response times
in periods of traditionally heavy OPAC use (mid-morning to early evening). User behaviour when cross-searching catalogues: the importance to users of a number of on-screen features, including the ability to refine a search and clear indication that a search is processing. The importance to users of information about the availability of an item as well as the holdings data. The impact of search tools such as Google and Amazon on user
behaviour and the expectations of more information than is normally available from a library catalogue. The distrust of some librarians interviewed of the data sources in
virtual union catalogues, thinking that there was not true
interoperability.


Statistical information of diverse official sources with respect to rain was revised and factors of productivity of the system bovine meat in the state of Sonora, Mexico, for the period from 1999 to 2008. Nine variables were analyzed statistically to obtain the Coefficient of Correlation(CC), using the package SPSS, Version 12. The variables were: 1. rain in mm, 2. number of heads produced, 3. volume of meat production in tons, 4. value of the production in thousands pesos, 5. price of the carcass in pesos by kilogram, 6. weight of the carcass in kilograms, 7. number of calves exported, 8. number of heifer exported and 9. price average in US dollars by pound of it exported; all the variables were expressed considering the rain of each with the productive parameters of the following year during the period. The variable rain and number of heifer exported they were the unique significant with CC=0.664. It is concluded that in the years of the period analyzed, to greater annual rain a greater number of heifer was reflected they exported to the following year.


Introduction The instant developmental switch of nutritional and oxygen supply from the umbilical cord to the lungs and the intestinal canal are necessary and dramatic changes for the offspring in order to adapt to life outside the uterus. This period is also characterised by exposure and colonisation by live bacteria, an assumed important step towards physiological programming of the newborn. The perinatal period is associated with establishment of a functional blood-brain barrier (BBB), essential for the brain development and protection from adverse systemic influences, which in rodents, has been suggested to be regulated by intestinal microbiome. To investigate whether the pig could be used as a model for preterm infant brain maturation, we studied the BBB in preterm and term newborn piglets. Methods The integrity of the BBB was evaluated in caesarean-delivered preterm (90% gestation) and term-born neonate pigs immediately after birth (n = 10). The expression of main tight junctions proteins (TJPs) controlling the BBB, and the glucose transporter-1 (Glut-1) in the hippocampus and striatum were determined by western blot technique. Results Alterations of TJPs expression in brain tissue were observed in hippocampus and striatum of preterm piglets compared to full-term controls. In addition, Glut-1 expression in the brain endothelial cells exhibited changes in a region-specific manner. Conclusion This pilot study demonstrate altered expression patterns of TJPs and Glut-1 in hippocampus and striatum of preterm piglets compared to full term piglets which support that the BBB impairment observed in rodents may also extend to the BBB in preterm piglets.


Marijuana (MJ) remains the most widely abused illicit substance in the United States, and in recent years, a decline in perceived risk of MJ use has been accompanied by a simultaneous increase in rates of use among adolescents. In this study, the authors hypothesized that chronic MJ smokers would perform cognitive tasks, specifically those that require executive function, more poorly than control subjects and that individuals who started smoking MJ regularly prior to age 16 (early onset) would have more difficulty than those who started after age 16 (late onset). Thirty-four chronic, heavy MJ smokers separated into early and late onset groups, and 28 non-MJ smoking controls completed a battery of neurocognitive measures. As hypothesized, MJ smokers performed more poorly than controls on several measures of executive function. Age of onset analyses revealed that these between-group differences were largely attributed to the early onset group, who were also shown to smoke twice as often and nearly 3 times as much MJ per week relative to the late onset smokers. Age of onset, frequency, and magnitude of MJ use were all shown to impact cognitive performance. Findings suggest that earlier MJ onset is related to poorer cognitive function and increased frequency and magnitude of MJ use relative to later MJ onset. Exposure to MJ during a period of neurodevelopmental vulnerability, such as adolescence, may result in altered brain development and enduring neuropsychological changes.


