Abstract We review the Palaeozoic-Early Mesozoic evolution of the Eastern Mediterranean-Balkan region with special reference to Anatolia, and provide new isotopic data on the Palaeozoic magmatic and metamorphic rocks. The pre-Alpide evolution of the region involves episodic growth of Laurussia by accretion of oceanic terranes and Gondwana-derived microcontinents. Terrane accretion, associated with deformation, magmatism and regional metamorphism, took place in the Late Ordovician-Early Silurian, Carboniferous, Late Triassic-Early Jurassic and Mid-Jurassic. The Late Ordovician-Early Silurian accretion is inferred from strati-graphic and faunal records in the Pontides; other evidence for it is buried under young cover on the northern margin of the Black Sea. The Carboniferous orogeny is related to southward subduction and continental collision on the southern margin of Laurussia. It is marked in the Pontides by high-grade regional metamorphism, north-vergent deformation and post-orogenic latest Carboniferous-Early Permian plutonism. The latest Triassic-Early Jurassic Cimmeride orogeny involved the collision and amalgamation of an oceanic plateau to the southern margin of Laurasia. It is represented by voluminous accretionary complexes with Late Triassic blues-chists and eclogites. Late Jurassic regional metamorphism and deformation is confined to the Balkans, and is the result of continental collision between the Rhodope-Serbo-Macedonian and Strandja blocks in the Late Jurassic. The Palaeozoic geological history of the Balkans and the Pontides resembles that of Central Europe, although the similarities end with the Mesozoic, as a consequence of the formation of Pangaea.


Two methods have been identified in the DEPLOY project for Event-B model decomposition: the shared variable decomposition (called A-style decomposition), and the shared event decomposition (or B-style decomposition). Both allow the decomposition of a (concrete) model into several independent sub-models which may then be refined separately. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Event-B model decomposition, from theory (A-style vs. B-style, differences and similarities) to practice (decomposition plug-in of the Rodin [1] platform).


A grossular-rich garnetite composed of 80 vol. % garnet (Grs63Alm25Prp7And4) and 15 vol. % hercynite+anorthite symplectite after kyanite occurs as a boudin in migmatitic gneiss of the Gfohl unit in the easternmost part of the Moldanubian Zone, next to its overthrust on the Cadomian foreland in Moravia, Czech Republic. Garnet cores contain 0.10 to 0.18 wt. % Na2O and up to 0.5 wt. % TiO 2 . Both rutile and ilmenite are present as early inclusions in garnet. The UHP assemblage underwent partial decompression breakdown under granulite/amphibolite facies conditions, including the reaction garnet + kyanite → hercynite + anorthite (An 99 ) and localised reaction of garnet to anorthite+aluminous augite+ferropargasite+titanite veinlets. A Ba-Al-Fe silicate loosely related to bafertisite is a minor phase tied to anorthite aggregates. The widespread preservation of Na-rich garnet indicates that Na diffusion was controlled by the limited extent of decompression reactions. The elevated sodium content in garnet, comparable to those of diamond-bearing UHP crustal rocks and diamondiferous eclogites, indicates imprint of sub-lithospheric high pressures, P 4 GPa. The garnetite can be interpreted as a calc-silicate rock subducted to mantle depths and subsequently obducted with mantle peridotite and pyroxenites. This scenario is supported by published isotopic evidence on a Palaeozoic crustal component in some mantle-derived Variscan garnet pyroxenites and eclogites in the Gfohl unit. Very close similarity of garnetite composition to epidote (except Fe oxidation state and H2O content) indicates that a nearly monomineralic epidosite is the most probable parent rock.


In this investigation, the material tested was a 75S-T6 aluminum alloy and the stresses were essentially biaxial and tensile. The biaxial tensile stresses were produced in a specially designed testing machine by subjecting a thin-walled tubular specimen to axial tension and internal pressure. Plastic stress-strain relations for various biaxial stress conditions were obtained using a clip-type SR-4 strain gage. Three types of tests were made: Constant-stress-ratio tests, variable-stress-ratio tests, and special tests. The constant-stress-ratio test results gave control data and showed the influence of biaxial stresses on the yield, fracture, and ultimate strength of the material. By means of the variable-stress-ratio tests, it is possible to determine whether there is any significant difference between the flow and deformation type of theory. Finally, special tests were conducted to check specific assumptions made in the theories of plastic flow. The constant-stress-ratio tests show that the deformation theory based on the octahedral, effective; or significant stress-strain relations is in approximate agreement with the test results. The variable-stress-ratio tests show that both the deformation and flow theory are in equally good agreement with the test results.


Background and objectives Water pollution is an issue of grave importance worldwide, especially in countries that boast of a large number of industries. High concentration of heavy metal ions such as lead, nickel, etc are often found in industrial waste water and can have adverse affects on human health. Over the years a variety of methods, both physical and chemical ones, are reported to have been used for removal of heavy metal ions from water such as filtration and advanced oxidation [1, 2], etc. Adsorption is among the most widely used techniques due to its simplicity, reasonable operational conditions and cost-effective nature. The primary physical property of any absorbent is its surface area and structure. PANI is used due to the presence of primary and secondary amines functional groups which absorb heavy metals. However, due to poor solubility of PANI in common solvents it is made into composite with polystyrene which has strong mechanical properties. In this study a PS/PANI nanocomposite was prepared using the casting method; the composite was then investigated for its heavy metal ion absorption potential. Methodology PANI is obtained using dispersion polymerization by the usual technique defined in the literature [14, 15]. In order to prepare PANI/PS a mixture of toluene and sulfuric acid is used to get the composite. 0.05 g polystyrene, 0.95 g PANI mixed in 13:13 ml sulfuric acid and toluene solution and stirred at room temperature for 4 hours. The composite is kept on petri disc overnight and dried samples were heated at 50°C for 3 hours. Sulfuric acid was removed by washing the precipitate with distilled water and then dried again at 50°C for 3 hours to obtain the desired composite. Results and discussions SEM & FTIR The morphology and structure of the obtained nanocomposite was studied by Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and the functional groups were characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). The SEM images of pure PANI and PANI/PS composite are shown in Fig. 1 (a–b). The SEM image of pure PANI doped with HCl shows a predominantly fibrous morphology with fibers of uniform diameter of 93 nm. However, PANI/PS composites show very different morphologies. PANI/PS images show some nanoscale structures where PS are coated on the surface of PANI nanofibril structure. From the SEM images, it is clear that PANI/PS composite shows presence of a large surface area required for adsorption. Figure 2 shows the FTIR spectra of pure PANI, pure PS and PANI/PS composite. FTIR spectroscopy is a powerful tool for analyzing the molecular structure and the chemical interactions of the constituent polymers. The appearance of new peaks in the composite FTIR spectra along with changes in existing peaks directly indicates the chemical interaction between polymers. The obtained values are in good agreement with theoretical prediction. Adsorption Tests Table 1 tabulates the adsorption results of pure PANI and PANI/PS composites. From the results, it is clear that PANI/PS composites show the best removal efficiency because of the presence of high surface area due to its fiber morphology. Therefore, the remaining adsorption studies are done only on PANI/PS composites. The following sections describe the effect of contact time, pH, metal loading and composite dosages of the PANI composites on the removal efficiency of Pb from aqueous solution. Effect of contact time The effect of time on the adsorption process of PANI nanocomposite was obtained by plotting the removal efficiency of Pb against time (Fig. 3). For the solution containing 50 ppm of Pb the maximum adsorption was reached in a short period of time and the composite adsorbed approximately 90% of the metal ion. The kinetics of the uptake of metal ion is related to the explicitness of the interaction between the metal ion and the polymer composite matrix. Effect of pH The pH of the solutions showed significant effect on the adsorption process. The effect of pH on the adsorption process of nanocomposite is represented in Fig. 4, where the adsorption coefficient was determined over the pH range 2–9, using 0.2 g PANI nanocomposite and 50 ppm Pb solution. It is clear that the maximum adsorption of metal ion took place for the solution with pH 2–6, and decreased at higher pH values. In our study, the pH of the prepared Pb solutions were adjusted to pH 5. Effect of metal loading The study of initial metal ion concentration on the sorption characteristics of the polymer nanocomposite is analyzed in the concentration range 30–100 ppm of the metal ion. The adsorption, as it can be seen in Fig. 5, is increasing rapidly with the increase in the initial concentration of Pb until 70 ppm. Beyond this concentration, the rate of increase in the adsorption is slow most probably because the adsorption sites are already saturated. Effect of composite dosage Figure 6 illustrates the effect of PANI composites weight on the adsorption of metal ions. Varying amounts (0.1–0.5 g) of sorbent are added in 100 mL 50 ppm Pb solution under optimized conditions. From the graph, it is obvious that as the adsorbent concentration increases the removal efficiency of Pb in PANI/PS composite also increases. This is because the increase in adsorbent concentration provides greater surface area for adsorption and as a result it can hold more metal particles. Conclusion This work illustrates the preparation and adsorption property of pure PANI and PANI/PS composites. The synthesis of PANI nanocomposite has been successfully performed by in situ polymerization method and the incorporation of the PANI in PS was confirmed by FTIR. The SEM images of PANI and its composites confirmed the nanometer size range of PANI fibers. Adsorption performance of PANI and its nanocomposites has been studied for the removal of Pb from aqueous solution. Among the two adsorbents, PANI/PS shows 95% removal efficiency. The adsorption capacity of PANI/PS for Pb increases with initial metal concentration and composite dosages. Maximum adsorption was observed for pH 5, hence all the measurements are done at that pH. In conclusion, PANI/PS nanocomposite could be a good candidate for efficient Pb-removal from wastewater and for the deep-purification of pollutant water. References [1] S. S Madaeni, Y. Mansourpanah, Filtration & Separation, 40(6) (2003). 41–46. [2] T. Kurbus, Y. M. Slokar, A. M. Le Marechal, D.B. Voncina, Dyes and Pigments, 58(2), (2003) 171–178. [3] J. Stejskal, R. G. Gilbert, Polyaniline. Preparation of a conducting polymer, Pure Appl. Chem., 74 (2002) 857–867. [4] N. Gospodinova, L. Terlemezyan, Conducting polymers prepared by oxidative polymerization: polyaniline, Progress in Polymer Science, 23 (1998) 1443–1484.


