Introduction Museum Personalization was identified as one of the six most important emerging trends for museums in 2015 by the Center for the Future of Museums.[1] It is an approach that focuses on the individual visitor rather than generic visitor groups and can be applied to a range of work areas including exhibit experiences, operations, marketing/communications and retail. The commonly perceived benefit of this approach is that visitors enjoy an enhanced or 'tailored' museum experience and museums/institutions gain longer-lasting and more meaningful relationships with their audiences. Simple forms of personalization have been employed by museums since the early days of digital experimentation in the 1980s, however, as priorities have increasingly shifted towards understanding and building audiences, this approach is offering exciting new opportunities and more sophisticated applications are now being explored. The potential for personalization has been significantly expanded by advances in technology over the past five years, especially in mobile phones, e-commerce, social media and wearable tech. Context two recent examples of museum personalization can be found at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York City and the Dallas Museum of Art. The Cooper Hewitt Design Museum reopened to the public in December 2014 with its 'Smart Pen', allowing visitors to collect their favorite objects and chart their activities over repeat museum visits. Within the first five months of operation the museum had recorded almost 1.4 million digitally collected objects and more than 54,000 new 'visitor made designs'.[2] This has provided fascinating new insights into their collection. In 2012, the Dallas Museum of Art scrapped admission fees and introduced an innovative membership program that rewards individual visitors for participating in museum activities with digital badges and points. These can be redeemed for special rewards such as free parking, workshops, VIP events and film screenings. After two years of the membership program, overall attendance figures have increased by 29? and financial donations have risen by 19?.[3] Museums are not alone in developing personalization approaches and much inspiration has been taken from other industries such as e-commerce (personal retail recommendations), theme parks (wearable personalization devices), communications (social media aggregation), education (personalized learning e.g. Khan Academy and ClassDojo) and healthcare (customized health plans). Research Purpose Qatar Museums is the lead body for museums in Qatar with two open museums[4], three gallery spaces[5] and several new museums in development. The stated core purpose of the organization is to be 'a cultural instigator for the creation generation'[6]. One of the key challenges to achieving this ambitious goal is the development of regular museum visiting habits in local audiences. This requires Qatar Museums to provide engaging museum experiences that attract visitors and cultivate long-lasting and meaningful relationships with those visitors. This paper explores the potential impact of museum personalization as a tool for achieving these goals. Methodology In evaluating the potential impact of museum personalization to museums in Qatar, this paper looks at three areas of research: An extensive review of international museums that use personalization approaches or techniques, focusing on both the benefits that they bring to museums and audiences as well as the challenges that they present. An evaluation of Qatar's technology landscape and how well suited this is to facilitate the introduction of personalization approaches in museums. An analysis of ongoing qualitative and quantitative audience research commissioned by Qatar Museums, focusing on Qatar-specific perceptions towards the use of technology. Summary of Key Findings International Review Summary – Through the extensive review of international museums using personalization techniques, the key benefits and challenges of museum personalization have been identified. These can be split into two categories: benefits for visitors; and benefits for museums/institutions. Main benefits for museum visitors: An increased sense of control and ownership Tailored content delivered at the best place and time. The ability to record and chart ongoing personal experiences and achievements Greater awareness of the 'museum community'. A more comfortable and convenient visit Main benefits for museums/institutions: An enhanced reciprocal relationship between the museum and visitors Greater ability to identify changing audience needs Strengthened relationships with education professionals and community leaders Enhanced operational effectiveness Innovative new income generation streams. The research has also exposed some of the most common challenges and shortcomings of museum personalization – Over-complicated and unintuitive personalization systems. Creating unwanted distractions from other museum experiences. Unsustainable technical infrastructure Privacy and data protection concerns Qatar's Technology Landscape Summary – Technology is a key part of Qatar's 2030 National Vision and transformation into a knowledge-driven economy. Qatar's comparatively small population and geographic size has enabled the rapid development of cutting edge technology infrastructure such as fiber optic internet, 4G mobile phone networks and WIFI enabled public parks. There has also been considerable effort to develop e-government with 547 new digital services introduced since 2013 in areas such as healthcare, utilities, education and Islamic Affairs[7]. Qatar's advanced technology infrastructure is coupled with a healthy appetite for the consumption of technology goods and services. A 2013 survey revealed that the average household in Qatar owned three mobile phones, two computers and one smart phone[8]. Today's figures will undoubtedly be higher. Broadband internet penetration rates are at 85? placing Qatar alongside highly advanced economies such as South Korea and the United Kingdom.[9] Qatar's youth are leading the way with 98? of citizens aged between 15 and 24 using smartphones.[10] The advanced technology infrastructure in Qatar, together with the healthy appetite for technology goods and services, provide fertile conditions for the application of personalization approaches in Qatar's museums. Museum Audience Research Analysis Summary – Qatar Museums has an ongoing program of audience evaluation research that looks into a wide range of issues including general perceptions towards the use of technology. The research has indicated that there are positive links made between technology and creativity. 'Everything creative now has something to do with technology' – Qatari Mother[11]. However, it has also revealed some important concerns, particularly from parents regarding their children's perceived over-exposure to technology. Some also link this over-exposure to a general lack of physical exercise. 'Our children do not have this energy and vitality, they are sitting at the computer all the time, they sit 8 hours, 5 hours, it is too much. When we were their age we would jump and hop and play, they do not do anything.' – Qatari Mother[12] 'I have to provide them with an education that benefits them. It cannot be play all the time; be it in malls, or using a Play station or a computer. Computers can be a means of distraction, of learning and of leisure' – Arab Non-Qatari Mother[13] 'I have a technology problem at home. All my children have laptops; even the 4 year old boy. My children spend all their time using this equipment, to the extent that my son of 4 refuses to go out because he prefers to complete his laptop session.' – Jordanian Father[14] Although museum personalization is often presented as a way of counteracting the alienation created by technology, these genuine concerns of over-exposure will have to be carefully considered for any future development in Qatar. Conclusions and Significance of the Research This research provides strong evidence that museum personalization has the potential to have a significant and positive impact on the development of regular museum visiting habits in Qatar. It also exposes some important challenges that will have to be overcome through careful planning and extensive audience testing. Findings from this research will provide ideas and inspiration for Qatar's operational museums as well as opportunities to embed museum personalization into the development of new museum projects and audience engagement programs. References [1] Elizabeth Merritt, Trends Watch 2015, 2015, American Alliance of Museums. [2] http://labs.cooperhewitt.org/2015/5-months-with-the-pen/ [3] https://www.dma.org/press-release/dallas-museum-art-s-dma-friends-program-home-100000-members. [4] Museum of Islamic Art and Mathaf Museum of Modern Arab Art. [5] Al Riwaq Gallery, QM Gallery 10 (Katara Cultural Village) and the QM Fire Station Artist in Residence Centre. [6] QM Website – http://www.qm.org.qa/en/our-purpose. [7] Qatar Digital Government, Executive Highlights, p. 1, 2015, ICT Qatar. [8] Qatar's ICT Landscape, p.5, 2013, ICT Qatar. [9] Ibid (p.10). [10] Ibid (p.22). [11] QM Future Audience Evaluation: Phase 2, Part 2, p.74, 2012, Qatar Museums. [12] QM Future Audience Evaluation: Phase 2, Part 3, p.48, 2012, Qatar Museums. [13] QM Future Audience Evaluation: Phase 2, Part 3, p.60, 2011, Qatar Museums. [14] QM Future Audience Evaluation: Phase 1, p.25, 2011, Qatar Museums.


Cancer is largely caused by genetic events that result in the mutation of oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes, leading to cell autonomous proliferation and growth. The repair of these mutant gene products may be expected to subvert this neoplastic behavior. Indeed, oncogene inactivation can result in the elimination of all or almost all tumor cells by various mechanisms through the phenomena described as oncogene addiction. Recently, we have shown that oncogene addiction occurs through at least two broad classes of mechanisms: tumor cell intrinsic mechanisms of cellular senescence and apoptosis; and tumor cell extrinsic host-dependent mechanisms that include the shut-down of angiogenesis. We have argued that the abatement of oncogenic activity within a cancer cell not only leads to the demise of a tumor from within but also through the instruction of the restoration of the microenvironment.


Abstract. There is no doubt that the hazard assessment of future floods, especially under consideration of recent environmental change, can be significantly improved by the consideration of historic flood events. While flood frequency inventories on local, regional and even European scale have already been developed and published, the estimation of their magnitudes indicated by discharges is still challenging. Such data are required due to significant human impacts on river channels and floodplains, though historic flood levels cannot be related to recent ones or recent discharges. Based on experiences from single local key studies, we present the general outline of an approach to estimate the discharge of the previous flood based on handed-down flood level and topographic data. The model for one-dimensional steady flow is based on the empirical Manning equation for the mean flow velocity. Background and potential sources of information, acceptable simplifications and data transformation for each element of the model equation are explained and discussed. Preliminary experiences regarding the accuracy of ±10% are documented, and potential approaches for the validation of individual estimations are given. A brief discussion of benefits and limitations, including a generalized statement on alternative approaches, concludes the review of the approach.


