Phasiinae (Diptera: Tachinidae) are endoparasitoid flies that attack Heteroptera, including a multitude of agricultural pests. A phylogenetically informed classification of Phasiinae has eluded systematists for over a century, primarily because of the conflicting character states and confusing morphology of certain taxa that indicate potential placement within other subfamilies. The unstable nature of phasiine taxonomy discourages important research into their classification, life history and potential use in biological control. In hopes of resolving several longstanding taxonomic debates and encouraging future research into this important group of parasitoids, the first molecular systematic analysis of Phasiinae is presented, including 128 worldwide taxa (80 genera) and approximately 7.6 kb of nuclear data representing four genes. Special emphasis is placed on the resolution of taxonomically ambiguous groups. The resulting robustly supported phylogenetic trees [maximum‐likelihood (ML)/Bayesian] were used to trace the evolution of significant adaptive traits within Tachinidae and test hypotheses about the classification of Phasiinae. Subfamily placements of certain taxa are confidently resolved including Eutherini, Epigrimyiini, Litophasia Girschner within Dexiinae, and Strongygastrini and Parerigonini within Phasiinae. The members of tribe Phasiini are redistributed: Cistogaster Latreille, Clytiomya Rondani, Ectophasia Townsend, Eliozeta Rondani and Euclytia Townsend transferred to Gymnosomatini; Opesia Robineau‐Desvoidy to Strongygastrini; and Xysta Meigen to Xystini. Similarly, members of Parerigonini are treated as belonging to Parerigonini (Parerigone Brauer, Zambesomima Walker), Cylindromyiini (Australotachina Curran, Pygidimyia Crosskey, Neobrachelia Townsend) or new tribe Zitini (Zita Curran, Leverella Baranov). Penthosia van der Wulp is transferred from Cylindromyiini to Hermyini. Ancestral state reconstruction suggests that piercing structures used to insert eggs directly into host tissues have evolved separately in a number of groups, but have also been lost or reduced in several lineages. A single potentially unequivocal morphological synapomorphy of Phasiinae, an elongated medial plate of the hypandrium in males, is identified.


The reinforcement learning (RL) community has made great strides in designing algorithms capable of exceeding human performance on specific tasks. These algorithms are mostly trained one task at the time, each new task requiring to train a brand new agent instance. This means the learning algorithm is general, but each solution is not; each agent can only solve the one task it was trained on. In this work, we study the problem of learning to master not one but multiple sequentialdecision tasks at once. A general issue in multi-task learning is that a balance must be found between the needs of multiple tasks competing for the limited resources of a single learning system. Many learning algorithms can get distracted by certain tasks in the set of tasks to solve. Such tasks appear more salient to the learning process, for instance because of the density or magnitude of the in-task rewards. This causes the algorithm to focus on those salient tasks at the expense of generality. We propose to automatically adapt the contribution of each task to the agent's updates, so that all tasks have a similar impact on the learning dynamics. This resulted in state of the art performance on learning to play all games in a set of 57 diverse Atari games. Excitingly, our method learned a single trained policy - with a single set of weights - that exceeds median human performance. To our knowledge, this was the first time a single agent surpassed human-level performance on this multi-task domain. The same approach also demonstrated state of the art performance on a set of 30 tasks in the 3D reinforcement learning platform DeepMind Lab.


As the EU's relations with Russia remain at an all-time low and continue to be in a state of paralysis, marked by de-institutionalisation, inertia and estrangement, the EU's policy towards Russia seems up for review. By taking stock of the implementation of the EU's Global Strategy and the five principles that are guiding EU-Russia relations, this volume provides a forward-looking angle and contributes to a better understanding of the current EU-Russia relationship and the prospects for overcoming the existing deadlock. By bringing together European and Russian scholars and adopting an interdisciplinary perspective that combines insights from EU studies, international relations, and European and international law, the book provides a comprehensive and holistic view on the state of affairs in EU-Russia relations.


Despite increases in the human life span, people have not increased their rate of saving. In a phenomenon known as 'temporal discounting', people value immediate gains over future gains. According to a future self-continuity hypothesis, individuals perceive and treat the future self differently from the present self, and so might fail to save for their future. Neuroimaging offers a novel means of testing this hypothesis, since previous research indicates that self- vs other-judgments elicit activation in the rostral anterior cingulate (rACC). Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we predicted and found not only individual differences in rACC activation while rating the current vs future self, but also that individual differences in current vs future self activation predicted temporal discounting assessed behaviorally a week after scanning. In addition to supporting the future self-continuity hypothesis, these findings hold implications for significant financial decisions, such as choosing whether to save for the future or spend in the present.


The aim of this work is to formulate a rapid method for finding out the degree of water pollution in the field, based on the toxicity produced by sulfates and metals dissolved in solution, using simple pH measurement in rivers that undergo AMD processes and which flow into public water supply dams. A classification model based on the degree of the impact is proposed, which is applied to a river affected by AMD in the Iberian Pyritic Belt, and which might serve as a reference for other dams that have to tolerate the arrival of mine water. Application of the proposed method will allow the approximate state of the water quality to be learned by simply measuring its pH. This may prove very useful during the design of hydrochemical control networks. Weighting and standardizing values allows the relative extent of the pollution to be quantified simply, still within the framework of the permitted limits for the public water supply, while the proposed graphical representation makes it significantly easier to understand the phenomenon and proves useful for comparing temporal or spatial variations over the course of a river.


Unrepresented patients are individuals who lack decision makingcapacity and have no family or friends to make medical decisions for them. This population is growing in number in the United States, particularly within emergency and intensive care settings. While some bioethical discussion has taken place in response to the question of who ought to make decisions for these patients, the issue of how surrogate medical decisions ought to be made for this population remains unexplored. In this paper, we argue that standard applications of surrogate decision making principles in health care are not well suited to many unrepresented patients with long-term mental health diagnosis. We argue that when applied to this population, the substituted judgment standard, designed to preserve patient preferences and values, may lead to the exclusion of their preferences. We argue further that the application of the best interest standard runs the risk of leading to harmful cases of overtreatment or undertreatment. We offer an alternative interpretation of the best interest principle that is better able to promote the well-being of unrepresented patients, especially for those who lack capacity because of mental disorders. This alternative is based on the practices and principles of harm reduction and includes three components: emphasis on considering the expressed preferences of unrepresented patients, a focus on reducing harm as well as the delivery of clinical benefits, and a recognition of the importance of promoting trust.


Arising from the supposed negative impact of illegal immigration, including security threats as well as recent xenophobic violence, the South African Government would like to counter illegal immigration. To do this, it needs to understand the root causes of illegal immigration into the country. This article, therefore, seeks to explain and interpret why illegal immigrants make South Africa their ideal choice of destination. To provide a context, the article begins with a discussion on the research setting, that is, the South African international boundaries. Thereafter, the article discusses the concept of illegal immigration from the South African context before reviewing literature on the number of illegal immigrants in South Africa and the supposed impact. The article then explores literature on international movements and discusses established migration frameworks that explain and interpret these movements. Lastly, to confirm some facts arising from the review, we interviewed officials that manage illegal immigration as well as detained immigrants. We establish that four migration streams that have created a blended society in Southern Africa sparked illegal immigration into South Africa. The article conclude that the problem of illegal immigration into South Africa is perpetuated by deep-rooted migration networks. Therefore, if the South African Government wants to avert illegal immigration, its policy-makers should examine these roots and take them into account to arrive at a solution that is in sync with the root causes of the problem.


Numerical simulations were conducted to systematically assess the effects of different spray models on the ignition delay predictions and compared with experimental measurements obtained at the KAUST ignition quality tester (IQT) facility. The influence of physical properties and chemical kinetics over the ignition delay time is also investigated. The IQT experiments provided the pressure traces as the main observables, which are not sufficient to obtain a detailed understanding of physical (breakup, evaporation) and chemical (reactivity) processes associated with auto-ignition. A threedimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, CONVERGE, was used to capture the detailed fluid/spray dynamics and chemical characteristics within the IQT configuration. The Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) turbulence with multi-zone chemistry sub-models was adopted with a reduced chemical kinetic mechanism for n-heptane and iso-octane. The emphasis was on the assessment of two common spray breakup models, namely the Kelvin-Helmholtz/Rayleigh-Taylor (KH-RT) and linearized instability sheet atomization (LISA) models, in terms of their influence on auto-ignition predictions. Two spray models resulted in different local mixing, and their influence in the prediction of auto-ignition was investigated. The relative importance of physical ignition delay, characterized by spray evaporation and mixing processes, in the overall ignition behavior for the two different fuels were examined. The results provided an improved understanding of the essential contribution of physical and chemical processes that are critical in describing the IQT auto-ignition event at different pressure and temperature conditions, and allowed a systematic way to distinguish between the physical and chemical ignition delay times.


