HYDRODYNAMIC EFFECTS OF A CANNULA IN A USP DISSOLUTION TESTING APPARATUS 2 by Qianqian Liu Dissolution testing is routinely used in the pharmaceutical industry to provide in vitro drug release information for drug development and quality control purposes. The USP Testing Apparatus 2 is the most common dissolution testing system for solid dosage forms. Usually, sampling cannulas are used to take samples manually from the dissolution medium. However, the inserted cannula can alter the normal fluid flow within the vessel and produce different dissolution testing results. The hydrodynamic effects introduced by a permanently inserted cannula in a USP Dissolution Testing Apparatus 2 were evaluated by two approaches. Firstly, the dissolution tests were conducted with two dissolution systems, the testing system (with cannula) and the standard system (without cannula), for nine different tablet positions using non-disintegrating salicylic acid calibrator tablets. The dissolution profiles at each tablet location in the two systems were compared using statistical tools. Secondly, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) was used to obtain experimentally velocity vector maps and velocity profiles in the vessel for the two systems and to quantify changes in the velocities on selected horizontal iso-surfaces. The results show that the system with the cannula produced higher dissolution profiles than that without the cannula and that the magnitude of the difference between dissolution profiles in the two systems depended on tablet location. However, in most dissolution tests, the changes in dissolution profile due to the cannula were small enough to satisfy the FDA criteria for similarity between dissolution profiles (f1 and f2 values). PIV measurements showed slightly changes in the velocities of the fluid flow in the vessel where the cannula was inserted. The most significant velocity changes were observed closest to the cannula. However, generally the hydrodynamic effect generated by the cannula did not appear to be particularly strong, which was consistent to dissolution test results. It can be concluded that the hydrodynamic effects generated by the inserted cannula are real and observable. Such effects result in slightly modifications of the fluid flow in the dissolution vessel and in detectable differences in the dissolution profiles, which, although limited, can introduce variations in test results possibly leading to failure of routine dissolution tests. HYDRODYNAMIC EFFECTS OF A CANNULA IN A USP DISSOLUTION TESTING APPARATUS 2


Vertically aligned SnSe nanosheets were successfully synthesized on different substrates (silicon, quartz, and fluorine-doped tin oxide glass) via a non-catalytic vapour phase synthesis method for the first time. Such substrate independent feature could benefit the fabrication and application of various nanodevices due to the considerably enhanced surface area. The SnSe nanosheets have the thickness of ~20–30 nm and the lateral dimension of several micrometers. The analyses using X-ray diffraction and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy demonstrate that the nanosheets are single crystalline with an orthorhombic crystal structure of the Pnma 62 space group. Two-dimensional nanosheets were formed due to the anisotropic atomic bonding nature of the SnSe crystal, which is apparently different from the oriented attachment growth or the exposed plane suppressing growth. They also revealed faceted edge planes, which was elucidated in detail based upon the difference in the surface energy of each atomic plane. SnSe nanosheets show a direct band gap of ~1.1 eV, ideally meeting the requirements as high-performance light absorbing materials for solar cell applications.


The pharmacological effects of a drug are highly dependent on the absorption, metabolism, elimination, and distribution of the drug. In the past few years it has become apparent that transport proteins play a major role in regulating the distribution, elimination and metabolism of some drugs. As a consequence of our new understanding of the influence of transport proteins on the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic behavior of drugs, increasing attention has been focused on the potential for drug-drug interactions arising from interactions with drug transport proteins. The efflux transporter P-glycoprotein (P-gp) has received the most attention with regard to its role in restricting drug absorption and distribution and as a potential source for variability in drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. This review will focus on the evaluation of drug candidates to assess the potential for drug interactions at the level of P-gp. We will discuss the role of P-gp in drug disposition, the biochemistry of P-gp efflux as it relates to model systems to study drug interactions with P-gp, and the implementation of P-gp assay models within the drug discovery process.


ISSUE ADDRESSED
Debate on obesity spans complex health and social issues drawing on varying representations of fat bodies. This paper seeks to determine whether the recent public health focus on social inequalities is reflected in broader policy debate on obesity.

METHODS
We reviewed public submissions to the 2008 Australian House Standing Committee on Health and Ageing inquiry into obesity. Using a qualitative framing approach we categorised the 95 submissions, analysing a sample of 20 of them, thereby, elucidating attitudes to obesity held by a range of interested stakeholders.

RESULTS
Two primary frames and one lesser frame were identified. While it was common for contributors to situate obesity as a problem of individuals, it was equally common for contributors to draw on environmental level arguments where obesity is located in structural forces outside of the individual. The range of attributing factors reflects disagreement as to the causes of obesity, although adherents to both the individual and environmental frames called for more government regulation and financial support. Only two submissions directed policy reform to issues of inequality.

CONCLUSIONS
Empirically, this study represents a novel investigation of the role of public health ethics in obesity debate and policy. Politically, we highlight the relative lack of explicit attention given to inequality in the debate, even though social inequalities are demonstrably relevant.


Background. To build modern effective programs for the development of preschoolers' logical thinking, it is necessary to study the specifics of the operational structures functioning within their thought systems. According to Piaget, two operational groups of thought develop in parallel and synchrony: 1) logical-mathematical (classification, seriation, and invariant construction — the conservation principle); and 2) spatial-temporal — the structuring of space (linear ordering [LO], transformation of geometric forms [TGS], reconstruction of sensorimotor space at the level of representations [RSMS]) and time. However, there has been no empirical verification of the significant links between the levels of development of an individual's logical-mathematical and spatial-temporal operations in his/her system of thought. Purpose. The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of the links between the elements of the logical-mathematical and spatial-operational structures in preschoolers' systems of thought. Design. The study involved the following steps: 1) Individual diagnosis of the developmental level of logical-mathematical and spatial operations in 52 preschool children (5,8 – 7,1 years) using classica Piaget techniques and the Bender-Gestalt test; 2) identification of the operational developmental stage of each examinee; and 3) identification of the nature of the links between the logical-mathematical and spatial operational structures within each child's thinking system, using statistical tools for data analysis (ρ Spearman; regression analysis). Results. Statistically significant differences between the developmental levels of spatial and logical-mathematical operations were revealed, as well as between the levels of development of spatial operations LO, TGS, and RSMS as measured by the Bender-Gestalt test. It was found that all the spatial operations (LO, TGS, RSMS) were conceived at a higher level than logical-mathematical operations (classification, seriation, and the conservation principle). Significant predictors of the development of logical-mathematical/spatial operations were identified. Conclusions. Piaget's hypothesis that the development of the logical-mathematical and spatial operations within a child's thinking system is an interconnected process has received statistical justification in this study. The data we obtained suggest that both operational structures have similar sets of features. As proof that an internal causal nexus between the logicalmathematical and spatial structures exists, it is necessary to conduct formative experiments


Glacier beds provide crucial information concerning past and present ice dynamics and thermal regime. In this paper we present structural and sedimentological data from four valley glaciers (Austre Lovénbreen, Midtre Lovénbreen, Vestre Lovénbreen and Austre Brøggerbreen) on Brøggerhalvøya, NW Spitsbergen. The main focus of this paper is Midtre and Austre Lovénbreen, two typical High-Arctic land-based polythermal valley glaciers; the former has a long record of documentation regarding its response to twentieth century climatic warming. Structural mapping on the glacier surface and analysis of sediments in the proglacial area of Midtre Lovénbreen indicate that the dynamic regime and thermal structure of the glacier have changed through time. Dynamically, Midtre Lovénbreen was once heavily crevassed and relatively fast moving, but now is virtually crevasse-free and slow moving. The sedimentary record indicates that extensive areas of this glacier were wet-based when it was in a more advanced state, probably at its Neoglacial maximum (late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries). During this advance, a thin deforming layer of diamicton, commonly fluted, was draped over the existing morphology in the presently exposed proglacial area. This morphology consisted of large streamlined ridges aligned parallel to ice flow. Erosion of the underlying bedrock appears to have been limited. Radio-echo soundings of the glacier show that, at present, it is characterized by a polythermal basal thermal regime, with wet-based subglacial conditions only beneath its thicker parts. Modification of the bed is limited under this thermal regime and, as a result, the supraglacial environment dominates modern sedimentation. Comparative studies on Austre Lovénbreen, which also is probably polythermal, indicate similar sedimentary characteristics and facies associations, although here there are much more extensive areas of striated bedrock indicative of former basal sliding. In contrast both Austre Brøggerbreen and, by analogy, Vestre Lovénbreen are known to be predominantly cold-based. Collectively, these four glaciers suggest a trend of glacier recession and thinning accompanied by a change in thermal regime from predominantly wet-based, through partly frozen, to completely frozen. This study suggests that Svalbard valley glaciers have several dynamic modes and that glaciers switch between these modes largely as a reaction to changes in mass balance.