This article considers how changing media practices of minority groups and political and media elites impact on democratic participation in national debates. Taking as its case study the state-sponsored campaign to formally recognise Indigenous people in the Australian constitution, the article examines the interrelationships between political media and Indigenous participatory media—both of which we argue are undergoing seismic transformation. Discussion of constitutional reform has tended to focus on debates occurring in forums of influence such as party politics and news media that privilege the voices of only a few high-profile Indigenous media 'stars'. Debate has progressed on the assumption that constitutional change needs to be settled by political elites and then explained and 'sold' to Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Our research on the mediatisation of policymaking has found that in an increasingly media-saturated environment, political leaders and their policy bureaucrats attend to a narrow range of highly publicised voices. But the rapidly changing media environment has disrupted the media-driven Recognise campaign. Vigorous public discussion is increasingly taking place outside the mainstream institutions of media and politics, while social media campaigns emerge in rapid response to government decisions. Drawing on a long tradition in citizens' media scholarship we argue that the vibrant, diverse and growing Indigenous media sphere in Australia has increased the accessibility of Indigenous voices challenging the scope and substance of the recognition debate. The article concludes on a cautionary note by considering some tensions in the promise of the changing media for Indigenous participation in the national policy conversation.


Social media have dramatically altered the communication landscape, offering novel contexts for individual expression. But how do youth who are civically engaged off-line manage opportunities for civic expression on social media? Interviews with 70 U.S.-based civic youth aged 15 to 25 revealed three main patterns characterizing the relationship between off-line participation and online expression: blended, bounded, and differentiated. Five sets of empirically derived considerations influencing expression patterns emerged: organizational policies, personal image and privacy, perceived alignment with civic goals, attitudes toward the platform(s), and perceptions of their audience(s). Most civic youth express the civic online, yet a minority highlight tensions that lead them to refrain from sharing in certain or all online contexts.


This paper will present and discuss the results of an empirical study on perception of quality in interpretation carried out on a sample of 286 interpreters across five continents. Since the 1980's the field of Interpreting Studies has been witnessing an ever growing interest in the issue of quality in interpretation both in academia and in professional circles, but research undertaken so far is surprisingly lacking in methodological rigour. This survey is an attempt to revise previous studies on interpreters' perception of quality through the implementation of new Information Technology which allowed us to administer a traditional research tool such as a questionnaire, in a highly innovative way; i.e., through the World Wide Web. Using multidimensional scaling, a perceptual map based upon the results of the manner in which interpreters ranked a list of linguistic and non-linguistic criteria according to their perception of importance in the interpretative process, was devised.


. This research presents techniques suitable for pedestrian localization in closed environments using mobile devices without the need of GPS technol-ogy. The objective of this research is to design and implement a pedestrian localization system, which can be used directly without investments into building a support infrastructure and acquiring expensive devices. The research problem is that GPS signal is weak or absent in closed spaces, thus cannot be used to identify location. Several technologies, which are using mobile sensors, are used as part of the experimental methodology to implement the system. These include tracking of wireless networks, dead reckoning, step detection, and bar-code scanning. These technologies were combined and coded in the Java pro-gramming language to form the localization system. Beside the technologies mentioned above, crowdsourcing is used for gathering environment data needed for calculation of location estimates. Currently, the implementation has been done for the Android platform, but it is designed to be universal, and can be ex-panded to other mobile platforms. Preliminary results of the prototype application report a positioning error (standard deviation) of roughly 2 meters.


Background: Sarcoidosis is a multi-system disorder characterised by non-caseating granulomas. Coexistence of sarcoidosis with immune-mediated and chronic inflammatory diseases has been described in case series. However, the coexistence of two different diseases in individuals can occur by chance, even if each of the diseases is rare. Aim: To determine whether sarcoidosis necessitating hospital admission or day-case care coexists with a range of immune-mediated and chronic inflammatory diseases more commonly than expected by chance. Design: Analysis of an epidemiological database of hospital admission and day-case statistics, spanning 30 years. Results: 1510 patients with sarcoidosis were identified (mean age 44 years, median follow-up 19 years) who had been admitted to hospital or day-case care. Significant associations in the sarcoidosis cohort were identified with systemic lupus erythematosus (odds ratio (OR) 8.3; 95% CI 2.7 to 19.4), autoimmune chronic hepatitis (OR 6.7; 95% CI 1.8 to 17.1), multiple sclerosis (OR 3.3; 95% CI 1.7 to 5.6), coeliac disease (OR 3.1; 95% CI 1.01 to 7.3), thyrotoxicosis (OR 2.5; 95% CI 1.4 to 4.0), myxoedema (OR 2.2; 95% CI 1.2 to 3.7) and ulcerative colitis (OR 2.1; 95% CI 1.1 to 3.7). Weaker associations were found for diabetes mellitus with a first admission aged 30–49 years (OR 2.9; 95% CI 2.1 to 4.0) or age >50 (OR 1.7; 95% CI 1.2 to 2.3), but not for people age <30. No significant association with Crohn's disease (OR 1.52; 95% CI 0.61 to 3.14) or primary biliary cirrhosis (OR 3.75; 95% CI 0.77 to 11.0),was found. When all immune-mediated and chronic inflammatory diseases for which associations were sought were combined, the overall rate ratio associated with sarcoidosis was 2.2 (95% CI 1.9 to 2.6). Conclusion: This study adds epidemiological evidence to information from clinical reports that there is a connection between sarcoidosis and other immune-mediated and chronic inflammatory diseases.


The view on information technology strategy has changed significantly. In the past, a functional-level view was prevailing, where information technology (IT) strategy was subordinate to a deliberate business strategy and needed alignment. Recently, rapid developments in digital technologies leaves no industry untouched and IT becomes an enabler and differentiator for businesses. Therefore, IT strategy exceeds the view of alignment towards a fusion of businessand IT-strategy– coined as digital business strategy (DBS). Yet, strategies are inextricably linked to organizational design in order to function well. Consequently, a DBS requires a suitable underlying organizational design. This paper aims to explore the very organizational design components for DBS by examining the state of the art literature. Specifically, this paper sheds light on the organizational design components of strategy, structure, processes, rewards, and people. The research method is a review of relevant literature at the intersect of information systems (IS) and management. Conclusions, implications for research and practice are presented.


This paper investigates the control and localization of a heterogeneous (e.g., different sensing, mechanical, computational capabilities) group of mobile robots. The group considered here has several inexpensive sensor-limited and computationally limited robots, which follow a leader robot in a desired formation over long distances. This situation is similar to a search, demining, or planetary exploration situation where there are several deployable/disposable robots led by a more sophisticated leader. Specifically, the robots in this paper are designed for highway safety applications where they automatically deploy and maneuver safety barrels commonly used to control traffic in highway work zones. Complex sensing and computation are performed by the leader, while the followers perform simple operations under the leader's guidance. This architecture allows followers to be simple, inexpensive, and have minimal sensors. Theoretical and statistical analysis of a tracking-based localization method is provided. A simple follow-the-leader control method is also presented, including a method for changing follower's configuration. Experimental results of localization and follow-the-leader formation-motion are included.


Security-by-Contract (S×C) is a paradigm providing security assurances for mobile applications. In this work, we present the an extension of S×C, called Security-by-Contract-with-Trust (S×C×T). Indeed, we enrich the S×C architecture by integrating a trust model and adding new modules and configurations for managing contracts. Indeed, at deploy-time, our system decides the run-time configuration depending on the credentials of the contract provider. The run-time environment can both enforce a security policy and monitor the declared contract. According to the actual behaviour of the running program our architecture updates the trust level associated with the contract provider. We also present a possible application of our framework in the scenario of a mobile application marketplace, e.g., Apple AppStore, Cydia, Android Market, that, nowadays, are considered as one of the most attractive e-commerce activity for both mobile application developers and industries of mobile devices. Since the number of applications increases, Mobile Applications Marketplace (MAMp) sets up recommendation systems that rank and highlight mobile applications by category, social activity, etc. The S×C×T framework we propose is applied in this scenario for providing security on cus- tomers' mobile devices as well as help Mobile Applications Marketplaces to enhance their recommendation systems with security feedback. The main advantage of this method is an automatic management of the level of trust of software and contract releasers and a unified way for dealing with both security and trust.


