Sentence matching is widely used in various natural language tasks such as natural language inference, paraphrase identification, and question answering. For these tasks, understanding logical and semantic relationship between two sentences is required but it is yet challenging. Although attention mechanism is useful to capture the semantic relationship and to properly align the elements of two sentences, previous methods of attention mechanism simply use a summation operation which does not retain original features enough. Inspired by DenseNet, a densely connected convolutional network, we propose a densely-connected co-attentive recurrent neural network, each layer of which uses concatenated information of attentive features as well as hidden features of all the preceding recurrent layers. It enables preserving the original and the co-attentive feature information from the bottommost word embedding layer to the uppermost recurrent layer. To alleviate the problem of an ever-increasing size of feature vectors due to dense concatenation operations, we also propose to use an autoencoder after dense concatenation. We evaluate our proposed architecture on highly competitive benchmark datasets related to sentence matching. Experimental results show that our architecture, which retains recurrent and attentive features, achieves state-of-the-art performances for most of the tasks.


In the spring of 2003, Jacques Derrida sat down for a public debate in Paris with Algerian intellectual Mustapha Cherif. The eminent philosopher arrived at the event directly from the hospital, where he had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the illness that would take his life just over a year later. That he still participated in the exchange testifies to the magnitude of the subject at hand: the increasingly distressed relationship between Islam and the West, and the questions of freedom, justice, and democracy that surround it.As Cherif relates in this account of their dialogue, the topic of Islam held special resonance for Derrida - perhaps it is to be expected that near the end of his life his thoughts would return to Algeria, the country where he was born in 1941. Indeed, these roots served as the impetus for their conversation, which first centers on the ways in which Derrida's Algerian-Jewish identity has shaped his thinking. From there, the two men move to broader questions of secularism and democracy; to politics and religion and how the former manipulates the latter; and to the parallels between xenophobia in the West and fanaticism among Islamists.Ultimately, their discussion is an attempt to tear down the notion that Islam and the West are two civilizations locked in a bitter struggle for supremacy and to reconsider them as the two shores of the Mediterranean - two halves of the same geographical, religious, and cultural sphere. "Islam and the West" is a crucial opportunity to further our understanding of Derrida's views on the key political and religious divisions of our time and an often moving testament to the power of friendship and solidarity to surmount them.


ABSTRACT Few studies have correlated counts of street users to walkability features or tested for temporal variations in use across the day. Trained observers counted street users for four streets that differed in walkability according to the Irvine-Minnesota audit. From 7 am to 7 pm weekdays, across four 2-hour observation periods, all four streets had significant quadratic trends of increasing then decreasing use. Furthermore, the two most walkable streets also showed significant linear increases in users across the day. Part of a street's identity is its temporal activity rhythm, and both walkability and rhythms can inform urban design and renewal.


This article analyses European Union Treaties, Council of Europe communique, programs regulating general principles on external and internal borders protection, major changes of these Treaties in the field of Freedom, Justice and Security space. The article provides historical overview of European Union evolution in the field of freedom, security and justice. This article widely disputes influence of European Union treaties to the area of police and judicial, and describes tendencies to improve legal acts as well as main influence of these treaties for the concept of developing external borders in Lithuanian Law system. The article describes issues that arise with implementing and adopting European Union legal acts in the field of external borders protection. After Lithuania became border state of European Union it was evident that protection of external borders became main guarantee of the internal security of whole Europe. The article examines topical issues of cooperation between police and judicial officers of European Union member states as well as intensification security of external borders. With compensating removal of internal borders control in European Union a lot of attention is paid to protect external borders by using strict law rules, administrative and technical requirements that are described in this article. This article provides practical recommendations for better development of internal borders protection as well as guaranteeing the high level inspection over external borders of the Republic of Lithuania.


Scholarly communication has not remained unaffected by the advance of the social networking culture. The traditional bibliometric paradigm is strongly questioned as a tool that accurately portrays the impact of research outcomes. New metrics, such as download or view rates and shares, have been proposed as alternative ways for measuring the impact of digital content published in the form of articles, datasets, etc. Mendeley's Readership Statistics are one of these metrics, based on the assumption that there is a linkage between a paper in a collection and the interests of the collection owner. The current study explores the 'altmetric' aspects of the literature of the digital libraries evaluation domain, as it is expressed in two major conferences of the field, namely JCDL and ECDL. Our corpus consists of 224 papers, for which we extract readership data from Mendeley and examine in how many collections these papers belong to. Our goal is to investigate whether readership statistics can help us to understand where and to whom DL evaluation research has impact. Therefore the data are analyzed statistically to produce indicators of geographical and topical distribution of Mendeley readers as well as to explore and classify their profession. Finally it derived that there is a loose correlation between the number of Google Scholar citations and the number of Mendeley readers. Keywords: altmetrics, digital library evaluation, Mendeley, conference literature


Reinforcement learning (RL) in partially observable settings is challenging because the agent's observations are not Markov. Recently proposed methods can learn variable-order Markov models of the underlying process but have steep memory requirements and are sensitive to aliasing between observation histories due to sensor noise. This paper proposes dynamic-depth context tree weighting (D2-CTW), a model-learning method that addresses these limitations. D2-CTW dynamically expands a suffix tree while ensuring that the size of the model, but not its depth, remains bounded. We show that D2-CTW approximately matches the performance of state-of-the-art alternatives at stochastic time-series prediction while using at least an order of magnitude less memory. We also apply D2-CTW to model-based RL, showing that, on tasks that require memory of past observations, D2-CTW can learn without prior knowledge of a good state representation, or even the length of history upon which such a representation should depend.


The goal of this paper is to study the role of multi-product firms in the market provision of product variety. The analysis is conducted using the spokes model of non-localized competition proposed by Chen and Riordan (2007). Firstly, we show that multi-product firms are at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis single-product firms and can only emerge if economies of scope are sufficiently strong. Secondly, under duopoly product variety may be higher or lower with respect to both the first best and the monopolistically competitive equilibrium. However, within a relevant range of parameter values duopolists drastically restrict their product range in order to relax price competition, and as a result product variety is far below the efficient level.


Myrmica schoedli sp.n. is described from workers and a single queen collected on the mountains of northern Vietnam, and its taxonomic position is discussed. A first record of M. angulata in Vietnam is reported and a first description of its queen is given. A short review of the Myrmica species known from Vietnam and a key for their identification are provided. It is proposed that M. draco, M. yamanei and M. schoedli sp.n. should be placed in the M. draco complex (a new complex in the M. ritae species group) based on their unusual combination of morphological features.


In this study, an analysis and an evaluation of the feedback comments made by fourth year law students on legal writing assignments of first year law students is made. The purpose is to formulate a sense of the student tutors' shared capacity to critique legal writing, and thereby assist in developing the writing skills of first year students at one South African law school. A review of the literature on legal writing from the United States of America suggests that there has been a shift away from the current-traditional paradigm, which focussed on formal features of legal writing. The 'new legal rhetoric' approach , based on research and theoretical understandings which view writing as a recursive process , has now been widely adopted. This approach has been further extended by the 'social perspective ,' which acknowledges writing as a social practice. which novice writers can learn from experts within the legal discourse community. Finally, critical reading and writing theorists propose a politicised approach to writing , encouraging critiques of alienating discourse practices. Legal writing pedagogy in the United States has refiected these changing theoretical perspectives . The 'process' approach to teaching writing requires intensive writing instruction and practice by novices. Several drafts of assignments are submitted , and instructors respond with appropriate written (and verbal) feedback comments, which are intended to motivate revisions. The implications of this approach are that increased numbers of trained writing instructors are required to implement such a labour-intensive pedagogy. Resource constraints , and the difficulties of staffing such programmes, have resulted in innovative models being devised. The use of student tutors to assist in teaching legal writing inspired the introduction of a comparable tutor-training course at the University of Natal, Durban Law School, in 1999. In this study, eighteen pieces of writing: three different examples of first year law students' writing , on which six tutors had each written feedback comments, were analysed. The number, accuracy and type of comments were tabulated , and the tone and quality of the responses were evaluated against the theoretical frameworks reviewed above. A descriptive , qualitative interpretation of their commenting practice develops a detailed sense of their successes and deficiencies. The conclusions which emerged suggest that modifications to the tutors' education and training , and closer supervision/monitoring procedures would enhance the tutors' theoretical understandings, as well as their commenting practice. The value and viability of such a programme is confirmed by the empirical information, and indicates that student tutors can extend teaching resources , to provide the assistance necessary to implement intensive legal writing instruction. In a South African context, where academic literacy skills are so often deficient in first year students, a programme which builds capacity and extends limited teaching resources can be extremely beneficial.