Purpose. The aim of the study was to observe and to describe the evolution of early diagnosed hearing loss in children with neonatal auditory neuropathy spectrum disorders identified by universal neonatal hearing screening.
Materials and method. In the last years, the development of universal auditory newborn screening program, that covers all maternities in our city, allowed us to test initially over 50,000 of babies and to identify and manage newborns with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorders after clinical audiological assessments. The follow-up was done for each child periodically until 18 months for cases fitted by hearing aids and until the cochlear implantation for cases with this indication.
Results. We identified 26 children with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorders, six children with normal tonal hearing and 20 cases with different degrees of hearing loss. According to the results of our follow-up process, all children with normal tonal hearing kept their auditory status in time. All deaf children were hearing aid fitted, except the profound hearing loss with direct indication for cochlear implantation. In the group of children with hearing loss, we observed that 35% presented progressive forms and 15% presented fluctuating forms. 57% of progressive hearing loss group evolved to the profound deafness and cochlear implant indication. The greater the initial diagnosed degree of hearing loss, the more the children have progressed to profound deafness.
Conclusions. A lot of children with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorders present progressive hearing loss, the profound form being finally present in more than 45% of cases. The periodical follow-up is essential in the first 18 months in order to offer the best medical indication and to avoid the delay of appropriate intervention for hearing rehabilitation and speech development.


As im/politeness scholars increasingly explore the intersections of identity and im/politeness, they reveal a growing need for empirical research that examines these intersections in a variety of discourses. This paper investigates the linkages between participants' co-constructions of identity and impoliteness in naturally occurring classroom discourse. The data come from a corpus of conflictive interactions observed in seven hours of whole-class discussions and twelve hours of small-group discussions in four eighth-grade classrooms. I apply an analytic framework that combines a genre-approach (Garces-Conejos Blitvich 2010, 2013) to impoliteness with a socio-constructivist approach (Bucholtz and Hall 2005) to identity, and I categorize identity according to Zimmerman's (1998) three broad identity types: discourse identity, (genre)situated identity, and transportable identity. In co-constitutive processes (Miller 2013), participants co-construct impoliteness and identity, strategically initiating and assessing potential impoliteness acts to assert and reject identity claims.


This article is a version of themes presented at a plenary lecture given at the 2016 Legal Education Conference at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Regulation of legal education is becoming increasingly important as regulation becomes more complex and intrusive in educational design and practice. As a consequence of pressures upon regulators from government, consumer groups, educational institutions, the profession and other stakeholders, there has been an increase in the number and size of reports and reviews as regulators and accreditors seek to position and re-position their practices within the regulatory field. In that field, regulatory relationship is one aspect of the regulation of legal education that is insufficiently researched and understood. This article seeks to explore models by which the relationship between regulators and legal educators can be improved. It begins by summarizing some of the regulatory literature on legal education, and suggesting that a complexity theory approach in safety regulation could be used in legal education. An example of regulatory relationship between educational institution and regulator will be described and aspects analyzed; in the final section, I outline possible ways forward for regulators and legal educators.


E-learning has found its way into various areas of our lives and, as technology has developed, the ways in which e-learning has been delivered have become more varied. Researchers and e-learning developers can become captivated by new technologies and the facilities that these technologies can offer. However, increased availability does not necessarily mean better facilities or results. In the early days of e-learning, materials were generally just text-based and the use of multimedia elements such as audio was very limited, whilst current materials generally incorporate much multimedia and often result in materials that are 'all singing all dancing'. However, there has been little research into the benefits of such 'entertaining' learning materials over the older-style text-based learning materials. The research described in this thesis explored the use of music and animation within an e-learning environment and the effects it might have upon a learner in particular how music and animation might affect a learner's emotional state and learning attainment. The model of flow was used to determine the emotional state of the learner. Flow can be used to describe focused motivation, when a person is fully immersed in a task. Several experiments were designed and carried out to determine the effects of including music and animation in an e-learning application. It was found that while the learning attainment was unaffected by the inclusion of the music and animation, learners' flow experiences were negatively affected. These findings highlighted the importance of the design phase of learning material and it should also be considered that adding more multimedia elements does not necessarily lead to improved learning or enhanced learner satisfaction.


Lee, Julie J. M.S. Egr., Department of Electrical Engineering, Wright State University, 2007. Analysis of Small-Signal Model PWM DC-D Buck-Boost Converter in CCM. The objective of this research is to analyze and simulate the pulse-width-modulated (PWM) dc-dc buck-boost converter and design a controller to gain stability for the buck-boost converter. The PWM dc-dc buck-boost converter reduces and/or increases dc voltage from one level to a another level in devices that need to, at different times or states, increase or decrease the output voltage. In this thesis, equations for transfer funtions for a PWM dc-dc open-loop buck-boost converter operating in continuous-conduction-mode (CCM) are derived. For the pre-chosen design, the open-loop characterics and the step responses are studied. The converter is simulated in PSpice to validate the theoretical analysis. AC analysis of the buck-boost converter is performed using theoretical values in MatLab and a discrete point method in PSpice. Three disturbances, change in load current, input voltage, and duty cycle are examined using step responses of the system. The step responses of the output voltage are obtained using MatLab Simulink and validated using PSpice simulation. Design and simulation of an integral-lead (type III) controller is chosen to reduce dc error and gain stability. Equations for the integral-lead controller are given based on steady-state and AC analysis of the open-loop circuit, with a design method illustrated. The designed controller is implemented in the circuit, and the ac behavior of the system is presented. Closed loop transfer fuctions are derived for the buck-boost converter. AC analysis of the buck-boost converter is studied using both theoretical values and a discrete point method in PSpice. The step responses of the output voltage due to step change in reference voltage, input voltage and load current are presented. The design and the obtained transfer functions of the PWM dc-dc closed-loop buck-boost converter are validated using PSpice. iii


Introduction: In Iran, being inspired by advanced countries and old patterns of Iranian city pedestrian spaces, the creation of pedestrian zones in the metropolises of the country has become popular to shift from car-oriented to walkability. The creation of the pedestrian zones in Tehran city after a number of relatively successful experiments, such as the 15th Khordad pedestrian zone and Sepahsalar pedestrian zone was followed by the creation of the 17th Shahrivar pedestrian zone. But, the 17th Shahrivar pedestrian zone based on the evidences such as the findings of scholars, criticisms of authorities and the discontent of the local people, is a rather unsuccessful experience. Research objective: This research with an analytical and profound look tries to methodically explain the main failure components of the 17th Shahrivar pedestrian zone in Tehran. Research method: For this purpose, the qualitative approach and the basic tools for collecting information including documents, semi-structured interviews and field observations have been used. The textual data collected mainly by coding, counting and creating the thematic network and the place data mainly by counting, photographing and mapping organized and conceptualized. In this stage, authors have inferred the main causes of project failure with scrutinizing all findings, examining the relationship between the main themes with each other, considering the theoretical foundations of the research and relying on rational and logical arguments. Conclusion:The findings of the article show that the main issues of the project failure are the three main problems: "The lack of proper need assessment, feasibility study and providing infrastructure for the project", "Marginalizing local people in the process of planning and implementation" and "Macro economic, political and managerial issues". Meanwhile, the main factor behind the defects and problems of the project seems to be political, managerial, and economic conditions and objectives. The experience of the 17th Shahrivar pedestrian zone indicates that the potential positive impacts of pedestrian zone creation on improving the quality of the environment are only possible if they are correctly located and have a sustainable and grassroots planning and management approach.


