Recommendation agents are deployed to give online consumers advice on products. This study focuses on how two demographic interface characteristics of online recommendation agents – ethnicity and gender – influence the way consumers agree with the product recommendations offered by anthropomorphic (humanoid) recommendation agents. Because consumers may not always straightforwardly self-report their true perceptions about entities that differ from them in their ethnicity and gender, this study applies neuroimaging methods (fMRI) to understand how the design of online recommendation agents can include anthropomorphic interfaces with different ethnicity and gender to enhance the interaction between consumers and agents. Subjects who either fully matched or fully mismatched with the ethnicity and gender of recommendation agents were asked to indicate their agreement with the advice provided by the recommendation agents while their brain activities were observed in an fMRI scanner. The results show that there is only activation in brain areas of intense emotion (amygdala) and fear of loss (insular cortex) when subjects disagree with a recommendation agent that does not match their ethnicity and gender, while there is no activation for recommendation agents that match their ethnicity and gender. The fMRI results suggest that ethnicity and gender mismatch spawns strong emotional responses in the brain, particularly among women.


High temperature activation of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) provides a new and highly versatile functionalisation strategy. The reaction allows the attachment of a wide variety of functional species onto the nanotube surface at grafting ratios between 1–8 wt%, whilst maintaining the intrinsic properties of the untreated materials. The underlying, radical-based, reaction mechanism has been established by quenching experiments and EPR studies. The distribution of the functionalised sites has been investigated at the microscopic scale using tagging reactions. The grafted products have been characterized by electron microscopy, thermal analysis (TGA), Raman spectroscopy, and inverse gas chromatography (IGC). The change in the CNT surface properties after grafting has been quantified in terms of dispersive and specific surface energies, and altered dispersibilities in a broad range of solvents. It is possible to carry out the reaction using gas phase reagents, providing a clean, efficient, and scalable methodology, relevant to a diverse range of applications.


On May 26, 1863, Walt Whitman wrote to his mother: "O the sad, sad things I see-the noble young men with legs and arms taken off-the deaths-the sick weakness, sicker than death, that some endure, after amputations...just flickering alive, and O so deathly weak and sick." For nearly three years, Whitman immersed himself in the devastation of the Civil War, tending to thousands of wounded soldiers and recording his experience with an immediacy and compassion unequaled in wartime literature anywhere in the world. In The Better Angel, acclaimed biographer Roy Morris, Jr. gives us the fullest accounting of Whitman's profoundly transformative Civil War Years and an historically invaluable examination of the Union's treatment of its sick and wounded. Whitman was mired in depression as the war began, subsisting on journalistic hackwork, wasting his nights in New York's seedy bohemian underground, his "great career" as a poet apparently stalled. But when news came that his brother George had been wounded at Fredericksburg, Whitman rushed south to find him. Though his brother's injury was slight, Whitman was deeply affected by his first view of the war's casualties. He began visiting the camp's wounded and, almost by accident, found his calling for the duration of the war. Three years later, he emerged as the war's "most unlikely hero," a living symbol of American democratic ideals of sharing and brotherhood. Instead of returning to Brooklyn as planned, Whitman continued to visit the wounded soldiers in the hospitals in and around the capital. He brought them ice cream, tobacco, brandy, books, magazines, pens and paper, wrote letters for those who were not able and offered to all the enormous healing influence of his sympathy and affection. Indeed, several soldiers claimed that Whitman had saved their lives. One noted that Whitman "seemed to have what everybody wanted" and added "When this old heathen came and gave me a pipe and tobacco, it was about the most joyful moment of my life." Another wrote that "There is many a soldier that never thinks of you but with emotions of the greatest gratitude." But if Whitman gave much to the soldiers, they in turn gave much to him. In witnessing their stoic suffering, in listening to their understated speech, and in being always in the presence of death, Whitman evolved the new and more direct poetic style that was to culminate in his masterpiece, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." Brilliantly researched and beautifully written, The Better Angel explores a side of Whitman not fully examined before, one that greatly enriches our understanding of his later poetry. More than that, it gives us a vivid and unforgettable portrait of the "other army"-the legions of sick and wounded soldiers who are usually left in the shadowy background of Civil War history-seen here through the unflinching eyes of America's greatest poet.


The market economy contrasts sharply with the commodity economy that existed in China 2000 years ago. Its external forms and underlying meaning are mutually incompatible with traditional Chinese culture. In the world's recent history, market economy has strongly supported the development of the industrial countries and has created an amount of wealth within a short span of 200 years, which far exceeds the total wealth created by feudal societies over the course of thousands of years. By implementing a market economic system within the framework of socialism, China's strength is continuously increasing and the standard of living is constantly improving. Now, China has become the second largest economic entity in the world. However, the panmarketization argument confounds right and wrong and advocates so-called economic theories that are unsuitable to China's basic conditions. Not only does it disrupt the rational development order of China's economy and society, but it also harms the basic interests of a majority of the people. The developmental history of market economy shows that pan-marketization is not suitable to China's society.


This paper comprises discussions from a residential symposium, "Methods in Dialogue", that took place near Cambridge, UK, in May 2005. The symposium concluded a series of seminars organised by the London East Research Institute and the Centre for Narrative Research at the University of East London and supported by the Economic and Social Research Council. Public support for social research increasingly depends on its ability to deliver scientifically valid and reliable studies to guide policy and practice. The theoretical foundations of social research, however, seem to be in a critical state. Evidence generated by both qualitative and quantitative methods is more and more seen to be conflicting, open to many interpretations. The aim of the event was to bring together qualitative researchers in the social sciences, many working in the field of narrative but also a number working with life history and auto/biography, discourse analysis, grounded theory methodology, visual methods and ethnography, to discuss the theoretical foundations of qualitative social research. The discussions addressed narrative itself as an index case for methodological debate; methodological considerations of objectivity and evidence, interpretation and context; appropriate levels of research focus and their interactions; the role of dialogue between disciplines; and the interaction between social science and the wider environment of which it is a part. Questions such as the following were discussed throughout the symposium: Who and what is social research for, and whose voices does it represent? What are social researchers' and participants' interpretative rights over their data and each other? How does thick description and the rich social interpretation it affords relate to the need for precise methods of explanation and generalisable conclusions? What special problems of research design or delivery arise when attempts are made to "empower" informants, to enable them to interrogate, and even co-construct the research story?


Police and Law Enforcement Ethics The Library of Essays on Legal Ethics and the Enforcement of Law Edited by Seamas Miller Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1. John Kleinig, Moral Foundations of Policing, in The Ethics of Policing (Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 11-29. 2. Seumas Miller and John Blackler, A Theory of Policing: The Enforcement of Moral Rights, in Ethical Issues in Policing (Ashgate, 2005), pp. 5-30. 3. Robert Reiner, Watching the Watchers: Theory and Research in Policing Studies, in The Politics of the Police, 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 3-36. 4. Egon Bittner, The Capacity to Use Force as the Core of the Police Role, The Functions of Police in Modern Society (National Institute for Mental Health, 1970), pp. 36-47 5. K. C. Davis, The Pervasive False Pretense of Full Enforcement, in Police Discretion, K.C. Davis and John P. Wilson (eds), (Delmar/Cengage, 1975), pp. 52-78. 6. John Kleinig, Ethical Constraints on Taser Use by Police, Policing 1, 3, 2007, 284-292. 7. Howard S. Cohen and Michael Feldberg, `Rock Concert', in Power and Restraint: The Moral Dimension of Police Work (ABC Clio, 1991), pp. 71-88. 8. P. A. J. Waddington, The Use of Force in Public-Order Policing, in The Strong Arm of the Law: Armed and Public Order Policing (Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 156-219. 9. Jerome H. Skolnick and James J. Fyfe, Public Order Policing, in Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force (Simon & Schuster, 1993), pp. 67-88. 10. P. A. J. Waddington, Deadly Force, in The Strong Arm of the Law: Armed and Public Order Policing (Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 75-120. 11. Seumas Miller and John Blackler, The Moral Justification for Police Use of Deadly Force, in Ethical Issues in Policing (Ashgate, 2005), pp. 61-83. 12. John Kleinig and Tziporah Kasachkoff, Civil Emergencies and the Claims of Innocence, in Shooting to Kill: Socio-legal Perspectives on the Use of Lethal Force (Bloomsbury, 2012), pp. 19-46. 13. David H. Bayley and Robert M. Perito, The Role of the Police in Controlling Violence, in The Police in War: Fighting Insurgency, Terrorism and Violent Crime (Lynne Reinner, 2010), pp. 51-66. 14. Seumas Miller, Police Detectives, Criminal Investigations and Collective Moral Responsibility, Criminal Justice Ethics 33, 1, 2014, 21-39. 15. Michael Skerker, Police Interrogation, in An Ethics of Interrogation (University of Chicago Press, 2010), pp. 89-114. 16. Clive Harfield, Police Informers and Professional Ethics, Criminal Justice Ethics 31, 2, 2012, 73-95. 17. Gary T. Marx, Under-the-Covers Undercover Investigations: Some Reflections on the State's Use of Sex and Deception in Law Enforcement, Criminal Justice Ethics 11, 1, 1992, 13-24. 18. Amitai Etzioni, NSA: National Security vs. Individual Rights, Intelligence and National Security 30, 1, 2015, 100-136. 19. Trevor Jones and Tim Newburn, Making Sense of the Policing Division of Labour, Private Security and Public Policing (Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 247-270. 20. Philip C. Stenning, Powers and Accountability of Private Police, European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 8, 3, 2000, 325-352. 21. Geoffrey Smith, Mark Button, Les Johnston and Kwabena Frimpong, Investigating Fraud, in Studying Fraud as White Collar Crime (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 96-113. Index


In architectural design it is of cardinal importance to anticipate how people will use a building prior to its construction and occupation. Conventional multiagent simulation methods represent occupant movement and activities to assess the day-to-day performance of households and office buildings. In these environments, behavior is usually driven by individual schedules or comfort-related actions. In other kinds of settings, such as hospitals, airports, or factories, behavior is driven by codified sets of collaborative procedures which dynamically adapt to the spatial and social context. To address these building types, we propose a narrative-based approach whereby a variety of behavior patterns involving multiple occupants can be simulated and visualized. A scheduling method coordinates the narratives using Operations Research techniques. The method is demonstrated through a preliminary study, which involved collecting data in an existing hospital environment, modeling narratives computationally, and simulating them in an abstracted layout of a generic hospital ward.


