[1] The long-term evolution of upper stratospheric ozone has been recorded by lidars and microwave radiometers within the ground-based Network for the Detection of Stratospheric Change (NDSC), and by the space-borne Solar Backscatter Ultra-Violet instruments (SBUV), Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE), and Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE). Climatological mean differences between these instruments are typically smaller than 5% between 25 and 50 km. Ozone anomaly time series from all instruments, averaged from 35 to 45 km altitude, track each other very well and typically agree within 3 to 5%. SBUV seems to have a slight positive drift against the other instruments. The corresponding 1979 to 1999 period from a transient simulation by the fully coupled MAECHAM4-CHEM chemistry climate model reproduces many features of the observed anomalies. However, in the upper stratosphere the model shows too low ozone values and too negative ozone trends, probably due to an underestimation of methane and a consequent overestimation of ClO. The combination of all observational data sets provides a very consistent picture, with a long-term stability of 2% or better. Upper stratospheric ozone shows three main features: (1) a decline by 10 to 15% since 1980, due to chemical destruction by chlorine; (2) two to three year fluctuations by 5 to 10%, due to the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO); (3) an 11-year oscillation by about 5%, due to the 11-year solar cycle. The 1979 to 1997 ozone trends are larger at the southern mid-latitude station Lauder (45°S), reaching −8%/decade, compared to only about −6%/decade at Table Mountain (35°N), Haute Provence/Bordeaux (≈45°N), and Hohenpeissenberg/Bern(≈47°N). At Lauder, Hawaii (20°N), Table Mountain, and Haute Provence, ozone residuals after subtraction of QBO- and solar cycle effects have levelled off in recent years, or are even increasing. Assuming a turning point in January 1997, the change of trend is largest at southern mid-latitude Lauder, +11%/decade, compared to +7%/decade at northern mid-latitudes. This points to a beginning recovery of upper stratospheric ozone. However, chlorine levels are still very high and ozone will remain vulnerable. At this point the most northerly mid-latitude station, Hohenpeissenberg/Bern differs from the other stations, and shows much less clear evidence for a beginning recovery, with a change of trend in 1997 by only +3%/decade. In fact, record low upper stratospheric ozone values were observed at Hohenpeissenberg/Bern, and to a lesser degree at Table Mountain and Haute Provence, in the winters 2003/2004 and 2004/2005.


This paper analyzes optimal unemployment insurance over the business cycle in a search model in which unemployment stems from matching frictions (in booms) and job rationing (in recessions). Job rationing during recessions introduces two novel effects ignored in previous studies of optimal unemployment insurance. First, job-search efforts have little effect on aggregate unemployment because the number of jobs available is limited, independently of matching frictions. Second, while job-search efforts increase the individual probability of finding a job, they create a negative externality by reducing other jobseekers' probability of finding one of the few available jobs. Both effects are captured by the positive and countercyclical wedge between micro-elasticity and macro-elasticity of unemployment with respect to net rewards from work. We derive a simple optimal unemployment insurance formula expressed in terms of those two elasticities and risk aversion. The formula coincides with the classical Baily-Chetty formula only when unemployment is low, and macro- and micro-elasticity are (almost) equal. The formula implies that the generosity of unemployment insurance should be countercyclical. We illustrate this result by simulating the optimal unemployment insurance over the business cycle in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model calibrated with US data.


Repetitive control is a widely used technique for the compensation of repeatable error in systems that contain rotating mechanisms or repeat a trajectory. Generally, it includes delay chains and a low-pass filter in the positive feedback loop, which generate a periodic signal. The controller has typically been implemented in a plug-in fashion and designed heuristically with the simplest form of the filter. However, this design approach is somewhat ambiguous in the selection of controller parameters because of its influence over nonharmonic frequencies. Also, it leaves the possibility for further improvement. This paper presents an improved design method for the repetitive controller that provides minimum track misregistration (TMR) in a hard disk drive (HDD). For TMR prediction, the method identifies disturbances acting on an HDD and estimates servo performance, using the identification result. We have confirmed the identification and estimation procedure through experiments. In our method, first the basic tracking controller is designed and later the repetitive controller is designed in conjunction with a Q filter. A cost function based on Parseval's theorem, reflecting the servo performance as TMR, is defined. Then the servo performance is estimated from the identified disturbance, and the plant and designed controller's frequency response are modified as necessary by changing the parameters of the controller, whose optimization is carried out with a commercial nonlinear optimization tool. The design strategy facilitates the controller design by providing an accurate estimation for the attainable servo performance and design criteria under the optimization framework.


Real-world materials are often layered: metallic paints, biological tissues, and many more. Variation in the interface and volumetric scattering properties of the layers leads to a rich diversity of material appearances from anisotropic highlights to complex textures and relief patterns. However, simulating light-layer interactions is a challenging problem. Past analytical or numerical solutions either introduce several approximations and limitations, or rely on expensive operations on discretized BSDFs, preventing the ability to freely vary the layer properties spatially. We introduce a new unbiased layered BSDF model based on Monte Carlo simulation, whose only assumption is the layer assumption itself. Our novel position-free path formulation is fundamentally more powerful at constructing light transport paths than generic light transport algorithms applied to the special case of flat layers, since it is based on a product of solid angle instead of area measures, so does not contain the high-variance geometry terms needed in the standard formulation. We introduce two techniques for sampling the position-free path integral, a forward path tracer with next-event estimation and a full bidirectional estimator. We show a number of examples, featuring multiple layers with surface and volumetric scattering, surface and phase function anisotropy, and spatial variation in all parameters.


Anthropogenic sulfur compounds play an important role in acid deposition, aerosol particle formation, and subsequent radiative forcing and human fine particulate exposure. There are substantial uncertainties in processes influencing sulfate and precursor distributions, however, that have not yet been resolved through comparisons with observations. We find here an underappreciated factor that has a large impact on model results: uncertain emission height. Global aerosol‐climate model simulations indicate that the assumed effective anthropogenic emission height is very important to SO2 near‐surface concentrations and vertical profile. The global range of near‐surface SO2 concentration over land (ocean) due to uncertainty in industrial (international shipping) emission injection height is 81% (76%), relative to the average concentration. This sensitivity is much larger than the uncertainty of SO2 emission rates. Black carbon and primary organic matter concentration and profiles are also sensitive to emission heights (53% over land and 28% over oceans). The impact of emission height uncertainty is larger in winter for land‐based emissions, but larger in summer over the Northern Hemisphere ocean for shipping emissions. The variation in aerosol optical depth related to shipping emission injection heights is 11% over oceans, revealing the potential importance of injection height on aerosol forcing and climatic effects. The large impact on SO2 concentrations can confound attempts to use surface, aircraft, and satellite observations to constrain the importance of other processes that govern sulfur compound distributions in the atmosphere. The influence of emission height on vertical SO2 column also will impact the accuracy of satellite retrievals.


Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a growing epidemic that affects more than 50% of the world's population. CHF is a preventable disease, but prevention requires a healthy lifestyle from a young age. Most patients already diagnosed with CHF receive advice and strict instructions for care to prevent further cardiac injury. This quantitative descriptive research study was designed to address walking and jogging as the best exercises for patients diagnosed with CHF and in patients diagnosed with other cardiac problems. The results revealed that walking is the best exercise to improve patients' resting heart rate and overall cardiac function. This study also indicated that cardiac rehabilitation (CR) improved both blood pressure and heart rate, but the findings showed that CR improved heart rate most effectively. The Levine conservation model served as the foundation of the research. The Levine conservation model ensures the safety and the wholeness of a patient by protecting the interaction and adaptations of the patient's health care plan and environment through conserving and balancing energy. The social change plan for this research study is to give health care teams who care for patients with CHF or cardiac problems guidance to educate patients about CR. Increasing CR education among all health care teams could help improve many patients' quality of life, and the autonomy and empowerment given to patients may subsequently increase patients' cooperation with the treatment plan.


BACKGROUND
Modern culture has stereotyped the female body as one that is continually getting thinner. Internalization of the 'thin' ideal is partly attributable to the inner ideal to be successful combined with the external pressure imposed by media and others. Many individuals attempt to achieve these ideals by behavior modification that imposes health risks.

PURPOSE
To investigate disordered eating (DE) behavior and energy status in female student dancers.

METHODS
Volunteer dancers (n = 26) aged 19.0 (18.0; 21.0) years, matched by controls (n = 26) aged 20.0 (19.0; 21.0) years were recruited. Eating Disorder Inventory-3 (EDI-3) subscales, Three-factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ) Cognitive Dietary Restraint (CDR) subscale, and EDI-3 Referral Form behavioral questions assessed DE behavior. Energy status was assessed with a food record and Actiheart monitor.

RESULTS
Dancers achieved significantly higher scores than controls in all questionnaires, namely: EDI-3 Drive for Thinness [12.0 (3.0; 19.0) vs. 4.5 (2.0; 9.0), p = .023], EDI-3 Body Dissatisfaction [16.0 (10.0; 25.0) vs. 6.5 (3.0; 14.0), p = .004], and TFEQ-CDR [9.0 (2.0; 15.0) vs. 3.0 (3.0; 7.0), p = .032]; dancers used excessive exercise to lose weight (19.2% vs. 0%, c2 = 5.53, p = .019), and had lower energy availability (24% vs. 8%, p < .05) than controls. The average energy balance (EB) was negative for both groups [dancers: EB = -3896 (-5236; -1222) vs.