Along with the World Bank and the IMF, the International Trade Organization (ITO) formed the centrepiece of new kind of international organization in the late 40s. At the time, what was particularly novel about the Havana Charter was that it was not simply or mainly a trade organization like the WTO, its latter day descendent. At its core, the countries of the world rejected the idea that it was possible to maintain a firewall between trade, development, employment standards and domestic policy. Its most distinctive feature was the integration of an ambitious and successful program to reduce traditional trade barriers, with a wide-angled agreement that addressed investment, employment standards, development, business monopolies and the like. It pioneered the idea that trade disputes had to be settled by consultation and mediation rather than with legal clout. Further it established an institutional linkage between trade and labour standards that would effect a major advance in global governance. Finally it embedded the full employment obligation, along with "a commitment to free markets" as the cornerstone of multilateralism.

Despite these accomplishments, the US Congress refused to ratify the Havana Charter even though it had signed it. As a direct consequence, the ITO's collapse represented a significant closure of the full employment era internationally. In the end, it's demise made possible the rapid return of the free trade canon that increasingly, would impose its authority and ideology on all international organizations and on the practice of multilateralism. As this essay concludes, its history compelling because whatever its apparent shortcomings, governments, economists and ordinary people demanded that trade, employment goals and developmental needs should reinforce each other in the world trading system.


A system for stable transformation of Toxoplasma gondii tachyzoites was developed that exploited the susceptibility of Toxoplasma to chloramphenicol. Introduction of the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) gene fused to Toxoplasma flanking sequences followed by chloramphenicol selection resulted in parasites stably expressing CAT. A construct incorporating the tandemly repeated gene, B1, targeted efficiently to its homologous chromosomal locus. Knockout of the single-copy gene, ROP1, was also successful. Stable transformation should permit the identification and analysis of Toxoplasma genes important in the interaction of this opportunistic parasite with its host.


Sickle beta plus thalassemia (Hb S/β+ Th) is a rare inherited disorder among haemoglobinopathies. This disorder is inherited in an autosomal recessive manner. Sickle beta plus thalassemia patient usually have chronic haemolytic anaemia and rarely can present as vaso-occlusive painful crisis. Abdominal pain is frequently seen in vaso-occlusive painful crisis and may masquerade diseases such as acute appendicitis and cholecystitis. Acute pancreatitis is rarely included as a cause of abdominal pain in these patients. There are no systematic literature available which can give insight about this complication and its management. Here we report a case of sickle beta plus thalassemia presenting as acute pancreatitis.


ABSTRACT In this article I analyse the narratives of conversion to Evangelical churches in St Petersburg by inquiring how Russians engage with the Evangelical churches and how they construct a meaningful conversion identity. My analysis shows how the social and political changes of post-Soviet Russia are experienced in religious terms and whether they have social implications that are reflected in identity-building as both Russian and Evangelical. Individual identity always reflects time and place, and the social and societal context in which an individual lives. Through this route I also broaden the understanding of Russian societal attitudes towards present-day 'religious dissidents'. My research is based on 19 thematic interviews and participant observations in church meetings in St Petersburg between 2006 and 2009. Most of the interviewees belonged to communities that could be categorised as neo-Pentecostal. The study revealed that both a personal religious quest, especially during the societal turmoil that existed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the influence of friends or relatives were significant impulses for conversion. The resources sustaining the conversion as an ongoing process are communal, but also involve an individual self-improvement project within the construction of a new Evangelical self.


In 1979, in a pioneering work in behavioral finance, Franco Modigliani and Richard Cohn showed that investors tend to undervalue firms in inflationary times if they do no properly account for the effects on a company's income statement. They termed this effect "money illusion." Here the authors examine a corollary of the Modigliani-Cohn result: In the presence of "money illusion," the correlation between stock and bond returns will be abnormally high during periods of high inflation. For the United States, the authors show that inflation had exactly this effect on the stock/bond correlation during the postwar era. These results are useful to anyone who wants to forecasts the correlation between stocks and bonds, as essential ingredient in asset allocation.


IZA DP No. 14240 MARCH 2021 Do More School Resources Increase Learning Outcomes? Evidence from an Extended School-Day Reform* Whether allocating more resources improves learning outcomes for students in lowperforming public schools remains an open debate. We focus on the effect of increased instructional time, which is theoretically ambiguous due to possible compensating changes in effort by students, teachers or parents. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we find that a reform extending the school day increases math test scores, with a large effect size relative to other interventions. It also improved reading, technical skills and socioemotional competencies. Our results are partly explained by reductions in home production by students, specialization by teachers and investments in pedagogical assistance to teachers. JEL Classification: I2, I22, I26


The design of highly wavelength tunable semiconductor laser structures is presented. The system is based on a one dimensional photonic crystal cavity consisting of two patterned, doubly-clamped nanobeams, otherwise known as a "zipper" cavity. Zipper cavities are highly dispersive with respect to the gap between nanobeams in which extremely strong radiation pressure forces exist. Schemes for controlling the zipper cavity wavelength both optically and electrically are presented. Tuning ranges as high as 75 nm are achieved for a nominal design wavelength of lambda = 1.3 microm. Sensitivity of the mechanically compliant laser structure to thermal noise is considered, and it is found that dynamic back-action of radiation pressure in the form of an optical or electrical spring can be used to stabilize the laser frequency. Fabrication of zipper cavity laser structures in GaAs material with embedded self-assembled InAs quantum dots is presented, along with measurements of photoluminescence spectroscopy of the zipper cavity modes.


The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of the Consciousness Energy Healing (The Trivedi Effect®) Treatment based test formulation and medium (DMEM) against various skin health parameters using three cell lines i.e., HFF-1, HaCaT, and B16-F10. The various study parameters viz. collagen, elastin, hyaluronic acid, melanin, cell viability against UV-B induced stress, and wound healing were evaluated. The test formulation and DMEM were divided into two parts. One part of the test formulation and one part of the DMEM received the Consciousness Energy Healing Treatment by Janice Patricia Kinney and were defined as the Biofield Energy Treated samples, while the other parts were denoted as the untreated test samples. Cell viability using MTT assay showed more than 70% cells were viable in all the tested concentrations in three cells, indicating that the test formulation was safe and nontoxic. The collagen synthesis was significantly (p≤0.001) increased by 22.42% and 17.48% in the UT-DMEM + BT-Test formulation group at 0.63 and 2.5 µg/mL, respectively in relation to the UT-DMEM + UT-Test formulation group. The Elastin level was significantly (p≤0.001) increased by 28.41% in the BT-DMEM + BT-Test formulation group at 5 µg/mL compared to the untreated group. Hyaluronic acid at 0.63 µg/mL was increased significantly by 15.90% in the BT-DMEM + BT-Test formulation group compared to the untreated group. The level of melanin was reduced significantly by 9.25% and 7.26% in the BT-DMEM + BT-Test formulation group at 0.013 and 0.063 µg/mL, respectively in relation to the untreated group. Protection of skin cells after UV-B exposure data displayed that the cell viability was increased significantly by 17.88%, 20.10%, and 25.77% in the BT-DMEM + BT-Test formulation group at 0.625, 1.25, and 2.5 µg/mL, respectively compared to the UT-DMEM + UT-Test formulation group. Wound healing data exhibited significant wound closure and cell migration activities in the HFF-1 and HaCaT cells compared to the UT-DMEM + UT-Test formulation. Overall, the data suggests that the Biofield Energy Treated DMEM and test formulation demonstrated better responses compared to the untreated medium and test formulation with respect to the tested skin health parameters. Therefore, the Biofield Energy Healing and the Treated test formulation could be developed as an effective cosmetic product to protect and treat the various skin problems including infection, photosensitivity, erythema, contact dermatitis, seborrheic dermatitis, athlete's foot, psoriasis, erythema, cutis rhomboidalis nuchae, skin aging, wrinkles and/or change in skin color, etc.


This study highlights the importance of extending medical awareness to outreach communities and explores the creation of a risk assessment questionnaire to help detect diabetes in Filipino participants in Tandag, Philippines. The aim of this work is to help indigent Filipinos in remote villages receive medical care if necessary. A risk assessment tool can act as a self-completion questionnaire for participants to identify themselves as diabetics or prediabetics in order to seek appropriate medical attention. Therefore, Filipino participants living in remote villages will not have to travel several hours to receive diabetic blood testing unless diagnosed by the risk assessment tool.

The development of the risk assessment tool takes the following assessments into consideration: blood pressure, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, family history, and diabetic symptoms. The research hypothesis states that a risk assessment questionnaire will determine if a person is diabetic. The null hypothesis claims that a risk assessment questionnaire will not determine if an individual is diabetic. The data rejects the null hypothesis since a statistically significant correlation is found between blood glucose levels and total points. A positive correlation is found between total points and BMI, supporting that a risk assessment questionnaire can detect those at risk for diabetes and prediabetes.


Asia, the Pacifi c and Oceania region is very rich in genetic diversity of tropical fruits. Although, fruits have always been important agricultural species, it is only in recent years that there is an increasing awareness of the potential of native tropical fruit species as good sources of dietary vitamins, minerals and energy. They also play a very signifi cant role for the wellbeing of the people through enhancing household income, employment generation particularly for women, and environmental protection. At the same time, their genetic diversity and even the species diversity is threatened due to various human interventions and concerted efforts are required to take corrective measures. Bioversity International, in collaboration with national partners, implemented in recent past several programmes for effective conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources of tropical fruits in the region and is continuing to do so. This paper describes the results of studies on various aspects of tropical fruit genetic diversity and species diversity as well as their sustainable use in major fruit growing countries in Asia, the Pacifi c and Oceania in the last decade and half. The studies included exploration and collecting, characterization and evaluation, identifi cation of promising/elite lines, documentation, conservation, training and capacity building, socio-economic analysis, information dissemination, collaboration and networking, impacts and sustainability of efforts. The paper also touches on the current efforts and future thrusts for tropical fruit species genetic resources conservation, management and sustainable use.