Rhinoceros beetle horns, a sexually selected weapon, are sensitive to nutrition and reliably indicate male quality. Exaggerated ornaments such as beetle horns, deer antlers, and extreme tail lengths in birds are typically assumed to be subject to sexual selection because they signal the quality of an individual's breeding status—but how? Emlen et al. present a general mechanistic model for the evolution of exaggerated traits, proposing that sensitivity to the insulin response pathway can explain variation among individuals. The exaggerated size of such ornaments and their increased variability between individuals are a result of sexual selection for traits that are honest signals of the fitness of the individual. D. J. Emlen, I. A. Warren, A. Johns, I. Dworkin, L. Corley Lavine, A mechanism of extreme growth and reliable signaling in sexually selected ornaments and weapons. Science 337, 860–864 (2012). [Abstract] [Full Text]


This paper investigates whether and how strongly the share of homeowners in a community affects residential property taxation by local governments. Different from renters, homeowners bear the full property tax burden irrespective of local market conditions, and the tax is more salient to them. "Homeowner communities" may hence oppose high property taxes in order to protect their housing wealth. Using granular spatial data from a complete housing inventory in the 2011 German Census and historical war damages as a source of exogenous variation in local homeownership, we provide empirical evidence that otherwise identical jurisdictions charge significantly lower property taxes when the share of homeowners in their population is higher. This result is invariant to local market conditions, which suggests tax salience as the key mechanism behind this effect. We find positive spatial dependence in tax multipliers, indicative of property tax mimicking by local governments.


The growing electricity demand during peak demand periods has resulted in the need to build and develop additional infrastructure. Moreover, the rise in fuel prices have opened up opportunities to investigate renewable energy technologies (RET) to meet this growing demand. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be reduced and significant savings can be achieved on electricity bills and carbon credits. Compared to the existing literature on energy load management, very few studies integrating electricity demand response programs and renewable energy have been conducted.
 In this thesis, initially, we develop a discrete event simulation (DES) model considering a manufacturing facility with multiple stations and multiple product types. The production schedule is determined by optimizing the product sequence and labor requirement under the constraint of production throughput using simulation based optimization (SBO). Later, we establish an agent based simulation model considering a renewable Distributed Generation (DG) system and a Time of use (TOU) electricity pricing program to minimize the electricity cost incurred from the grid. The DG system features on-site generation from RET and a battery storage. The dispatch strategy of the DG system is based on the on-peak and off-peak periods of the day, availability of renewable energy, energy demand, and battery state of charge. Also, the size of battery storage is determined using SBO for specified capacities of RET. The capacities of the DG system are chosen from the annual savings plot. Two case studies considering a PV-battery hybrid system and a PV-wind-battery hybrid system are compared with the baseline scenario to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model.


Thomas and Brown / Why virtual Worlds Can Matter 37 Virtual worlds are persistent, avatar-based social spaces that provide players or participants with the ability to engage in long-term, coordinated conjoined action. In these spaces, cultures and meanings emerge from a complex set of interactions among the participants, rather than as part of a predefined story or narrative arc. At least in part, it is the players themselves who shape and to a large extent create the world they inhabit. While many virtual worlds provide the opportunity for that kind of world to emerge, game-based environments such as World of Warcraft or Eve Online illustrate it best because of the intense degree of coordinated action and co-presence among players. This sense of "being with others" and being able to share space, see physical representations of each other, and communicat e and act in that shared space provides a very specific set of affordances for players. This article is an effort to trace out and understand those affordances. Or, put differently, it is an effort to understand why virtual worlds, and the avatars that exist inside them, can matter. In that sense, virtual worlds are very similar to other distributed systems, where the whole ends up being greater than the sum of its parts. The World Wide Web, for example, is more than a collection of websites. It is also what emerges out of the collection of and interconnections among the sites that constitute it, producing software or websites that re-imagine what is possible technologically as well as socially. Sites such as MySpace or YouTube are more than just collections of pages or videos, they are communities of interest and in some cases are networks of practice. Shared interests provide a reason for people to come together, while networks of practice provide the technological means to share and create practices. Visit IJLM.net


Background: The benefits of a health-related intervention may be compromised by the challenges of delivering the intervention on a large scale. We analyzed the process involved in the Tanzania National Voucher Scheme, a system for delivering insecticide-treated mosquito nets to pregnant women. We aimed to identify potential ways to equitably improve overall coverage of the intervention. Methods: We defined five steps in the process. We collected data from a multistage cluster survey of nationally representative households conducted in 2007 across 21 districts in Tanzania. Using these data, we multiplied the rate of success of each step cumulatively to estimate the overall success of the system. Results: The rate of coverage for use of insecticide-treated nets among pregnant women was 23% (95% confidence interval [CI] 19%–27%). We observed large differences in coverage by socio-economic status, from 7% (95% CI 4%–13%) among participants in the poorest households to 48% (95% CI 38%–59%) among those in the richest households. The rate of success of each step in the process was high (60%–98%). However, the cumulative rate of success for the process as a whole was low (30%). The largest and most inequitable reduction in coverage occurred in the step involving treatment of nets with insecticide. Interpretation: The cumulative effect of modest attrition at several steps in the process substantially diminished the overall rate of coverage for all women, but most markedly among the poorest participants. Analysis of the process suggests that delivery of nets treated with long-lasting insecticide rather than untreated nets packaged with an insecticide-treatment kit could result in an improvement in coverage of 22 percentage points, from 30% to 52%.


The paper deals with economical, social and cultural context of business in present-day society. The economical aspect of business activity includes organizational and production innovations, as well as economical freedom. The personal aspect involves steady individual features which are manifested irrespective of specific production activities (intuition, aggressiveness, charisma). The paper examines the peculiarities of business functioning in Russia, identifies various pitfalls in the economical behavior typical for the national business culture and analyzes the key features of its entrepreneurship. Russian post-transformation economics fell into a trap of systemic crisis as previous institutes of social regulation had been destroyed. Cultural and moral values characterizing the former business relations lost their importance. Meanwhile the society spontaneously developed institutions that were using the interaction models previously regarded as unsuitable. Economic agents transformed into the business elite which has its own sources of power in present-day society, getting the opportunity to use some kind of independence within the political institutes nowadays. However, the methods it uses to support its social status reflect the systemic crisis that has struck the entire society and, in particular, its economic behavior. New economic agents have been able to succeed in an uncertain and aggressive business environment. Their achievements have nothing to do with professional competitiveness, but rather with the effective adaptation to an unfavorable social and economic situation. They have not adapted to the current market, but begun to work closely with the situation using «the time of troubles» for getting non-competitive advantages: compensating the lack of special skills with the activities bringing quick returns, indifferent to norms of law and ethics. The paper defines conditions required for the transition to the civilized ways of business activities, the rationally motivated choice of ethical code of conduct and the establishment of social mechanisms to correct the influence of market subjects' subconscious motivation on the economical activity. BUSINESS SPIRIT; ORGANISATIONAL AND PRODUCTION INNOVATION; INTUITION STRATEGY; IMPLICIT KNOWLEDG; SOCIAL PSYCH-ANALYSIS; SPECIFICITY; PARTICULARISM; DIFFUSENESS.


Between the Great Depression and the mid-1970s, hitchhikers were a common sight for motorists, as American service members, students, and adventurers sought out the romance of the road in droves. Beats, hippies, feminists, and civil rights and antiwar activists saw "thumb tripping" as a vehicle for liberation, living out the counterculture's rejection of traditional values. Yet, by the time Ronald Reagan, a former hitchhiker himself, was in the White House, the youthful faces on the road chasing the ghost of Jack Kerouac were largely gone—along with sympathetic portrayals of the practice in state legislatures and the media. In Roadside Americans, Jack Reid traces the rise and fall of hitchhiking, offering vivid accounts of life on the road and how the act of soliciting rides from strangers, and the attitude toward hitchhikers in American society, evolved over time in synch with broader economic, political, and cultural shifts. In doing so, Reid offers insight into significant changes in the United States amid the decline of liberalism and the rise of the Reagan Era.