In the age of economic globalisation, do art and heritage matter? Once the domain of elitist practitioners and scholars, the governance of cultural heritage and the destiny of iconic artefacts have emerged as the new frontier of international law, making headlines and attracting the varied interests of academics and policy-makers, museum curators and collectors, human rights activists and investment lawyers and artists and economists, just to mention a few. The return of cultural artefacts to their legitimate owners, the recovery of underwater cultural heritage and the protection and promotion of artistic expressions are just some of the pressing issues addressed by this book. Contemporary intersections between art, cultural heritage and the market are complicated by a variety of ethical and legal issues, which often describe complex global relations. Should works of art be treated differently from other goods? What happens if a work of art, currently exhibited in a museum, turns out to have originally been looted? What is the relevant legal framework? What should be done with ancient shipwrecks filled with objects from former colonies? Should such objects be kept by the finders? Should they be returned to the country of origin? This book addresses these different questions while highlighting the complex interplay between legal and ethical issues in the context of cultural governance. The approach is mainly legal but interdisciplinary aspects are considered as well.


This article predicts the imminent demise of certain prominent doctrines of criminal procedure. These doctrines were fashioned in the 1960's primarily to combat the use of discretionary policing to exclude African-Americans from the Nation's political life. The political power of African Americans has risen steadily, however, since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Today African-Americans exert significant power in the Nation's inner cities. Many are now using their political strength to secure curfews, anti- loitering laws, and other forms of order maintenance policing, which they support as milder alternatives to severe prison sentences. Ironically, doctrines that were designed to counteract institutionalized racism are now being invoked to impede the efforts of minority communities to free themselves from rampant criminality -- itself both a vestige of racism and a potent barrier to the integration of minority citizens into the economic and social mainstream. A doctrinal regime so ripe with contradiction cannot long endure. This article proposes a new regime in which courts would defer to democratic evaluations of discretionary policing so long as it is clear that the community at large is meaningfully sharing in the burdens that such policing places on liberty. It uses this mode of analysis to defend curfews, gang-loitering laws, and other policies that make up the "new community policing."


Background: Although urinalysis is simple and inexpensive to perform, the finding of microhaematuria on urinalysis may be unreliable for diagnosing urolithiasis. Objective: To evaluate microhaematuria as a diagnostic marker for urolithiasis compared with low-dose unenhanced multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) as the "gold standard". Setting: A level 1 emergency department in a tertiary referral university teaching hospital. Design: Retrospective analysis. Methods: A study was undertaken to assess whether the finding of microhaematuria was diagnostic for urolithiasis using a low-dose unenhanced MDCT-based diagnosis as the reference standard by reviewing the records of all patients who presented to the emergency department with colicky flank pain and underwent a CT scan between January 2003 and December 2005. Results: Urolithiasis was present (as defined by low-dose unenhanced MDCT) in 507/638 patients (79%); 341/638 (53%) were true positive for urolithiasis, 76 (12%) were true negative, 55 (9%) were false positive and 166 (26%) were false negative. Microhaematuria as a test for urolithiasis in patients presenting to the emergency department therefore has a sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of 67%, 58%, 86% and 31%, respectively. 58% of the urinalysis results were negative for haematuria in the subset of patients with significant alternative diagnoses. Conclusions: The sensitivity, specificity and negative predictive value of microhaematuria on urinalysis for urolithiasis using unenhanced MDCT as the reference standard were low. This suggests that, when urolithiasis is clinically suspected, unenhanced MDCT is indicated without urinalysis being a prerequisite.


In general the use of minority language in schools is supposed to contribute to the maintenance of that language. The present study investigates whether this assumption is true for bilingual education in Friesland (i.e. the use of both Frisian and Dutch as media of instruction and communication). To this end 39 bilingually and 31 monolingually Dutch educated 6th graders were questioned on their language attitudes and usage (in various domains) and skills with respect to both Frisian and Dutch by means of a questionaire with multiple choice items. Analyses indicated that bilingual education in Friesland does not have a positive influence on attitudes and skills with respect to Frisian (as reported by the children). Usage of Frisian was more frequently reported by the bilingually educated group, although mainly in the expected school domain. Bilingual education in Friesland does not seem to contribute to the maintenance of the Friesian language. This study did reveal a stron. indication of the importance of Frisian as a subject for language maintenance based on the relation found between language skills in Frican and language use and attitudes. Because of its explorator nature, the conclusion of this study must be tentative.


The risk of collision is one of the crucial factor for the applications of Ekranoplans in civil transportation. In fact, the extremely low flight altitude of these aircraft increases dramatically the chances of interference between their flight path and the multitude of obstacles populating the surrounding area. Examples of those potential obstacles are: ships, small boats, and stumbling blocks. In this work we consider the optimal collision avoidance problem between a cruising kranoplan and a steady obstacle located on the ground. The following assumptions are employed: (i) initially the Ekranoplan is moving in a quasisteady levelled cruise trajectory; (ii) after the avoidance manoeuvre a recovery manoeuvre is executed by the aircraft to return to the initial cruise path; (iii) both the avoidance manoeuvre and the recovery manoeuvre lie on the same vertical plane identified by the initial cruise trajectory. The investigation of the collision avoidance performances on the longitudinal flight is encouraged by the relatively large quasi-flat turn radius of the Ekranoplans.

[ DOI : 10.1685/CSC09271] About DOI


The law governing the international carriage of goods by sea is deeply rooted in the doctrine of freedom of contract. The historical origins of the shipping industry itself can be traced to the era of 'laissez faire' in which contractual practice, based on negotiated terms and conditions, was free from the regulatory constraints of the state. It is for this reason that to this day modern shipping law is still rooted in the common law and customary trade usages with very limited statutory influences. Nonetheless, a review of the key elements of the law governing the international carriage of goods by sea reveals an array of terms and conditions implied by law which owe their origins not to the free will of parties or to trade usages, but to implication by the courts or through statutory enactments and international conventions. We find these developments enigmatic, given the 'laissez faire' background which originally informed early shipping industry practice. Even more surprising is the fact that this aspect of the development of shipping law does not seem to have attracted the attention of scholars, as the literature review clearly indicates that very little if any research has been conducted in this area. It is for this reason that we believe that this area of law deserves closer and critical scrutiny. This paper has the following main aims and objectives: (1) a comparative and critical overview of the various categories of implied terms in general contract law and in shipping law; (2) a critical appraisal of the judicial approach to the implication and classification of terms in selected shipping industry cases; and (3) a critical assessment of the philosophical basis for the implication and classification terms set against the historical background and modern context of international shipping industry practice.


Much research is currently centred on the detection of damage in structures using vibrational data. The work presented here examined several areas of interest in support of a practical technique for identifying and locating damage within bridge structures using apparent changes in their vibrational response to known excitation. The proposed goals of such a technique included the need for the measurement system to be operated on site by a minimum number of staff and that the procedure should be as non-invasive to the bridge traffic-flow as possible. Initially the research investigated changes in the vibrational bending characteristics of two series of large-scale model bridge-beams in the laboratory and these included ordinary-reinforced and post-tensioned, prestressed designs. Each beam was progressively damaged at predetermined positions and its vibrational response to impact excitation was analysed. For the load-regime utilised the results suggested that the infuced damage manifested itself as a function of the span of a beam rather than a localised area. A power-law relating apparent damage with the applied loading and prestress levels was then proposed, together with a qualitative vibrational measure of structural damage. In parallel with the laboratory experiments a series of tests were undertaken at the sites of a number of highway bridges. The bridges selected had differing types of construction and geometric design including composite-concrete, concrete slab-and-beam, concrete-slab with supporting steel-troughing constructions together with regular-rectangular, skewed and heavily-skewed geometries. Initial investigations were made of the feasibility and reliability of various methods of structure excitation including traffic and impulse methods. It was found that localised impact using a sledge-hammer was ideal for the purposes of this work and that a cartridge `bolt-gun' could be used in some specific cases.