With the increasing popularity of product assortments by recommendation system, how
online seller manage the links of products seems important. As the similar products that are
viewed together in product's search pages, we study the economic effects of the similar
products network. In this study, we construct the similarity network by using data from
Taobao.com. We apply Cross-sectional data models to examine the spillover effect of reviews
from the similar product, additionally how characters of network moderate this effect for
three product categories. We find that the semantic similarity of similar product's review
has a negative impact on focal product's sale. The more similar in context, the more
substitutable of the product. Furthermore, the volume and price of similar product also have
influence on the demand. From the view of network characteristics, we find that the indegree
of a product, clustering coefficient and density of the incoming network also has an
impact on the demand.


The explosive growth of mobile communications, and the overly crowded and expensive spectrum have pushed both system engineers and operators to make their systems as spectrally efficient as possible in order to accommodate the increasing traffic demand. This article is a tutorial introduction to the orthogonal subchannel (OSC) technique. OSC was adopted to improve the capacity of the GSM/EDGE radio access network GERAN, and it is a new concept in which two users can simultaneously share the same GSM radio resource (time slot and frequency) in both the downlink and in uplink directions. Potentially, OSC could not only provide increased network capacity, but also reduce network-associated costs through more efficient usage of hardware and spectrum resources. In addition, this article presents some challenges related to this method, as well as solutions and their respective impact. The results provided herein may contribute to guidelines for network dimensioning and optimization, as well as list potential enhancements to the OSC radio resource management mechanisms needed to further exploit the benefits of OSC. Currently, in real OSC network deployments a capacity gain of 50 percent has been achieved at the cell level. As an indication of the importance of OSC, GSMA awarded it (called Quad Rate) the Best Technology Breakthrough award at Mobile World Congress 2012 [1].


The increasing prevalence of ever-sophisticated technology permits machines to stand in for or augment humans in a growing number of contexts. The questions of whether, when, and how the so-called actions of machines can and should result in legal liability thus will also become more practically pressing. One important set of questions that the law will inevitably need to confront is whether machines can have mental states, or—at least—something sufficiently like mental states for the purposes of the law. This is because a number of areas of law have explicit or implicit mental state requirements for the incurrence of legal liability. Thus, in these contexts, whether machines can incur legal liability turns on whether a machine can operate with the requisite mental state. Consider the example of copyright law. Given the long history of mechanical copying, courts have already faced the question of whether a machine making a copy can have the mental states required for liability. They have often answered with a resounding, unconditional "no." But this Essay seeks to challenge any generalization that machines cannot operate with a mental state in the eyes of the law. Taking lessons from philosophical thinking about minds and machines—in particular, the conceptual distinction between "conscious" and "functional" properties of the mind—this Essay uses copyright's volitional act requirement as a case study to demonstrate that certain legal mental state requirements might seek to track only the functional properties of the states in question, even ones which can be possessed by machines. This Essay concludes by considering how to move toward a more general framework for evaluating the question of machine mental states for legal purposes.


What is to our knowledge the first high-density (>10(12) bits/cm(3)) optical recording of digital information in a multilayered, three-dimensional format is reported. Information is written as submicrometer volume elements of increased refractive index in a photopolymer by two-photon excitation of a photoinitiator at the waist of a highly focused beam from a colliding-pulse mode-locked laser. Quadratic dependence of two-photon excitation on intensity confines polymerization to the focal volume. Information is read with sufficient axial resolution by differential interference contrast microscopy. This write-once, read-many technique should increase the capacity of the spinning disk format by 100-fold.


Nowadays, it is widely accepted that the data warehouse design task should be largely automated. Furthermore, the data warehouse conceptual schema must be structured according to the multidimensional model and as a consequence, the most common way to automatically look for subjects and dimensions of analysis is by discovering functional dependencies (as dimensions functionally depend on the fact) over the data sources. Most advanced methods for automating the design of the data warehouse carry out this process from relational OLTP systems, assuming that a RDBMS is the most common kind of data source we may find, and taking as starting point a relational schema. In contrast, in our approach we propose to rely instead on a conceptual representation of the domain of interest formalized through a domain ontology expressed in the DL-Lite Description Logic. We propose an algorithm to discover functional dependencies from the domain ontology that exploits the inference capabilities of DL-Lite, thus fully taking into account the semantics of the domain. We also provide an evaluation of our approach in a real-world scenario.


Alteration of riparian stream flow through the damming of rivers and streams impacts not only river morphology but also the vegetation communities that exist within the confines of a river's banks. To examine changes in vegetation community composition and structure resulting from human control of water flow, I conducted a series of surveys on dammed and undammed streams in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. These surveys documented that areas below dams contain increased leaf litter and grass thatch deposition, increased grass species coverage, and an altered community of existing forbs as compared to sites with naturally flowing streams. There was also an increased woody species canopy coverage as distance from the stream increased. To examine the proximal causes of damming on herbaceous plants, I set up a factorial field experiment examining the impact of grass thatch, shading, and herbivory on a common riparian species, Mimulus guttatus, the common monkeyflower. M. guttatus germination was decreased in the thatch augmentation plots and under artificial shading. For seedlings, shading increased final plant height and thatch increased herbivory. In plots where herbivory was not controlled by insecticide, M. guttatus plants grew smaller and had lower reproduction. I also repeated this experiment in a more controlled greenhouse environment using two seed sources and two levels of shading coverage. Results from this experiment largely confirm patterns seen in the field, but also revealed a strong interaction between shading and thatch treatments for both germination and growth. Overall, my results suggest that altering riparian stream flow may impact plant performance through a cascading set of biotic interactions, and that controlled releases from dams that mimic bankfull or greater discharge events may be required to restore these important and diverse communities by resetting disturbance rates.


Abstract : Congress's contempt power is the means by which Congress responds to certain acts that in its view obstruct the legislative process. Contempt may be used either to coerce compliance (inherent contempt), punish the contemnor (criminal contempt), and/or to remove the obstruction (civil contempt). Although arguably any action that directly obstructs the effort of Congress to exercise its constitutional powers may constitute a contempt, in the last 70 years the contempt power (primarily through the criminal contempt process) has generally been employed only in instances of refusals of witnesses to appear before committees, to respond to questions, or to produce documents. This report examines the source of the contempt power, reviews the historical development of the early case law, outlines the statutory and common law basis for Congress's contempt power, and analyzes the procedures associated with each of the three different types of contempt proceedings. In addition, the report discusses limitations both nonconstitutional and constitutionally based on the power.


The problem of fair classification can be mollified if we develop a method to remove the embedded sensitive information from the classification features. This line of separating the sensitive information is developed through the causal inference, and the causal inference enables the counterfactual generations to contrast the what-if case of the opposite sensitive attribute. Along with this separation with the causality, a frequent assumption in the deep latent causal model defines a single latent variable to absorb the entire exogenous uncertainty of the causal graph. However, we claim that such structure cannot distinguish the 1) information caused by the intervention (i.e., sensitive variable) and 2) information correlated with the intervention from the data. Therefore, this paper proposes Disentangled Causal Effect Variational Autoencoder (DCEVAE) to resolve this limitation by disentangling the exogenous uncertainty into two latent variables: either 1) independent to interventions or 2) correlated to interventions without causality. Particularly, our disentangling approach preserves the latent variable correlated to interventions in generating counterfactual examples. We show that our method estimates the total effect and the counterfactual effect without a complete causal graph. By adding a fairness regularization, DCEVAE generates a counterfactual fair dataset while losing less original information. Also, DCEVAE generates natural counterfactual images by only flipping sensitive information. Additionally, we theoretically show the differences in the covariance structures of DCEVAE and prior works from the perspective of the latent disentanglement.


The relationship between residents and tourists in particular communities has been characterized by an imbalance of power, superficial interactions, an exchange of goods for money, and the dichotomy of 'self' versus 'other.' What has been neglected within the tourism literature is the embrace of an emotional component within the relationship between the parties. The purpose of this work is to offer emotional solidarity as a viable framework to explain the deeper, affective connections residents and tourists possess with one another. Three "real world" examples of emotional solidarity are presented to indicate its existence. The remainder of the paper includes a call for greater exploratory research of the construct.


The volatile terpenoid fraction from needles in 13 cultivars of Tsuga canadensis L. (Carriere) was analyzed by gas chromatography with mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The results of this study are considered along with previously reported results for foliar terpenoid levels of the Asian (T. sieboldii, T. chinensis, T. diversifolia), western North American (T. mertensiana, T. heterophylla), and eastern North American species (T. canadensis, T. caroliniana) of hemlock to draw conclusions about the potential of cultivar host resistance to the hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae Annand). It is suggested that hemlocks in eastern North America have adapted their terpenoid chemistry for protection against endemic defoliators and that this has made them vulnerable to non-native, sucking pests such as adelgids and scales. Some cultivars of T. canadensis have a terpenoid profile that resembles that of the resistant noneastern North American species and are candidates for biological screening for resistance. Among the cultivars, the variation in terpenoid chemistry did not absolutely correspond with the considerable differences in morphological characters observed, indicating that the terpenoid chemistry is not definitively coupled with hemlock morphology.