Abstract Purpose The aim of this study was to describe differences in long-term outcomes for patients discharged to inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs) following stroke compared to patients discharged directly home or to residential aged care facilities (RACFs). Materials and methods Cohort study. Data from the Australian Stroke Clinical Registry were linked to hospital admissions records and the national death index. Main outcomes: death and hospital readmissions up to 12 months post-admission, Health-related Quality of Life (HRQoL) 90-180 days post-admission. Results Of 8,555 included patients (median age 75, 55% male, 83% ischemic stroke), 4,405 (51.5%) were discharged home, 3,442 (40.2%) to IRFs, and 708 (8.3%) to RACFs. No between-group differences were observed in hazard of death between patients discharged to IRFs versus home. Fewer patients discharged to IRFs were readmitted to hospital within 90, 180 or 365-days compared to patients discharged home (adjusted subhazard ratio [aSHR]:90-days 0.54, 95%CI 0.49, 0.61; aSHR:180-days 0.74, 95%CI 0.67, 0.82; aSHR:365-days 0.85, 95%CI 0.78, 0.93). Fewer patients discharged to IRFs reported problems with mobility compared to those discharged home (adjusted OR 0.54, 95%CI 0.47, 0.63), or to RACFs (aOR 0.35, 95%CI 0.25, 0.48). Overall HRQoL between 90-180 days was worse for people discharged to IRFs versus those discharged home and better than those discharged to RACFs. Conclusions Several long-term outcomes differed significantly for patients discharged to different settings after stroke. Patients discharged to IRFs reported some better outcomes than people discharge directly home despite having markers of more severe stroke. Implications for rehabilitation People with mild strokes are usually discharged directly home, people with moderate severity strokes to inpatient rehabilitation, and people with very severe strokes are usually discharged to residential aged care facilities. People discharged to inpatient rehabilitation reported fewer problems with mobility and had a reduced risk of hospital readmission in the first year post-stroke compared to people discharged directly home after stroke. The median self-reported health-related quality of life for people discharged to residential aged care equated to 'worst health state imaginable'.


Background: Police staff have difficult work conditions, are prone to physical damages, and experience high levels of occupational stress. Their work-related problems may affect their quality of work life (QWL). Meanwhile, there is no appropriate instrument for assessing their WLQ. Objectives: This study was conducted to develop the police quality of work–life questionnaire (PQWLQ) and evaluate its psychometric properties. Methods: This methodological study was conducted in 2018–2019 in two phases. In the first phase, literature review and semi-structured interviews with 13 police staff were conducted and the results were used for item generation. In the second phase, the face, content, and construct validity and reliability of the questionnaire were assessed. For construct validity assessment through exploratory factor analysis, 234 police staff were purposefully recruited to fill out PQWLQ. Results: In the first phase, 57 items were produced. In the second phase, item number reduced to 38 after face and content validity assessment. In exploratory factor analysis for construct validity assessment, 14 more items were deleted and the remaining 24 items were loaded on two factors. The Cronbach's alpha and the test–retest intraclass correlation coefficient of PQWLQ were 0.947 and 0.931, respectively. Conclusion: The 24-item PQWLQ has acceptable validity and reliability and can be used for QWL assessment among police staff. The use of this scale can help police and health managers develop their understanding about police staff's QWL and develop strategies for its improvement.


In 1952 at Princeton University, Harold Garfinkel developed a sociological theory of information. Other prominent theories then being worked out at Princeton, including game theory, neglected the social elements of "information," modeling a rational individual whose success depends on completeness of both reason and information. In real life these conditions are not possible and these approaches therefore have always had limited and problematic practical application. Garfinkel's sociological theory treats information as a thoroughly organized social phenomenon in a way that addresses these shortcomings comprehensively. Although famous as a sociologist of everyday life, Garfinkel focuses in this new book-never before published-on the concerns of large-scale organization and decisionmaking. In the fifty years since Garfinkel wrote this treatise, there has been no systematic treatment of the problems and issues he raises. Nor has anyone proposed a theory of information like the one he proposed. Many of the same problems that troubled theorists of information and predictable order in 1952 are still problematic today.


This paper studies the effects of ECB communications about unconventional monetary policy operations on the perceived sovereign risk of Italy over the last five years. More than fifty events concerning non-standard operations are identified and classified with respect to the specific ECB program. The empirical results are derived from both an event-study analysis and a GARCH framework, which uses Italian long-term bond futures to disentangle expected from unexpected policy actions. We find that the ECB announcements about unconventional monetary policies substantially reduced Italian long-term government bond yield spread relative to German counterparts. Particularly, among the different types of measures, news about the Securities Markets Programme and the Outright Monetary Transactions are found to be effective in affecting the perceived sovereign risk of Italy.