The study was conducted in 1996 in order to review the progress in the implementation of the Zimbabwe Civil Service Reform Programme with a specific focus on the implementation of performance management and a performance based salary increment and bonus. The study established that the introduction of performance management was strongly resisted by teachers in the civil service and most staff associations on the grounds that:
(1) the employees concerned were not consulted in the formulation of the programme;
(2) performance management is results-oriented and is not compatible with public administration which focuses on social services;
(3) civil servants cannot be held responsible for non-attainment of targets, when they do not control the resource inputs. Indeed, the civil service top managers, the permanent secretaries, rejected the concept of their being put on a contract by government because of the uncertainty in resource mobilization and control;
(4) performance management was introduced at the same time government was carrying out economic reforms, which .entailed the reduction of the public service employees by 25% in order to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. The performance management programme was perceived by the staff associations as a means to downsize the civil service;


In this paper new dynamic charge injection E/D logics are presented and compared with traditional dynamic ones such as TDFL (Two Phase Dynamic Fet Logic). The main drawbacks of TDFL will be analyzed together with the advantages offered with respect to the static DCFL based topologies; a tentative structure has been derived (MTDFL - Modified TDFL) to comply with the VLSI requirements; then the advantages of the charge injection principles applied to the design of new logic topologies are inspected and used in a pseudo complementary structure (PCDL - Pseudo Complementary Dynamic Logic). The results of the simulations for these structures are presented together with the design of a 4-bits pipelined adder simulated at 2 GHz with a power dissipation 20 times lower than a DCFL implementation.


The building research establishment used an electro-level (e-l) system to monitor the below ground level performance under lateral load of two large diameter (1.5 m and 1.2 M) bored and cast-in-place piles. The piles were also fitted with 5 levels of vibrating wire (vw) strain gauges. The tests demonstrated that the e-l system can be deployed in bored cast-in-place piles at very little cost, or inconvenience to the piling contractor and that detailed information can be obtained on the below ground performance of the pile. Good agreement was found between the lateral head deflections of the piles monitored by surface instruments and calculated from the e-l results. This suggests that the deflected shape of the pile below ground level was accurately determined. Bending strains determined from the e-l results agreed at low loads with those determined from the vw gauges. At higher loads the strains monitored by the vw gauges were considered unrepresentative of the general strain levels in the piles due to the concrete cracking. (TRRL)


Meditation and acupressure-like stimulations have been shown to relieve pain. The aim of this study was to determine whether a short bout of mind-body intervention combined with meditation and acupressure-like stimulation was able to alleviate shoulder pain and improve its function in a short time window. Sixty-five adults with shoulder pain were recruited and randomly classified into two groups. One group participated in an intervention which consisted of acupressure-like stimulation and meditation over a 5 min period. The other group was instructed to rest during this time. A visual analog scale (VAS) pain score and objective constant scores were measured before and after intervention to determine shoulder pain and range of motion (ROM), respectively. A two-way repeated measures analysis of variance with Bonferroni correction and a regression analysis were performed. VAS pain, objective constant score, flexion, abduction, and external rotation score showed significant interactions between time and group. The pain intensity was significantly reduced, while flexion and abduction were significantly improved, in the experimental group compared to the control group, after the intervention. In addition, the change of flexion negatively correlated with the change of pain intensity in the experimental group, but not in the control group. These results show that a short-term application of mind-body intervention significantly alleviates shoulder pain and improves shoulder movement, suggesting its potential use as a therapy for people with shoulder pain.


The stress corrosion cracking of tube-to-tubesheet joints is one of the major faults causing heat exchanger failure. After the expansion process, the stresses are developed in a plastically deformed tube around the tube-to-tubesheet joint. These residual stressed joints, exposed to tube and shell side fluids, are the main crack initiation sites. Adequate contact pressure at the tube-to-tubesheet interface is required to produce a quality joint. Insufficient tube-to-tubesheet contact pressure leads to insufficient joint strength. Therefore, a study on the residual stress and contact pressure that have a great significance on the quality of the tube-to-tubesheet joint is highly demanded. In this research, a 2D axisymmetric numerical analysis is performed to study the effect of the presence of grooves in the tubesheet and the expansion pressure length on the distribution of contact pressure and stress during loading and unloading of 400 MPa expansion pressure. The results show that the maximum contact pressure is independent of the expansion pressure length. However, the presence of grooves significantly increased the maximum contact pressure. It is proven that the presence of grooves in the tubesheet is distinguishable from the maximum contact pressure and residual von mises equivalent stress. The tube pull-out strength increases with the expansion pressure and the number of grooves. In conclusion, the presence of the grooves affects the tube-to-tubesheet joints.


Finalist for the African Studies Association's 2010 Melville J. Herskovits Award. Forests have been at the fault lines of contact between African peasant communities in the Tanzanian coastal hinterland and outsiders for almost two centuries. In recent decades, a global call for biodiversity preservation has been the main challenge to Tanzanians and their forests. Thaddeus Sunseri uses the lens of forest history to explore some of the most profound transformations in Tanzania from the nineteenth century to the present. He explores anticolonial rebellions, the world wars, the depression, the Cold War, oil shocks, and nationalism through their intersections with and impacts on Tanzania's coastal forests and woodlands. In Wielding the Ax, forest history becomes a microcosm of the origins, nature, and demise of colonial rule in East Africa and of the first fitful decades of independence. Wielding the Ax is a story of changing constellations of power over forests, beginning with African chiefs and forest spirits, both known as "ax-wielders," and ending with international conservation experts who wield scientific knowledge as a means to controlling forest access. The modern international concern over tropical deforestation cannot be understood without an awareness of the long-term history of these forest struggles.


Pylephlebitis is a life-threatening condition commonly associated with diverticulitis in adults. The diagnosis is often missed because of its non-specific clinical presentation. We present the case of a 74-year-old woman that was admitted with abdominal pain and fever. Computerized tomography revealed thrombosis of the portal vein system and diverticulitis of the sigmoid colon. The patient was treated with antibiotics and anticoagulation. No thrombophilic risk factors were diagnosed. J Med Cases. 2018;9(5):151-153 doi: https://doi.org/10.14740/jmc3050w


This paper focuses on the significance of curriculum value orientations for curriculum implementation and, therefore, for teacher education. The paper draws on data arising from research undertaken with six Health and Physical Education teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand to explore issues pertinent to Physical Education teacher education (PETE). Selected findings from the study are presented and critically engaged with from a teacher education viewpoint to specifically address (i) considerations relating to students' value orientations that teacher educators need to be cognisant of, and (ii) issues arising for teacher educators seeking to engage with value orientations in undergraduate and/or post-graduate PETE programmes. The paper foregrounds the highly personal nature of value orientations in considering their significance in teacher education programmes and is written from the position of the author as a teacher educator committed to raising student teachers' awareness of value orientations and their influence on curriculum and pedagogy. Attention is drawn to the significance of course content, practicum, critically reflective practice, and programme structures in relation to efforts to embed value orientations into teacher education programmes.


There is not enough charitable and government capital to meet the social and environmental challenges we face. Where, then, will we find the money to complement charity and government to bring solutions to scale? The Rockefeller Foundation launched its Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing initiative in November 2008 because it believes that impact investing can be part of the answer. Imprint Capital was similarly founded in 2007 to help the growing ranks of institutions and high-net-worth individuals create and execute strategies to drive impact with their investments.


In recent years, research focusing on intangible issues in business contexts has flourished. The authors of the current study aimed to contribute to this research by considering managers in terms of their spiritual leadership, spirituality and religiosity. This study addresses these concepts and tests a model that assesses the relationships between the spiritual leadership attributes of top Turkish managers and the spirituality and religiosity of those individuals. The results reveal four key elements. First, the spiritual leadership of top Turkish managers depends upon their wisdom and altruism. In addition, their spirituality is comprised of their approach to immateriality and their spiritual awareness. Furthermore, there are no common factors among spiritual leadership, spirituality and religiosity. Finally, although the factors that form spiritual leadership, spirituality and religiosity have very weak and positive relationships, no statistically significant relationship was found between spiritual leadership and the issues of spirituality and religiosity.


This article examines the politics of immigrant and minority German hip-hop from its emergence until today as well as its role within the cultural policies of the state. Hip-hop in Germany has both provided scripts for political and social contestation and acted as a means for the state to manage potentially "unruly" youth. Whereas early politically oriented hip-hop was divided between minoritarian ethnic and civic national forms of affiliation, in the past decade it has increasingly embraced German national symbolism from diverse political positions. We analyze these developments in the work of three contemporary artists and examine how their cultural production operates within national and transnational pedagogical contexts.


Katherine E. Blake "Urban Burial Reform in William Wordsworth's 'Village Churchyard'" (pp. 279–304) This essay looks at the relationship between space and class in nineteenth-century English burials in order to shed new light on William Wordsworth's Essays upon Epitaphs (1810, 1876) and "The Brothers" (1800). While Wordsworth's work dwells on pastoral images of burial, I argue that his representations in fact align more closely with the cultural practices and values underpinning urban burial conventions. Through his representation of burial space, Wordsworth's work plays out urban concerns about burial in the countryside. Ultimately, this essay argues that the exportation of urban concerns to imaginary rural sites accounts for the utility of Wordsworth's work to mid-nineteenth-century burial reformers, and particularly to Edwin Chadwick, a utilitarian known for his work on the 1832 Poor Law and sanitary guidelines for burial. By reevaluating what prior studies have said about Chadwick's reforms in light of recent work on his economic theories, I argue that Chadwick's citation of Wordsworth's first "Essay upon Epitaphs" transforms the latter's pastoral vision into an endorsement of a national cemetery. I explore the extent to which Wordsworth's early-nineteenth-century ideas are and are not compatible with Chadwick's mid-century reforms.