The objective of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between motherhood and women's labour force participation in South Africa. The key problem in estimating this relationship is the endogeneity of motherhood/childbearing with respect to women's labour force participation. Childbearing behaviour and decisions to participate in the labour force are jointly determined; and unobservable characteristics which influence childbearing behaviour are also correlated with women's labour force participation. This thesis shows that the definition of motherhood can exacerbate these sources of endogeneity bias. International studies typically identify mothers as women with biological children aged 18 years or younger who are co-resident with at least one of their children. In South Africa, however, a sizeable sample of women is not co-resident with their children. The remaining sample of co-resident mothers are a non-random sample of all mothers who are less likely to participate in the labour force than all mothers. Placing a co-residency restriction on motherhood therefore biases the relationship between motherhood/childbearing and labour force participation. In particular, it overestimates the negative relationship. In the international literature instrumental variable (IV) estimation has been used to disentangle these causal mechanisms. This thesis also considers an application of same sex sibling composition, first introduced by Angrist and Evans (1998), as a strategy to identify the exogenous effects of childbearing on women's labour force participation in South Africa. Little or no research has investigated this relationship in South Africa. One possible explanation for this is that studies on female labour force participation in South Africa have not been able to match women to their children with the datasets that have been analysed: most nationally representative household surveys in South Africa do not contain detailed birth history information. The first part of this thesis analyses what data are available to identify women with children and the quality of these data; it also outlines four different methods to match women to their children using these data. The second part of this thesis investigates the relationship between motherhood/childbearing and women's labour force participation in South Africa.


This paper analyses the effects of minimum wages on competition in the German roofing sector. The case is particularly interesting since this sector is faced with a uniform minimum wage despite significant regional disparities in productivity and wages. As a control industry we take the plumbing sector, which shows a similar market structure and demand trend but is not subject to a minimum wage. Employing a comprehensive firm panel data and using a difference-in-difference approach, we estimate the impacts of minimum wages on market entries and exits and firms' profitability. We find significant effects for East Germany which point to a substantial shift in industry structure. Minimum wages decreased both market entries and exits for roofing firms while they increased entries of sole traders. A decreasing number of non-sole traders lowered competition for this group of firms and helped them to increase profitability. The increasing share of sole traders may indicate some type of evasion strategy in eastern Germany, particularly since wages for skilled roofers declined towards the minimum wage. In the western part of the country minimum wages had no impact on competition.


Beliefs and feelings about language vary dramatically within and across Native American cultural groups and are an acknowledged part of the processes of language shift and language death. This volume samples the language ideologies of a wide range of Native American communities" from the Canadian Yukon to Guatemala" to show their role in sociocultural transformation. These studies take up such active issues as insiderness in Cherokee language ideologies, contradictions of space-time for the Northern Arapaho, language socialization and Paiute identity, and orthography choices and language renewal among the Kiowa. The authors" including members of indigenous speech communities who participate in language renewal efforts" discuss not only Native Americans conscious language ideologies but also the often-revealing relationship between these beliefs and other more implicit realizations of language use as embedded in community practice. The chapters discuss the impact of contemporary language issues related to grammar, language use, the relation between language and social identity, and emergent language ideologies themselves in Native American speech communities. And although they portray obvious variation in attitudes toward language across communities, they also reveal commonalities" notably the emergent ideological process of iconization between a language and various national, ethnic, and tribal identities. As fewer Native Americans continue to speak their own language, this timely volume provides valuable grounded studies of language ideologies inaction" those indigenous to Native communities as well as those imposed by outside institutions or language researchers. It considers the emergent interaction of indigenous and imported ideologies and the resulting effect on language beliefs, practices, and struggles in today's Indian Country as it demonstrates the practical implications of recognizing a multiplicity of indigenous language ideologies and their impact on heritage language maintenance and renewal.


The link between jokes and social reality is visible in the way jokes adapt to different sociopolitical contexts by dealing with the most salient issues of such contexts. This chapter casts light on another facet of the relationship of jokes and their social context. Ideas about jokes are influenced by their social context, being continuously reformulated by social change or political manipulation. This case study analyses the official and unofficial media discourses that address the issues of taste and sense of humour, as emerging from a recent polemics about Estonian ethnic jokes. The different standpoints reflect ideas about the content and functions of the jokelore, characterising jokes either as an essentially racist or as a funny (i.e. harmless) genre.


The manifestations of Kawasaki disease in infants are often subtle and many times infants with this condition do not meet full diagnostic criteria. The approach to incomplete Kawasaki disease remains a challenge for physicians because clinical features may be mistaken for symptoms of other conditions. Young infants are at an extremely high risk of developing coronary arterial abnormalities compared to older children, probably due to the delay in diagnosis and the fact that only a small number receive intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) during the first 10 days of illness. We present a 5-month-old boy treated at our pediatric intensive care unit. The boy presented with fever lasting for more than five days, unresponsive to antibiotic therapy, changes in extremities (erythema, edema and desquamation), polymorphous rash, changes in the lips and oral cavity, seizures, irritability, pyuria, anemia, leukocytosis and raised titer of acute phase reactants. The presence of rash was initially mistaken for a reaction to antibiotics administered for a presumed urinary tract infection. All bacterial cultures and serologic tests were negative. Echocardiography showed no abnormality, but according to the criteria for incomplete Kawasaki disease published by the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Heart Association, we decided to treat the child with IVIG. With this report, we would like to highlight the importance of a high degree of clinical suspicion of Kawasaki disease in infants in whom the presentation is often incomplete, while prompt IVIG therapy is crucial to avoid serious cardiac complications.


Institutions such as universities are responsible for a significant amount of recyclable material entering landfills. This problem could be addressed in part by increasing the percentage of waste recycled by consumers on campuses. Building on previous research, we evaluated the effects of bin proximity and visual prompts on rates of recycling within a university building. The total weight of recyclable materials (aluminum, plastic, and paper) placed into the building's garbage and recycling bins was measured each day, and a reversal design was employed in which the environmental arrangement of the recycling bins was systematically manipulated. Both interventions produced a decrease in the amount of recyclable material being thrown in the trash cans, with visual prompts plus bin proximity being slightly more effective than bin proximity alone. However, neither intervention produced large increases in recycling. Interpretations of these findings and suggestions for future researchers are discussed.


Abstract We analyse a simple supply chain with one supplier, one retailer and uncertainty about market demand. Focusing on the incentives of the supplier and the retailer to enhance their private information about the actual market conditions, we show that choices on information acquisition are strategic complements. While the retailer's incentives are mainly driven by the information rent that he can earn, the supplier will choose to acquire information only if the retailer is rather well informed, even though the information is free of charge.


Family therapy was launched from the early work of Gregory Bateson and others in the Hixon Symposia and then adopted a General System perspective. This paper charts some of the pathways taken by Systemic Family and Couples Therapy (SFCT) during the last 50 years, reviews current developments and invites consideration of developments in other areas of systemic theory and application that would benefit SFCT. In the process I will offer stages from my own erratic thread through these developments, through theories of contingency , causal attribution, schemas, and attachment to practice in reflexive learning and developing a self-report measure of family functioning. Early models of SFT included the strategic in which the therapist determines the systemic dysfunction and creates conditions that prevent the family from continuing with it, and the more collaborative structural with its focus on communicational and other boundaries, and triangulations. Major advances in the 1980s include 'Milan systemic', Murray Bowen's Systemic Family Therapy and Maturana's structurally determined systems. In Europe at least the field became resistant to explanations involving causality and there was a move to regarding the family as the only expert on its functioning. Meanwhile the focus on families as linguistic systems opened up to external influences from such as Bakhtin, Vygotsky, Foucault and Derrida focussed attention on wider systemic influences. Current developments cluster around an integration of systemic with attachment approaches, the 'open dialogue' movement and 'relational reflexivity'. Concerns have returned to wider systems and in particular Government and Health concerns with evidence-based provision, monetisation, and well-being.


We present in this article a discussion about gestures produced from the childhood entry in the interface with the experience of school time. It is a discussion woven inside the center for studies and research in education in particular, the times group of the faculty of education of the federal university of Juiz de Fora/MG. Throughout history, time has been discussed in various ways and still is, as well as childhood, conceptually constructed as a result of social, political, religious, and cultural influences. In the attempt to "start thinking", we ask ourselves about what theoretical formulations have been based on childhood at the interface with school time in the field of education? We defend the central thesis that childhood, in a western cut, has been presented in productions still as social time. It is a recent movement to consider childhood as an event, experience, as opposed to the idea of childhood as the stage of life. As a result, considering infancy related to the tension between social time and time as intensity of the present, implies the need for pedagogical gestures that think this tension and, thus, consider the children of the current, narrowing their relations with the school, with knowledge and with life. To enlighten the issues sewn from our concerns, we chose authors such as Agamben, Leal, Bakhtin/Volochinov, Kohan, Vieira, Bento and Meneghel, Kramer, Borba, who focused on childhood and education. In order to problematize the time category, we dialogued with St. Augustine, Oliveira, Marques C. and Marques L, Skliar. The reading of our interlocutors and our listening with/to the school could subsidize the thought that we can invent ways not only imagined as possible with the perspective of reflecting time, childhood, experience and school on other bases. The interrogation, not the conviction, enables the sense of knowledge in the materiality of our practices, produced inside/outside the university. These are underprivileged subjects in curriculum matrices and disciplines that address the issue of children, their childhoods and temporalities.


