Identities formed during adolescence are known to be crucial in shaping future life decisions in multiple domains, including not only the educational and work careers but also partnership arrangements, fertility trajectories, residential choices, even civic and political attitudes. In this article we examine in a very simple and mostly descriptive way the main differences and similarities between the daily life of adolescents of immigrant and non-immigrant origin, and their wishes and expectations for their future, utilizing data from the Chances Survey, collected in 30 secondary schools in the city of Madrid in 2011. Our methods combine a comparison of means, the ANOVA test, multivariate regressions and factor analysis, in order to identify when adolescents of immigrant origin reveal wishes and expectations significantly different from those of their classmates of native origin; and the extent to which they expect higher frustration of their wishes in their future life, or not. Differences by gender are also explored.
Our findings suggest similarities and differences between both groups depending on the particular aspect examined, and discard a systematic pattern of greater optimism or pessimism among immigrant adolescents compared to their non-immigrant classmates. Differences by origin tend to be larger when respondents are asked about the immediate future instead of the more distant one, and immigrant girls seem to be the most pessimistic about their future.


Botrytis cinerea can be detected in juice pre- and postharvest using the monoclonal antibody BC-12.CA4 in plate trapped antigen-enzyme linked immunosorbent assays (PTA-ELISA). The amount of antigen predicted by PTA-ELISA was found to increase as grape juice samples were progressively diluted. This effect was also observed in B. cinereacontaminated boysenberry and blackcurrant juice samples. Detection of B. cinerea infections by PTA-ELISA was improved by incubation of grapes at 20oC for 48 h and was similar to visual assessments of infected grapes. PTA-ELISA is faster (1-3 days) than visual B. cinerea assessments (10-14 days). PTA-ELISA measurements can be standardised, removing human bias in determining B. cinerea infection levels.


To raise school participation, many programs in developing countries eliminate or reduce private contributions to education. Using data from a randomized experiment in Ecuador, we ironically find that announcing a free school uniform program had a negative impact on attendance. The school uniforms were distributed in only 63% of the schools that were told that they would get them, thus this negative impact could have been generated by creating false expectations of free distribution, or also by a sunk cost effect on those who did actually receive the uniforms.


Simultaneous 2D pressure and 2D velocity information at the rough water-sediment interface of streambeds were gained by a newly developed measurement setup. In the bed the pressure fluctuations decay exponentially within the first 1-2 equivalent sand roughnesses. Structural findings concerning coherent flow structures are consistent with models originally developed for smooth walls. A significant bed destabilizing flow-pressure pattern was identified for the first time.


Introduction: In recent years, a significant increase in elderly population, modernization, industrial improvements, and greater involvement of women in the workforce have led to an increase in elder abuse. Elder abuse and frequent emotional abuse of the elderly have significant negative effects on their health and well-being. This study was conducted to evaluate the level of emotional abuse perceived by the elderly living in nursing homes. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional and descriptive study was carried out between June 15 and July 15, 2017, at the Nursing Home Elderly Care and Rehabilitation Center in Adana, Turkey. The study sample consisted of a total of 118 elderly individuals who were selected using a simple random sampling method. Research data were collected using a personal information form and the perceived emotional abuse scale for adults (PEASA). The study results were evaluated using the IBM SPSS Statistics 22 (IBM SPSS, Turkey) program. The statistical significance level was set at P <0.05 for all analyses. Results: The mean age of the participants was 74.63 ± 6.76 years; of these, 50.2% were male, 70.3% were married, 29.7% were primary school graduates, and 83.1% had children. Their mean PEASA score was determined as 133.86 ± 35.23. The mean PEASA score of the elderly individuals without children was found to be statistically significantly higher than that of the elderly individuals with children (P = 0.044; P < 0.05). No statistically significant difference was found between the mean PEASA scores in terms of other descriptive characteristics of the participants (P > 0.05). Conclusion: The study results showed that the mean PEASA score of elderly individuals living in nursing homes was slightly above the scale mean score in general, and these individual perceived moderate emotional abuse.


There is growing interest in data-driven weather prediction (DDWP), for example using convolutional neural networks such as U-NETs that are trained on data from models or reanalysis. Here, we propose 3 components to integrate with commonly used DDWP models in order to improve their physical consistency and forecast accuracy. These components are 1) a deep spatial transformer added to the latent space of the U-NETs to preserve a property called equivariance (a concept in geometric deep learning), which is related to correctly capturing rotations and scalings of features in spatio-temporal data, 2) 5 a data-assimilation (DA) algorithm to ingest noisy observations and improve the initial conditions for next forecasts, and 3) a multi-time-step algorithm, which combines forecasts from DDWP models with different time steps through DA, improving the accuracy of forecasts at short intervals. To show the benefit/feasibility of each component, we use geopotential height at 500 hPa (Z500) from ERA5 reanalysis and examine the short-term forecast accuracy of specific setups of the DDWP framework. Results show that the equivariance-preserving networks (U-STNs) clearly outperform the U-NETs, for example improving the 10 forecast skill by 45%. Using a sigma-point ensemble Kalman (SPEnKF) algorithm for DA and U-STN as the forward model, we show that stable, accurate DA cycles are achieved even with high observation noise. This DDWP+DA framework substantially benefits from large (O(1000)) ensembles that are inexpensively generated with the data-driven forward model in each DA cycle. The multi-time-step DDWP+DA framework also shows promises, e.g., it reduces the average error by factors of 2-3. These results show the benefits/feasibilities of these 3 components, which are flexible and can be used in a variety of DDWP 15 setups. Furthermore, while here we focus on weather forecasting, the 3 components can be readily adopted for other parts of the Earth system, such as ocean and land, for which there is a rapid growth of data and need for forecast/assimilation.


Early Methodist Spirituality: Selected Women's Writings. Edited by Paul Wesley Chilcote. (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 2007, Pp. xvi, 396. $39.00, paper.) Paul Wesley Chilcote's earlier collection of documents, Her Own Story: Autobiographical Portraits of Early Methodist Women (Nashville, 2001), is now joined by a companion volume that exhibits many of the strengths and weaknesses of its predecessor. It should be said at the outset that, when taken together, the two compilations of autobiographical and spiritual writings provide hundreds of pages of primary sources by early Methodist women, a contribution that helps to fill an important gap in the literature of Methodism. Moreover, because the new volume contains selections by some notable figures not included in Her Chun Story, the breadth of coverage provided by Chilcote is now quite impressive. Among those included in the new collection are Mary Fletcher and Hester Ann Rogers, women whose writings remained influential among Methodists on both sides of the Atlantic well into the nineteenth century. Yet Chilcote should have given more thought to the selection and presentation of his material in the book under review. He opens with the claim that he will be providing "some of the best, but virtually inaccessible, material related to Methodist spirituality" (xi), but he quickly shifts ground and states that he will also focus on "the better-known works of female icons of early Methodism" (xiii). In fact, the "icons" take pride of place. While most of the volume's thirty-seven women writers are represented by a single extract which amounts to a page or less of text in many cases, Chilcote returns repeatedly to Fletcher, Rogers, Sarah Crosby, and a few other favorites. Many of these icons belonged to the circle around Mary Fletcher, many were preachers, and many of their accounts are taken from Methodist periodicals or other sources that are readily accessible. As in the earlier volume, the editorial commentary is overly long, but only sporadically enlightening, and the editing of the texts is erratic. Chilcote excuses himself in advance by stating, "My primary aim is more descriptive than analytical" (xii), and "my intent is not to present definitive texts for the scholarly community; rather, my intent lies in a balance of academic and devotional objectives" (xiv). Academic standards, in other words, are not going to be uniformly observed. Chilcote chooses to focus on Wesleyan Methodist women and thus excludes the Countess of Huntingdon (a Calvinist Methodist) and Hannah More (an Anglican) even though "their contributions to eighteenth-century evangelical Anglican spirituality were significant" (xiii). Students of the countess will find this statement surprising, to say the least. …


Cancer is a major public health problem with limited success of available treatments, pointing to the need for new strategies to be developed. Phosphoethanolamine exhibits broad antitumor activity in a variety of tumor cells and potent inhibitor effects on tumor progress in vivo. Once-used organophosphates inhibit acetylcholinesterase (AChE), resulting in toxic effects to the user. As this group is present in phosphoethanolamine, we perform prediction of the in silico metabolism of phosphoethanolamine and submit this series to a docking study on AChE. A total of 10 metabolites were indicated by the prediction, including ammonia and hydroxylamine, which were not included in the study. Using a group of 8 organophosphorus whose pIC50 values ranged from 5.92 to 9.47 as template, we observed that no compound present in the phosphoethanolamine series had a binding energy lower than that of organophosphorus, suggesting that the series has low inhibitory power on AChE. In light of this, we conclude that phosphoethanolamine and its predicted metabolites do not significantly inhibit AChE to cause a cholinergic crisis. This finding highlights the importance of investigating this compound as lead for potential anticancer agents.