Mobile devices play an important role in the wireless network environment for providing different services over internet. The business transactions over wireless electronic devices are not secure and hence the messages are prone to be intercepted and modified by an intruder. So, devices supporting wireless internet must be guaranteed at the same level of security as the wired network. PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) used in the wired environment is not suitable for wireless environment because of the less powerful processor and small memory. This arises a need for the development of a Wireless Public Key Infrastructure (WPKI) that provides the similar security level as the wired PKI suitable for mobile phone. In this paper, a discussion of public key infrastructure and an experimental set up for Wireless Public key Infrastructure for mobile phones are made.


The light-harvesting reactions of photosynthesis take place on the thylakoid membrane inside chloroplasts. The thylakoid membrane is folded into appressed membranes, the grana, and non-appressed membranes that interconnect the grana, the stroma lamellae. This folding is essential for the correct functioning of photosynthesis. Electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy are commonly used to study the thylakoid membrane, but these techniques have limitations in visualizing a complete chloroplast and its organization. To overcome this limitation, we applied expansion microscopy (ExM) on isolated chloroplasts. ExM is a technique that involves physically expanding a sample in a swellable hydrogel to enhance the spatial resolution of fluorescence microscopy. Using all-protein staining, we visualized the 3D structure of spinach (Spinacia oleracea) thylakoids in detail. We were able to resolve stroma lamellae that were 60 nm apart and observe their helical wrapping around the grana. Furthermore, we accurately measured the dimensions of grana from top-views of chloroplasts, which allow for precise determination of the granum diameter. Our results demonstrate that ExM is a fast and reliable technique for studying thylakoid organization in great detail.


While holding great promise, nanotechnology also raises concerns about currently unknown health and environmental risks. The lack of information about these potential risks poses distinct challenges for regulators, who need a clear understanding about problems in order to solve them. Under such circumstances of information scarcity, a strong case can be made for having regulators engage with business and even delegate responsibility for uncovering and avoiding risks, as the firms themselves possess an informational advantage over government. In this chapter, I review what researchers have learned about engaging business in regulation, with the goal of informing future decisionmaking about how to respond to nanotechnology. Specifically, I consider the available evidence on the conditions for the effective use of flexible regulatory instruments, governmental voluntary programs, nongovernmental voluntary regimes, and industry self-regulation. To date, the regulatory responses to nanotechnology's potential risks have been primarily voluntary and industry-based, with firms playing the central role in nanotechnology risk management. Yet the same lack of information that makes such industry-based responses attractive also makes it difficult to ensure that businesses will act in a socially optimal manner. In the end, the forms of engagement or delegation that initially appear attractive for managing nanotechnology's risks will also present inherent difficulties in ensuring effective risk management - or at least it will be difficult for regulators or the public to know whether these approaches are indeed effective.


In this paper we continue efforts aimed at modeling jet noise using self-consistent analytical approaches within the generalized acoustic analogy (GAA) formulation. The GAA equations show that the far-field pressure fluctuation is given by a convolution product between a propagator tensor that depends on the (true) non-parallel jet mean flow and a generalized fluctuating stress tensor that is a stationary random function of time and includes the usual fluctuating Reynolds' stress tensor as well as enthalpy fluctuation components. Here, we focus on approximating the propagator tensor by determining an appropriate asymptotic solution to the adjoint vector Green's function that it depends on by using an asymptotic approach at all frequencies of interest for jet noise prediction. The Green's function is then rationally approximated by a composite formula in which the GSA (Goldstein-Sescu-Afsar, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 695, pp. 199-234, 2012) non-parallel flow Green's function asymptotic solution is used at low frequencies and the O(1) frequency parallel flow Green's function is used for all frequencies thereafter. The former solution uses the fact that non-parallelism will have a leading order effect on the Green's function everywhere in the jet under a distinguished scaling in which the jet spread rate is of the same order as the Strouhal number for a slowly-diverging mean flow expansion. Since this solution, however, is expected to apply up to the peak frequency, the latter O(1) frequency Green's function in a parallel flow must be used at frequencies thereafter. We investigate the predictive capability of the composite Green's function for the prediction of supersonic axi-symmetric round jets at fixed jet Mach number of 1.5 and two different temperature ratios (isothermal & heated) using Large-eddy simulation data. Our results show that, in the first instance, excellent jet noise predictions are obtained using the non-parallel flow asymptotic approach, remarkably, up to a Strouhal number of 0.5. This is true for both heated and un-heated jets. Furthermore, we develop the analytical approach required to extend this solution by appropriate asymptotic approximation to O(1) frequencies.


In this article, I use Albert Hirschman's consumer-based 'exit' and 'voice' concepts in order to set out the political ecology of voice (PEV), an innovative theoretical framework that aims to examine the causes of environmental pollution from a new angle. I begin by providing a brief overview of political ecology, and why it provides such a useful framework from which to position Hirschman's ideas of exit and voice. This will lead into a more detailed analysis of Hirschman's theories in an environmental context, and why the use of voice by various stakeholders (citizens, community based organizations (CBOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)) is dependent upon a number of political, economic, social and geographical factors over a specific temporal period. The study of voice through PEV will enable researchers to examine the accountability of economic actors for incidents of environmental pollution. Keywords: Albert Hirschman, political ecology of voice


There exists near-consensus among professional economists on the desirability of achieving macroeconomic stabilization prior to the removal of microeconomic distortions. Yet this advice was completely disregarded in some of the most important cases of reform during the last decade--Bolivia and Mexico since 1985, Poland since 1990, Argentina since 1991, for example. In these and many other cases, radical trade liberalization measures were put in place, or existing programs speeded up, in conjunction with macroeconomic stabilization packages. In this paper I revisit this issue by focusing on recent liberalizations in Latin America. I argue that the theoretical case for the existence of a policy dilemma in exchange-rate management when trade liberalization is implemented simultaneously with stabilization policies is weaker than is usually presupposed. A commitment to a pegged exchange rate can, if credible, actually solve rather than intensify the potential conflict between trade liberalization and exchange-rate stability. However, the credibility of disinflation may be endangered by early liberalization.


Laser desorption mass spectroscopy has been used to characterize both modern and ∼ 150-year-old daguerreotypes. Such investigations are a necessary prelude to attempts to clean them of tarnish and other contaminants by laser ablation of the surface layers. Both positive- and negative-ion time-of-flight spectra were obtained following YAG laser ablation/desorption at 1064, 532, and 355 nm. Major peaks obtained from several daguerreotypes reveal expected elements from the substrate (Ag, Cu) as well as the developing (Hg) and gilding (Au) processes. Silver clusters (Ag n ) may reflect surface desorption of molecules or, alternatively, aggregates formed in the ejection process. Silver sulfide molecules observed from old daguerreotypes are the signature of the tarnishing process.


The relative contribution of increased blood pressure (BP) or norepinephrine (NE), or both, to the stimulatory effect of an NE pressor infusion on circulating immunoreactive atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) was evaluated in 10 healthy young men. They were studied during an infusion of NE, which was applied initially alone and then in combination with sodium nitroprusside. NE infusion rate was increased in four 30-minute intervals to a final dose of 200 ng/kg body weight per minute, leading to 12-fold higher plasma NE levels than were seen during control conditions. This increased mean BP (from a mean basal value of 94 +/- 3 to 119 +/- 4 [SEM] mm Hg; p less than 0.001) and plasma immunoreactive ANP (from 50 +/- 7 to 112 +/- 17 pg/ml; p less than 0.001), whereas heart rate decreased (p less than 0.001). The NE infusion was continued at the highest dose and an additional infusion of sodium nitroprusside was started to titrate mean BP in 30-minute intervals down to control values; a mean sodium nitroprusside dose of 0.95 micrograms/kg/min restored mean BP to 93 +/- 4 mm Hg (p less than 0.001), decreased plasma immunoreactive ANP to basal values (51 +/- 4 pg/ml; p less than 0.001), increased heart rate (p less than 0.001), and left plasma levels of NE largely unchanged. Plasma protein and hematocrit rose about 5 to 6% (p less than 0.001) during the NE infusion and then decreased about 3 to 4% (p less than 0.001 and p less than 0.01) when sodium nitroprusside was added.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


In antenna array applications, the propagation environment is often more complicated than the ordinarily assumed model of plane wavefronts. Here, a low-complexity algorithm is suggested for estimating both the DOA and the spread angle of a source subject to local scattering, using a uniform linear array. The parameters are calculated from the estimates obtained using a standard algorithm such as root-MUSIC to fit a two-ray model to the data. The algorithm is shown to give consistent estimates, and the statistical performance is studied analytically and through simulations.