IN JANUARY 1865, BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON assumed the artistic directorship of the Christiania Theater, a position that he held until the summer of 1867. One of the first plays that he produced during his successful yet turbulent tenure as artistic director was A Midsummer Night's Dream (En skjorsommernattsdrom), which premiered on 17 April 1865 in Oehlenschlager's translation with music by Mendelssohn. Responding to unfavorable reviews of the production, Bjornson published an essay on A Midsummer Night's Dream in Aftenbladet on 28 April 1865 in which he claimed that the Aftenbladet reviewer of the production had focused unduly on the "ydre Handling" [outer plot] of the play--the "dream" and the various fanciful characters and events that add to the illusion of the dream. Two Morgenbladet reviews, he further charged, had elucidated "hverken [Stykkets] ydre eller indre" [neither (the play's) outer nor its inner (plot)]. (1) It is unfortunate that Bjornson's ensuing analysis of what he designated as the "inner plot" of A Midsummer Night's Dream--the main characters' experiences of love and rejection--has been given little attention in secondary literature. (2) His analysis yields significant insights not only into his attempts to interpret the classics for his audience, but also into the personal circumstances that most likely kindled his intense interest in the drama. (3) As will be shown, Bjornson saw in A Midsummer Night's Dream a play that would stimulate the Norwegian imagination without the need for extensive props or fancy costumes, and he also assumed that his spectators would identify with the tribulations of characters who dream about love and betrayal just as he had identified with the characters' predicaments in reflecting on his own personal life. Fixated on the clear relevance of this inner plot for his personal life, however, he appears not to have understood that his spectators found it difficult to discern any relevance of the play for their own lives since the clumsy acting and uninspired set and costumes failed to engage them. Despite this failure, the production represents the crucial first step in Bjornson's successful campaign as artistic director to stimulate Norwegian interest in the theater. Before becoming artistic director, Bjornson had frequently protested against the Danish influence on the Norwegian stage. As a young theater critic in the 1850s, he had criticized the Danish director Carl Peter Borgaard for his unwillingness to cultivate the talents of the few Norwegian actors at the Christiania Theater. In an article published in Krydseren (1 March 1854), he raged that the aging Danish actress Augusta Schrumpf was given youthful roles while promising young Norwegian actresses were cast merely as extras (Artikler og Taler 1:51-7). In 1856, he organized "pipekonserter" ("whistle concerts") to protest the hiring of the Danish actor Ferdinand Schmidt, who officially was only visiting the Christiania Theater but had in fact been given a longer engagement. Norwegian actors were though in fact being cast in principal roles well before Bjornson assumed the artistic directorship of the Christiania Theater in January 1865, and only six of the theater's forty actors were Danes in the 1865-64 season (Blanc 183). But ensuring that plays would be performed with Norwegian pronunciation and by Norwegian actors did not alone satisfy Bjornson, who was convinced that creating a solid tradition of Norwegian theater would also entail both preparing the actors to perform more difficult pieces--first and foremost the classics, which he viewed as a means of measuring the growing abilities of the actors--and educating the theater-going public to appreciate serious drama. His expectation that A Midsummer Night's Dream would pique his spectators' interest in theatrical masterpieces is evident in his decision to have the play performed five evenings in a row, at the time a long run. (4) The reviews of A Midsummer Night's Dream point to the difficulties that Bjornson experienced in attempting to achieve his goals. …


All organisms have limited amounts of energy, time and nutrients to spend during their lifetime and this gives rise to trade-offs in life histories. It has been shown that increased reproductive effort can reduce parasite resistance and specific immune response in birds. This suggest that there is a trade-off between spending energy on immune system and reproductive effort. Within birds there are several suitable blood parasites that can be used as model organisms for the study of parasite - host interactions, of which 3 genera of protozoan haemosporidians which one could call malaria parasites. Since a few years back it is possible to detect and investigate with high accuracy and speed whether individual organisms are infected with blood parasites or not. Still, there is not sufficient knowledge about how avian malaria parasites affect their host's fitness. In this study I investigated how reproductive success of collared flycatchers is affected by the presence of malaria and if a certain secondary sexual character is correlated to infection. I also used old biometrical data to see if there is a correlation between size as nestling and malaria infection as old. I found that females infected with avian malaria have a lower reproductive success, and that adult males infected with malaria have on average less white on their 3rd tertial feather than non-infected ones. I also show that infected individuals were smaller as 12 day nestlings than non-infected individuals.


Infants unable to maintain oral feeding can be nourished by orogastric tube. We have shown that orogastric continuous feeding restricts muscle protein synthesis compared with intermittent bolus feeding in neonatal pigs. To determine whether leucine infusion can be used to enhance protein synthesis during continuous feeding, neonatal piglets received the same amount of formula enterally by orogastric tube for 25.25 h continuously (CON) with or without LEU or intermittently by bolus every 4 h (BOL). For the CON+LEU group, leucine pulses were administered parenterally (800 μmol·kg(-1)·h(-1)) every 4 h. Insulin and glucose concentrations increased after the BOL meal and were unchanged in groups fed continuously. LEU infusion during CON feeding increased plasma leucine after the leucine pulse and decreased essential amino acids compared with CON feeding. Protein synthesis in longissimus dorsi (LD), gastrocnemius, and soleus muscles, but not liver or heart, were greater in CON+LEU and BOL than in the CON group. BOL feeding increased protein synthesis in the small intestine. Muscle S6K1 and 4E-BP1 phosphorylation and active eIF4E·eIF4G complex formation were higher in CON+LEU and BOL than in CON but AMPKα, eIF2α, and eEF2 phosphorylation were unchanged. LC3-II-to-total LC3 ratio was lower in CON+LEU and BOL than in CON, but there were no differences in atrogin-1 and MuRF-1 abundance and FoxO3 phosphorylation. In conclusion, administration of leucine pulses during continuous orogastric feeding in neonates increases muscle protein synthesis by stimulating translation initiation and may reduce protein degradation via the autophagy-lysosome, but not the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway.


Students find ethical and moral issues central and interesting when they interpret history. History can offer explanations and references to moral values that are still valid - or not valid - in our time. At the same time moral values provide conceivable contexts that connect students to the past. Views on interrelations between the past and the present seem to interact with the students' moral foundations, questions, interpretations, understanding or repudiation. On a societal level similar phenomena can be identified when groups of people turn to history either to handle challenges or to apologize or heal wrongs from the past. Furthermore National curricula prescribe ethical dimensions in school education, not least for the subject of history. In this pilot study swedish 9th grade students discuss a text from Christopher Brownings' book Ordinary Men. The students' answers are analysed in a theroetical model including different aspects of historical consciousness and different apsects of moral reasoning. The aim is to study if there are patterns of interrelations and, if so, how these patterns are manifested.


Iraq highly depends on its surface water resources. Now it is facing water shortage problems. For these reasons, the utilization of groundwater will be increasing with time. Karbala Governorate is located in the central part of Iraq. It covers an area of 5034 km2 and the population exceeds one million. It is characterized by an arid or semiarid environment. Karbala Governorate lack surface water resource and consequently, groundwater is the only available resource. The main groundwater aquifer within the area is Dibdibba formation. It is composed of poorly sorted sand and sand stone with gravel. In this research hydrological and hydrogeological information were used to find out the magnitude and the direction of groundwater seepage velocity. The results indicate that groundwater flow toward the flood plain to the east of the study region. The seepage velocity ranges from 0 to 0.18 m/d, with a general increase when moving from the west to the east.


We place perturbative unitarity constraints on both the dimensionful and dimensionless couplings in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model Higgs Sector. These constraints, plus the requirement that the singlino and/or Higgsino constitutes at least part of the observed dark matter relic abundance, generate upper bounds on the Higgs and neutralino/chargino mass spectrum. We obtain an upper bound of 12 TeV for the charginos and neutralinos and 20 TeV for the heavy Higgses outside defined fine-tuned regions. By using the NMSSM as a template, we describe a method which replaces naturalness arguments with more rigorous perturbative unitarity arguments to get a better understanding of when new physics will appear.


This paper studies access to finance by suppliers that are linked to a multinational enterprise. The theoretical framework consists of a property rights model featuring suppliers that are either vertically integrated or sell to the multinational at arm's length, which in turn affects the availability of different sources of credit. Integrated suppliers are predicted to cover a relatively larger share of their costs using internal sources, consisting of initial wealth plus funds from the multinational parent. In addition, due to the diminished dependence on external funds (local bank credit), integrated suppliers' funding shares are less responsive to changes in their home country's level of financial development. We test the model's predictions using firm survey data from over 50 developing and emerging countries and find broad support.


John Rae made a wide-ranging contribution to economics, in particular through his work on Capital Theory and Technical Change. Although Rae was held in high esteem by some of the great names of the past who have openly acknowledged his originality and their indebtedness to him, he has not yet received all the attention he deserves. In The Economics of John Rae, respected economists, redress the general neglect of Rae as a classical economist and examine his role as a political economist.


The beginning of the 1 st millennium BC was one of the key periods in the development of glassmaking technologies, characterized by the supplanting of plant-ash technology by natron-based production, which would be typical of the Roman glass industry. The ESEM-EDS, EMPA, and LA-ICPMS analyses of 72 glass samples from Sarno, Cuma and Capua (Campania, southern Italy), dated to the 9 th –6 th century BC, revealed a complex picture as regards both the chemical composition of the glass and the trade routes of Early Iron Age Campania. The sample set was composed of classic natron glass, natron black glass (characterised by high levels of FeO ≥ 10 wt%), natron alumina-cobalt blue glass coloured with Egyptian cobaltiferous alum, and plant-ash glass. The trace-element analysis made it possible to hypothesize the trade routes that linked ancient Campania with the Eastern Mediterranean.


Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl and Private First Class Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning have something in common. Military officials unlawfully closed all or portions of their preliminary hearings to the public. When doing so, military officials exploited two unusual features of the military justice system, thereby denying the accused and the media of their respective Sixth Amendment and First Amendment rights to a public hearing.
The first feature is that the military justice system does not include a standing trial-level court. If there is a problem at the preliminary hearing, the accused and media have nowhere to go for help. The accused and the media must file a writ petition with a military appellate court to vindicate their rights. This leads to the second feature: these courts routinely find that they do not have jurisdiction to hear these claims. And when these courts deny the writ petitions, the accused and the media are left without an effective remedy. Recognizing this, military officials now block access to these hearings by mischaracterizing these challenges as Freedom of Information Act requests. They then tell the accused and the media to seek relief using the rights provided under that law, knowing none will be coming anytime soon.
Using the Bergdahl case as context, this Article describes this blocking maneuver. It then exposes the flawed reasoning that military appellate courts use when refusing to hear these constitutional claims. Finally, this Article offers legislative and regulatory fixes to ensure public access to these hearings.
Now is the time for change. In the last three years, Congress and the President have made significant changes to the military justice system. These changes have come in large part because the public lost trust and confidence in the military justice system. Transparency fosters trust and confidence. The more the public knows about what is considered at a preliminary hearing, the more trust and confidence the public will have in the commander's prosecutorial decision based on that hearing, and, ultimately, in the overall role of commanders in the military justice system.


ABSTRACT One biological need for Ni in marine cyanobacteria stems from the utilization of the Ni metalloenzyme urease for the assimilation of urea as a nitrogen source. In many of the same cyanobacteria, including Synechococcus sp. strain WH8102, an additional and obligate nutrient requirement for Ni results from usage of a Ni superoxide dismutase (Ni-SOD), which is encoded by sodN. To better understand the effects of Ni deprivation on WH8102, parallel microarray-based analysis of gene expression and gene knockout experiments were conducted. The global transcriptional response to Ni deprivation depends upon the nitrogen source provided for growth; fewer than 1% of differentially expressed genes for Ni deprivation on ammonium or urea were concordantly expressed. Surprisingly, genes for putative Ni transporters, including one colocalized on the genome with sodN, sodT, were not induced despite an increase in Ni transport. Knockouts of the putative Ni transporter gene sodT appeared to be lethal in WH8102, so the genes for sodT and sodN in WH8102 were interrupted with the gene for Fe-SOD, sodB, and its promoter from Synechococcus sp. strain WH7803. The sodT::sodB exconjugants were unable to grow at low Ni concentrations, confirming that SodT is a Ni transporter. The sodN::sodB exconjugants displayed higher growth rates at low Ni concentrations than did the wild type, presumably due to a relaxed competition between urease and Ni-SOD for Ni. Both sodT::sodB and sodN::sodB lines exhibited an impaired ability to grow at low Fe concentrations. We propose a posttranslational allosteric SodT regulation involving the binding of Ni to a histidine-rich intracellular protein loop.


SUMMARY. Therapeutic importance and benefices caused by antineoplastic drugs are unquestionable however unfortunately well-known are their side effects. So, the extensive use and the exposure to multiple agents may be at risk to health care workers involved in the preparation and administration of these drugs. It is therefore important to have accurate methods for simultaneous analysis for evaluation of the occupational exposure. In this study, we have developed a method for simultaneous determination of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), methotrexate (MTX), doxorubicin (DOX), cyclophosphamide (CP) and ifosfamide (IF). The assay was performed by HPLC-UV, detection in 195 nm, with a C18 column (250 x 4 mm, 5 μm) with a similar guard- column. Mobile phase was constituted by water pH 4: acetonitrile: methanol (70:17:13, v/v/v) with a flow of 0.4 mL min–1 up to 13 min and after this, 1 mL min–1. For cleaning of surfaces, we used a solution of acetonitrile: methanol (50:50, v/v). The method presented a linear calibration in a range from 0.25 to 20 μg mL–1, for 5-FU and MTX and from 0.5 to 20 μg mL–1 for IF, DOX and CP, with correlation coefficients (r2) upper to 0.997. The repeatability, expressed in terms of percent relative standard deviation, was ≤ 10% and recovery was > 70%, in surfaces contaminated with the analytes. The results obtained suggest that the method developed can be applicable for simultaneous determination of the five drugs studied and can be considered useful in exposure assessment.


Accountancy's double-entry bookkeeping system has spread throughout the world over the past 5 centuries. Within each country, local accountants have adopted accountancy practices to suit their unique environment. In the modern global business environment, this uniqueness makes crossborder financial statement comparisons difficult. A key objective of a globally acceptable set of accounting standards (such as IFRS), is to enhance such trans-national comparisons of corporate performances. However, research revealed that the influence of cultural backgrounds is a key contributing factor influencing accounting practices. It is evident that culture is a key concomitant of accounting development, including accounting education. Two globally recognized authors on the importance of culture in the work environment, Hofstede and Gray, developed cultural dimensions to gauge the cultural impact in a business environment. The primary objective of this research was to consider the impact of different cultural backgrounds, as measured by Hofstede and Gray on prospective accountants in South Africa, as an early adopter of IFRS. The results of the study suggest that culture will play an important role in accounting education and acceptance in the culturally diverse South African context.


This article proposes a lexicographical approach to the compilation of multilingual concept literacy glossaries which may play a very important role in supporting students at institutions of higher education. In order to support concept literacy, especially for students for whom English is not the native language, a number of universities in South Africa are compiling multilingual glossaries through which the use of languages other than English may be employed as auxiliary media. Terminologies in languages other than English are developed by translating English terms or coining new terms in these languages to exploit the native language competence of most students. The glossary project at the University of Cape Town (UCT) which was conceived under the auspices of the Multilingualism Education Project (MEP) is discussed. It is shown that the UCT glossaries are compiled using methods consistent with those employed in modern lexicography or proffered in lexicographical theory. The lexicographical function theory is specifically used to account for the glossaries and their production. It is suggested that modern lexicography can provide useful guidance for the production of glossaries, given that the earliest glossaries constitute the humble beginnings of lexicography.


This thesis describes an exploratory experimental and theoretical study of gasification of wood powder in a cyclone gasifier. The generated gas could be used to operate a gas turbine in a combined cyclone power plant. The objective has been to develop the understanding of cyclone gasification by experimental studies of the performance of a cyclone designed in principle as a separation cyclone and by comparisons between the experimental results and theoretical predictions. The experiments were carried out with commercial Swedish wood powder fuels, injected with air or steam/air mixture through two diametrically opposite tangential inlets and gasified at atmospheric pressure in cyclones of two different configurations with a volume of about 0.034 m3. The studies show that stable gasification of this fuel can be obtained for a specific fuel feeding rate of about 5 MW/m3 cyclone volume for equivalence ratios above 0.15 and that the equivalence ratio had to be kept below about 0.4 in order to avoid material temperatures above 950oC. A cyclone with a short outlet pipe, designed as a conventional separation cyclone was found to give lower char conversion than a modified cyclone with a long outlet pipe. The heating value of the gas was found to be approximately 4.5 MJ/kg. The dust load in the product gas was measured to between 1000 and 2500 mg/Nm3. It was possible to separate at least 40-60% of the potassium and 60-90% of the sodium supplied with the wood. The alkali that left the cyclone with the product gas appear to be in solid or melted phase in the unseparated char particles and consequently not vaporised during gasification. As the K and Na were assumed to remain within the particles during gasification, it was concluded that to reduce the amount of alkali metals in the product gas it would be necessary to improve the particle separation efficiency. The results of the theoretical modelling, using the existing models in the commercial software CFX 4.2, show with 3-dimensional modelling of the cyclone flow that RSM turbulence models give better agreement between predicted and observed velocity distributions than k-e models. Nevertheless, the latter give acceptable predictions as regards particle separation. Comparisons between predicted and experimental performance of cyclone gasifiers show that the heating value is over-predicted and the carbon conversion and alkali carry over are under-predicted. The results show that further development of the theoretical models is necessary.


The paper characterizes several empirical regularities of closed- end fund prices and examines the extent to which a 'sentiment' model of asset prices is consistent with the empirical regularities. We find that after controlling for the effect of cross-border investment restrictions, country funds trade at an average discount. Discounts vary substantially and contribute to a variance in country fund weekly returns which is generally three times greater than the returns on the net asset value (NAV). Regression analysis suggests that discounts have predictive power for fund returns but not for NAV returns, suggesting that investor 'sentiment' is a component of the price of a fund and not its NAV. Estimation of an unobserved components model on the discounts of the funds reveals a significant and strongly persistent common component across fund discounts. Regressions of fund and NAV returns on financial variables reveal that fund prices are 'sticky' with respect to movements in the host country's stock market and overly sensitive to variation in the U.S. and world stock markets. This relation is unaffected when we consider separately funds whose host countries restrict cross-border investment and funds which invest in emerging stock markets.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)


M edical nutrition therapy (MNT) is important in preventing diabetes, managing existing diabetes, and preventing, or at least slowing, the rate of development of diabetes complications. It is, therefore, important at all levels of diabetes prevention (see Table 1). MNT is also an integral component of diabetes self-management education (or training). This position statement provides evidence-based recommendations and interventions for diabetes MNT. The previous position statement with accompanying technical review was published in 2002 (1) and modified slightly in 2004 (2). This statement updates previous position statements, focuses on key references published since the year 2000, and uses grading according to the level of evidence available based on the American Diabetes Association evidence-grading system. Since overweight and obesity are closely linked to diabetes, particular attention is paid to this area of MNT. The goal of these recommendations is to make people with diabetes and health care providers aware of beneficial nutrition interventions. This requires the use of the best available scientific evidence while taking into account treatment goals, strategies to attain such goals, and changes individuals with diabetes are willing and able to make. Achieving nutrition-related goals requires a coordinated team effort that includes the person with diabetes and involves him or her in the decision-making process. It is recommended that a registered dietitian, knowledgeable and skilled in MNT, be the team member who plays the leading role in providing nutrition care. However, it is important that all team members, including physicians and nurses, be knowledgeable about MNT and support i ts implementation. MNT, as illustrated in Table 1, plays a role in all three levels of diabetes-related prevention targeted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Primary prevention interventions seek to delay or halt the development of diabetes. This involves public health measures to reduce the prevalence of obesity and includes MNT for individuals with prediabetes. Secondary and tertiary prevention interventions include MNT for individuals with diabetes and seek to prevent (secondary) or control (tertiary) complications of diabetes.


