Imagine placing a receiver at any location in the earth and recording the response at that location to sources on the surface. In such a world, we could place receivers around our reservoir to better image the reservoir and understand its properties. Realistically, this is not a feasible approach for understanding the subsurface. We have developed an alternative and realizable approach to obtain the response of a buried virtual receiver for sources at the surface. Our method is capable of retrieving the Green's function for a virtual point in the subsurface to the acquisition surface. In our case, a physical receiver is not required at the subsurface point; instead, we require the reflection measurements for sources and receivers at the surface of the earth and a macromodel of the velocity (no small-scale details of the model are necessary). We can interpret the retrieved Green's function as the response to sources at the surface for a virtual receiver in the subsurface. We obtain this Green's function by solving the Marchenko equation, an integral equation pertinent to inverse scattering problems. Our derivation of the Marchenko equation for the Green's function retrieval takes into account the free-surface reflections present in the reflection response (previous work considered a response without free-surface multiples). We decompose the Marchenko equation into up- and downgoing fields and solve for these fields iteratively. The retrieved Green's function not only includes primaries and internal multiples as do previous methods, but it also includes freesurface multiples. We use these up- and downgoing fields to obtain a 2D image of our area of interest, in this case, below a synclinal structure.


Sustainable development involves multiple discourses and practices at multiple levels in society, in which there are competing and conflicting formulations of what constitutes 'sustainability.' Sustainability involves struggles around definitions and priorities, among those maintaining or gaining influence, struggles set within a pluricentric society in which interests are often in competition at a time of rapid globalization, conflicts over diminishing resources, and rising risk factors. These struggles trickle down into policies, regulations, taxes – and designs – which embody particular discourses, ideals and priorities, implying profound changes to how we live and how we live together. Sustainable development, on a variety of levels, is and essentially, a matter of the political.

Design is increasingly taking on roles in sustainable development – and, thus, in its politics. At the macropolitical level, design may be commissioned for the UN Environment Program, a Green Party, or grassroots political action; by companies implementing corporate social responsibility, product developers applying environmental certification standards, or cities implementing Rio Local Agenda programs. Micropolitical roles of design, the focus here, involve instituting discourses and practices of sustainability deeply in the everyday life of consumers and citizens. Embedded in the intimate spaces and embodied routines of everyday life, design mediates access to and control over resources, and it shapes how people identify and comply with particular ideals and ways of living.

Here, I evoke two general areas in which the design role is growing – 'sustainable consumption' and 'sustainable communities'. In these roles, design is engaged in mediating how and by whom resources are accessed and controlled, and which or whose interests are made visible in sustainable development. In reducing domestic energy consumption and steering sustainable processes in communities, profound changes to the social organization of everyday life are at stake. Just as sustainable development is a political matter, so is design.


The renal vascular effects of prostaglandin Ej (PGEj), 6-keto-PCE, and PGL were investigated in indomethacin-pretreated rats. These prostanoids were infused directly into the left renal artery at rates ranging from 0.01 to 1.0 /ig/min, while renal blood flow and mean arterial blood pressure were constantly monitored. PGE, 6-keto-PCEi, and PGIj produced reductions in mean arterial blood pressure with threshold doses of 1.0, 0.3, and 0.03;ig/min (P < 0.01), respectively, and maximal vasodepressor responses of 18.9 % 4.3, 37.0 % 7.8, and 58.7 % 8.2 mm Hg (P < 0.01), respectively. In addition, all three prostanoids caused a dose-related reduction in renal vascular resistance with a threshold dose of 0.01 /xg/min (P < 0.05). The maximal reductions in renal vascular resistance were 2.59 % 0.52, 4.41 % 1.20, and 5.29 % 1.06 mm Hg/(ml per min) for PGEj, 6-keto- PGEi, and PGI2 (P < 0.01), respectively. Whereas PGE2 and 6-keto-PGEi produced dose-dependent increases in renal blood flow (maximal increases of 1.5 % 0.3 and 1.0 % 0.3 ml/min, respectively (P < 0.01), PGI2 nonsignificantly increased renal blood flow at low doses and decreased renal blood flow at higher infusion rates (P < 0.01). These data indicate that the in vivo rat kidney, similar to the kidneys of other species, is vasodilated by low doses of PGE2, PGI2, and 6-keto-PGEi.


Purified human C9 spontaneously polymerizes upon prolonged incubation at 37 degrees C, and a fraction of these C9 polymers becomes resistant to dissociation by sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and reducing agents. We examined possible mechanisms for this spontaneous covalent linking of C9. The following results are consistent with the conclusion that the formation of the covalently linked C9 polymer involves disulfide linking. 1) In addition to the SDS/dithiothreitol (DTT)-resistant C9 polymer (Mr = 950,000), disulfide-linked C9 dimers and trimers were formed upon incubation of C9 at 37 degrees C for 64 h. 2) The C9 polymer formed upon incubation at 37 degrees C for 64 h was resistant to dissociation by 6 M guanidine hydrochloride, 20 mM DTT but was dissociated by 6 M guanidine thiocyanate alone, yielding disulfide-linked C9 oligomers. 3) The formation of the SDS/DTT-resistant C9 polymer was completely inhibited by 1 mM iodoacetamide and 5,5'-dithiobis-(2-nitrobenzoic acid) (DTNB), while DTNB enhanced the formation of disulfide-linked C9 oligomers. 4) A significant amount of free sulfhydryl group was detected in the polymerized C9 samples with various SH-specific reagents, though native C9 reacted with none of these reagents. In addition, inhibition by 1 mM iodoacetamide of C9 disulfide linking inhibited the self-association of C9 as analyzed by gel filtration on TSK-G4000 SW, whereas enhancement by 1mM DTNB of C9 disulfide linking enhanced C9 self-association. Thus, these results indicate that C9 disulfide linking that occurs upon C9 polymerization is an intrinsic property of C9 which is of importance in the formation of the stable C9 polymer structure.


Abstract Background: Various exercises have been proposed to mitigate chronic low back pain (LBP). However, to date, no one particular exercise has been shown to be superior. Hence, the aim of this study was to compare the efficiency between 2 exercises: the individualized graded lumbar stabilization exercise (IGLSE) and walking exercise (WE). Methods: A randomized controlled trial was conducted in 48 participants with chronic LBP. After screening, participants were randomized to 1 of 4 groups: flexibility exercise, WE, stabilization exercise (SE), and stabilization with WE (SWE) groups. Participants underwent each exercise for 6 weeks. The primary outcome was visual analog scale (VAS) of LBP during rest and physical activity. Secondary outcomes were as follows: VAS of radiating pain measured during rest and physical activity; frequency of medication use (number of times/day); Oswestry disability index; Beck depression inventory; endurances of specific posture; and strength of lumbar extensor muscles. Results: LBP during physical activity was significantly decreased in all 4 groups. Exercise frequency was significantly increased in the SE and WE groups; exercise time was significantly increased in the SE group. The endurance of supine, side lying, and prone posture were significantly improved in the WE and SWE groups. Conclusions: Lumbar SE and WE can be recommended for patients with chronic LBP because they not only relieve back pain but also prevent chronic back pain through improving muscle endurance.


Abstract. Rewetting of long-term drained fens often results in the formation of eutrophic shallow lakes with an average water depth of less than 1 m. This is accompanied by a fast vegetation shift from cultivated grasses via submerged hydrophytes to helophytes. As a result of rapid plant dying and decomposition, these systems are highly dynamic wetlands characterised by a high mobilisation of nutrients and elevated emissions of CO2 and CH4. However, the impact of specific plant species on these phenomena is not clear. Therefore we investigated the CO2 and CH4 production due to the subaqueous decomposition of shoot biomass of five selected plant species which represent different rewetting stages (Phalaris arundinacea, Ceratophyllum demersum, Typha latifolia, Phragmites australis and Carex riparia) during a 154 day mesocosm study. Beside continuous gas flux measurements, we performed bulk chemical analysis of plant tissue, including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and plant polymer dynamics. Plant-specific mass losses after 154 days ranged from 25% (P. australis) to 64% (C. demersum). Substantial differences were found for the CH4 production with highest values from decomposing C. demersum (0.4 g CH4 kg−1 dry mass day) that were about 70 times higher than CH4 production from C. riparia. Thus, we found a strong divergence between mass loss of the litter and methane production during decomposition. If C. demersum as a hydrophyte is included in the statistical analysis solely nutrient contents (nitrogen and phosphorus) explain varying greenhouse gas production of the different plant species while lignin and polyphenols demonstrate no significant impact at all. Taking data of annual biomass production as important carbon source for methanogens into account, high CH4 emissions can be expected to last several decades as long as inundated and nutrient-rich conditions prevail. Different restoration measures like water level control, biomass extraction and top soil removal are discussed in the context of mitigation of CH4 emissions from rewetted fens.


With increasing capability and complexity of surgical interventions, intra-operative visualization is becoming an important part of a surgical environment. This paper reviews some of our recent progress in the intelligent use of pre- and intra-operative data for enhanced surgical navigation and motion compensated visualization. High fidelity augmented reality (AR) with enhanced 3D depth perception is proposed to provide effective surgical guidance. To cater for large scale tissue deformation, real-time depth recovery based on stereo disparity and eye gaze tracking is introduced. This allows the development of motion compensated visualization for improved visual perception and for facilitating motion adaptive AR displays. The discussion of the paper is focused on how to ensure perceptual fidelity of AR and the need for real-time tissue deformation recovery and modeling, as well as the importance of incorporating human perceptual factors in surgical displays.