Although it is generally accepted that a decrease in plasma oncotic pressure may result in the formation of peripheral edema, the effect of a hypo-oncotic state on brain water content is less well known. Therefore, utilizing the technique of hollow-fiber plasma-pheresis to manipulate plasma composition, the authors examined the effects of acute changes in either plasma osmolality or colloid oncotic pressure on the EEG, regional cerebral blood flow, intracranial pressure, and brain tissue specific gravity (as a measure of cerebral water content) in anesthetized, neurologically normal New Zealand white rabbits. Animals in which either osmolality or oncotic pressure was decreased by plasma replacement with an appropriate solution were compared with a group of control animals in which both of these variables were maintained constant. Animals in which plasma osmolality was decreased by 13 ± 6 mOsm/kg (from a baseline value of 295 ± 5 mOsm/kg) showed evidence of a significant increase in cortical water content (≈0.5%), whereas a 65% reduction in oncotic pressure (from 20 ± 2 mmHg to 7 ± 1 mmHg) failed to produce any change. There were no significant differences in mean arterial pressure, central venous pressure, regional cerebral blood flow, or the EEG between any of the groups. Although intracranial pressure increased in all groups, the largest increase (8.1 ± 4.4 mmHg) occurred in those animals whose osmolality was reduced. The increase in intracranial pressure in animals rendered hypo-oncotic was no different front the "control'' group (2.4 ± 0.9 mmHg vs. 3.0 ± 1.5 mmHg). This study suggests that an acute fall in oncotic pressure does not promote an increase in cerebral water content in the non-injured brain. Unlike peripheral tissues, the presence of the blood-brain barrier with its small pore size and limited permeability may serve to enhance the importance of osmolality and minimize the role of oncotic pressure in determining water movement between the vasculature and brain tissue.


Trichomonas vaginalis is a member of the Parabasalia, a group of single-celled eukaryotes within the clade Excavata, which also includes parasites of genera such as Giardia and Trypanosoma . The ability to culture the parasite under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions has allowed simple manipulation in the laboratory. Studies of the basic biology of this organism not only provide important information about its unique cellular and metabolic features and contribute to our understanding of the evolution of anaerobic parasites and diversity among eukaryotes, but also contribute to the design of new drugs to cure infections.

The publication of the genome sequence in 20071 identified several unique characteristics of the organism, such as the large genome size (∼160 megabases), extensive gene duplication and presence of families of transposable elements. It also facilitated data mining and the generation of 'omic' data sets, especially from transcriptomic and proteomic studies.2 For example, purification of hydrogenosomes and the subsequent sequencing of proteins via …


This paper describes a web-based system named Emosys, developed both for managing and studying hematological diseases. The system is made of independent modules for the clinical management, for the collection of data and for research on these diseases. To achieve this goal two main cooperating agents have been implemented. The first allows sharing the clinical collection of data among doctors and clinical operators of the same department and communicating with remote clinical sites. The second one implements data mining techniques, based on neural networks, to confirm known results and/or to find interesting, unknown relationships among the data. The system is now under validation at the clinical site.


This paper presents a finite element method with high spatial order for solving the Maxwell equations in the time domain. In the first part, we provide the mathematical background of the method. Then, we discuss the advantages of the new scheme compared to a classical finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. Several examples show the advantages of using the new method for different kinds of problems. Comparisons in terms of accuracy and CPU time between this method, the FDTD and the finite-volume time-domain methods are given as well.


Over the course of nearly half a century, Robert A. F. Thurman has left an indelible mark on numerous fields of study, including Buddhist literature, Tantric Buddhism, Tibetan Studies, and the comparative sciences of mind. To celebrate his seventieth birthday, Thurman's students and colleagues have come together to pay tribute to these contributions and to Thurman's ongoing leadership in these fields by assembling a collection of essays of their own that extend and supplement his groundbreaking research. In Vimalakirti's House is the result of this collaboration and represents a broad spectrum of cutting edge studies in areas central to Thurman's own scholarly project. The resulting volume is itself a kind of "treasury of the Buddhist sciences," insofar as its authors explore wide-ranging problems in art, literature, epistemology, history, ritual, buddhology, and lexicography. Published by American Institute of Buddhist Studies (AIBS)


In 2013, the Gambia appointed the first special climate envoy from a least developed country (LDC). While such appointments have become commonplace in developed countries, LDC diplomats have previously lacked the influence and capacity to engage in climate diplomacy successfully. Gambian officials have identified several best practices for successful engagement, including establishing climate change as a core national interest, mainstreaming climate change into development planning and engaging with the media. With a view to help build the political conditions for the next global climate agreement in 2015, and to facilitate international coordination and cooperation beyond the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), this brief outlines four policy pointers to help other LDC governments improve their officials' abilities to have an impact on this diplomatic arena.


The quality of various types of tea from shops in Prague (Czech Republic) in respect to microfungal contamination was investigated. Altogether, 40 samples of tea were tested including black, green and herbal teas. Eighty-one species of microfungi were detected. Aspergillus niger agg. was found to be the most frequent. Great differences were recorded in microfungal species composition between various kinds of tea. However, when using the Monte Carlo Permutation test in CCA, we did not find any correlation between microfungi and type of tea. Aflatoxin production was not proven in any of the tested strains. Colony forming units (CFU) did not exceed the limits valid in the Czech Republic.


We report on likely mixed paternity in a natural population of snow skinks (Niveoscincus mirolepidotus) from alpine Tasmania, Australia. This species is nonterritorial and males guard females after copulation, suggesting that guarding behavior has evolved to prevent rival mating of still-receptive females. To what degree does this mate-guarding prevent rival copulations? We sampled gravid females at random in the wild and looked for within-clutch mixed paternity among their offspring using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP). Incorporating all visualized fragments, offspring band-sharing based on maternal bands was 0.94 (±0.05, SD), whereas for paternal fragments it was 0.54 (±0.46, SD). We then tested paternal band-sharing scores for all young of pairs against the mean score of the maternally inherited fragments to assess whether paternal genetic variation was larger than for a known single parent, hence, suggesting multiple sires. To reduce the risk of unequal sampling of polymorphic maternal and paternal fragments, we based our statistical tests on heterozygous bands only. Offspring band sharing based on maternal heterozygous fragments was on average 0.68 (±0.22, SD), versus 0.35 (±0.33, SD) based on paternally inherited fragments. In six of eight clutches (75%), at least one pair of young in a clutch had paternal scores outside of the confidence interval for a single parent (i.e., the mother). Thus, mixed paternity seems to be widespread in this population, despite prolonged postcopulatory mate-guarding by males.


The high diversity of Peruvian carnivore species may pose problems when deciding to which taxa and topics new research efforts should be directed. In this publication, we evaluated the research effort made on each taxa -by assessing the number of publications per species-, point out the knowledge gaps that are important to the conservation of each species and present the first evaluation of research priorities for this group of ani - mals to the country. We registered 145 publications about Peruvian carnivores made since 1943. The number of publications is significantly different between taxa, between subjects and between ecoregions where the research was conducted. According to the proposed priority scale, the species to be studied with greater prior- ity is Nasua olivacea and the lowest priority is for Leopardus pardalis. The results of our study highlight the urgent need to conduct research on certain species of carnivores about which there are few published data, locally and globally, and which occupy a low number of ecoregions in the country. Both the scale of research priorities and the list of knowledge gaps presented here will be useful to guide logistical and financial efforts, for individual researchers as well as for private or governmental institutions.


Knowledge sharing and information security have become well-established concepts in academia and within organisations. Knowledge sharing aims to encourage individuals to share tacit and explicit knowledge with colleagues and stakeholders, yet on the other hand, information security initiatives aim to apply controls and restrictions to the knowledge that can be shared and how it can be shared, where the primary focus is usually on protecting explicit knowledge or information. This thesis draws attention to the largely unexplored and under-developed area of knowledge protection ; it investigates the paradoxical and concurrent nature of knowledge sharing and information security practices by exploring their relationship and understanding how this can affect an organisation and subsequently identifies ways of achieving a balance between the two practices.

The empirical work was carried out through an interpretivist case study approach in the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) an organisation that combines knowledge and expertise from partnerships with academia, industry and the UK government, in order to deliver innovative low carbon solutions. A novel team-based action learning approach was developed to generate individual, team and organisational learning and to help initiate change; the data was collected from three project teams about their knowledge and experiences of knowledge sharing and information security practices, which was then analysed and further supplemented with the ETI s organisational perspective and the researcher s own experience of collaborating with the ETI to contextualise the findings.

Eight predominant overarching themes were identified that play an important role in and influence the organisation s knowledge sharing and information security practices. When looking at the practices of knowledge sharing and information security independently at the ETI, proactive and conscious efforts towards achieving the goals of each practice are evident. Knowledge is recognised as the ETI s core product and its effective dissemination is key for the organisation s success, which is why there is a keen attitude towards improving knowledge sharing internally and externally. On the other hand, a great deal of importance is given to protecting valuable knowledge and meeting stakeholders confidentiality requirements, thus, there are good systems, access controls, and information restrictions in place. In addition, strict legal and approval processes to protect information value and accuracy are implemented. However, when both knowledge sharing and information security - practices are compared from a broader perspective, evidence of issues arising from their conflicting nature is evident. Moreover, operating in a complex governance structure with various expectations and contractual agreements with stakeholders regarding confidentiality, has created a protective culture in the organisation surrounding its knowledge, which causes a hindrance to formal and informal knowledge sharing (including both, tacit and explicit forms) and makes identifying opportunities for fully exploiting knowledge and Intellectual Property an ongoing operational challenge.