The next generation VLSI circuits will be designed with millions of densely packed interconnect segments on a single chip. Inductive effects between these segments begin to dominate signal delay as the clock frequency is increased. Modern parasitic extraction tools to estimate the onchip inductive effects with high accuracy have had limited impact due to large computational and storage requirements. This work describes a parallel software package for inductance extraction called ParIS, which is capable of analyzing interconnect configurations involving several conductors within reasonable time. The main component of the software is a novel preconditioned iterative method that is used to solve a dense complex linear system of equations. The linear system represents the inductive coupling between filaments that are used to discretize the conductors. A variant of the fast multipole method is used to compute dense matrix-vector products with the coefficient matrix. ParIS uses a two-tier parallel formulation that allows mixed mode parallelization using both MPIand OpenMP. An MPI process is associated with each conductor. The computation within a conductor is parallelized using OpenMP. The parallel efficiency and scalability of the software is demonstrated through experiments on the IBM p690 and Intel and AMD Linux clusters. These experiments highlight the portability and efficiency of the software on multiprocessors with shared, distributed, and distributed-shared memory architectures.


Research background: Participatory Forest Management program (PFMP) is initiated to manage forest resources and promote household participation to enhance their livelihood. In contrast, the long-term evaluation of many programs' timing remains low attention. Thus, it is vital to measure livelihood impacts on membership duration associated with the PFM program in Ethiopian farm households Purpose of the article: To evaluate the impact of membership duration in participatory forest management on livelihoods of program participating households in south-western Ethiopia. The results of the program's periodic assessment data were analysed on the long-term effect of the activities of forest management members. Methods: The study applied the generalized propensity score method. The research depends on cross-sectional survey data collected in mid-2018 from 267 farm households from Sheka and Kafa zones of south-western Ethiopia. The procedure matched families with similar covariates with different years of membership duration in the participatory forest management program. The technique was used members' annual per capita expenditure as an indicator outcome variable for measuring rural livelihood. Findings, value-added & novelty: Impacts studies of PFMP on heterogeneous effects across different groups of membership duration are scarce, and there is a research gap on how membership duration affects outcomes. Our study addresses this gap by measuring the long-term evaluation of program outcomes and their impacts on the participatory member households. Furthermore, the result revealed that the program's effects were initially low but positively affected when approaching an optimum year of membership dose. The program's optimal duration of the membership dose was 11-12 years, and 4263.75 birrs were the optimal level of yearly household per capita consumption spending. Recommendation: The results recommend more work on the participating household members by encouraging new forest-related income sources and integrating the socio-economic network more closely with the forest's ecosystem services. Although the relationship among participating members of households' longevity and income is substantial, the program has been focused on the medium and longer duration of the forest program participating.


Mobile technologies could help to improve service delivery to smallholder farmers, but whether such services are fulfilling their potential remains poorly understood. To address this gap, this article presents an exploratory literature review regarding the impact of mobile phone-enabled services on farmers in developing countries. The review highlights a dearth of empirical evidence in this area. Findings suggest that farmers benefited through improvements in production planning, management of weather-related risks, and greater ease in receiving money. The review also points to several methodological shortcomings, notably the reliance on perception data and the failure to assess impacts in relation to usage. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Understanding the 'human operator' is a central concern of both ergonomists and sport and exercise scientists. This cutting-edge collection of international research papers explores the interface between physical, cognitive and occupational ergonomics and sport and exercise science, illuminating our understanding of 'human factors' at work and at play. Drawing on a wide diversity of disciplines, including applied anatomy, biomechanics, physiology, engineering, psychology and design, the book explores themes of central importance within contemporary ergonomics and sport and exercise science, such as performance, health, environment, technology and special populations. "Contemporary Sport, Leisure and Ergonomics" establishes important methodological connections between the disciplines, advancing the research agenda within each. It is essential reading for all serious ergonomists and human scientists.


—Hybridizing power electronic systems using an energy storage unit has gained popularity in transportation and power system applications. This task has traditionally been performed by using several independent power electronic converters. Multi-input converters, due to their reduced part count and improved efficiency, seem to be an advantageous option to replace the conventional converters. A few multi-input converter topologies have been reported in the literature; however, there is not a systematic approach to derive them. Furthermore, all possible topologies are not completely explored and it is difficult to derive new converters from the existing topologies. Hence, in this paper, a systematic approach to derive multi-input converters by using single-pole triple-throw switches as building blocks is presented.


With cities at the forefront of the challenge of achieving global sustainability, a key concern for urban management bodies is to identify ways to promote sustainable development at the urban and sub-urban level. Assessment mechanisms have dominated this field for the past two decades, and sustainable community assessment tools (SCATs) are fast becoming the principal framework adopted by urban planners and developers to drive sustainability. This paper investigates the efficacy and applicability of this approach to urban sustainability. The study aims to establish that the deployment of a management platform, founded in the principles of facilities management (FM), can provide better mechanisms to facilitate the process of achieving urban sustainability. The data were collected by means of survey interviews with key stakeholders who consisted of two main categories: participants from private and public sector engaged in the management and development of sustainable cities. Secondly, developers of the tools were interviewed. The tools evaluated include: LEED for Neighbourhood Development (LEED-ND), BREEAM Communities (BREEAM-C), CASBEE for Urban Development (CASBEEUD), and Green Star Communities (GSC). It was found that the prescriptive and outcomes-based nature of assessment tools do not adequately accommodate institutional and social imperatives of urban sustainability. Additionally, a need for more a robust procedural framework to manage relationships between the various relevant professionals and interest groups was highlighted. This would provide a unified method to facilitate the achievement of urban sustainability. The paper concludes that urban sustainability needs to draw upon the management principles of FM to facilitate more comprehensive development and assessment relevant to the needs of a specific locale. Without a process-oriented method such as this, cities will continue to fall short of their sustainable imperatives.


ABSTRACT Background: Gestures are spontaneous hand and arm movements that are part of everyday communication. The roles of gestures in communication are disputed. Most agree that they augment the information conveyed in speech. More contentiously, some argue that they facilitate speech, particularly when word-finding difficulties (WFD) occur. Exploring gestures in aphasia may further illuminate their role. Aims: This study explored the spontaneous use of gestures in the conversation of participants with aphasia (PWA) and neurologically healthy participants (NHP). It aimed to examine the facilitative role of gesture by determining whether gestures particularly accompanied WFD and whether those difficulties were resolved. Methods & Procedures: Spontaneous conversation data were collected from 20 PWA and 21 NHP. Video samples were analysed for gesture production, speech production, and WFD. Analysis 1 examined whether the production of semantically rich gestures in these conversations was affected by whether the person had aphasia, and/or whether there were difficulties in the accompanying speech. Analysis 2 identified all WFD in the data and examined whether these were more likely to be resolved if accompanied by a gesture, again for both groups of participants. Outcomes & Results: Semantically rich gestures were frequently employed by both groups of participants, but with no effect of group. There was an effect of the accompanying speech, with gestures occurring most commonly alongside resolved WFD. An interaction showed that this was particularly the case for PWA. NHP, on the other hand, employed semantically rich gestures most frequently alongside fluent speech. Analysis 2 showed that WFD were common in both groups of participants. Unsurprisingly, these were more likely to be resolved for NHP than PWA. For both groups, resolution was more likely if a WFD was accompanied by a gesture. Conclusions: These findings shed light on the different functions of gesture within conversation. They highlight the importance of gesture during WFD, both in aphasic and neurologically healthy language, and suggest that gesture may facilitate word retrieval.


Apical pelagic species forage in predictable habitats, and their movements should signal biologically and ecologically significant areas of the marine ecosystem. Several countries are now engaged in identifying these areas based on animal tracking, but this is often limited to a few individuals from one breeding population, which may result in biased portrayals of the key marine habitats. To help identify such foraging areas, we compiled tracking data of a marine top predator from the main breeding colonies in the Central Macaronesia.


Abstract. The majority of people at risk from earthquakes do little or nothing to reduce their vulnerability. Over the past 40 years social scientists have tried to predict and explain levels of seismic hazard adjustment using models from behavioural sciences such as psychology. The present paper is the first to synthesise the major findings from the international literature on psychological correlates and causes of seismic adjustment at the level of the individual and the household. It starts by reviewing research on seismic risk perception. Next, it looks at norms and normative beliefs, focusing particularly on issues of earthquake protection responsibility and trust between risk stakeholders. It then considers research on attitudes towards seismic adjustment attributes, specifically beliefs about efficacy, control and fate. It concludes that an updated model of seismic adjustment must give the issues of norms, trust, power and identity a more prominent role. These have been only sparsely represented in the social psychological literature to date.


In this paper, I look specifically at Catholic colleges in the United States and compare their student enrollment and graduation rates to other types of colleges, and ask if Catholic colleges continue to play a role as levers of economic mobility for students, or if they are reproducing the social class status of their families. Combining institutional data from the College Scorecard and the Equality of Opportunity Project, my analysis shows that Catholic colleges in the U.S. have higher graduation rates than public and other private schools, but they enroll a lower proportion of students who are low income. Catholic colleges also enroll a smaller proportion of first-generation college students than public schools, but a higher percentage of students who identify as Hispanic than other private schools. Some Catholic colleges are primarily educating students whose families are from the highest income quintile, but the proportions vary greatly by school. The combined dataset provides an opportunity for Catholic colleges in the U.S. to examine the demographics of their students and to ask questions about how they want to live out their missions by the students they enroll and ultimately graduate.