The development of action control was studied in normal infants between 5-15 months
and in children with Williams syndrome, a group in whom it is thought that the visual
processing stream controlling action (the dorsal stream) may be specifically impaired. In
the first set of experiments, looking and reaching measures were taken as infants were
resented with pairs of objects of different sizes. An increase in frequency of reaches to
raspable objects and in the time spent inspecting objects before reaching was observed
after 8 1/2 months, reflecting a developing ability to use visual information to predict the
'graspability' of objects. There were concurrent changes in the kinematics of the reach;
infants at this age exhibited slower reaches, with an extended 'homing-in' phase.
referential looking measures showed that as infants get older, visual orienting to objects
in personal space becomes less dependent on the visual salience of the object. Lastly,
there was evidence that reaches tended to follow the direction of the first look in any
given trial. Flexibility in the choice of a target for reaching may therefore depend upon
the development of an ability to selectively inhibit neural circuits controlling looking
and reaching.
The second set of experiments investigated how far the visuo-motor difficulties
experienced by children with Williams syndrome are due to atypical dorsal stream
development, or in the ability to plan ahead in simple actions. The ability to adapt grip
size to object size (a 'dorsal stream') function was compared with the ability to make a
perceptual size judgment (a 'ventral stream' function). Deficits were observed in both
tasks, with no relative deficit in dorsal stream, compared to ventral stream function.
Tests of motor planning indicated that children with WS are less likely than controls to
select an initial grip that ensures a comfortable end-state posture of the arm. However,
this ability seems to be unevenly distributed in children with WS. Further work will
need to be done to identify whether these differences between individuals are related
to different compensatory strategies or are correlated with the extent of the genetic
deletion in WS.


If trust is critical in relationships between teachers and distance education students, then how do teachers facilitate trust? This particularly challenging question arose from our experience teaching distance education nursing students who were continuing their education through the medium of audio-teleconferencing. Although audio-teleconferencing has the advantage of allowing students to stay in their own communities while accessing educational opportunities, we believed that it complicates the development of trusting relationships between teachers and students. In a qualitative study, students were asked to provide their perspectives on factors that facilitate trust within this distance education learning environment. Their responses indicate that, within the context of the learning milieu, trusting is construed as a developmental process, and through this process, trust in the learning, in the curriculum, and in one's co-learners occurs.


Turkish baths, or hamams are necessary to the Turkish tradition for both religious and physical cleansing. In the Seljuk, Principalities and Ottoman periods, hamams began to be built in religious, commercial and military buildings near mosques with zawiyah, and then they were built inside the Islamic-Ottoman social complexes (külliye) by the foundation system. Hamams were open to people from all walks of life and allowed different strata of the community to socialize.They both affected and were affected by their locations. Religious minorities in the society established foundational hamams for their own communities in the districts where they were numerous. Hamam culture is included in Turkish literature, architecture and fine arts. In Turkish painting, the inclusion of hamam culture begins with examples in the craft of miniatures. Miniature works depicting hamams are found in books such as Surname-iHümayun (The Imperial Festival Book), Hünername (The Book of Gestures) and Zenname (TheBook of Women). The Turkish hamam became a common theme in in paintings and journals of foreign travelers, either in paintings by them or other foreign artists who depicted their stories. Turkish painters considered hamams as a tradition that should be kept secret, like the harem, and did not used it as a theme in their works.The Turkish hamam is a phenomenon that emerged very long ago and survived to the present. It is capable of illuminating the richness of Turkish people's culture and lifestyle in many ways. It is an important task of Turkish painters to preserve and improve this cultural heritage and its values regarding health, social life and art and to reflect them in their paintings so that they are conveyed to future generations.


This paper contributes to the debate on whether volunteering influences social cohesion, and argues that issues of race equality should be considered in this discussion. Whilst the German government, like other European states, promotes volunteering as a way of improving social cohesion, discussions on social cohesion in Germany tend not to mention race explicitly, whilst studies on volunteering tend to neglect to explore race at all. When they do, race is simply considered a factor influencing engagement, rather than a structural issue. Employing the example of the German Technical Relief Service for civil defence, the paper explores race relations and representation in Germany, where discussions on race generally remain taboo, drawing on theories of structural racism and whiteness. The paper concludes that it cannot be unproblematically assumed that volunteering leads to social cohesion in an ethnically diverse society if racial inequalities are not addressed.


Electrolyte-gated, printed field-effect transistors exhibit high charge carrier densities in the channel and thus high on-currents at low operating voltages, allowing for the low-power operation of such devices. This behavior is due to the high area-specific capacitance of the device, in which the electrolyte takes the role of the dielectric layer of classical architectures. In this paper, we investigate intrinsic double-layer capacitances of ink-jet printed electrolyte-gated inorganic field-effect transistors in both in-plane and top-gate architectures by means of voltage-dependent impedance spectroscopy. By comparison with deembedding structures, we separate the intrinsic properties of the double-layer capacitance at the transistor channel from parasitic effects and deduce accurate estimates for the double-layer capacitance based on an equivalent circuit fitting. Based on these results, we have performed simulations of the electrolyte cutoff frequency as a function of electrolyte and gate resistances, showing that the top-gate architecture has the potential to reach the kilohertz regime with proper optimization of materials and printing process. Our findings additionally enable accurate modeling of the frequency-dependent capacitance of electrolyte/ion gel-gated devices as required in the small-signal analysis in the circuit simulation.


The concept of microgrid was first introduced in 2001 as a solution for reliable integration of distributed generation and for harnessing their multiple advantages. Specific control and energy management systems must be designed for the microgrid operation in order to ensure reliable, secure and economical operation; either in grid-connected or stand-alone operating mode. The problem of energy management in microgrids consists of finding the optimal or near optimal unit commitment and dispatch of the available sources and energy storage systems so that certain selected criteria are achieved. In most cases, energy management problem do not satisfy the Bellman's principle of optimality because of the energy storage systems. Consequently, in this paper, an original fast heuristic algorithm for the energy management on stand-alone microgrids, which avoids wastage of the existing renewable potential at each time interval, is presented. A typical test microgrid has been analysed in order to demonstrate the accuracy and the promptness of the proposed algorithm. The obtained cost of energy is low (the quality of the solution is high), the primary adjustment reserve is correspondingly assured by the energy storage system and the execution runtime is very short (a fast algorithm). Furthermore, the proposed algorithm can be used for real-time energy management systems.


A preparative method for a flame-retarding poly(propylene carbonate) (PPC) was demonstrated by employing diphenylphosphinic acid (Ph2P(O)(OH)), phenylphosphonic acid (PhP(O)(OH)2), or phosphoric acid (P(O)(OH)3) as a chain transfer agent in the immortal CO2/propylene oxide copolymerization catalyzed by a highly active catalyst, a cobalt(III) complex of a Salen-type ligand tethered by four quarternary ammonium salts (1). High turnover frequencies of 10 000–20 000 h−1 (700–1300 g-polymer per g-cat·h) were maintained even in the presence of a large amount of the protic chain transfer agent ([–OH]/[1], 1600–200). Directly after the copolymerization using PhP(O)(OH)2 as a chain transfer agent, thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) was formed by adding a stoichiometric amount of toluene-2,4-diisocynate. The TPU also was not inflammable. Cone calorimeter studies showed that PPC itself and TPU prepared using PPC-diol emitted significantly less smoke while burning than common plastics, such as polystyrene.


We analyze two 3D general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic accretion simulations in the context of how they would manifest in Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations of supermassive black holes. The two simulations differ only in whether the initial angular momentum of the plasma is aligned with the rapid (a = 0.9) spin of the black hole. Both have low net magnetic flux. Ray tracing is employed to generate resolved images of the synchrotron emission. When using parameters appropriate for Sgr A* and assuming a viewing angle aligned with the black hole spin, we find the most prominent difference is that the central shadow in the image is noticeably eccentric in tilted models, with the ring of emission relatively unchanged. Applying this procedure to M87 with a viewing angle based on the large-scale jet, we find that adding tilt increases the angular size of the ring for fixed black hole mass and distance, while at the same time increasing the number of bright spots in the image. Our findings illustrate observable features that can distinguish tilted from aligned flows. They also show that tilted models can be viable for M87, and that not accounting for tilt can bias inferences of physical parameters. Future modeling of horizon-scale observations should account for potential angular momentum misalignment, which is likely generic at the low accretion rates appropriate for EHT targets.


The intensity of water absorption in the region of the solar spectrum plays a dominant role in atmospheric energy balance and hence strongly influences climate. Significant controversy exists over how to model this absorption accurately. We report dipole moment measurements of highly vibrationally excited water, which provide stringent tests of intensities determined by other means. Our measurements and accompanying calculations suggest that the best currently available potential and dipole surfaces do not accurately model intensities in the optical spectrum of water.


We explore the effect of confinement and polymer-nanoparticle interactions on the viscosity of unentangled polymers undergoing capillary rise infiltration (CaRI) in dense packings of nanoparticles. In CaRI, a polymer is thermally induced to wick into the dense packings of nanoparticles, leading to the formation of polymer-infiltrated nanoparticle films, a new class of thin film nanocomposites with extremely high concentrations of nanoparticles. To understand the effect of this extreme nanoconfinement, as well as polymer-nanoparticle interactions on the polymer viscosity in CaRI films, we use two polymers that are known to have very different interactions with SiO2 nanoparticles. Using in situ spectroscopic ellipsometry, we monitor the polymer infiltration process, from which we infer the polymer viscosity based on the Lucas-Washburn model. Our results suggest that physical confinement increases the viscosity by approximately two orders of magnitude. Furthermore, confinement also increases the glass transition temperature of both polymers. Thus, under extreme nanoconfinement, the physical confinement has a more significant impact than the polymer-nanoparticle interactions on the viscosity of unentangled polymers, measured through infiltration dynamics, as well as the glass transition temperature. These findings will provide fundamental frameworks for designing processes to enable the fabrication of CaRI nanocomposite films with a wide range of nanoparticles and polymers.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: http://rsc.li/journals-terms-of-use


What do we currently know about atheists and secular people? In what ways are atheism and secularity correlated with positive societal outcomes? This article offers a thorough presentation and discussion of the latest social scientific research concerning the identities, values, and behaviors of people who don't believe in God or are non-religious, and addresses the ways in which atheism and secularity are positively correlated with societal well-being.