The research process facilitated the achievement of effective learning at individual, team and organisational level for the ETI about its practices, identification of challenges and areas of improvement, incorporation of learning and recommendations into its knowledge management strategy alongside existing activities to improve knowledge sharing. The contents of this thesis particularly the eight themes that have emerged from the research findings - are also contributing significantly to a project the organisation is carrying out to reflect on and review what has been learned from operating the ETI for the last 10 years.

The thesis contributes to the existing body of knowledge, theoretically and practically, in the disciplines of knowledge management and information security; what was predominantly overlooked by previous literature, the empirical research findings surface evidence of the relationship between knowledge sharing and information security practices, showing their interconnectedness, and, the negative consequences of the two practices being treated and managed separately. For the action learning arena, a novel methodological approach underpinned by the action learning philosophy has been introduced that demonstrates how team action learning (i.e. using intact teams as opposed to conventional action learning teams) can be used to engage employees to share and combine their knowledge on real organisational issues, generate new learning and develop actions to initiate improvements in the organisation.


In this study dietary boron at different doses (0, 25, 50, 100 and 200 mg/kg feed) was supplemented to layers from 4 to 64 weeks of age. There was no significant difference between treatments with respect of mortality, egg production, egg weight, egg mass and cracked eggs. Significant increases were observed in body weight as age rose. Body weight was not affected by dietary boron supplementation at 16 and 40 weeks of age. At 64 weeks of age boron additions of 50, 100 and 200 mg/kg to the diet resulted in significant lower body weights than that of the control group. Egg quality parameters; albumen height and Haugh units, were improved when 25 or 50 mg boron/kg diet was supplemented above the other treatments. Shape index, shell thickness, shell breaking strength were not affected by treatments, though 25 mg boron/kg diet tended to increase shell breaking strength. Tibia bone strength and phosphorus content in the tibia and femur were not affected by boron supplementation. Boron supplementation at 25 and 50 mg/kg significantly increased femur bone strength, and ash and calcium content of the tibia and femur bones. Concentration of boron in bone increased with the increase in dietary boron.


In traditional time-based scheduling schemes for real-time systems time line is explicitly managed to obtain a feasible schedule that satisfies all timing constraints. In the schedule the task attributes, such as task start time, are statically decided off-line and used without modification throughout system operation time. However, for dynamic real-time systems, in which new tasks may arrive during the operation, or tasks may have relative constraints based on information only known at run-time, such static schemes may lack the ability to accommodate dynamic changes. Clearly a solution of dynamic real-time scheduling has to reflect the knowledge about tasks and their execution characteristics. In this dissertation we present a dynamic time-based scheduling scheme and show its applicability for three problem domains.
In dynamic time-based scheduling scheme attributes of task instances in the schedule may be represented as functions parameterized with information available at task dispatching time. These functions are called attribute functions and may denote any attribute of a task instance, such as lower and upper bound of its start time, its execution mode, etc. Flexible resource management becomes possible in this scheme by utilizing the freedom provided by the scheme.
First, we study the problem of dynamic dispatching of tasks, reflecting relative timing constraints among tasks. The relative constraints may be defined across the boundary of two consecutive scheduling windows as well as within one scheduling window. We present the solution approach with which we are not only able to test the schedulability of a task set, but also able to obtain maximum slack time by postponing static task executions at run-time.
Second, new framework is formulated for designing real-time control systems in which the assumption of fixed sampling period is relaxed. That is, sampling time instants are found adaptively based on physical system state such that a new cost function value is minimized which incorporates computational costs. We show, for linear time-invariant control systems, that the computation requirement can be reduced while maintaining the quality of control.
Third, acceptance tests are found for dynamically arriving aperiodic tasks, and for dynamically arriving sporadic tasks, respectively, under the assumption that an Earliest Deadline First scheduling policy is used for resolving resource contention between dynamic and static(dynamic) tasks.
Dynamic time-based scheduling scheme can be applied as solution approaches for these problems as will be shown in this dissertation, and its effectiveness will be demonstrated.


The accurate consideration of propagation losses in arbitrarily shaped waveguide-based structures is studied in this paper. For such a purpose, a software tool based on the perturbation of the boundary conditions on the waveguide metallic walls and on the boundary integral – resonant mode expansion method has been developed. To show the advantages of the proposed technique with respect to the classic power-loss method, the complex propagation wavenumbers of a double ridge and an elliptical waveguide have been first computed and compared with results of a commercial software based on the finite element technique. Next a circular, a sectorial shaped and a triangular shaped waveguide have been considered. Then, a computer-aided design software package based on this modal analysis tool has been applied to predict the propagation loss effects in complex waveguide structures, such as an evanescent mode ridge waveguide filter, a traditional dual mode filter with circular cavities and a twist component for K-band applications.


At the start of the last school year, educators across the country, especially those who teach social studies, returned to their schools and found quite a surprise. The celebration and recognition of Constitution Day on September 17th was now required by federal law. The new law, known colloquially as the Byrd Amendment, requires all schools receiving any federal assistance, from kindergarten to higher education, to teach students about the Constitution on Constitution Day. To further complicate the matter, in the first year this law was in effect, Constitution Day fell on a Saturday, and this year it is on a Sunday. The United States Department of Education determined, however, that "when September 17 falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or holiday, Constitution Day shall be held during the preceding or following week." (1) With this information, school administrators sought to assign the task of insuring their school was within the law and turned to their teachers of social studies. That was last year. Now that we know what it is like to put together a one-day event to honor the Constitution, and with the knowledge of how to plan for success, we can look forward to this year's day with excitement. Constitution Day must be seen as an opportunity. This is our moment: social studies educators are being turned to for leadership. For this one day, we are not being pushed aside or asked to take a back seat--we are in the spotlight. We must use this opportunity to its greatest potential. We must take charge. Where to begin? The concept of a school's civic mission has been growing in recent years, since the publication of the Civic Mission of Schools report in 2003 and with the launching of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. (2) Constitution Day is the perfect opportunity to enlighten students, administrators, faculty and parents that your school has a "Civic Mission." It has a mandate from your community and from the country to educate and prepare young citizens for their role in our democracy. How do you create a commitment to civic education? Based on the suggestions of best classroom practices from the Civic Mission of Schools report, the National Constitution Center has created a three sphere approach to civic education, with the belief that great civic education can be led by social studies teachers but must be carried out in all classrooms and at all grade levels. Civic Knowledge The teaching of civic knowledge is the bedrock of civics education. This is the information covered in government classrooms, American history courses, and most of the content on the AP American Government and Politics exam. The information covered in the civic knowledge sphere includes the following: the Constitution, how a bill becomes a law, state and local governments, and the rights and responsibilities of citizens, to name just a few. On Constitution Day, social studies classrooms can introduce students to the Constitution and use it as the starting point for the rest of the school year. The civic knowledge sphere should not be limited to the social studies classroom. Every discipline can be encouraged to teach basic civic knowledge: science teachers can work with students to examine the role of the FDA, NASA, or the EPA; math teachers can study fractions by examining how many votes in the electoral college it takes to win the presidency; Language Arts teachers can work with students to compose essays and other writings on political themes; and the physical education department can work with students on examining the role of government in sports or the impact of the Olympic games on international relations. Civic knowledge is only one key to a complete civic education, but it is one that is already being taught in schools across the country. The key to furthering its success is encouraging students to understand that civic knowledge is not limited to the social studies classroom. …


Despite centuries of use, artificial light at night has only recently been recognized as a cause for environmental concern. Its global extent and ongoing encroachment into naturally lit ecosystems has sparked scientific interest into the many ways in which it may negatively affect human health, societal attitudes, scientific endeavors, and biological processes. Yet, perhaps because sources of artificial light are largely land based, the potential for artificial light pollution to interfere with the biology of the ocean has not been explored in any detail. There is little information on how light pollution affects those species, behaviors, and interactions that are informed by the intensity, spectra, and periodicity of natural nighttime light in marine ecosystems. Here, we provide an overview of the extent of marine light pollution, discuss how it changes the physical environment, and explore its potential role in shaping marine ecosystems.