The production of steel from the locally available Itakpe Iron Ore in Nigeria was achieved in the Delta Steel Direct Reduction-Electric Arc Furnace Plant. The ore was originally thought to be unsuitable for use in the direct reduction process due to its low total iron content, less than 64% and high gangue content which was in excess of 4% and above the maximum acceptable limit of 3.5%. Pilot and Plant tests were carried out to determine suitable operating parameters and conditions for its use in the iron making pelletizing and direct reduction plants and also the steel making plant. The excessive oversize pellets, +16 mm > 20% coupled with fairly high cold compression strength of the fired pellets yielded only a moderately high direct reduced iron fines content. The high gangue level which is a major issue in steel production did not however pose any major operational problem at the direct reduction plant. The cost of production of 1 tonne of liquid steel from the local ore was about $61 as against $80 which was the cost per tonne in the use of the imported ores. This report is an examination of the efforts made in overcoming the challenges associated with production of steel from an ore with excessive gangue materials while still ensuring high grade steel products to meet the needs of the Nigerian steel market.

 Key words: Itakpe Iron Ore, Electric Arc Furnace, Steel, Slag.


The targeted public distribution system, intended to provide subsidised food to poor households, is the largest welfare programme in India, with a budget corresponding to about 1% of the net national product. Several studies have found the system to be inefficient and costly in assisting the poor. This paper analyses the case for, and against, replacing a reformed version of this system with a targeted and differentiated cash transfer scheme. Such a scheme could cover about two-thirds of households, and make far larger transfers to the poorest compared to the actual subsidy embedded in the current system, eliminating the risk of large exclusion errors. Further, the overall budget can be held at the present outlay level. It is argued that most of the objections to such a transfer scheme can be circumvented at the design stage.


This paper examines the impact of two models of constitutional design on Latin American politics. It suggests that the debate about the advantages and disadvantages of presidentialism needs to move beyond a discussion of whether parliamentary systems last longer than presidential systems. Constitutional design—the way that political systems assign the functions of government among the parts of government—not only affects democratic stability, but also the responsiveness, transparency, and effectiveness of political systems. This essay argues that the checks and balances version of the separation of powers—one that allocates every function of government among two or more parts of government—has contributed not only to political instability, but also impaired political system performance in many countries in the region. It also contends that most presidential systems possess elements of the old with the new separation of powers—a theory of constitutional design assigns one function of government to one part of government. The essay presents evidence that the most successful political systems of the region—Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay—are those that depart most significantly from the checks and balances version of the separation of powers.


Stainless steels (SS) in automobile sector were previously incorporated mainly due to their decorative applications. Nowadays, their functional and specific characteristics make them more required and employed in this sector. Especially attention from automotive manufacturers has been paid in order to improve the engine efficiency and reduce weight of the vehicle, stainless steels result to be enabled due to their high strength mechanical characteristics, energy absorption capability, fatigue and corrosion resistance; besides their ductility which is traduced to an easy manufacturability. When welding is applied some of their characteristics may be affected and could decrease their mechanical properties. In attempt to avoid these circumstances, welding experimental practices must be carried out. In this study plates of 308 austenitic and 409 ferritic stainless steels were welded by Gas Tungsten Arc Welding process with different current values in order to get their mechanical properties behavior. Tensile tests were performed, it results that for austenitic stainless steels welds all failed in the fusion zone presenting ductile behavior; however, for ferritic stainless steels brittle fracture was observed. The maximum value of hardness for 308 austenitic SS was founded in the base metal, instead for 409 ferritic SS was reached at the heat affected zone. This study can be a practical guide in the selection of adequate joining methods in order to determine the more efficient to use in structural automotive industry.


Young adult (60 day old) Wistar rats of either sex were orally intubated with 50 mg/kg body weight and 100 mg/kg body weight of aqueous root extract of Clitoria ternatea (CTR) for 30 days, along with age‐matched saline controls. These rats were then subjected to passive avoidance tests and the results from these studies showed a significant increase in passive avoidance learning and retention. Subsequent to the passive avoidance tests, these rats were killed by decapitation. The amygdala was processed for Golgi staining and the stained neurons were traced using a camera lucida and analysed. The results showed a significant increase in dendritic intersections, branching points and dendritic processes arising from the soma of amygdaloid neurons in CTR treated rats especially in the 100 mg/kg group of rats, compared with age‐matched saline controls. This improved dendritic arborization of amygdaloid neurons correlates with the increased passive avoidance learning and memory in the CTR treated rats as reported earlier. The results suggest that Clitoria ternatea aqueous root extract enhances memory by increasing the functional growth of neurons of the amygdala. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The Nagasaki Coal Mine Technology Training Center was established following the closure of Matsushima Coal Mine Co. Ltd. in November 2001. A part of mining concession area formerly owned by Matsushima Coal Mine was then purchased to be used as training facilities. The training program is focused on transfer of coal mine technology, and conducted by NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization). The objectives of the training program is to promote the transfer of technology on underground coal mining to engineers from coal producing countries such as China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. For these countries, the technology will serve as valuable tool to face changes that will likely occur in near future. These changes include a shift in mining method from open cut to underground mining, or deterioration in mining conditions as mining locations become deeper and deeper. Through the technological cooperation and transfer of Japan's coal mining technology, efforts were made to achieve the stable coal supply-demand in Asian region and stable supply of foreign coal to Japan.


Only slightly smaller in size than the United States, Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world. It is home to exotic Rio de Janeiro, the mighty Amazon River, the world-renowned Carnival, and of course, its shrinking rainforests. A Brief History of Brazil offers a concise yet comprehensive account of the rich and varied history of Brazil, placing the political, economic, and cultural events of today into broad historical context. The book opens with an overview of pre-colonial Brazil and goes on to examine the history of Portuguese exploration, through the early years of the slave trade between Africa and the Americas, and the creation of the largest slaveholding society in the modern world. During this era, a vibrant African culture left its mark, joined by influences from European, Asian, and Middle Eastern immigrants, all of which combined to create modern Brazil. After a short-lived First Republic at the turn of the twentieth century, Brazil experienced more than three decades of military dictatorship before it developed the vibrant democracy that characterizes the country today. "A Brief History of Brazil" also examines key historical figures and the hallmarks of Brazilian popular culture: soccer, Carnival, music, and television. This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


In this paper we introduce the notion that artists should be able to control fluid simulations by providing examples of expected local fluid behavior (for instance, an artist might specify that magical smoke often forms star shapes). As our idea fits between high-level, global pose control and low-level parameter adjustment, we deem it mid-level control. We make our notion concrete by demonstrating two mid-level controllers providing stylized smoke effects for two-dimensional animations. With these two controllers, we allow the artist to specify both density patterns, or particle motifs, which should emerge frequently within the fluid and global texture motifs to which the fluid should conform. Each controller is responsible for constructing a stylized version of the current fluid state, which we feed-back into a global pose control method. This feedback mechanism allows the smoke to retain fluid-like behavior, while also attaining a stylized appearance suitable to integration with 2D animations. We integrate these mid-level controls with an interactive animation system, in which the user can control and keyframe all animation parameters using an interactive timeline view.


The responses of single neurons in the primary (AI) and secondary (AII) auditory cortical fields of waking cats were recorded during presentation of sequences of five iso-intensity tones. Tonal contour was varied by employing sequences that either increased or decreased monotonically in frequency, or in which contour was non-monotonic. The vast majority of neurons in both auditory fields (84%) exhibited sensitivity to tonal contour, that is, the response to at least one frequency (usually more) in a sequence differed significantly between two or more types of contour. Although all of the mechanisms involved have not been identified, the serial position of a tone within a sequence could explain some of the findings. Responsivity may also depend upon the magnitude of the interval difference between two consecutive tones. Additionally, contour per se could be effective even for neurons that were not sensitive to differences in type of contour; for example, responses to the same tones could be facilitated when presented in sequences of different frequencies compared to sequences of the same frequency. Further, the range of frequency response and the best frequency of a neuron may depend upon whether these parameters are determined using isolated tones or contoured sequences. Finally, omission of one tone within a sequence produced significant modification of response to other tones in most (87%) cells, with effects extending up to 3 sec following the the gap. Neurons in both primary and secondary auditory cortical fields displayed all effects, the only difference was that neurons in All were more likely to exhibit sensitivity to tone omission than those in AI. The findings are discussed with reference to neurophysiological and psychophysical data. We conclude that the effects of contour and other aspects of tonal sequences are detectable at the level of single neurons in auditory cortex of waking animals and that the use of dynamic stimuli is likely to be critical for a neurophysiological account of music perception and the perception of other complex acoustic stimuli.