Background Microcredit services—the awarding of small loans to individuals who are too poor to take advantage of traditional financial services—are an increasingly popular scheme for poverty alleviation. Several studies have examined the ability of microcredit programmes to influence the financial standing of borrowers, but only a few studies have examined whether the added household income improves health and nutritional outcomes among household members. This study examined the hypothesis that longer participation in microcredit services would be associated with better nutritional status in women. Methods Cross-sectional data were obtained in February 2007 from 1593 female clients of a microcredit organisation in Peru. The primary predictor variable was length of time as a microcredit client measured in number of completed loan cycles (range 0 to 5.5 years, average loan size US$350). The outcome variables were age-adjusted body mass index (BMI), haemoglobin levels (g/dl) and food insecurity measured using the US household food security survey module. Extensive data on demographic and socioeconomic status were also collected. Results Longer microcredit participation was associated with higher BMI (β=0.05, p=0.06), higher haemoglobin levels (β=0.07, p<0.01) and lower food insecurity (β=−0.13, p<0.01). With the inclusion of demographic and socioeconomic variables, the associations with higher haemoglobin (β=0.03, p=0.04) and lower food insecurity (β=−0.08, p<0.01) were sustained. Conclusion This study supports the notion that microcredit participation has positive effects on the nutritional status of female clients. Further research should explore more definitive causal pathways through which these effects may occur and should examine the effects on other household members.


The flypaper effect results when a dollar of exogenous grants-in-aid leads to significantly greater public spending than an equivalent dollar of citizen income: Money sticks where it hits. Viewing governments as agents for a representative citizen voter, this empirical result is an anomaly. Four alternative explanations have been offered. First, it's a data problem; matching grants have been mis-classified as exogenous aid. Second, it's an econometric problem; exogenous aid is correlated with omitted variables leading to a downward bias in estimates of income's effects and an upward bias in estimates of aid's effects. Third, it's a specification problem: the representative citizen either fails to observe lump-sum aid, or sees aid but mis-perceives its impact as an average price effect, or finally, sees and understands aid's budgetary effects but allocates "public" and "private" monies through separate "mental accounts." The empirical evidence suggests none of these explanations is sufficient. A fourth explanation seems most promising: It's politics. Rather than an anomaly, the flypaper effect is best seen as an outcome of political institutions and the associated incentives of elected officials.


The beauty of the Christian faith shines out from this true story of Sumi San, a Japanese nurse who converted from Buddhism to Christianity. In the heart of Japan, when Shintoism and Buddhism held almost universal sway, Sumi San's zeal in winning others for Christ was often mocked and opposed, but it was her dedication that led to the foundation of a vigorous indigenous church in her village community. She lived just long enough to attend the dedication of the completed building. This deeply moving story is one that will challenge Christians and non-Christians alike to dedicate their lives to the service of others.


Improvements in neural network calibration models by a novel approach using neural network ensemble (NNE) for the simultaneous spectrophotometric multicomponent analysis are suggested, with a study on the estimation of the components of an antihypertensive combination, namely, atenolol and losartan potassium. Several principal component neural networks were trained with the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm by varying conditions such as inputs, hidden neurons, initialization, training sets and random Gaussian noise injection to the inputs. Genetic algorithm (GA) has been used to develop the NNE from the trained pool of neural networks. Subsets of neural networks selected from the pool by decoding the chromosomes were combined to form an ensemble. Several such ensembles formed the population which was evolved to generate the fittest ensemble. Ensembling the networks was done with weighted average decided on the basis of the mean square error of the individual nets on the validation data while the ensemble fitness in the GA optimization was based on the relative prediction error on unseen data. The use of a computed calibration spectral data set derived from three spectra of each component has been described. The calibration models were thoroughly evaluated at several concentration levels using spectra obtained for 76 synthetic binary mixtures prepared using orthogonal designs. The ensemble models showed better generalization and performance compared with any of the individual neural networks trained. Although the components showed significant spectral overlap, the model could accurately estimate the drugs with satisfactory precision and accuracy, in tablet dosage with no interference from excipients as indicated by the recovery study results. The GA optimization guarantees the selection of the best combination of neural networks for NNE and eliminates the arbitrariness in the selection of any single neural network model, thus maximizing the knowledge utilization without the risk of memorization or over-fitting.


This article provides a first time look at the numerous challenges facing multiemployer or Taft-Hartley benefit plans in the post-global recession and health care reform world. These plans have provided pension, health, and welfare benefits to union members of smaller employers in itinerant industries for over sixty years and even today, these plans collectively have over ten million participants in over 1500 plans. Multiemployer plans are increasingly mired in financial trouble and are finding it more difficult to continue to provide adequate retirement and health benefits to their members. Although they once represented one of the great triumphs in American labor relations, these plans are now becoming just another part of the growing employee benefits crisis confronting the United States. The purpose of this article is to consider, and respond to, the various financial, healthcare, and judicial challenges that threaten the on-going viability of these plans. By addressing these challenges in a systematic manner, this article seeks to provide a more sustainable path forward so that multiemployer benefit plans can continue to provide crucial employee benefits to the next generation of union workers.


The effective planning of a product's manufacture is critical to both its cost and delivery time. Recognition of this importance has motivated over 30 years of research into automated planning systems and generated a large literature covering many different manufacturing technologies. But complete automation has proved difficult in most manufacturing domains. However, as manufacturing hardware has evolved to become more automated and computer aided design software has been developed to support the creation of complex geometries; planning the physical fabrication of a virtual model is still a task that occupies thousands of engineers around the world, every day. We intend for this paper to be useful to newcomers in this field, who are interested in placing the current state-of-the-art in context and identifying open research problems across a range of manufacturing processes. This paper discusses the capabilities, limitations and challenges of automated planning for four manufacturing technologies: machining, sheet metal bending, injection molding, and mechanical assembly. Rather than presenting an exhaustive survey of research in these areas, we focus on identifying the characteristics of the planning task in different domains, current research directions, and open problems in each area. Our key observations are as following. First, the incorporation of AI techniques, geometric modeling, computational geometry, optimization, and physics-based modeling has led to significant advances in the automated planning area. Second, commercial tools are available to aid the manufacturing planning process in most manufacturing domains. Third, manufacturing planning is computationally challenging and still requires significant human input in most manufacturing domains. Fourth, advancement in several emerging areas has the potential to create, in the near future, a step-change in the capabilities of automated planning systems. Finally, we believe that deploying fully automated planning systems can lead to significant productivity benefits. [DOI: 10.1115/1.3593411]


3D shape recovery using photometric stereo (PS) gained increasing attention in the computer vision community in the last three decades due to its ability to recover the thinnest geometric structures. Yet, the reliability of PS for color images is difficult to guarantee, because existing methods are usually formulated as the sequential estimation of the colored albedos, the normals and the depth. Hence, the overall reliability depends on that of each subtask. In this work we propose a new formulation of color photometric stereo, based on image ratios, that makes the technique independent from the albedos. This allows the unbiased 3D-reconstruction of colored surfaces in a single step, by solving a system of linear PDEs using a variational approach.


In a series of papers we published in 2016, we show that relative valuations predict subsequent returns for both factors and smart beta strategies in exactly the same way price matters in stock selection and asset allocation. To many, one surprising revelation in that series is that a number of "smart beta" strategies are expensive today relative to their historical valuations. The fact they are expensive has two uncomfortable implications. The first is that the past success of a smart beta strategy—often only a simulated past performance—is partly a consequence of "revaluation alpha" arising because many of these strategies enjoy a tailwind as they become more expensive. We, as investors, extrapolate that part of the historical alpha at our peril. The second implication is that any mean reversion toward the smart beta strategy's historical normal relative valuation could transform lofty historical alpha into negative future alpha. As with asset allocation and stock selection, relative valuations can predict the long-term future returns of strategies and factors—not precisely, nor with any meaningful short-term timing efficacy, but well enough to add material value. These findings are robust to variations in valuation metrics, geographies, and time periods used for estimation.


Over the past 100 years, urban planners have been promoting a variety of new urban forms, called inter alia Sustainable, Green, Low Carbon, Livable, and Eco-cities, to improve the quality of life of citizens and the local and global environment. Numerous indicator systems have been developed to evaluate the implementation of these theories. The popularity of indicator systems is increasing as local and global constituents give greater attention to mitigating and adapting to climate change, environmental damage and resource constraints. However, no two systems are alike. Each system differentially includes, categorizes and prioritizes indicators, making it difficult to define an eco-city and evaluate the status and progress of developments. This paper evaluates the structures and component indicators of 16 international municipal-level sustainable, green and eco-city indicator systems from the last several years. While there is some consensus regarding the most important elements in determining city sustainability, there is little agreement on the method by which indicators are chosen, the weights assigned to indicators, and the best indicators themselves. Key conceptual frameworks and indicator categories are isolated and evaluated for common elements and the results are compared to other studies. The analysis of best-practices suggests that a set of standardized core indicators need to be developed first, and then enhanced with locally-relevant indicators. Ranking could be postponed until empirical data establishes causal connections between indicators and outcomes. The findings from this study will be used to further develop a lowcarbon eco-city indicator system for China.