This article presents parallel cost analysis, a static cost analysis targeting to over-approximate the cost of parallel execution in distributed systems. In contrast to the standard notion of serial cost, parallel cost captures the cost of synchronized tasks executing in parallel by exploiting the true concurrency available in the execution model of distributed processing. True concurrency is challenging for static cost analysis, because the parallelism between tasks needs to be soundly inferred, and the waiting and idle processor times at the different locations need to be accounted for. Parallel cost analysis works in three phases: (1) it performs a block-level analysis to estimate the serial costs of the blocks between synchronization points in the program; (2) it then constructs a distributed flow graph (DFG) to capture the parallelism, the waiting, and idle times at the locations of the distributed system; and (3) the parallel cost can finally be obtained as the path of maximal cost in the DFG. We prove the correctness of the proposed parallel cost analysis, and provide a prototype implementation to perform an experimental evaluation of the accuracy and feasibility of the proposed analysis.


The Surface Ocean CO₂ Atlas (SOCAT, www.socat.info) is a synthesis activity by the international
marine carbon community (>100 contributors) with support from SOLAS, IMBER, IOCCP, IOC and
(inter-)national agencies. SOCAT brings together quality-controlled fCO₂ (fugacity of carbon
dioxide) values for the global surface oceans and coastal seas with regular updates. Version 3 of
SOCAT has 14.5 million surface water fCO₂ values for the years 1957 to 2014 with more than 1.0
million fCO₂ values per year for 2006 to 2012. SOCAT now accepts well-calibrated, good quality
fCO₂ measurements from alternative sensors and platforms. Dataset flags reflect the accuracy of
surface water fCO₂ values, ranging from better than 2 micro-atm (for the highest quality data) to
better than 10 micro-atm (for alternative sensors). Automation of data upload is now enabling
annual SOCAT releases from version 4 onwards. The interactive Data Set Viewer allows effective interrogation of the SOCAT data collection and rapid creation of high-quality figures for scientific
presentations. Users of SOCAT data products are urged to acknowledge the contribution of data
providers, as stated in the SOCAT Fair Data Use Statement.
SOCAT version 4 is planned to be made public in early September 2016, and we'll highlight its
updates above version 3 including observations to end of 2014. We will also present scientific
applications of SOCAT including quantification of the ocean carbon sink and its long-term
variation, detection of ocean acidification, as well as evaluation of coupled-climate and ocean-only
biogeochemical models. SOCAT represents a milestone in coordinating international researchers,
for the delivery of publically accessible and uniformly quality-controlled datasets, for marine and
global carbon research and for informing government climate policy.


Designing a high-energy Q-switched all-solid-state laser operating on the quasi-four-level 0.946-µm transition of Nd:YAG is quite challenging because of intense competition from the high-gain 1.064-µm transition. We have achieved such a laser by implementing an innovative resonator design, augmented by specialty coatings. Utilizing this approach, we obtained >75 mJ of Q-switched TEM00 mode energy in an all-solid-state diode pumped laser, a factor of 22 times more energy per pulse than any published data have reported.


In order to analyze digital activism, the authors of this paper investigated hundreds of campaigns from around the world and assembled protest event data more comprehensive than any previously collected. With a team of over 40 coders, reviewing hundreds of cases and two decades of digital activism, the study used the highest of social scientific standards to build the best available data set on one of the most important trends in global politics.Key findings of the study include that despite prominent media coverage of hacking and cybercrime, both physical and technical violence are extremely rare in digital activism. It also concludes that even though Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube may be the most popular tools for digital activism around the world, but there are interesting regional variations. For example, E-petitions are most popular in North America and Northern Europe, regions with strong democratic traditions. Globally, there is no "killer app" that makes some campaigns more successful than others. Regarding the link between success rate and digital campaigns, the study found that if anything, using a diverse digital toolkit causes some campaigns to succeed and others to fail. Digital activism has a demonstrated, positive impact on drawing people to the streets to protest, especially when civil society groups use digital tools and changing government policy is the goal. If the objective is change in government or government policy, civil society groups have demonstrated success with just modest street protests and a few digital tools. Both recipes for success are true regardless of regime type.


We devise a novel dynamic PCE-based impairment-aware RWA algorithm in translucent GMPLS WSON that minimizes regenerator usage. Experimental evaluation carried out on the Open GMPLS/PCE control plane of CTTC ADRENALINE test-bed shows that significant improvements (>340%) are attained in terms of the offered traffic load.


This paper studies the role of ethnicity in the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment. Relying on heteroskedasticity to identify parameters in the presence of endogenous regressors, I revisit Borjas ethnic capital hypothesis. I find evidence that the OLS estimates of the effect of ethnic capital on intergenerational transmission of education are biased upwards due to the transfer of unobserved ability. I find that while the role of parental capital has declined over time, ethnic capital has a relatively constant effect on intergenerational transmission of educational attainment. I also find that only women benefit from the quality of the ethnic environment and that the intergenerational transfer of ethnic capital is most prevalent in communities with strong ties measured with endogamy rates.


To date, most autonomous micro air vehicles (MAV-s) operate in a controlled environment, where the location of and attitude of the aircraft are measured with an infrared (IR) tracking systems. If MAV-s are to ever exit the lab, their flight control needs to become autonomous and based on on-board image and attitude sensors. To address this need, several groups are developing monocular and binocular image based navigation systems. One of the challenges of these systems is the need for exact calibration in order to determine the vehicle's position and attitude through the solution of an inverse problem. Body schemas are a biologically-inspired approach, emulating the plasticity of the animal brain, which allows it to learn non-linear mappings between the body configurations, i.e. its generalized coordinates and the resulting sensory outputs. The advantages of body schemas has long been recognized in the cognitive robotic literature and resulting studies on human-robot interactions based on artificial neural networks, however little effort has been made so far to develop avian-inspired flight control strategies utilizing body and image schemas.This paper presents a numerical experiment of controlling the trajectory of a miniature rotorcraft during landing maneuvers suing the notion of body and image schemas. More specifically, we demonstrate how trajectory planning can be executed in the image space using gradient-based maximum seeking algorithm of a pseudo-potential. It is demonstrated that a neural-gas type artificial neural network (ANN), trained through Hebbian-type learning algorithm, can be effective in learning a mapping between the rotorcraft's position/attitude and the output of its vision sensors. Numerical simulation of the landing performance, including resulting landing errors are presented using an experimentally validated rotorcraft model.Copyright © 2015 by ASME


The great nation which dwelt in the seventh century before our era on the banks of Tigris and Euphrates flourished in literature as well as in the plastic arts, and had an alphabet of its own. The Assyrians sometimes wrote with a sharp reed, for a pen, upon skins, wooden tablets, or papyrus brought from Egypt. In this case they used cursive letters of a Phoenician character. But when they wished to preserve their written documents, they employed clay tablets, and a stylus whose bevelled point made an impression like a narrow elongated wedge, or arrow-head. By a combination of these wedges, letters and words were formed by the skilled and practised scribe, who would thus rapidly turn off a vast amount of "copy." All works of history, poetry, and law were thus written in the cuneiform or old Chaldean characters, and on a substance which could withstand the ravages of time, fire, or water. Hence we have authentic monuments of Assyrian literature in their original form, unglossed, unaltered, and ungarbled, and in this respect Chaldean records are actually superior to those of the Greeks, the Hebrews, or the Romans.


Asset forfeiture came into prominence as a law enforcement tool in the United States during the 1990s. At the beginning of that decade, the Department of Justice - the principal federal law enforcement agency - was forfeiting approximately $200 million per year in criminal assets, mostly from drug cases. By the end of the decade, it was forfeiting over $600 million per year in assets involved in an enormous variety of serious crimes.
In short, in the last decade, asset forfeiture became institutionalized as an essential weapon in the arsenal that the federal law enforcement agencies in the United States could bring to bear on the perpetrators of crime. But the statutes, procedures and policies that govern the application of the forfeiture laws did not spring full-grown from a single Act of Congress. Nor were the various statutes that were enacted piecemeal over many years accepted by the courts without scepticism or controversy. To the contrary, laws and concepts that were slowly developed throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were greatly expanded in the last 20 years, applied in new contexts, and subjected to close scrutiny by a sceptical judiciary. Only now, after more than a dozen constitutional challenges in the Supreme Court of the United States and the enactment of comprehensive reform legislation, can it be said that most of the major issues have been settled. Many issues remain, but to a large extent when the practitioners of forfeiture law go to federal court today, they are litigating over the details.


e-services, QoS, QoE, QoBiz, management, business metrics, alarms, optimization, monitoring This report discusses the effects of quality of service degradations on the profitability of e-services. We characterize possible relationships between quality-of-service metrics (throughput, delay, availability) and business metrics (revenue, costs). We build an e-service (named Q2B) that collects run-time data and visualizes the above relationships. Furthermore, the Q2B service triggers alarms if customers are likely to react to quality-of-service perturbations of a service or its suppliers. We also apply mathematical programming to facilitate business decision making based on the impact of QoS on business metrics.