The tenth to the thirteenth centuries in Europe saw the appearance of popular heresy and the establishment of the Inquisition, the expropriation and mass murder of Jews, and the propagation of elaborate measures to segregate lepers from the healthy and curtail their civil rights. These were traditionally seen as distinct and separate developments, and explained in terms of the problems which their victims presented to medieval society. In this stimulating book, first published in 1987 and now widely regarded as a a classic in medieval history, R. I. Moore argues that the coincidences in the treatment of these and other minority groups cannot be explained independently, and that all are part of a pattern of persecution which now appeared for the first time to make Europe become, as it has remained, a persecuting society.

In this new edition, R. I. Moore updates and extends his original argument with a new, final chapter, "A Persecuting Society". Here and in a new preface and critical bibliography, he considers the impact of a generation's research and refines his conception of the "persecuting society" accordingly, addressing criticisms of the first edition.


ABSTRACT. On farm production of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi is suitable for vegetable and horticultural crop production because the inocula may be efficiently mixed into horticultural potting media for plant production in the greenhouse. These inocula are not amenable for use in row crop production because they are not in a form suitable for mechanical application. Experiments were conducted in which light expanded clay aggregates (LECA) and pelletized biochar were used in the media for the on-farm production of AM fungus inoculum utilizing compost and vermiculite with Paspalum notatum Flugge as the nurse host plant. Subsequent colonization assays using P. notatum failed to detect any infectivity of LECA granules, indicating that the AM fungi did not infest the granules. However, as little as 0.1 g fresh wt of biochar was sufficient to produce colonization of test plants. Biochar pellets recovered from the on-farm system used to propagate Rhizophagus intraradices exhibited 24 propagules g−1 fresh wt. These results indicate the promise of pelletized biochar as a carrier for AM fungi in inoculum production systems.


Visual capability introduced to Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) render many novel applications that would otherwise be infeasible. However, unlike legacy WSNs which are commercially deployed in applications, visual sensor networks create additional research problems that delays the real-world implementations. Conveying real-time video streams over resource constrained sensor hardware remains to be a challenging task. As a remedy, we propose a fairness-based approach to enhance the event reporting and detection performance of the Video Surveillance Sensor Networks. Instead of achieving fairness only for flows or for nodes as investigated in the literature, we concentrate on the whole application requirement. Accordingly, our Event-Based Fairness (EBF) scheme aims at fair resource allocation for the application level messaging units called events. We identify the crucial network-wide resources as the in-queue processing turn of the frames and the channel access opportunities of the nodes. We show that fair treatment of events, as opposed to regular flow of frames, results in enhanced performance in terms of the number of frames reported per event and the reporting latency. EBF is a robust mechanism that can be used as a stand-alone or as a complementary method to other possible performance enhancement methods for video sensor networks implemented at other communication layers.


Small groups of participants acting as mock juries heard an audiotape of the summing up arguments in a fatigue-related truck-crash court case. When asked to decide if they thought that the defendant was guilty, participants found the defendant not guilty significantly more often than guilty. Furthermore, their decision of guilt was not affected by whether the defendant was an individual or a corporation. Issues that participants thought important when coming to their decision were the awareness of sleepiness by the defendant and communication that the driver had with others earlier in the day prior to the crash. On average, when asked to allocate penalties, participants gave an average of half the maximum penalty to the defendant. Coupled with the low conviction rate, and the content of the discussions captured when the groups were coming to their decisions, this study suggests that the seriousness of driver fatigue is under-recognised by the general public.


Motivated by the aging trend, much effort is being invested into implementing ICT (Information and Communications Technology)-enabled systems to provide a better quality of life and support the independent living of older people. As a result, many systems, often labeled as eHealth or AAL (Ambient/Active Assisted Living), were developed over the years. In creating such systems, which very often serve various needs, different architectures have emerged. This work focuses on analyzing and comparing the work and architectures from seven (six of which are in progress) EU-funded healthcare projects, with a total budget of 126MEUR in which we participate. After establishing the theoretical foundation by defining core concepts, we give a brief background on architectures in eHealth and AAL. We elaborate on the chosen analysis method based on three established healthcare and AAL taxonomies we identified by performing a literature survey and the selected Reference Architecture Model (RAM). Since there is no standard way of describing architectures in the eHealth and AAL domain, we conducted the online survey during August and September 2020 and identified CREATE-IoT 3D RAM as the most appropriate option. We present a classification of selected projects based on established taxonomies and map projects' architectures to CREATE-IoT 3D RAM, which we also propose as standard RAM for future digital healthcare and AAL projects. During our analysis, we identify the most common types of assistance: communication support, reminders, monitoring, and guidance to address health and communication issues. We conclude that proper ecosystems are critical for lowering entry barriers and facilitating sustainable solutions for smart and healthy living.


INTRODUCTION Of the bottom material collected by the Snellius-Expedition 78 samples contained Foraminifera. Many of these samples were extremely small, since they were gathered by means of piston core samplers; some were larger, as they were collected by means of a dredge; others were samples in shallow water at beaches or reefs. A l l samples were fixed in formaldehyde, so that after the 40 years they remained in store before they were studied, rests of protoplasma were seldom preserved. The numerous plankton samples, preserved in formaldehyde or in alcohol, did note contain planktonic Foraminifera; obviously the small amount of CaC03 in the samples caused the dissolution of the tests. The planktonic Foraminifera are not described here, as planktonic forms of the Pacific Ocean were already studied by Parker (1962) and by Todd (1965). Planktonic specimens from several of the localities are preserved in cardboard slides, but, as they do not belong to the bottom fauna, they were not considered ecologically. Several slides are preserved containing the planktonic fauna of a sample as a whole.


The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law has designed this manual for people who want to draft campaign finance reform legislation that is both appropriate for their community and sensitive to constitutional concerns. Because different laws may be appropriate in different states and localities, the handbook will not tell you what provisions to include in legislation you draft. In our view, people with ties to communities interested in reform are in the best position to determine what legislation is needed and achievable. We therefore do not provide model laws here, but we do identify organizations that can provide such models. Rather than providing a blueprint for reform, we offer practical suggestions and legal analysis that will assist reformers in selecting and drafting appropriate campaign finance provisions. The handbook certainly should help drafters who wish to maximize the potential for avoiding a lawsuit or succeeding in court if their legislation is challenged, so that campaign finance reform can be implemented expeditiously. The manual also should be of use to activists who aim to push the envelope of permissible reform by drafting statutes or initiatives that can serve as the basis for test cases. Both groups of drafters must understand the state of current law to accomplish their purpose. We focus primarily on the drafting of statutes or initiatives that will govern state elections. Our recommendations and analysis also apply, however, to local campaign finance laws. Special issues that must be faced when attempting to regulate municipal campaign finance are addressed briefly in the Epilogue. Please note that this document was up to date as of December 2010. It has not been updated in light of the Supreme Court's 2011 decision about public financing triggers, Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC (a.k.a. McComish v. Bennett).


Many strands are woven into the ideas and work of Jeffrey Gray. From a background of classical languages and a spell in military intelligence spent honing skills in languages and typing, he took two BA degrees (in modern languages and psychology) at Oxford University. He then trained as a clinical psychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry (IOP), London, capping this with a PhD on the sources of emotional behaviour.


Sara Ahmed is a feminist philosopher specializing in how the cultural politics of language use and discourse mediate social and embodied encounters with difference. She has published field-shaping contributions to queer and feminist theory, critical race and postcolonial theory, affect and emotion studies, and phenomenology. Since the publication of Differences that Matter: Feminist Theory and Postmodernism in 1998, her work has epitomized the value of contemporary feminist cultural studies to speak to and against the masculinist traditions of continental philosophy. Unequivocally inserting feminist politics into the rarified air of academic theory, it crosses the sexist boundary which corrals feminist thought into the category of "studies" while opposing it to male-authored philosophy—the latter automatically authorized to speak on the social and material "Real." In doing so, her work sits squarely within discourse-analytical traditions that seek to expose how various epistemic scenes – activism, the media, and academia, to name a few -- sediment false authority on such issues as happiness, utility, and the good. Moreover, in contesting New Materialism's search for some monist "matter" beneath experience, she traces how those linguistic moves impose insidiously singular concepts of what social "reality" is, and how it unfolds, for real people. As a field, communication studies concerns itself centrally with matters of social influence, scale, and power, such as the electoral effects of political speech, or the ability of a message to morph as it reaches new audiences. Turning a critical eye upon the (re)production of cultural norms and social structure through interpersonal and institutional encounters, Ahmed's oeuvre explores the discursive logics and speech acts that sediment or transform the social meanings of race, gender, and other differences.


Fine‐grained, Ti‐poor titanomagnetite in the ~12.7 Ma Tiva Canyon (TC) Tuff systematically increases in grain size from superparamagnetic (SP) at the flow base to single domain (SD) at a few meters height. This allows us to examine the role of grain‐size variation on paleointensity, within the transition from SP to stable SD. We present magnetic properties from two previously unreported sections of the TC Tuff, as well as Thellier‐type paleointensity estimates from the lowermost ~7.0 m of the flow. Magnetic hysteresis, frequency‐dependent susceptibility, and thermomagnetic data show that sample grain‐size distribution is dominated by SP in the lower ~3.6 m, transitioning upwards to mostly stable SD. Paleointensity results are closely tied to stratigraphic height and to magnetic properties linked to domain state. SD samples have consistent absolute paleointensity values of 28.5 ± 1.94 μT (VADM of 51.3 ZAm2) and behaved ideally during paleointensity experiments. The samples including a significant SP fraction have consistently higher paleointensities and less ideal behavior but would likely pass many traditional quality‐control tests. We interpret the SD remanence to be a primary thermal remanent magnetization but discuss the possibility of a partial thermal‐chemical remanent magnetization if microcrystal growth continued at T < Tc and/or the section is affected by post‐emplacement vapor‐phase alteration. The link between paleointensity and domain state is stronger than correlations with water content or other evidence of alteration and suggests that the presence of a significant SP population may adversely impact paleointensity results, even in the presence of a stable SD fraction.