Purpose To determine if AVM angioarchitecture characteristics can be predictive and direct specific curative endovascular procedures accurately and consistently to treat high-flow malformations. Materials and methods Angiographic analysis of high-flow vascular malformations determined 4 major angioarchitectures. Type I: Direct arterial/arteriolar to vein/venule connection; e.g., as commonly seen in pulmonary AVF, congenital renal AVF, etc. Type II: Arterial/arteriolar connections to a "nidus" that then have several out-flow veins with no intervening capillary beds in any of the vascular interconnections. Type IIIa: Arterial/arteriolar connections to an aneurysmal vein ("nidus" is the vein wall) that drains into a dominant out-flow vein with no intervening capillary bed in these connections. Type IIIb: Same angioarchitecture as Type IIIa, except that there are more than one (several) out-flow veins. Type IV: "Infiltrative" form of AVM whereby innumerable micro-arteriolar branches fistulize through a tissue (e.g., ear) totally infiltrating it, shunting into multiple out-flow veins. Capillary beds also exist in the tissue and are mixed with the innumerable AVFs. Without the capillaries the tissue could not be viable, therefore must be present. Results Type I: Can be effectively treated with mechanical devices; e.g., coils, Amplatzer Plugs, etc. Type II: Can be effectively treated with ethanol embolization. Type IIIa: Can be effectively treated by transcatheter ethanol, retrograde vein catheter access or direct puncture access of the aneurysmal vein and treatment with ethanol and coils, or even by coils alone. Type IIIb: Can be effectively treated as above, but can be more challenging by the vein route as more veins (not a single out-flow vein) require closure. Type IV: Can be effectively treated by transcatheter or direct puncture of the innumerable microfistulous AVFs by embolization with 50%–50% ethanol non-ionic contrast mixture. Conclusion This never before reported classification system has a direct impact on determining the curative endovascular and direct puncture embolization procedures and also determines the embolic agents that will successfully treat complex AVMS in the body. Disclosures W. Yakes: None.


Over the last two decades, income inequality has increased in most developed welfare states. Therefore, redistributive policies are high on the political agenda of many countries. From a policy perspective, the correct empirical assessment of the redistributive effects of taxes and benefits is important to develop a well-designed redistributive policy mix. This thesis contributes to the understanding and measurement of redistribution by examining redistributive policies and income inequality and their interdependencies. The first empirical analysis explores the size and structure of effective redistribution in a broad sample of European welfare states. Besides answering the question of how different components of the tax and transfer system contribute to disposable income inequality, it also investigates whether the findings are sensitive to the underlying measurement method. Chapter 3 presents two detailed case studies of Germany and the United Kingdom and examines whether the structure of fiscal policies has changed over the last two decades. The analysis provides a comprehensive dynamic analysis of effective progressivity and redistribution by including all major fiscal elements: direct taxation, pay roll taxes, indirect taxes and benefits. Chapter 4 focuses on the identification of the causal effect of redistributive spending policies on income inequality by using a dynamic panel approach and some exogenous variation in social spending levels as an instrument. In contrast to the previous chapters, it explicitly discusses possible second-order effects of redistributive policies. Chapter 5 introduces the concept of inequality of opportunity instead of the traditional inequality of outcome approach. Given that previous estimates of unfair inequality could only provide lower bounds, the study suggests a new panel estimator which additionally allows identifying an upper bound of inequality of opportunity. The approach is illustrated by comparing Germany and the United States based on harmonized micro data. Overall, the book shows that tax benefit systems substantially reduce income inequality in all EU member states, with distinct redistributive capacities of different welfare state instruments. The amount of effective redistribution is significantly reduced when considering indirect taxes and second-order effects. Finally, while tax benefit systems equalize outcomes, they do not reveal a differential impact on unequal opportunities.


AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
To explore and compare Finnish and British nursing students' perceptions of their learning about patient safety in clinical settings.

BACKGROUND
Patient safety culture and practices in different health care organisations and clinical units varies, posing challenges for nursing students' learning about patient safety during their clinical placements. Patient safety as a growing international concern has challenged health care professionals globally requiring a comprehensive review. International studies comparing nursing education about patient safety are lacking.

DESIGN
A cross-sectional comparative study.

METHOD
The participants were final year preregistration nursing students from two universities of applied sciences in Finland (n = 195) and from two universities in England, UK (n = 158). The data were collected with the Patient Safety in Nursing Education Questionnaire and analysed with principal component analysis, Pearson Chi-Square and Mann-Whitney U tests and logistic regression.

RESULTS
Finnish nursing students had significantly more critical perceptions on their learning about patient safety in clinical settings than their British peers. A strong predictor for differences was supportive and systems-based approaches in learning to ensure patient safety. Notably, fewer Finnish students had practiced reporting of incidents in clinical settings compared to British students. In both countries, the students held learning about patient safety in higher esteem compared to their learning experiences in clinical settings.

CONCLUSIONS
Nursing students appear to want more learning opportunities related to patient safety compared to the reality in clinical settings. Learning systematically from errors in a supportive environment and having systems-based approaches to ensure patient safety are essential elements for nursing students' learning about safe practice. Finnish students seem to experience more barriers in learning about safe practices and to report errors than the British students.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE
Health care organisations and professionals with responsibilities for patient safety should seek to standardise the preparation of nursing students incorporating requisite international standards and benchmarks.


Spatial recognition is the ability to recognize the environment and generate goal-directed behaviors, such as navigation. Animals develop spatial recognition by integrating their subjective visual and motion experiences. We propose a model that consists of hierarchical recurrent neural networks with multiple time scales, fast, medium, and slow, that shows how spatial recognition can be obtained from only visual and motion experiences. For high-dimensional visual sequences, a convolutional neural network (CNN) was used to recognize and generate vision. Our model, which was applied to a simulated mobile agent, was trained to predict future visual and motion experiences and generate goal-directed sequences toward destinations that were indicated by photographs. Due to the training, our model was able to achieve spatial recognition, predict future experiences, and generate goal-directed sequences by integrating subjective visual and motion experiences. An internal state analysis showed that the internal state...


We propose to improve the depth of field of Integral Imaging systems by combining an array of phase masks with the traditional lenslet array. We show that obtained elemental images are sharp over a larger range than with a regular lenslet array. We further increase the quality of elemental images by a digital restauration. Computer simulations of pickup and reconstruction are presented.


It has been known that Newtonian fluids are inadequate to describe non-Newtonian fluids. Non-Newtonian flows arise in disparate process in engineering, science and biology for example, in polymer processing, coating, ink-jet printing, microfluidics, geological flows in the earth mantle, homodynamic and many others. Modeling non-Newtonian flows is important for understanding and predicting the behaviour of processes and thus for designing optimal flow configurations and for selecting operating conditions. Several models, mainly based on empirical observations, have been suggested for non-Newtonian fluids. The rheologists have been able to provide a theoretical Foundation in the form of a constitutive equations which can in principle, have any order. For applied mathematics and computer scientists the challenge comes from a different quarter. A constitutive equation of even the simplest non-Newtonian fluids are such that the differential equation describing the motion have, in general, their order higher than those describing the motion of the Newtonian fluids, but apparently there is no corresponding increase in the number of boundary conditions. Applied mathematicians and computer scientists are thus forced with the so-called ill-posed boundary value problems which, in theory have a family of infinitely many solutions. The task them becomes of selecting one of them under some plausible assumption. The main objective of this thesis is to consider the problems in one class of non-Newtonian fluids namely the fluids of differential type and to develop analytic solutions for them. The explicit, totally analytic solutions for the considered problems are obtained using the homotopy analysis method (HAM). The explicit form of the series is given for the analytical solutions. The dependence of the convergence of the obtained series is discussed. The flow problems regarding the flow of second. third and fourth grade fluids are investigated for both Cartesian and Cylindrical coordinates. The considered problems involve flat porous plate, pipe flow, planar and axisymmetric flow over a linear stretching sheet. The heat transfer analysis is carried out for the stretching problems. Two heating processes namely (i) prescribed surface temperature (PST case) and (ii) prescribed heat flux (PHF case) are taken into account. The effects of the emerging non-Newtonian parameters of interest are seen and discussed. Finally, the comparison of the obtained results with the existing results in the literature is also presented.


Simulations are being increasingly used to train medical students in diverse clinical skills. Simulation is arguably the most prominent innovation in medical education over the past 15 years. Role play is a simulation technique which can potentially strengthen knowledge that will lead to improved expertise. The present study was undertaken to assess an effectiveness of simple intervention, in the form of 'Role Play Simulation' on the knowledge of undergraduate MBBS medical students of one of randomly selected medical colleges in Maharashtra is regarding 'Epidemics Investigations.' Methods: A cross-sectional study consisting of pre and post test intervention was conducted at one of the randomly selected medical colleges in Western Maharashtra. A structured pretested self administered questionnaire consisting of 15 close ended questions was distributed to all 144 participants. The present study attempted to incorporate simulation based role play which was based on epidemic/outbreak investigations for food poisoning. Immediately after this intervention, same questionnaire was distributed to participants as a post test and responses were collected. 'Paired t-test' was used to assess pre and post intervention knowledge of participants. Results: Present study revealed significant improvement in knowledge of participants about epidemic investigations from pre to post intervention as a result of 'Role Play Simulation Based Education' (t = 42.87, p < 0.001).Statistically significant difference was observed for all fifteen questions. Conclusion: A simple simulation form like role play can make significant change in knowledge of medical students about very important topic i.e. 'Epidemic Investigation' in Community Medicine subject.