The unprecedented degradation of the planet's vital ecosystems is among the most pressing issues confronting the international community. Despite the proliferation of legal instruments to combat environmental problems, conflicts between rich and poor nations (the North-South divide) have compromised the effectiveness of international environmental law, leading to deadlocks in environmental treaty negotiations and non-compliance with existing agreements. International Environmental Law and the Global South examines both the historical origins of the North-South divide in European colonialism as well as its contemporary manifestations in a range of issues, including food justice, energy justice, indigenous rights, trade, investment, extractive industries, human rights, land grabs, hazardous waste, and climate change. Born out of the recognition that global inequality and profligate consumerism present threats to a sustainable planet, this books makes a unique contribution to international environmental law by emphasizing the priorities and concerns of the global South.


Functional seizures (FS) is a condition where the child experiences seizure-like events, without abnormal electrical discharge as measured by EEG, and with high risk of misdiagnosis. Diagnosing FS contains: 1) video-EEG, 2) anamnestic evaluation, focusing on the presence of psychosocial stressors, psychiatric co-morbidity and functional symptoms other than FS, and 3) evaluation of seizure characteristics such as long duration, seizure initiation during wakefulness and in the presence of witnesses asynchronous movements, and no incontinence, tongue bite and injury related to the event.


This title offers a forensic, entertaining polemic from the author of "The Pope's Children". Ireland is deeply in debt, beholden to the IMF, the EU and the bond markets. Its economy is frozen, and years of austerity are ahead. It didn't have to be this way - and it doesn't have to be this way. In "The Good Room", David McWilliams, who spotted the dangers of the Irish property bubble and imbalances within the eurozone at a time when other commentators were cheerleading the boom, explains the bizarre economics behind Ireland's current predicament, and illuminates a different path for the country. He illustrates the consequences of debt and austerity for ordinary Irish people and explains why austerity can't work. And he shows that history offers numerous useful models for Irish recovery - provided we open our eyes to them. Economics is about people like you. "The Pope's Children" was the book that connected the dots between economics and daily life in Ireland during the boom years. "The Good Room" does the same for the Ireland of the bust, and is - in its call for a completely different approach - an even more urgent and necessary work. "McWilliams has a great knack for bringing a complex economics story to life. He is also funny. In economics, that's a rare and persuasive combination". (Stephanie Flanders, "Irish Times"). "A gifted and often courageous polemicist who has done more to popularize the debate about economics in Ireland than anyone else". ("Irish Independent"). "McWilliams makes a compelling argument for the need for a different approach to Irish and European economic management...[A] realistic, pragmatic call for innovative policies that take account of proven economic theory". ("Sunday Business Post"). David McWilliams is Ireland's leading popular economist, and a columnist for the "Irish Independent" and the "Sunday Business Post". He is the author of the bestsellers "The Pope's Children", "The Generation Game", and "Follow the Money".


Genetic based diseases are commonly thought as an "error", i.e. as the result of one or few rare mutations in the DNA. While this explanation can work fine for Mendelian, high penetrance, diseases, it is less plausible for complex diseases (CD). Indeed, this important class of diseases is characterized by the fact of being caused by hundreds of variants, each of them "common" in the population and with a small effect. As a possible explanation for such an apparent paradox, it has been proposed that variants associated with CD are the result of direct or indirect evolutionary pressures in ancient times. According to this hypothesis, those variants (or variants close to them) were selected in our ancestors for being advantageous and that they became dangerous only recently because of the totally different environment we live in. Then, the very recent changes in the environment, together with the late onset characterizing these diseases, provided no time for natural selection to act against them.
As a first step toward addressing this hypothesis, I analyzed the genomic distribution of a specific marker of selective pressure, namely F(ST). I examined, in particular, its relationship with genes associated to human CD finding indeed suggestions of positive selection occurred on them.
To better understand the role of natural selection on genes associated with CD I then focused on two different cases of study corresponding to two different scenarios. In the first one, I found hints for schizophrenia to be, at least partially, a maladaptive by-product of natural selection which acted on vitamin D related genes when first humans moved to higher latitudes.
In the second example, I focused on the case in which variants increasing the risk for autoimmune diseases are most likely to be the actual and direct target of selection. I found that a plausible hypothesis is that the diseases themselves are the results of an environmental mismatch with respect to that our ancestors, when these variants were selected.


We consider the estimation of the acoustic source position in a known room from recordings by a microphone array. We propose an algorithm that does not require the room to be convex, nor a line-of-sight path between the microphone array and the source to be present. Times of arrival of early echoes are exploited through the image source model, thereby transforming the indoor localization problem to a problem of localizing multiple sources in the free-field. The localized virtual sources are mirrored into the room using the image source method in the reverse direction. Further, we propose an optimization-based algorithm for improving the estimate of the source position. The algorithm minimizes a cost function derived from the geometry of the localization problem. We apply the designed optimization algorithm to track a moving source, and show through numerical simulations that it improves the tracking accuracy when compared with the naïve approach.


The primary objective of this work is to provide formal guidance to county engineers throughout Minnesota for repairing timber bridge components. The benefit of having such a resource will be measured by improving the overall condition of the transportation system and reducing system failures through implementation by local officials. As is often the case, funds required to complete repairs are limited and, as a result, any method used must not only be structurally feasible but also economically feasible. This report provides bridge owners and caretakers several routine maintenance and repair options aimed to meet the goals of simplicity and affordability. The economic impact of repairing timber bridges was assessed for multiple scenarios: a comparison was made between the net present value of repair at varying repair costs over time and the net present value of varying reconstruction costs over time. Through this exercise, for each scenario, a point in time was identified when repair or reconstruction makes most economic sense. An additional assessment of overall costs (direct plus indirect) was completed, which included the increased user costs due to bridge posting or closure. This assessment made clear that when indirect costs are included, the benefits of maintaining or repairing a bridge to prevent posting or closure become great. A standalone manual, "Cost-Effective Timber Bridge Repairs: Manual for Repairs of Timber Bridges in Minnesota," was also developed for this project.


The recent demand for new measures of the rule of law confronts several methodological challenges. This article calls for careful attention to fundamental social science ideas of conceptualization and measurement in approaching the rule of law. Efforts to measure complex social phenomena such as the rule of law are challenging, and thus require that researchers and policy makers pay attention to the cautionary rules of social science in their efforts. Violating these basic rules risks producing measures that are not reliable or valid, and could be a bad basis for policymaking. This paper demonstrates some of the pitfalls that rule of law researchers have fallen into and suggests improvements in measurement approaches.


Changes in synapse and neuronal morphology have been reported in the rat hippocampal formation after the induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) of the perforant path, although few studies have investigated such parameters in the maintenance phase of L-LTP. Moreover, the results of investigations of synaptic and neuronal morphometry changes after LTP have varied and this could be due to the methods of analysis employed, the choice of stimulation protocol and or whether an in vitro or in vivo study.

This in vivo investigation applied unbiased stereological methods to examine the morphology and morphometry of perforant path-granule cell synapses, in the dentate gyrus, after the induction of LTP. Two controls were employed, the contralateral hemisphere of each animal and the inner molecular layer, where the medial perforant path has little synaptic input. Many previous studies of the first 6Omin post tetanisation have used high frequency stimulation (HFS) to induce LTP however, in this study – to determine whether changes in morphology were due to LTP per se - potentiation was induced by theta burst stimulation (TBS).

45min after the induction of LTP there were no significant differences, between hemispheres, in the mean numerical density (Nv) of axodendritic or axospinous asymmetric synapses, or the mean number of synapses per neuron in the middle molecular layer (MML) of the dentate gyrus. There were no significant differences, between potentiated and non-potentiated tissue, in the Nvs of those asymmetric synapses with perforated or concave profiles. Neither were significant differences following LTP demonstrated in the size of the postsynaptic densities of these synaptic subtypes or the volume density of apposition zone (AZ) area (Sv) of individual, or all, asymmetric axospinous synapses. However, there was a trend towards larger perforated synapses in the potentiated hemisphere and, in both hemispheres, concave and perforated synapses were larger than average. In the inner molecular layer (IML), there were no differences except for a significant decrease in the total AZ volume density in the potentiated hemisphere. This would suggest that any morphological modifications taking place in the induction phase of L-LTP may be restricted to a fraction of synapses in the MML, although perforated synapses appear to be involved.

The second part of this study examined morphological correlates 24h after the induction of LTP with TBS and HFS. In the MML after induction of LTP with TBS there were significant increases in the Nv of asymmetric axodendritic synapses and the mean number of axodendritic synapses per neuron. There was an increase in the Nv of axospinous synapses and in the mean number of axospinous synapses per neuron that was not significant. This was reflected in significant increases in the total AZ Sv and in the frequency of macular synapses in the potentiated hemisphere. 24h post tetanisation with HFS, there was a significant difference in the Nv of axospinous synapses in the MML of the potentiated compared to the contralateral hemisphere. There were also significant differences in the frequency of synapses with perforated and concave profiles. There were no significant differences in synaptic morphometric parameters, between hemispheres, in the IML after either of the stimulating regimes.