The genre of the intimate diary is a monophonic narration par excellence; nevertheless, it will be shown that even personal genres are not exempt from the presence of others. The purpose of the paper is to examine the occurrence of polyphonic marks based on some extract of young ladies' diaries collected and published by Lejeune. The analysis reaches the conclusion that others' words appear in the form of scriptural marks like quotation marks and metalinguistic comments which make it possible for the diarists to use and refuse at the same time any discourse borrowed from their social surroundings.


To clarify the photoprotective mechanisms of cotton leaves under water deficit in the field, leaf gas exchange, chlorophyll a fluorescence as well as the corresponding physiological responses were examined in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) to evaluate electron flux distribution. With increasing water deficit, net photosynthetic rate (Pn) significantly decreased, the total electron flux through PSII [Je(PSII)] gradually decreased and the fraction of electron flux required to sustain CO2 assimilation [Je(PCR)] markedly declined. Simultaneously, the ratio of quantum efficiency of PSII [Φ(PSII)] to the quantum efficiency of CO2 fixation [Φ(CO2)] increased, accompanied by an increase in the alternative electron flux (Ja). The enhanced alternative electron flux of O2-dependent Ja(O2-dependent) indicated that electrons had been transported to O2 in the Mehler-peroxide reaction (MPR) and that the remaining alternative electron flux Ja(O2-independent) had been used for nitrate reduction, as indicated by an increase in nitrate reductase (NR) and glutathinone reductase (GR) activities. In addition, mild water deficit increased the proportion of electron flux for the photorespiratory carbon oxidation [Je(PCO)]. Water deficit significantly increased surperoxide radical production rate (O2-•) and hydrogen peroxide content (H2O2), and the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), peroxidase (POD) and catalase (CAT) in cotton leaves also increased under water deficit. Therefore, the Mehler-peroxidation reaction, photorespiration and nitrate reduction helped to dissipated excess light energy, being important photoprotective mechanisms for adapting the photosynthetic apparatus to mild and moderate water deficit in cotton.


Badush Dam is a combined earthfill and concrete buttress dam; uncompleted, it is planned to be a protection dam downstream of Mosul Dam, which impounds the Tigris River. Mosul Dam is also an earthfill dam; it is the largest dam in Iraq. The safety of Mosul Dam is a matter of debate since its commissioning in 1986. This is attributed to the geological conditions at the dam site are not suitable due to thick exposures of karstified gypsum rocks, which extend, deep down, into the foundations. Therefore, Badush Dam was planned and designed to protect the population and present infrastructures downstream of Mosul Dam, if the latter would collapse. The geological conditions at Badush Dam site are similar to those at Mosul Dam site, which means; the foundations of the dam, are located on karstified gypsum beds also. Grouting works were planned and designed, and they were partly performed simultaneously with the beginning of the construction of Badush Dam in 1988 and continued until the suspension of the construction in 1991. The constructed parts attained about (30 – 40)% of the work items. The design of the Badush Dam indicates clearly the temporary nature of its use, which is reflected in the thin inclined clay core and other embankment details. The basic design considerations of the dam were to have a dam, which is high enough to contain the full volume of Mosul Dam wave of 10 X 10 9 m 3 when routed through its reservoir, and to limit at the same time the released discharge within the capacity across the downstream reach of the river without causing flooding. In this study, we have presented and discussed the geological and engineering geological conditions; whether Badush Dam can function as a protection dam or can it be remodeled to become a normal storage dam to replace Mosul Dam.


Carotid arteries from spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) exhibited an active tone when exposed to a physiological salt solution; that is, the tension decreased when nifedipine was added. To determine the possible role of Ca(2+)-activated K+ (KCa) channels in the resting state of these arteries, the effects of agents that interact with these channels on tension and 86Rb efflux were compared in endothelium-denuded strips of carotid arteries from SHR and normotensive Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY). The addition of charybdotoxin, a blocker of high-conductance KCa channels, to the resting strips produced a concentration-dependent contraction in SHR but not in WKY. In resting strips preloaded with 86Rb, the basal 86Rb efflux rate constant was significantly greater in SHR than in WKY. The addition of nifedipine to the resting strips decreased the basal 86Rb efflux rate constant only in SHR. The effect of nifedipine on tension and 86Rb efflux in 25.9 mM K(+)-contracted strips of WKY was comparable to the effect of this blocker in the resting strips of SHR. The basal 45Ca influx in resting strips of SHR was significantly increased when compared with WKY, and this increase in SHR was abolished by nifedipine. These results suggest that the transmembrane Ca2+ influx via L-type voltage-dependent Ca2+ channels was significantly increased in the resting state of carotid arteries from SHR and that the KCa channels were highly activated.


This study examined the effect of study habits on the academic performance among public Junior High Schools in Ekumfi District in the Central Region of Ghana. It adopted the Study Habits Inventory Theory postulated by Bakare (1977). The mixed sequential explanatory approach was followed in the conduct of the study where both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analysed. The multi-stage sampling procedure with the use of proportionate stratified random sampling and convenience sampling techniques were used to select 475 students' even though 380 were correctly filled and therefore used for the study. Structured questionnaire, semi-structured interview guide and checklist were used as instruments for data collection. With the aid of the Version 20 of the Statistical Product for Service Solution (SPSS), descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistical tools such independent sample t-test, one-way ANOVA and Multiple Regression were used to analyse the quantitative data whilst the thematic approach was used to analyse the qualitative data. The findings of the study revealed that study habits significantly accounted for 44% variance in students' academic performance. It further showed that reading and notetaking (β=0.605, p=0.000) and time management (β=0.133, p=0.001) made unique significant individual contribution to academic performance whilst the contribution of examination (β=0.011, p=0.830), homework and assignments (β=0.036, p=0.529), and concentration (β=..039, p=0.394) did not individually contribute significantly to academic performance. Besides, the study hypothesis disclosed that apart from gender and age, the circuit and form significantly impact on their academic performance. It was recommended that the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service should pay attention to study habits of students so as to heighten academic performance of students in Ekumfi District.


In finite populations, mutation limitation and genetic drift can hinder evolutionary diversification. We consider the evolution of a quantitative trait in an asexual population whose size can vary and depends explicitly on the trait. Previous work showed that evolutionary branching is certain ("deterministic branching") above a threshold population size, but uncertain ("stochastic branching") below it. Using the stationary distribution of the population's trait variance, we identify three qualitatively different sub-domains of "stochastic branching" and illustrate our results using a model of social evolution. We find that in very small populations, branching will almost never be observed; in intermediate populations, branching is intermittent, arising and disappearing over time; in larger populations, finally, branching is expected to occur and persist for substantial periods of time. Our study provides a clearer picture of the ecological conditions that facilitate the appearance and persistence of novel evolutionary lineages in the face of genetic drift.


Image Pyramids, as created during a reduction process of 2D image maps, are frequently used in porting non-local algorithms to graphics hardware. A Histogram pyramid (short: HistoPyramid), a special version of image pyramid, collects the number of active entries in a 2D image. We show how a HistoPyramid can be utilized as an implicit indexing data structure, allowing us to convert a sparse 3D volume into a point cloud entirely on the graphics hardware. In the generalized form, the algorithm reduces a highly sparse matrix with N elements to a list of its M active entries in O(N) + M (log N) steps, despite the restricted graphics hardware architecture. Our method can be used to deliver new and unusual visual effects, such as particle explosions of arbitrary geometry models. Beyond this, the algorithm is able to accelerate feature detection, pixel classification and binning, and enable high-speed sparse matrix compression.


Background Intestine plays a major role for the normal growth of the fetus during the prenatal period. The process of the embryonic development is not quantified histologically. Therefore the main aim of the study was to measure the thickness of all part of the wall of the small intestine that are mucosa, submucosa and muscularis externa and to look for the appearance of the Brunner's glands and Peyer's patches in the submucosa of duodenum and ileum. Methods The present study was carried out on 30 fetuses of gestational ages ranging from 11–36 weeks. Ten fetuses from each trimester were used in the study. Fetal small intestine were dissected carefully, and were separated as duodenum, jejunum & ileum and fixed in formalin solution. The tissue was processed for histology and then slides were stained with Haematoxylin and Eosin. The microscopic features were noted using light microscope. Results The thickness of the mucosa, submucosa and the muscularis externa was observed to be increased in first trimester, decreased in the second trimester and again increased in the third trimester, which could be because of the increase cell turnover and the arrangement of the collagen fibers as to support the mucosa and the muscularis externa. Conclusion Thus, the knowledge of the histogenesis and histomorphometry of the human fetal small intestine is crucial for the adult gastroenterologist to appreciate, because of the potential for these early life events to affect the responsiveness of the intestine to physiological or pathological challenges in later life.


As deep networks begin to be deployed as autonomous agents, the issue of how they can communicate with each other becomes important. Here, we train two deep nets from scratch to perform realistic referent identification through unsupervised emergent communication. We show that the largely interpretable emergent protocol allows the nets to successfully communicate even about object types they did not see at training time. The visual representations induced as a by-product of our training regime, moreover, show comparable quality, when re-used as generic visual features, to a recent self-supervised learning model. Our results provide concrete evidence of the viability of (interpretable) emergent deep net communication in a more realistic scenario than previously considered, as well as establishing an intriguing link between this field and self-supervised visual learning.