Phytoplankton, microscopic plants that inhabit aquatic ecosystems, are the first link in the aquatic food chain and can influence climate globally by altering amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Certain species produce toxins that can impact human health. In the Sea of Galilee, Peridinium gatunense, a dinoflagellate that forms large, dense patches, has historically dominated the phytoplankton community. Over the past decade, however, annual blooms of P. gatunense have been delayed or absent. Vardi et al. investigated interactions between P. gatunense and Microcystis, a toxic cyanobacterium, and discovered that substances released into the water by one or the other of these microorganisms influenced survival of the other through species-specific signal transduction pathways. Statistical analyses indicated a negative correlation between abundance of the two microorganisms in the wild, and long-term growth experiments showed reciprocal inhibition of growth between P. gatunense and Microcystis that depended on the initial density of P. gatunense but was independent of nutrient supply. A particular species, Microcystis MG, triggered a biphasic oxidative burst in P. gatunense and promoted cell death under some culture conditions while stimulating division of surviving cells. Pharmacological analysis with protein kinase inhibitors, together with in-gel kinase and Western blot analysis, implicated mitogen-activated protein kinase pathways in the P. gatunense response. Medium from cultures of P. gatunense triggered massive Microcystis MG lysis, but increased amounts of a protein involved in toxin biosynthesis in the remaining cells. The authors suggest that phytoplankton can influence the growth of other species through interactions with specific signal transduction pathways; such interactions raise the possibility of biological control of toxic species. A Vardi, D Schatz, K Beeri, U Motro, A Sukenik, A Levine, A Kaplan, Dinoflagellate-cyanobacterium communication may determine the composition of phytoplankton assemblage in a mesotrophic lake. Curr. Biol. 12, 1767-1772 (2002). [Online Journal]


Gravitational wave detectors, aimed at detecting the momentary gravitational perturbation that might come from the gravitational collapse of a star, share almost every attribute of a very sensitive acoustic detector, except the requirement that they be completely decoupled from any true acoustic source. There are now four multiton cryogenic resonant detectors around the world that have operated with burst amplitude sensitivity in the attometer (10−18‐m) range, including the ALLEGRO detector at LSU. Even at liquid helium temperature, one possible fundamental noise source is the Langevin force, whose spectral density is determined by the mechanical Q of the relevant antenna resonances. Two practical materials, aluminum–magnesium alloy and high‐purity niobium, have proven to have Q's greater than 10 million under some conditions. Now that many other noise sources have been eliminated, further improvements in sensitivity will come from further increases in Q.


Many privacy mechanisms reveal high-level information about a data distribution through noisy measurements. It is common to use this information to estimate the answers to new queries. In this work, we provide an approach to solve this estimation problem efficiently using graphical models, which is particularly effective when the distribution is high-dimensional but the measurements are over low-dimensional marginals. We show that our approach is far more efficient than existing estimation techniques from the privacy literature and that it can improve the accuracy and scalability of many state-of-the-art mechanisms.


The effective population size (N-e), and the ratio between N-e and census population size (N) are often used as measures of population viability. We show that using the harmonic mean of population sizes over time - a common proxy for N-e- has some important evolutionary consequences and implications for conservation management. This stems from the fact that there is no unambiguous relationship between the arithmetic and harmonic means for populations fluctuating in size. As long as the variance of population size increases moderately with increasing arithmetic mean population size, the harmonic mean also increases. However, if the variance of population size increases more rapidly, which existing data often suggest, then the harmonic mean may actually decrease with increasing arithmetic mean. Thus maximizing N may not maximize N-e,N- but could instead lower the adaptive potential and hence limit the evolutionary response to environmental change. Large census size has the clear advantage of lowering demographic stochasticity, and hence extinction risk, and under certain conditions large census size also minimizes the loss of genetic variation. Consequently, maximising census size has served as a useful dogma in ecology, genetics and conservation. Nonetheless, due to the intricate relationships among N-e, population viability and the properties of population fluctuations, we suggest that this dogma should be taken only as a rule of thumb. (Less)


A joint theoretical-experimental study has been carried out for Sc-doped ZnO (SZO), one of the lesser-studied n-type transparent conducting oxide materials. Density functional theory has been used to create a computational model of SZO, in order to provide a theoretical basis for experimentally-observed phenomena where growth conditions, dopability and electronic properties are concerned. Meanwhile a range of thin films of SZO have been synthesised via chemical vapour deposition in an attempt to (i) observe experimentally the theoretically predicted properties, thereby providing mutual validation of the studies; (ii) seek the optimum dopant quantity for minimal electrical resistivity, and; (iii) demonstrate that transparent and electrically conductive SZO can be synthesised by chemical vapour deposition means. The films exhibit resistivities as low as ρ = 1.2 × 10−3 Ω cm, with carrier density n = 7.2 × 1020 cm−3 and charge carrier mobility μ = 7.5 cm2 V−1 s−1. Low resistivity of the films was retained after 12 months in storage under ambient conditions, indicating strong atmospheric stability. The films exhibit a high degree of transparency with 88% transmission in the visible range (400–750 nm). A correction to the Tauc method was applied to estimate band gaps of Eoptg = 3.45 ± 0.03 eV in the most conductive SZO sample and Eoptg = 3.34 ± 0.03 eV in nominally undoped ZnO.


Mouse small intestine intraepithelial lymphocytes (IEL) that express alphabetaTCR and CD8alphaalpha homodimers are an enigmatic T cell subset, as their specificity and in vivo function remain to be defined. To gain insight into the nature of these cells, we performed global gene expression profiling using microarray analysis combined with real-time quantitative PCR and flow cytometry. Using these methods, TCRalphabeta(+)CD8alphaalpha IEL were compared with their TCRalphabeta(+)CD8beta(+) and TCRgammadelta(+) counterparts. Interestingly, TCRalphabeta(+)CD8alphaalpha IEL were found to preferentially express genes that would be expected to down-modulate their reactivity. They have a unique expression pattern of members of the Ly49 family of NK receptors and tend to express inhibitory receptors, along with some activating receptors. The signaling machinery of both TCRalphabeta(+)CD8alphaalpha and TCRgammadelta(+) IEL is constructed differently than other IEL and peripheral T cells, as evidenced by their low-level expression of the linker for activation of T cells and high expression of the non-T cell activation linker, which suppresses T cell activation. The TCRalphabeta(+)CD8alphaalpha IEL subset also has increased expression of genes that could be involved in immune regulation, including TGF-beta(3) and lymphocyte activation gene-3. Collectively, these data underscore the fact that, while TCRalphabeta(+)CD8alphaalpha IEL resemble TCRgammadelta(+) IEL, they are a unique population of cells with regulated Ag reactivity that could have regulatory function.


In this paper, we develop a new model for recognizing human actions. An action is modeled as a very sparse sequence of temporally local discriminative key frames - collections of partial key-poses of the actor(s), depicting key states in the action sequence. We cast the learning of key frames in a max-margin discriminative framework, where we treat key frames as latent variables. This allows us to (jointly) learn a set of most discriminative key frames while also learning the local temporal context between them. Key frames are encoded using a spatially-localizable pose let-like representation with HoG and BoW components learned from weak annotations, we rely on structured SVM formulation to align our components and mine for hard negatives to boost localization performance. This results in a model that supports spatio-temporal localization and is insensitive to dropped frames or partial observations. We show classification performance that is competitive with the state of the art on the benchmark UT-Interaction dataset and illustrate that our model outperforms prior methods in an on-line streaming setting.


resorption processes in the scales of Atlantic salmon, during its anadromous migration are known since 1935, but have never been quantified. In fact, the ellipsoid form of the ascending salmon scale resorbs into an irregular highly deformed shape in spawning salmon. The aim of this study is to quantify the changes of both anterior and posterior scale areas using image analysis techniques. Salmon scales were sampled taking into account the sex and sea age of fish at two stages of migration, viz at the beginning of the upstream migration in rivers and at the spawning areas. Analyses confirmed that scales are highly resorbed during the anadromous migration and that the resorption is caused by the osteoclastic activity. morphometric analyses showed that the scale posterior area eroded significantly more intensely than the anterior one. The reason behind the higher ero- sion in the posterior surface is probably the fact that this area is closer to the circulatory system. Whatever the sex, scales eroded because they ensure a source of minerals used during sexual maturation. However, scales of males eroded significantly more than those of females. Therefore, scale quantification could well be used to discriminate males from females especially after spawning. The time spent at sea seemed to play a minor role on scale modifications during the upstream migration in females. In the light of these quantifications, the use of eroded scales could constitute an accurate tool to improve the knowledge and the management of wild popula- tions.


An immense amount of research is currently, being done on the development and use of Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs) in industry. An important component of this research often involves navigation and route-optimization of such AGVs. In this paper the design and control of an AGV, using a stationary control system and a GPS-like navigational system, is discussed. Substantial provision has also been made for the display of operational characteristics of the AGV on the stationary control unit.


Given that sampling strategies and protocols in bioarchaeology are rarely discussed in the literature, this paper is an attempt at reflecting upon the skeletal sampling process (e.g., preparation period, development of strategies and protocols, decision-making process, collaboration with those involved) as well as provide some considerations that may be useful to other junior researchers carrying out their sampling within the realm of bioarchaeology (also may be applicable to other research fields that engage in sampling specimens from museum collections). I provide the considerations about human bone and teeth as it pertains to stable isotope analysis from the literature and then move to discuss my sampling process experience: the preparation period, the sampling process, and the sampling map I developed as an initial guide in the field. Finally, I discuss the main considerations I found helpful in the field which overall involve: 1) Familiarity with the skeletal collections; 2) Constant communication and participant collaboration with those involved in the process; 3) Establishing a feasible sampling protocol well-founded on research questions and biochemical analysis planned as a guide in the field but flexible and open to changes; 4) Handling administrative and logistical aspects of the process well in advance of the sampling visit, and 5) Continual awareness that while as researchers we value skeletal collections in a scientific manner, these also may have other kind of value to others so we must treat these collections with outmost respect at all times (i.e., when discussing, sampling, analyzing, interpreting, and disseminating our research).


The analysis of the mortgage market is a specialised field but examines a financial market with extremely wide-ranging implications; it affects the stability of the whole economy.