Ensemble classifiers are known to generally perform better than their constituent classifiers. Whereas a lot of work has been focusing on the generation of classifiers for ensembles, much less attention has been given to the fusion of individual classifier outputs. One approach to fuse the outputs is to apply Shaferpsilas theory of evidence, which provides a flexible framework for expressing and fusing beliefs. However, representing and fusing beliefs is non-trivial since it can be performed in a multitude of ways within the evidential framework. In a previous article, we compared different evidential combination rules for ensemble fusion. The study involved a single belief representation which involved discounting (i.e., weighting) the classifier outputs with classifier reliability. The classifier reliability was interpreted as the classifierpsilas estimated accuracy, i.e., the percentage of correctly classified examples. However, classifiers may have different performance for different classes and in this work we assign the reliability of a classifier output depending on the class-specific reliability of the classifier. Using 27 UCI datasets, we compare the two different ways of expressing beliefs and some evidential combination rules. The result of the study indicates that there is indeed an advantage of utilizing class-specific reliability compared to accuracy in an evidential framework for combining classifiers in the ensemble design considered.


Today, many agricultural organizations have developed Web databases or deep Web' to publish their observation data. However, the availability of deep Web alone limits any agricultural applications to automatically perform. There is thus a need for a deep Web Service or simply dWS that facilitates any client applications to automatically access the data available on a specified deep Web. It is likely that several dWS' must be developed. In this paper, we thus propose a conceptual framework that facilitates the development of a dWS as per a given deep Web. Specifically, it provides an essential mechanism that enables dWS developers to simply generate all necessary configurations, and then build the corresponding dWS.


We present an improved method for determining statistically significant alignments of pointlike features. One of the principal such methods now in use, the two-point azimuth method, depends on a homogeneous distribution of points over the region of interest. Modification of this approach by use of the relatively new statistical technique of kernel density estimation permits treatment of heterogeneous point distributions without introducing substantial dependence on choice of the grid employed in the test for significance of apparent preferred orientations. The improved method can selectively reveal alignments on different spatial scales and can suggest the locations of alignments as well as their orientation. We use this method to analyze the spatial distribution of 416 vents, largely of Pleistocene age, in the Pinacate volcanic field, Sonora, Mexico, just east of the northern end of the Gulf of California. Apart from a few sets of aligned cinder cones, the distribution of Pinacate vents appears nearly random on aerial and space photography. However, when treated statistically, old Pinacate vents exhibit structural control trending approximately N10°E throughout the field and in all its subareas. In contrast, vents with ages estimated by comparison with dated cones to be younger than about 0.4 Ma show not only the N10°E control but also N20°W and N55°W alignments significant at the 95% confidence level. The N10° alignment probably reflects the current Basin and Range horizontal stress regime in this particular area, which is atop the mantle magma source of the Pinacate lavas. The N55°W direction is related to a major regional fracture of that orientation passing through the middle of the field and possibly related to normal faults associated with opening of the adjacent Gulf of California. The distribution of vents relative to the fracture trace is consistent with magma having been guided upward along a SW dipping fault plane. The origin of the N20° W alignment is unknown but of pre-Pleistocene heritage. We found no evidence to support control of the Pinacate vent alignments parallel to rifting or transform directions in the adjacent Gulf. Intrusion along N20°W and N55°W fractures at or since about 0.4 m.y. ago could reflect either a shift in the crustal stress field or an increase in magma pressure in Pinacate conduits that allowed magma to ascend along structures that were not parallel to the maximum horizontal compressive stress.


In 1659, a vast and unusual map of China arrived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was bequeathed by John Selden, a London business lawyer, political activist, former convict, MP and the city's first Orientalist scholar. Largely ignored, it remained in the bowels of the library, until called up by an inquisitive reader. When Timothy Brook saw it in 2009, he realised that the Selden Map was 'a puzzle that had to be solved': an exceptional artefact, so unsettlingly modern-looking it could almost be a forgery. But it was genuine, and what it has to tell us is astonishing. It shows China, not cut off from the world, but a participant in the embryonic networks of global trade that fuelled the rise of Europe - and which now power China's ascent. And it raises as many question as it answers: how did John Selden acquire it? Where did it come from? Who re-imagined the world in this way? And most importantly - what can it tell us about the world at that time? Brook, like a cartographic detective, has provided answers - including a surprising last-minute revelation of authorship. From the Gobi Desert to the Philippines, from Java to Tibet and into China itself, Brook uses the map (actually a schematic representation of China's relation to astrological heaven) to tease out the varied elements that defined this crucial period in China's history.


A scheme for understanding the organization of human postural movements is developed in the format of a position paper. The structural characteristics of the body and the geometry of muscular actions are incorporated into a three-dimensional graphical representation of human movement mechanics in the sagittal plane. A series of neural organizational hypotheses limit a theoretically infinite number of combinations of muscle contractions and associated movement trajectories for performing postural corrections: (1) Controls are organized to use the minimum number of muscles; (2) frequently performed movements are organized to require a minimum of neural decision-making. These hypotheses lead to the prediction that postural movements are composed of muscle contractile strategies derived from a limited set of distinct contractile patterns. The imposition of two mechanical constraints related to the configuration of support and to requirements for body stability with respect to gravity predict the conditions under which individual movement strategies will be deployed. A complementary organizational scheme for the senses is developed. We show that organization of postural movements into combinations of distinct strategies simplifies the interpretation of sensory inputs. The fine-tuning of movement strategies can be accomplished by breaking down the complex array of feedback information into a series of scalar quantities related to the parameters of the movement strategies. For example, the magnitude, aim, and curvature of the movement trajectory generated by an individual strategy can be adjusted independently. The second half of the report compares theoretical predictions with a series of actual experimental observations on normal subjects and patients with known sensory and motor disorders. Actual postural movements conform to theoretical predictions about the composition of individual movement strategies and the conditions under which each strategy is used. Observations on patients suggest how breakdowns in individual steps within the logical process of organization can lead to specific movement abnormalities. Discussion focuses on the areas needing further experimentation and on the implications of the proposed organizational scheme. We conclude that although our organizational scheme is not new in demonstrating the need for simplifying the neural control of movement, it is perhaps original in imposing discrete logical control upon a continuous mechanical system. The attraction of the scheme is that it provides a framework compatible with both mechanical and physiological information and amenable to experimental testing.


The World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on public stockholding programmes have been under discussion among member countries for quite some time and are likely to be at the heart of the WTO Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires in December 2017. This article proposes a new approach to advance toward a permanent solution on public stockholding programmes. This approach is based on splitting WTO rules into two components: i) the rules that specify how the support provided by public stocks should be calculated; and ii) the rules that define how WTO disciplines on support should be calculated. It focuses on the first, more technical, component. The author provides a systematic analysis of the biases in current WTO rules for estimating the support provided to farmers through public stockholding programmes and puts forward a proposal to correct them. (Resume d'auteur)


"Ever since the advent of modern quantum mechanics in the late 1920's, the idea has been prevalent that the classical laws of probability cease, in some sense, to be valid in the new theory. [...] The primary object of this presentation is to show that the thesis in question is entirely without validity and is the product of a confused view of the laws of probability" (Koopman, 1957). The secondary objects are: to show that quantum inferences are cases of partially exchangeable statistical models with particular prior constraints; to wonder about such constraints; and to plead for a dialogue between quantum theory and the theory of exchangeable models.


Jeffrey Harborne made a major contribution to the discipline of phytochemistry. Originally an organic chemist, he became an academic leader in the biochemistry of secondary metabolites, particularly flavonoids and also other plant phenols. He contributed significantly to areas at the interface between chemistry and traditional areas of plant science, systematics and ecology. His early research was influential on the rise in importance of both plant chemotaxonomy and biochemical ecology.


Abstract:The Summer 2023 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and now provides readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares "the Triton among minnows."The Summer 2023 Issue, guest-edited by Tom Perrotta, features poetry and prose by Marianne Leone, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Andre Dubus III, Fabio Morabito, Jen Trynin, Olufunke Grace Bankole, and Jess Walter, among others.


The author reinvestigates the relationship between the organizational power of trade unions and strikes based on data from the European Company Survey 2009 (ECS-2009) and the Institutional Characteristics of Trade Unions, Wage Setting, State Intervention and Social Pacts (ICTWSS) database, which include more than 5,000 firms across all 27 European Union (EU) member states. He shows that the incidence of strikes is higher in companies for which workplace union membership is high, the number of workplace unions is high, and unions dominate establishment-level works councils. These factors interact to affect strike incidence. In addition, the company-level effects of union organization on strike incidence vary across countries. These country differences can partially be explained by differences in national trade union systems, such as decentralization and membership density.


We propose a scheme for driving a dimer of spatially separated qubits into a maximally entangled non-equilibrium steady state. A photon-mediated retarded interaction between the qubits is realized by coupling them to two tunnel-coupled leaky cavities where each cavity is driven by a coherent microwave tone. The proposed cooling mechanism relies on striking the right balance between the unitary and driven-dissipative dynamics of the qubit subsystem. We map the dimer to an effective transverse-field XY model coupled to a non-equilibrium bath that can be suitably engineered through the choice of drive frequencies and amplitudes. We show that both singlet and triplet states can be obtained with remarkable fidelities. The proposed protocol can be implemented with a superconducting circuit architecture that was recently experimentally realized and paves the way to achieving large-scale entangled systems that are arbitrarily long lived.