CONTROLS
EB = -2639 (-4744; -789) kJ/day].

CONCLUSION
Female dancers are at risk for DE behavior and many have suboptimal energy status which may be related to their quest to achieve a more desirable appearance; education on healthy weight management practices is needed.


Acidand ion-containing polymers have interchain interactions that alter polymer behavior at the nano, micro, and bulk length scales. Strong secondary-bonds act as thermo-reversible physical crosslinks between chains which drive self-assembly. Tuning theses interactions can modify bulk polymer properties including stiffness, toughness, melt viscosity, resilience, clarity, abrasion resistance and puncture resistance. Furthermore, understanding and improving the relevant factors that control transport properties would have vast implications on developing solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) for technologically important applications including water desalination, ion exchange membranes and microelectronics. This thesis explores the structure – processing – morphology property relationships of acid and ionic functionalized polymers. Improvements in synthetic techniques and advancements in characterization methods have enabled new studies of associating polymer systems. Synthesis of entangled, high molecular weight, linear polyethylene (PE) chains functionalized with interacting pendant groups (acidic or ionic) placed periodically along the polymer backbone represent a new class of associating polymers. These polymers with periodic distributions of acid groups are much more homogenous than the commercially available polymers. Previous studies of these polymers with greater structural homogeneity revealed great variety in morphologies of the nanoaggregated polar groups within the non-polar polymer matrix. This thesis correlated the morphologies with bulk properties through real-time X-ray scattering and tensile deformation at a range of temperatures and sample compositions. New, transient morphologies and hierarchical morphologies were observed which coincided with unusual tensile strain hardening. These results indicate that improvements in synthetic control of polymers can enhance physical properties such as tensile strain-hardening, through cooperative bonding between chains. The structural regularity of precise polyethylenes also enables robust comparisons between experiments and computer simulations. At picoto nano-seconds time scales and length scales of polymer and aggregate dynamics, neutron scattering and molecular dynamics simulations were combined to extend the knowledge of the molecular-level aggregated polymer dynamics. These experiments provide a baseline for future studies of ion-conduction in associating polymer melts. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Materials Science & Engineering First Advisor Karen I. Winey This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1897


In this paper, we introduce a discrete variant of the meta-learning framework. Meta-learning aims at exploiting prior experience and data to improve performance on future tasks. By now, there exist numerous formulations for meta-learning in the continuous domain. Notably, the Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning (MAML) formulation views each task as a continuous optimization problem and based on prior data learns a suitable initialization that can be adapted to new, unseen tasks after a few simple gradient updates. Motivated by this terminology, we propose a novel meta-learning framework in the discrete domain where each task is equivalent to maximizing a set function under a cardinality constraint. Our approach aims at using prior data, i.e., previously visited tasks, to train a proper initial solution set that can be quickly adapted to a new task at a relatively low computational cost. This approach leads to (i) a personalized solution for each individual task, and (ii) significantly reduced computational cost at test time compared to the case where the solution is fully optimized once the new task is revealed. The training procedure is performed by solving a challenging discrete optimization problem for which we present deterministic and randomized algorithms. In the case where the tasks are monotone and submodular, we show strong theoretical guarantees for our proposed methods even though the training objective may not be submodular. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework on two real-world problem instances where we observe that our methods lead to a significant reduction in computational complexity in solving the new tasks while incurring a small performance loss compared to when the tasks are fully optimized.


The concept of Strategy-as-Practice has become prevalent in academic discussions on strategy which try to capture the emergent nature of strategizing in social organizations. While this concept offers the potential to explain and inform some of the many challenges that ICT for development researchers and practitioners face when trying to plan and design interventions, little research has focused on it. In this context, strategizing involves several components, and practitioners in the field are involved in developing, implementing or reacting to a range of strategies from a network of stakeholders. In this paper, we first conduct a review of aspects of strategizing and strategic activity in practice in the area of information technology for development. We further explore these processes in the context of the establishment and ongoing development of initiatives to increase access and usage of information and communication technologies, such as telecentres, community access points, and deployments in schools and libraries. Case vignettes of developing such strategy are described, followed by implications for research and practice.


Full color: Learn how to build great Windows Store apps! Figures and code appear as they do in Visual Studio. Windows 8.1 enables you to build stunning applications that integrate with each other, Web services, and Windows itself. You can sell them in the Windows Store, with more options than ever before, for tablets such as Surface, laptops, and traditional desktop PCs! World-renowned Microsoft programming guru Adam Nathan shows you exactly how to write first-class apps for this significant update to Windows. Dont let the minor name change fool you--Windows 8.1 contains an incredible amount of new developer opportunities compared to Windows 8. Clear, accessible, and intensely practical, this guide teaches through concise code examples, in full color to match their appearance in Visual Studio--the same approach that made Nathans WPF Unleashed so popular. Writing with unprecedented depth and insight, Nathan guides you through creating advanced user interfaces with XAML and exploiting key Windows 8.1 features. Whether youre already comfortable with Microsoft programming or relatively new to it, Windows 8.1 Apps with XAML and C# Unleashed will take you to the cutting edge of Windows 8.1 development. Detailed information on how to... Use XAML to represent state-of-the-art user interfaces, even across multiple windows Handle touch, mouse, keyboard, and pen input, including handwriting recognition Use new Windows 8.1 controls for creating hubs, flyouts, better app bars, performing in-app searches, rendering PDFs, and much more Encode, decode, and transcode multimedia content and speech-enable your app Leverage rich XAML vector graphics and animation Interact with built-in functionality such as the Camera app, file picker, the lock screen, new contacts and appointments integration, and more Exploit the Windows 8.1 charms bar Integrate DirectX graphics seamlessly Work with the rich set of available sensors: accelerometer, compass, light sensor, location (with geofencing support), proximity, and more Control devices such as fingerprint readers, image and bar code scanners, magnetic stripe readers, and custom Bluetooth, USB, HID, or Wi-Fi Direct devices


Host-parasite systems can be powerful arenas in which to explore factors influencing community structure. We used a comparative approach to examine the influence of host ecology and morphology on the diversity of chewing lice (Insecta: Phthiraptera) among 52 species of Peruvian birds. For each host species we calculated two components of parasite diversity: 1) cumulative species richness, and 2) mean abundance. We tested for correlations between these parasite indices and 13 host ecological and morphological variables. Host ecological variables included geographic range size, local population density, and microhabitat use. Host morphological variables included body mass, plumage depth, and standard dimensions of bill, foot and toenail morphology, all of which could influence the efficiency of anti-parasite grooming. Data were analysed using statistical and comparative methods that control for sampling effort and host phylogeny. None of the independent host variables correlated with louse species richness when treated as a dependent variable. When richness was treated as an independent variable, however, it was positively correlated with mean louse abundance. Host body mass was also positively correlated with mean louse abundance. When louse richness and host body mass were held constant, mean louse abundance correlated negatively with the degree to which the upper mandible of the host's bill overhangs the lower mandible. This correlation suggests that birds with longer overhangs are better at controlling lice during preening. We propose a specific functional hypothesis in which preening damages lice by exerting a shearing force between the overhang and the tip of the lower mandible. This study is the first to suggest a parasite-control function of such a detailed component of bill morphology across species. Avian biologists have traditionally focused almost exclusively on bills as tools for feeding. We suggest that the adaptive radiation of bill morphology should be reinterpreted with both preening and feeding in mind.


While religiosity as a field of inquiry has been gaining research interest in recent years, a central issue about its conceptualisation, measurement, and relationships with work outcomes remains unresolved. The aims of this paper are: (1) to introduce a new scale designed to measure religiosity among Muslims, based on an Islamic perspective that centres on the bodily action or human activity (islam), the mind or understanding of God (iman), and the spirit or actualisation of virtue and goodness (ihsan); and (2) to demonstrate how religiosity relates to various work outcomes. We followed a rigorous multi-steps scale development procedure using four empirical studies involving 703 participants. The final scale yielded one factor with 10 underlying items. Our results showed that religiosity was positively correlated with job satisfaction, positive work behaviour, workplace integrity, and organisational commitment, but negatively correlated with antagonistic work behaviour. This new scale also showed incremental validity over an existing Muslim attitude scale in predicting organisational commitment and integrity. Overall, this new scale demonstrates good psychometric properties and is a promising tool for the measurement of religiosity among Muslims in organisational settings.


A new single-shot technique based on linear spectral interferometry between a temporally short reader pulse and a temporally long probe pulse is demonstrated for measuring the spatiotemporal phase and amplitude of an optical probe for use as an ultrafast diagnostic. The probe spatiotemporal field information is recovered, with a resolution set by the duration of the reader pulse, by applying a single Fourier transform operation to the interferogram image, without need of any reference data. The technique was used in conjunction with electro-optic sampling to measure waveforms of coherent, ultrashort THz pulses emitted by electron bunches from a laser-plasma accelerator with sub-50fs resolution. The presence of strong spatiotemporal coupling in the THz waveforms and of complex temporal electron-bunch structure was determined.


Reliable estimation of the geometric transformation (homography)between different planes is a key step in a number of robotics applications. A common requirement is the homography estimation between a ground plane and a camera. For this task, the most usual approach is to define the correspondence between the coordinates of realworld points and their pixel coordinates in the image. Often, however, real-world coordinates are not available or ground measurements are not practical. Targeting these scenarios, a homography estimation framework is proposed using (semi-)rigid objects that can be placed in different positions in the field of view, with its top and bottom pixels approximately identified in the image. The derived method shows that it can work with or without the knowledge of the camera intrinsics, even in presence of non-Gaussian measurement noise. A thorough analysis of the method is presented by observing the effect of noise, distance from the camera and number of measurements on the quality of the final results. The experiments illustrate the applicability of the method.