Prestige has traditionally been viewed as a primary explanation for individuals' identification with organizations. Yet there are clues in the literature that some individuals identify with organizations that have lost their prestige owing to failure. We use data from a survey of former employees of a defunct technology firm to test a proposed model of identification with failed organizations. We find that the extent to which the perceived identity of a failed organization fulfills former members' self-enhancement and belongingness motives has a positive relationship with their identification with it. Identification, in turn, inclines former members to socially interact with each other and participate in alumni associations. Further qualitative analysis reveals the organizational identity work practices by which former members recast a failed organization's identity in positive terms. These findings suggest the merit of relaxing assumptions about prestige as a necessary precursor to organizational identification, and augment scholarly understanding of the cognitive and relational mechanisms that facilitate individuals' identification with organizations in the wake of events that injure their reputations.


Standardized means, commonly used in observational studies in epidemiology to adjust for potential confounders, are equal to inverse probability weighted means with inverse weights equal to the empirical propensity scores. More refined standardization corresponds with empirical propensity scores computed under more flexible models. Unnecessary standardization induces efficiency loss. However, according to the theory of inverse probability weighted estimation, propensity scores estimated under more flexible models induce improvement in the precision of inverse probability weighted means. This apparent contradiction is clarified by explicitly stating the assumptions under which the improvement in precision is attained.


Fifty percent of all the mammal species to have become extinct worldwide in the past 200 years have been lost from the Australian fauna giving Australia the worst record for mammal conservation of any country or continent. Sixteen species from a mammal fauna of 245 are believed to be extinct, 26 species now occur only as remnant populations occupying <20% of their former ranges. Offshore islands, tropical Australia, and the mesic fringe of the continent have provided refuges where mammal communities have survived relatively intact. The drier interior regions, which include cereal growing areas, intensive and extensive pastoral areas, and the little-used Triodia deserts, have lost many species. Extinctions and declines have not occurred equally throughout the Australian fauna, but have occurred at a disproportionately higher rate among medium-sized ground-dwelling mammals in the weight range 0.035-5.500 kg. Historically, conservation of mammals has concentrated on protection from hunting and trade, reservation of land as national parks and nature reserves, and faunal surveys to map distribution and abundance. These approaches have been necessary but insufficient to either stabilize the decline of endangered mammals or to promote their recovery. The past 20 years have seen many attempts to conserve endangered mammals, either by evading the presumed cause(s) of extinction or decline by translocation to islands, or by managing these causes within reserves by controlling exotic predators, controlling or excluding exotic herbivores, or applying a particular fire pattern or regime. The most significant successes have come with effective control of exotic predators, either by establishing populations of endangered species on predator-free islands or by the intensive use of 1080 poison to control exotic predators at mainland sites.


The purpose of this project was to experience the design-build project delivery method in the context of a research-fueled, procedural testing investigation. Thus, this project consisted of 3 main components each of which will be addressed in this report. The first aspect to be addressed is the research aspect. The goal of our research was to establish a chemical understanding of how replacement of cement with pozzolans in a grout mixture affects chemical processes and resulting structural characteristics within and of the grout. This research was then applied to formulation of potentially self-consolidating mix designs to be tested in the next aspect of the project. The next aspect of the project to be addressed is the application of the research to formulation of mix designs followed by the evaluation and analyses of said mix designs. This included ASTM procedurally guided testing of slump flow, j-ring slump flow, visual stability index identification, blocking assessment, compressive testing, and consolidation assessment. The goal of this testing was to establish a self consolidating grout mix design in accordance with ASTM C 476 which defines a self consolidating mix by its performance in terms of slump, visual stability, and compressive strength. The final aspect of the project to be addressed is the design build experience encountered while carrying out the procedural portion of the project. This will be discussed on the basis of criteria outlined by the Design Build Institute of American, namely 3 key terms assigned to successful design build project delivery, collaboration, integration, and communication. Each of these terms will be discussed in the context of our experience on this project.


In our previous work we demonstrated that a single headed attention encoder-decoder model is able to reach state-of-the-art results in conversational speech recognition. In this paper, we further improve the results for both Switchboard 300 and 2000. Through use of an improved optimizer, speaker vector embeddings, and alternative speech representations we reduce the recognition errors of our LSTM system on Switchboard-300 by 4% relative. Compensation of the decoder model with the probability ratio approach allows more efficient integration of an external language model, and we report 5.9% and 11.5% WER on the SWB and CHM parts of Hub5'00 with very simple LSTM models. Our study also considers the recently proposed conformer, and more advanced self-attention based language models. Overall, the conformer shows similar performance to the LSTM; nevertheless, their combination and decoding with an improved LM reaches a new record on Switchboard-300, 5.0% and 10.0% WER on SWB and CHM. Our findings are also confirmed on Switchboard-2000, and a new state of the art is reported, practically reaching the limit of the benchmark.


ABSTRACT.
 Hispid pocket mice (Chaetodipus hispidus) are found from the grasslands of the Great Plains to the deserts of the southwestern United States, but the natural history and ecology of this species have not been described in native tallgrass prairie at the eastern edge of its range. We initiated an ongoing long-term study of small mammals on Konza Prairie Biological Station, Kansas (a Long-Term Ecological Research [LTER] site), in autumn 1981. Our sampling scheme for 14 LTER sites was a 20-station trapline; small mammals were sampled in autumn and spring for 30 years and in summer for a shorter period. We combined data for these sites with those from shorter studies on Konza Prairie that used traplines and trapping grids. We recorded only 96 hispid pocket mice over the 30 years of study (>300,000 trap-nights overall). Pocket mice were more likely to be captured in autumn and summer than in spring. The earliest annual capture was on 20 March and the latest on 7 December; males emerged from torpor in spring before females, whereas females entered torpor later in autumn. Precipitation (January—September) had a tight limiting effect on maximal number of individuals that were present in autumn. Pocket mice were more common on slope prairie than on upland or lowland prairie, but burning and grazing had no effect. Their spatiotemporal distribution showed a slightly "anti-nested" pattern with only weakly preferred sites and no focal years that might indicate favorable conditions. Collectively, our data suggested the presence of 3 age classes when individual body masses (no differences between males and females) were plotted against capture date. Finally, our study illustrates the importance of long-term data sets, especially in the study of uncommon to rare species.


Purpose Recent years have witnessed the birth and rapid development of "coworking" spaces that are likely to affect classic models of work and organizations. This paper aims to identify the crucial issues raised by this phenomenon, for both practitioners and researchers, in both management and organization theory. Design/methodology/approach To describe this growing phenomenon, the current paper presents an in-depth analysis of existing literature and identifies the social, organizational and managerial issues raised by the development of coworking. Findings A review of how organizational research has analyzed the rapid development of coworking spaces thus far reveals a conceptual framework for grasping the origins, nature and implications of this phenomenon. Such an assessment in turn sheds light on the issues and potential questions raised by the growth of this new type of organization. Practical implications Managers and practitioners can gain a better grasp of the phenomenon and the potential evolution of workplaces and organizations, as well as a better understanding of the extent to which developing coworking spaces might invoke evolution in organizations and management practices. Originality/value The rise of coworking spaces is unprecedented in its speed and scale. Yet, academic research has largely ignored this phenomenon, and practitioner studies have privileged a descriptive approach. This paper thus covers a topic that has attracted scant attention in prior academic research, despite its vast and growing importance.


Quantum mechanics is a subject that has captured the imagination of a surprisingly broad range of thinkers, including many philosophers of science. Quantum field theory, however, is a subject that has been discussed mostly by physicists. This is the first book to present quantum field theory in a manner that makes it accessible to philosophers. Because it presents a lucid view of the theory and debates that surround the theory, An Interpretive Introduction to Quantum Field Theory will interest students of physics as well as students of philosophy. Paul Teller presents the basic ideas of quantum field theory in a way that is understandable to readers who are familiar with non-relativistic quantum mechanics. He provides information about the physics of the theory without calculational detail, and he enlightens readers on how to think about the theory physically. Along the way, he dismantles some popular myths and clarifies the novel ways in which quantum field theory is both a theory about fields and about particles. His goal is to raise questions about the philosophical implications of the theory and to offer some tentative interpretive views of his own. This provocative and thoughtful book challenges philosophers to extend their thinking beyond the realm of quantum mechanics and it challenges physicists to consider the philosophical issues that their explorations have encouraged.