Heart cells were loaded with sodium by treatment with toxic doses of acetyl strophanthidin. After this treatment, an increase in extracellular calcium resulted in a transient net outward sodium flux against its electrochemical gradient and in net cellular uptake of calcium. It is concluded that the free energy for the net outward sodium movement was derived from the increased calcium gradient and that these ion movements took place through the sodium-calcium exchange. While in the normal physiological state the sodium-calcium exchange produces calcium extrusion from the cell, these experiments demonstrate its reversibility.


This paper analyzes the energy system of the autonomous community of the Basque Country. The aim of study is to analyze the current situation in the energy field of the autonomous community of the Basque Country, which is a region of the north of Spain with a problem of energy dependency. 95% of the energy consumed in the region comes from out the borders, which is among the highest rates of the European Union. Therefore, based on gathered information an energy survey of the region has been made, to understand the in and outs of the system, to know which are the energy flows of the region. In 2007 the energy available for gross inland consumption was 7 774 ktoe, where 40.6% comes from petroleum and 39.2% from natural gas. In other words, it is a system characterized by a high consumption of fossil fuels. Renewable energy plays an important role in every future energy scenario of every country, also in the Basque energy system. Hence current situation is analyzed to get a general idea of the situation of them in the system. Renewable energy is only 5.1% of the energy available for gross inland consumption and thus there is still a lot of work to do with it. Waste treatment has been analyzed as the key for comfort in modern society, but also a problem that every region has to face. The amounts of waste generated in 2005 was 1 165 799 tones, which is the equivalent of 545.6 kg per capita and it is increasing every year. The waste treatment facilities are now in a crossroad in the region and it is there where the proposal takes place. Landfilling is not an affordable option in a small region with high population density like the autonomous community of the Basque Country. As waste can be used as a fuel in power plants, why do not take advantage of both problems? Then, two new incineration plants like the one that already exist in the region are proposed. The new installations will replace 88 000 toe per year of primary energy and reduce the emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere 880 000 t per year. The conclusion that could be drawn from this study is that the proposal is not going to give an answer to all the problems of the energy system, but it will be clearly a good step forward. It will solve at the same time the problem of energy dependency, reducing it to 93.47%, and the problem of waste treatment facilities.


A numerical model of axisymmetric convection in the presence of a vertical magnetic flux bundle and rotation about the axis is presented. The model contains a compressible plasma described by the non-linear MHD equations, with density and temperature gradients simulating the upper layer of the Sun's convection zone. The solutions exhibit a central magnetic flux tube in a cylindrical numerical domain, with convection cells forming collar flows around the tube. When the numerical domain is rotated with a constant angular velocity, the plasma forms a Rankine vortex, with the plasma rotating as a rigid body where the magnetic field is strong, as in the flux tube, while experiencing sheared azimuthal flow in the surrounding convection cells, forming a free vortex. As a result, the azimuthal velocity component has its maximum value close to the outer edge of the flux tube. The azimuthal flow inside the magnetic flux tube and the vortex flow is prograde relative to the rotating cylindrical reference frame. A retrograde flow appears at the outer wall. The most significant convection cell outside the flux tube is the location for the maximum value of the azimuthal magnetic field component. The azimuthal flow and magnetic structure are not generated spontaneously, but decay exponentially in the absence of any imposed rotation of the cylindrical domain.


Tens of millions of youth coached by millions of coaches participate in competitive sports annually in the United States on a weekly or even daily basis. Coaches, athletes, parents, league administrators, and recreation professionals engaged in recruiting and training coaches have the need to better understand the impact these coaches and their coaching styles have on the youth athletes with whom they associate. The purpose of this study was to determine the existence and extent of the relationship between coaching styles and adolescent athletes' psychological needs in terms of Self Determination Theory (SDT). Specifically, this study adapted Baumrind's parenting styles of authoritative, authoritarian, and permissiveness to coaching styles and examined the relationship between each coaching style and the tenets of SDT, namely autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The sample consisted of 194 students from a university in the Western United States who had participated in either club or high school level sports for at least one year during high school. Results from block entry method linear multi-regression analysis suggested that coaching styles were related to athletes' levels of perceived autonomy, and competence. Results revealed that an authoritative coaching style was a significant predictor of athlete autonomy and competence while an authoritarian coaching style was a significant negative predictor of athlete autonomy levels. Results from this study hold practical implications for coaches, athletes, parents, league administrators and recreation professionals. Coaches have new principles on which they can base their coaching styles. Results provide criteria for parents and adolescents to use while selecting coaches. League administrators and recreation professionals received information for coach selection and training criteria and coaching evaluation development. Overall, this study adds to the youth sport literature by not only showing that coaches impact adolescent athletes' basic needs, but provides a practical style or mindset rather than a list of behaviors for coaches to implement, coach selection criteria for parents and athletes, and guidelines for league administrators and recreation professionals to use in selecting, training, and evaluating coaches. Subscribe to JPRA


Photoelectron angular distributions (PADs) from two-photon ionization of atoms in linearly polarized strong laser fields are obtained in accordance with the nonperturbative quantum scattering theory. We also study the influence of laser wavelength on PADs. For two-photon ionization very close to the ionization threshold, most of the ionized electrons are vertically ejected to the laser polarization. PADs from two-photon ionization of atoms are determined by the second order generalized phased Bessel function at which the ponderomotive parameter plays a key role. In terms of dependence of PADs on laser wavelength, corresponding variations for the ponderomotive parameter are demonstrated.


In recent years there has been a remarkable increase in anthropometric surveys taking place worldwide for development of sizing systems. It has been acknowledged that the extent to which one sizing system may be applied to different populations is limited due to the variability of body shapes and sizes. Various countries have developed their own sizing systems in order to reduce problems associated with clothing sizes and fit. This study established that no official anthropometric survey has been conducted in Ghana. The absence of any publication of a national sizing system, intended for clothing purposes has resulted in the need for a sizing system that will relate to Ghanaian women and satisfy their different body shapes.

This study was undertaken to develop a conceptual framework to facilitate the understanding of clothing sizes, body shapes and manufacturing strategies for the production of ready-to-wear for Ghanaian women aged between of 16-35 years. A mixed approach to research methods was adopted which incorporated interviews, focus group discussions, questionnaires and anthropometric survey to achieve the aims of the research after an extensive review of literature. The grounded theory approach was used to analyse the qualitative data to ascertain key issues related to sizing systems, body shapes and manufacturing strategies. Data was obtained from clothing manufacturers, stakeholders and consumers in Ghana using non-probability purposive sampling methods. Twenty clothing manufacturers and four stakeholders were interviewed. Four focus groups were formed for the discussions and 400 questionnaires were administered to consumers. Eight hundred and forty two Ghanaian women aged between 16-35 years were measured using the manual body measurement procedures. A quantitative approach using correlation and one-way ANOVA programmes from the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to determine the relationships among the variables and to obtain statistical information for the development of the sizing system. The grounded theory using an inductive approach was used to analyse the qualitative data from the interviews and focus group discussions. The findings of this study have implications for manufacturing strategy for clothing manufacturers for the Ghanaian market. A conceptual framework was developed to help facilitate the understanding of clothing sizes, body shape and manufacturing strategy for the production of ready-to-wear clothing. The anthropometric survey helped to develop a size chart for Ghanaian women aged between 16-35 years in order to improve well fitted and quality garments to satisfy consumer clothing needs. This study also established significant relationships between body shape, body cathexis and clothing. It contributes greatly to knowledge by providing a detailed procedure involved in developing a research based anthropometric, which will serve as the basis for other future national anthropometric surveys for men and children in Ghana as well as West Africa. This study also provides original baseline data for future research on body shape and body cathexis on Ghanaian women of all ages.


This paper studies the implications of information-processing limits on the consumption and savings behavior of households through time. It presents a dynamic model in which consumers rationally choose the size and scope of the information they want to process concerning their financial possibilities, constrained by a Shannon channel. The model predicts that people with higher degrees of risk aversion rationally choose more information. This happens for precautionary reasons since, with finite processing rate, risk averse consumers prefer to be well informed about their financial possibilities before implementing a consumption plan. Moreover, numerical results show that consumers with processing capacity constraints have asymmetric responses to shocks, with negative shocks producing more persistent effects than positive ones. This asymmetry results in more savings. I show that the predictions of the model can be effectively used to study the impact of tax reforms on consumers spending.