This thesis describes a new gallium nitride (GaN) based transistor technology for electronic switching applications. Conventional GaN based transistors are of the high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) type and are depletion mode devices. These are not suitable for switching applications since an extra DC supply
is required to bias the device in the cut-off (off-state) region and the devices are not fail-safe, i.e. incase of malfunction a short-circuit can exist between the main DC supply and ground. Enhancement mode (E-Mode) or normally-off devices
can overcome these limitations and if realized in the GaN material system would benefit from the good material properties that support large breakdown voltages and low On-resistances.
Fabrication of high performace E-mode GaN devices with low On-resistance and high breakdown voltage still remains a big challenge to date. In this thesis a new method for realizing enhancement mode aluminium gallium nitride - gallium nitride (AlGaN/GaN) devices using a localized gate-foot oxidation has been described. Thermal oxidation of the AlGaN barrier layer converts the top surface/part of this layer into aluminium oxide (Al2 O3 ) and gallium oxide (Ga2O3 ), which serve as a good gate dielectric and improve the gate leakage current by several orders of magnitude compared to a Schottky gate. The oxidation process
leaves a thinner AlGaN barrier which can result in normally o§ operation. Without special precaution, however, the oxidation of the AlGaN barrier is not uniform from the top but occurs at higher rates at the defect/dislocation sites. This makes it impossible to control the barrier thickness and so rendering the barrier useless.
To avoid the problem of non-uniform oxidation, a thin layer of aluminum is first deposited on the barrier layer and oxidized to form aluminium oxide on top. This additional oxide layer seems to ensure uniform oxidation of the AlGaN barrier layer
underneath on subsequent further oxidation. Results of the fabricated 2 um x 100 um AlGaN/GaN MOS-HEMTs with a partially oxidized barrier layer showed a threshold voltage of -0.5 V (compared to -3 V for a Schottky devive fabricated on the same epilayer structure) and a maximum drain current of 800mA/mm
at high gate bias of 5 V with very little current compression. The peak extrinsic transconductance of the device is 160 mS/mm at a drain-source voltage of 10 V with a very low specific On-resistance of 9:8 ohm.mm2 and an off-state breakdown voltage higher than 42 V. Capacitance-Voltage (C-V) measurements
of Al2O3 /AlGaN /GaN circular test metal-oxide-semiconductor structures were observed and measured. They exhibit no hysteresis, indicating the good quality of the thermally grown aluminium oxide for realizing AlGaN/GaN based E-Mode
devices for high frequency and high power applications.


Over the last two decades, there have been several longevity records of bats that have exceeded 20 years, mostly corresponding to Holarctic hibernating species. Whereas such data of tropical bats is still scarce. Here we report the first longevity record for the Gervais ́s funnel-eared bat, Nyctiellus lepidus (Gervais, 1837) (family Natalidae). We recaptured a male individual that had been banded 16.9 years previously in the same cave in Central Cuba. This species is endemic to Cuba (including Isla de la Juventud) and the Bahamas and is an obligate cave-dwelling bat. Weighing nearly 2 grams, N. Lepidus is one of the world's smallest bats. Based on longevity quotient (the ratio of observed to predicted longevity), we estimate that its lifespan is 3.9 times longer than expected for its body mass. This longevity record constitutes one of the longest in a non-hibernating insectivorous bat.


Latinos are already the largest minority group in the United States, and experts estimate that by 2050, one out of three Americans will identify as Latino. Though their population and influence are steadily rising, stereotypes and misconceptions about Latinos remain, from the assumption that they refuse to learn English to questions of just how "American" they actually are. By presenting thirteen riveting oral histories of young, first-generation college students, Mario T. Garcia counters those long-held stereotypes and expands our understanding of what he terms "the Latino Generation." By allowing these young people to share their stories and struggles, Garcia reveals that these students and children of immigrants will be critical players in the next chapter of our nation's history. Collected over several years, the "testimonios" follow the history of the speakers in thought-provoking ways, reminding us that members of the Latino Generation are not merely a demographic group but rather real individuals, as American in their aspirations and loyalty as the members of any other ethnic group in the country.


We investigate the persistence of real exchange rates using Bayesian methods. First, an algorithm for Bayesian estimation of nonlinear threshold models is developed. Unlike standard grid-based estimation, the Bayesian approach fully captures joint parameter uncertainty and uncertainty about complicated functions of the parameters, such as the half-life measure of persistence based on generalized impulse response functions. Second, model comparison is conducted via marginal likelihoods, which reflect the relative abilities of models to predict the data given prior beliefs about model parameters. This comparison is conducted for a range of linear and nonlinear models and provides a direct evaluation of the importance of nonlinear dynamics in modeling exchange rates. The marginal likelihoods also imply weights for a model-averaged measure of persistence. The empirical results for real exchange rate data from the G7 countries suggest general support for nonlinearity, with the strength of the evidence depending on which country pair is being considered. However, the model-averaged estimates of half-lives are almost always as small or smaller than for the linear models alone, suggesting that the purchasing power parity persistence puzzle is less of a puzzle than previously thought.


Metallothioneins are a family of low molecular weight, metal-binding proteins with an
unusually high cysteine content. The metallothionein I/II isoforms (hereafter referred to
as MT) have been demonstrated extensively in a number of studies to promote axonal
outgrowth of a variety of central nervous system (CNS) neurons, both in vivo and in
vitro, after traumatic injury. However, the precise mechanisms through which MT
interacts with injured neurons to promote their regeneration after injury remains largely
unknown. The goal of this thesis is to identify some of these molecular mechanisms in
both the injured CNS and peripheral nervous system (PNS).
The first part of this thesis aimed to identify how exogenous MT interacts with glia and
neurons in the CNS after traumatic injury using the in vivo focal needle-stick injury
model. It was found that injection of fluorescently labeled-MT (488-MT) into the injury
site led to a decrease in overall injury size compared to vehicle treatment (fluorescentunincorporated
dye, AlexaFluor-488). Histological analysis found that 488-MT was
present in both neurons as well as reactive microglia surrounding the injury site. The
internalization of 488-MT by cortical neurons suggests that the injected 488-MT might
interact directly upon injured neurons to promote regenerative axonal sprouting, which
would be in accordance with prior studies demonstrating that neuronal internalization is
required for MT to promote initial neurite outgrowth and elongation.
To identify the signaling pathway through which MT exerts its effect upon neurons, the
MT were co-injected with receptor-associated protein (RAP), an antagonist for megalin
(a recently identified receptor for MT) into the injured cortex using the same injury
model. The results demonstrated that the addition of RAP has blocked the effect of MT in promoting regenerative axonal sprouting after injury, thus confirming that MT acts
through LRP receptors-dependent pathways to exert its regenerative effect upon injured
cortical neurons.
The uptake of MT by microglia led to a further investigation into the direct effect of MT
on the microglial response after injury. In vivo data suggested that the injection of 488-
MT caused a morphological change in reactive microglia. There was also enhanced
physical association between reactive microglia and regeneratively spouting neurons.
Using a series of neuron-microglia co-culture and media exchange experiments, it was
found that MT could block the inhibitory effect of cytokine-activated microglia had upon
neurite outgrowth of cultured cortical neurons. Hence this demonstrates that MT might
potentially modulate the microglial response, which indirectly leads to improvement in
regenerative axonal sprouting after injury.
The second half of this thesis evaluated the potential role of MT in promoting nerve
regeneration in the PNS. The rationale for this study relates to recent reports that another
neuroprotective protein, transthyretin, can promote neurite outgrowth of dorsal root
ganglion (DRG) neurons via interaction with the megalin receptor (also a putative
receptor for MT). To investigate the effect of MT in promoting neurite regeneration in
the DRG neurons, MT was applied to DRG neuron cultures, which led to an
improvement in axonal sprouting after scratch injury. To investigate in further detail the
mechanism of action of this effect, a compartmentized in vitro injury model was
established, which allowed the precise and restricted application of MT to either the
axonal processes or neuronal soma immediately after axonal scratch injury. The length of
regenerative axonal sprouts was measured 24 hours after injury, and a 4-fold or 1.4-fold increase in regeneration was observed when MT was administered to either the soma or
axonal compartments respectively (fold change relative to vehicle-treated control).
Interestingly, this correlated with the expression of megalin, which was restricted
primarily to the neuronal soma, with very little megalin labeling observed in axons.
Finally, MT was found to promote DRG neuron regeneration via LRP- and MAPK-
(mitogen-activated protein kinase-)-dependent pathway.
Overall, this thesis has provided new insight to the field in understanding some of the
precise mechanisms through which MT promotes neural regeneration in both CNS and
PNS. It demonstrated that MT may potentially act directly upon microglia to modulate
the extracellular environment in response to brain injury, which may then facilitate
neuronal sprouting after injury in the CNS. This thesis also demonstrates that MT
promotes peripheral nerve regeneration after injury via a megalin and MAPK-dependent
mechanism.


This chapter proposes an objective approach to the formal analysis of literary prose in English in order to investigate the relation between lexical density and judgments of canonicity. Based on the concepts of literariness proposed by the Russian Formalists and lexical variety, a mathematical index is designed, relating three variables which take the materiality of text into consideration: (a) relative frequency of lexical bundles, (b) lexical bundle type/token ratio, and (c) word type/token ratio. The index is described and illustrated with 46 canonical and non-canonical literary works. Statistical analysis shows no significant relation between lexical richness and decisions of what has been classified as canonical, indicating that these judgments may be influenced by factors other than the text itself.