The key thing about this analysis is the increasing importance of the secondary mortgage market – which in the US is now several times larger than the market for government debt. The UK secondary mortgage market is also growing and the book will provide a timely resource to those active and interested in this important financial market.

The 1990s saw an enormous growth of mortgage market analysis as an academic subject and there is a vast literature scattered among the key real estate journals. There is now a great need to not only bring this very complex subject area together, but also to abstract the main issues and to render them intelligible. The book will provide an organised research resource and also inform and motivate further research into the microeconomics of mortgage markets.


Mourning Becomes Electra is a tragic play, which has revenge as its main theme. It tells about the revenge of its main character (Lavinia Mannon) towards her mother (Christine Mannon) for murdering her father (Ezra Mannon). The term of revenge here is defined as a deliberate punishment or injury inflicted in return for what one has suffered. I am interested in story, which generally describes Lavinia?s revenge. Lavinia?s action of revenge brings some consequences to her life, which leads her to have a mournful life. Therefore, in this study, I would like to find out the effects of Lavinia?s revenge. The purpose of this study is to identify the effects of Lavinia?s revenge on her life. In order to analyze the effects of Lavinia?s revenge, I will use literary approach with its tools, characterization and conflict. Besides, some psychological concepts such as guilt, anxiety and frustration are also used as the supporting concepts in the analysis. Through the analysis, I find out some problems, which are faced by Lavinia as the effects of her revenge. She feels guilty although she has tried many things to avoid facing the reality of her guilt. In addition, she feels anxious that people surround her will discover everything she has done in the past and that will make them condemn and hate her. Moreover, she also becomes frustrated in her effort to pursue happiness in life by canceling her marriage with Peter as she realizes that her past always haunts her and if someday Peter finds it out, it will bring about separation with Peter. Finally, I conclude that Lavinia?s guilty feeling, anxiety and frustration are the effects of her revenge and these effects, which make her unable to obtain happiness in life, are actually the consequences that she has to face for the rest of her life.


Translating the Nurturing Care Framework and unprecedented global policy support for early child development (ECD) into action requires evidence-informed guidance about how to implement ECD programmes at national and regional scale. We completed a literature review and participatory mixed-method evaluation of projects in Saving Brains®, Grand Challenges Canada® funded ECD portfolio across 23 low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Using an adapted programme cycle, findings from evaluation related to partnerships and leadership, situational analyses, and design for scaling ECD were considered. 39 projects (5 'Transition to Scale' and 34 'Seed') were evaluated. 63% were delivered through health and 84% focused on Responsive Caregiving and Early Learning (RCEL). Multilevel partnerships, leadership and targeted situational analysis were crucial to design and adaptation. A theory of change approach to consider pathways to impact was useful for design, but practical situational analysis tools and local data to guide these processes were lacking. Several RCEL programmes, implemented within government services, had positive impacts on ECD outcomes and created more enabling caregiving environments. Engagement of informal and private sectors provided an alternative approach for reaching children where government services were sparse. Cost-effectiveness was infrequently measured. At small-scale RCEL interventions can be successfully adapted and implemented across diverse settings through processes which are responsive to situational analysis within a partnership model. Accelerating progress will require longitudinal evaluation of ECD interventions at much larger scale, including programmes targeting children with disabilities and humanitarian settings with further exploration of cost-effectiveness, critical content and human resources.


An open problem within the domain of service oriented architectures, such as grid infrastructures, is the discovery of resources and/or services suitable for the execution of a specific task. Grid information producers generally provide functional information on the resources they monitor. Therefore information models represent this syntactic information whereas information consumers use such functional properties in order to select resources. In practice many jobs are generally restarted due to errors in the allocated resources. However various initiatives which try to use ad-hoc techniques in order to manipulate non-functional properties have been proposed. This thesis proposes a new approach in the modelling of non-functional properties of grid resources, so that non-functional properties can be used both by the producers and the consumers of grid-based information in order to improve both the performance of the infrastructure layer and the performance of the jobs executed on such infrastructure. Various innovations have been required regarding this new approach. In the first place, a model based on semantic technologies has been developed in order to integrate both the existing models focused on representation of grid-based information and those focused on non-functional properties, with the aim of enriching the existing information on every resource at every level present on each grid node. Secondly, a new methodology for the representation of non-functional properties in the grid domain has been proposed so that it can be used by the administrators of the various nodes in order to enrich the definition of their resources and improve the user experience with respect to the execution of their jobs. Thirdly, such methodology has been applied to the representation of three non-functional properties: two at computational resource level (availability and reliability) and one at grid node level (reliability). Finally, a set of algorithms modified by including non-functional properties at computational resource level which allows the discovery and selection of such resources within the context of a testing model for a grid simulation tool has been developed. This set of modified algorithms allows the comparison of the results obtained by using such non-functional properties in a stand-alone or combined fashion during the discovery or selection of resources.


Panax notoginseng is a traditional Chinese herb with high medicinal and economic value. There has been considerable research on the pharmacological activities of ginsenosides contained in Panax spp.; however, very little is known about the ginsenoside biosynthetic pathway. We reported the first de novo genome of 2.36 Gb of sequences from P. notoginseng with 35,451 protein-encoding genes. Compared to other plants, we found notable gene family contraction of disease-resistance genes in P. notoginseng, but notable expansion for several ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter subfamilies, such as the Gpdr subfamily, indicating that ABCs might be an additional mechanism for the plant to cope with biotic stress. Combining eight transcriptomes of roots and aerial parts, we identified several key genes, their transcription factor binding sites and all their family members involved in the synthesis pathway of ginsenosides in P. notoginseng, including dammarenediol synthase, CYP716 and UGT71. The complete genome analysis of P. notoginseng, the first in genus Panax, will serve as an important reference sequence for improving breeding and cultivation of this important nutraceutical and medicinal but vulnerable plant species.


Abstract. Semi-arid woodlands, which are characterised by patchy vegetation interspersed with bare, open areas, are frequently exposed to wildfire. During summer, long dry periods are occasionally interrupted by rainfall events. It is well known that rewetting of dry soil induces a flush of respiration. However, the magnitude of the flush may differ between vegetation patches and open areas because of different organic matter content, which could be further modulated by wildfire. Soils were collected from under trees, under shrubs or in open areas in unburnt and burnt sandy mallee woodland, where part of the woodland experienced a wildfire which destroyed or damaged most of the aboveground plant parts 4 months before sampling. In an incubation experiment, the soils were exposed to two moisture treatments: constantly moist (CM) and drying and rewetting (DRW). In CM, soils were incubated at 80 % of maximum water holding capacity (WHC) for 19 days; in DRW, soils were dried for 4 days, kept dry for another 5 days, then rewetted to 80 % WHC and maintained at this water content until day 19. Soil respiration decreased during drying and was very low in the dry period; rewetting induced a respiration flush. Compared to soil under shrubs and in open areas, cumulative respiration per gram of soil in CM and DRW was greater under trees, but lower when expressed per gram of total organic carbon (TOC). Organic matter content, available P, and microbial biomass C, but not available N, were greater under trees than in open areas. Wild fire decreased the flush of respiration per gram of TOC in the open areas and under shrubs, and reduced TOC and microbial biomass C (MBC) concentrations only under trees, but had little effect on available N and P concentrations. We conclude that the impact of wildfire and DRW events on nutrient cycling differs among vegetation patches of a native semi-arid woodland which is related to organic matter amount and availability.


Traumatic metacarpophalangeal joint (MCPJ) volar plate attenuations are often managed non-operatively in adults. However, the management of these situations in children is a less commonly encountered challenge. We present a systematic review of the evidence describing the management of these injuries in the paediatric population. We also present our experience of managing painful thumb MCPJ volar plate attenuation in three children who presented to a single UK hand unit.


The categorical identification of the historical Jesus continues to be a central challenge in Jesus Research yet the identification of the historical Jesus as a first-century Jewish mystic has long been a popular topic among Western esotericists, Christian mystics, contemporary New Age authors, and some biblical scholars. Taking a critical look at the category and study of mysticism in Jesus Research in light of the ancient etymological origins of modern mysticism, the concept of 'religious experience,' and the epistemological problems associated with perennialism as a religionist discourse, this article argues that the comparative study of mysticism still proves to be an explanatorily powerful analytical, theoretical, and interpretative lens in Jesus Research.


Localization has become a key enabling technology in many emerging wireless applications and services. One of the most challenging problems in wireless localization technologies is that the performance is easily affected by the signal propagation environment. When the direct path between transmitter and receiver is obstructed, the signal measurement error for the localization process will increase significantly. Considering this problem, we first propose a novel algorithm which can automatically detect and remove the obstruction and improve the localization performance in complex environment. Besides the environmental dependency, the accuracy of target location estimation is highly sensitive to the positions of reference nodes. In this thesis, we also study on the reference node placement, and derive an optimum deployment scheme which can provide the best localization accuracy. Another challenge of wireless localization is due to insufficient number of reference nodes available in the target's communication range. In this circumstance, we finally utilize the internal sensors in today's smartphones to provide additional information for localization purpose, and propose a novel algorithm which can combine the location dependent parameters measured from sensors and available reference nodes together. The combined localization algorithm can overcome the error accumulation from sensor with the help of only few number of reference nodes.