The research study was carried out to assess the biogas potential at Nyazura Adventist High School, Rusape, Zimbabwe, a co-educational school with a total enrolment of 700 boarders. The school is connected to the national grid electricity. The electricity is in short supply due to long hours of load shedding. Firewood to be used for heating and cooking purposes is in short supply. The main objective of the study was to make an assessment of biogas potential at the school. The energy demand for the whole school was calculated and it was found to be 2 710 kWh per day. The biogas yields for the feedstocks at the school were estimated. The total biogas yield that could be obtained from the feedstocks was 50 m3 per day. The digesters volume for the feedstocks was estimated and the material requirements for the digesters were also determined. The techno-economic analysis of the proposed project was done. The results suggested that the proposed project was feasible, and it was concluded that the school is capable of producing enough biogas from its feedstocks to support a feasible project. The daily 50 m3 biogas yield is adequate to supply enough electricity for lighting purposes during the load shedding periods.


This thesis investigated the work lives of principals of central schools situated in remote inland areas of the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. This research considered how the situational contexts of central school leadership in remote NSW have affected the work lives of principals of central schools in remote NSW. These contexts included the education policy context of devolution of government school systems, the community context of remoteness and low socio-economic status (SES) and the specific school context of leading a small school and leading both secondary and primary departments.
Research literature such as Ballet and Kelchtermans (2008), Gronn and Rawlings-Sanaei (2003) and Southwell (2008) on the factor of the education policies of devolution in the work lives of principals described characteristics which match the attributes of work intensification including longer hours of work, more tasks to be completed in a day, and diversification of skills. However, current literature has much less data about the particular contexts of the work lives of principals living in, and working with the issues of, remote and low SES communities. There is even less data about the implications for principals attempting to provide secondary education in such communities.
This research study used a mixed methods design beginning with a survey questionnaire of all principals of central schools in NSW. Nearly half of the survey respondents then participated in a longitudinal program of interviews conducted in the schools of the principals. The rapport with principals developed by the researcher as an "insider" facilitated the collection of rich data on the work lives of the principals. Many of the issues raised had not been fully researched in broader studies.
The study confirmed the research of Starr and White (2008) and Hatton (1995, 1996), who reported "massive intensification" in the work lives of principals in remote Australian schools. In addition, the study provided a more nuanced understanding of the work intensification of these principals as it reported on the many aspects and consequences of the personal, family, social and professional isolation of principals in remote schools as they responded to issues related to high welfare needs of students and of the community in general.. Principals were threatened with violence and, in several cases, were required to respond to high levels of child sexual abuse in their communities. Participant principals in this study were professionally isolated and faced limited career prospects. The data in this study provided a greater understanding with respect to the issue of low numbers of applications for the principalship, particularly in remote areas.
Much of the literature on school leadership is generic in nature with considerable reliance on theories of leadership and management which have been developed in non-school contexts. This study suggested that there needs to be more research on the variety of educational and social contexts in which principals work in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of the work lives of principals of remote, low SES schools and the high stakes in the career prospects of these principals. For policy makers, a removal or amelioration of the disincentives in remote school principalship identified in this study would appear to be more urgent and more effective than the current policy of provision of incentives to work in such schools.


Empowering people to play an active role in their own healthcare influences their health state positively. PHRs' features and functions are key factors for the empowerment of patients, but only little research has been done to date. This survey identifies PHR functions and properties that are relevant for patient empowerment and compiles a list of PHR products that are currently available on the market. Based on a literature review and former research work, a function taxonomy checklist including 6 domains and 58 subgroups of features was created. A list of products was compiled from two public directories that list PHRs and from the result of an explorative search that was performed utilizing various search engines. Together with the PHRs found during the scientific literature review this lead to an adjusted list of 48 products. Every product was analyzed by the usage of a questionnaire, that was sent to the product vendor, the public available information about the product, and whenever possible by the exploratory use of provided test accounts. There has been good support for most of the common features in the structured data, services, security and interface domain, whereas almost none of the PHRs use existing medical standards for the storage and communication of their data. At the present time, PHRs have implemented only basic features allowing only basic patient empowerment. The breakthrough for empowerment will require cost intensive implementations of medical standards to provide interoperability and health services which let the users make a choice for the usage of a PHR.


Construction monitoring, controlling and scheduling is one of the important tool in a construction project. Every construction project involve with a lot of activities which need to be planned, monitored, controlled and scheduled properly to ensure the completion of the project. These project management techniques of planning, scheduling and controlling are used to complete the project within the stipulated time, scope, quality and cost. These techniques can be applied to all types of projects. Resource allocation and levelling are among the top challenges in project management, due to the complexity of projects. The main objective of this project is to optimize the resource schedule of construction project activities in order to minimize the total duration of the project, maximization of net present value, or minimization of average tardiness subjected to both precedence and resources constraints using an optimization technique called Ant Colony Optimizing Algorithm (ACO). This work describes an algorithm approach to Resource Constraint Project Scheduling Problems (RCPSP) in construction industry. The study on the optimization technique that is genetic algorithm and its terminology, operator, parameter used is clearly depicted. The modern approach of using ant colony algorithm technique to solve the Resource Constraint Project Scheduling Problems (RCPSP) problem for a construction project with constraints and to find the best optimal solution by overcoming the drawbacks in other optimization technique. The algorithm adapts to dynamic factors such as changes to the project plan or disturbances in the schedule execution. The ACO procedure then searches for an optimum set of tasks and priorities that produce shorter project duration and better-levelled resource profiles.


Glass sponges are conspicuous inhabitants of benthic communities in the cool waters of the Antarctic and north Pacific continental shelf. We used an ROV outfitted with a new device for simultaneous sampling of water inhaled and exhaled by the sponges to provide the first data on the nutritional ecology and metabolism of two glass sponge species in their natural deep‐water habitat (120–160 m). Aphrocallistes vastus and Rhabdocalyptus dawsoni were found to be mostly bacteriovores, removing up to 95% of the bacteria (median removal was 79% for both species) and heterotrophic protists (<10 µm) from the water they filter. The relatively scarce microbial cells were efficiently selected from a 'soup' of suspended clay and detritus particles (microorganisms accounted for ~1% of the total ambient suspended solids). Removal of planktonic microorganisms (2.2 ± 1.3 µmol carbon [C] C L−1 and 0.37 ± 0.17 µmol nitrogen [N] L−1) accounted for the entire total organic C uptake and ammonium excretion by both species, with no evidence for dissolved organic uptake. Similar results were obtained in laboratory experiments in which dissolved organic C was directly measured. Despite the massive siliceous sponge skeleton, silica uptake was below detection levels (0.28 µmol L−1), supporting previous suggestions of low growth rates in Hexactinellida. Reported mean sponge abundances of >1 individual m−2 indicate that the sponge filtering activity may significantly affect the deep microbial community and benthic‐pelagic mass exchange in some north‐east Pacific fjords.


User behavior modeling is essential in computational advertisement, which builds users' profiles by tracking their online behaviors and then delivers the relevant ads according to each user's interests and needs. Accurate models will lead to higher targeting accuracy and thus improved advertising performance. Intuitively, similar users tend to have similar behaviors towards the displayed ads. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is not much previous work that explicitly investigates such similarities and incorporates them into ad response targeting and prediction, largely due to the prohibitive scale of the problem. To bridge this gap, in this paper, we use bipartite graphs to represent historical user behaviors, which consist of both user nodes and advertiser campaign nodes, as well as edges reflecting user-campaign interactions in the past. Based on this representation, we study random-walk-based local algorithms for user behavior modeling and action prediction, whose computational complexity depends only on the size of the output cluster, rather than the entire graph. Our goal is to improve action prediction by leveraging historical user-user, campaign-campaign, and user-campaign interactions. In particular, we propose the bipartite graphs AdvUserGraph accompanied with the ADNI algorithm. ADNI extends the NIBBLE algorithm to AdvUserGraph, and it is able to find the local cluster consisting of interested users towards a specific advertiser campaign. We also propose two extensions of ADNI with improved efficiencies. The performance of the proposed algorithms is demonstrated on both synthetic data and a world leading Demand Side Platform (DSP), showing that they are able to discriminate extremely rare events in terms of their action propensity.