From the article:
Abstract
Since more and more business rules management solutions are utilized, organizations search for
guidance to design such solutions. Principles are often applied to guide the design of information
systems in general. Scientific research on principles for business rules management is limited. The
purpose of this paper is to specify, classify, and validate design principles that can be applied to guide
the design of a business rules management solution. We conducted a three round focus group and three
round Delphi Study, which led to the identification of 22 principles. These 22 principles can be clustered
into four categories: 1) deep structure principles, 2) physical structure principles, 3) surface structure
principles, and 4) organizational structure principles. Our results provide a framework for the design
and analysis of business rules management solutions.


This research considers a Customer Satisfaction Index approach and its relative benefits to the UK community. It is focussed on the service industries in both the public and private sectors. It looks at, and develops the measuring and modelling processes involved and employs a Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) methodology. The research critiques two of the leading methodologies currently available (Maximum Likelihood and Fixed Point Estimation) before selecting one from which to model the whole process. Throughout the research, three different structural models are considered. These vary in how the different latent variables are connected together, but are based around a core of specific latent variables, which together make up a customer's total buying experience. Two of the models considered were by other authors, while the third (Sheffield Model) was a direct development of this research. The data has been collected by the means of a questionnaire. Over the life of the research a generic questionnaire has been developed to produce a tool that is focused on the specific issues that the model requires for it to operate. The final part of the research contemplates how a company can use the results of the index to pin point where improvements in their customer service provision would have the largest impact on their overall customer satisfaction index score. The research considers the different aspects of customer satisfaction and their place within a Total Quality Management approach. However, the index is a completely self-contained product, which allows any company to measure how well it is satisfying its customers. The index calculates an index score between one and one hundred. The ultimate aim of the index is for a company's score to be compared over time, against other companies within the same industry, against other companies from other industries, against the national average and even against company's throughout Europe and the World, as National Indices operate overseas. In fact, it is envisaged that the index will act as a way for individual companies to benchmark themselves against the best customer service companies in the world.It is hoped that over time the customer satisfaction index can become a key indicator as to the state of the UK economy. After all, satisfied customers are very often loyal customers, they tend to buy more, more often, and satisfied customers are often willing to pay premium prices for a company's products (Kristensen & Martensen, 1996).


Crowdsourced workflows are used in research and industry to solve a variety of tasks. The databases community has used crowd workers in query operators/optimization and for tasks such as entity resolution. Such research utilizes microtasks where crowd workers are asked to answer simple yes/no or multiple choice questions with little training. Typically, microtasks are used with voting algorithms to combine redundant responses from multiple crowd workers to achieve result quality. Microtasks are powerful, but fail in cases where larger context (e.g., domain knowledge) or significant time investment is needed to solve a problem, for example in large-document structured data extraction.

In this paper, we consider context-heavy data processing tasks that may require many hours of work, and refer to such tasks as macrotasks. Leveraging the infrastructure and worker pools of existing crowdsourcing platforms, we automate macrotask scheduling, evaluation, and pay scales. A key challenge in macrotask-powered work, however, is evaluating the quality of a worker's output, since ground truth is seldom available and redundancy-based quality control schemes are impractical. We present Argonaut, a framework that improves macrotask powered work quality using a hierarchical review. Argonaut uses a predictive model of worker quality to select trusted workers to perform review, and a separate predictive model of task quality to decide which tasks to review. Finally, Argonaut can identify the ideal trade-off between a single phase of review and multiple phases of review given a constrained review budget in order to maximize overall output quality. We evaluate an industrial use of Argonaut to power a structured data extraction pipeline that has utilized over half a million hours of crowd worker input to complete millions of macrotasks. We show that Argonaut can capture up to 118% more errors than random spot-check reviews in review budget-constrained environments with up to two review layers.


RoboCup provides challenging research for a multiagent system. Player agents must move autonomously in a dynamic environment. Teaching (training, programming, and learning) player agents is the main theme in simulation games. Reviewing score books of soccer matches gives game data such as which players scored goals, which made shots, and which made passes. Score books are useful for analyzing games, ranking players, and making strategies for coming games. This situation is assumed to be similar to RoboCup simulation games. Using data in score books helps to program the synthetic player's function. Following RoboCup-97, the LOGMONITOR (Takahashi 2001) was made for automatically extracting good plays in simulation games to train player agents. RoboCup simulation games are recorded as log files, where the positions of the ball and all players for both teams at each simulation step are written. It is necessary to recognize soccer plays such as shots or passes from the time-sequence data for checking a play's quality. The play recognition and its performance depend on the situation. Thus, it is similar to gesture understanding in a computer-human interface. For example, recognition of a pass requires that the ball move from one player to a teammate. If the ball were to move to an opponent, it is interpreted as an interception or shot. The pass linked with a goal should be evaluated as a high-quality pass. LOGMONITOR (figure 1a) is a tool for Articles


Larvae of the South American mud crab species Hexapanopeus schmitti were reared in the laboratory from hatching to metamorphosis. Development consists of four zoeal stages and a megalopa. Duration of each of the zoeal stages at 25°C is 2-5 d, and in the megalopa 7-9 d, i.e. total larval development duration lasts approximately three weeks. The morphology of the larvae is described and compared with that of larvae of H. angustifrons, the only other species within the same genus for which a description of larval stages is available at present. The zoeae of H. schmitti differ from those of H. angustifrons mainly in the absence of lateral carapace spines and in the number of both internal and external lateral spines on the telson. The megalopa can be distinguished by the number of aesthetascs and setae on the antennule, the setation of the antennal flagellum, the mouth parts and maxillipeds, and by the presence of spines on the surface of the scaphognathite of the maxilla. The latter feature has not yet been observed in other xanthid species.


This paper will examine the Paraguayan growth experience since the early 1960slooking at different periods to try to identify the main factors behind particular levels performance. Studying the determinants of growth is particularly important for a country like Paraguay that just recently recovered the most basic political rights and is still trying to consolidate its gain by building effective democratic institutions. Thus far the positive political trend has not been accompanied by economic growth and less poverty. This paper is part of the project "Explaining Economic Growth Performance" launched by the Global Development Network (GDN). The purpose of this project is to explain economic growth performances across seven regions of the world.


Wierød Borčak, Fedja (2016). A Children's Literature? – Subversive Infantilisation in Contemporary Bosnian-Herzegovinian Fiction, Linnaeus University Dissertation No 269/2016, ISBN: 978-91-88357-48-9. Written in English. The past two decades of political and social disintegration in Bosnia and Herzegovina have given birth to literary counter-reactions against hegemonic ways of imagining social life in the country. This thesis deals with a particular practice in Bosnian-Herzegovinian war and post-war literature, which uses infantile perspectives to critically address issues related to the socialist history of Bosnia as part of Yugoslavia, the war in the 1990s, and the so-called transitional post-war period. Drawing on an old Western literary tradition of using the child character to estrange conventional experiences of the world, the texts (by authors such as Miljenko Jergović, Nenad Veličković, Alma Lazarevska, Aleksandar Hemon, and Saša Stanišić) use the skewing and dislocating outlook associated with the infantile subject to expose and undermine perceivably problematic mechanisms in socialist, ethnonationalist, and Western liberal hegemonic discourses. In contrast to previous research on the topic, which has primarily focussed upon the narratological conditions for the infantile perspective, the focus here is on the subversive infantilisation of hegemonic discourse—that is, the very discursive act of representing and contesting dominant concepts, narratives, and representations. The texts are seen as transitional areas through which input from the social world passes and, in this process, is restructured and ultimately transformed into a configuration slightly or radically different from the original input. Theoretically inspired by discourse theory and ideas from New Historicism, the study isolates and investigates a set of techniques through which this reconfiguration occurs. Apart from discussing the use of the basic infantile perspective as such a technique, the study also considers how the notion of the infantile influences techniques of dichotomisation (the production of positional counterpoints), appropriation (the critical subsuming of dominant discourse), and blending (the mixing of dominant and


With increasing time-to-market pressure and shortening semiconductor product cycles, more and more chips are being designed with library-based methodologies. In spite of this shift, the problem of discrete gate sizing has received significantly less attention than its continuous counterpart. On the other hand, cell sizes of many realistic libraries are sparse, for example, geometrically spaced, which makes the nearest rounding approach inapplicable as large timing violations may be introduced. Therefore, it is highly desirable to design an effective algorithm to handle this discrete gate-sizing problem. Such an algorithm is proposed in this paper. The algorithm is a continuous-solution-guided dynamic-programming-like approach. A set of novel techniques, such as locality-sensitive-hashing-based solution pruning, is also proposed to accelerate the algorithm. Our experimental results demonstrate that 1) the nearest rounding approach often leads to large timing violations and 2) compared to the well-known Coudert's approach, the new algorithm saves up to 21% in area cost while still satisfying the timing constraint.


As remarkable as Columbus and the conquistador expeditions, the history of Portuguese exploration is now almost forgotten. But Portugal's navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, launched the expedition of Vasco da Gama to India and beat the Spanish to the spice kingdoms of the East - then set about creating the first long-range maritime empire. In an astonishing blitz of thirty years, a handful of visionary and utterly ruthless empire builders, with few resources but breathtaking ambition, attempted to seize the Indian Ocean, destroy Islam and take control of world trade. Told with Roger Crowley's customary skill and verve, this is narrative history at its most vivid - an epic tale of navigation, trade and technology, money and religious zealotry, political diplomacy and espionage, sea battles and shipwrecks, endurance, courage and terrifying brutality. Drawing on extensive first-hand accounts, it brings to life the exploits of an extraordinary band of conquerors - men such as Afonso de Albuquerque, the first European since Alexander the Great to found an Asian empire - who set in motion five hundred years of European colonisation and unleashed the forces of globalisation.