Fault Tolerance for Flexible Time-Triggered Ethernet-based systems (FT4FTT) is a project to devise an architecture for distributed embedded systems that provides both flexibility to changing real-time requirements and high reliability through fault tolerance. One of the key parts of such an architecture is the communication subsystem. When designing such a subsystem many decisions have to be made. To understand how such decisions impact the reliability of the final design, in this paper we present a framework to evaluate the reliability of a large number of potential designs. The approach is based on storing a finite subset of the design space for the communication subsystem of FT4FTT in an undirected graph and then generating a continuous-time Markov chain from the graph to evaluate the reliability of each design belonging to the subset.


The primary aim of the project was to develop the basis for a set of rules to be used in the design of RHS slim floor edge beams with web openings. However, since the research is fundamental in nature, the findings are also applicable to other situations where it may be advantageous to cut holes in load bearing tubular members of rectangular cross-section.
The study considered the influence of the number and size of holes upon resistance and stiffness in bending, shear, and torsion and combined analytical Finite Element modelling with large and small scale pseudo-static (short-time static loading) laboratory testing.
In all but one category of tests (see below), good agreement was achieved between experimentally measured quantities (such as capacities, deflections and strains) and the corresponding Finite Element predictions, allowing parametric investigations to be conducted with calibrated analytical models.
Preliminary design recommendations are presented based on the results of the parametric study and laboratory tests. The design advice was developed with regard to existing recommendations for the design of perforated I-beams, and was produced in a form that allows integration with modern limit state design codes. Aspects of behaviour requiring further investigation have been identified and categorised.
Torsion tests on full scale RHS without web openings yielded some unexpected results. Elastic and plastic capacities measured in the laboratory were significantly lower (12–20%) than those predicted by the Finite Element models and the thick walled torsion theory used as the basis of the British and European design procedures. Attempts were made to determine the cause of this behaviour and a number of possibilities were eliminated. Although the anomalous results have not been fully explained, evidence of similar behaviour in previous full-scale testing was discovered.


Dolomite precipitation has been reported in sediments of marginal-marine hypersaline lagoons near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and has been related to microbial sulfate reduction. Our field study of pore-water and sediment geochemistry in two lagoons reveals only modest degrees of SO4 reduction and even H2S oxidation. Significant differences in dolomite contents, salinity, and carbon-sulfur cycling occur in the two lagoons; pore waters from the most dolomite-rich sediments exhibit significantly elevated SO4/Cl ratios relative to seawater. Moreover, the O isotope composition of SO4 in all lagoonal waters has evolved significantly from seawater values. This suggests active sulfur recycling via H2S oxidation, which provides acid that decreases pore-water saturation state for high-Mg calcite and aragonite, thermodynamically favoring the precipitation of dolomite. The open hydrogeochemical nature of these lagoons maintains SO4 concentrations below gypsum saturation, allowing dolomite to form from fluids with normal marine Mg/Ca.


The traditional university classroom paradigm frequently leads to fragmented knowledge dispersal; each student creates, collates, and curates their own notes individually. Here, we present a more holistic approach to student participation, based on experience from a student-initiated experiment using interactive applications in higher education. We explore several methods to help university students work collaboratively: Simultaneous note-taking using an online, interactive notepad; centralised information storage using a dedicated wiki; student-run centralised storage in the cloud; and communication management using a dedicated email list. In this paper, we elaborate on these points, and draw upon relevant previous literature, as well as our experience with implementing this system in several classes with diverse subjects in a graduate level Computational Linguistics degree. We also suggest future avenues to explore, such as slide-and-note integration.


The effectiveness of market discipline - the strong built-in incentives that encourage banks and financial systems to operate soundly and efficiently - commands much attention today, particularly in light of recent accounting scandals. As government discipline, in the form of regulation, seems to grows less effective as the banking industry and financial markets grow more complex, the role of market discipline becomes increasingly important. In this collection, which grew out of a conference cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a diverse group of academics and policymakers address different aspects of the ability of market discipline to affect corporate behavior and performance.

A major purpose of the book is to develop evidence on how market discipline operates across non-government regulated industries and in different countries, how successful it has been, and how it may transfer to a regulated industry. The chapters examine such topics as the theory of market discipline, evidence of market discipline in banking and other industries, evidence of market discipline for countries, the current state of corporate governance, and the interaction of market discipline and public policy.