Students' acceptance and use of technologies introduced in their academic environments is an important factor in determining the success of these technologies. This research project used the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), a prominent technology acceptance and use model, as a theoretical basis to conduct empirical research testing the factors that influence students' acceptance and use of technology in their academic environment.
Although several studies applied UTAUT in various organizational and cultural contexts, very few implement the full model and examine all of its constructs. By focusing on students in higher-education and technology that is new to them, and by using the full UTAUT model with no changes or elimination of constructs, this study places itself in the area where there are no exhaustive studies. Also, this research addresses the question of whether UTAUT is applicable in an academic environment for educational technologies introduced to the students.
The study found a mixed support for UTAUT. Performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions and attitude towards using technology were significant determinants of technology acceptance. All moderating variables had a significant moderating influence except for experience, which was surprisingly not significant. The UTAUT model is found to be applicable to some extent in the educational setting, but might need a few modifications to fit the context.
The study provides recommendations to help prepare the appropriate environment and training before a new technology is introduced for students. It also provides recommendation for further research examining students' acceptance and use of technology.


In 1866 Patrick Manson, a young Scottish doctor fresh from medical school, left London to launch his career in China as a port surgeon for the Imperial Chinese Customs Service. For the next two decades, he served in this outpost of British power in the Far East, and extended the frontiers of British medicine. In 1899, at the twilight of his career and as the British Empire approached its zenith, he founded the London School of Tropical Medicine. For these contributions Manson would later be called the "father of British tropical medicine." In Imperial Medicine: Patrick Manson and the Conquest of Tropical Disease Douglas M. Haynes uses Manson's career to explore the role of British imperialism in the making of Victorian medicine and science. He challenges the categories of "home" and "empire" that have long informed accounts of British medicine and science, revealing a vastly more dynamic, dialectical relationship between the imperial metropole and periphery than has previously been recognized. Manson's decision to launch his career in China was no accident; the empire provided a critical source of career opportunities for a chronically overcrowded profession in Britain. And Manson used the London media's interest in the empire to advance his scientific agenda, including the discovery of the transmission of malaria in 1898, which he portrayed as British science. The empire not only created a demand for practitioners but also enhanced the presence of British medicine throughout the world. Haynes documents how the empire subsidized research science at the London School of Tropical Medicine and elsewhere in Britain in the early twentieth century. By illuminating the historical enmeshment of Victorian medicine and science in Britain's imperial project, Imperial Medicine identifies the present-day privileged distribution of specialist knowledge about disease with the lingering consequences of European imperialism.


The phenomenal increase of foreign labour employment (FLE) in the last three decades has brought about numerous socio-economic problems for receiving, sending and hosting nations of foreign workers. As a consequence, these have triggered many clamours for justice and equity for foreign workers from less developed countries especially. These circumstances have provided an opportune setting for a cross-cultural investigation into prevailing FLE attitudes and ethics (teleological or deontological) among managers from three countries (Australia, Singapore and Malaysia), two race/ethnic (Caucasian and Chinese) groups and three religious (Christian, Buddhist and Malay Muslim) denominations. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies were employed to enable cross-data reliability checks among random and quota samples. The qualitative interview random sample consisted of managers from 36 Australian-owned Melbourne-based companies. The case study sample composed of two Singaporean-born expatriates in Melbourne. The quantitative survey sample comprised 120 randomly selected and 83 quota selected respondents from Australia (105), Singapore (55) and Malaysia (43). Procuring 'suitably qualified' respondents was difficult and this probably explains the response rates of 34 and 24 percent among random samples. Even though the responses of managers were very favourable towards FLE (foreign skilled particularly), they had their reservations about FLE in other countries (company relocation especially). Job and wealth losses were their foremost concerns. The degree of support for FLE correlated with the ethical stances. Singaporeans were entirely teleological and the most favourable of the three country groups toward FLE. Conversely, Australians were totally deontological and the least favourable of the three country groups toward FLE. Consistency was achieved in responses across samples and with cross-references between attitudes and ethics, along with other considerations such as companies' employment practices, residence preferences and views on profit. Partial support was found for the two hypotheses. Generally speaking, the results highlight that among individuals from various groups, culture does bring about differences in attitudes, ethical stances and even behaviours. These have implications for commercial activity. More importantly, they indicate that managers, whether in business or in government and not just those involved with human resource management, need to be cognisant of the importance of cultural differences when they conduct negotiations or make policy changes. This is the first step to avoid conflict and to exhibit a trustworthy effective corporate leadership.


Numerous cases can be shown of nations that elevate symbols they associate with their own defeat to the centre of their national mythology and construction of history. While this has been recognized and commented upon by scholars examining individual nations, it has yet to be examined in a comparative context as a phenomenon distinct to nationalism and the nation as a modern ideology and social construct. Yet such symbols are sufficiently common in national mythologies, and unusually so in that they can be shown to have been elevated in importance and altered in meaning over the process of nation building, that examination of this particular category of symbols has potential to offer unique insights into "the nation" as a general concept. Nations are modem constructs, yet most identify in continuity with ancient predecessors. The elevation of symbols of defeat serves to negotiate this balance by substantiating the nation's sense of continuity with the traditional ethnic culture on which it relies for its symbolic content, while at the same time rationalising the radical social transformation necessary in order for the community to assert claims in the modern political context. Under certain conditions, such myths can even serve as the very signifiers which give the system its structure and meaning and therefore the effective foundation myths of the nation. As a result, an added desperation, difficult for outsiders to understand, often characterises conflicts over symbols associated with these myths.


The nitrogen derived from N2 fixation was measured by the 15N isotope dilution method, in three Arachis pintoi (Ap) ecotypes: CIAT 17434, 18744 and 18748, using a Bradyrhizobium strain (BS) CIAT 3101, and native strains (NS) from Veracruz, Mexico, on greenhouse conditions. The reference plants were: a non-nodulating Arachis hypogaea, Brachiaria arrecta, Brachiaria brizantha and Cynodon nlemfuensis. Plant material received a 15N-enriched solution at 5 atom % 15N. Five harvests were done, where dry matter yield was highest (P0.001) in Ap ecotypes+BS (53.9 ±5.2 g pot-1), vs Ap ecotypes+NS (19.7 ± 0.7 g pot-1). N yield (mg pot-1) of Ap ecotypes+NS was: 439 ± 19.6 mg pot-1 vs 1538 ± 117.0 mg pot-1 (P0.001) from Ap ecotypes+BS. Values of atom% 15N in excess of legume shoots were lower (0.027 ± 0.01) with BS, compared to NS group (0.052 ± 0.002). The proportion of N2 fixed was greater than 0.5 in the three Ap ecotypes+ BS, using grasses as reference plant. Arachis pintoi ecotypes CIAT 17434 and CIAT 18744 fixed more N than ecotype CIAT 18748; and the improved Bradyrhizobium strain CIAT 3101 was more efficient to fix N2 than the native strains.


The story of our time may be the awakening of society to an epidemic of global tax dodging by the world's elites. Citizens, watchdog groups, and even government officials are puzzled, frustrated, and sometimes outraged by the phenomenon, wondering where the nation-state lost its way in regulating its people and its resources, and why it is standing by, apparently helplessly, as its tax base erodes while austerity measures undermine the welfare state. This paper demonstrates that the sequence of tax base erosion-austerity-welfare state erosion is a story about a crisis of tax justice. It does so by revisiting how Canada's historic Royal Commission on Taxation, in its search for guiding principles for tax reform, turned to tax justice as the central component for any tax system. It shows why nations have consistently failed to meet these guiding principles, instead taxing the easy-to-tax more or less comprehensively, the hard-to-tax more or less randomly, and the impossible-to-tax not at all. It demonstrates that the result is that no state today imposes taxation justly: instead, taxation as exercised around the world today is overwhelmingly characterized by arbitrariness and injustice. The paper concludes that if governments cannot or will not pursue justice in taxation, they have at minimum a duty to explain to society why this goal is no longer worthy of pursuit.


The purpose of this paper is to review recent data made available through the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) that include expenditures and asset valuations. The LIS data are augmented with comparable data from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey. The surveys with expenditure data are reviewed in terms of collection units and variable definitions. Inequality statistics are produced and compared using income, expenditures, and market value of owned home. Rankings of countries by income and expenditure inequality are similar but not the same across the countries studied. Suggestions are made for the LIS to improve the expenditure data available following the COICOPS framework.


Kenya is a thriving country in East Africa: its economy is largely based on the natural environment that frames the tourism sector, mainly through safaris and holidays on the coast. The natural environment also underpins the second largest industry: agriculture. Kenya's social, technological, and industrial developments are a reference for many neighboring countries. Kenya plays a leading role in Africa and attracts huge amounts of investments. Furthermore, the humanitarian community has made Nairobi its base for international headquarters and regional offices. This makes Kenya a possible model for development and investment in its widest sense.

This book aims at updating the holistic view on Kenya's natural environment and resources. It provides a sound scientific introduction to this country's physical and socioeconomic setting and its evolution through time and will appeal to a broad audience of students – in Kenya and abroad – as well as those working in the development and humanitarian sectors and to international donors looking for a scientific compendium on Kenya's environment. Its structure and references allow the reader to deepen his or her knowledge of every theme touched on in the book.