Given the inevitability of serious climate impacts, climate change adaptation is becoming an urgent priority. Policy makers at the local, regional, state, and federal level are struggling to determine how to parlay existing authorities and develop new measures to avoid future calamity. Successful adaptation will require not only attention to physical infrastructure, but to the underlying socioeconomic conditions that strongly determine the severity of climate impacts. Given the importance of underlying socioeconomic factors, this essay argues that equity should be a central feature of emerging domestic climate adaptation initiatives. It suggests seven principles for achieving equitable adaptation, principles designed to improve substantive adaptation outcomes, ensure meaningful participation, and grapple with underlying inequities. This essay is a shorter version of "Domestic Climate Change Adaptation and Equity," a longer article that includes a more detailed discussion of projected climate impacts and their equity implications.


Several new methods have been developed to meet the critical and diversified challenges in the state-of-art unstructured-grids based high-order methods for 3D real-world applications, including 1) parameter-free high-order generalized moment limiter for arbitrary mesh; 2) efficient line implicit method; 3) efficient quadrature-free SV method; 4) novel high-order mesh generation method for 3D hexahedral mesh. The parameter-free high-order generalized moment limiter does not need any user-specified free parameter to detect the discontinuities and exclude the smooth extrema. The present limiter has been designed to be naturally generic, compact, and efficient, which can be applied for arbitrary mesh and general unstructured-grids based high-order methods. The present low-storage line implicit BLUSGS method significantly overcomes the anisotropy stiffness due to highly stretched wall grids in high Reynolds number flows. Up to 3 times of saving on CPU time and improved robustness have been demonstrated compared with the cell BLU-SGS solver. This line implicit method preserves the favorable feature of high compactness from the cell BLU-SGS method, and can be programmed as a black box so as to be easily applied in general highorder methods. The quadrature-free SV method has improved the original SV method by replacing the large number of quadrature for face integrals in 3D case with many less nodal operations based on analytical shape functions. Finally for high-order unstructured mesh generation, the present novel and fully automatic algorithm guarantee to resolve the selfintersection problem for non-linear quadrilateral or hexahedral mesh with strong robustness. The algorithm also offers the advantage of correcting grid self-intersection without changing the basic aspect ratio of the original grids or degrading the original grid quality.


The use of reliable, high-temperature, lightweight materials in the manufacture of aircraft engines is expected to result in lower fossil and biofuel consumption, thereby leading to cost savings and lower carbon emissions due to air travel. Although nickel-based superalloy blades and vanes have been successfully used in aircraft engines for several decades, there has been an increased effort to develop high-temperature, lightweight, creep-resistant substitute materials under various NASA programs over the last two decades. As a result, there has been a great deal of interest in developing SiC/SiC ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) due to their higher damage tolerance compared to monolithic ceramics. Current-generation SiC/SiC ceramic matrix composites rely almost entirely on the SiC fibers to carry the load, owing to the premature cracking of the matrix during loading. Thus, the high-temperature usefulness of these CMCs falls well below their theoretical capabilities. The objective of this work is to develop a new class of high-temperature, lightweight, self-healing, SiC fiber-reinforced, engineered matrix ceramic composites. Several engineered matrices were designed to be thermally compatible with SiC. Several different tests were conducted on these matrices, which helped to down-select suitable compositions. Engineered matrix composites (EMCs) designed to match the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of the SiC fiber were fabricated by slurry casting and melt infiltration techniques. The matrix composition was designed to convert any ingressed oxygen into lowviscosity oxides or silicates so they can flow into the cracks due to capillary action and seal them, thereby activating its self-healing properties. The present concept uses the fundamental principles of physics and materials science to develop a new class of selfhealing ceramic composites (SHCCs). Unlike current SiC/SiC CMC technology, the present concept develops SiC fiber-reinforced SiC-Si3N4-silicide matrix composites with a composition formulated to match the CTE of the fibers, and with an ability to get ingressed oxygen and self-heal cracks by filling them with low-viscosity oxides. The present concept provides considerable flexibility in designing the composite matrix for a wide variety of hightemperature applications. Depending on the composition, silicides deform plastically at high temperatures, unlike SiC and Si3N4. Thus, the matrix is likely to be compliant to the applied loading conditions at high temperatures rather than develop cracks. This important feature allows the matrix to carry some load before transferring to the reinforcing SiC fibers, extending the life of the composite. The ability of these matrices to self-heal fine cracks is also expected to increase composite life. For matrices containing (Cr,Mo)3Si, the expected amount of free silicon after melt infiltration is expected to be low, which would allow composites made with this engineered matrix to be used in applications at or above 1,755 K. This work was done by Sai V. Raj of Glenn Research Center, and Mrityunjay Singh and Ramkrishna Bhatt of the Ohio Aerospace Institute. Further information is contained in a TSP (see page 1). Inquiries concerning rights for the commercial use of this invention should be addressed to NASA Glenn Research Center, Innovative Partnerships Office, Attn: Steven Fedor, Mail Stop 4–8, 21000 Brookpark Road, Cleveland, Ohio 44135. Refer to LEW-18964-1.


Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a major risk factor for stroke and systemic embolization, particularly in the elderly. Approximately 2.3 million adults in the United States have AF, and it is projected that this number will increase to approximately 5.6 million individuals by the year 2050, with over 50% aged 80 years or older. Vitamin K antagonists are currently the most widely accepted means of stroke prevention in patients with AF; unfortunately, this method of treatment is not a feasible option for many patients for numerous reasons. This article examines and compares the various newer therapeutic agents that have either been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration or are still in various stages of clinical testing, and provides an overview of established antithrombotic therapies. We also discuss the role of anticoagulation in the setting of cardioversion in patients with AF.


PURPOSE
To evaluate factors affecting corneoscleral profile (CSP) using anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT) in combination with conventional videokeratoscopy.

METHODS
OCT DATA WERE COLLECTED FROM 204 SUBJECTS OF MEAN AGE 34.9 YEARS (SD: ±15.2 years, range 18-65) using the Zeiss Visante AS-OCT and Medmont M300 corneal topographer. Measurements of corneal diameter (CD), corneal sagittal height (CS), iris diameter (ID), corneoscleral junction angle (CSJ), and scleral radius (SR) were extracted from multiple OCT images. Horizontal visible iris diameter (HVID) and vertical palpebral aperture (PA) were measured using a slit lamp graticule. Subject body height was also measured. Associations were then sought between CSP variables and age, height, ethnicity, sex, and refractive error.

RESULTS
Significant correlations were found between age and ocular topography variables of HVID, PA, CSJ, SR, and ID (P < 0.0001), while height correlated with HVID, CD, and ID, and power vector terms with vertical plane keratometry, CD, and CS. Significant differences were noted between ethnicities with respect to CD (P = 0.0046), horizontal and vertical CS (P = 0.0068 and P = 0.0095), and horizontal ID (P = 0.0010). The same variables, with the exception of vertical CS, also varied with sex; horizontal CD (P = 0.0018), horizontal CS (P = 0.0018), and ID (P = 0.0012). Age accounted for the greatest variance in topography variables (36%).

CONCLUSIONS
Age is the main factor influencing CSP; this should be taken into consideration in contact lens design, IOL selection, and in the optimization of surgical procedures. Ocular topography also varied with height, sex, ethnicity, and refractive error.


Governmental powers can be apportioned vertically at different levels. Five levels of vertical government are distinguishable, moving from purely local to the truly global: (1) local, ie municipal or citywide; (2) substate-regional (3) State; (4) supranational, eg the European Union; (5) and arguably global eg the WTO and the UN. This book focuses on levels (2) (3) and (4). It intends to analyse the interaction of the constitutional and political orders of EU Member States that exhibit varying degrees of territorial pluralism, their sub-state entities and the supranational organisation to which they belong. It does so by comparing the division of competences for internal policies but also for external affairs, the various models of fiscal federalism and the different systems for the effective protection of individual and collective rights within various European multi-level constitutional orders. Following a functional method of comparative constitutional law, on which the ERC-funded European and National Constitutional law project is based, the current book provides for an important study of the application of the federal principle within the European constitutional space.


The growing precision of optical and scattering experiments necessitates a better understanding of the influence of damping onto the collective mode of sheet electrons. As spin-polarized systems are of particular interest for spintronic applications, we here report spin-sensitive linear response functions of graphene, which give access to chargeand spin-density related excitations. We further calculate the reflectivity of graphene on an SiO2 surface, a setup used in s-wave scanning near-field microscopy. Increasing the partial spin-polarization of the graphene charge carriers leads to a significant broadening and shift of the plasmon mode, due to single-particle interband transitions of the minority spin carriers. We also predict an antiresonance in the longitudinal magnetic response function, similar to that of semiconductor heterostructures.