The authors trace the development of ethnographic practices according to the methodological assumptions of ethnographers within different historical periods. As communication scholars, the authors find Calvin O. Schrag's conceptualization of the self to be informative and advantageous for navigating an ethnographic sense of 'self in the current status of the methodological contestation. Borrowing from Schrag' s work, which focuses on communicative praxis in understanding the self, this article explores an innovative methodological framework called automethodology. By examining the deployment and emplotment of the self within the automethods of autobiography, autoethnography, narrative co-construction, community autoethnography, critical complete-member ethnography, reflexive ethnography, autoperformance, and layered account, the authors develop epistemological foundations for praxis-oriented ethnographers. Throughout this journey, the authors end up situating themselves in a place they consider home-in the practices of automethodology.


Acid mine drainage is an unavoidable consequence of some coal mining operations. Typically runoff pH is below 3.5 and at these pH levels heavy metals are mobilised. Leachate from coal reject dumps may require collection and treatment to raise the pH and precipitate the metals before being discharged. A bi-product of coal mining operations at Clarence Colliery is coarse washery reject. At present the coarse reject is deposited above ground and rehabilitated. Adjacent to Clarence Colliery is the Kable's Transport Pty Ltd sand mining operation. It has been proposed that co-disposal of the rejects from both operations may produce a product whose leachate has near neutral pH. The University of Western Sydney undertook laboratory experiments to investigate the chemistry of leachate water from 22 co-disposal options. Reject material was placed in 205L drums. Each drum contained coarse reject and either sand or clay, either mixed or layered. Three control drums were used, being 100% coarse reject, 100% sand and 100% clay. Deionised water was introduced to the co-disposed material at approximately 4mL/min for one month and the leachate tested for pH and conductivity. On two occasions samples were collected and analysed for metals concentration using Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry .This paper presents the results of the metals analysis, comparing the materials, quantities and modes used for co-disposal.


The experiment was conducted on 14 postpartum mithun (Bos frontalis) cows to establish the preovulatory LH and FSH surge patterns during estrus in peripheral circulation. Blood samples from jugular vein were collected every 2 h until 72 h and on alternate days till day 22 (day 0 = day of estrus) following the day of estrus onset. Plasma progesterone (P4), LH and FSH levels were estimated. Plasma P4 profile of the estrous cycle indicated that all the animals were ovulated following the onset of estrus. Also plasma LH and FSH concentrations were found to be significantly (p<0.01) higher around estrus. Two different preovulatory LH and FSH surge patterns were observed during the study. Pattern-1 indicated multiple and concomitant LH and FSH rises during estrus (43% animals, 6 out of 14), while pattern-2 showed multiple LH rises without concomitant FSH rises during estrus (57% animals, 8 out of 14). The basal concentrations of LH and FSH, the area under LH and FSH curves and the number of LH peak did not vary significantly during estrus between the patterns. However, the amplitude of LH and FSH peaks (p<0.05) and the number of FSH peak (p<0.01) were found to be significantly higher during estrus in pattern-1. The result indicated that the multiple preovulatory LH surges along with increased FSH activities were responsible for ovulation in mithun.


The integrated effects of ocean-climate dynamics on export production in the North Pacific have remained elusive. We present a 91 k.y. export productivity (EP) record based on sedimentary reactive phosphorus from the western subtropical North Pacific. On a millennial time scale, EP decreased during Northern Hemisphere cold events when atmospheric dust loading was high, and increased during warm episodes. The inferred antiphase relation between dust and EP suggests that the supply of macronutrients to the sunlit surface ocean, modulated by the penetration depth of North Pacific Intermediate Water and not eolian Fe, exerted a major control on EP in the subtropical North Pacific. A compilation of global EP records suggests that eolian Fe most likely played a role in stimulating EP regionally only in the Subantarctic zone of the Southern Ocean. Over the past 91 k.y., during the cold-south–warm-north phase of the bipolar seesaw, the biological pump in both hemispheres was enhanced synchronously, yet by different drivers; atmospheric Fe input for the Subantarctic and subsurface macronutrient supply for the North Pacific, including the tropical and/or subtropical Pacific, and the Antarctic zone of the Southern Ocean.


The objective of this experiment was to study the effect of Biofield Energy Treated test item (1:1 ratio of a mixture of the Biofield Energy Treated herbal extracts of Phyllantus emblica and Eclipta alba) on the normal hair cycle of C57BL/6 mice after topical application. The test item was divided into two parts. One part was denoted as the untreated test item, without any Biofield Energy Healing Treatment, while the other part was defined as the Biofield Energy Treated test item, which received the Consciousness Energy Healing Treatment by a renowned Biofield Energy Healer, Mahendra Kumar Trivedi. Mice telogen skin was prepared and used as a test system in this experiment for the topical application of the test item. The study parameters like induction of anagen and melanogenesis using skin biopsy technique were used in this experiment for the assessment of hair growth phages. The experimental results showed that the untreated and Biofield Energy Treated groups exhibited 50% and 100%, respectively of hair growth on dorsal clipped of skin after topical application of the test items. Besides, both the untreated and Biofield Energy Treated test items exhibited 100% melanogenesis after biopsy analysis in mice skin at the end of experiment. Altogether, results envisaged that The Trivedi Effect® promotes hair growth as evident via increased an earlier anagen induction, hair growth, and melanogenesis than untreated test item. Henceforth, the Biofield Energy Healing (The Trivedi Effect®) Treatment could be useful as a hair growth enhancer for various types of skin injuries and skin-related disorders like actinic keratosis, necrotizing fasciitis, sebaceous cysts, diaper rash, decubitus ulcer, eczema, seborrheic dermatitis, chickenpox, measles, warts, acne, etc.


Abstract. The Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART was originally designed for calculating long-range and mesoscale dispersion of air pollutants from point sources, such that occurring after an accident in a nuclear power plant. In the meantime, FLEXPART has evolved into a comprehensive tool for atmospheric transport modeling and analysis at different scales. A need for further multiscale modeling and analysis has encouraged new developments in FLEXPART. In this paper, we present a FLEXPART version that works with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) mesoscale meteorological model. We explain how to run this new model and present special options and features that differ from those of the preceding versions. For instance, a novel turbulence scheme for the convective boundary layer has been included that considers both the skewness of turbulence in the vertical velocity as well as the vertical gradient in the air density. To our knowledge, FLEXPART is the first model for which such a scheme has been developed. On a more technical level, FLEXPART-WRF now offers effective parallelization, and details on computational performance are presented here. FLEXPART-WRF output can either be in binary or Network Common Data Form (NetCDF) format, both of which have efficient data compression. In addition, test case data and the source code are provided to the reader as a Supplement. This material and future developments will be accessible at http://www.flexpart.eu .


OBJECTIVE To assess multiple central venous and arterial blood variables that alone or in conjunction with one another reflect global oxygenation status in healthy neonatal foals. ANIMALS 11 healthy neonatal foals. PROCEDURES Central venous and arterial blood samples were collected from healthy neonatal foals at 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, and 96 hours after birth. Variables measured from central venous and arterial blood samples included oxygen saturation of hemoglobin, partial pressure of oxygen, lactate concentration, partial pressure of carbon dioxide, and pH. Calculated variables included venous-to-arterial carbon dioxide gap, estimated oxygen extraction ratio, ratio of partial pressure of oxygen in arterial blood to the fraction of inspired oxygen, bicarbonate concentration, base excess, and blood oxygen content. RESULTS Significant differences between arterial and central venous blood obtained from neonatal foals were detected for several variables, particularly partial pressure of oxygen, oxygen saturation of hemoglobin, and oxygen content. In addition, the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in central venous blood samples was significantly higher than the value for corresponding arterial blood samples. Several temporal differences were detected for other variables. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Results of this study provided information about several variables that reflect global oxygenation in healthy neonatal foals. Values for these variables in healthy foals can allow for comparison with values for critically ill foals in future studies. Comparison of these variables between healthy and ill foals may aid in treatment decisions and prognosis of clinical outcome for critically ill foals.