A major factor that will drive the definition and design of future avionics systems is affordability. Affordability is being addressed on numerous fronts such as hardware re-use, software re-use, COTS leveraging, and reduced cycle times. Each of these thrusts provide potential cost savings along with unique challenges. What is needed is a process that integrates these initiatives while ensuring the overall system objectives are achieved. An Open Systems-based process is key to integrating these initiatives and balancing affordability and system performance goals. Although Open Systems are being widely recognized as a key to affordability, most interpret Open Systems as a set of system attributes that need to be achieved. There are numerous claims of vendors saying they have an Open Systems architecture or how their system will evolve to an Open Systems architecture. This emphasis is not on increasing affordability but on attaching a politically correct label to their product. In this paper, we focus on the Open Systems process as the key to affordability. An Open Systems process is based on Open Systems principles. This paper discusses the Open Systems principles and process in detail and shows how this process integrates numerous affordability initiatives.


The proliferation and ever-increasing capabilities of mobile devices such as smart phones give rise to a variety of mobile sensing applications. This paper studies how an untrusted aggregator in mobile sensing can periodically obtain desired statistics over the data contributed by multiple mobile users, without compromising the privacy of each user. Although there are some existing works in this area, they either require bidirectional communications between the aggregator and mobile users in every aggregation period, or have high-computation overhead and cannot support large plaintext spaces. Also, they do not consider the Min aggregate, which is quite useful in mobile sensing. To address these problems, we propose an efficient protocol to obtain the Sum aggregate, which employs an additive homomorphic encryption and a novel key management technique to support large plaintext space. We also extend the sum aggregation protocol to obtain the Min aggregate of time-series data. To deal with dynamic joins and leaves of mobile users, we propose a scheme that utilizes the redundancy in security to reduce the communication cost for each join and leave. Evaluations show that our protocols are orders of magnitude faster than existing solutions, and it has much lower communication overhead. Keyword: Mobile sensing, Privacy, data aggregation


Abstract. Following the Early Eocene climatic optimum (EECO, ~55–50 Ma), climate deteriorated and gradually changed the earth from a greenhouse into an icehouse, with major cooling events at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary (∼34 Ma) and the Middle Miocene (∼15 Ma). It is believed that the opening of the Drake Passage had a marked impact on the cooling at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. Based on an Early Eocene simulation, we study the sensitivity of climate and ocean circulation to tectonic events such as the closing of the West Siberian Seaway, the deepening of the Arctic-Atlantic Seaway, the opening of the Drake Passage, and the constriction of the Tethys and Central American seaways. The opening of the Drake Passage, together with the closing of the West Siberian Seaway and the deepening of the Arctic-Atlantic Seaway, weakened the Southern Ocean Deep Water (SODW) dominated ocean circulation and led to a weak cooling at high latitudes, thus contributing to the observed Early Cenozoic cooling. However, the later constriction of the Tethys and Central American Seaways is shown to give a strong cooling at southern high latitudes. This cooling was related to the transition of ocean circulation from a SODW-dominated mode to the modern-like ocean circulation dominated by North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW).


Racially Writing the Republic investigates the central role of race in the construction and transformation of American national identity from the Revolutionary War era to the height of the civil rights movement. Drawing on political theory, American studies, critical race theory, and gender studies, the contributors to this collection highlight the assumptions of white (and often male) supremacy underlying the thought and actions of major U.S. political and social leaders. At the same time, they examine how nonwhite writers and activists have struggled against racism and for the full realization of America's political ideals. The essays are arranged chronologically by subject, and, with one exception, each essay is focused on a single figure, from George Washington to James Baldwin.

The contributors analyze Thomas Jefferson's legacy in light of his sexual relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings; the way that Samuel Gompers, the first president of the American Federation of Labor, rallied his organization against Chinese immigrant workers; and the eugenicist origins of the early-twentieth-century birth-control movement led by Margaret Sanger. They draw attention to the writing of Sarah Winnemucca, a Northern Piute and one of the first published Native American authors; the anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett; the Filipino American writer Carlos Bulosan; and the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who linked civil rights struggles in the United States to anticolonial efforts abroad. Other figures considered include Alexis de Tocqueville and his traveling companion Gustave de Beaumont, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina (who fought against Anglo American expansion in what is now Texas), Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and W. E. B. Du Bois. In the afterword, George Lipsitz reflects on U.S. racial politics since 1965.

Contributors . Bruce Baum, Cari M. Carpenter, Gary Gerstle, Duchess Harris, Catherine A. Holland, Allan Punzalan Isaac, Laura Janara, Ben Keppel, George Lipsitz, Gwendolyn Mink, Joel Olson, Dorothy Roberts, Patricia A. Schechter, John Kuo Wei Tchen, Jerry Thompson


Semi-NMF is a matrix factorization technique that learns a low-dimensional representation of a dataset that lends itself to a clustering interpretation. It is possible that the mapping between this new representation and our original features contains rather complex hierarchical information with implicit lower-level hidden attributes, that classical one level clustering methodologies can not interpret. In this work we propose a novel model, Deep Semi-NMF, that is able to learn such hidden representations that allow themselves to an interpretation of clustering according to different, unknown attributes of a given dataset. We show that by doing so, our model is able to learn low-dimensional representations that are better suited for clustering, outperforming Semi-NMF, but also other NMF variants.


The paper focuses on the gaps in national law in preventing repetitive violence and adopting a general strategy for the prevention of violence against women. The national legislation of the Republic of Lithuania is evaluated in relation to international law in the area of gender-based and domestic violence. Notably, Lithuania is a party to the corresponding international documents in this area. However, the national legislation at the level of laws and regulations lacks links with international law and relevant documents. The basic preventive measures are very broad and are not targeted at the elimination of violence against women; instead, they seek to decrease the numbers of crimes in the area of domestic violence. The most relevant sectors for prevention, i.e. the health care sector and the education sector, are not involved. The objectives of prevention are not placed within the gender equality paradigm, and violence against women is not seen as being connected with stereotypes and discrimination. In addition, gaps are identified in the prevention of repeated violence against women. The paper suggests that the system of protective orders should be reformed so that protective orders are available to all victims of violence and not limited to domestic violence victims. Both civil and criminal protection measures should exist, and they should be applicable to post-trial victims as well. It is also recommended that the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, which is the most thorough document on prevention, be ratified. Ratification would improve the weakest point in Lithuanian legislation on violence against women – the prevention of violence.


We propose a new scheme for compressing on image set by building its minimal-cost prediction structure. Existing prediction-based video coding methods can be easily extended and incorporated into this scheme to achieve higher compression efficiency. According to this prediction structure, we also develop a progressive transmission approach for interactive object movie (OM) browsing.


New commercial rootstocks for peach include P. persica seedlings as well as many Prunus interspecific hybrids and plum species. However, no rootstock has been successful in replant infected soils that have the Peach Tree Short Life Syndrome (PTSL) that includes both Pseudomonas syringae canker disease and Armillaria spp. root rot. Four rootstock trials consisting anywhere from 5 to 16 out of 18 total rootstocks were budded with 4 scion cultivars, 'Flameprince', 'Crimson Lady', 'Julyprince' and 'Fireprince' and planted in 2012, 2013, 2013, 2015, respectively, in either Edgefield or Oconee Counties in South Carolina, USA. Tree death from bacterial canker (P. syringae) occurred in all sites planted before 2015. Trees on the hybrid or plum species rootstocks except MP-29 had the highest mortality. P. munsoniana selections "1, 2, 3, and 4" had tree death of (24-63%) from either incompatibility or bacterial canker in the 2012 test. Trees on these rootstocks were also ~40 to 50% smaller than the controls after 4 years. Hybrid rootstocks Replantpac, Tempropac, Densipac and Purplepac had PTSL-related mortality of 50, 63, 67, and 33%, respectively for the 2013 'Crimson Lady' planting. Several 'Julyprince' trees on Densipac and Tempropac rootstocks have also died from PTSL. The plum hybrid MP-29 had a high survival and semi-dwarfing effect (~50% standard) on the "2" test sites in which it was planted in 2013. Lovell and Guardian® have had minimal PTSL death from bacterial canker but Armillaria has started to kill trees in the 2012 planting site. Another 3-5 years will be necessary to determine Armillaria tolerance, but the new rootstocks appear to have less resistance to bacterial canker than their commercial standard counterparts.


As pool scrubbing plays an important role in fission product (FP) decontamination, a reliable model is needed. Despite the needs, mechanism of FP transfer from air-water from the swarm is not explained exactly which means that the evaluation of physical model used in pre-existing model couldn't be done enough.
 Existing model for pool scrubbing is predicted in the MELCOR code. Inside the code, a simple model of bubbly jet divided in 3 regions is used: 1) Globule region where the gas including FP enter and collapse, 2) Swarm rise region where the bubble rises up stationary after the collapse is done and, 3) Entrainment region where the bubble pop out to the atmosphere. In each region, the decontamination factor (DF), the particle density ratio before and after each region, is calculated. On these region, flow and physical force inside the gas phase is predicted to be one of the driving force which cause the FP transfer.
 Therefore, our study aims at the particle behavior on the gas phase. As to understand the physical phenomenon individually, the study focuses on flow behavior and inner flow of a single rising bubble. As an approach, comparison of bubble containing aerosol and no aerosol has been done for each parameter of size, aspect ratio, velocity. Compared with existing equations, the rising speed of clean bubble condition and aspect ratio of CSI condition agreed well to the MELCOR code [1]. On the other hand, many difference were also measured in other condition.
 Application of parameters obtained from experiment were done against the MELCOR model. Calculation of velocity inside the oil droplet using the experimental parameters obtained from visualization measurement was done. The local gravitational sedimentation and centrifugal velocity took a higher value in clean bubble and OX50 condition compared to CSI condition. On the other hand, Brownian diffusion velocity had an opposite trend. PIV measurement were performed by a silicone oil to visualize the inner flow clearly and compared with the calculation. Seen from the results, the local diffusion velocity took a lower value compared to the calculation using the MELCOR model.