In this prospective biomarker study, we evaluated the prognostic significance of Ki67, p53 and angiogenesis in patients with locally advanced bladder cancer. The patients were volunteers from a Southwest Oncology Group trial of locally advanced bladder cancer who were randomized to treatment with neoadjuvant chemotherapy plus cystectomy or cystectomy alone. Tissue specimens were obtained prior to neoadjuvant chemotherapy from 42 patients randomized to receive the combination-treatment arm and 52 randomized to cystectomy alone. The statistical power of the study was quite limited by the small sample size. The biomarkers were assayed by immunohistochemistry. Angiogenesis was determined using anti-CD34 immunostaining. Patients whose tumors had increased Ki67 expression had better progression-free survival that was marginally significant, p=0.063. The median survival in those with higher Ki67 expression was 73 months, and in those with lower expression was 38 months. However, this did not achieve statistical significance, p=0.25. There was a suggestion of worse survival among patients whose tumors exhibited altered p53 staining [hazard ratio (HR) = 1.48; p=0.15], but there was no difference in progression-free survival (HR=1.02; p=0.93). The enumeration of tumor microvessels did not provide prognostic information.


Australian government started the policy of reconciliation in 1991. The Aborigines were very optimistic about the policy in the beginning. The optimism is evident in Alexis Wright's Plains of Promise, but in her second novel Carpentaria; she revises her point of view and she demonstrates the reconciliation has made no difference in the lives of the Aborigines. The novel demonstrates that racism is still strong in the small towns like Desperance, the town described in the novel. The novel also shows that the Aboriginal culture faces the most important threat in the era of reconciliation. In the novel, Wright makes it clear that the Aborigines are trying to reconcile with the oppressive white Australian policies, but the whites are still hesitant in giving human status to the Aborigines. The minds of the whites are still frozen in the assimilation era where the Aborigines were supposed to acquire the etiquettes of the whites. The Aborigines are still the worst sufferers of white racist policies. The novel makes it clear that reconciliation has become an oppressor centred policy rather than an oppressive centred one.


Biomedical named entity recognition (NER) is an important technique for biological information extraction. Here, we have proposed a model using machine learning where biological terms are recognized using second-order conditional random fields (CRFs). From our experiments with the JNLPBA 2004 dataset, the CRFs labeling model returns an F-score prediction value of almost 99%.


In the first two activities, students working in small groups receive a series of model viruses.
These include each of several types of nucleic acid genomes (DNA/RNA, ds/ss, +/- strands). In one
set of activities, students sequentially examine the variety of modes by which the genomes are
replicated and the dependence of mechanism upon the form of nucleic acid. In a second series of
activities, small groups examine the steps in the normal flow of information from cellular genes to
mRNA. Students then examine viral genomes of different compositions and identify how the message is
made once the genome has entered the host cell. In the third activity, students are given a
hypothetical protein, then they are directed to back-translate from the amino acid sequence to the
original viral nucleic acid sequence found in that specific virus.


A formulation of singular classical theories (determined by degenerate Lagrangians) without constraints is presented. A partial Hamiltonian formalism in the phase space having an initially arbitrary number of momenta (which can be smaller than the number of velocities) is proposed. The equations of motion become first-order differential equations, and they coincide with those of multi-time dynamics, if a certain condition is imposed. In a singular theory, this condition is fulfilled in the case of the coincidence of the number of generalized momenta with the rank of the Hessian matrix. The noncanonical generalized velocities satisfy a system of linear algebraic equations, which allows an appropriate classification of singular theories (gauge and nongauge). A new antisymmetric bracket (similar to the Poisson bracket) is introduced, which describes the time evolution of physical quantities in a singular theory. The origin of constraints is shown to be a consequence of the (unneeded in our formulation) extension of the phase space, when the new bracket transforms into the Dirac bracket. Quantization is briefly discussed.


Despite the scholarly attention that has rightly been paid to Universitat de Valencia, Biblioteca Historica, MS 835, and Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 2573, as crucially important textual sources for Tinctoris's music theory, insufficient regard has so far been given to these two Neapolitan presentation manuscripts as historical artefacts that encode information about the priorities and concerns of those who brought them into existence. This thesis presents the first complete physical descriptions of these manuscripts, and employs detailed palaeographical, iconographical, and historical analysis to establish the likely circumstances of, and reasons for, their production. In the course of proposing identifications of the scribes and artists involved, analysing in fine detail their sequences of preparation, considering the organisational structure articulated by the decorated initials, interpreting the iconography of the portrait miniature on the frontispiece of Valencia 835, and marshalling complex heraldic evidence, many other Neapolitan manuscripts are brought into discussion. By analysing and contextualising Valencia 835 and Bologna 2573, therefore, the thesis functions also as a significant contribution to anglophone scholarship on the wider output of the Neapolitan scriptorium in the late fifteenth century.
A newly enriched account is proposed of Tinctoris's arrival and period of employment in Naples, and of his and the wider court's involvement in the preparation of music theory manuscripts as instruments of political expression. This thesis, therefore, offers a re-appraisal of the genesis and later history of these two high-value music theory manuscripts. By presenting detailed codicological analysis and using it to construct and reshape historical narratives, it also provides a firm basis for future scholarly investigation into Tinctoris and music theory within the intellectual, cultural, and political climate of late fifteenth-century Italy.


The choice of location is a key facet of decision-making in operations. One such choice is whether to colocate activities, services, or personnel. Prior research, including in healthcare, has reported that colocation yields benefits. However, these benefits may need to be balanced with higher costs of colocation (e.g., due to operational constraints). Thus, it is critical to understand not only whether colocation makes a difference but also under what circumstances it is most beneficial, and the mechanisms through which those benefits are realized. We consider colocation in the context of healthcare services, and ask: Does colocation of mental and physical health resources improve patient outcomes? This colocation is important, as primary care serves as a gateway to address mental health concerns and referrals to specialists. We next study colocation's relationship with two important operational variables: continuity of care (CoC) with a provider, and patient severity. Finally, we examine the mediating role of patients' no-shows and medication adherence in the colocation-outcomes relationship. As America's largest integrated healthcare system, the Veterans Health Administration offers us an excellent setting to study these questions. We analyze over 300,000 patients – over an eleven-year period – who suffer from diabetes, a chronic condition, and show evidence of mental illness. We use an empirical approach to quantify the relationship between colocation and four key outcomes attributable to mental illness: hospitalizations, length of stay (LOS), 30-day readmissions, and suicidal behavior. We find that colocation is associated with improvement in outcomes. For example, a one standard deviation increase in the mean colocation measure is related to a 2.4% decrease in LOS – equivalent to an annual savings of approximately $1.5 million, on average, just for our cohort. In addition, we find that colocation and CoC are substitutes, in that colocation benefits patients whose care is fragmented. Further, we find that colocation offers greater benefits to patients whose mental health conditions are more severe. Finally, our analysis reveals that colocation improves outcomes (partially) through a reduction in the no-show rate and an increase in medication adherence. Our findings are validated by extensive robustness checks and sensitivity analyses. Our study has implications for both the theory and practice of healthcare operations. Theoretically, we advance the location literature, establish its connection with the continuity literature, and highlight key moderators and mediators in the colocation-outcomes relationship. Practically, our work offers insights into how to design an operationally efficient system and, in settings with limited resources, where to target colocation. Our study is particularly timely as it may help address the growing mental health crisis in America and around the world, further exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic.


Ambient Intelligent (AmI) applications are often meant to be used in complex and highly dynamic environments and are characterized by features such as context-awareness, personalisation, adaptivity and anticipation of user's desires. In this demo we focus on how the use of the high level of abstraction provided by multi agent-oriented technologies and related programming languages - and in particular of the ones rooted on a strong notion of agency - can ease the conceiving and realisation of AmI applications exhibiting such features. For doing this we present here an adaptive governance application, realised using the JaCaMo framework, for the dynamic management and allocation of rooms in the context of a smart co-working space.


It is common today in large corporate environments for system administrators to employ centralized systems for log collection and analysis. The log data can come from any device between smart-phones and large scale server clusters. During an investigation of a system failure or suspected intrusion these logs may contain vital information. However, the trustworthiness of this log data must be confirmed. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the state of the art and provide practical solutions and suggestions in the field of secure logging. In this thesis we focus on solutions that do not require a persistent connection to a central log management system. To this end a prototype logging framework was developed including client, server and verification applications. The client employs different techniques of signing log entries. The focus of this thesis is to evaluate each signing technique from both a security and performance perspective. This thesis evaluates "Traditional RSA-signing", "Traditional Hash-chains"', "Itkis-Reyzin's asymmetric FSS scheme" and "RSA signing and tick-stamping with TPM", the latter being a novel technique developed by us. In our evaluations we recognized the inability of the evaluated techniques to detect so called `truncation-attacks', therefore a truncation detection module was also developed which can be used independent of and side-by-side with any signing technique. In this thesis we conclude that our novel Trusted Platform Module technique has the most to offer in terms of log security, however it does introduce a hardware dependency on the TPM. We have also shown that the truncation detection technique can be used to assure an external verifier of the number of log entries that has at least passed through the log client software.


When the wave approaches to coast, the wave steepness, which is the ratio of wave height to water depth increases due to depth re-duction. This increase continues to a certain extent, until finally at this limit, the wave breaks. Wave breaking results in the releasing of wave energy, production of coastal currents and increase of the average water elevation. The surf zone and swash zone is the most active region from the aspect of hydrodynamic processes. In this region sediment transport and seabed changes are due to the breaking waves and its induced nearshore currents. Numerical models based on the Navier-Stokes equations can model the flow field very accurately. The generation, transformation and dissipation of turbulence can be delicately modeled by closuring a proper turbulence model to the main model. Besides the free surface shape can be estimated using an appropriate numerical algorithm. As a final remark it can be concluded that numerical modeling can accurately model wave breaking. The main objective of this research is to define the wave breaking in shallow water and describing the relevant hydrodynamic processes such as wave run up, generation and dissipation of turbulence. In this paper, a two-dimensional numerical model has been developed to study wave breaking and wave run up on a sloping beach. The model is based on solving the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations, and a k-e turbulence closure model. The free surface is tracked by the VOF technique; the log-law profile for the mean velocity is applied at the bottom. Propagation, deformation, breaking and overturning of an Airy wave have been numerically studied with the main emphasis on velocity and turbulence characteristics.