Results from the three animals in each group showing the greatest degree of potentiation, were pooled and demonstrated significant differences in the Nv and mean number of axospinous synapses per neuron. There was also a significant difference in the number of synapses with concave profiles but this was replicated in the IML.

The effects of these morphological changes, after LTP induction, on the cellular mechanisms involved and on synaptic efficacy are discussed, and possible reasons for the variable pattern of morphology after different stimulating protocols is considered.


In the study of eye movements in natural tasks, where subjects are able to freely move in their environment, it is desirable to capture a video of the surroundings of the subject not limited to a small field of view as obtained by the scene camera of an eye tracker. Moreover, recovering the head movements could give additional information about the type of eye movement that was carried out, the overall gaze change in world coordinates, and insight into high-order perceptual strategies. Algorithms for the classification of eye movements in such natural tasks could also benefit form the additional head movement data.We propose to use an omnidirectional vision sensor consisting of a small CCD video camera and a hyperbolic mirror. The camera is mounted on an ASL eye tracker and records an image sequence at 60 Hz. Several algorithms for the extraction of rotational motion from this image sequence were implemented and compared in their performance against the measurements of a Fasttrack magnetic tracking system. Using data from the eye tracker together with the data obtained by the omnidirectional image sensor, a new algorithm for the classification of different types of eye movements based on a Hidden-Markov-Model was developed.


In 2002, the U.S. Catholic bishops finally accepted that the sexual abuse of minors by priests was a widespread problem within the church that required action. The bishops asked researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to study the problem. The John Jay reports (2004 2011) found a thirty-year trend of rising incidents between 1950 and 1980, followed by a sharp decline during the 1980s. These incidents involved nearly 4,500 accused priests and nearly 11,000 different alleged victims. More than eighty percent of the victims were male. Failing to find a psychological profile that differentiated perpetrators from non-perpetrators, the researchers argued that many priests succumbed to situational temptations involving male minors, due to changing socio-cultural values about sexual activity associated with "the Sixties." The John Jay studies showed little awareness that an increasingly close relationship existed between the church and Catholic psychologists during the very decades that the incidents were rising. This relationship involved professional psychologists assessing candidates for the priesthood in order to screen out those with serious psychopathologies, including various forms of sexual deviancy, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists who treated priests for aberrant sexual behavior. Assessment psychologists detected no systemic proclivity for future child sexual abuse (although patterns of psychosexual immaturity, sociopathy, and homosexuality seem suspiciously relevant in hindsight). At the time, child sexual abuse had not been identified by the public as a serious social problem, no method existed for detecting this potential, and psychologists as a broader discipline struggled to understand the complexity of human sexual identity and behavior. Even so, there were two and possibly three points before 2002 when clergy sexual abuse might have been detected and acted on as a systemic problem within the church: the late 1930s, 1965–1971, and 1985–1986. When considered together, the work of psychologists in screening candidates, therapists in treating priests, and the John Jay data suggest that perhaps two-thirds of priests in the 1950s and 1960s were psychosexually immature and that a subset of these priests who also were sociopathic, attracted to minors, or open to same-sex activity for various reasons, including a fear of women, accounted for a sizeable share of the problem. Why these apparently relevant factors may have characterized candidates and priests to a greater degree between 1950 and 1980 is not clear.


Producing high quality scholarly publications is a daunting task for many college and university librarians. In 2007, the LSU Libraries established a writing group to assist in this process. This four-member group makes itself available to review and critique manuscripts submitted by LSU librarians, most of whom are tenure-track. This paper examines the background, formation, and experiences-to-date of this group. Emphasis is placed on the particular characteristics of the LSU group, which make this group different from similar groups at other institutions. Thus, this paper includes, in its Appendices, practical materials such as forms for writers to use when submitting their works for review. It also includes the results of a small survey given to participants in order to gauge their satisfaction with the entire review process. The purpose for sharing this information is two-fold: first, to provide for the group itself a record of the group's rationale and activities; and, second, to provide other college and university libraries with some useful tools if they are considering creating a similar program. Codex: the Journal of the Louisiana Chapter of the ACRL ISSN 2150-086X Volume 1: Issue 2 (2010) Page 19 Formation of an Academic Writing Group at Louisiana State University Libraries: Background, Guidelines and Lessons Learned


Master research methods with ESSENTIAL RESEARCH METHODS FOR SOCIAL WORK! Reader-friendly and clear, this social work book provides you with the tools you need to understand essential research methods content. Illustrations and examples throughout show you how you can apply research to practice. Studying is made easy with a book-specific website that includes tutorial quizzes and links to additional related concepts. Outlines, introductions, boxes, chapter endings with main points, review questions and exercises, and Internet exercises provide you with the information and practice you need to conduct research methods in social work.


This Article presents an innovative institutional strategy for global climate protection, quite distinct from, but ultimately complementary to and supportive of the currently stalled UNFCCC climate treaty negotiations. The bottom-up strategy relies on a variety of smallerscale transnational cooperative arrangements, involving not only states but sub-national jurisdictions, firms, and CSOs, to undertake activities whose primary goal is not climate mitigation but which will achieve greenhouse gas reductions as an inherent byproduct. This strategy avoids the inherent problems in securing an enforceable treaty to secure the global public good of climate protection by mobilizing other incentives - including economic self-interest, energy security, cleaner air, and furtherance of international development - to motivate such actors to cooperate on actions that will also benefit the climate. These bottom-up regimes will contribute to global climate action not only by achieving emissions reductions in the short-term, but also by linking the bottom-up regimes to the UNFCCC system through greenhouse gas monitoring and reporting systems. In these ways, the bottom-up strategy will help secure eventual agreement on a global climate treaty.


By the last socioeconomic crisis of 2009, it became clear that the present path of world development is not sustainable in the longer term, even if we recognize the enormous potentials of the market and technological innovation. New ideas and strategies will be needed to ensure that improved living conditions and opportunities for a growing population across the world can be reconciled with the preservation of viable living conditions for this species – or, in other words, with enlarging of the carrying capacity of the human biotope. An 'Ecosystem evolution' approach offers a vision and path for understanding human social world development and for finding new pathways for social development.


A methodology and a framework for integrated sustainability assessment of water cycle services to be used for analysis of strategic options in integrated water management has been developed. The hypothesis was that a holistic assessment framework based on local data would enable decisionmaking and sustainable development on a local scale in integrated water management. The SUWAM assessment framework was developed using the water cycle services of a small town in Western Cape, South Africa, as case. The point of departure was the municipality's plan for sustainable development. The suitability of the SUWAM Framework was assessed by comparison with two other frameworks: TRUST, from the EU-project TRUST, and City Blueprint, developed in an EIPwater action group. The comparison demonstrated that a sustainability assessment framework must: (i) be tailored to the local conditions, and (ii) that the perspective of the user, often a decision maker, must be taken into account in the interpretation of results. The methodology used in the development of the SUWAM Framework fulfilled these two criteria and produced results that were recognised as relevant for the studied case by local stakeholders. The methodology is suited for comparison and further analysis of different mitigation and adaptation measures. Keywords: Integrated Water Management, Sustainability Assessment, Water Cycle Services


Abstract. Obtaining reliable reconstructions of long-term atmospheric circulation changes in the North Atlantic region presents a persistent challenge to contemporary paleoclimate research, which has been addressed by a multitude of recent studies. In order to contribute a novel methodological aspect to this active field, we apply here evolving functional network analysis, a recently developed tool for studying temporal changes of the spatial co-variability structure of the Earth's climate system, to a set of Late Holocene paleoclimate proxy records covering the last two millennia. The emerging patterns obtained by our analysis are related to long-term changes in the dominant mode of atmospheric circulation in the region, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). By comparing the time-dependent inter-regional linkage structures of the obtained functional paleoclimate network representations to a recent multi-centennial NAO reconstruction, we identify co-variability between southern Greenland, Svalbard, and Fennoscandia as being indicative of a positive NAO phase, while connections from Greenland and Fennoscandia to central Europe are more pronounced during negative NAO phases. By drawing upon this correspondence, we use some key parameters of the evolving network structure to obtain a qualitative reconstruction of the NAO long-term variability over the entire Common Era (last 2000 years) using a linear regression model trained upon the existing shorter reconstruction.