SAP ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming) elucidates the numerous features of the core programming platform, which is used for development for the entire SAP software suite. SAP ABAP uses numerous hands on business oriented use cases and a valuable dedicated e-resource to demonstrate the underlying advanced concepts of the OO ABAP environment and the SAP UI. SAP ABAP covers the latest version (NetWeaver 7.3 and SAP application programming release 6.0) of the platform for demonstrating the customization and implementation phases of the SAP software implementation. Shorn of weighty theoretical treatment and preoccupation with language syntax, SAP ABAP is a comprehensive, practical one stop solution,which demonstrates and conveys the languages commands and features through hands on examples. The accompanying e-resource is a take off point to the book. SAP ABAP works in tandem with the accompanying e-resource to create an interactive learning environment where the book provides a brief description and an overview of a specified feature/command followed by the user switching over to the accompanying e-resource, where a step-by-step guide to creating and running the features object is available. The presentation of the features is scenario oriented, i.e. most of the features are demonstrated in terms of small business scenarios. The e-resource contains the scenario descriptions, screen shots, detailed screen cams and ABAP program source to enable the reader to create all objects related to the scenario and run/execute them. The underlying concepts of a feature/command are conveyed through execution of these hands-on programs. Further exercises to be performed independently by the reader are also proposed. The demonstration/illustration objects including the programs rely on some of the SAP application tables being populated, for example an IDES system which is now a de facto system for all SAP training related activities. What youll learn The core ABAP platform Advanced concepts of OO programming with ABAP SAP application tables IDES system Programming the SAP user interface. Who this book is for For beginners in SAP application programming, and as a reference for practicing professionals and consultants in SAP ABAP.


To investigate the possibility that non-alpha beta T cell-dependent mechanisms can induce systemic autoimmune disease, and to address the roles of alpha beta T cells in murine lupus, we analyzed lupus-prone MRL mice congenitally deficient in alpha beta T cells. Surprisingly, TCR-alpha-/- MRL mice developed several characteristics of human systemic lupus erythematosus, including hypergammaglobulinemia, autoantibodies against DNA and small nuclear ribonucleoproteins, and immune deposits in kidneys. These results, which contrast with past studies concluding that MRL autoimmunity requires CD4+ alpha beta T cells, demonstrate that non-alpha beta T cell-dependent mechanisms are capable of inducing lupus phenomena, and further suggest that MRL disease may consist of both alpha beta T cell-independent and alpha beta T cell-dependent mechanisms.


In this paper, we investigate the biomechanical applications of spatiotemporal analysis and nonlinear dynamic analysis to quantitatively describe regular and irregular vibrations of twelve excised larynges from high-speed image recordings. Regular vibrations show simple spatial symmetry, temporal periodicity, and discrete frequency spectra, while irregular vibrations show complex spatiotemporal plots, aperiodic time series, and broadband spectra. Furthermore, the global entropy and correlation length from spatiotemporal analysis and the correlation dimension from nonlinear dynamic analysis reveal a statistical difference between regular and irregular vibrations. In comparison with regular vibrations, the global entropy and correlation dimension of irregular vibrations are statistically higher, while the correlation length is significantly lower. These findings show that spatiotemporal analysis and nonlinear dynamic analysis are capable of describing the complex dynamics of vocal fold vibrations from high-speed imaging and may potentially be helpful for understanding disordered behaviors in biomedical laryngeal systems.


The standard way of solving the polynomial eigenvalue problem of degree $m$ in $n\times n$ matrices is to "linearize" to a pencil in $mn\times mn$ matrices and solve the generalized eigenvalue problem. For a given polynomial, $P$, infinitely many linearizations exist and they can have widely varying eigenvalue condition numbers. We investigate the conditioning of linearizations from a vector space $\mathbb{DL}(P)$ of pencils recently identified and studied by Mackey, Mackey, Mehl, and Mehrmann. We look for the best conditioned linearization and compare the conditioning with that of the original polynomial. Two particular pencils are shown always to be almost optimal over linearizations in $\mathbb{DL}(P)$ for eigenvalues of modulus greater than or less than 1, respectively, provided that the problem is not too badly scaled and that the pencils are linearizations. Moreover, under this scaling assumption, these pencils are shown to be about as well conditioned as the original polynomial. For quadratic eigenvalue problems that are not too heavily damped, a simple scaling is shown to convert the problem to one that is well scaled. We also analyze the eigenvalue conditioning of the widely used first and second companion linearizations. The conditioning of the first companion linearization relative to that of $P$ is shown to depend on the coefficient matrix norms, the eigenvalue, and the left s of the linearization and of $P$. The companion form is found to be potentially much more ill conditioned than $P$, but if the 2-norms of the coefficient matrices are all approximately 1 then the companion form and $P$ are guaranteed to have similar condition numbers. Analogous results hold for the second companion form. Our results are phrased in terms of both the standard relative condition number and the condition number of Dedieu and Tisseur [Linear Algebra Appl., 358 (2003), pp. 71-94] for the problem in homogeneous form, this latter condition number having the advantage of applying to zero and infinite eigenvalues.


Prior expectation may influence our perception of people at the first meeting. For example, it has been shown that we are more likely to categorise a person as 'male' or to estimate their age as closer to our own. This could be due to perceptual effects and/or cognitive response bias. Here we use a forced choice task to reduce cognitive influence and a Bayesian modelling approach to estimate perceptual biases inherent in our decisions about the sex and age of faces. Two identities were presented to participants simultaneously, both of the same age or sex. One face was presented for 1000msec while the other was presented for either 250ms or 500ms (more/less uncertainty). Participants were asked to indicate which face appeared more male/female (n=40) or younger/older (n=20). The proportion of trials on which the briefer stimulus was chosen as more male/older indicated that under conditions of increasing uncertainty participants were more likely to respond 'male' and 'older'. For both judgements this is consistent with the operation of a Gaussian prior with a peak towards male and older faces and with the prior becoming more influential under conditions of increased uncertainty. This finding was supported by the results of a rating task. Here uncertainty was induced by jittering the phase spectrum of the face images. The equivalent shift in the rating of the noiseless version of each face that would be required to match the ratings of the phase jittered faces was also consistent with a Gaussian prior with a peak towards male and older faces. This demonstrates a biased expectation, operating at a perceptual level, that faces will be male and older. As this effect is not due to cognitive response bias, it represents a true inaccuracy in the experienced percept which we anticipate will be impenetrable to cognitive control. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Digital inequalities have real consequences for individuals' everyday lives—this basic assumption drives digital inequality research. Recent efforts have focused on tangible benefits of online engagement, yet subjective quality of life measures also matter as Internet outcomes. This article contributes to closing this gap. First, it theoretically introduces subjective social well-being—the appraisal of one's functioning in society—as a consequence of digital participation, potential, and perception differences. Second, it tests the dependence of social well-being on these three dimensions using structural equation modeling with nationally representative survey data. Results reveal that the perception of digital belongingness directly increases social well-being, and Internet skills as digital potential do so indirectly. The net effect of digital participation is insignificant. These findings lead to recommendations for policies targeting digital inequalities and future research directions.


We conduct a randomized control trial that generates exogenous variation in the access to foreign markets for rug producers in Egypt. Combined with detailed survey data, we causally identify the impact of exporting on firm performance. Treatment firms report 15-25 percent higher profits and exhibit large improvements in quality alongside reductions in output per hour relative to control firms. These findings do not simply reflect firms being offered higher margins to manufacture high-quality products that take longer to produce. Instead, we find evidence of learning-by-exporting whereby exporting improves technical efficiency. First, treatment firms have higher productivity and quality after accounting for rug specifications. Second, when asked to produce an identical domestic rug using the same inputs, treatment firms receive higher quality assessments despite no difference in production time. Third, treatment firms exhibit learning curves over time. Finally, we document knowledge transfers with quality increasing most along the specific dimensions that the knowledge pertained to.


This practical new book offers help and advice to those providing and supporting the learning process of dyslexic children within the primary school classroom. Packed with valuable advice and ideas, Chris Neanon aims to address those questions that are most frequently asked by teachers and to build confidence. Sections include: Definitions of dyslexia, recent research and early identification issues. What is it like to be dyslexic? A child's perspective on dyslexia. Differences in learning styles How to support the dyslexic learner in the Literacy Hour Using teaching assistants most effectively Useful resources - letters for parents explaining dyslexia including suggestions of ways in which parents can support children at home


The most tangible outcome of a breeding program of any type is increased yield; however, breeding for biotic stresses (maintenance breeding) generally results in pathogen resistance, which can be viewed as mitigating potential crop losses. Economists tend to undervalue the opportunity cost of this type of agricultural research. This study estimates the loss (volume and revenue) in rice production in the Mid-South attributed to the presence of sheath blight, a common fungus in the US. We then ask the counterfactual question: what would the implications be if sheath blight was not present in US rice production. To do this we estimated the additional rice supply from sheath blight resistance and entered it into the RiceFlow model. The RiceFlow model generates global estimates of changes in rice price given an increase supply, as well as changes in consumer and producer welfare. Finally, the counterfactual increased yield and decreased fungicide usage from the absence of sheath blight were analyzed in a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model to assess the environmental impact that would have resulted if sheath blight was not present. These results provide insight on how potential genetic resistance to sheath blight could affect producer livelihoods, food security, and environmental sustainability.


As the world endures and approaches a string of energy crises, both financially and environmentally, this project aims to critique and challenge society's relationship with energy by provoking individuals to examine their current habits of energy consumption, consider the future implications of these actions, and question their willingness to make sacrifices for a cleaner environment. This is accomplished through the development of a fictional society in the near future in which individuals are required to produce all the electrical energy that they need or desire to consume. Within the daily narrative of a fictional family of five, the details and events of their everyday lives have been extrapolated to create a liminal world where mundane, yet peculiar diegetic prototypes create tense situations, uncomfortable behaviors, and unforeseen consequences. Plot devices manifested include distributed government information in the form of an energy harvesting catalog, product infomercial, energy bill, and a home monitoring brochure. The narrative emphasis and human driven context aspires to foster a new lens of speculation, imagination, and discovery regarding the production and consumption of energy.What if you were required to produce all the energy you desire to consume?