The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) has recently discovered gravitational waves (GWs) emitted by merging black hole binaries. We examine whether future GW detections may identify triple companions of merging binaries. Such a triple companion causes variations in the GW signal due to: (1) the varying path length along the line of sight during the orbit around the center of mass; (2) relativistic beaming, Doppler, and gravitational redshift; (3) the variation of the "light"-travel time in the gravitational field of the triple companion; and (4) secular variations of the orbital elements. We find that the prospects for detecting a triple companion are the highest for low-mass compact object binaries which spend the longest time in the LIGO frequency band. In particular, for merging neutron star binaries, LIGO may detect a white dwarf or M-dwarf perturber at a signal-to-noise ratio of 8, if it is within distance from the binary and the system is within a distance of 100 Mpc. Stellar mass (supermassive) black hole perturbers may be detected at a factor 5 × (103×) larger separations. Such pertubers in orbit around a merging binary emit GWs at frequencies above 1 mHz detectable by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna in coincidence.


When a restaurant is full, its managers have to determine which of several tactics they will use to seat the customers who are waiting in line for a table. The waiting guests generally might expect that the restaurant would seat them in the order they arrived, but not all restaurants use a first-come, first-served policy. Because restaurant operators seek ways to achieve the greatest possible revenue from a particular meal period, they may use approaches for seating the waiting guests that shift demand and violate the first-come, first served expectation. This study tested the following four demand-shifting tactics: seating guests according to party size (by matching party size to available tables), accepting reservations for large parties only, seating VIP guests in preference to others, and allowing guests to call ahead to put their name on the waitlist for an approximate seating time. The study found that guests would accept some of those approaches as being fair, while others are dimly regarded. In response to a series of scenarios involving these four seating policies, the 268 respondents rated seating by party size and call-ahead seating as being relatively fair, but large-party reservations were seen as a neutral policy at best and VIP seating was considered to be essentially unfair. In general, respondents who said that they were not familiar with a particular policy gave that policy a lower fairness rating than did those who had experience with that policy. One interesting finding was that fairness ratings were generally not influenced by whether a respondent gained the advantage of an earlier seating from a given policy scenario. With regard to the respondents' likelihood of returning to a restaurant, however, the likelihood of return was greater when a particular demand-shifting policy gave the respondent the advantage of fast seating. Of the four policies, VIP seating was mostly likely to drive customers from a restaurant. Although it makes sense to use demand-shifting tactics to boost revenue during busy times, restaurateurs should be wary of using any tactic that guests see as being unfair. Offering a clear explanation of a policy, particularly call-ahead seating and seating by party size, may assuage guests who would otherwise be unhappy, but accepting reservations for large parties is a chancy tactic and seating VIPs ahead of others might well be seen as unfair no matter how it is handled.


In this paper, we consider the resource allocation problem for multicast over IEEE 802.16j WiMAX networks, which use relay stations to transmit data between the base station and subscriber stations to improve the transmission quality. Our objective is to maximize the total number of recipients by allocating resource among the base station and relay stations subject to the resource budget and the channel quality. We prove that the problem is NP-hard, and design a polynomial-time algorithm to solve it. The algorithm can be integrated with the multicast mechanism defined in the WiMAX standards, and can also be applied to any kind of wireless networks that support adaptive modulation and coding schemes. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated through simulations. We show that the typical routing approach is inefficient, whereas our scheme can always utilize relay stations to achieve a superior performance under different channel qualities and resource budgets.


MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding RNA molecules that play an important role in the post-transcriptional regulation of mRNA. These molecules have been the subject of growing interest as they are believed to control the regulation of a large number of genes, including those expressed in the brain. Evidence suggests that miRNAs could be involved in the pathogenesis of neuropsychiatric disorders. Alterations in metabolic enzymes of the polyamine system have been reported to play a role in predisposition to suicidal behaviour. We have previously shown the expression of the polyamine genes SAT1 and SMOX to be down-regulated in the brains of suicide completers. In this study, we hypothesized that the dysregulation of these genes in depressed suicide completers could be influenced by miRNA post-transcriptional regulation. Using a stringent target prediction analysis, we identified several miRNAs that target the 3'UTR of SAT1 and SMOX. We profiled the expression of 10 miRNAs in the prefrontal cortex (BA44) of suicide completers (N = 15) and controls (N = 16) using qRT-PCR. We found that several miRNAs showed significant up-regulation in the prefrontal cortex of suicide completers compared to psychiatric healthy controls. Furthermore, we demonstrated a significant correlation between these miRNAs and the expression levels of both SAT1 and SMOX. Our results suggest a relationship between miRNAs and polyamine gene expression in the suicide brain, and postulate a mechanism for SAT1 and SMOX down-regulation by post-transcriptional activity of miRNAs.


Abstract A laminated sediment record of the last 12 600 radiocarbon years from the anoxic Cariaco Basin provides a rare opportunity to study interannual to millenial-scale climatic change in a marine setting. Sedimentological and radiometric analyses of laminae couplets in the basin sediments indicate that they are annually deposited varves. The varves consist of light and dark laminae which are deposited as the result of the Intertropical Convergence Zone's annual north-south migration over the tropical North Atlantic, and the impact of this migration on regional upwelling and rainfall patterns. Light laminae contain planktonic fossils (predominantly diatoms) and are an indicator of productivity over the basin during the winter-spring upwelling season. Dark laminae contain terrigenous mineral grains and are an indicator of runoff from northern South America during the late summer-fall rainy season. Varve measurements developed using X-ray images and thin sections indicate that a continuous 14 000 calendar year long varve chronology may be generated. Preliminary measurements of thickness of individual light and dark laminae for the period 12.6 to 9 ka BP show similar palaeoclimate signals. Thickness of dark laminae, interpreted as measuring changes in regional runoff, increased rapidly at 10.8 ka BP and decreased rapidly at 9.8 ka BP, an interval coincident with the Younger Dryas cold period. Thickness of light (diatom-rich) laminae, indicative of productivity and possibly upwelling intensity, also show an increase at 10.8 ka BP, and a rapid decrease at 9.8 ka BP, simultaneous with the changes in the dark laminae. Current work is focusing on building long multiple-core varve chronologies and using these for palaeoclimatic reconstructions and geochronological research.


ABSTRACT Political scientists have devoted vastly more attention to general presidential elections than to party nominations for president. This emphasis might be reasonable if parties could be counted on to nominate generic representatives of their traditions. But it is clear that they cannot. Since the party reforms of the 1970s, regulars like Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, and Al Gore have sometimes won fairly easy nominations, but outsider candidates like Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean have made strong runs or even won. 2016 has produced extremes of both types: ultimate regular Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side and far outsider Donald Trump on the Republican side. It seems, moreover, that party regulars are having more difficulty in recent cycles than they did in the 1980s and 1990s. There is therefore some urgency to the question: when and why do party regulars tend to win nominations? We examine this question from the point of view of two well-known studies, Nelson Polsby's Consequences of Party Reform and our own, The Party Decides. The former explains why incentives built into the reformed system of presidential nominations make outsider and factional candidates like Trump likely. The latter argues that, following the factional nominations of the 1970s, party leaders learned to steer nominations to insider favorites. This article uses the logic of these studies to argue that major trends over the past two decades – the rise of new political media, the flood of early money into presidential nominations, and the conflict among party factions – have made it easier for factional candidates and outsiders to challenge elite control of nominations.