Conventionally, product development and manufacturing of pharmaceuticals are based on small molecules and simple chemical processes. Then at the end of the genomic era, the industry was forced to adopt sophisticated biotech-based approaches for innovation of new kinds of pharmaceutical products, termed biopharmaceuticals. Following the industrial transformation, anti-cancer therapy, therapeutic proteins, vaccines and hormone
therapy become the major outputs. Specific biopharmaceutical products include insulin for diabetes, erythropoietin (EPO) to treat neutropenia, granulocytes-colony stimulating factors (G-CSFs), growth hormones, and cytokines (for therapeutic purposes). Currently, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are the fastest growing
therapeutic proteins in RD targeting at cancer treatment, inflammatory and immune related diseases. Existing cytotoxic drugs have been rejuvenated via conjugation technology with MAbs to improve effects of the former. Lead by mAbs, therapeutic protein market has claimed at least 30% of the total value
of biopharmaceuticals in the global market. Cytokines is already in advanced development for treatments of cancers, benign prostatic hyperplasia, gout and inflammatory conditions. Interestingly, insulin has been in the market for a long time, but R&D efforts are still strong especially on new formulation and delivery of oral or other
non-invasive dosage. On the other hand, even though many vaccines are already well established in the market, new technologies are still needed to make those vaccines become more potent, cost effective and convenient. Previously, it was almost impossible to accelerate development of vaccines against some diseases as it was limited by technology. Currently, there are many new vaccines against existing
targets and vaccines against new targets in the pipeline. Despite numbers of failures in the past, many biopharmaceutical companies are not discouraged to develop difficult vaccines against major problems or complex diseases including malaria, dengue, hepatitis
C and HIV. Acute issues on diseases, for instance bio-terrorism, SARS and influenza, became a major growth driver for development of new vaccines and method of production. The cost of producing biopharmaceuticals is nowhere going to be cheap. The advancement of biopharmaceutical industry also stimulates "fringe industries" that supports the entire value chain, for example an improved bio-process technology, chromatography, bio-assay development, preclinical and clinical trials contract research organisation (CRO),
sophisticated manufacturing technology, bioinformatics, contract manufacturing organisation (CMO), cold-chain management and logistics. From the business perspective, the requirement for highly specialised knowledge and skilled worker, great amount of funding required for investment and long-term investment horizon with a
big loop in J-Curve serve as great barriers to new entrants. Despite the high risks, many sophisticated investors treated this as a great opportunity for potential higher returns from successful investee companies, provided that they are well equipped with the necessary bullets for evaluation, forecasting and making the right decision before joining the party.


This paper studies the problem of ergodicity of transition probability matrices in Markovian models, such as hidden Markov models (HMMs), and how it makes very difficult the task of learning to represent long-term context for sequential data. This phenomenon hurts the forward propagation of long-term context information, as well as learning a hidden state representation to represent long-term context, which depends on propagating credit information backwards in time. Using results from Markov chain theory, we show that this problem of diffusion of context and credit is reduced when the transition probabilities approach 0 or 1, i.e., the transition probability matrices are sparse and the model essentially deterministic. The results found in this paper apply to learning approaches based on continuous optimization, such as gradient descent and the Baum-Welch algorithm.


This paper reports on an investigation into the possibility of first language (L1) transfer in the initial stages of the second language (L2) acquisition of isiXhosa by adolescent L1 speakers of Afrikaans and English, respectively. Four hypotheses about the initial state of L2 acquisition are (i) the Full Transfer hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse 1994, 1996; White 1989, 2003), (ii) the Minimal Trees hypothesis (Vainikka and Young-Scholten 1994, 1996), (iii) the Initial Hypothesis of Syntax (Platzack 1996) and (iv) the No Transfer hypothesis (Clahsen and Muysken 1986). A study was conducted to test the different predictions made by these hypotheses regarding verb placement by beginner learners of isiXhosa; data were collected by means of both a sentence completion and a grammaticality judgement task. It is argued that the results of the study are only compatible with the Full Transfer hypothesis. The implications of the results of this investigation for L2 teaching in a multilingual environment are also briefly discussed.


This report outlines the HITEC Technical Evaluation Plan for large seismic isolator and energy dissipation devices. The plan is designed to characterize the fundamental properties and performance characteristics of a wide range of devices produced by U.S. and overseas manufacturers. It describes a program of full-scale dynamic tests, the results of which should provide guidance to the transportation-engineering community regarding the performance of large seismic devices.


Current commercial fiber testing was not designed to measure or detect white specks in the small quantities that have been determined to be detrimental to the quality of dyed, finished products. In the absence of applicable fiber testing, the most logical step would be the development of counting methodologies, which would allow the accurate and repeatable quantification of white specks in a test medium that has significance to an end-product. Prior work indicated that dyed yarn was such a test medium, but the manual white speck reading process used was influenced by the limitations of human inspectors. There is a need for the application of scanner-based image analysis techniques and protocols to replace the human expert in the quantification of white specks on dyed yarn. One of the first challenges was describing a white speck from a human visual defect perspective in parameters that could be identified by image analysis counting software. This study undertook the task of creating an operational definition of a white speck confirmed by human observations that could be used to establish measurement parameters for a scanner-based image analysis procedure for counting white specks. Results demonstrated that by using scanned images of dyed yarn, in conjunction with counting software, it was possible to develop an operational definition of a white speck in terms of pixel area and gray scale level that relates to human observations.


In response to the perfect storm of falling stock returns and interest rates that hit pension funds in 2000, many companies in the United States and the United Kingdom have shifted from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) schemes. In contrast, Dutch pension plans have mainly preserved their defined benefit character in recent years, although they have switched from "final-pay" to "average-wage" schemes. The average-wage plans may be better viewed as hybrid DB-DC schemes. They are like DB plans in that accrued pension rights are based on an employee's wages and years of service, and contribution rates can be raised in response to a funding shortfall. They are like DC plans in that the annual indexation factor, which is applied to both the accrued rights of active workers and the benefits of retired workers, is tied to the fund's financial status and, therefore, investment returns. As a result, these hybrid plans have two mechanisms — contribution rates and indexation — to control solvency risk, effectively minimizing the risk of under-funding.


DEVELOPING AND LAUNCHING STRATEGIC OFF-CAMPUS COMMUNITY GROUPS AT HIGHLAND PARK BAPTIST CHURCH, MUSCLE SHOALS, ALABAMA James Eugene Taylor III, D.Min. Faculty Supervisor: Dr. William D. Henard The purpose of this project was to develop and launch strategic off-campus community groups at Highland Park Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Chapter 1 presents the goals, ministry context, and rationale of the project. Chapter 2 endeavors to establish a biblical and theological basis for offcampus community groups by examining the Bible's depiction of community. Scripture portrays the doctrine of community in several different ways. Community is seen in the unity found within the Godhead. Community is evident in the creation of humankind. Community is observed in the call and establishment of Abram and Israel, and it is witnessed in Christ's redemptive work upon the cross as he reconciles humankind back to God the Father and to one another. And finally, community is evident in the early church as they are of one mind, working together to spread the gospel message. Chapter 3 provides a framework for properly discovering, developing, and deploying off-campus community group leaders. These leaders are an essential component in the discipleship process of the church. Consequently, the way community group leaders are discovered, developed, and deployed is central to the overall health and success of the small group. Chapter 4 describes in detail the methodology of the project. Chapter 5 provides an evaluation of the project as well as some suggestions of what should have been done differently.


Background: Visualisation of the lymphatic system is a challenging task. Recently, an indocyanine green (ICG) fluorescent lymphography system was developed for visualising the lymphatic vessels. ICG emits energy in the near-infrared region between 840 and 850 nm when it is bound to protein in the tissue. Aim: To use ICG fluorescent lymphography to identify locations of the lymphatic vessel for lymphovenous shunt. Methods: The lymphatic anatomy in the upper extremity was investigated using ICG fluorescent lymphography in 3 healthy volunteers and 15 patients with breast cancer-related lymphoedema prior to them undergoing lymphaticovenular bypass. Results: In healthy volunteers, fluorescent images of lymphatic vessels emerged at the dorsal hand as a shiny linear pattern and ran longitudinally towards the proximal arm after a few minutes. In lymphoedema patients, the lymphatic vessels could be identified at the dorsal hand, but the appearance of the lymphatic structure varied between patients. Conclusions: ICG fluorescent lymphography allows for the prompt identification of the lymphatic vessels and has the potential to improve the outcomes of lymphovenous shunt operations and for use as a diagnostic tool. Declaration of interest: None.


We introduce a class of quantile regression estimators for short panels. Our framework covers static and dynamic autoregressive models, models with general predetermined regressors, and models with multiple individual effects. We use quantile regression as a flexible tool to model the relationships between outcomes, covariates, and heterogeneity. We develop an iterative simulation-based approach for estimation, which exploits the computational simplicity of ordinary quantile regression in each iteration step. Finally, an application to measure the effect of smoking during pregnancy on children's birthweights completes the paper.


A new method of biodiversity assessment is developed to characterize the biodiversity values of roads across New Zealand. The methodology blends rigorous probability sampling and PNAP sampling methodology with environmental domains analyses to characterize the biodiversity attributes of highways. It demonstrates the usefulness of this methodology in allowing regional reporting and integrating biodiversity conservation with road management by applying it to a particular road segment, State Highway 3 from Hamilton to New Plymouth. The data gathered is also used to develop an overall biodiversity enhancement and restoration plan for the studied segment of road. The biodiversity attributes of the road reserve differed markedly between the environmental sectors, and showed a strong effect from the surrounding land cover. Results indicate that the road reserve is both a biodiversity asset and a liability. The road reserve is an asset, in that it provides public lands for conservation that are highly visible to the public, often in habitats that are under-represented in the reserve network, and can provide links between existing reserves. The road reserve may be a liability in that it has reduced biodiversity value in the surrounding forests and can act as corridors for the spread of weeds into agricultural areas or indigenous forests. Effective integration of biodiversity conservation and road management can increase these assets and reduce these liabilities. This can be achieved by changing policy at all levels (Transfund NZ, Transit NZ, other roading authorities), by increasing awareness of the biodiversity value of road reserves, and by providing specific guidelines for the management and protection of roadside biodiversity. (a)