In six experiments, I investigated children's thinking about their own and others' regret and relief. The results were described in relation to the developmental counterfactual thinking literature which offers an account of gradual improvements in order to achieve adult-like counterfactual thinking. Children aged 5 to 6 years old children experienced regret. Only children aged 7 to 8 years old experienced relief (Experiment 1). Children up to 6 to 7 years old failed to understand that another would experience regret or relief (Experiment 2). These findings are evidence for a lag between regret and relief. Investigation into the lag identified that relief trials may have been more difficult to process than regret trials but the lag was reduced. Children aged 4 to 5 years old experienced a fledgling regret (Experiment 3). Children's limited experience of regret was unlikely to result from their difficulty to access explicit information. Children demonstrated no implicit responses to what could have been (Experiment 4). From 5 to 6 years old, children could infer the happiness of another after seeing what could have been but did not provide counterfactual justifications until 8 to 9 years old (Experiment 5). Children were less likely to experience regret or relief when there was less responsibility for the outcome. Thus, it was unlikely that children were using non-counterfactual thinking strategies throughout this thesis (Experiment 6). Children first think about regret at 4 to 5 years old. At 7 to 8 years old, they are able to think about relief. By 8 to 9 years old, when children can justify others' regret and relief, children are most adult-like in their development of thinking about regret and relief


For quantitative predictions the tokamak plasma has to be modelled as a consistent entity. Distinguishing features of fusion plasma theory are the simultaneous importance of a large number of effects, essential multidimensionality in geometrical and velocity space, and a high degree of nonlinearity in the interaction between these effects. Only computational methods, mainly based on linearization, iteration and on procedures for solving huge systems of linear equations, are widely applicable, and provide quantitative 'point results' of the 'numerical experiment' type. The practical limitations of computer capacity and cost of computing time impose severe limits on details which can be taken into account in computational plasma models. For plasmas of tokamaks such as JET, the models are set up as initial boundary value problems on several time scales, and composed of a cluster of interdependent computer codes. The basic magnetic field-plasma configuration is determined from a one-fluid (magnetohydrodynamic) theory in two dimensions. The macroscopic stability of these configurations is checked. For stable plasmas the secular evolution of a sequence of equilibria is computed by 'transport codes'. In these the balance equations for the conservation quantities (mass, momentum, energy) are solved for fluxes between, and sources and sinks on, the magnetic surfaces (as determined from equilibrium). These are multifluid equations in one spatial dimension for all charged plasma species including impurities. Important source terms such as electromnetic wave heating, injected particles, and fusion x-particles must be calculated kinetically with at least one additional velocity-space coordinate. At least at the plasma boundary, neutral atoms cannot be neglected. Their distribution is calculated by Monte-Carlo methods in three spatial dimensions (and velocity space). The bulk plasma is usually surrounded by magnetic surfaces or field lines that cross solid walls. Here also, for the transport of charged particles, propagation in two dimensions must be calculated. The consistent combination of these major elements is considered.


We present LOFAR measurements of radio emission from extensive air showers. We find that this emission is strongly polarized, with a median degree of polarization of nearly 99%, and that the angle between the polarization direction of the electric field and the Lorentz force acting on the particles, depends on the observer location in the shower plane. This can be understood as a superposition of the radially polarized charge-excess emission mechanism, first proposed by Askaryan and the geomagnetic emission mechanism proposed by Kahn and Lerche. We calculate the relative strengths of both contributions, as quantified by the charge-excess fraction, for 163 individual air showers. We find that the measured charge-excess fraction is higher for air showers arriving from closer to the zenith. Furthermore, the measured charge-excess fraction also increases with increasing observer distance from the air shower symmetry axis. The measured values range from (3.3± 1.0)% for very inclined air showers at 25 m to (20.3± 1.3)% for almost vertical showers at 225 m. Both dependencies are in qualitative agreement with theoretical predictions.


This paper briefly explains the idea of "member responsibility" for acts of an international organization, moves on to lay out the International Law Commission 2011 Articles on Responsibility of International Organizations framework on this issue, and then offers some critical observations on the ILC treatment of the topic. The 2011 articles framework on this issue can be considered to have four aspects, short-handed roughly as "independent personality", "additional acts approach", "no member responsibility", and 'remedy-enabling obligations pursuant to the rules of the international organization'. The consolation prizes that the ILC has given to the world are article 61 on prevention of circumvention of member States' obligations and article 40 on ensuring the fulfillment of the obligation to make reparation. Neither represents a substantial victory for member responsibility, but each can be considered a half-step forward in that direction. As to article 61, the intention to circumvent obligations may be too high a threshold and may not cover the original establishment of an international organization and thus may not completely solve the 'beautiful for some but ugly for others' problem, but at least it would catch the overtly villainous States, if any. As to article 40, the 'take all appropriate measures' obligation to enable remedies on the part of the international organization as well as its member States may not rise to the level of 'hard obligations' because under article 40 these obligations are supposed to be pursuant to the rules of the organization which may reject such obligations. The saving grace is probably the suggestion made in the commentary that an implied obligation to enable remedies should be read into silent or unclear rules of the organization. This can be a powerful idea because silent or unclear rules of the organizations are the norm, other formulations the exception. This 'rule of interpretation' may nudge the law into the direction of providing for remedies where they are due.


The paper proposes an assessment of citizenship rules in European Union countries. First, it designs an analytical framework in order to evaluate the rules of political membership from a liberal-democratic perspective. Second, it develops a systematic comparative study of the citizenship rules of the 27 member states of the EU. I argue that a liberal-democratic conception of membership requires certain degrees of inclusiveness as well as exclusiveness. Moreover, liberal-democratic membership can be compatible with both major ideological views on membership –ethno-cultural and civic-territorial. It is not the ethnic or civic ideological conception of the polity that renders the rules of membership illiberal, but their unjustified scope.


In the previous installment of the Statistics to English Translation, we discussed the technical meaning of the term "significant". In this installment, we look at how significance is calculated. This article will be a little more technically detailed than the last one, but our primary goal is still to help you decipher statements about significance in research papers: statements like "(F (2, 864) = 6.6, p = 0.0014)". As in the last article, we will concentrate on situations where we want to test the difference of means. You should read that previous article first, so you are familiar with the terminolgy that we use in this one.


The subject of the present work is heat transfer close to moving three-phase contact lines. The term three-phase contact line designates the area in which the liquid/vapour- or liquid/gas-interface approaches a solid wall. Due to the small thermal resistance of the extremely thin liquid film high heat fluxes are reached within this area. These can have significant influence onto the overall heat transfer process within two-phase systems. Examples of such systems are pool and flow boiling, droplet evaporation during spray cooling applications or heat pipes used for high power electronics cooling. The more the interface approaches to the heated wall, the stronger the influence of intermolecular interactions between wall molecules and those at the liquid/vapour-interface onto the local phase equilibrium becomes. This results in a shift of the equilibrium to higher temperatures, so that local evaporation is entirely inhibited through intermolecular forces at a certain minimum liquid film thickness. A few molecule layers thin liquid film that cannot be evaporated remains on the apparently dry surface. Apart from the wall superheat, the direction of contact line movement and its velocity, as well as the system pressure influence the local heat transfer in the contact line area decisively. While there is some experimental work on the influence of contact line velocity and its movement direction, the influence of system pressure has remained uninvestigated up to date. Aim of this work is therefore a target oriented experimental investigation of the pressure and velocity influence on heat transfer in the proximity of moving three-phase contact lines.
Core of the dedicated experiment setup is an infrared transparent heater element, which provides the possibility to measure the temperature fields at the heater/fluid interface with high spatial and temporal resolution using infrared thermography. The heater developed for this purpose consists of an infrared transparent substrate, onto which a two-layer composition of black Chromium Nitride and pure Chromium with an overall thickness of approximately 800 nm is applied through Physical Vapour Deposition. While the black Chromium Nitride layer enhances the surface emissivity and thereby increases the signal-to-noise-ratio of the IR thermography drastically, the pure Chromium is employed as resistance heater to achieve the wall superheat necessary for evaporation. As experiment fluid degassed FC-72 (n-perfluorohexane) is used. Within the experiment setup a single capillary slot with a width of 1.4 mm is created between the infrared transparent heater and a polished copper wall. Liquid rises between the walls of the slot due to capillary forces and forms a single extended meniscus. The system pressure is adjusted through the saturation state of the fluid by variation of the system temperature, while the movement of the meniscus is realized through a volume displacement within the system. Movement of the meniscus results in an advancing or a receding contact line situation at the surface of the IR transparent heater, that influences the local temperature distribution at the heater wall. The temperature distribution on the backside of the Chromium Nitride layer at a distance of less than 1 micrometer away from the heater/fluid-interface is measured with a high speed IR camera at a framerate of 1000 Hz and a resolution of 29.27 micrometer/pixel. The high speed IR camera is synchronized to a high speed black-and-white camera, that allows detection of the liquid/vapour-interface with a resolution of 4 micrometer/pixel. From the temperature fields the local heat flux distribution is calculated numerically with the same spatial and temporal resolution.
Experiments were performed at reduced pressures in the range of p_R = 0.05 to p_R = 0.7 and with liquid/vapour-interface velocities of up to v_int = +-40 mm/s. Comparisons to earlier experiments on three-phase contact line heat transfer show, that the results obtained using thin foil heaters are transferable to heaters with substantial larger thermal inertia, like the IR transparent heaters used within this work. Merely the extremely high temperature differences, that are present in proximity of the contact line, are significantly smaller on walls with higher thermal inertia.
The conducted experiments clearly show a local heat flux peak in proximity of the contact line, which is accompanied by a local temperature minimum. At increased system pressure and equal wall superheat and contact line velocity, the local heat flux peak at the contact line decreases with increasing pressure. This effect can be attributed to the reduction of latent heat of evaporation with increasing pressure.
Considering the influence of the contact line velocity, one must distinguish between advancing and receding contact lines. At a receding contact line and equal reduced pressure and wall superheat, no influence of the contact line velocity onto the local heat flux distribution in proximity of the contact line is discernible. At an advancing contact line on the other hand, an increase of the heat flux maximum at the wall and thereby the heat transfer in proximity of the contact line with increasing contact line velocity is observed. Both the increase of the heat flux maximum with increasing contact line velocity at an advancing contact line and the independence of the maximum heat flux on the contact line velocity at a receding contact line is observed at low and high levels of the reduced pressure.
In some experiments with negative meniscus velocity (and therefore receding contact line) it was observed, that a thin, evaporating liquid film can be deposited on the heater surface by the moving liquid/vapour-interface. If and to which extend the thin film is deposited, depends on the wall superheat, the velocity and acceleration of the liquid/vapour-interface, the latent heat of evaporation of the fluid and the wetting characteristics of the heated wall. Furthermore it was observed, that film rupture due to instabilities can occur. If the thin film was present, the contribution of thin film evaporation to the overall heat transfer was dominating compared to the contribution of contact line heat transfer. This makes it necessary to describe the thin film with a model, if it appears during an evaporation process in order to capture the underlying physics correctly.
Based on an estimation of the thickness of a liquid film staying behind on a wall drawn out of a quiescent liquid by Landau and Levich, a model for stationary thin film evaporation was developed. It is assumed, that thin film evaporation has no influence onto the initial film thickness, so it can be calculated according to Landau and Levich. Starting from the mass and energy balance at an infinitesimal thin segment of the film, an equation for the film thickness gradient in direction parallel to the wall is derived. By making the equation dimensionless, non-dimensional quantities governing thin film evolution are identified.
Comparison of the length of the thin film region calculated using the model to lengths of the thin film region observed in the experiment shows good agreement up to a certain velocity, at which an increasing deviation between theoretical value and experimental data is observed. This deviation is probably caused by the limited length of the IR transparent heater, which does not allow for reaching steady state thin film evaporation.