In this work, we focus on two important goals of the transmission of scalable video over the Internet. The first goal is to provide high quality video to end users and the second one is to properly design networks and predict network performance for video transmission based on the characteristics of existing video traffic. Rate-distortion (R-D) based schemes are often applied to improve and stabilize video quality; however, the lack of R-D modeling of scalable coders limits their applications in scalable streaming.
Thus, in the first part of this work, we analyze R-D curves of scalable video coders and propose a novel operational R-D model. We evaluate and demonstrate the accuracy of our R-D function in various scalable coders, such as Fine Granular Scalable (FGS) and Progressive FGS coders. Furthermore, due to the time-constraint nature of Internet streaming, we propose another operational R-D model, which is accurate yet with low computational cost, and apply it to streaming applications for quality control purposes.
The Internet is a changing environment; however, most quality control approaches only consider constant bit rate (CBR) channels and no specific studies have been conducted for quality control in variable bit rate (VBR) channels. To fill this void, we examine an asymptotically stable congestion control mechanism and combine it with our R-D model to present smooth visual quality to end users under various network conditions.
Our second focus in this work concerns the modeling and analysis of video traffic, which is crucial to protocol design and efficient network utilization for video transmission. Although scalable video traffic is expected to be an important source for the Internet, we find that little work has been done on analyzing or modeling it. In this regard, we develop a frame-level hybrid framework for modeling multi-layer VBR video traffic. In the proposed framework, the base layer is modeled using a combination of wavelet and time-domain methods and the enhancement layer is linearly predicted from the base layer using the cross-layer correlation.


Need answers quickly? Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 on Demand provides those answers in a visual step-by step format. We will show you exactly what to do through lots of full color illustrations and easy-to-follow instructions. Inside the Book Use the latest web technologies to create sites and mobile apps Create sites with HTML5/CSS3 and mobile apps for iOS and Android Use web page templates to quickly create pages or mobile apps Use the simplified site setup to create and work with sites Use Live view to design your web pages under real-world conditions Create and maintain Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Use coding tools to develop consistent and reusable code Insert Adobe Photoshop files to create image Smart Objects Preview sites or apps using Multiscreen Preview and Adobe BrowserLab Use Subversion to manage site versions Manage local, remote, and testing sites Transfer, synchronize, and WC3 validate sites Bonus Online Content Register your book at queondemand.com to gain access to: Workshops and related files Keyboard shortcuts Visit the author site: perspection.com


Clay animation is a form of stop motion animation but is rarely used as a teaching approach in higher education classes because it is too tedious and time consuming. "Slow Motion Animation" (Slowmation) is a simplified form of clay animation that is different in four ways and can be completed in 1-2 hour tutorial or workshop: (i) models of science concepts are made and manipulated in the horizontal plane; (ii) a range of materials can be used; (iii) the animations are played at 2-6 frames per second; and (iv) science concepts are annotated with factual text. This study demonstrates how 30 teacher education students used Slowmation to make a QuickTime animation of the life cycle of a frog in a two-hour tutorial. Slowmation is a teaching approach that is feasible for use in university classes and is a motivation for students to engage in the content knowledge of science.


: Mnemonic confabulation is an epistemic failure that involves memory error. In this paper, I examine an account of mnemonic confabulation offered by Sarah Robins in a number of works. In Robins' framework, mnemonic cognitive states in general (e.g., remembering, misremembering) are individuated by three conditions: existence of the target event, matching of the representation and the target event, and an appropriate causal connection between the target event and its representation. Robins argues that when these three conditions are not met, the cognitive state in question is an instance of mnemonic confabulation. Here, I argue that this is not true. There are mnemonic cognitive states which don't meet any of these conditions, and they are not cases of mnemonic confabulation. On a more positive note, I argue that mnemonic confabulation requires it to be a failing on behalf of either the subject or her mnemonic system that these conditions are not met.


The far ultraviolet cameras on board the IMAGE satellite images the aurora in three different spectral regions. One of the channels of the spectrographic imager SI12 observes the Doppler-shifted Lyman α emission of precipitating protons. It makes it possible to spectrally discriminate between the proton and electron FUV aurora and to globally map the energetic protons. Its response depends on the auroral Lyman α line shape which reflects the characteristics of the proton pitch angle and energy distributions. We illustrate the dependence of the SI12 count rate on the characteristic energy of the proton precipitation and the viewing geometry. Simultaneous in situ observations of the precipitated protons have been collected during a FAST satellite pass when IMAGE was observing the global north polar region. The premidnight region located at the equatorward boundary of the oval is dominated by proton precipitation with a mean energy Ē = 7 keV which is separated from the electron component. The prenoon crossing exhibits a softer proton energy spectrum with Ē = 0.9 keV. The measured proton energy distribution is used as an input to a Monte Carlo model to calculate the expected SI12 signal along the magnetic footprint of the satellite orbit. If the different spatial resolution of the two types of measurements is accounted for, a good quantitative agreement is found with the IMAGE observations. Similarly, ion flux measurements collected on board the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Fl5 satellite during an overflight in the postmidnight sector provide good agreement with the SI12 observations at the footprint aurora. The comparisons confirm the reliability of the FUV IMAGE cameras to remotely discriminate between the electron and the proton precipitations. The vertical emission rate profiles of the N2 Lyman-Birge-Hopfield and OI(1356A) emissions are calculated in the proton-dominated premidnight region. It is shown that the protons and the electrons produce FUV emissions with contributions peaking at different altitudes. Excitation by secondary electrons dominates the production of both emissions.


Abstract The conclusions of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) following the peer review of the initial risk assessments carried out by the competent authorities of the rapporteur Member State, Estonia, and co‐rapporteur Member State, France, for the pesticide active substance Streptomyces strain K61 are reported. The context of the peer review was that required by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 844/2012, as amended by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 2018/1659. The conclusions were reached on the basis of the evaluation of the representative use of Streptomyces strain K61 as a fungicide on fruiting vegetables, leafy vegetables, bulb vegetables, pulses, ornamentals, aromatic herbs and root crops, onions and seedlings, in permanent greenhouses and walk‐in tunnels. The reliable end points, appropriate for use in regulatory risk assessment, are presented. Missing information identified as being required by the regulatory framework is listed. Concerns are identified.


Abstract We examine the validity of two methods for estimating glacier equilibrium-line altitudes (ELAs) from topographic maps. The ELA determined by contour inflection (the kinematic ELA) and the mean elevation of the glacier correlate extremely well with the ELA determined from mass-balance data (observed ELA). However, the range in glacier elevations above sea level is much larger than the variation in ELA, making this correlation unhelpful. The data were normalized and a reasonable correlation (r 2 = 0.59) was found between observed and kinematic ELA.The average of the normalized kinematic ELAs was consistently located down-glacier from the observed ELA, consistent with theory. The normalized mean elevation of the glacier exhibited no correlation and suggests that the toe–headwall altitude ratio is not a good approximation for the ELA. Kinematic waves had no effect on the position of the kinematic ELA. Therefore, topographic maps of glacier surfaces can be used to infer the position of the ELA and provide a method for estimating past ELAs from historic topographic maps.


Scene understanding is a prerequisite to many high level tasks for any automated intelligent machine operating in real world environments. Recent attempts with supervised learning have shown promise in this direction but also highlighted the need for enormous quantity of supervised data- performance increases in proportion to the amount of data used. However, this quickly becomes prohibitive when considering the manual labour needed to collect such data. In this work, we focus our attention on depth based semantic per-pixel labelling as a scene understanding problem and show the potential of computer graphics to generate virtually unlimited labelled data from synthetic 3D scenes. By carefully synthesizing training data with appropriate noise models we show comparable performance to state-of-the-art RGBD systems on NYUv2 dataset despite using only depth data as input and set a benchmark on depth-based segmentation on SUN RGB-D dataset.


This study focuses on journalists Paul Lewis (The Guardian) and Ravi Somaiya (The New York Times), the most frequently mentioned national and international journalists on Twitter during the 2011 UK summer riots. Both actively tweeted throughout the four-day riot period and this article highlights how they used Twitter as a reporting tool. It discusses a series of Twitter conventions in detail, including the use of links, the taking and sharing of images, the sharing of mainstream media content and the use of hashtags. The article offers an in-depth overview of methods for studying Twitter, reflecting critically on commonly used data collection strategies, offering possible alternatives as well as highlighting the possibilities for combining different methodological approaches. Finally, the article makes a series of suggestions for further research into the use of Twitter by professional journalists.


A novel, low-cost optical measurement system has been designed for biomedical applications such as immunoassays. The system comprises a rapid-prototyped ABS plastic housing, 500 nm LED source, 530 nm UV filter, and 540 nm silicon photodiode receiver with a custom-built high gain precision amplifier. The sensor system has been designed to measure the fluorescence of different bioliquids in a standard glass test-tube. In addition, a small disc magnet can be inserted to enhanced signal-to-noise in liquids containing fluorophore-labelled magnetic beads. Our preliminary results show that the baseline optical signal depends weakly on the refractive index of the liquid and more strongly on its opaqueness. Removing this baseline signal permits the measurement of FTIC solutions down to concentrations of about 100 nMol. In addition, the insertion of the magnet was found to enhance significantly the optical signal in translucent liquids with low bead concentrations but, interesting, not in opaque ones. We believe that this low-cost (less than 150) optical immunoassay sensor has potential applications such as detecting progesterone and bacteria levels in milk, water, saliva, urine, and blood.