We study the implicit bias of gradient descent methods in solving a binary classification problem over a linearly separable data set. The classifier is described by a non‐linear ReLU model and the objective function adopts the exponential loss function. We first characterize the landscape of the loss function and show that there can exist spurious asymptotic local minima besides asymptotic global minima. We then show that gradient descent (GD) can converge to either a global or a local max‐margin direction or may diverge from the desired max‐margin direction in a general context. For stochastic gradient descent (SGD), we show that it converges in expectation to either the global or the local max‐margin direction if SGD converges. We further explore the implicit bias of these algorithms in learning a multineuron network under certain stationary conditions and show that the learned classifier maximizes the margins of each sample pattern partition under the ReLU activation.


Abstract Methods are outlined by which density changes due to burial and compaction can be studied, and results are briefly discussed of an application of these methods to New Red Sandstone rocks from the English Midlands. From density measurements on surface rocks and compaction tests on a disaggregated sandstone it is concluded that there is no significant increase in density with depth down to 10,000 feet if the original, depositional, porosity of the sediment is low. Compaction tests suggest that sands with a high original porosity will, over a similar depth range, undergo permanent (i.e. non-elastic) deformation producing a 10 per cent increase in density.


Situated between two different constitutional traditions, those of the United Kingdom and the United States, Canada has maintained a distinctive third way: federal, parliamentary, and flexible. Yet in recent years it seems that Canadian constitutional culture has been moving increasingly in an American direction. Through the prorogation crises of 2008 and 2009, its senate reform proposals, and the appointment process for Supreme Court judges, Stephen Harper's Conservative government has repeatedly shown a tendency to push Canada further into the US constitutional orbit.Red, White, and Kind of Blue is a comparative legal analysis of this creeping Americanization, as well as a probing examination of the costs and benefits that come with it. Comparing British, Canadian, and American constitutional traditions, David Schneiderman offers a critical perspective on the Americanization of Canadian constitutional practice and a timely warning about its unexamined consequences.


The advent of the World Wide Web and Internet in the early 1990s has led to a major investment in information and communication technologies for educational purposes. The technology and growth of the Internet has been developing at an exponential rate, creating a situation where what constitutes effective educational practice has not been fully developed in the literature. Existing models of evaluation in the area are limited in scope or based on untested assumptions. These limitations are combined with a relative paucity of original research dedicated to explaining or predicting phenomena related to successful outcomes in Web-based learning, particularly from the perspective of the learners. This study addresses some of these gaps and the outcomes provide guidance for the future development of Web-based learning resources. It demonstrates the importance of sound instructional design and pedagogy and the results of the study point towards the overall effectiveness of the World Wide Web for learning.
The study used a naturalistic theory approach in conjunction with a multilevel evaluation to examine the impact of Web-based learning on over 300 health professionals enrolled with an Australasian Continuing Professional Education (CPE) provider, Med-E-Serv. The overall effectiveness of a number of the provider's courses was assessed in terms of learner satisfaction, cognitive achievement and self-reported application of knowledge gained from the course or behaviour change in professional practice. In addition, the impact of pedagogical and instructional design moderators (timing, pacing, feedback/interaction, problem-based learning [PBL] and learner autonomy) was assessed in terms of their impact on learner achievement and satisfaction.
The study found that health professionals expressed a high level of satisfaction (overall impressions, 98.1%) with the learning environment and a statistically significant improvement in cognitive achievement (Eta-square = 0.551). Self-reported application of course content into practice, or changes in professional practice (recorded as review, modify, change) was high (68.7%). Of the courses examined, 57% used a clinical assessment tool that 96.8% of respondents implemented into practice. This high percentage combined with Zobs analysis (3.757) indicated that behaviour change was greater as a result of those courses that included a clinical learning tool.
The study revealed that pedagogical and instructional design moderators are inherently positively correlated to learner satisfaction. For example, the association between interaction, course feedback and learner satisfaction was positively correlated. Additionally, PBL was viewed as conducive to learning (94.95%), a finding supported by the pre-post course test scores. Learner autonomy in choosing the rate and pacing of course material and their relationship to satisfaction was significant (0.774, p<0.05). These findings indicated that the instructional design and pedagogical characteristics of Med-E-Serv's courses examined in this study not only supported learning but also were highly regarded by the participating health professionals.