Given the increasing freshwater scarcity, the performance of irrigation is critical in increasing and sustaining agricultural productivity in the water-scarce and largely arid and semi-arid Kenya. Irrigation currently accounts for most of the water withdrawals in the country, and the required improvement in the performance of irrigation is hampered by inadequate benchmarks upon which to base effective planning. This study was conducted between September and October 2008 to analyze the economic efficiency of irrigation water-use in Mwea Irrigation Scheme in the Upper Tana River Basin in Kirinyaga District, Kenya. The objectives of the study were to determine response of rice yields to the quantity of irrigation water used in Mwea Irrigation Scheme, the economic water-use efficiency, and the main factors explaining the efficiency. This required data on quantities of water withdrawn for irrigation, irrigated land area, working capital, labour and rice output, as well as other technical and socio-economic features of the irrigators. Questionnaires and field observations were used to collect secondary data on these variables from a sample of 121 out of the 4,189 rice farms. Descriptive statistics, regression and correlation tools were used for data analysis. The results were presented in form of tables, plates and graphs, from which discussions, conclusions, and recommendations were made. The study revealed that the quantity of irrigation water as was used had positive but insignificant effect on rice output, probably implying over-use of water. Technical, allocative, and overall economic (cost) water-use efficiencies in the Scheme were 69%, 91%, and 63% respectively. Further, technical efficiency was explained mainly by the actual duration of land preparation, water conflicts, drain water re-use, and availability of water in the canal. It is recommended that technical and institutional changes be made in order to improve technical efficiency of water use in the Scheme. Specifically, these include dry land preparation, shortening of land preparation period, cultivation of more water-efficient rice varieties, non-flood weed control, and construction of large-scale water storage infrastructure. Other recommendations are canal lining, installation of water control structures, drain water re-use, capacity-building of IWUAs, and integrated approaches to water management in the Thiba and Nyamindi river basins. This study contributes to effective and efficient decision-making on irrigation planning and management in Mwea Scheme. It will also facilitate the development and implementation of the National Irrigation Policy that is currently being formulated. In addition, it is expected to generate more interest in irrigation research in Kenya to help achieve the national macroeconomic development objectives of poverty alleviation, food security, employment creation, and industrialization.


Improved document security on any information output at Sistem Informasi Akademik (SIA) of UNP is by adding a digital signature. The use of elliptic curve digital signature based on Elliptic Curve Discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP) on the elliptic curve modulo a prime has a high level of security.
SIA application in this thesis produce printed output of documents that have been added (embedded) with signature. The Signature of Information (Plaintext) which are encrypted in the process of signing the "NIM, IP, type of document and print time" where all four of these variables are encrypted with the elliptic curve algorithms in Finite Fields FPm and generate the public key r stored in a database table, a private key s and the ciphertext (ds code). In the test application signatures (verifying) with decrypt the ciphertext (ds code) is entered, if the public key value and the four variables is match than the application will be displayed information from the document valid. Testing the level of security and reliability of the signature using a sniffing program Wireshark and Chain & Abel. And performance testing web pages using firebug applications.
This thesis research resulted in the application "SIA" which was added a signature and the signature validity reader application. From the test results, the signature can not be hacked and cracked with application-sniffing, and the perifying application is show the average access time of 110 ms. The Verifying web application takes a long time to decrypt the digital signature, but is comparable to the security and reliability of information generated by the system with this elliptic curve algorithms.

Keywords : Sistem Informasi Akademik (SIA), elliptic curve algorithms, public key, private key.


Abstract Most published results concerning deuterium-hydrogen fractionation in plants are in the range 0.8-1, indicating no bioaccumulation of the heavy isotope. In spite this, an updated compilation of litterature data show that 77% of OBT/TFWT ratios measured in terrestrial plants and food items are greater than one, with a mean value of 1.92. On the other hand, OBT/TFWT ratios for aquatic samples do not show such a tritium anomaly, with 81% of the published ratios being less than 1. This strongly suggests that the cause for excess tritium in terrestrial organic matter has to be found in the atmosphere. We have developed a simple model of tritium incorporation during plant growth, forced by the annual cycle of tritium in precipitation taken from the IAEA/ISOHIS database. The simulated distribution of the OBT/TFWT ratios for terrestrial samples shows many similarities with the observed one. Although other processes such as soil moisture with lower tritium content than atmospheric water vapour can be invoked, our results suggest that the annual tritium maximum which occurs in spring, during the growing season, is capable of creating substantial OBT/TFWT enrichments and has to be considered as well.


For the addicted, pregnant, and poor women living in daily-rent hotels in San Francisco's Mission district, life is marked by battles against drug cravings, housing debt, and potential violence. In this stunning ethnography Kelly Ray Knight presents these women in all their complex humanity and asks what kinds of futures are possible for them given their seemingly hopeless situation. During her four years of fieldwork Knight documented women's struggles as they traveled from the street to the clinic, jail, and family court, and back to the hotels. She approaches addicted pregnancy as an everyday phenomenon in these women's lives and describes how they must navigate the tension between pregnancy's demands to stay clean and the pull of addiction and poverty toward drug use and sex work. By creating the space for addicted women's own narratives and examining addicted pregnancy from medical, policy, and social science perspectives, Knight forces us to confront and reconsider the ways we think about addiction, trauma, health, criminality, and responsibility.


A collaborative effort by the BLM, MAES and MFWP, the Whitetail Watershed Restoration Project used prescribed fire in 2005 and 2006 to address aspen decline, conifer encroachment and altered hydrologic function in a forested watershed within Jefferson County, MT. As part of this effort quaking aspen response to fire was evaluated in two sub-drainages of the Whitetail Basin three years after treatment. Unburned stands were first surveyed to determine whether regeneration was occurring and to measure the distribution of aspen stems by size class. This information was then compared to stem response in burned stands. Big game and cattle impacts on aspen sucker height and density were measured using a series of 3-part ungulate exclosures in a sub-sample of burned stands. Regeneration was occurring in only1 of 40 unburned stands suggesting aspen was declining in this area. Sucker density increased dramatically in the burned stands after three years increasing the likelihood for regeneration. Within the first three years post-fire big game and the combination of big game and cattle did not affect sucker density in the burned stands. Although sucker height was significantly less in plots used by ungulates we did not feel it was enough to prevent regeneration. This assertion was supported by sufficient annual growth rates and the recruitment of individual regeneration stems into stands outside of protected plots. While it appears fire has increased the potential for aspen regeneration in the Whitetail Basin, early growth rates have allowed for some individual stem to surpass browse height to date, suggesting future monitoring will be necessary to learn if the current recruitment levels are sufficient to regenerate the majority of stands.


The main objective of this paper is to analyse dete rminants that influence implementation of accounting standards for Islamic financial institut ions by examining the history of accounting standards and two different contexts as applied to Islamic financial institutions in the United Kingdom and Indonesia. The paper explores available texts and literature mainly from international journals and text books. Employing th e Ibn Khaldun perspective, this study analyses two determinants i.e. institutional settin g hat may be suitable in the context of the United Kingdom, and accounting needs in the case of Indonesia. The research shows the determinants are well fitted with interdisciplinary characters of Ibn Khaldun model of civilization i.e. G = f(S, N, W, j and g). This exp lains a civilized society is led by the political authority (G) which is influenced concurrently by f actors such as the direction of Shari'ah (S), the role of people (N), the use of wealth (W), the development of a country (g), and the promotion of justice (j). This paper has practical significance for accounting standard setters in the Islamic finance industry and policy makers, for understanding the environmental determinant perspective of the country and using th is perspective for positioning important aspect in accounting standard setting, developing policies; and articulating procedures to maximize development of Islamic finance.


Geologic mapping of the Trans-Alaska Crustal Transect (TACT) project along the Dalton Highway in northern Alaska indicates that the Endicott Mountains allochthon and the Hammond terrane compose a combined allochthon that was thrust northward at least 90 km in the Early Cretaceous. The basal thrust of the combined allochthon climbs up section in the hanging wall from a ductile shear zone in the south through lower Paleozoic rocks of the Hammond terrane and into Upper Devonian rocks of the Endicott Mountains allochthon at the Mount Doonerak antiform, culminating in Early Cretaceous shale in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range. Footwall rocks north of the Mount Doonerak antiform are everywhere parautochthonous Permian and Triassic shale of the North Slope terrane rather than Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous strata of the Colville Basin as shown in most other tectonic models of the central Brooks Range. Stratigraphic and structural relations suggest that this thrust was the basal detachment for Early Cretaceous deformation. Younger structures, such as the Tertiary Mount Doonerak antiform, deform the Early Cretaceous structures and are cored by thrusts that root at a depth of about 10 to 30 km along a deeper detachment than the Early Cretaceous detachment. The Brooks Range, therefore, exposes (1) an Early Cretaceous thin-skinned deformational belt developed during arc-continent collision and (2) a mainly Tertiary thick-skinned orogen that is probably the northward continuation of the Rocky Mountains orogenic belt. A down-to-the-south zone of both ductile and brittle normal faulting along the southern margin of the Brooks Range probably formed in the mid-Cretaceous by extensional exhumation of the Early Cretaceous contractional deformation.