In The Life and Afterlives of Hanabusa Itchō, Miriam Wattles reveals many facets of a forgotten artist of the Edo period. Infamous for being exiled, in later generations he became a symbol for a subtly subversive potential for art.


Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, has historically been read as a "timeless" allegory dramatizing the fundamental conflict between the "good" and "evil" elements of human nature. More recent readings of the novel, however, have put forth historicized interpretations of the text emphasizing its engagements with the cultural developments of late-nineteenth-century Britain. This article builds upon these historicized readings, arguing that Stevenson's novella is reflective of the anxieties engendered by current theories of evolutionary degeneration and, more specifically, its manifestations in illicit behaviour, especially in the areas of alcohol consumption and sexual expression. Stevenson's novel actively critiques those cultural sites most vocal in articulating such anxieties, namely the temperance and social purity movements of the later nineteenth century. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thus deploys a language of (in)temperance to interrogate the potentially destructive results of an evolutionary model which posits the subject as already split between his or her civilized (moral) and barbaric (immoral) selves.


Density functional theory (DFT) calculations are performed on a series of peripherally substituted free-base and fluorinated zinc phthalocyanines, namely FnPcM (M = 2H, Zn; n = 16, 32, 48, 64). F16PcM, F32PcM, and F48PcM all prefer a planar skeletal structure of the metallomacrocycle core. In the case of F64Pc, F64PcZn remains planar but F64PcH2 is domed. The occurrence of a dome distortion appears to be related, at least in part, to the orientation of the isopropyl -C3F7 substituents as well as to the intermolecular (packing) interactions. The trends in the calculated results of the Pc2-–M2+ binding energy, polarizabilities, and electron excitation energies in H16PcM, F16PcM, and F64PcM are in agreement with the experimental observations, as are the geometrical features. It is further confirmed that the simpler F32PcM or F48PcM mimic the basic electronic properties of F64PcM.


Growth in the first post-reform decade in Latin America has been disappointing, largely because of a severe slowdown after 1995 in the countries in South America. Per capita income grew at only .9% per year between 1995 and 1999 compared to 2.7% for 1950-80 and 1.5% for the nineties as a whole. What has gone wrong? The paper finds that neither falling investment, volatile capital inflows nor the implementation of structural reforms is the problem. Indeed relative growth performance across countries is positively related to the amount of reform they adopted. Instead the problem seems to relate to a significant reduction in the growth rate of exports since 1997. Mexico, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic did well, but every country in South America has suffered a reduction in exports with the exception of Colombia where they were constant. Partly that is because the countries that are the main markets for Latin exports are not growing as fast as they were, but South America is also losing market share in those countries. The basic assumption of the new reform growth model is that exports will be a significant engine of growth. It does not seem to be working out that way for South America. It is not clear what the cause of the export slowdown is, but no export-led growth strategy is going to work if it cannot produce an export growth rate higher than 2.3% per year.


ABSTRACT Classroom assessment has always been an indispensable and integral part of any curriculum. In particular, assessment plays the role of reporting students' learning summatively (assessment of learning), providing diagnostic and formative information for teachers to inform their instruction (assessment for learning); more recently, Earl (2013) proposed the notion of assessment as learning, which puts students at the center of assessment. Students in this assessment paradigm act as critical connecters between assessment and learning through self-reflection and self-regulation. The first section of this article reconceptualizes summative and formative assessments into three assessment paradigms: assessment of, for, and as learning through incorporating Serafini's assessment models and Habermas's three human interests. In so doing, our understanding of the three paradigms is consolidated and enriched to encompass not only the pedagogical implications but also their philosophical and epistemological underpinnings. The second section of the article focuses on one particular kind of assessment method commonly used in language classrooms, which is written feedback. I summarize and categorize recent written feedback research with reference to the three assessment paradigms and suggest directions for future research.


The position of non-EU migrants in social security is problematic. Many European states reduce access to social benefits for categories of migrants whose presence is not desired. At the same time the scope of application of the national systems is becoming more confined to the national borders, as, for example, countries take measures to reduce the exportability of benefits. These two trends of exclusion and retrenchment particularly affect irregular immigrants and persons moving between Europe and developing countries who are not protected by any bilateral social security agreements. The background of these trends can be traced back to the way social security interacts with immigration and civic integration policies. This book addresses this interaction and contains contributions on the social security position of irregular migrants, on the reception of asylum seekers, on income requirements in immigration law, on civic integration, on informal social security protection of formally excluded migrants and on social protection and voluntary return. These separate contributions lead to an overall analysis on the position of excluded migrants. Knowing that the exclusion of certain immigrants from social security is legitimate from the point of view of national policies or even from the point of view of the logics of social security itself, what alternative strategies can be developed in order to give protection to excluded migrants without undermining these policies and logics?


We present estimates of the Fresnel zone diameter for the axial magma chamber lens along the southern and northern East Pacific Rise and compare them to the magma lens widths derived from migrated seismic sections. The mean values of that diameter are 996m and 1052m and the mean values of the magma lens width are 680m and 1056m respectively. Most individual estimates of the magma lens width fall below the Fresnel zone diameter. Similar results are presented for three other mid‐ocean ridges. The registered signal is therefore a mix of responses from the magma sill and the encasing rock and lateral resolution is not achieved. We conclude that data analysis procedures that assume a laterally homogeneous Earth, cannot provide reliable estimates of the magma lens physical properties, including whether it is liquid or not.


The project took the form of a survey conducted in
Littleover School, Derby by means of a series of
questionnaires answered by a whole year group in Years
4 and and nine months after leaving school. It
examines the value of the School's Careers Education
Programme in helping pupils to make considered choices
with regard to courses, careers decisions and Further
and Higher Education, by asking pupils about their job
ideas and knowledge, sources of information, reasons for
subject choices, ambitions, expectations for the future,
expected examination results, first experiences of work
and opinions regarding the School's careers guidance
provision.
The results are examined in the light of the developmental
theories of careers choice, being the theories upon which
Careers Education Programmes are based, and sociological
findings concerning the overriding influences of social
class and outside-school environment. It was possible
to trace the progression/stability of their career ideas
and, by comparing a school-banding analysis with a socioeconomic
analysis on the basis of four housing zones, to
draw some conclusions regarding the School's influence
compared with socio-economic factors. A comparison of
girls' and boys 'attitudes, aspirations and jobs/further
training was also made on the same basis, incorporating
information regarding those pupils who entered the
6th Form. Additionally, relationships between school
attitudes and performance, types of jobs and attitudes
to work were also explored, in order to identify ways in
which the facilities could be improved and used more
effectively.
The final part deals with the changes that have occurred
in the labour market since the years of the survey and
the response to those changes to be found in the Careers
Education curriculum of the School.


This paper proposes a method to solve multi-objective problems using improved Particle Swarm Optimization. We propose leader particles which guide other particles inside the problem domain. Two techniques are suggested for selection and deletion of such particles to improve the optimal solutions. The first one is based on the mean of the m optimal particles and the second one is based on appointing a leader particle for any n founded particles. We used an intensity criterion to delete the particles in both techniques. The proposed techniques were evaluated based on three standard tests in multi-objective evolutionary optimization problems. The evaluation criterion in this paper is the number of particles in the optimal-Pareto set, error, and uniformity. The results show that the proposed method searches more number of optimal particles with higher intensity and less error in comparison with basic MOPSO and SIGMA and CMPSO and NSGA-II and microGA and PAES and can be used as proper techniques to solve multi-objective optimization problems.


Abstract The CABRI facility is an experimental pulse nuclear reactor funded by the French Nuclear Safety and Radioprotection Institute and operated by the French Atomic Energy Commission. It is designed to study the behavior of fuel rods at high burnup under reactivity-initiated accident (RIA) conditions, such as a control rod ejection. The distinctive feature of this reactor is its reactivity injection system. The fast depressurization into a discharge tank of 3He (strong neutron absorber) previously introduced inside 96 tubes (so-called transient rods) located among the fuel rods allows us to create a power burst from 100 kW to 20 GW with a full-width at half-maximum of 10 to 80 ms. The total energy deposit in the tested rod is adjusted by dropping the control and safety rods after the power transient. The neutron flux is measured online by compensated boron chambers located outside the reactor and operated in the current mode. These neutron detectors are calibrated during a commissioning phase thanks to standards given by a conventional heat balance. To assess the energy released into the test rod, we had to integrate the driver core power signal measured online. Thus, the beginning of the transient, called transient overpower (TOP) onset, has to be estimated. The TOP onset of a transient test is defined as the instant of the beginning of the test. It is determined by experimentalists during the processing phase. It corresponds to the beginning of the increase of the neutron detector signal, measured by the compensated boron chamber devices sufficiently sensitive at low current levels. So far, the choice of this instant has been realized by a visual choice zooming in the zone of interest, which may induce some shift according to experimentalists. In an attempt to overcome this issue, we put forward in this paper a theoretical method of determination to calculate the TOP onset. The main asset of the method is to formalize the TOP onset determination. Furthermore, it provides the possibility of associating an uncertainty, which is impossible by the manual process. The methodology relies on the fact that at the beginning of the RIA transient, the neutron flux at any point of the reactor core undergoes an exponential evolution as a function of the time. Then, a logarithmic transform allows us to show that the search for the TOP onset is equivalent to solving a nonlinear regression. The methodology has been validated in the last 14 experiments. Moreover, the reactor restarted in October 2015 and now gives us the opportunity to apply this methodology on signals recently acquired and pertaining to the power commissioning phase with a view to preparing the experiment foreseen next year.