There has been much fruitful discussion of Buddhist ethics over the last two decades, much of it in response to Damien Keown's The Nature of Buddhist Ethics (1992). However, the discussion has been complicated by a number of possible misconceptions leading to less than helpful formulation of important questions and attempts to solve at least one problem that does not seem to exist in the tradition (at least the Theravada) itself. In the present paper I address inadequate understandings of the term punna, the motivations for good and right behavior in the Buddhist context, and the distinction between what I shall call "karmic results" (2) and "ordinary consequences." (3) To motivate the discussion and provide context, I briefly review Keown's book and two responses, those of Abraham Velez de Cea (2004) and Martin T. Adam (2005). I do not mean by this choice of authors to imply that the issues and possible misunderstandings discussed here are exclusively the provenance of western scholars. Indeed Keown's thesis owes much to the work of Sri Lankan P. D. Premasiri, whom he cites, and all three authors reviewed here refer to Premasiri's position on the difference between punna and kusala, either agreeing or disagreeing. It may well be that Premasiri initially problematized the relation between these concepts; his paper, "Interpretation of two principal ethical terms in early Buddhism," (1976) is cited in nearly every academic paper I have found treating the subject. (4) Other nonwestern scholars have discussed the issue as well, for example P. A. Payutto (2012) of Thailand (although he does not reference Premasiri) and Piya Tan (2006) of Malaysia. My purpose is to clarify a few concepts rather than to give an exposition and critique of these authors' work. Thus, I focus only on the issues here raised rather than their overall arguments, and make no attempt at proposing an overall characterization of Buddhist ethics. Neither is it my purpose to definitively characterize the relationship between punna and kusala, the debate about which motivates the present effort. Although I offer a suggestion here, the main purpose is rather to clarify some of the issues involved. It should also be noted that my expertise and experience are in the Theravada, and it is to that tradition that my remarks apply. Keown, Velez de Cea, and Adam Damien Keown characterizes Buddhist ethics as a virtue ethics, similar to that articulated by Aristotle. In his understanding, the rightness or wrongness of actions (5) has nothing to do with results or consequences of any kind; rather their moral status is determined solely by the "preceding motivation" (178). Actions are right to the extent that they manifest or participate in "nirvanic values" such as "Liberality (araga), Benevolence (adosa) and Understanding (amoha)," (ibid.). "If an action does not display nirvanic qualities then it cannot be right in terms of Buddhist ethics whatever other characteristics (such as consequences) it might have" (177). "Nirvanic qualities" Keown identifies with kusala dhamma (118), that is, by his definition, "those things which are to be pursued if enlightenment is to be attained." But actions that are said to be good and right are associated in the Pali Nikayas and the tradition with punna as well as with kusala. Punna and its opposite, apunna or papa, have to do with kamma and the vipaka of karmic results, that is, actions and the pleasant or painful results necessitated by the law of kamma, often, though not necessarily, following rebirth. In his effort to maintain a unified ethics, Keown maintains that punna and kusala refer to the same set of actions--with an exception for arahants. (6) Kusala in Keown's formulation refers to the rightness of actions, that is, in his characterization, their participation in nirvanic virtues, and punna refers to the tendency of those same actions to generate pleasant results (122), though he does not follow this definition consistently. …


We explore the relationship between agency and hedonic and evaluative dimensions of well-being, using data from the Gallup World Poll. We positthat individuals emphasize one well-being dimension over the other, depending on their agency. We test fourhypotheses including whether: (i) positive levels of well-being in one dimension coexist with negative ones in another;and (ii) individuals place a different value on agency depending on their positions in the well-being and income distributions. We findthat: (i) agency is more important to the evaluative well-being of respondents with more means; (ii) negative levels of hedonic well-being coexist with positive levels of evaluative well-being as people acquire agency; and (iii)both income and agency are less important to well-being at highest levels of the well-being distribution. We hope to contributeinsight into one of the most complex and important components of well-being, namely,people's capacity to pursue fulfilling lives.


The Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Governance and Politics surveys the broad range of environmental and sustainability challenges in the emerging Anthropocene and scrutinizes available concepts, methodological tools, theories and approaches, as well as overlaps with adjunct fields of study. This comprehensive reference work, written by some of the most eminent academics in the field, contains 68 entries on numerous aspects across 7 thematic areas, including concepts and definitions; theories and methods; actors; institutions; issue-areas; cross-cutting questions; and overlaps with non-environmental fields. With this broad approach, the volume seeks to provide a pluralistic knowledge base of the research and practice of global environmental governance and politics in times of increased complexity and contestation. Providing its readers with a unique point of reference, as well as stimulus for further research, this Encyclopedia is an indispensable tool for anyone interested in the politics of the environment, particularly students, teachers and researchers. (Less)


In the collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum is a limestone relief depicting a king at life-size engaged in a boat ritual as part of the Sed-festival. Discovered in 1904 at Herakleopolis, this object can be dated, based on context, iconography, and style to the early Old Kingdom. Only the upper part of this monumental relief is preserved and the name of the king does not survive. However, the associated labels show that the scene depicted a king, accompanied by Iunmutef, receiving the barque of the goddess Wenut-Shemau, or Nekhbet, at the Sed-festival. This relief, reused in the foundations of the Twelfth Dynasty at Herakleopolis derives from what was evidently a large-format tableau of Sed-festival scenes in a royal cult complex of the Old Kingdom. The relief is a forerunner to scenes in the Twentieth Dynasty tomb of Setau at El Kab depicting the arrival of Wenut-Shemau at the site of the Sed-festival. The ceremonial mooring of the barques of Wadjet and Nekhbet at the Sed-festival may form a central, but hitherto unrecognized, element of the Sed-festival. The closest surviving parallels to the Herakleopolis scene occur in fragmentary reliefs from the Valley Temple of Sneferu at Dahshur. Attribution is proposed to Huni, Sneferu or Khufu. The Sed-festival block may have been transported to Herakelopolis from one of the Memphite pyramid complexes, or from Meidum, during the early Twelfth Dynasty. Alternatively, the relief may derive from an early Old Kingdom royal complex at Herakelopolis itself, possibly originating in a mortuary complex of Huni that once stood at that site.  doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5913/jarce.53.2017.a007


The liver is crucial for systemic inflammation in cancer cachexia. Previous studies have shown that L-carnitine, as the key regulator of lipid metabolism, exerts an anti-inflammatory effect in several diseases, and ameliorates the symptoms of cachexia by regulating the expression and activity of carnitine palmitoyltransferase (CPT) in the liver. However, the effect of L-carnitine on the liver inflammatory response in cancer cachexia remains to be elucidated. The aim of the present study was to examine the role of the CPT I-dependent peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)γ signaling pathway in the ameliorative effect of L-carnitine on the liver inflammatory response. This was investigated in a colon-26 tumor-bearing mouse model with cancer cachexia. Liver sections were immunohistochemically analyzed, and mRNA and protein levels of representative molecules of the CPT-associated PPARγ signaling pathway were assessed using PCR and western blot analysis, respectively. The results showed that oral administration of L-carnitine in these mice improved hepatocyte necrosis, liver cell cord derangement and hydropic or fatty degeneration of the liver cells in the liver tissues, decreased serum levels of malondialdehyde, increased serum levels of superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase, and elevated the expression levels of PPARα and PPARγ at the mRNA and protein levels. These changes induced by L-carnitine were reversed by treatment with etomoxir, an inhibitor of CPT I. The inhibitory effect of L-carnitine on the increased expression level of nuclear factor (NF)-κB p65 in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells was markedly weakened by GW9662, a selective inhibitor of PPAR-γ. GW9662 also eliminated the inhibitory effect of L-carnitine on the expression of cyclooxygenase-2 (Cox-2) in the liver, and on the serum expression levels of pro-inflammatory prostaglandin E2, C-reactive protein, tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-6 in the cancer cachexia model mice. This reversing effect of GW9662 on L-carnitine was restored by pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate, a specific inhibitor of NF-κB signaling. Taken together, these results demonstrated that L-carnitine ameliorated liver inflammation and serum pro-inflammatory markers in cancer cachexia through regulating CPT I-dependent PPARγ signaling, including the downstream molecules of NF-κB p65 and Cox-2.