REINFORCEMENT LEARNING IN INDIVIDUALS AT RISK FOR ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE Christina M. Figueroa Marquette University, 2013 Explicit memory is the hallmark of impairment in Alzheimer's disease (AD) while implicit memory has mixed task-dependent results. Models of memory processes have posited that hippocampal function is sensitive to reinforcement learning (RL), which involves both explicit and implicit memory. The hippocampus is also vital for the transfer of learned associations to novel situations. Nevertheless, RL paradigms have been underutilized in assessing memory processes in individuals at risk for AD, which may aid in early identification of cognitive decline. Thirty-six apolipoprotein-E (APOE) genotyped older adults (Male n=8; Mage=80; Meducation=15 years) performed word stem completion, word recognition, and RL tasks. The RL task was comprised of an RL phase, an implicit testing phase, and explicit recognition component. Group comparisons were made based on low risk (APOE e4-; n=16) vs. high risk (APOE e4+; n=20) for AD. A series of mixed ANOVAs based on task performance indicated that risk groups did not differ on EM measures (RL, word recognition, and RL recognition). However, high risk participants exhibited significantly poorer IM performance (RL testing and word stem) than the low risk group, p = .03. The pattern of results in the present study was counter to prediction in that risk groups did not differ on explicit memory measures, which was strongly supported by existing literature. However, the exhibited performance of poorer implicit memory in the high risk group is consistent with results implicating the hippocampus in the application learned associations to novel environments. RL paradigms may offer high sensitivity for assessing preclinical decline.


Abstract
Oxidized form of cellular nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is currently intensively investigated topic in longevity science. However, if ageing is considered a defense mechanism against cancer, caution should be implemented regarding the use of NAD+ and its precursors. In the hypothesis presented NAD+ is shown as an important factor related to cancer formation and prevention. NAD+ depletion with age may play a major role in the process of cancer formation by limiting (1) energy production, (2) DNA repair, (3) genomic stability and signaling. Disruption of any of these processes could increase the cancer risk due to impaired genomic stability. NAD+ content is a critical protective factor in early carcinogenesis and can become detrimental factor later in cancer progression and promotion phase. Namely, NAD+ restoration could prevent or reverse the phenotype of malignant cells at early stages by inducing cellular repair and stress adaptive response as well as regulate cell cycle arrest and apoptotic removal of damaged cells. Contrary, during cancer promotion, progression and treatment increased NAD+ levels could have deleterious effects on the malignancy process due to growth advantage, increased resistance and greater cell survival. NAD+ levels can be increased with exercise, caloric restriction and ingestion of NAD+ precursors and intermediates or could be increased by using PARP and CD 38 inhibitors. The evidence indicating that modulation of NAD+ levels could be important in cancer prevention, initiation and progression phase is presented.


Otitis media with effusion (OME) is a disease characterised by inflammation of the middle ear and changes in middle ear mucosa from a columnar to a more secretory type epithelium, with a proliferation of goblet cells and mucus glands. There is excessive production of mucus, resulting in the accumulation of a viscous effusion in the middle ear cleft. Various factors have been implicated in the aetiology of the disease including bacteria, Eustachian tube dysfunction, allergy and craniofacial abnormalities. It has been suggested that laryngopharyngeal reflux could be an inflammatory co-factor and possible cause of many upper respiratory disorders including OME. The aims of this thesis were to examine effusions for the presence of gastric juice and were also concerned with the biochemical and rheological characterisation of effusions. Acidic proteinase (pepsin) activity measured at pH2.2 using the N-terminal assay was detected in 29% of effusions and 91% of these samples contained pepsin/pepsinogen protein at elevated levels compared to serum (using an ELISA). As other serum protein levels in effusions were of the same order as serum reference levels, the source of the activity was unlikely to be from a transudate of plasma and rather due to the reflux of gastric contents into the middle ear. The data suggests that reflux may be a primary factor in the initiation of OME in children. Middle ear effusions are mucin-rich secretions that demonstrate a lack of degradation on storage. They contained at least two distinct mucin populations, MUC5B is the major mucin and MUC5AC is present at much lower levels. MUC5B had a significant correlation with effusion specific viscosity suggesting that it is responsible for the rheological properties of the effusion. Interleukin-8 (IL-8) levels in effusions had significant correlation with MUC5AC and it may be that MUC5AC is produced in response to IL-8 in the middle ear during the inflammatory process of glue ear. Neither IL-6 nor IL-8 levels correlated with MUC5B content. It is likely that a different stimulus or other cytokine is responsible for the regulation of MUCSB. There was a significant correlation between IL-6 and IL-8 levels in effusions demonstrating that one cytokine could stimulate the secretion of the other. Further studies developing from the work presented in this thesis would involve analysis of effusions for other components of gastric juice, such as gastric lipase and intrinsic factor, to


This field-defining collection consolidates and builds momentum in the burgeoning area of affect studies. The contributors include many of the central theorists of affect—those visceral forces beneath, alongside, or generally other than conscious knowing that can serve to drive us toward movement, thought, and ever-changing forms of relation. As Lauren Berlant explores "cruel optimism," Brian Massumi theorizes the affective logic of public threat, and Elspeth Probyn examines shame, they, along with the other contributors, show how an awareness of affect is opening up exciting new insights in disciplines from anthropology, cultural studies, geography, and psychology to philosophy, queer studies, and sociology. In essays diverse in subject matter, style, and perspective, the contributors demonstrate how affect theory illuminates the intertwined realms of the aesthetic, the ethical, and the political as they play out across bodies (human and non-human) in both mundane and extraordinary ways. They reveal the broad theoretical possibilities opened by an awareness of affect as they reflect on topics including ethics, food, public morale, glamor, snark in the workplace, and mental health regimes. The Affect Theory Reader includes an interview with the cultural theorist Lawrence Grossberg and an afterword by the anthropologist Kathleen Stewart. In the introduction, the editors suggest ways of defining affect, trace the concept's history, and highlight the role of affect theory in various areas of study.

Contributors

Sara Ahmed

Ben Anderson

Lauren Berlant

Lone Bertelsen

Steven D. Brown

Patricia Ticineto Clough

Anna Gibbs

Melissa Gregg

Lawrence Grossberg

Ben Highmore

Brian Massumi

Andrew Murphie

Elspeth Probyn

Gregory J. Seigworth

Kathleen Stewart

Nigel Thrift

Ian Tucker

Megan Watkins


Integrating Solar Energy and Local Government Resilience Planning Stephan Wayne Schmidt Resilience and solar energy are separately growing in popularity for urban planners and similar professionals. This project links the two discrete terms together and examines the extent to which solar energy can improve local government resilience efforts. It includes a detailed literature review of both topics, as well as the methodology and findings related to a survey and interviews of local government officials and key stakeholders across the country related to hazard mitigation and energy assurance planning. This research finds that integrating the use of solar energy can improve local government resilience efforts related to mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery activities in the following ways: by being incorporated into hazard mitigation strategies as a means to maintain critical operations, thereby reducing loss of life and property; by being utilized in comprehensive planning efforts to increase capacity and decrease reliance and stress upon the grid, thereby reducing the likelihood of blackout events; by being used in tandem with backup storage systems as an integral part of energy assurance planning, which can help ensure critical functions continue in times of grid outage; by being used to provide power for response activities such as water purification, medicine storage and device charging; and by being used as an integral part of rebuilding communities in a more environmentally-conscious manner. The result of the research is a document entitled Solar Energy & Resilience Planning: a practical guide for local governments, a guidebook for local government officials wishing to have more information about incorporating solar energy into current resilience initiatives; it is included at the end of the report as Appendix C.


Humans follow the example of prestigious, high-status individuals much more readily than that of others, such as when we copy the behavior of village elders, community leaders, or celebrities. This tendency has been declared uniquely human, yet remains untested in other species. Experimental studies of animal learning have typically focused on the learning mechanism rather than on social issues, such as who learns from whom. The latter, however, is essential to understanding how habits spread. Here we report that when given opportunities to watch alternative solutions to a foraging problem performed by two different models of their own species, chimpanzees preferentially copy the method shown by the older, higher-ranking individual with a prior track-record of success. Since both solutions were equally difficult, shown an equal number of times by each model and resulted in equal rewards, we interpret this outcome as evidence that the preferred model in each of the two groups tested enjoyed a significant degree of prestige in terms of whose example other chimpanzees chose to follow. Such prestige-based cultural transmission is a phenomenon shared with our own species. If similar biases operate in wild animal populations, the adoption of culturally transmitted innovations may be significantly shaped by the characteristics of performers.


We estimate the effect of internet penetration on retail bank margins in the euro area. Based on an adapted Baumol [1982] type contestability model, we argue that the internet has reduced sunk costs and therefore increased contestability in retail banking. We test this conjecture by estimating the model using semi-aggregated data for a panel of euro area countries. We utilise time series and cross-sectional variation in internet penetration. We find support for an increase in contestability in deposit markets, and no effect for loan markets. The paper suggests that for time and savings deposits, the presence of brick and mortar bank branches may no longer be of first order importance for the assessment of the competitive structure of the market. JEL codes: G21, E43, D43