Hypothetical Datalog is based on an intuitionistic semantics rather than on a classical logic semantics, and embedded implications are allowed in rule bodies. While the usual implication (i.e., the neck of a Horn clause) stands for inferring facts, an embedded implication plays the role of assuming its premise for deriving its consequence. A former work introduced both a formal framework and a goal-oriented tabled implementation, allowing negation in rule bodies. While in that work positive assumptions for both facts and rules can occur in the premise, negative assumptions are not allowed. In this work, we cover this subject by introducing a new concept: a restricted predicate, which allows negative assumptions by pruning the usual semantics of a predicate. This new setting has been implemented in the deductive system DES.


Preparing a multi-purpose lexicon requires a systematic analysis of inter-conceptual relations. These relations are of two types, namely (i) syntactic and (ii) semantic, which can further be decomposed to capture the greater explanatory adequacy. But the exploration of the lexical structure becomes intricate because of the hidden dynamics of the context; since traditionally, language has been viewed as a totality of lexicon and computation system, and major emphasis has been given to the designing of the computational system, considering the designing of the lexicon internal domain ontology as a mere metaphysical game, when in reality it is a serious epistemic concern, because of having the capacity of licensing inferences. Therefore a lexical level representation should have enough scope to incorporate the contextual information.

Designing domain ontology is important since it tells us about the conceptual constellation within the coherent whole of which the related terms are meaningful. Isolating a term from the corresponding constellation will results into the evaporation of meaning. Furthermore it provides the basis, upon which the entire linguistic structure rests. If so, then how is it possible to construct a lexicon, by divorcing the ontological issues? And at the same time, ontology by itself is not enough, again because of the reason that the higher order typifications of those (grounded) concepts and their corresponding interrelations among the types ultimately results into the consequent super-ordinating levels, containing the syntactic information pertinent to a symbol manipulating system.

In this paper I would show that the representation of a lexical structure, should include both kind of information which are pertinent to the closed class and as well as the open class semantics, on the basis of examples, cited from English and Bengali.


This thesis endeavours to establish the facts concerning the life of
the abbe Lenglet, based on archival, manuscript and printed evidence:
his socio-economic background, his chequered 'political' career, his
abortive attempts at integration into the church establishment, his
many clashes with the royal administration and the resulting numerous
periods of imprisonment. It shows how books were, from the early years,
a major preoccupation in his life, whether as librarian and book-trader,
or bibliographer, editor and author.
Having failed to secure a living through either state or church, the
abbe's publishing activities became the principle, though never the
sole preoccupation of his life. A documented study of the redaction
and publication of each of Lenglet's works and editions, and the public
response which greeted them, is complemented by a detailed analytical
bibliography which adds to our understanding of the material conditions
pertaining to the dissemination of ideas in the first half of the
eighteenth century.
The thesis concludes that the abbe Lenglet's character was deeply
marked by inconsistency, dishonesty and cynicism, and that these traits
seriously affected the quality of his work. But, at the same time,
he was an erudite and enterprising bibliographer, and he had a bold,
consistently critical, and sometimes original mind. Thanks to these
latter qualities, coupled with an often foolhardy disregara for
authority, he wrote or edited a number of important and influential
works. In this he was actively helped and encouraged by more 'respectable'
scholars, members of the robe class and close to the royal
administration, who would not themselves risk any open association
with the publication of 'subversive' material; their atttiude to the
abbe was highly ambiguous. He was also responsible for popularising,
sometimes in a regrettably adulterated form, the works of greater
writers. Though he lacked the ability of a major original author,
he nonetheless made a significant contribution to the literature of
the period. Moreover, the study of such a secondary figure adds a
new, and perhaps indispensable dimension to our understanding of the
social and intellectual climate of the eighteenth century.


The basic design concepts of the neo-traditional development (NTD) come from western countries. Little is done to localise these design concepts according to vernacular Middle Eastern urbanism. This paper attempts to link the historical studies to the urban form and the new design approaches based on the traditional urbanism of Iran. The organisation/area of neighbourhoods/neighbourhood units, the walking distances/structure of the neighbourhood unit centres (NUCs) are investigated. The case-study cities are Yazd and Kashan as examples of sustainable societies. The conclusions can be used in new Middle Eastern development plans with similar cultural/religious/climatic conditions as the centre of Iran.


This paper deals with analysis of image Enhancement and background detection used in Mathematical Morphological [MM]. In this paper, Low intensity images have been processed through Block Analysis and Morphological Transformation. Basically, Weber"s Law Operator is used to analyze Low intensity images which are carried out by two methods such as Image background detection by block analysis while second operator utilize opening by reconstruction to define multi background notion. Basic Morphological Transformations are like Erosion, Dilation, Compound operation such as Opening by reconstruction, closing by Reconstruction and Block Analysis is used to detect the background of images. Analysis of above mention methods illustrated through the processing of images with filtering techniques along with different dark background images.


"Nonclinical Study Contracting and Monitoring: A Practical Guide" offers a systematic and straightforward handbook for obtaining high quality preclinical Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) studies. This book is full of real-world examples, processes, procedures, useful templates, checklists and sample reports to provide readers with a better understanding of exactly what happens during all stages of a GLP study and the critical aspects of GLP study design and conduct. Designed for both the novice and experienced scientist, this book covers the GLP regulations and how they impact preclinical studies, the differences between GLP, non-GLP and peer-reviewed studies, preclinical GLP study design, laboratory selection, contracts and business ethics, how to obtain test material for the study, animal sourcing and release for study, preparation of a draft report and much more. By illustrating the overall big picture and tying it together with the individual steps, this book is an essential resource to help scientists ensure a high quality GLP study that passes both scientific and regulatory scrutiny. It includes both the "big picture" look at complex processes, such as contracting toxicology and safety studies with CROs, as well as a detailed account of each individual step. It contains several real world examples of problems in preclinical studies to provide you with an idea of the types of challenges that are routinely encountered and how this book can help you avoid these issues. It provides monitoring checklists through the book that will help you comply with each GLP requirement and maintain compliance throughout the entire process. Both entry level and experienced scientists involved in nonclinical toxicology study monitoring will benefit from the ideas, examples, discussions and strategies presented throughout this book.


One of the fi rst movements of early modern humans out of Africa occurred 130–100 thousand years ago (ka), when they migrated northward to the Levant region. The climatic conditions that accompanied this migration are still under debate. Using high-precision multicollector– inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS) U-Th methods, we dated carbonate cave deposits (speleothems) from the central and southern Negev Desert of Israel, located at the northeastern margin of the Saharan-Arabian Desert. Speleothems grow only when rainwater enters the unsaturated zone, and this study reveals that a major cluster of wet episodes (the last recorded in the area) occurred between 140 and 110 ka. This episodic wet period coincided with increased monsoonal precipitation in the southern parts of the SaharanArabian Desert. The disappearance at this time of the desert barrier between central Africa and the Levant, and particularly in the Sinai-Negev land bridge between Africa and Asia, would have created a climatic "window" for early modern human dispersion to the Levant.


Through the timely response of the Owner, the potential failure of Douglas Dam was averted, and lives and property downstream were protected. The economic losses created by loss of irrigation water from the reservoir and damage to an irrigation canal structure downstream were also prevented. The Owner, upon noting seepage, immediately contacted his Consulting Engineer and the State Engineer. With the consultant's assistance and the cooperation of the State Engineer, the Owner made temporary emergency repairs. The long-term repairs followed, including remediating a seep that developed in the dam near the outlet structure, and upgrading the capacity of the spillway as recommended by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Owner elected to remove and replace the embankment above the base of the outlet structure while leaving the outlet structure in place. The remedial measures also included constructing a soil-bentonite slurry wall along the upstream toe and replacing the embankment with a compacted fill. A chimney/blanket drain was installed in the downstream slope. The repair was designed such that the slurry wall or chimney/blanket drain could be extended in the future if needed. The source of seepage was identified during construction as a portion of an old outlet structure which was replaced but never completely removed. The following presents a history of the project and the actions taken to mitigate seepage in the embankment, both for the emergency response and long-term repairs made to the dam.


As a developer, you are aware of the increasing concern amongst developers and site architects that websites be able to handle the vast number of visitors that flood the Internet on a daily basis. Scalable Internet Architecture addresses these concerns by teaching you both good and bad design methodologies for building new sites and how to scale existing websites to robust, high-availability websites. Primarily example-based, the book discusses major topics in web architectural design, presenting existing solutions and how they work. Technology budget tight? This book will work for you, too, as it introduces new and innovative concepts to solving traditionally expensive problems without a large technology budget. Using open source and proprietary examples, you will be engaged in best practice design methodologies for building new sites, as well as appropriately scaling both growing and shrinking sites. Website development help has arrived in the form of Scalable Internet Architecture.