Let K be a knot manifold, that is the 3-sphere S 3 minus an open regular neighborhood of a polygonal simple closed curve in S 3 . Whether K can be embedded in S s differently or in a homotopy 3-sphere different from S 3 (if such really exist) leads in a natural way to the question of which planar surfaces can be embedded in K. Geometric conditions are imposed on the embedded planar surfaces which are sufficient to imply that K is not knotted, that is K is homeomorphic to a disk cross SK


Background Persistent transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has given rise to a COVID-19 pandemic. Several vaccines, evoking protective spike antibody responses, conceived in 2020, are being deployed in mass public health vaccination programs. Recent data suggests, however, that as sequence variation in the spike genome accumulates, some vaccines may lose efficacy. Methods Using a macaque model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, we tested the efficacy of a peptide-based vaccine targeting MHC Class I epitopes on the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein. We administered biodegradable microspheres with synthetic peptides and adjuvants to rhesus macaques. Unvaccinated control and vaccinated macaques were challenged with 1 x 108 TCID50 units of SARS-CoV-2, followed by assessment of clinical symptoms, viral load, chest radiographs, sampling of peripheral blood and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid for downstream analysis. Results Vaccinated animals were free of pneumonia-like infiltrates characteristic of SARS-CoV-2 infection and presented with lower viral loads relative to controls. Gene expression in cells collected from BAL samples of vaccinated macaques revealed a unique signature associated with enhanced development of adaptive immune responses relative to control macaques. Conclusions We demonstrate that a room temperature stable peptide vaccine based on known immunogenic HLA Class I bound CTL epitopes from the nucleocapsid protein can provide protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection in non-human primates. Graphical Abstract


The biological role of the protein tyrosine kinase, Pyk2, was explored by targeting the Pyk2 gene by homologous recombination. Pyk2–/– mice are viable and fertile, without overt impairment in development or behavior. However, the morphology and behavior of Pyk2–/– macrophages were impaired. Macrophages isolated from mutant mice failed to become polarized, to undergo membrane ruffling, and to migrate in response to chemokine stimulation. Moreover, the contractile activity in the lamellipodia of Pyk2–/– macrophages was impaired, as revealed by measuring the rearward movement toward the nucleus of fibronectin-coated beads on the lamellipodia in opposition to an immobilizing force generated by optical tweezers. Consistently, the infiltration of macrophages into a carageenan-induced inflammatory region was strongly inhibited in Pyk2–/– mice. In addition, chemokine stimulation of inositol (1, 4, 5) triphosphate production and Ca2+ release, as well as integrin-induced activation of Rho and phosphatidyl inositol 3 kinase, were compromised in Pyk2–/– macrophages. These experiments reveal a role for Pyk2 in cell signaling in macrophages essential for cell migration and function.


Designing effective behavioral controllers for mobile robots can be difficult and tedious; this process can be circumvented by using unsupervised learning techniques which allow robots to evolve their own controllers in an automated fashion. In multi-robot systems, robots learning in parallel can share information to dramatically increase the evolutionary rate. However, manufacturing variations in robotic sensors may result in perceptual differences between robots, which could impact the learning process. In this paper, we explore how varying sensor offsets and scaling factors affects parallel swarm-robotic learning of obstacle avoidance behavior using both Genetic Algorithms and Particle Swarm Optimization. We also observe the diversity of robotic controllers throughout the learning process in an attempt to better understand the evolutionary process.


The gradually growing need for testbed use so as networking algorithms to be validated in real environments, has given rise to optimal utilization of testbed resources. Despite the fact that, many laboratories around the globe have deployed testbeds, so as experimenters have the opportunity to test their algorithms, the majority of those testbeds suffer from bad management that prevents users from efficiently exploiting testbed's resources. Moreover, as the number of testbed users increases, experimenters needs for more sophisticated allocation of testbed resources are growing. Toward, this direction, we propose a managerial framework that exploits testbed utilization by introducing slicing over frequency spectrum. This new framework will allow a more sophisticated way to optimally control and manage network resources of a testbed. Lab's website: http://nitlab.inf.uth.gr


These essays seek to apply the conceptual apparatus pioneered by Max Weber in his studies of the major world religions to developments in religious traditions around the globe over the past century. Topics covered include the continuing legacy of Confucianism and Taoism in Chinese culture; neo-Confucianism in Singapore schools; political religion in Communist China; Zen Buddhism in the United States and Japan; Buddhist reinterpretation in Sri Lanka; the role of the Ayatollah Khomeini in the Iranian revolution; Russian sectarianism; the Protestant ethic introduced by the Basel Mission in Ghana; charismatic Christianity in South Africa and North America; Protestant and Catholic movements in Latin America; Church of England parishes in New Towns; Protestant-Catholic agendas in Northern Ireland; the ordination of women in the Anglican Communion; and a California flying-saucer cult. Shows in rich detail that a neo-Weberian approach is relevant to present-day developments and therefore potentially futuritive. $99.95 356pp. 1992


Background: Breast cancer is a completely heterogeneous disease caused by interaction of factors, such as genetic and environmental risks leading to a progressive accumulation of genetic and epigenetic changes in breast cancer cells. Moreover, it deeply affects patients' mental and social health. The present study aimed at examining the effect of group commitment-acceptance treatment on perceived stress, symptoms of depression, and marital satisfaction in women with breast cancer. Methods: The present research was a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT), the study population of which consisted of women with breast cancer referred to Avicenna Research Institute in Tehran, Iran. The participants were selected randomly using random sampling method and Morgan table, and they were assigned to 2 groups of trial (20 individuals) and control (20 individuals). The trial group underwent 8 sessions (each taking 2 hours) for 1 month and received therapy in mind empowerment clinic based on acceptance and commitment, but the control group received no therapy except the routine management. Both groups were examined in terms of psychology using standardized questionnaires. Afterwards, the collected data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation, t-test, univariate analysis of covariance, and multivariate analysis of covariance by employment of SPSS software. Results: The results of analysis of covariance indicated that the performed therapy improved the level of perceived stress, symptoms of depression, and marital satisfaction in the trial group. The calculated eta-squared (0.40) indicated that 40% of individual differences in post test scores of perceived stress, marital satisfaction, and symptoms of depression is related to ACT. In addition, the results of univariate analysis of covariance indicated that 48% of individual differences in scores of perceived stress, 63% of individual differences in scores of marital satisfaction, and 58% of individual differences in scores of symptoms of depression were related to ACT. Conclusions: The results of the present study show that acceptance-commitment group therapy is effective and productive in reduction of psychological problems of women with breast cancer. The findings of this study, in general, provide an experimental support for ACT in terms of reduction of psychological problems of patients with cancer.


The organisation of drug development has radically changed in the last 40 years due to changes in the scientific knowledge base and the availability of new forms of finance. Stimulated by breakthroughs in biotechnology, new investment has facilitated changes to the strategies and structure of the industry. Furthermore, scientific advances have provided greater understanding of disease, drug targets and disease-drug interactions, particularly in oncology. Yet new ways of organising innovation bring new challenges. This thesis provides evidence to inform new policies and business models by assessing the non-technical conditions associated with the success and failure of drug development projects. The thesis presents an integrative theoretical framework that supports a multi-dimensional analysis of the network, organisation and individuals involved in drug projects. This approach is applied to case studies of 11 development projects for rare cancer drugs involving UK organisations. These cases are then compared and contrasted through a descriptive multi-case analysis and a Qualitative Comparative Analysis.

The findings contribute towards an understanding of the environmental conditions for the successful development of drugs. Firstly, the concept of project drag is introduced, to draw attention to the accumulation of issues during development that can cause projects lose momentum and lead to termination. The organisational environment around firms is found to be key; common disruptions are identified, particularly within small firms which are more vulnerable to industrial dynamics than larger organisations. This thesis also highlights mechanisms that can mediate adverse conditions; key individuals, their networks, power and consistent enthusiasm for projects can mediate project drag. The thesis also makes a methodological contribution in the formation and operationalisation of an integrative framework for project evaluation which provides a foundation for further research in this area. The thesis is concluded with policy recommendations of pathways that contribute towards the successful development of drug projects.


The first Agriculture-Vision Challenge aims to encourage research in developing novel and effective algorithms for agricultural pattern recognition from aerial images, especially for the semantic segmentation task associated with our challenge dataset. Around 57 participating teams from various countries compete to achieve state-of-the-art in aerial agriculture semantic segmentation. The Agriculture- Vision Challenge Dataset was employed, which comprises of 21,061 aerial and multi-spectral farmland images. This paper provides a summary of notable methods and results in the challenge. Our submission server and leaderboard will continue to open for researchers that are interested in this challenge dataset and task; the link can be found $\color{OrangeRed}{here}$.


Integration of large-scale renewable energy (RE) sources in particular, wind and solar energy into the grid introduces current and voltage harmonics due to power electronics devices as well as inverter connected into the RE sources. Ensuring adequate harmonics in the line currents of RE integrated power system is one of the biggest challenges today. Therefore, this study investigates the potential impacts in particular current and voltage harmonics causes due to large-scale integration of RE into the Berserker Street Feeder, Frenchville Substation under Rockhampton distribution network (DN), Central Queensland, Australia. From the model analyses, it has clearly evident that harmonics across the network increases with the increase of RE integration and causes uncertainties in the feeder as well as in the DN. This study also explores possible mitigation measures and it has seen that optimized STATCOM effectively reducing the adverse harmonic impacts of integrating large-scale RE into the DN.


Societal safeguards, established by those who have shared perceptions of the importance of safety and taking preventative measures, reduce the incidence of accidents that harm people and damage property. These safeguards prevent or discourage community members from partaking in careless behaviors that often lead to accidents. Wildland urban interface communities that recognize the importance of safety and taking preventive measures are likely to have a lower rate of accidental wildfire. Research has established a strong link between a positive safety culture and a reduction in accidents. This paper tests whether the lack of societal safeguards results in higher rates of accidental wildfires by modeling unintentional human caused wildfires as a function of constructed 'Broken Window' indices. Abandoned buildings and unkempt infrastructure identify areas with social disorder, where individuals are more likely to partake in careless behaviors that result in frequent accidents. The results from this analysis suggest that social collaboration and crime prevention programs as well as wildfire safety programs may be effective tools in preventing accidental wildfire ignitions and damage.