Virtual team communication has gained immense importance in recent years due to new work evolution and innovative IT-based communication tools. However, virtual teams face emotional obstacles within team communication. Affective chatbots can sense and understand human affective signals and leverage them to support the virtual team by increasing its emotional intelligence through behavioral and persuasive cues. However, through their capabilities such systems may also cause harm to individuals through addiction and increased vulnerability. Simultaneously, they experience higher distrust and skepticism. Therefore, affective chatbots require careful, ethical reflection on when and how to apply them in order to retain trustworthiness. In this paper, we present preliminary results of an ongoing design science research project developing design principles for affective chatbots with a specific emphasis on transparency and human autonomy. With our work we contribute theoretically with prescriptive design knowledge for the class of trustworthy affective chatbots in the context of virtual team communication. We, thereby, provide avenues towards a nascent design theory for this class of systems. Practically, our work supports providers of innovative IT-based communication tools in leveraging this knowledge and designing affective chatbots to help virtual teams in order to communicate more successfully under consideration of ethical principles.


Abstract. This work presents synergistic satellite, airborne and surface based observations of a Pocket of Open Cells (POC) in the remote south-east Atlantic. The observations were obtained over and upwind of Ascension Island during the CLouds and Aerosol Radiative Impacts and Forcing (CLARIFY) and the Layered Smoke Interacting with Clouds (LASIC) field experiments. A novel aspect of this case-study is that an extensive free-tropospheric biomass burning aerosol plume that had been transported from the African continent was observed to be in contact with the boundary layer inversion over the POC and the surrounding closed cellular cloud regime. The in-situ measurements show marked contrasts in the boundary layer thermodynamic structure, cloud properties, precipitation and aerosol conditions between the open cells and surrounding overcast cloud field. The data demonstrate that the overlying biomass burning aerosol was mixing down into the boundary layer in the stratocumulus cloud downwind of the POC, with elevated carbon monoxide, black carbon mass loadings and accumulation mode aerosol concentrations measured beneath the trade-wind inversion. The stratocumulus cloud in this region was moderately polluted and exhibited very little precipitation falling below cloud base. A rapid transition to actively precipitating cumulus clouds and detrained stratiform remnants in the form of thin quiescent veil clouds was observed across the boundary into and deep within the POC. The sub-cloud layer in the POC was much cleaner than that in the stratocumulus region. The clouds in the POC formed within an ultra-clean layer (accumulation mode aerosol concentrations ~ few cm−3) in the upper region of the boundary layer, that was likely to have been formed via efficient collision-coalescence and sedimentation processes. Enhanced Aitken mode aerosol concentrations were also observed intermittently in this ultra-clean layer, suggesting that new particle formation was taking place. Across the boundary layer inversion and immediately above the ultra-clean layer, accumulation mode aerosol concentrations were ~ 1000 cm−3. Importantly, the airmass in the POC showed no evidence of elevated carbon monoxide over and above typical background conditions at this location and time of year. As carbon monoxide is a good tracer for biomass burning aerosol that is not readily removed by cloud processing and precipitation, it demonstrates that the open cellular convection in the POC is not able to entrain large quantities of the free-tropospheric aerosol that was sitting directly on top of the boundary layer inversion. This suggests that the structure of the mesoscale cellular convection may play an important role in regulating the transport of aerosol from the free-troposphere down into the marine boundary layer. We then develop a climatology of open cellular cloud conditions in the south-east Atlantic from 19 years of September MODIS Terra imagery. This shows that the maxima in open cell frequency (> 0.25) occurs far offshore and in a region where subsiding biomass burning aerosol plumes may often come into contact with the underlying boundary layer cloud. If the results from the observational case-study applied more broadly, then the apparent low susceptibility of open cells to free-tropospheric intrusions of additional cloud condensation nuclei could have some important consequences for aerosol-cloud interactions in the region.


Anachelin, a complex secondary metabolite isolated from Anabaena cylindrica, possesses an unusual structure combining polyketide, peptide and alkaloid building blocks. This natural product was postulated to act as siderophore with catecholate and salicylate groups for putative iron binding with the three-dimensional solution structure of anachelin remaining unknown. In this preliminary communication, the conformation of anachelin in aqueous solution is investigated. ROESY experiments revealed several interresidual NOEs characteristic of a com- pact, folded structure. A β-turn type structure of the central tripeptide sequence L-Thr-D-Ser-L-Ser structure in- volving D-Ser at position (i+1) and L-Ser at position (i+2) would be in agreement with the observed experimental da- ta. In particular, this conformation of the free ligand would align the putative metal binding groups (structural pre- organization) and thus lower the free energy for Fe binding. As it is highly unusual to see such a small tripeptide fragment folding into a compact structure, it appears reasonable to assume that both the cationic tetrahydro- quinolinium ring as well as the trihydroxylated e-amino acid contribute to the stabilization of the folded structure.


The European Community's successes and failures in guaranteeing the fundamental right to free movement of persons continue to develop against the backgrounds of domestic civil rights and international human rights obligations. Although often justified merely in terms of economic efficiency, non-discriminatory rights and freedoms of movement can be seen as constituting an essential component of the legal foundation of all European projects, and as a powerful force in the forging of a new European identity beyond the traditional nation-state.The present volume - a revised and updated edition of the important work first published in 2001 - provides a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of European law on the movement of persons. Its scope encompasses doctrinal basis, institutional framework, legal compliance, judicial development, and derogation on such grounds as security and health. The authors, both well-known experts in the field, comment extensively on matters including visas, free movement of workers, freedom of establishment for companies in the context of taxation, posted workers, harmonisation of professional qualifications, European citizenship, freedom to provide and receive services, agreements between the European Community and other states concerning free movement, and the rights of families and individuals to housing and education, as well as the increasingly important topic of the rights of third country nationals.In addition to providing analysis of the relevant provisions of the European Community Treaty as amended by subsequent treaties including the Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice, the book takes considerable account of all relevant secondary legislation and sometimes soft law, for example draft treaties, resolutions, and draft legislation. All of these perspectives - legislative and judicial, at domestic, EC and international levels - are here fully updated, with special attention to the far-reaching implications of the recent Residence Directive.In this new edition the authors clearly articulate what has been gained in recent years, and also consider what obstacles remain and what future developments might take place in this area of Community law. For these reasons and others, "Free Movement of Persons Within the European Community, Second Edition", will continue to be of great value to legal practitioners, officials of the EC and other economic unions, academics, and students as well as to the wider public interested in the process of European integration.


Background: Vascular complications, as the most common complications of diagnostic catheterization and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) , are important factors in the morbidity of patients undergoing such procedures; thus, this study was done to evaluate the prevalence of these complications and their related factors. Methods: This is a descriptive study composed of 2097 consecutive patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention in Shahid Rajaei Cardiovascular Center in Tehran, Iran from January 2008 to January 2009 . Occurrence of vascular complications in course of hospitalization and the related factors leading to the complications were investigated. Results: Out of 2097 patients, 1544 (73.6%) were male and 553 (26.4%) were female, and the mean age of the participants was 57  10 years. Vascular complications from the time of PCI to the time discharge were observed in 19 (0.9%) patients. The other complications included: hematoma in 10 cases (52.6%) , pseudoaneurysm in five cases (26.3%) , retroperitoneal hemorrhage and arteriovenous fistula in 2 (10.5%) patients each. The complications were significantly more common in female patients (P=0.003) , in patients with a history of hypertension (P=0.02) , people of shorter stature (P=0.004) , and being on gp III a/ II b inhibitors (P=0.003) . Conclusion: The rate of vascular complications post-percutaneous coronary interventions is low and it is considered to be a good treatment option for patients with coronary stenosis; provided that sufficient compression is applied on the vascular access point in the right time after removal of the arterial sheath. PCI is of fewer vascular complications, especially in female patients, history of hypertension, and higher anticoagulant complication.


Religious conversion is the act of conversion will be undertaken someone as a real form on the turmoil of one's soul on a belief and trust in the new religion. When someone does a religious conversion means he has left the old religion and the move to the new religion, someone who has embraced the religion of Islam is usually often experience psychological dilemmas that require an understanding of the community. Things like this very important as a concern in the community, for a muallaf tranquility and comfort in the midst of life in society is very important, with tranquility and comfort and guidance even good reception from the public that will be it as a reinforcement of the psychological condition of a muallaf, thereby strengthening the grip and confidence in their beliefs. This article aims to find a convert and a form of psychological treatments given to the muallaf as a form of strengthening the psychological condition muallaf. The method used in this research is qualitative descriptive, with the techniques of data collection using interviews, observation, and documentation. by taking four samples of two people from Christianity Catholic and two Protestant Christians. With the result object embraced Islam willingly and there is no pressure at all from outside himself. at the beginning of their conversion find their pressure coming from family, relatives, close friends, and the community, from the start in angry, insulted, reviled, and up to physical violence. So that it resulted in the disrupt tion of psychological conditions muallaf.