Cinematographic stereoscopic particle image velocimetry measurements were performed to resolve small and intermediate scales in the far field of an axisymmetric co-flowing jet. Measurements were performed in a plane normal to the axis of the jet and the time-resolved measurement was converted to quasi-instantaneous three-dimensional data by using Taylor's hypothesis. The quasi-instantaneous three-dimensional data enabled computation of all nine components of the velocity gradient tensor over a volume. The results based on statistical analysis of the data, including computation of joint p.d.f.s and conditional p.d.f.s of the principal strain rates, vorticity and dissipation, are all in agreement with previous numerical and experimental studies, which validates the quality of the quasi-instantaneous data. Instantaneous iso-surfaces of the principal intermediate strain rate (β) show that sheet-forming strain fields (i.e. β > 0) are themselves organized in the form of sheets, whereas line-forming strain fields (β < 0) are organized into smaller spotty structures (not lines). Iso-surfaces of swirling strength (a vortex identification parameter) in the volume reveal that, in agreement with direct numerical simulation results, the intense vortex structures are in the form of elongated 'worms' with characteristic diameter of approximately 10η and characteristic length of 60--100η. Iso-surfaces of intense dissipation show that the most dissipative structures are in the form of sheets and are associated with clusters of vortex tubes. Approximately half of the total dissipation occurs in structures that are generally sheet-like, whereas the other half occurs in broad indistinct structures. The largest length scale of dissipation sheets is of order 60η and the characteristic thickness (in a plane normal to the axis of the sheet) is about 10η. The range of scales between 10η (thickness of dissipation sheets, diameter of vortex tubes) to 60η (size of dissipation sheet or length of vortex tubes) is consistent with the bounds for the dissipation range in the energy and dissipation spectrum as inferred from the three-dimensional model energy spectrum.


This research focuses on a previously unexamined risk associated with the widely used new product development strategy of line extensions. Specifically, it explores consumer reactions when line extensions become too visually similar and examines both short-term and longer term strategies for solving the problem. Examined in the context of consumer durables, specifically, automobiles, the results show that consumers who make categorization mistakes when trying to distinguish between two visually similar product lines have more negative attitudes not only toward the product but also toward the parent brand. The results of Study 1 confirm that providing a design vocabulary that articulates the car's design features is effective in reducing consumer's categorization mistakes. In addition, results of Study 2 indicate that changes to the car's "eyes" (headlights) are more effective than changes to the car's "mouth" (grille) in helping consumers to differentiate among cars in the line.


The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments. They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.


This paper presents a weakly supervised instance segmentation method that consumes training data with tight bounding box annotations. The major difficulty lies in the uncertain figure-ground separation within each bounding box since there is no supervisory signal about it. We address the difficulty by formulating the problem as a multiple instance learning (MIL) task, and generate positive and negative bags based on the sweeping lines of each bounding box. The proposed deep model integrates MIL into a fully supervised instance segmentation network, and can be derived by the objective consisting of two terms, i.e., the unary term and the pairwise term. The former estimates the foreground and background areas of each bounding box while the latter maintains the unity of the estimated object masks. The experimental results show that our method performs favorably against existing weakly supervised methods and even surpasses some fully supervised methods for instance segmentation on the PASCAL VOC dataset.


Purpose: Hypomagnesemia contributes to morbidity in a significant proportion of hospitalized and severely ill patients, but it could also have beneficial anticancer effects. Alimentary tract mucositis is a frequent complication of cytotoxic chemotherapy. The aim of this study was to determine frequency and severity of hypomagnesemia in patients with different grades of chemotherapy-induced alimentary tract mucositis and to assess its clinical manifestations. Methods: Multicentric observational study included 226 adult patients with alimentary mucositis treated at 3 different institutions. Patients were evaluated for severity of mucositis and the presence of hypomagnesemia, symptoms associated with hypomagnesemia, hypocalcemia, ECG changes and granulocytopenia. Subgroup analysis related to mucositis severity and presence of hypomagnesemia was performed. Results: Patients with grade 3 or 4 alimentary mucositis expectedly had more frequent and more severe granulocytopenia than patients with milder mucositis (49.6% vs. 35.4%, P = 0.043), but there were no differences in rate of hypomagnesemia (24.8% vs. 26.5%). When compared to patients with normal magnesium levels, patients with hypomagnesemia had higher rates of hypocalcemia (50.0% vs. 32.7%, P = 0.026), QTc prolongation (15.5% vs. 3.0%, P = 0.002) and granulocytopenia (77.6% vs. 39.9%, P < 0.001), while there was no difference in symptoms or other ECG features among these subgroups. Conclusions: Hypomagnesaemia is not associated with the severity of chemotherapy-induced mucositis. However, hypomagnesaemia was associated with higher rates of granulocytopenia and hypocalcemia. Our study failed to identify the link between hypomagnesaemia and chemotherapy-induced mucositis.


In dispersed acini prepared from guinea pig pancreas, peptides isolated from amphibian skin (caerulein, bombesin, litorin, and physalaemin) as well as eledoisin, a peptide isolated from the posterior salivary gland of a Mediterranean octopod, caused a significant increase in amylase release. Each amphibian peptide potentiated the stimulation of amylase release caused by vasoactive intestinal peptide or secretin in that the increase in amylase release caused by an amphibian peptide plus vasoactive intestinal peptide or secretin was significantly greater than the sum of the increase caused by each secretagogue acting alone. Potentiation of amylase secretion did not occur with an amphibian peptide plus cholecystokinin or carbachol.


Abstract Management of existing structures has traditionally been based on condition assessment, based on visual inspections, disregarding the susceptibility of different structural types to aging and deterioration. Robustness, as a measure of the effects of unpredictable damage to structural safety can be a complementary information to the results of inspection. Although robustness has mostly been used to evaluate the consequences of extreme events, a similar framework can be used to investigate the result of aging, allowing a better understanding of the potential effects of deterioration and allowing a better allocation of available maintenance funding. In this work, a probabilistic structural robustness indicator is used to quantify the susceptibility of structures to corrosion. The methodology is exemplified through a case study comprising an existing reinforced concrete bridge deck, heavily damaged due to reinforcement corrosion, and finally demolished due to safety concerns. Robustness measures the bridge deck safety tolerance to reinforcement corrosion. The principal effects of corrosion, including loss of area and bond between concrete and steel are modelled using a non-linear finite-element model, coupled with a Response Surface Method to compute the bridge reliability as a function of the corrosion level, and finally used to assess robustness. Results show that the redundancy of the bridge allows significant redistribution of loads between elements with different corrosion levels. As a result, the bridge presents significant robustness and tolerance to reinforcement corrosion.


This work is concerned with the characterisation of epitaxial (Hg,Mn)Te, and in particular the assessment of the structural and transport properties of the layers. Direct alloy growth (DAG) of (Hg,Mn)Te on buffered GaAs and unbuffered (Cd,Zn)Te substrates in a horizontal MOVPE reactor resulted in poor surface compositional and thickness uniformity. This was attributed to the differences in the pyrolysis rates of the Te and Mn precursors. Double crystal x-ray diffraction was used to determine accurately layer thickness, composition and quality. Analysis of the symmetric and asymmetric rocking curves revealed that for thickness over lµm (Hg,Mn)Te was almost 100% relaxed. A reduction in the dislocation density, as inferred from the x-ray rocking curve width, was observed with increasing layer thickness and was considered in terms of the Gay model. A sub-grain structure was seen using double crystal x-ray topography, where grain diameter decreased in a linear manner with inverse layer thickness. Triple axis x- ray diffraction revealed that tilts between the sub-grains were the primary cause of the rocking curve broadening. Hall and resistivity measurements were made in the temperature range 4K to 290K. The majority of the layers exhibited n-type behaviour, with carrier concentrations and mobilities dependent on layer thickness. Modelling of the temperature dependence of the carrier mobility was attempted for various lattice and impurity scattering mechanisms. Attempts were also made to explain the temperature dependence of the carrier concentration using a two band model and estimates for the bandgaps obtained from intrinsic Hall data. The interdiffused multilayer process (IMP) was then employed, resulting in layers with superior lateral compositional and thickness uniformities. Improved crystalline quality to that seen in comparable DAG layers was also obtained. The electron mobilities were higher in IMP lasers than incomparable DAG ones and analysis of the mobility data indicated that several scattering mechanisms were operative, including ionised and neutral impurity, optical phonon and piezoelectric (in Mn rich layers) scattering. Layers grown by IMP appeared to be more stable and changes in transport properties over a period of a few months were less pronounced than for comparable DAG layers.


Traditional service-based applications, in fixed networks, are typically constructed and managed centrally and assume stable service endpoints and adequate network connectivity. Constructing and maintaining such applications in dynamic heterogeneous wireless networked environments, where limited bandwidth and transient connectivity are commonplace, presents significant challenges and makes centralized application construction and management impossible. In this demonstration we present an architecture which is capable of providing an adaptable and resilient method for on-demand decentralized construction and management of complex time-critical applications in such environments. The approach uses a Vector Symbolic Architecture (VSA) to compactly represent an application as a single semantic vector that encodes the service interfaces, workflow, and the time-critical constraints required. By extending existing services interfaces, with a simple cognitive layer that can interpret and exchange the vectors, we show how the required services can be dynamically discovered and interconnected in a completely decentralized manner. There are a large number of workflow systems designed to work in various scientific domains, including support for the Internet of Things (IoT). One such workflow system is Node-RED, which is designed to bring workflow-based programming to IoT. The main focus of this demonstration is to show how we can migrate Node-RED workflows into a decentralized execution environment, so that such workflows can run on Edge networks.