In this paper we explore the ways in which institutions and networks influence entrepreneurial development in Russia. By utilizing new Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data collected in 2001, we investigate the effects of the weak institutional environment in Russia in terms of three dimensions: on the rate of productive entrepreneurial activity measured in terms of start-ups and existing business owners; on the characteristics of business owners; and on business financing. In addition, the analysis explores the effectiveness of Russia's informal networks for circumventing the weak institutional environment for business development. Our results indicate that Russia's business owners share many of the same characteristics as business owners in advanced western countries, though education is not associated with entrepreneurial activity. However, the main differences are in the sources of financing and the fact that relatively few individuals engage in productive entrepreneurial activity. Our results support the notion of the limited effectiveness of Russia's networks for supporting entrepreneurial activity in its weak institutional environment.


The needs of hospitalized male patients are often unrecognized and unmet. Men occupy greater than half of all inpatient hospital beds and incur a broad array of illnesses and injuries at higher rates than women—yet often receive health care that pays surprisingly little attention to the concept of patient masculinity, or to masculinity's influence on the male patient's perspectives, behaviors, goals, interests, needs, and challenges. Little emphasis is placed on considering hospitalized male patients as men, understanding their need for patient-centered care within this context, and intervening in ways that regularly allow strengths to be adequately recognized and utilized. In this article, we explore how hospital social workers can reconsider masculinity as a vibrant and formative component of male patients' lives and actively view its characteristics as comprising more than just potential challenges to medical treatment—but also as untapped sources of resilience and strength.


One of the greatest proximate threats facing biodiversity is habitat change as a result of the combined effects of agricultural development and livestock grazing. Extensive livestock systems are increasingly competing with wildlife for access to land and natural resources in African rangelands. Ethiopia has the highest numbers of livestock in Africa with most livestock production taking place in highland systems. The Bale Mountains contain the largest extent of afroalpine habitat in Africa and are the most important conservation area in Ethiopia as one of thirty-four Conservation International Biodiversity Hotspots. The Bale Mountains National Park was established forty years ago to protect the endemic, and rodent-specialist Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) and the afroalpine habitats upon which they depend.
I use a 21 year time-series of livestock counts in the park to detect changes in the Oromo traditional livestock production system or godantu. I show that a seasonal transhumant livestock production regime, akin to godantu, only appears to persist in the Web valley today and I also find some evidence that the type of livestock is changing with smaller stock, such as sheep and goats, being more frequently kept. Despite reportedly growing numbers of households in the Web valley, I do not detect an overall increase in livestock numbers, suggesting that the area may have reached its carrying capacity in terms of livestock. In contrast, the number of livestock on the Sanetti Plateau increased over the monitoring period, including the remote and inhospitable western section of the plateau. Furthermore, I detect an increase in the risk of contact and disease transmission between Ethiopian wolves and free-roaming dogs in wolf optimal habitats. I subsequently estimate, through the use of transects, the densities of livestock in the Web valley, Morebawa and Sanetti and calculate the ratio of observed to maximum sustainable livestock density (based on rainfall and vegetation productivity). The conservative results suggest that the Web valley and Morebawa are overstocked given the rangeland predicted productivity for those areas, and that the problem of overstocking is at its worst during the dry season.
I then establish critical relationships between vegetation conditions, livestock grazing pressure and rodent populations (Tachyoryctes macrocephalus, Lophuromys melanonyx and Arvicanthis blicki) in the afroalpine, under both natural and controlled experimental conditions. Rodent biomass declines as the livestock index increases along a natural grazing gradient, but rodents" body condition, use of the habitat or breeding ecology and most vegetation variables measured do not significantly vary across the livestock grazing gradient. Rodent populations do respond to the experimental removal of livestock inside exclosures, although this response is site and species-specific, and I find some evidence that these responses are concurrent with changes in the vegetation. Grazed plots have higher plant species richness and diversity compared to the exclosure sites which harbour reduced bareground cover and taller vegetation. Differences among rodent species in their responses to grazing may be mediated by interaction between the direct effects of grazing on habitat quality and species-specific habitat requirements, although the specific mechanism of this interaction could not be tested. Livestock may negatively affect rodents by increasing their predation risk (through removing vegetation cover), by reducing the soil suitability for maintaining burrow systems (through trampling) or, less likely, by competing for food resources.
A series of simple dynamic food chain models are developed to explore the interactions between Ethiopian wolves, rodents and vegetation and how they may be affected by increasing levels of livestock grazing. I also explore how predictions made about these trophic dynamics are affected by the type of functional response linking the different levels. The models suggest that the pastures of the Web valley and Morebawa are likely to be incapable of maintaining wolves at current livestock densities, while the Sanetti plateau may be able to sustain only slight increases in livestock density before tipping into a trophic configuration unable to sustain wolves. This model is a first step in assessing the seriousness of conflict between pastoralists and wildlife in BMNP.
Resource selection functions are developed and validated for cattle and sheep/goats grazing in the Bale afroalpine in an attempt to understand some of the drivers behind the heterogeneous use of the landscape by livestock. Habitat use by livestock is focused on lower-lying pastures in the vicinity of water sources (rivers or mineral springs). Only cattle strongly select for/against particular vegetation types. The probability of habitat use is also linked to the distance from the nearest villages. The models developed highlight a strong association between livestock use and rodent biomass in Morebawa and Eastern Sanetti, suggesting that livestock grazing poses a threat to Ethiopian wolves" persistence in marginal habitats in which rodent availability is already limited. Furthermore, the concentration of livestock around water sources has serious implications for the degradation of the park"s hydrological system and the livelihoods and food security of the millions of people living in the dependent lowlands. Integrating research and practice is a fundamental challenge for conservation. I discuss how the methodological tools developed and the insights gained into the dynamics of the afroalpine system can contribute to the management of livestock grazing pressure in Bale Mountains National Park and highlight gaps in the knowledge of the afroalpine ecosystem where more research is needed.


The global increase in asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and other pulmonary diseases has stimulated interest in preclinical rat models of pulmonary disease. Imaging methods for study of these models is particularly appealing since the results can be readily translated to the clinical setting. Comprehensive understanding of lung function can be achieved by performing registered pulmonary ventilation and perfusion imaging studies in the same animal. While ventilation imaging has been addressed for small animals, quantitative pulmonary perfusion imaging has not been feasible until recently, with our proposed technique for quantitative perfusion imaging using multiple contrast‐agent injections and a view‐sharing radial imaging technique. Here, we combine the method with registered ventilation imaging using hyperpolarized 3He in an airway obstruction rodent model. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive quantitative assessment of lung function in small animals at high spatial resolution. Standard deviation of the log (V/Q) is used as a quantitative biomarker to differentiate heterogeneity between the control and treatment group. The estimated value of the biomarker lies within the normal range of values reported in the literature. The biomarker that was extracted using the imaging technique described in this work showed statistically significant differences between the control rats and those with airway obstruction. Magn Reson Med, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Sensing is a fundamental function in wireless sensor networks. Researchers have built WSN platforms with a wide spectrum of sensors, ranging from simple thermostats to micro power impulse radars. Traditional signal processing algorithms, however, often prove too complex for energy-and-cost-effective WSN nodes. In this work, we propose a distributed approach for event classification in wireless sensor networks. This approach is based on the assumption that events to be detected can be characterized by a set of features where each can be measured by a specific kind of sensors. The paradigm is composed of two phases: a training phase and a classification phase. In the training phase, for each event type E and a feature F, a set of values is determined. Then, in each node with a sensor corresponding to a feature F we maintain a 2-dimensional array where columns represent event types and rows represent the divisions in the readings' range of the corresponding sensor. In the classification phase, the network detects and classifies events in a distributed fashion using a voting-like technique in which individual nodes contribute to the classification. Our algorithms are validated through extensive simulations and analysis.


The product of a unique collaboration between a pioneering earth scientist and an award winning science writer, "Fixing Climate" takes an unconventional approach to the vitally important issue of global warming. Wallace S. Broecker, a long time researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, warned about the possible consequences of global warming decades before the concept entered popular consciousness. Hooked on climate studies since his student days, he has learned, largely through his own findings, that climate changes - naturally, dramatically, and rarely benignly.He also knows from experience that when mankind pushes nature as we are currently doing by dumping some sixty to seventy million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day, climate will change even more dramatically and less benignly. As Broecker points out, if a well-meaning fairy godmother were to turn us all into energy saving paragons at the stroke of midnight tonight, the resulting reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide might lessen but could not turn aside the great warming tide now headed our way. There is, nonetheless, a glimmer of hope in the development of new technologies that are directed not only at the reduction of carbon dioxide output but also at its harmless disposal. Told by skilled science journalist Robert Kunzig, "Fixing Climate" is a timely and informative story that makes for riveting reading.