Replication and Knowledge Production in Empirical Software Engineering Research Jonathan L. Krein Department of Computer Science, BYU Doctor of Philosophy Although replication is considered an indispensable part of the scientific method in software engineering, few replication studies are published each year. The rate of replication, however, is not surprising given that replication theory in software engineering is immature. Not only are replication taxonomies varied and difficult to reconcile, but opinions on the role of replication contradict. In general, we have no clear sense of how to build knowledge via replication, particularly given the practical realities of our research field. Consequently, most replications in software engineering yield little useful information. In particular, the vast majority of external replications (i.e., replications performed by researchers unaffiliated with the original study) not only fail to reproduce the original results, but defy explanation. The net effect is that, as a research field, we consistently fail to produce usable (i.e., transferable) knowledge, and thus, our research results have little if any impact on industry. In this dissertation, we dissect the problem of replication into four primary concerns: 1) rate and explicitness of replication; 2) theoretical foundations of replication; 3) tractability of methods for context analysis; and 4) effectiveness of inter-study communication. We address each of the four concerns via a two-part research strategy involving both a theoretical and a practical component. The theoretical component consists of a grounded theory study in which we integrate and then apply external replication theory to problems of replication in empirical software engineering. The theoretical component makes three key contributions to the literature: first, it clarifies the role of replication with respect to the overall process of science; second, it presents a flexible framework for reconciling disparate replication terminology; and third, it informs a broad range of practical replication concerns. The practical component involves a series of replication studies, through which we explore a variety of replication concepts and empirical methods, ultimately culminating in the development of a tractable method for context analysis (TCA). TCA enables the quantitative evaluation of context variables in greater detail, with greater statistical power, and via considerably smaller datasets than previously possible. As we show (via a complex, real-world example), the method ultimately enables the empirically and statistically-grounded reconciliation and generalization of otherwise contradictory results across dissimilar replications—which problem has previously remained unsolved in software engineering.


In the standard modeling of the pricing of options and derivatives as generally understood these days the underlying process is taken to be a Wiener Process or a Levy Process. The stochastic process is modeled as a stochastic differential equation. From this equation a partial differential equation is obtained by application of the Feynman-Kac Theorem. The resulting partial differential equation is of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman type. Analysis of the partial differential equations arising from Mathematics of Finance using the methods of the Lie Theory of Continuous Groups has been performed over the last twenty years, but it is only in recent years that there has been a concerted effort to make full use of the Lie theory. We propose an extension of Mahomed and Leach's (1990) formula for the nth-prolongation of an nth-order ordinary differential equation to the nth-prolongation of the generator of an hyperbolic partial differential equation with p dependent and k independent variables. The symmetry analysis of this partial differential equation shows that the associated Lie algebra is {sl(2, R)⊕W3} ⊕s∞A1 with 12 optimal systems. A modeling approach based upon stochastic volatility for modeling prices in the deregulated Pennsylvania State Electricity market is adopted for application. We propose a dynamic linear model (DLM) in which switching structure for the measurement matrix is incorporated into a two-state Gaussian mixture/first-order autoregressive (AR (1)) configuration in a nonstationary independent process defined by time-varying probabilities. The estimates of maximum likeliii hood of the parameters from the "modified" Kalman filter showed a significant mean-reversion rate of 0.9363 which translates to a half-life price of electricity of nine months. Associated with this mean-reversion is the high measure of price volatility at 35%. Within the last decade there has been some work done upon the symmetries of stochastic differential equations. Here empirical results contradict earliest normality hypotheses on log-return series in favour of asymmetry of the probability distribution describing the process. Using the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and the Log-likelihood estimation (LLH) methods as selection criteria, the normal inverse Gaussian (NIG) outperformed four other candidate probability distributions among the class of Generalized Hyperbolic (GH) distributions in describing the heavy tails present in the process. Similarly, the Skewed Student's t (SSt) is the best fit for Bonny Crude Oil and Natural Gas log-returns. The observed volatility measures of these three commodity prices were examined. The Weibull distribution gives the best fit both electricity and crude oil data while the Gamma distribution is selected for natural gas data in the volatility profiles among the five candidate probability density functions (Normal, Lognormal, Gamma, Inverse Gamma and the Inverse Gaussian) considered.


Growth factors affect a variety of epithelial functions. We examined the ability of TGF-beta to modulate epithelial ion transport and permeability. Filter-grown monolayers of human colonic epithelia, T84 and HT-29 cells, were treated with TGF-beta (0.1-100 ng/ml, 15 min-72 h) or infected with an adenoviral vector encoding TGF-beta (Ad-TGF beta) for 144 h. Ion transport (i.e., short-circuit current, I(sc)) and transepithelial resistance (TER) were assessed in Ussing chambers. Neither recombinant TGF-beta nor Ad-TGF beta infection affected baseline I(sc); however, exposure to > or = 1 ng/ml TGF-beta led to a significant (30-50%) reduction in the I(sc) responses to forskolin, vasoactive intestinal peptide, and cholera toxin (agents that evoke Cl(-) secretion via cAMP mobilization) and to the cell-permeant dibutyryl cAMP. Pharmacological analysis of signaling pathways revealed that the inhibition of cAMP-driven epithelial Cl(-) secretion by TGF-beta was blocked by pretreatment with SB-203580, a specific inhibitor of p38 MAPK, but not by inhibitors of JNK, ERK1/2 MAPK, or phosphatidylinositol 3'-kinase. TGF-beta enhanced the barrier function of the treated monolayers by up to threefold as assessed by TER; however, this event was temporally displaced from the altered I(sc) response, being statistically significant only at 72 h posttreatment. Thus, in addition to TGF-beta promotion of epithelial barrier function, we show that this growth factor also reduces responsiveness to cAMP-dependent secretagogues in a chronic manner and speculate that this serves as a braking mechanism to limit secretory enteropathies.


This paper examines two decisions farmers in southern Malawi make every planting season: whether or not to acquire increasingly expensive chemical fertilizers and whether or not to buy and plant equally expensive hybrid maize seed. Both choices are interrelated. Maize is the staple food crop in Malawi and the key to food security; and traditionally, 95 percent of the total land area cultivated in maize has been planted to local open-pollinated varieties instead of the newer semi-flint hybrids. Local maize is very popular with smallholder subsistence farmers as is hybrid maize, that when fertilized, intensifies production improving food security at both household and national levels. In the current economic environment, however, planting hybrid maize has two drawbacks. The first is the high price of seed and the second is its high requirements of fertilizer. With fertilizer unaffordable to many farmers, especially to women farmers of poorer female-headed households, planting hybrid maize is impractical. This paper disaggregates Malawi's farmers into subgroups of men, married women, and female headed households, describes the decision processes they make, and examines whether small bags of fertilizer will make any difference to the dilemma they now face.


This paper is devoted to a study of the role of the fluctuations that the eye is subject to, from the point of view of noise-enhanced processing. To this end, a basic model of the retina is considered, namely a regular sampler subject to space and time fluctuations that model the random sampling and the involuntary eye tremor respectively. The filtering that can be done by the photoreceptor is also taken into account and the study focuses on a stochastic model of a natural scene. To quantify the effect of the noise, a coefficient of correlation between the signal acquired by a given photoreceptor and a given point of the scene that the eye is looking at is considered. It is shown both for academic examples and for a more realistic case that the fluctuations which affect the retina can induce noise-enhanced processing effects. The observed effect is then interpreted as a stochastic control of the retina via the random tremor.


Post occupancy evaluation (POE) is a tool used to determine the users' satisfaction of a building after its completion. Most educational facilities do not conduct a post occupancy evaluation due to the absence of it in the contract agreement between the institution and architect. The client often chooses to bypass the POE to reduce the cost of the project. The purpose of this research is to conduct a POE of an academic building and identify areas of user dissatisfaction in order to enhance future projects. An academic building on a major, Midwestern university campus was remodeled during the academic year of 2014-15 followed by a POE with end users (students, faculty, and staff). The building houses the Dean's office and two departments with a total of approximately 1400 Students and 65 Full-time faculty and staff. Personal interviews were conducted with the staff of the architectural firm responsible for the project (architect, Interior designer, and construction manager), and the university facility planning director and architect. Interviews and walk-throughs were also conducted with program directors and chairpersons. A questionnaire in three different formats to accommodate different majors was distributed to 750 students and 45 faculty and staff. Specialized areas included a student operated restaurant and kitchen, as well as interior design studios and apparel design labs. Overall, users were satisfied with the remodeled building with the exception of a few minor issues such as navigation through the building and temperature.


The purpose of vocational psychology and career counseling is to prepare individuals to meet the modern world challenges by helping them to make better career decisions. High school is an appropriate time for adolescents to be incorporate in career exploration and choices. Yet cultural differences create many obstacles in their ways of deciding and choosing careers to pursue. This paper will examine some of career development theories, career decision-making along with some cultural factors that contributing in career decision-making difficulties among adolescents. Suggestions for career counselors and the previous studies weaknesses will be provided. The knowledge from this review will help to stimulate career counselors' cultural awareness, that they can be able to apply appropriate career assessments and interventions while helping the high school students. CULTURE AND DECISION-MAKING 3