The name Araecerus fasciculatus (DeGeer 1775) is resurrected for the coffee bean weevil, with the following synonyms: Bruchus cacao Fabricius 1775, Bruchus peregrinus Herbst 1797, Bruchus capsinicola Fabricius 1798, Anthribus coffeae Fabricius 1801, Amblycerus japonicus Thunberg 1815 (probably a synonym), Anthribus alternans Germar 1824, Phloeobius griseus of Stephens 1831, not Fabricius 1792, Cratoparis parvirostris Thomson 1858, Araecerus seminarius Chevrolat 1871, and Tropideres (Rhaphitropis) mateui Cobos 1954. Lectotypes are designated for A. fasciculatus, B. capsinicola, and A. alternans. A diagnosis distinguishes Araecerus from all 650 anthribid genera and a diagnosis for the species is as complete as possible with materials studied. Some additional species of Araecerus are discussed: Bruchus crassicornis Fabricius 1798 is distinguished from A. fasciculatus and a lectotype is designated. Araecerus suturalis Boheman 1839 is diagnosed and shown to be dissimilar from the species recently reported as A. suturalis from South Africa. The identity of Araecerus suturalis of Frieser, not Boheman, is not yet clear. Araecerus sambucinus Boisduval 1835 and Trepideres [sic] fragilis Walker 1859 may be synonyms of A. fasciculatus but pertinent data are insufficient. Brachytarsus niveovariegatus Roelofs 1879 (spelled nigrovariegatus by Bovie (1906)), listed as a synonym of A. fasciculatus by Wolfrurn (1929) is removed to Anthribus Forster 1770 with Anthribus lajievorus Chao 1976 as a new synonym.


This paper addresses the control of the blending process in cement industries. This process can be modeled by a nonlinear multivariable system with large parametric uncertainty. Using a specific transformation, a linear parameter varying (LPV) model with set-points as scheduling parameters is developed. Moreover, the model uncertainty originated from the stochastic variation of the composition of the input materials is represented as a polytopic multimodel uncertainty. Then a multivariable gain-scheduled robust controller is designed by convex optimization to control the quality of the raw mix in the blending process. The control performance is illustrated by simulation and compared with a robust controller based on a nominal model.


Background: With the busy lifestyle, there is little or no time to look after oneself, both physically and mentally. A balanced diet along with a healthy diet and regular physical exercise can help us combat various nutrition problems andachieve healthy weight goals. Obesity has become one among us. It is one of the most omnipresent, chronic diseases in need of new better strategies for prevention. Children are equipped with smartphones which makes them less active physically. It is the need of the day to have a check on the lifestyle of students, especially in the professional field, since everyday is tedious, and this is the time where tend to inculcate good or bad eating and exercising habits. Hence, this study aimed to evaluate the diet and exercise pattern of students of a well-reputed dental college. Materials and Methods: A structured questionnaire was prepared and given to the dental students of a reputed institution in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The study was conducted from October 2016 to January 2017. A total of 197 responses were obtained. The obtained data were tabulated and analyzed. Results: This study showed that the diet and exercise habits of the students in majority are not very healthy. 36% of students had their breakfast on time, 42% had their lunch on time, and 51% had their dinner on time. 22.84% always ate more when stressed. A total of 54.3% had the habit of snackingduring studying, 52.1% when they were bored, 34% at parties, and 7.4% due to other reasons which were not stated. Nearly 50% of them exercise 0–1 time/week with light intensity exercises such as walking. A majority of 66.7% did not have the habit even before joining the college. With regard to the level of intensity, 33.3% of them did light workout, and 42% did moderate workout and 7% had the habit of doing heavy workout. The reason for exercising was mainly to maintain or lose weight (45%). 29% for general health, 14% for enjoyment, 9% stated that they worked out to relieve stress, and 3% for other reasons. Conclusion: This study concludes that the students, if given enough guidance, will be able to choose proper diet and exercise patterns, maintain good fitness and follow it regularly. This will prevent obesity and thus, in turn, various chronic diseases.


In this paper we introduce a novel framework for traffic identification that employs machine learning techniques focusing on the estimation of multiple traffic influencing factors. The effect of these factors is handled with the training of several machine learning models. We utilize the outcome of the multiple models via a recombination algorithm to achieve high overall true positive and true negative and low overall false positive and false negative classification ratio. The proposed method can improve the performance of every kind of machine learning based traffic identification engine making them capable of efficient operation in changing network environment i.e., when the probing node is trained and tested in different sites.


The contributors explore the life, thought, and works of Aelred, 12th-century Cistercian abbot of Rievaulx Abbey, his sermons, spirituality, and histories and highlight their principal themes (e.g., friendship, community, lay spirituality, and saints' lives).


Services are increasing in importance in international business and understanding the characteristics of services in the supply chain context can provide crucial information for enabling efficient and effective implementation of risk management. Service literature has in general suggested that the distinctive nature of services—in contrast to products—can be connected to the so-called IHIP attributes (intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability of production and consumption, and perishability). In this study, we utilize these attributes in the task of identifying the distinctive features and dynamics of service supply chains in a risk management context. The study provides an important, yet sparsely addressed, viewpoint of the supply chain risk management literature by illustrating the special characteristics of services in this context. We develop a conceptual framework and a set of propositions to highlight our arguments. The findings of the study suggest that service supply chain risk management requires special attention in terms of the IHIP attributes, which include issues the traditional supply chain risk management tools can easily miss. The presented viewpoint is a novel one and provides a new perspective to supply chain risk management theory by linking the service theories to supply chain risk management.


The formation of the investment climate, characterized by the positive dynamics of its main parameters, is one of the fundamental tasks of the regional economy of our country. Creating conditions for attracting domestic and foreign investment provides an increase in socio-economic indicators of the economic system of the region, stimulates the development of various sectors of the economy, has a positive impact on the level of employment and unemployment in the region, forms the resource potential. Currently, most regions have a serious need for investment resources, which are necessary for the growth of economic potential and the creation of a comfortable social environment. Conducting financial and economic activities in the border regions is characterized by the presence of additional opportunities for the development of investment activity and the creation of a stable system of foreign economic relations. The border areas of the Leningrad Region have considerable experience in practical implementation of joint economic cooperation programs. Active attraction of investment resources of neighboring countries in conjunction with the regional policy of strategic development determine the positive parameters of the socio-economic state of the Leningrad Region. One of the successful tools for improving economic efficiency is the creation of a positive investment climate in the region. To generate favorable conditions for forming the investment climate in the border regions, it is necessary to develop an effective management mechanism aimed at increasing the investment attractiveness and improving the ways of organizing economic activities. The article deals with the conditions of formation of the investment climate as a source of sustainable growth of socio-economic development of the border area. The study discusses the specifics of forming a mechanism for managing the investment climate of the border region as a basis for increasing the investment attractiveness, the specific conditions and the possibility of adapting them under the influence of a certain set of factors, offering a mechanism for managing the investment climate in the border regions. Effective organization of economic activity is currently impossible without attracting foreign investment. Due to peculiarities of the geopolitical position, geographical, economic and political characteristics, the border regions have a significant impact on the modern system of international investment relations. The field of foreign economic interests of the states is actively formed in the border areas. The investment climate that has developed in the border region is mainly formed by the state authorities in order to create comfortable conditions, primarily for foreign investors through a set of measures for using the mechanisms of state guarantees to protect foreign investments. It should be noted that today, despite all the prerequisites for development of local self-government in the Russian Federation, the regional and municipal governments of the border areas do not have sufficient authority to address the whole range of issues arising in formation of the regional investment climate.