This Chapter is an introduction to the various length scales of internal stresses, the causes of internal stresses and in particular their measurement by neutron diffraction. Some of the approaches used to model and interpret internal stresses are also introduced, and the use of these approaches to interpret deformation mechanisms illustrated through a number of examples.

In nearly every case when an engineering material is employed it will experience some stresses, if only those due to its own weight. Real materials are not the uniform continuum they are sometimes considered to be, and local differences in structure or properties mean that the local 'internal' stress is not necessarily equal to any external applied stress. These internal stresses are fundamental in controlling the deformation and failure of materials; they can have a considerable effect on material properties, including fatigue resistance, fracture toughness and strength. These stresses can vary greatly as a function of position within a body, due to the processes experienced during its production. Consequently, their measurement and interpretation is of considerable interest (e.g., Hutchings 1990), and great efforts have been employed over the years in developing accurate and precise measurement techniques. Such stresses can develop in a deformed material at many length scales and from many mechanisms. Fundamentally, internal stresses arise due to the elastic response of the material when an inhomogeneous distribution of non-elastic strains is imposed. These non-elastic strains could be due to plastic strain, precipitation, phase transformations, thermal expansion, etc. (Noyan and Cohen 1987). The origins in all cases thus come down simply to two aspects: heterogeneity and constraint. That is, when the various constituent parts of a component or material would, if unconstrained, exhibit different responses to the applied load (be that stress, temperature, electric field, etc.) the constraints imposed by the bulk of the …


This book was funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme (7FP), TropicMicroArch 623293 Project (http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/187754_en.html). The book will be Open Access, thanks to FP7 post-grant Open Access (https://www.openaire.eu/postgrantoapilot).


During the persuasive technology symposium, Marije Deutekom - Baart de la Faille and colleagues organised a symposium session with 4 presentations: • Presentation 1: A home based exercise program: are older adults able to use mHealth technology? (Sumit Mehra). • Presentation 2: Promoting healthy diet and physical activity in children through the use of games: bridging the gap between industry and science (Monique Simons). • Presentation 3: Increased motivation for exercise through exercise apps such as BAMBEA (Joey van der Bie & Nicky Nibbeling) • Presentation 4: Which factors are important for effectiveness of sport- and health-related apps? Results of focus groups with experts (Joan Dallinga).


Accurate seizure prediction will transform epilepsy management by offering warnings to patients or triggering interventions. However, state-of-the-art algorithm design relies on accessing adequate long-term data. Crowd-sourcing ecosystems leverage quality data to enable cost-effective, rapid development of predictive algorithms. A crowd-sourcing ecosystem for seizure prediction is presented involving an international competition, a follow-up held-out data evaluation, and an online platform, Epilepsyecosystem.org, for yielding further improvements in prediction performance. Crowd-sourced algorithms were obtained via the 'Melbourne-University AES-MathWorks-NIH Seizure Prediction Challenge' conducted at kaggle.com. Long-term continuous intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) data (442 days of recordings and 211 lead seizures per patient) from prediction-resistant patients who had the lowest seizure prediction performances from the NeuroVista Seizure Advisory System clinical trial were analysed. Contestants (646 individuals in 478 teams) from around the world developed algorithms to distinguish between 10-min inter-seizure versus pre-seizure data clips. Over 10 000 algorithms were submitted. The top algorithms as determined by using the contest data were evaluated on a much larger held-out dataset. The data and top algorithms are available online for further investigation and development. The top performing contest entry scored 0.81 area under the classification curve. The performance reduced by only 6.7% on held-out data. Many other teams also showed high prediction reproducibility. Pseudo-prospective evaluation demonstrated that many algorithms, when used alone or weighted by circadian information, performed better than the benchmarks, including an average increase in sensitivity of 1.9 times the original clinical trial sensitivity for matched time in warning. These results indicate that clinically-relevant seizure prediction is possible in a wider range of patients than previously thought possible. Moreover, different algorithms performed best for different patients, supporting the use of patient-specific algorithms and long-term monitoring. The crowd-sourcing ecosystem for seizure prediction will enable further worldwide community study of the data to yield greater improvements in prediction performance by way of competition, collaboration and synergism.10.1093/brain/awy210_video1awy210media15817489051001.


This report documents proof of concept research for Derived Personal Identity Verification (PIV) Credentials. Smart card-based PIV Cards cannot be readily used with most mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, but Derived PIV Credentials (DPCs) can be used instead to PIVenable these devices and provide multi-factor authentication for mobile device users. This report captures existing requirements related to DPCs, proposes an architecture that supports these requirements, and then demonstrates how such an architecture could be implemented and operated.


We document the nature of structural changes in employment to understand "jobless" growth in Irish Manufacturing in the aftermath of EEC/EU membership, 1972-2003. By 1972, forty years of protectionism and fifteen years of export promotion induced the coexistence of large exporting plants with import competing plants within 4-digit industries. During trade liberalisation we document persistent horizontal waves of creative destruction, a decline in traditional import competing plants and an expansion in exporting plants, within each sector. This coexisted with rapid vertical waves of creative destruction in small non-exporting plants which supported exporting growth through forward vertical linkages within each sector.


Abstract The integral transport equation clearly indicates that the angular flux in a void is constant along each characteristic. Yet, simple arguments can be used to demonstrate that there exist angular flux solutions in voids that have a delta-function angular dependence and a nonconstant spatial dependence. Such solutions can appear to be nonconstant along a characteristic. Using a simple example problem, we demonstrate that such solutions represent the limit of a continuous sequence of nonsingular solutions, each of which is constant along every characteristic. We also show that care must be taken in applying the integral transport equation to singular problems of this type because erroneous solutions are easily obtained. Two reliable approaches for obtaining proper solutions are presented. We also show that the differential form of the transport equation in one-dimensional spherical geometry requires less care than the integral form of the transport equation for problems of this type. Finally, we discuss the applicability of the Sn method to problems in curvilinear geometries with singular solutions of this type.


An experimental investigation and theoretical modeling of nonlinear refraction in a CW-pumped Cr4+:YAG crystal at wavelength 1.06µm is reported. An analysis of the processes resulting in nonlinear change of refractive index of Cr4+:YAG allows to conclude that the main contributions in the change are the effect of Cr4+ centers' population perturbation due to the ground-state absorption saturation and the thermo-lensing effect. The role of the refractive index change anisotropy stemming from both the effects is addressed for the first time to our knowledge.


The implementation of travel time reliability (TTR) in route choice behaviour is still not very common in transport models, especially not in a public transport context. The reasons probably are that it is difficult to measure and that there is no agreement how it best can be represented in utility functions. Typically, it is represented by a standard deviation, however, particularly in public transport choices it is more likely that travellers think about the consequences of unreliability in travel times in terms of buffer times. This paper contributes to the literature by comparing five different model specifications of TTR in public transport route choices that are either based on standard deviations or on buffer time indicators. The models are estimated from choices observed in a stated choice experiment. To address heterogeneity, a latent class model is estimated. The results suggest that the reliability buffer time indicator outperforms the standard deviation indicator. Furthermore, the reliability buffer time parameter is only statistically significant in two of the four classes. The other two classes are particularly sensitive to making transfers and to low frequencies of public transport services, suggesting different strategies to deal with TTR.


Viable diapausing eggs of Daphnia exilis, a species within the Daphnia similis species complex, occur in sediments of Onondaga Lake, New York. The discovery of this species, which otherwise occurs exclusively in temporary saline ponds in southwestern North America, represents a range extension of 1,000 km. 210Pb‐dating of the sediments containing diapausing eggs indicates that D. exilis was present in Onondaga Lake between the mid‐1920s and the early 1980s. The species' introduction, successful colonization, and subsequent disappearance from the water column correspond temporally with distinct events in the history of industrial activity along the shores of the lake and with the paleoecological record of this activity deposited in Onondaga Lake sediments. Only the most recently deposited diapausing eggs (late 1970s to early 1980s) hatch during laboratory incubation; older eggs may not be viable because of toxic concentrations of mercury pollution in older sediments. The D. exilis eggs that have hatched have had strikingly low genetic (allozyme) variation in comparison with the variation documented for populations in the southwestern United States by Hebert and Finston (1993). Exploration of various invasion scenarios through simulated introduction of genotypes from the southwestern United States suggests that a single genotype established the D. exilis population in Onondaga Lake. These observations document the ecological and microevolutionary patterns associated with an invasion by an exotic crustacean that currently persists only in the sediment egg bank.