The subject of personal identity has received substantial treatment in contemporary African philosophy. Importantly, the dominant approach to personal identity is communitarian. Bernard Matolino's new book Personhood in African Philosophy enters into this discussion by way of contesting some of the assumptions underlying communitarian approaches. His own critical assessment leads him to what I believe is an unprecedented objection in the literature; the conclusion that communitarian philosophers are involved in a category mistake when framing the question and articulating the notion of personhood. I intend to present a brief summary of the chapters of the book and reflect on some of the main philosophical issues that the book provokes, noting what I take to be refreshing insights that Matolino brings to the discussion while also engaging critically with the ones I find most contentious. In particular, I briefly assess Matolino's implicit suggestion that an Akan inspired quasi-physicalist account of mind avoids the mind-body interaction problem; I object to the category mistake charge on behalf of communitarians; and lastly, I raise questions about, and propose ways Matolino can refine, his proposal concerning a new way of thinking about personhood, which goes under the rubric of Limited Communitarianism.


I. Introduction Nothing pleases a parent more than seeing their child participate in extra-curricular activities. I remember many instances when my mother and father would come and watch me play tennis for Keokuk Senior High School in Keokuk, Iowa. I had a sense of pride, accomplishment and happiness when I was out on the court, battling an opponent. Looking back on my four years of high school tennis at Keokuk I know that I was blessed with teammates that supported each other, a smart coach to guide us, and, ultimately, a 1993 State Team Tennis Championship. Yet, it was not until recently that I realized how truly lucky I was to get the opportunity to win a state championship. In order for everything to go well in tennis I had to be physically healthy and experience few injuries. Recently, I have wondered what would have happened if I had sustained an injury that lasted most of the tennis season. Could I still have participated in the state tennis competition? Were there any rules that were created by the Iowa High School Athletic Association that would have prevented me from playing? Did I have to play in at least 50% of the team's regularly scheduled contests to be eligible for the state tournament? Was there an exception for injuries and medical conditions? Today there are rules that mandate such participation from student-athletes. These rules are developed by high school athletic associations. High school athletic associations have rules and regulations for students wishing to participate not only in sports but also in speech, debate and music.' Some of these rules have been challenged with many courts deciding the case in favor of athletic associations.2 The goal of this article is to analyze whether one particular rule, the 50% rule, needs to be changed or possibly eliminated. First, the article explores the Indiana High School Athletic Association's (IHSAA) 50% rule, which has been challenged by parents and their children who want to play in IHSAA sponsored sporting events but cannot due to the limitations of the rule. Second, a federal case involving the IHSAA's 50% rule will be discussed. Finally, this article presents three solutions that would help to solve many of the problems that athletic associations face with respect to student-athlete eligibility. The IHSAA In numerous states around the country, nearly every high school is a member of some high school athletic association.3 The member-schools compete with each other in competitions! Since 1980, courts have recognized that extracurricular activities and competitions were a vital component of a student's education.5 However, by joining the athletic association, schools agree to abide by any rules which the association sets forth.6 Rules prohibiting the consumption and use of alcohol and drugs for studentathletes are not new.' If a student has violated such a rule, the association usually mandates that the student be declared ineligible to participate in sponsored association events for a specified period of time.' Thus, the rules that athletic associations promulgate are of potentially great importance to coaches and high school sports teams. The IHSAA, which is a voluntary association created to regulate athletic competitions, is composed of over 160,000 students statewide and establishes standards for competitions, sportsmanship and eligibility through its By-Laws and Articles of Incorporation.' While some of these standards and regulations are necessary and reasonable, courts have been willing to interfere with the association's broad discretion in handing down punishments to the student-athletes.10 Yet "[u]nder Indiana law, as in most states, there is a longstanding, general principle of judicial noninterference in the internal affairs of voluntary associations."11 Thus, it is extremely difficult for students and their parents to overturn any eligibility-related decisions by the IHSAA. The 50% Rule Since its adoption in 1991, some student-athletes have fallen victim to IHSAA's 50% rule in the sport of tennis. …


This paper focuses on the effect of import protection on the response of the real exchange rate to capital flows. The central hypothesis is that barriers to imports blunt the expenditure and production shifting effects of changes in relative prices, and hence the ability of the real exchange rate to equilibrate the economy in response to international capital flows. Employing a cross-section approach, the study focuses on three broadly similar countries but with very different levels of protection: Argentina, Australia, and Canada. The empirical results are consistent with the central hypothesis.