Looking for a head start in your undergraduate degree in mathematics? Maybe you've already started your degree and feel bewildered by the subject you previously loved? Don't panic! This friendly companion will ease your transition to real mathematical thinking. Working through the book you will develop an arsenal of techniques to help you unlock the meaning of definitions, theorems and proofs, solve problems, and write mathematics effectively. All the major methods of proof - direct method, cases, induction, contradiction and contrapositive - are featured. Concrete examples are used throughout, and you'll get plenty of practice on topics common to many courses such as divisors, Euclidean algorithms, modular arithmetic, equivalence relations, and injectivity and surjectivity of functions. The material has been tested by real students over many years so all the essentials are covered. With over 300 exercises to help you test your progress, you'll soon learn how to think like a mathematician.


This paper is the first in a series of three studies looking at tax compliance using administrative data from Rwanda. It discusses the use of administrative data for tax research – specifically anonymised taxpayers records, which have become increasingly available on the African continent. The paper starts by critically summarising the key advantages and disadvantages of using this data for tax research in Africa. It proceeds to illustrate these opportunities and challenges in practice, using the case of Rwanda for application of the data to analyse tax compliance and progressivity. By doing this it shows some stylised facts – for example that tax systems designed to be progressive can still be regressive in practice, that a great share of tax revenue is generated by a few very large taxpayers, and that some taxpayers face a negligible probability of being audited. Although these results are specific to Rwanda, they are in line with the situation in other low-income countries in Africa.


A two-dimensional numerical model is formulated to simulate long-term mixing in the coastal waters over the European Continental Shelf. By using both tidal and wind-driven components, the mean circulation over this region is computed and is shown to be in good agreement with earlier estimates from (i) modelling studies, (ii) observations of residual flow, and (iii) observations of mean sea level distribution. Long-term gradients of sea level in the adjacent oceanic region are found to be unimportant for shelf circulation. These residual flow components are used to develop a mixing model, observational data of the mixing of 137Cs (released from Windscale over a 17 year period) are used to calibrate and evaluate the model. The model accurately simulates the transport routes of this material both spatially and temporally. This transport is shown to be dependent on both advection and dispersion. The model is used to determine various time constants for the shelf seas, namely: age, residence times and turn-over-times. Thus, the turn-over-time of the North Sea is calculated to be 530 d compared with a value of 328 d for the Irish Sea. The geographical distribution of turn-over-times differentiates regions of vigorous mixing from more stagnant regions and thereby indicates regions conducive to the formation of thermal fronts. The model also indicates that about one third of the material discharged from Windscale is lost to the ocean in the vicinity of the shelf edge to the north and west of Scotland.


In this paper, we investigate the evolution of systems engineering using a framework developed for this purpose. Systems engineering was conceived to deal with complex problems and has evolved to address new challenges as they have emerged. The field has made advances in design capabilities and the process by which products are brought to realisation. It has worked at the limits of what is possible under an engineering governed paradigm. More challenges that involve extremely large, complex structures and networks include problems that supersede any form of design capability. The integration of a management-governed paradigm has become necessary. At this point, it is critical to map the future of systems engineering as a discipline that is capable of dealing with these new problems or can effectively limit itself to more traditional engineering undertakings.


Brooksia lacromae sp. nov. is described from zooplankton material collected at a marine monitoring station in the South Adriatic in the autumn of 2014. The description of both solitary and aggregate forms is given along with 18S rRNA and mitochondrial cox1 sequence data that provides strong evidence that both forms belong to the same species. The described species is morphologically markedly different from B. rostrata (Traustedt, 1893) and B. berneri van Soest, 1975, previously the only two species in the genus Brooksia . Genetic analysis based on 18S rRNA gene confirmed distinctness of B. lacromae sp. nov. from B. rostrata (1.5% uncorrected pairwise distance). The appendicularian Fritillaria helenae Buckmann, 1924, so far known from the Atlantic only, was found in the same samples as B. lacromae sp. nov. Co-occurrence of B. lacromae sp. nov. with an Atlantic appendicularian suggests an Atlantic or Western Mediterranean origin for this new taxon.


ABSTRACT Under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Turkish nation-state sought to Turkify all of its non-Turkic minorities. His well-known motto of "How happy is the one who says I am a Turk" became the slogan of this policy. The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) that provided the ultimate legitimacy for the Turkish nation-state drew the lines of sociological borders in the newborn republic. This study highlights the denial of Kurdish identity in Turkish school textbooks. Since national indoctrination was carried out through the textbooks used in three core courses — Civics (Vatandaşlık), History (Tarih), and National Security Studies (Milli Güvenlik Bilgisi) — this research will attempt to trace this policy of denial by examining relevant chapters in these volumes that were published in the 1924–2002 period. While doing that, the article will focus on the 1980–2002 period since, in that given time interval, the Turkish state not only ignored the Kurdish identity but also actively denied its existence. In order to remain in the historical timeframe, the research limits its scope to the rise of the AKP in 2002.


Title of Document: IMPACT OF DUST ON THE RELIABILITY OF PRINTED CIRCUIT ASSEMBLIES Bo Song, Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Dissertation directed By: Professor Michael G. Pecht Department of Mechanical Engineering Dust is a ubiquitous component of the environments in which we live and work. It can deposit on printed circuit assembly to act as a source of ionic contamination. Two common consequences of dust contaminations in the printed circuit boards are loss of impedance (i.e., loss of surface insulation resistance) and electrochemical migration between traces and component leads. Both failure mechanisms involve the contamination forming a current leakage path on a printed circuit board. Based on studies on ionic contaminations, researchers have argued that the impact of dust in these two failure mechanisms is dependent on its pH, its hygroscopic compositions, and the critical relative humidity of the salts in it. However, due to the lack of experimental results and the complexity of dust compositions, the argument is not substantiated. Very few papers concerning the impact of different natural dusts on these two failure mechanisms can be found in the literature. In practice, mixtures of Arizona dust and salts are used as a substitute for dust in experiments. In this research, natural dusts were collected from four locations: natural outdoor and indoor dust samples from Massachusetts, U.S., natural outdoor dust from Tianjin, China, and the ISO standard test dust (Arizona test dust). Loss of impedance in dust contaminated printed circuit boards was investigated under controlled temperature (20oC to 60oC) and relative humidity (50% to 95%) ranges. The impact of dust on electrochemical migration and corrosion was evaluated under temperature-humidity-bias tests (50oC, 90% RH, and 10 VDC). In addition to the conventional DC measurement where only resistive data can be obtained, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy were adopted to obtain nonlinear equivalent circuit models of the electrochemical process, which helps to understand the underlying physics-of-failure. The variation of impedance with relative humidity exhibited a transition range. Below the range, the impedance was constant, and above it, the impedance degraded by orders of magnitude. The value of the transition range decreased with an increase of dust deposition density. The equivalent circuit modeling showed that the dominant resistive path gradually shifted from the bulk to the interfacial with the increase of temperature from 20 oC to 60 oC. There were big variations among different dusts, which were quantified using the degradation factor introduced in the research, the critical transition range, and time-to-failure. This result demonstrated that a single salt or a mixture of compounds can not be representative of all dusts. It also indicated that using the ISO standard test dust in place of natural dust samples for reliability evaluation could lead to inaccurate results. Dust should be collected from the field in order to evaluate its impact. It is showed in this thesis that some critical characteristics of dust can be used to classify different dusts for the failure mechanisms of interest. Moisture sorption capability of dust can be used to classify different dusts regarding the loss of impedance failure. The dust with the highest moisture sorption capability had the highest degradation factor. Ion species/concentration or conductivity of dust aqueous solution can be used to classify dust regarding the electrochemical migration related failures. Dust with the highest ion concentration and conductivity had the lowest time-to-failure. The underlying principals behind those critical characteristics were described and discussed based on the physicsof-failure. IMPACT OF DUST ON THE RELIABILITY OF PRINTED CIRCUIT ASSEMBLIES


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To identify symptom distress related to cancer for a group of Chinese American women in treatment, and to examine their use of various forms of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and their relationships to specific symptoms they identified.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional, correlational.

SETTING
American Cancer Society Asian Initiatives support groups in the state of New York.

SAMPLE
97 Chinese American women residing in New York with a mean age of 57 years; the time since diagnosis of cancer ranged from two months to 24 years. The type of diagnosis for the majority of women was breast cancer.

METHODS
A self-reported questionnaire including a demographic data form, a researcher-developed checklist for types of TCM, and the Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale Short Form (MSAS-SF) were administered. The MSAS-SF has three subscales: global distress index, psychological symptom distress scale, and physical symptom distress scale.

MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES
Symptoms, symptom distress, and types of TCM. The descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney U tests were applied for data analysis.

FINDINGS
Chinese American women with cancer in treatment reported multiple symptoms, and the three MSAS-SF distress subscale scores indicated moderate symptom distress. Symptoms were positively associated with the use of TCM.

CONCLUSIONS
Chinese American women in treatment for cancer reported multiple symptoms and moderate symptom distress. Participants with specific symptoms tended to use specific forms of TCM.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
High prevalence of psychological symptoms for Chinese American women with cancer suggests that oncology nurses should work with mental health providers for symptom management of this population. Oncology nurses also need to stay informed of the growing body of evidence on the benefits of TCM for patients with cancer. Future studies should include an emphasis on the improvement in methodologic quality for studies that investigate using TCM in participants with cancer.