Microstencil lithography, a resistless, single-step direct vacuum patterning method, is one of promising methods for metal micropattern definition on polymer substrates that are not suitable for conventional photolithography. We propose to apply microstencil lithography to fabricate microelectrodes on flat and pre-structured polymer substrates which form parts of microfluidic systems with incorporated microelectrodes. However, microstencil lithography is accompanied by two main issues when considered as a low-cost, reproducible alternative to standard photolithography on polymer substrates: clogging and blurring. The clogging of stencil apertures induced by metal evaporation was checked in detail, and it was determined that approximately 50 % of the thickness of the evaporated metals was deposited at the side walls of the stencil apertures. The influence of gap presence on the deposited structures was also analyzed experimentally, and we quantified the pattern blurring


The first beginning logic text to employ the tree method--a complete formal system of first-order logic that is remarkably easy to understand and use--this text allows students to take control of the nuts and bolts of formal logic quickly, and to move on to more complex and abstract problems. The tree method is elaborated in manageable steps over five chapters, in each of which its adequacy is reviewed; soundness and completeness proofs are extended at each step, and the decidability proof is extended at the step from truth functions to the logic of nonoverlapping quantifiers with a single variable, after which undecidability is demonstrated by example. The first three chapters are bilingual, with arguments presented twice, in logical notation and in English. The last three chapters consider the discoveries defining the scope and limits of formal methods that marked logic's coming of age in the 20th century: Godel's completeness and incompleteness theorems for first and second-order logic, and the Church-Turing theorem on the undecidability of first-order logic. This new edition provides additional problems, solutions to selected problems, and two new Supplements: Truth-Functional Equivalence reinstates material on that topic from the second edition that was omitted in the third, and Variant Methods, in which John Burgess provides a proof regarding the possibility of modifying the tree method so that it will always find a finite model when there is one, and another, which shows that a different modification--once contemplated by Jeffrey--can result in a dramatic speed--up of certain proofs.


Signaling by cell surface receptors and heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide–binding proteins (G proteins) is one of the most exhaustively studied processes in the cell but remains a major focus of molecular pharmacology research. The pheromone-response system in yeast (see the Connections Map at Science's Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment) has provided numerous major advances in our understanding of G protein signaling and regulation. However, the basic features of this prototypical pathway have remained largely unchanged since the mid-1990s. New tools available in yeast are beginning to uncover new pathway components and interactions and have revealed signaling in unexpected locations within the cell.


The Bond and Money Markets: Strategy, Trading, Analysis explains and analyses all aspects of the bond and money markets and is both an introduction for newcomers and an advanced text for experienced market practitioners and graduate students. Those with experience of the industry at all levels will find the book invaluable as a standard reference work. The book features coverage of: * Government and Corporate bonds, Eurobonds, callable bonds, convertibles * Asset-backed bonds including mortgages and CDOs * Derivative instruments including bond futures, swaps, options, structured products, and option valuation models * Interest-rate risk, duration analysis, convexity, and the convexity bias * The money markets, repo markets, basis trading, and asset / liability management * Term structure models, estimating and interpreting the yield curve * Portfolio management, including total return framework, portfolio strategies, and constructing bond indices and valuable insight into: * Trading and hedging strategy * Charting and technical analysis * The latest market developments, such as value-at-risk, and credit derivatives * Emerging markets and the benefits of international investment The Bond and Money Markets: Strategy, Trading, Analysis is aimed at a wide readership including bond salespersons, traders, corporate financiers and graduate trainees, as well as risk managers, operations professionals and business analysts. Other market participants including fund managers, corporate treasurers, management consultants, regulators and financial journalists will also find the content useful. This book is virtually a stand alone reference book on interest rate swaps, the money markets, financial market mathematics, interest-rate futures and technical analysis Includes some introductory coverage of very specialised topics (for which one requires specialised texts) such as VaR, Asset & liability management, credit derivatives Combines accessible style with advanced level topics, plus review of latest research


Biofuels production has received increasing focus by developed and developing countries due to rising fossil fuel prices and the need to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The net economic and environmental impacts of biofuel programs have become an important question of public policy. In particular, the anticipation that biofuels may have a lower environmental footprint than fossil fuels is one of the important drivers. This study investigates the economy-wide impact of biofuel investment in Ethiopia with the focus on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the forest sector. In order to capture the intersectoral linkages between biofuels, crops, and livestock as well as energy activities, this study uses a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model calibrated on the revised version of the 2005/06 SAM that includes GHG emissions, energy, and forestry products. The results suggest that an increase in biofuel investments would lead to an increase in GHG emissions, although the effects varied by biofuel feedstock types. These results have important implications for policies related to climate change mitigation as well as forestry.


Background Malaria remains a major global health concern. The development of novel therapeutic strategies is critical to overcome the selection of multiresistant parasites. The subtilisin-like protease (SUB1) involved in the egress of daughter Plasmodium parasites from infected erythrocytes and in their subsequent invasion into fresh erythrocytes has emerged as an interesting new drug target. Findings Using a computational approach based on homology modeling, protein–protein docking and mutation scoring, we designed protein–based inhibitors of Plasmodium vivax SUB1 (PvSUB1) and experimentally evaluated their inhibitory activity. The small peptidic trypsin inhibitor EETI-II was used as scaffold. We mutated residues at specific positions (P4 and P1) and calculated the change in free-energy of binding with PvSUB1. In agreement with our predictions, we identified a mutant of EETI-II (EETI-II-P4LP1W) with a Ki in the medium micromolar range. Conclusions Despite the challenges related to the lack of an experimental structure of PvSUB1, the computational protocol we developed in this study led to the design of protein-based inhibitors of PvSUB1. The approach we describe in this paper, together with other examples, demonstrates the capabilities of computational procedures to accelerate and guide the design of novel proteins with interesting therapeutic applications.


Newcomb's problem is viewed as a dynamic game with an agent and a superior being as players. Depending on whether or not a risk-neutral agent's confidence in the superior being, as measured by a subjective probability assigned to the move order, exceeds a threshold or not, one obtains the one-box outcome or the two-box outcome, respectively. The findings are extended to an agent with arbitrary increasing utility, featuring in general two thresholds. All solutions require only minimal assumptions about the being's payoffs, and the being is always sure to predict the agent's choice in equilibrium. The relevant Nash equilibria are subgame-perfect, except for risk-seeking agents where for intermediate beliefs, the being may be unable to ensure perfect prediction without relying on noncredible threats. Lastly, analogies of Newcomb's problem to the commitment problem on a continuum are discussed.


We empirically evaluate the extent to which people perceive non-constant time and speed encoded on 2D paths. In our graphical perception study, we evaluate nine encodings from the literature for both straight and curved paths. Visualizing time and speed information is a challenge when the x and y axes already encode other data dimensions, for example when plotting a trip on a map. This is particularly true in disciplines such as time-geography and movement analytics that often require visualizing spatio-temporal trajectories. A common approach is to use 2D+time trajectories, which are 2D paths for which time is an additional dimension. However, there are currently no guidelines regarding how to represent time and speed on such paths. Our study results provide InfoVis designers with clear guidance regarding which encodings to use and which ones to avoid; in particular, we suggest using color value to encode speed and segment length to encode time whenever possible.


Commercial and recreational fishing gear that is accidentally lost or intentionally discarded (i.e."derelict") in the marine environment impacts marine life and underwater habitat worldwide, including in California. Since 2006, the California Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project (www.lostfishinggear.org), a program of the SeaDoc Society at the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center, has removed more than 60 tons of lost commercial and recreational fishing gear and debris from California coastal waters, as well as more than one million feet of monofilament line from public-access piers. Based on successful programs in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, where derelict gear impacts the recovery of the endangered Hawaiian monk seal, and modeled on a similar program in Washington State, the Project contracts with commercial urchin harvesters to locate and recover lost gear utilizing SCUBA diving methods and equipment. A toll-free hotline (1-888-491-GEAR) fields citizen reports of gear loss or sightings. To date, the Project has recovered more than 1,200 lost commercial fishing nets, traps and pots entangling 690 live invertebrates (e.g. lobster, crab) and 106 live fish (e.g. sheepshead, garibaldi, sculpin, sharks and hagfish), which were rescued and released. A total of 64 organisms have been discovered dead in recovered lost gear, including nine cormorants, 4 common dolphins and 1 California sea lion. The Project has collaborated with the Monterey Bay and Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries on deep water lost gear recovery, and has organized local community groups to install and maintain fishing line recycling bins on public fishing piers to encourage appropriate disposal of unwanted hooks and line. The ultimate goal of the project is to transfer lost gear recovery operations to commercial fishermen's associations so that fishermen will serve as local leaders in lost gear recovery, garnering public support for their industry; a pilot effort has laid the groundwork for this transfer in Eureka. To better understand the impacts of lost gear on public-trust resources, the Project maintains a comprehensive database, has conducted epidemiologic research on rates of gear entanglement and ingestion in coastal wildlife, and in collaboration with the Northwest Straits Initiative, modeled the impacts of derelict nets on Dungeness crab in Puget Sound. Lost fishing gear is a proven mitigation measure that reduces risk of injury and death for coastal marine wildlife in California.