Objective— Androgen deprivation therapy has been associated with increased cardiovascular risk in men. Experimental studies support that testosterone protects against atherosclerosis, but the target cell remains unclear. T cells are important modulators of atherosclerosis, and deficiency of testosterone or its receptor, the AR (androgen receptor), induces a prominent increase in thymus size. Here, we tested the hypothesis that atherosclerosis induced by testosterone deficiency in male mice is T-cell dependent. Further, given the important role of the thymic epithelium for T-cell homeostasis and development, we hypothesized that depletion of the AR in thymic epithelial cells will result in increased atherosclerosis. Approach and Results— Prepubertal castration of male atherosclerosis-prone apoE−/− mice increased atherosclerotic lesion area. Depletion of T cells using an anti-CD3 antibody abolished castration-induced atherogenesis, demonstrating a role of T cells. Male mice with depletion of the AR specifically in epithelial cells (E-ARKO [epithelial cell-specific AR knockout] mice) showed increased thymus weight, comparable with that of castrated mice. E-ARKO mice on an apoE−/− background displayed significantly increased atherosclerosis and increased infiltration of T cells in the vascular adventitia, supporting a T-cell–driven mechanism. Consistent with a role of the thymus, E-ARKO apoE−/− males subjected to prepubertal thymectomy showed no atherosclerosis phenotype. Conclusions— We show that atherogenesis induced by testosterone/AR deficiency is thymus- and T-cell dependent in male mice and that the thymic epithelial cell is a likely target cell for the antiatherogenic actions of testosterone. These insights may pave the way for new therapeutic strategies for safer endocrine treatment of prostate cancer.


Purpose
People experiencing homelessness are high-users of hospital care in Canada. To better understand the scope of the issue, and how these patients are discharged from hospital, a national survey of key stakeholders was conducted in 2017. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Design/methodology/approach
The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness distributed an online survey to their network of members through e-mail and social media. A sample of 660 stakeholders completed the mixed-methods survey, including those in health care, non-profit, government, law enforcement and academia.

Findings
Results indicate that hospitals and homelessness sector agencies often struggle to coordinate care. The result is that these patients are usually discharged to the streets or shelters and not into housing or housing with supports. The health care and homelessness sectors in Canada are currently structured in a way that hinders collaborative transfers of patient care. The three primary and inter-related gaps raised by survey participants were: communication, privacy and systems pressures.

Research limitations/implications
The findings are limited to those who voluntarily completed the survey and may indicate self-selection bias. Results are limited to professional stakeholders and do not reflect patient views.

Practical implications
Identifying systems gaps from the perspective of those who work within health care and homelessness sectors is important for supporting system reforms.

Originality/value
This survey was the first to collect nationwide stakeholder data on homelessness and hospital discharge in Canada. The findings help inform policy recommendations for more effective systems alignment within Canada and internationally.


In this thesis I aim to improve phrase-based statistical machine translation (PBSMT) in a number of ways by the use of text harmonization strategies. PBSMT systems are built by training statistical models on large corpora of human translations. This architecture generally performs well for languages with similar structure. If the languages are different for example with respect to word order or morphological complexity, however, the standard methods do not tend to work well. I address this problem through text harmonization, by making texts more similar before training and applying a PBSMT system. I investigate how text harmonization can be used to improve PBSMT with a focus on four areas: compounding, definiteness, word order, and unknown words. For the first three areas, the focus is on linguistic differences between languages, which I address by applying transformation rules, using either rule-based or machine learning-based techniques, to the source or target data. For the last area, unknown words, I harmonize the translation input to the training data by replacing unknown words with known alternatives. I show that translation into languages with closed compounds can be improved by splitting and merging compounds. I develop new merging algorithms that outperform previously suggested algorithms and show how part-of-speech tags can be used to improve the order of compound parts. Scandinavian definite noun phrases are identified as a problem forPBSMT in translation into Scandinavian languages and I propose a preprocessing approach that addresses this problem and gives large improvements over a baseline. Several previous proposals for how to handle differences in reordering exist; I propose two types of extensions, iterating reordering and word alignment and using automatically induced word classes, which allow these methods to be used for less-resourced languages. Finally I identify several ways of replacing unknown words in the translation input, most notably a spell checking-inspired algorithm, which can be trained using character-based PBSMT techniques. Overall I present several approaches for extending PBSMT by the use of pre- and postprocessing techniques for text harmonization, and show experimentally that these methods work. Text harmonization methods are an efficient way to improve statistical machine translation within the phrase-based approach, without resorting to more complex models.


The government's focus on antisocial behaviour and public order when dealing with alcohol misuse risks overshadowing the importance of the damage to health from excessive drinking, claim MPs in a new report.

In its response to the government's alcohol strategy, the parliamentary select committee on health calls for clearer and more precise objectives in tackling alcohol misuse than are currently given by the government.1

The committee's report analyses the government's alcohol strategy, published in March by the Home Office, which set out plans to introduce a minimum unit price for alcohol and to work with the drinks industry to provide clearer information on alcohol units and calorie content.2

Although the Health Committee welcomed much of the strategy, serious flaws remain, according to the committee. "We believe that the health impact of …


Mechanical design tools would be considerably more useful if we could interact with them in the way that human designers communicate design ideas to one another, i.e., using crude sketches and informal speech. Those crude sketches frequently contain pen strokes of two different sorts, one type portraying device structure, the other denoting gestures, such as arrows used to indicate motion. We report here on techniques we developed that use information from both sketch and speech to distinguish gesture strokes from non-gestures -- a critical first step in understanding a sketch of a device. We collected and analyzed unconstrained device descriptions, which revealed six common types of gestures. Guided by this knowledge, we developed a classifier that uses both sketch and speech features to distinguish gesture strokes from nongestures. Experiments with our techniques indicate that the sketch and speech modalities alone produce equivalent classification accuracy, but combining them produces higher accuracy.


The importance of weather in our daily life is well known. It is a common experience
to us that the early setting in of the monsoon or a late monsoon or its failure
affect our agricultural production, some times with disastrous consequences. Similarly life
in the sea also is dependent on the various elements of weather like temperature, wind,
duration of sun shine etc., either directly or indirectly. Indeed there is practically no
business in our daily life which does not depend to a greater or a smaller extent on weather»
but there is scarcely any other profession which is dependent to such a high degree on
weather as that of fishermen


This thesis examines young children's early collaborative development when engaged in joint tasks with both a peer and a parent. It begins by examining how the term "collaborative" has been applied and researched in previous literature. As collaboration is found to usually require dialogue, and intersubjectivity is seen as an important component in the construction of both collaboration and dialogue, the ability to construct intersubjectivity is the subject of the rest of the chapter. The chapter concludes by introducing the research questions that underpin the experiments that follow. A number of experiments are then described. Experiments 1 and 2 investigate age differences in interaction styles and the communication strategies used by similar aged dyads. Experiments 3 and 4 investigate differences due to the age of the child and/or the status of the information giver (either parent or child) in the styles of interaction and the communication strategies used by parent and child dyads. Experiment 5 investigates the benefits of collaborating with a parent, and finally, Experiment 6 examines the collaborative ability of pre-schools. The thesis identifies a series of skills required for successful collaboration. These include recognition of a joint goal and the need to suppress individual desires, the ability to structure joint interaction, moving from role-based to a negotiating style, and communicative skills, for example, asking for clarification. Other reasons for children's failure in collaborative tasks involve task-related skills, such as the development of spatial terms, and failure to recognise the need for accuracy. The findings support Vygotsky's theory that when working with an adult, children perform at a higher level than when working with a peer. Evidence was also found of parents scaffolding the interaction for their children. However, further research is necessary to establish that such scaffolding skills affect the child's development of collaborative interactive skills.


English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) was the foremost advocate of Darwin's theory of evolution, which he was 'prepared to go to the stake' to defend. The controversies surrounding Darwin in the Victorian age became a vehicle for Huxley to gain power in intellectual, institutional, and political arenas. Yet in this investigation of Huxley's motivations in science, Sherrie L. Lyons uncovers Huxley's scepticism of two basic tenets of Darwin's theory - natural selection and gradualism. His criticism of Darwinian science as being too simplistic led to a strengthening of evolutionary theory, rather than a weakening of it. A self-appointed defender of truth, Huxley developed his own research program, examining philosophy prior to Darwin in an effort to fill the holes in evolutionary theory. Lyons also looks at Huxley's conversion from salutation to gradualism, and his views on progression and the fossil record. As Huxley's interest in developmental morphology continues to be crucial in studying problems in comparative anatomy, embryology, palaeontology, and evolution, this book is essential to students of Darwin, Huxley, and the scientific enterprise.


The discussion of citation and allusion has become an important area of research in Medieval Studies. The application of postmodern intertextual theories has brought scholars to a deeper understanding of the reuse of borrowed material, shedding new light on a culture of music and literature that was once dismissed as dully repetitive. This thesis builds on this work by examining in depth the manner in which citation and allusion was deployed in the fourteenthcentury motet. Motets are a particularly fertile ground for discussion of the reuse of material, drawing as they do on a range of citational techniques such as borrowed liturgical tenors, modelling of rhyme schemes on existing works, and quotation of refrains and authorities. The polyphonic and polytextual nature of the motet enabled composers to juxtapose different registers, languages and genres, and thus to create an array of competing possible interpretations. This study is situated against several strands of recent scholarship. It draws on critical theory, as well as discussions of refrain definition, memory, manuscript compilation, and notions of voice, authority and authorship. Each chapter examines a particular body of work: the interpolated Roman de Fauvel, the works of Guillaume de Machaut, the motets of the Ivrea and Chantilly manuscripts, and finally those of Manuscript Torino J.II.9. In each case, looking at the use of citation and allusion connects to other concerns. In the Roman de Fauvel, citation in the motets can be seen as functioning alongside use of the vernacular, manuscript layout and illuminations to elucidate the narrative. In the works of Guillaume de Machaut citation is linked to his ambiguous self-presentation and authorial presence, and connects individual pieces in his complete works' manuscripts. The Ivrea and Chantilly motets, while not linked by the same strength of context, demonstrate continuing use of thirteenth-century tradition. In this case, studying compilation choices may help us to understand how scribes interpreted citational material. Finally, I argue that understanding the internal use of symmetry in MS J.II.9 and its motets, and the reuse of material between the motets and the chansons of that repertory, vindicates the view that the music and poetry was composed by a single author well versed in mainstream tradition. I have been able to propose some previously unnoted allusions in the major works, and draw out the benefits of a holistic approach to understanding these motet and manuscripts. All this points to motets both continuing the writing traditions of the thirteenth century throughout the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, but also shows individual writers and compilers choosing to cite in a creative and innovative manner.