The ability of subjects to identify and reproduce brief temporal intervals is influenced by many factors; stimulus-, task- or subject-based. The current study examines the role the individual's personality has upon their perception of short durations, and their metacognition of that percept. Undergraduate subjects (n=120) completed the OLIFE schizotypal personality questionnaire prior to performing a modified temporal-bisection task. In the task, subjects responded to two identical instantiations of a 4deg diameter sinusoidal grating, presented 4deg above fixation for 1.5secs in a rectangular temporal-envelope. They initiated presentation with a button-press, and released the button when they considered the stimulus to be half-way through (750msecs). Subjects were then asked to indicate their 'most accurate estimate' of the two intervals and given feedback for the latter half of the trials. The stimuli were either static or drifted, blocked into 100 stimulus pairs. From a group perspective there was a significant order effect whereby the first interval appeared to be shorter (and closer to veridical) than the second, although this effect reduced to insignificance when stimuli were drifted. Subjects had insight into their own performance, indicated by a reduced variance for the 'best estimate' compared to the 'worst' of the two; this difference increased with feedback. In terms of personality, the positive-psychotic subscales of the OLIFE were correlated with a reduced confidence in performance, but no actual performance difference, and a reduced ability to use feedback. Negative subscales only correlated with an increased ability to use the drift to improve performance. These data are explained in terms of an increased level of noise with increasing positive schizotypy having an effect upon precision rather than accuracy in the decision process. In a greater context, these data are also consistent with a fully-dimensional view of psychosis. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Starting from the working hypothesis that specific chemical labelling may be an attractive approach to detect and study G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) we synthesized catalytically active antagonists of the neuropeptide Y1 receptor (Y1R). An argininamide-type Y1R antagonist scaffold was combined with a DMAP moiety via spacers of different length and chemical nature. These hybrid compounds have Y1R affinities in the two-digit nanomolar range and are capable of catalysing acyl-transfer reaction to surrogates of bionucleophiles, as demonstrated in the absence of cells by using esters of fluorescent dyes as substrates in buffer. By contrast, selective staining of Y1Rs on living MCF-7 cells was not achieved due to significant non-catalysed (Y1R ligand independent) reaction with biomolecules and the limited density of Y1R on the cell surface. Although this may also depend on insufficient selectivity of the staining reagents, the results of this study suggest that the general applicability of catalytic staining to GPCRs has to be reconsidered, as this approach is hampered by a very low portion of receptor of interest compared to the total amount of membrane proteins.


The problem to interpolate Hermite-type data (i.e. two points with attached tangent vectors) with elastic curves of prescribed tension is known to have multiple solutions. A method is presented that finds all solutions of length not exceeding one period of its curvature function. The algorithm is based on algebraic relations between discrete curvature information which allow to transform the problem into a univariate one. The method operates with curves that by construction partially interpolat~ the given data. Hereby the objective function of the problem is drastically simplified. A bound on the maximum curvature value is established that provides an interval containing all solutions.


ABSTRACT We consider the problem of learning a conditional Gaussian graphical model in the presence of latent variables. Building on recent advances in this field, we suggest a method that decomposes the parameters of a conditional Markov random field into the sum of a sparse and a low-rank matrix. We derive convergence bounds for this estimator and show that it is well-behaved in the high-dimensional regime as well as "sparsistent" (i.e., capable of recovering the graph structure). We then show how proximal gradient algorithms and semi-definite programming techniques can be employed to fit the model to thousands of variables. Through extensive simulations, we illustrate the conditions required for identifiability and show that there is a wide range of situations in which this model performs significantly better than its counterparts, for example, by accommodating more latent variables. Finally, the suggested method is applied to two datasets comprising individual level data on genetic variants and metabolites levels. We show our results replicate better than alternative approaches and show enriched biological signal. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.


Palm oil production could be key in solving rising food costs Summary: After many years of flat-lining, world food prices rose dramatically in the last years of the first decade of the twenty-first century. This applies to all the major world foodstuffs and the impact has been felt especially by the poor. Increases in the world's population and improvements in living standards are likely to put further pressure on food prices in coming decades. An important potential solution to this problem is efficient, large-scale plantation agriculture which is feasible for crops such as soya, palm oil and sugar. Such agricultural practices often come under attack from NGO's. In recent decades there has been a stark contrast between the failure of plantation agriculture in Africa and the success in Asia – especially in Malaysia and Indonesia. Half a century ago Nigeria was the world's largest exporter of palm oil whereas today it is the world's 24th largest producer. In Malaysia, however, responding to strong market demand, the cultivation of oil palm trees rose from 46.2 per cent of all cultivated land in 1990 to 77.4 per cent by 2009. Nearly three-quarters of oil palm estates in Malaysia are privately owned. The palm oil industry in Malaysia has a good record with regard to sustainability. Large agribusinesses are able to access capital for long-term investment and they finance a wide variety of environmental schemes. Whilst the state does not adopt an entirely non-interventionist approach, the basic preconditions for developing a successful business economy in this field exist in some Asian countries: property rights are reasonably well defined, as well as enforced, and the rule of law broadly prevails. Currently, palm oil productivity in Nigeria is about one third of the global average and 80 per cent of all production is via smallholders. Yet, there are indications that the Nigerian government is freeing up land ownership rules and opening up the agricultural sector to foreign investors. There are also positive developments in other African countries. Since 2008, governments across the equatorial region of sub-Saharan Africa have awarded concessions totalling 1.5 million hectares for commercial oil plantations. Meanwhile, investors are looking to negotiate a further 1.3 million hectares for oil palm cultivation. Wilmar, Asia's largest agribusiness and the world's largest processor of palm oil by volume, announced in august 2012 that it was prepared to invest substantial sums in Africa as a means of meeting global demand. Wilmar has acquired 50,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in Ivory Coast, Uganda and Ghana. It has also now commenced a programme to develop palm oil plantations in Nigeria. These developments are not entirely free from inappropriate government intervention but they do represent progress. Where there is government intervention in agriculture, it should be supportive of private business rather than directing it. In particular, it is important that business can work in a stable legal environment with well-established property rights in the relevant forest areas so that long-term investment can take place. The pace at which we may witness a renaissance in the West African agricultural sector will hinge on the willingness and ability to tackle the present barriers to efficient production. In Nigeria, this means tackling corruption and unwieldy bureaucracy as well as ensuring that property rights are observed.


Local government councils (LGC) rely on a number of funding sources including state and federal governments as well as their community constituents to enable them to provide a range of public services. Given the constraints on these funding sources councils need to have in place a range of strategies and policies capable of providing good governance and must appropriately discharge their financial accountabilities. To assist LGC with meeting their governance and accountability obligations they often seek guidance from their key stakeholders. For example, in the Australian State of New South Wales (NSW), the Office of Local Government has developed a set of guidelines, the Internal Audit Guidelines. In 2010 the NSW Office of Local Government issued revised guidelines emphasising that an internal audit committee is an essential component of good governance. In addition, the guidelines explained that to improve the governance and accountability of the councils, these committees should be composed of a majority of independent members. To maintain committee independence the guidelines indicated that the Mayor should not be a member of the committee. However these are only guidelines, not legislated requirements and as such compliance with the guidelines, before they were revised, has been demonstrated to be quite low (Jones & Bowrey 2013). This study, based on a review of NSW Local Government Councils' 2012/2013 reports, including Annual Reports and associated disclosures, assesses the level of compliance with the 2010 revised guidelines, specifically in relation to internal
audit committees, to determine if the guidelines are effective in improving local government council governance.


Bit errors occur in wireless communication when interference or noise overcomes the coded and modulated transmission. Current wireless protocols may use forward error correction (FEC) to correct some small number of bit errors, but generally retransmit the whole packet if the FEC is insufficient. We observe that current wireless mesh network protocols retransmit a number of packets and that most of these retransmissions end up sending bits that have already been received multiple times, wasting network capacity. To overcome this inefficiency, we develop, implement, and evaluate a partial packet recovery (PPR) system.
 PPR incorporates two new ideas: (1) SoftPHY, an expanded physical layer (PHY) interface that provides PHY-independent hints to higher layers about the PHY's confidence in each bit it decodes, and (2) a postamble scheme to recover data even when a packet preamble is corrupted and not decodable at the receiver.
 Finally, we present PP-ARQ, an asynchronous link-layer ARQ protocol built on PPR that allows a receiver to compactly encode a request for retransmission of only those bits in a packet that are likely in error. Our experimental results from a 31-node Zigbee (802.15.4) testbed that includes Telos motes with 2.4 GHz Chipcon radios and GNU Radio nodes implementing the 802.15.4 standard show that PP-ARQ increases end-to-end capacity by a factor of 2x under moderate load.


Abstract The nature and mineralogy of mixed Al and Fe(III) gels (initial Fe/Al molar ratios (Ri) of 1.0 and 2.5) formed at pH values ranging from 4.0 to 10.0, both in the presence and absence of citric acid (citrate/Fe + Al molar ratio (Rcit) of 0.01 and 0.1) and aged for a long period at room temperature and at 50°C have been studied. The complexes showed considerable differences in the mineralogy of the precipitation products. The samples formed at Ri = 1.0 contained ferrihydrite at pH 4.0, ferrihydrite + gibbsite at pH 5.0-7.0, and hematite + Al(OH)3 polymorphs + ferrihydrite at pH 9.0-10.0. The samples formed at Ri = 2.5 had greater quantities of poorly crystallized ferrihydrite. Large amounts of Fe+Al (25-82%) were solubilized from the samples aged for 60 days at 50°C by ammonium oxalate. The addition of increasing concentrations of citrate to the gel suspensions containing equimolar amounts of Fe and Al strongly inhibited the formation of Al(OH)3 polymorphs both at pH 5.0 or 8.5 by promoting the formation of short-range ordered materials. Citrate added initially to Fe-Al solutions (R*cit = 0.1) completely inhibited formation of crystals even after 135 days at 50°C.


Entrepreuners in the optics industry generally need to focus their talent, capital and mindshare on specific technologies and products. In many cases, this is driven by the choice of wavelengths that the business would need to focus on. This talk discusses drivers, challenges and case studies for SWIR applications in various industrial arenas.