Leafy spurge (Euphorbia esula L.), a widely established exotic, noxious, perennial weed, is a major threat to rangeland and wildland in the Upper Great Plains. Chemical, biological, and cultural control methods have limitations in their applicability and effectiveness in treating leafy spurge. However, many of the constraints prohibiting the use of herbicides, tillage, and biological controls do not apply to sheep grazing. Sheep grazing, while known to be effective in controlling leafy spurge since the 1930s, has lacked widespread adoption as a leafy spurge control. A deterministic, bioeconomic model, incorporating relationships between sheep grazing and leafy spurge control, grass recovery, and forage use by cattle, was developed to evaluate the economic viability of using sheep to control leafy spurge. Discounted annual control costs were compared to discounted annual control benefits over 5-year, 10-year, and 15-year periods. Various scenarios were developed depicting likely situations involving adopting a sheep enterprise or leasing sheep for leafy spurge control. Situational factors considered included fencing expenses, debt considerations, grazing values, infestation size, infestation canopy cover, rangeland productivity, and flock performance. Two levels of flock profitability, one based on a level of proficiency achieved by sheep ranches and one substantially lower than typically achieved in the sheep industry, represented best-case and worst-case situations, respectively. In the best-case situations, using sheep to control leafy spurge was economical in all of the control scenarios examined. However, in the worst-case situations, economics of using sheep to control leafy spurge were mixed across the scenarios examined. Leafy spurge control with poor sheep management, high fence expense, and unproductive rangeland generally was not economical. However, situations with low fencing costs, moderately productive rangeland, and poor sheep management resulted in less economic loss than no treatment. Although many of the key relationships tying leafy spurge control to grazing benefits remain unquantified, the economics of sheep grazing were positive across many of the scenarios evaluated in this study. Actual returns from leafy spurge control for most ranchers will likely fall between the two extremes examined. As a precaution, careful evaluation using site- and rancher-specific inputs would be recommended before implementing sheep grazing as a leafy spurge control method.


Several studies have reported the transport of short-lived climate forcers/pollutants (SLCF/P) from the highly polluted areas in southern Asia (e.g., the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayan foothills) to the Himalayas, with significant implications for the global and regional climate, crop yields, and human health. In this work, we perform a comparison of nearly three years (February 2013–October 2015) of simultaneous black carbon (BC) and surface ozone (O3) measurements at two sites in Nepal, viz., Paknajol (1380 m a.s.l.), in the Kathmandu Valley, and the WMO/GAW global station Nepal Climate Observatory-Pyramid (NCO-P, 5079 m a.s.l.), near the base camp of Mt. Everest. The two sites are only 150 km apart and are characterized by different situations: While the Kathmandu Valley is one of the regional urban "hot spots" for concerns related to air pollution, NCO-P is representative of the background conditions of the high Himalayas and the free troposphere. Therefore, the possible role played by emissions occurring in the planetary boundary layer (PBL) of the Kathmandu Valley in influencing the variability in SLCF/P at NCO-P was investigated. BC and O3 concentrations at NCO-P showed a linear correlation with the modeled PBL height over the Kathmandu urban area, providing evidence that the anthropogenic emissions occurring within the Kathmandu PBL could affect the variability in BC and O3 at NCO-P. Furthermore, when introducing an additional constraint into the analysis (viz., back-trajectories), we show that on days when air mass transport between the two measurement sites was observed (10% of the period), at least 22% and 16% of BC and O3 variability at NCO-P can be explained by concurrent variability in SLCF/P over the Kathmandu Valley.


Recreational cannabis is being decriminalized, deregulated and even legalized across a growing number of jurisdictions throughout the world. This article addresses the international law and policy implications of this trend, examining three international law frameworks — the drug control and anti-trafficking framework of the United Nations drug conventions, international human rights law, and the international economic law regime, in which the World Trade Organization (WTO) is central. In this article, we use Canada's legal regime for cannabis liberalization as a case study that illuminates the tensions, but also the unexplored complementarities, between the different international legal regimes or orders that affect cannabis legalization. We argue that although the drug conventions appear to provide unequivocal requirements for drug criminalization, a closer read of the treaty texts suggest otherwise, particularly when read together with the international human rights obligations. At the same time, international economic law, which has largely been ignored in the discussion of cannabis legalization, demonstrates certain inconsistencies with the Canadian cannabis legalization scheme that must be taken into account in further legalization efforts by other states.


Deforestation and conversion to intensive agriculture historically caused a large reduction in abundance of the New Zealand falcon, resulting in its current classification as At Risk. Many New Zealand falcons occur in managed plantation forests, but little is known about their winter use of the mosaic of different aged stands present in these forests. We radio tracked adult falcons (n = 36) during three winters (2012–2014) in Kaingaroa Forest, an intensively managed pine plantation located in the Central Plateau of the North Island of New Zealand. We used tracking data to establish the extent and habitat composition of winter home ranges, and transect surveys to assess the availability of potential prey (passerine birds). We also investigated whether falcon habitat use was related to weather. Open fields created by clearcutting were the primary hunting ground of falcons. Falcons occupied young pine stands (30.4%) and the ecotone between young and mature pine stands (31.2%) most frequently despite its limited availability (20.1% and 3.7%, respectively). Total prey abundance was similar across all habitats and sizes of open fields, but the species composition of potential prey differed significantly between habitats. Thus, the dynamic changes to forest structure created by clearcutting and its effects on prey accessibility are the most important factors influencing falcon space use. We observed that falcons used the mature portion of the forest edge area as a vantage point for hunting or for territorial defence and as a shelter from heavy rain, and interiors of mature tree stands as a shelter from strong winds. Females had a larger home range size (95% KDE, 32 km2) than males (15 km2). The availability of mature/young edge within a home range may be the key factor determining home range size during winter. Maintaining the availability of ecotones of young stands adjacent to mature trees in plantation forests can assist in supporting falcon populations in this novel habitat and hence the conservation of this endemic raptor.


Fresh plant litter inputs accelerate soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition through a ubiquitous mechanism called priming. Insufficient priming has been suggested as a stabilization mechanism of SOM at depth, as well as the long-term persistence of some highly degradable organic compounds in soils. Priming therefore plays a crucial, albeit unquantified and commonly neglected, role in the global carbon cycle. Because priming intensity is likely to be altered by global change-induced changes in net primary productivity, it casts substantial uncertainty to future projections of the climate-carbon cycle feedback. Using results from a large field litter manipulation experiment in Mongolian steppe, we here show that priming intensifies with increasing litter inputs, but at a decreasing efficiency: the stimulation per unit litter added declines with increasing litter inputs. This non-linear behavior originates from two antagonistic responses to fresh litter inputs: a stimulation of microbial activity versus a shift in microbial community composition (more fungi) associated to substrate shift from SOM to litter. Despite all complexity, however, the priming effect on SOM decomposition scaled linearly with the response of microbial biomass across the entire range of plant litter addition (60–480 g C m−2), suggesting that priming could be modeled effectively as a function of the response of microbial biomass to litter inputs. Incorporating the priming mechanism in Earth System models will improve their estimates of the SOM-climate feedback and appears to be best addressed by explicitly representing microbial biomass in the models.


Tourism destinations seek to attract tourists in innovative and enticing ways by using web-based communication media. Since tourists have the choice between many destinations of the same target category, destinations are required to provide something special in order to stand out from other destinations. Recently, a lot of attention has been paid to the idea of creating promotional ecosystems able to represent territorial specificities while, at the same time, taking advantage of the global attractiveness of the country brand. However, less is known about how integrated bottom-up approaches. Since congruence between destination image and destination identity was already found to be highly important for successful destination branding, integrated bottom-up communication could provide a reliable basis for developing effective destination branding campaigns.


Abstract A key question in urban sociology is how people interpret the urban environment. At a time when cities are increasingly militarized, this question is particularly important for understanding how militarism impacts urban life. However, urban sociologists have not addressed how people experience militarized environments. This article turns to this question by considering the case of Lydda-Lod, an Israeli city that has been demographically and physically transformed by war, displacement and securitization. Drawing on Wacquant's sociology of spatial stigma and adding insights from works on emotions in (post-)conflict cities, I examine how poor Palestinians think and feel about the surveilled districts where they live within the city's broader landscape of ruins. I show how the Israeli military, security and policing agencies have collectively produced spatial stigmatization of these districts. I discuss how Palestinians respond to this spatial stigma by attaching a sense of worthlessness to their districts. However, this reproduction of spatial stigma is punctuated by expressions of care for the built environment and by a desire to revalorize collective Palestinian life in the city. I conclude by discussing how a perspective on militarized cities focused on everyday responses to militarism and attentive to marginalities enriches urban sociology and urban studies more generally.


Background: In recent years, incidences of thyroid cancer have increased in developed countries; one of the known risk factors for thyroid cancer is exposure to radioiodine. Previous research by Bowlt and Tiplady [5] has shown an inverse link between radioactive iodine levels contained in thyroid tissue of deceased inhabitants and the distance they lived from the Sellafield nuclear facility in Cumbria, UK. Objectives: The present study aimed to determine what thyroid cancer incidences were in the regional localities in Cumbria for the last decade. Methods: An ethics-approved retrospective cohort study in which age-standardised incidence of thyroid cancer per 100,000 population was compared between localities within Cumbria and with UK average figures. Conclusions: The present study shows that the apparent lower incidence of thyroid cancer in West Cumbria has persisted, although due to the limited number of thyroid cancers diagnosed, a statistically significant difference was not observed. Further research – potentially involving populations living near sources of radioiodine emission - is indicated to investigate if there are any mechanisms that underlie this apparent trend.