People store and share ever-increasing numbers of digital documents, photos, and other files, both on personal devices and within online services. In this environment, proper access control is critical to help users obtain the benefits of sharing varied content with different groups of people while avoiding trouble at work, embarrassment, identity theft, and other problems related to unintended disclosure. Current approaches often fail, either because they insufficiently protect data or because they confuse users about policy specification. Historically, correctly managing access control has proven difficult, timeconsuming, and error-prone, even for experts; to make matters worse, access control remains a secondary task most non-experts are unwilling to spend significant time on. To solve this problem, access control for file-sharing tools and services should provide verifiable security, make policy configuration andmanagement simple and understandable for users, reduce the risk of user error, and minimize the required user effort. This thesis presents three user studies that provide insight into people's access-control needs and preferences. Drawing on the results of these studies, I present Penumbra, a prototype distributed file system that combines semantic, tag-based policy specification with logicbased access control, flexibly supporting intuitive policies while providing high assurance of correctness. Penumbra is evaluated using a set of detailed, realistic case studies drawn from the presented user studies. Using microbenchmarks and traces generated from the case studies, Penumbra can enforce users' policies with overhead less than 5% for most system calls. Finally, I present lessons learned, which can inform the further development of usable access-control mechanisms both for sharing files and in the broader context of personal data.


This innovative work takes a narrative technique (known as "storytracking") practised by Australian aboriginal peoples and applies it to the academic study of their culture. Gill's purpose is to get as close as possible to the perceptions and beliefs of these indigenous peoples by stripping away the layers of European interpretation and construction. His technique involves comparing the versions of aboriginal texts presented in academic reports with the text versions as they appear in each report's cited sources. The comparison helps reveal the extent to which the text is transformed through its presentation. Gill follows the chain of citations along, uncovering the story, or as he calls it the "storytrack," that interconnects scholar with scholar-independent subject. The storytrack reveals the various academic operations-translations, editing, conflation, interpretation-that serve to build a bridge connecting subject and scholarly report. Gill begins by examining Mircea Eliade's influential analysis of an Australian myth, "Numbakulla and the Sacred Pole". He goes back to the field notes of the anthropologists who originally collected the story and by following the trail of publications, revisions, and retellings of this tale is able to show that Eliade's version bears almost no relation to the original and that the interpretations Eliade built around it is thus entirely a European construct, motivated largely by preconceptions about the nature of religion. By applying this method to other received texts of aboriginal religion, Gill is able to bring us closer than ever before to the worldview of this vanishing culture. At the same time, his work constitutes an important statement on and critique of the academic study of religion as it has traditionally been practised.


Policymakers from developed countries who are looking to commission breastfeeding peer support
(BPS) services have every cause to be puzzled as to whether or not they can improve continuation
rates. On the one hand, BPS interventions are internationally recognised as having the potential to
contribute to improving breastfeeding durations.1 A recent Cochrane review found that additional
support from lay and professional supporters can have an impact on rates,2 and UK-based qualitative
studies suggest that BPS can encourage and enable women to breastfeed for longer periods.3,4 In the UK,
peer support for breastfeeding forms part of NHS commissioning guidance.5 On the other hand, a recent
meta-regression of BPS randomised controlled trials (RCTs) found little evidence that BPS interventions
improve breastfeeding durations in high-income countries6 and concluded that peer support for
breastfeeding was 'unlikely to be effective' in the UK. This paper highlights issues of intervention design
and implementation that problematise interpretation of trial data drawn from the meta-regression
analysis within high income countries. The paper then goes on to consider the potential for alternative
approaches to review evidence for BPS, highlighting the need to integrate insights from qualitative
research studies. Drawing on findings of a preliminary scoping review, we make the case for a shift towards
a realist interpretation of the evidence base. We argue that a realist approach would allow findings
emergent from different methodological traditions to be meaningfully integrated and the theoretical
basis for BPS to be explored and tested through the construction of context-mechanism-outcome
configurations. We believe this will provide a firmer basis for future intervention design and for
the development of theoretically-driven evaluation studies, leading to improved clarity for delivery
organisations and commissioning agencies. We contend that policy makers and researchers need to stop
merely asking 'does BPS work?' and look towards approaches which enlighten 'what works for whom, in
what circumstances, in what respects, and how?'7


Many tectonic problems require to treat the lithosphere as a compressible elastic material, which can also flow viscously or break in a brittle fashion depending on the stress level applied and the temperature conditions. We present a flexible methodology to address the resulting complex material response, which imposes severe challenges on the discretization and rheological models used. This robust, adaptive, two‐dimensional, finite element method solves the momentum balance and the heat equation in Lagrangian form using unstructured meshes. An implementation of this methodology is released to the public with the publication of this paper and is named DynEarthSol2D (available at http://bitbucket.org/tan2/dynearthsol2). The solver uses contingent mesh adaptivity in places where shear strain is focused (localization) and a conservative mapping assisted by marker particles to preserve phase and facies boundaries during remeshing. We detail the solver and verify it in a number of benchmark problems against analytic and numerical solutions from the literature. These results allow us to verify and validate our software framework and show its improved performance by an order of magnitude compared against an earlier implementation of the Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua algorithm.


Purpose A Markov model was used to assess the impact of two interventions often proposed as enhancements to breast cancer screening: computer aided detection and double reading of mammograms. Method Bibliographic databases were searched for evaluations of CAD and of double reading. A meta-analysis identified a range of values for the impact of both CAD and double reading on both the cancer detection rate and recall rate of screening. A Markov model was then constructed to examine the implications for the effectiveness of screening. Age-specific figures were taken from national data for: screening uptake, cancers detected at screening, non-screening detected cancer and other cause mortality. Audits were used to identify stage profiles for screen-detected and non-screen detected cancers. Different survival curves for the stages of cancer are calculated from published data. The model is used to assess the impact on various outcomes, including mortality, of changes in the screen detected rate by running the simulation and varying the figures for cancer detection based on the results of the meta-analysis described above. Results Eight studies were found comparing single reading to single reading with CAD and fifteen comparing single reading with double reading. Where double reading is performed with arbitration it shows a significant increase in detection rate (odds ratio: 1.08, 95% CI:1.02-1.15) and a significant decrease in recall rate (odds ratio:0.94, 95% CI:0.92-0.96). CAD studies do not show a significant increase in cancer detection rate (odds ratio: 1.05, 95% CI: 0.95-1.17) and show an increased recall rate (odds ratio: 1.14, 95% CI: 1.11-1.16). The simulation was run with data from UK screening, where double reading is standard practice. The simulation was repeated varying the cancer detection rate across a range of 4 cancers per 1000 women screened. Double reading results in fewer women being recalled and leads to more screen detected cancers than CAD. CAD and double reading both lead to a small but detectable difference in the total of breast cancer deaths. Conclusions The model shows a clear benefit from double reading with arbitration, with lowered recall rates, higher cancer detection rates and fewer deaths from cancer. CAD also shows improved cancer detection rates and fewer deaths, but the improvement is smaller and at the cost of an increased recall rate.


We describe a system for the semi‐autonomous in situ measurement of lake chemical properties, with high temporal resolution and the potential to map chemical properties in 3 dimensions. The system comprises both fixed sensor locations on moored buoys and one (or potentially more) autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) serving as mobile underwater sensor platforms. Sensors include conventional water quality multiprobes and thermistor strings and the NEREUS underwater mass spectrometer for measurement of dissolved metabolic gases such as methane as well as permanent gases. Data are delivered to a shore station via a network that includes acoustic modems for communication with the AUV and a radio network operating in the license‐free ISM (industrial, scientific, and medical) band operating under the IEEE 802.11b protocol. The system is designed to use low‐cost commercial hardware and open‐source software wherever possible. We constructed a prototype system of 3 buoys, 1 AUV, and a shore station, and field tests have demonstrated its ability to measure and remotely display lake chemical data in real time.


In the current field of art, sculpture is broadly defined to include various concepts of minimalism, conceptualism and performance. This definition is in the process of change. Despite its expansion, sculpture – or what I call the sculptural – is less focused in its simple relationship with the site or the environment. This thesis aims to expand on and experiment with the current understanding of sculpture, moving towards a new concept of the sculptural. To achieve this, it focuses on the concept of space and its role in the production of the sculptural from a multidimensional perspective, where particular works of art, theories and concepts are reinterpreted and dislocated in terms of the political dynamism of space. By reconsidering Rosalind Krauss' theory of the relationship between sculpture and the expanded field, this thesis investigates ways in which the sculptural is produced by and influences its surroundings in the complex mechanism of space. Furthermore, it rediscovers the object's territory in particular relation to political concepts, by exploring the production of a sculptural work in the shifting relationship between object, space and spectator. It focuses on the dialectical relationship between dwelling space and transit space, and proposes a new sculptural strategy for the transformation from the traditional concept of installation (art) to an expanded idea of installation. The sculptural elucidates changing ideas of the urban, particularly focusing on the relationship between the production of urban space and the logic of capital. Drawing on David Harvey's theory of neoliberalism, this thesis investigates the politics of urban centrality and its crucial role in the current trend from planned to produced urbanism. Through its dynamic relationship with the urban, the sculptural engenders and demonstrates certain notions about the world or the urban, finding means to construct an urban aesthetic, to practise urbanism; in this process, the site or the environment becomes non-environmental or sculptural.