Wavelet transform is a recent signal analysis tool that is already been successfully used in image, video and speech compression applications. This paper looks at the Wavelet transform as a method of compressing computer network measurements produced from high-speed networks. Such networks produce a large amount of information over a long period of time, requiring compression for archiving. An important aspect of the compression is to maintain the quality in important features of signals. In this paper two known wavelet coefficient threshold selection techniques are examined and utilized separately along with an efficient method for storing wavelet coefficients. Experimental results are obtained to compare the behaviour of the two threshold selection schemes on delay and data rate signals, by using the mean square error (MSE) statistic, PSNR and the file size of the compressed output.


How individual differences in information processing affect second language (L2) learning has been unclear in prior research. Adults lacking prior skill in Swedish were pretested for working memory, processing speed, and executive memory capacity. Participants then received 6 computer-based instructional sessions with pictorial animations of Swedish sentences, with a built-in experimental contrast between some lessons at high and some at low rates of presentation. The faster rate carried greater processing demands for the learners. Higher levels of Swedish performance during Instructional sessions were associated with higher working memory levels, as expected from widely-used models of working memory (e.g., Baddeley & Hitch, 1994). In contrast, results at demanding long-term retrieval on a posttest were more complex and revealed several dynamic relationships between processing speed, working memory, and Swedish language learning. Learners with low rather than high working memory showed higher L2 skills at long-term testing when instructional lessons had employed fast animations. This first-time demonstration that prior cognitive profiles strongly influence learners' progress in second language requires refinements in existing theories.


Wireless communication systems, aside from path-loss, also suffer from small scale up-anddown variations in the power of the received signal. These fluctuations in the received signal power, commonly referred to as multi-path fading, result in a significant performance degradation of the system. One way to combat fading is diversity. The idea behind diversity is to provide the receiver with multiple independent copies of the transmitted signal, either in time, frequency or space dimension. In broadcast networks with underlying slow-faded channels, an appropriate option for exploiting diversity is transmit diversity, which deploys several antennas in the transmitter terminal. Based on the amount of available channel state information on the transmitter side, various transmit diversity schemes have been proposed in the literature. Because of certain limitations of broadcast networks, a practical assumption in these networks is to provide no channel state information for the transmitter. In this dissertation, a new scheme is proposed to exploit transmit diversity for broadcast networks, assuming no channel state information in the transmitter. The main idea of our proposed method is to virtually impose time variations to the underlying slow-faded channels by multiplying quantized pseudo-random phases to data symbols before transmission. Using this method, all necessary signal processing can be transferred to the RF front-end of the transmitter, and therefore, the implementation cost is much less than that of alternative approaches. Under the proposed method, the outage probability of the system is analyzed and the corresponding achievable diversity order is calculated. Simulation results show that the performance of our proposed scheme falls slightly below that of the optimum (Alamouti type) approach in the low outage probability region.


OBJECTIVE
It is important to understand the relationship between perseverative responding resulting from perinatal exposure to alcohol and potential underlying causes, including attention, memory, or response-inhibition problems. The present study was designed to examine the relationship between perseveration and memory.

METHOD
Rats exposed neonatally to 6 g/kg/day alcohol from postnatal day (PD) 4 through PD 9 using an artificial rearing technique (n = 8) were compared with an artificially reared gastrostomy control group (n = 8) and a suckle control group (n = 8). Activity levels were assessed from PD 18-21. Beginning on PD 45, subjects were deprived of food and responded for food on a two-lever win-stay, lose-shift task in which reinforcement probability was a function of reinforcement delivery on the previous trial. If reinforcement was delivered, only a response on the same lever (stay) was reinforced. If reinforcement was not delivered, only a response on the opposite lever (shift) was reinforced. Effective responding depended on subjects remembering whether a reinforcer was delivered on the preceding trial. The intertrial interval varied across conditions (5 seconds or 60 seconds).

RESULTS
Alcohol-exposed rats showed increased activity during activity testing but did not differ from controls on win-stay, lose-shift accuracy. All groups showed a performance decrease at longer intertrial intervals. Alcohol-exposed rats showed increased lever pressing during the intertrial interval compared with suckle control rats but not with gastrostomy control rats.