Title of Document: THE MODERATING EFFECT OF AN INDIVIDUAL'S ROMANTIC ATTACHMENT STYLE ON INTENT TO LEAVE A HETEROSEXUAL CLINCAL COUPLE RELATIONSHIP IN WHICH HE OR SHE IS THE VICTIM OF EMOTIONAL ABUSE Mark J. Treimel, Master of Science, 2006 Directed By: Professor Sandra Hofferth Family Studies Department This study examined the impact of emotional abuse on an individual's steps taken toward leaving a relationship and how individuals with different styles of attachment to a romantic partner differed with regard to taking such steps. Analyses of participant responses on the Multi-dimensional Emotional Abuse Scale (MDEAS), the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ), and the Marital Status Inventory-Revised (MSIR) were conducted using analysis of variance. It was determined that abuse and being female were significantly associated with taking greater steps toward relationship dissolution. Finally, the interaction between abuse and attachment in steps taken toward leaving was significant among women, but not among men. Although attachment was associated with steps taken toward leaving an abusive relationship was significant for women, differences between attachment styles were not consistent with the hypotheses. THE MODERATING EFFECT OF AN INDIVIDUAL'S ROMANTIC ATTACHMENT STYLE ON INTENT TO LEAVE A RELATIONSHIP IN WHICH HE OR SHE IS THE VICTIM OF EMOTIONAL ABUSE IN HETEROSEXUAL CLINICAL COUPLES


The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has led to over 910,000 deaths worldwide and unprecedented decimation of the global economy. Despite its tremendous impact, the origin of SARS-CoV-2 has remained mysterious and controversial. The natural origin theory, although widely accepted, lacks substantial support. The alternative theory that the virus may have come from a research laboratory is, however, strictly censored on peer-reviewed scientific journals. Nonetheless, SARS-CoV-2 shows biological characteristics that are inconsistent with a naturally occurring, zoonotic virus. In this report, we describe the genomic, structural, medical, and literature evidence, which, when considered together, strongly contradicts the natural origin theory. The evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 should be a laboratory product created by using bat coronaviruses ZC45 and/or ZXC21 as a template and/or backbone. Building upon the evidence, we further postulate a synthetic route for SARS-CoV-2, demonstrating that the laboratory-creation of this coronavirus is convenient and can be accomplished in approximately six months. Our work emphasizes the need for an independent investigation into the relevant research laboratories. It also argues for a critical look into certain recently published data, which, albeit problematic, was used to support and claim a natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. From a public health perspective, these actions are necessary as knowledge of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and of how the virus entered the human population are of pivotal importance in the fundamental control of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as in preventing similar, future pandemics.


Typhoons are an inevitable and frequently occurring natural hazard in Taiwan which cause severe economic damage and loss of life. The common practice for flood-mitigation planning and design uses univariate frequency analysis. However, separate univariate analysis cannot reveal the significant relationship among correlated variables. This study therefore employs copulas to construct the joint distribution of rainfall depth and duration for typhoon data. Using copulas to construct a multivariate distribution means that the effects of marginal variables can be separated from that of dependent variables. We derive the depth-duration-frequency (DDF) formula based on using copulas to represent the joint distribution of rainfall depth and duration. Typhoon data recorded at the Kaohsiung Weather Station located in southern Taiwan are used as an example to illustrate the proposed methodology. The marginal distributions for rainfall depth and duration are fitted as the three-parameter gamma and Gumbel distributions, respectively. The Plackett copula is selected to construct the DDF curves. The DDF allows rainfall depth for a specific rainfall duration and return period to be estimated. This DDF formula improves the understanding of complex hydrologic processes and enhances the design safety criterion of hydraulic structures.


This contribution critically reflects on my project Travelling the Archive (2015-2016). Commissioned by Atlas Arts, the project is a collaboration between artist, archivist and a local history society from the village of Kyleakin on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. At the project's heart is a collection of 35mm Kodachrome slides taken from 1959 to 1973 by an English tourist, Joan Wilcock (1895-1994). She was a frequent visitor to the Island with 'snap-shot' photographs of her in Kyleakin, dating from the 1930s.

In 2008, over 400 of her slides were gifted to the Highland Council Archive. Other than the date on the slide mount, contextual information was minimal. Landscapes, fishing boats and ferries appeared among many unidentified portraits of local people, especially children. When the Kyleakin Local History Society first viewed the collection in 2010-11, not only did they find family, friends, and neighbours, but also their younger selves.

The Joan Wilcock collection therefore presents challenges to both archivist and artist. The archive comes to 'own' donated material where photographed subjects are still living. Alongside ethical questions (ownership, permissions, consent), the presence of local voices trouble artistic appropriation of the Wilcock images and the definitions of the 'found' and 'vernacular' photograph so popular within contemporary art practice (Langford, 2008). The processes of identification - from people to place -bring specific memories, narratives and histories: in short, a particular community gives meaning to the Wilcock collection. However, such local people are not simply 'context providers' for the collection (Pollen, 2016). How they look at the images, and what they have to say about them, is important. Details within images, easily overlooked by outsiders, hold significant meanings that move between the past to the present (Kuhn, 2007; MacDonald, 2015). Narratives also move from the personal to a collective portrait of a once tight-knit community (Cohen, 1985) that has significantly altered since Miss Wilcock visited. Once the gateway to Skye, Kyleakin experienced a dramatic change to its way of life when its ferry service ceased to operate with the 1995 opening of the Skye Bridge. Other 'vernacular' photographs from personal albums and private collections, along with the Wilcock collection, consequently all play their part in mediating personal and shared memories.

I will demonstrate how travelling with this photographic archive is to encounter memories, identities and lived experiences belonging to others. It also asks what is the role of the contemporary artist when 'vernacular' photography reminds a present-day community how 'we are social history' (Macdougall, in conversation with Bird, 2015).


Nature tends to inspire research in chemistry. Systems that emerge from molecules interacting via reaction networks is something that life has mastered over the course of evolution in order to produce complexity. Dynamic reactions are key in systems chemistry, where reaction networks give rise to complex, emergent behavior. This thesis aims to harness a special feature of selected dynamic reaction systems – responsiveness. The first chapter of this thesis introduces dynamic covalent chemistry and a general approach to create simple reaction networks by connecting dynamic covalent reactions. Concepts in systems chemistry are introduced in terms of network topology, responsiveness and non-equilibrium processes, while drawing parallels to natural systems. The second chapter explores the potential of the nitroaldol reaction for dynamic systems. Nitroaldol reactions are demonstrated for dynamic polymerization as well as formaldehyde-responsive breakdown of dynamic polymers. The simultaneous formation and breakdown of polymers create emergent nonequilibrium behavior. Furthermore, nitroaldol produced-diols are used in boronate ester formation. This reactivity produces interdependence over two reactions. Combining nitroaldol and boronate building blocks enabled boronate dynamers of different topology. The third chapter explores metal coordination effects in dynamic reaction networks. Novel base-free nitroaldol reactivity is exploited in reaction networks with hemiacetals. A systemic response to metals is demonstrated by hemiacetalmetal coordination. In the second half of the chapter, a biomimetic dynamic imine complex is shown to produce emergent, π-π-interactions resembling a "draw-bridge". Variation of metal charge, effective electrostatic character of substituent and ligands gives control over the system and its emergent π-πinteractions.


Photoinduced intermolecular proton-transfer processes from N , N -dimethyl-3-arylpropan-1-ammonium chloride salts (ArCl, with aryl as 1-pyrenyl, 9-anthryl, and 2-naphtyl) to a solvent molecule have been investigated by steady-state and dynamic spectroscopic methods. The intermolecular proton-transfers are coupled either to the formation of an exciplex or to a solvent-separated ion pair in what we have termed a 'proton-coupled charge-transfer reaction'. A range of solvents has been observed to mediate both the ground-state conformations of the ArCl and the extent of electron transfer. Unlike typical photoacids, in which through-bond interactions control photoacidity, through-space charge-transfer interactions are responsible in the excited singlet states of the ArCl. Transient absorption experiments reveal a range of electronic comportments in the excited-states of the ArCl. Excited-state p K _a values of −3.4, 1.3, and −3.3 in THF were calculated using a Förster-like approach for the 1-pyrenyl, 9-anthryl, and 2-naphthyl salts, respectively. The observed rate of proton-transfer was found to be independent of the thermodynamic driving force and the short-term reversibility of these reactions has been approximated. The data suggest how other systems may be designed to facilitate this novel process.


Distinguishing malignant mesotheliomas from benign mesothelial proliferations on hematoxylin and eosin-stained sections can be extremely challenging. Various immunohistochemical stains have been suggested to help in making this distinction, but all are controversial. Recently, IMP3 (insulin-like growth factor II mRNA binding protein 3) and GLUT-1 (glucose transporter protein 1) have been proposed as immunohistochemical markers that are positive in mesotheliomas but not in benign proliferations. We evaluated the performance of these markers on a tissue microarray containing 30 malignant mesotheliomas and 48 benign thoracic or abdominal mesothelial proliferations. IMP3 was positive in 53% of malignant and 27% of benign cases (P=0.03), whereas GLUT-1 was positive in 60% of malignant and 13% of benign cases (P=0.0003). Forty-three percent of malignant cases, but only 4% of benign cases, were positive for both IMP3 and GLUT-1 (P=0.00003). We conclude that, statistically, both IMP3 and GLUT-1 are more frequently positive in malignant compared with benign mesothelial processes; however, the frequency of positive staining in benign cases is too high to allow their diagnostic use as single stains. The combination of both markers may be of greater diagnostic value, but this hypothesis should be confirmed in further studies.