Comparative strain analyses were performed on quartz crystals within a Sahara fulgurite using neutron diffraction experiments. Besides, 3D-μXRCT (three-dimensional micro X-ray computed tomography) studies of the fulgurite were implemented in order to quantify the fusion behaviour, the expansion of the fulgurite as well as the distribution of the stressed quartz crystals. The study of the neutron diffraction pattern was carried out by applying an integral breadth method, more precisely a Rietveld and a LeBail strain–size evaluation with the software FullProf. The absorption contrast of the neutron diffraction pattern shows a concentration of the shocked quartz crystals in the outer shell of the Sahara fulgurite, while the inner part of the fulgurite is mostly glassy. On the basis of the diffraction results, the quartz crystals in the fulgurite can be assigned to a stage of deformation for which the causal shock pressure reaches about 25 GPa, as compared to a melting threshold pressure for quartz of about 50 GPa. Comparing the average density of the fulgurite with the average bulk density of quartz-based sand, it can be concluded that the fulgurite expanded by more than 35 % during its formation.


The mutual solubilities and related liquid–liquid equilibria of C13–C36 hydrocarbons with water are exhaustively and critically reviewed. Reports of experimental determination of solubility in 56 chemically distinct binary systems that appeared in the primary literature prior to end of 2002 are compiled. For 17 systems sufficient data are available to allow critical evaluation. All data are expressed as mass percent and mole fraction as well as the originally reported units. In addition to the standard evaluation criteria used throughout the Solubility Data Series, a new method based on the evaluation of all the experimental data for a given homologous series of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons was used.


Abstract:Awidely assumed but little-tested theory of employment interviewing suggests that female job applicants will be evaluated more favorably when they are paired with female versus male interviewers. To capitalize on this hypothesized affinity, a number of organizations have begun explicitly pairing female job applicants with female interviewers, in hopes of increasing the representation of women among new hires. However, whether this practice actually results in more favorable outcomes for female job candidates remains an open empirical question. Using data on job interview evaluations from a large, professional service organization, we test the effect of matching female job candidates with female interviewers on interview scores. Highlighting the contextually dependent nature of sex homophily, we find that the effect of being matched with a female interviewer varies by the female candidate's perceived skill level. Sex matches in job interviews work in favor of those female candidates perceived to be lowest in skill; have a small, statistically nonsignificant negative effect for female candidates of average perceived skill; and have a significant, negative effect for women at the highest level of perceived skill. We argue that matching female candidates with female evaluators in job interviews can operate both as a glass floor that can prevent female applicants from falling below a certain scoring threshold but also a glass ceiling that can prevent the most skilled female applicants from receiving the most favorable interview ratings.


Two Corbicula species (C. fluminea and C. fluminalis) were sampled every month in two canals in central France from December 2001 to May 2003. The C. fluminea populations were characterised by (1) a reproduction period that started in March and ended in September-October, during which two peaks of intensity could be distinguished, the first occurring in June and the second in August, the latter corresponding to a density peak, (2) the production of two generations per year, (3) the presence of five cohorts, (4) longevity from 2.5 to 3 years, and (5) a maximum shell length that may exceed 36 mm. In the Loire Lateral Canal, a second period of reproduction was observed during the winters of 2002 and 2003. However, since the number of larvae incubated was always low, we hypothesise that gravid individuals are in fact cryptic hybrids. The C. fluminalis populations were characterised by (1) two reproduction periods, the first occurring in winter during which the number of larvae incubated was low, while the second extended from March to October, reaching its maximum intensity in June and July though the corresponding peak of density did not occur until December, (2) the presence of four cohorts, (3) longevity of four years, a maximum length of 24 mm, a slower growth than that of C. fluminea, and (4) higher sensitivity to freezing. Sudden falls in chlorophyll-a concentrations may play a role in triggering the incubation and spawning periods of this species.


Based on an extensive review of research on advertising in a recession, the authors identify over 40 related studies. Ten of these studies involve original empirical analyses of cross-sectional or time series data. The rest are theoretical discussions, reviews, cases, or opinions. The studies may be classified into four groups based on the dependent variable analyzed: 1) Sensitivity of advertising expenditures to the economy; 2) Sensitivity of brand versus private label share to economic expansions and contractions; 3) Impact of advertising in a recession to sales or market share during or after a recession; 4) Impact of advertising in a recession to profits during and after the recession. The authors critically review these studies and synthesize the major findings.


Climate change and outdoor air pollution are two of the most challenging environmental issues that modern society faces. These challenges are strongly linked through their emission sources, the sectors they affect and the policies that can be implemented to reduce emissions. They also interact in the way they affect economic growth in the coming decades, although this aspect has been neglected in the literature. This paper presents the first global analysis of the joint economic consequences of climate change and outdoor air pollution to 2060, in the absence of new policies to address these challenges. A common methodology and a consistent modelling framework is used to specify the main economic interaction effects. While this paper provides a useful framework to analyse the interactions between two environmental issues in the economic system, the results need to be interpreted carefully, because of limited data availability.


High-performance three-dimensional (3D) printing materials are key for the advancement and practical applications of emerging 3D printing technology. However, these are still very few in the market. In this study, photocurable polyimide inks for digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing to produce architectures with excellent comprehensive properties are reported. Maleic anhydride-terminated polyimide oligomers with a glycidyl methacrylate graft were prepared by one-step imidization of phenolic hydroxyl groups containing diamine and aromatic dianhydride in high boiling-point solvent, followed by the reaction of glycidyl methacrylate with the phenolic hydroxyl groups. The good solubility of the oligomers in reactive diluents allowed the formation of a solvent-free photocurable ink for DLP 3D printing, and this ink could be deposited in a layer-by-layer sequence into polyimides with complex shapes. The resultant photocurable polyimide inks were capable of fabricating various complicated, precise architectures with good mechanical and thermoresistant properties. As such, the 3D printing polyimides are believed to be promising in constructing parts and models, such as micro-oil filters, through-tubing materials, cooling valves, and various engine components, where heat resistance, chemical inertness, and high mechanical properties are required.


Abstract Kalahari and Transvaal Tswana practised a mixed economy of herding, agriculture, and hunting for meat (and for skins). While faunal remains reflect higher percentage of domestic stock than of wild animals, such proportions alone do not reflect hunting's importance. Hunters probably slaughtered animals in the veld and dried the meat in strips for transport home with the skins. Moreover, hunting-related vocabulary and numerous references to wildlife trophies as associated with status show that hunting was integral to Tswana life. Hunting and wildlife utilisation changed after firearms, horses, and ivory trading were introduced. Non-consumption and trade assumed greater importance. Hunters killed wild animals to obtain trading trophies and to remove predators from expanding grazing and settlement areas. In the Transvaal, hunting largely disappeared, as Tswana were dispossessed by white settlers involved in commercial cattle and cash crop farming, and as elephants retreated north of the Limpopo River. To the west, however, game remained abundant and many observers in the Kalahari noted a wide variety of Tswana hunting practices, some likely predating the nineteenth century. Some of these hunting practices yielded substantial returns of ivory, skins, ostrich feathers, and other products which were fed into a wide-ranging trade throughout southern Africa.


The traditional monetary policy transmission mechanism is based on the fact that, in the wake of a restrictive monetary policy stance, the interest rate rises and that therefore interest-rate-related variables, such as corporate asset formation, decline or increase less sharply than at the given interest rate. For some years now economists - especially in the Anglo-Saxon countries - have been discussing the credit channel approach, which embraces the credit suppIy as well as the interest rate channel. A crucial factor in this context is that information between the lender and the borrower is asymmetric. This primarily affects small enterprises, whose creditworthiness is, as a rule, not as good as that of large firms and which are heavily reliant on bank credit. The credit channel theory states that, for small enterprises, a stricter monetary policy stance results in a higher cost of borrowed funds than for larger enterprises or even in credit rationing. The result is that this group of enterprises cuts its asset formation particularly sharply ...


Based on the 2011 Global Hunger Index, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has the most severe level of hunger and malnutrition. There is growing recognition that development in the agriculture sector and increasing productivity will be critical to reverse this trend. A growing set of literature looks at gender disparity in access to critical inputs, knowledge and markets, which have been shown to contribute to low productivity and nutrition insecurity. This assessment contributes to the knowledge gap by compiling existing empirical evidence and investigating the gender gaps in access to resources and opportunities in the agriculture and food sector in the DRC.