CONCLUSIONS
Choice behavior was comparable for all groups on the win-stay, lose-shift task, indicating that memory, as assessed by this task, was not differentially affected by alcohol exposure. Alcohol-exposed rats responded more during the intertrial interval compared with suckle controls, suggesting increased activity without increased response inhibition. The win-stay, lose-shift procedure is a potentially useful tool for separating simple activity level effects, memory-related effects, and response-inhibition effects. This study also highlights the need for additional research describing the relationship between perseverative responding and underlying mechanisms.


ABSTRACT This paper examines physical, chemical, and biological properties of soils and sediments from landforms in eastern Antigua, West Indies, to better understand the long-term consequences of colonial plantation agriculture for soil health. Plantation farming played a central role in the history of Caribbean societies, economies, and environments since the seventeenth century. In Antigua, the entire island was variably dedicated to agricultural pursuits (mostly sugarcane monoculture) from the mid-1600s until independence from the United Kingdom in 1981, when most commercial cultivation ceased. Today's soilscapes are highly degraded, although it is unknown what the role of the island's plantation legacy has played in this process. Our research combines geoarchaeological survey and sampling, sediment core analysis, and historical archival research to model the initial and cumulative impacts of the plantation industry on the island. We focus on the region surrounding Betty's Hope, the island's first large-scale sugarcane plantation in operation from 1674 to 1944. We find that current erosion and degradation issues experienced by today's farmers are not attributable to intensive plantation farming alone, but rather are part of a complex mosaic of human-environmental interactions that include abandonment of engineered landscapes.


After a short period of being not much more than a curiosity, the World-Wide Web quickly became an important medium for discussion, commerce, and business. Instead of holding just information that the entire world could see, web pages also became used to access email, financial records, and other personal or proprietary data that was meant to be viewed only by particular individuals or groups. This made it necessary to design mechanisms that would restrict access to web pages. Unfortunately, most current mechanisms are lacking in generality and flexibility—they interoperate poorly and can express only a limited number of security policies.
We view access control on the web as a general distributed authorization problem and develop a solution by adapting the techniques of proof-carrying authorization, a framework for defining security logics based on higher-order logic.
In this dissertation we present a particular logic for modeling access-control scenarios that occur on the web. We give this application-specific logic a semantics in higher-order logic, thus ensuring its soundness, and use it to implement a system that regulates access to web pages. Our system uncouples authorization from authentication, allowing for better interoperation across administrative domains and more expressive security policies. Our implementation consists of a web server module and a local web proxy. The server allows access to pages only if the web browser can demonstrate that it is authorized to view them. The browser's local proxy accomplishes this by mechanically constructing a proof of a challenge sent to it by the server. Our system supports arbitrarily complex delegation, and we implement a framework that lets the web browser locate and use pieces of the security policy that have been distributed across arbitrary hosts. Our system was built for controlling access to web pages, but could relatively easily be extended to encompass access control for other applications as well.


ABSTRACT Objectives: This study of loneliness across adult lifespan examined its associations with sociodemographics, mental health (positive and negative psychological states and traits), subjective cognitive complaints, and physical functioning. Design: Analysis of cross-sectional data Participants: 340 community-dwelling adults in San Diego, California, mean age 62 (SD = 18) years, range 27–101 years, who participated in three community-based studies. Measurements: Loneliness measures included UCLA Loneliness Scale Version 3 (UCLA-3), 4-item Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Social Isolation Scale, and a single-item measure from the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CESD) scale. Other measures included the San Diego Wisdom Scale (SD-WISE) and Medical Outcomes Survey- Short form 36. Results: Seventy-six percent of subjects had moderate-high levels of loneliness on UCLA-3, using standardized cut-points. Loneliness was correlated with worse mental health and inversely with positive psychological states/traits. Even moderate severity of loneliness was associated with worse mental and physical functioning. Loneliness severity and age had a complex relationship, with increased loneliness in the late-20s, mid-50s, and late-80s. There were no sex differences in loneliness prevalence, severity, and age relationships. The best-fit multiple regression model accounted for 45% of the variance in UCLA-3 scores, and three factors emerged with small-medium effect sizes: wisdom, living alone and mental well-being. Conclusions: The alarmingly high prevalence of loneliness and its association with worse health-related measures underscore major challenges for society. The non-linear age-loneliness severity relationship deserves further study. The strong negative association of wisdom with loneliness highlights the potentially critical role of wisdom as a target for psychosocial/behavioral interventions to reduce loneliness. Building a wiser society may help us develop a more connected, less lonely, and happier society.


Patentees sometimes use fraudulently procured patents to secure illegal monopolies, excluding efficient competitors and raising prices to consumers. While antitrust doctrine condemns the acquisition of monopoly power through fraudulently procured patents, antitrust liability hinges on whether the monopolist actually "enforced" the patent. Despite the critical importance of the definition of patent enforcement for antitrust law, no scholarship or commentary exists that addresses what conduct constitutes patent enforcement. Without explanation, lower courts have narrowly defined patent enforcement to mean either filing an infringement lawsuit or explicitly threatening to do so. This Article explains how monopolists with fraudulently procured patents have exploited this narrow conception of patent enforcement in order to effectively exclude competitors without triggering antitrust scrutiny. This Article argues that whenever a monopolist exercises the exclusionary power of a patent, it is in fact effectively enforcing the patent for antitrust purposes. The Article concludes that courts must broaden their conception of "patent enforcement" to include, depending on context, publicly flaunting one's patent, publicly stating a general intent to sue infringers, accusing competitors of infringement, threatening competitors' business partners, and licensing activities. Courts currently do not consider these actions to ever constitute patent enforcement. As a result, the current interpretation of the enforcement requirement for antitrust purposes renders patent fraud cost-beneficial. Absent antitrust liability, it is rational for a monopolist to commit fraud on the PTO, maintain the patent as an ever-present threat, and simply not actively enforce it. These are not incentives that either patent law or antitrust law should create. Expanding the definition of patent enforcement will close the loophole that currently allows firms to acquire and exercise illegal monopoly power through the acquisition of fraudulently procured patents.


This article explores how social media acted as a catalyst for protest mobilization during the Tunisian revolution in late 2010 and early 2011. Using evidence from protests we argue that social media acted as an important resource for popular mobilization against the Ben Ali regime. Drawing on insights from "resource mobilization theory", we show that social media (1) allowed a "digital elite" to break the national media blackout through brokering information for mainstream media; (2) provided a basis for intergroup collaboration for a large "cycle of protest"; (3) reported event magnitudes that raised the perception of success for potential free riders, and (4) provided additional "emotional mobilization" through depicting the worst atrocities associated with the regime's response to the protests. These findings are based on background talks with Tunisian bloggers and digital activists and a revealed preference survey conducted among a sample of Tunisian internet users (February–May 2012).


In a reading task we investigate the scaling of pitch accents in neutral and lively speech in German. We first show that lively speech tends to increase the pitch span, raising the F0 targets for H tones but little affecting those for L tones. We then investigate the scaling of a tone whose identity is controversial: the second tone, X, of an early peak accent (H+X*). This pitch accent is employed on inferentially accessible referents and has been analysed as H+!H* as well as H+L*. Our finding that the F0 target for X is clearly raised in lively speech favours its analysis as a downstepped high tone in a H+!H* pitch accent.


Large surveys have shown that red galaxies are preferentially aligned with their haloes, while blue galaxies have a more isotropic distribution. Since haloes generally align with their filaments, this introduces a bias in the measurement of the cosmic shear from weak lensing. It is therefore vitally important to understand why this difference arises. We explore the stability of different disc orientations within triaxial haloes. We show that, in the absence of gas, the disc orientation is most stable when its spin is along the minor axis of the halo. Instead when gas cools on to a disc, it is able to form in almost arbitrary orientation, including off the main planes of the halo (but avoiding an orientation perpendicular to the halo's intermediate axis). Substructure helps gasless galaxies reach alignment with the halo faster, but has less effect on galaxies when gas is cooling on to the disc. Our results provide a novel and natural interpretation for why red, gas poor galaxies are preferentially aligned with their halo, while blue, star-forming, galaxies have nearly random orientations, without requiring a connection between galaxies' current star formation rate and their merger history.


Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is a technique where the output from a pulsed laser is focused onto a sample to create an intense plasma. The emission spectrum from the plasma contains quantitative information on the composition of the sample in the region of the breakdown. Growing applications of this technique include remote or in situ measurements where the atmosphere, primarily nitrogen and oxygen, may present spectral interferences. This study was undertaken to evaluate the spectral characteristics of the interference from the nitrogen and oxygen components in air. Of primary interest in this study is the atomic and molecular origin of the emission features. Comparison of the LIBS spectra with NIST atomic emission data is presented.