The Steiner tree problem is one of the most fundamental NP-hard problems: given a weighted undirected graph and a subset of terminal nodes, find a minimum-cost tree spanning the terminals. In a sequence of papers, the approximation ratio for this problem was improved from 2 to 1.55 [Robins and Zelikovsky 2005]. All these algorithms are purely combinatorial. A long-standing open problem is whether there is an LP relaxation of Steiner tree with integrality gap smaller than 2 [Rajagopalan and Vazirani 1999].
 In this article we present an LP-based approximation algorithm for Steiner tree with an improved approximation factor. Our algorithm is based on a, seemingly novel, iterative randomized rounding technique. We consider an LP relaxation of the problem, which is based on the notion of directed components. We sample one component with probability proportional to the value of the associated variable in a fractional solution: the sampled component is contracted and the LP is updated consequently. We iterate this process until all terminals are connected. Our algorithm delivers a solution of cost at most ln(4) + ϵ < 1.39 times the cost of an optimal Steiner tree. The algorithm can be derandomized using the method of limited independence.
 As a by-product of our analysis, we show that the integrality gap of our LP is at most 1.55, hence answering the mentioned open question.


The concept of auditorymotor interaction pervades speech science research, yet the cortical systems supporting this interface have not been elucidated. Drawing on experimental designs used in recent work in sensorymotor integration in the cortical visual system, we used fMRI in an effort to identify human auditory regions with both sensory and motor response properties, analogous to single-unit responses in known visuomotor integration areas. The sensory phase of the task involved listening to speech (nonsense sentences) or music (novel piano melodies); the motor phase of the task involved covert rehearsal/humming of the auditory stimuli. A small set of areas in the superior temporal and temporal parietal cortex responded both during the listening phase and the rehearsal/humming phase. A left lateralized region in the posterior Sylvian fissure at the parietaltemporal boundary, area Spt, showed particularly robust responses to both phases of the task. Frontal areas also showed combined auditory + rehearsal responsivity consistent with the claim that the posterior activations are part of a larger auditorymotor integration circuit. We hypothesize that this circuit plays an important role in speech development as part of the network that enables acousticphonetic input to guide the acquisition of language-specific articulatory-phonetic gestures; this circuit may play a role in analogous musical abilities. In the adult, this system continues to support aspects of speech production, and, we suggest, supports verbal working memory.


The relation between the use of defense mechanisms and psychological functioning was examined in 154 adults (52 male and 102 female). The study used DSQ (Bond et al., 1983), ASEBA/ASR (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2003) and RSE (Rosenberg, 1965). The results of our study support the hypothesis that adaptive defense style is associated with adult adaptive functioning. Higher scores in good relations with spouse/partner and success at work correlate with higher ratings in level of adaptive defense style. There is a relationship between adult use of maladaptive action defenses and low job satisfaction. Correlation analysis indicates that adults who rely on maladaptive action or image-distorting defenses report higher levels of self-rated internalizing, externalizing behavior problems, and total problems (ASR). Adults who use the self-sacrificing defense style exhibit a higher level of internalizing symptoms (anxiety, depressivity, somatic complaints) and total problems. Results of the present study indicate that higher levels of maladaptive action and self-sacrificing defense style are associated with lower self-esteem. Women more often then men use the self-sacrificing defense style. There are also differences in adaptive defense style depending on adult marital status and level of education.


Over the past few years, Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) have become popular as a possible pathway to enable low-power event-driven neuromorphic hardware. However, their application in machine learning have largely been limited to very shallow neural network architectures for simple problems. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithmic technique for generating an SNN with a deep architecture, and demonstrate its effectiveness on complex visual recognition problems such as CIFAR-10 and ImageNet. Our technique applies to both VGG and Residual network architectures, with significantly better accuracy than the state-of-the-art. Finally, we present analysis of the sparse event-driven computations to demonstrate reduced hardware overhead when operating in the spiking domain.


The dating app Bumble has been lauded as the "feminist Tinder" largely because of its defining feature: Only women can initiate the conversation after a match. Using in-depth interviews with 14 users, this research explores cisgender women's experience of Bumble, through an affordances framework. The findings show that women strategically use the various affordances of the app to not only look for matches but also to actively avoid harassment and danger. The implications of this "negotiated use" as invisible gendered digital labor, as well as the overall limitations of Bumble as a "feminist" app focused on choice, are discussed.


Abstract During the U.S. Civil War, the Confederate Congress adopted three currency reforms that were intended to reduce the quantity of Treasury notes in circulation by inducing the money-holding public to exchange their notes for long-term bonds. In this paper, we examine the political factors that influenced the adoption of the reforms and their effect on the flow of seigniorage - revenue that the government derived by using the newly-printed Treasury notes to purchase the goods and services it required. We argue that the bifurcation of the Confederate Congress into two groups – those legislators that represented the Confederacy's interior and those from areas no longer under Confederate control – contributed to the adoption of the reforms. Our findings indicate that representing an area outside of the rebel government's control increased the likelihood that a legislator would support efforts to reform the currency by over 90 percent. In addition, our results indicate that the rate of monetary expansion in the South was below that which would have maximized the revenue from seigniorage. We find that the reforms reduced the flow of seigniorage by approximately 57 percent, depriving the Confederate government of much-needed revenue.


Unlike other clinical areas, psychiatry reports critical shortages in the availability of trained specialists. This article reports on the utilization of PAs in a state mental hospital. The clinical role of the PA is described. In state hospitals, the number of patients and patient-care episodes per psychiatrist is very high, especially in comparison to the situation at private psychiatric hospitals. The addition of PAs to the staff at this institution has significantly increased the time that psychiatrists have in which to plan and implement treatment, enabling the institution to remain open. The other clinical disciplines showed a high degree of acceptance of the PAs in this setting. The report therefore concludes that psychiatry is a promising area for employment of PAs, now and in the future.


ABSTRACT:This essay attempts a philological—meaning a both technically and socially attentive—historical study of an individual computer programming language, JavaScript. From its introduction, JavaScript's reception by software developers, and its importance in web development as we now understand it, was structured by a continuous negotiation of expertise. I use the term "improvised expertise" to describe both conditions for and effects of the unanticipated development of JavaScript, originally designed for casual and inexpert coders, into a complex of technical artifacts and practices whose range and complexity of use has today propelled it into domains previously dominated by other, often older and more prestigious languages. "Improvised expertise" also marks the conditions for and effects of three specific developmental dynamics in JavaScript's recent history: first, the rapidly accelerated development of the language itself, in the versions of its standard specification; second, the recent, abruptly emerging, yet rapid growth of JavaScript in server-side networking, data processing, and other so-called back-end development tasks previously off limits to it; third, the equally recent and abrupt, yet decisive emergence of JavaScript as the dominant language of a new generation of dynamic web application frameworks and the developer tool chains or tooling suites that support them.


One hundred twenty-five thousand years ago, when the Sahara desert was savanna, with plentiful water and game, a group of hominids made tools under the protection of a rock overhang in Jebel Faya, United Arab Emirates. A German-led team argues on page 453 of this week9s issue of Science that these toolmakers were modern humans who may have crossed directly from Africa as part of a migration spreading across Europe, Asia, and Australia. Although most researchers agree that our species came out of Africa in one or more waves (see p. 392), those dates are more than 50,000 years earlier than most believe our ancestors left the continent.


Experimental economics is an established method of generating controlled and replicable empirical knowledge. It is complementary to other empirical methods in the social sciences. The research infrastructure for laboratory experiments is very good in Europe and also in Germany. One useful instrument would be to develop a short socio-economic questionnaire with questions already used in surveys that experimental economists could use to administer to their participants. The analyses of the selectivity of subject pools would then be an easy task. However, among experimental economists no standard exists yet, which limits the comparability of respective data sets. An effort shall be undertaken to "create" such a common questionnaire. The status quo with regard to data reporting is that no standard has emerged yet. There exists one data repository (in the United States) where data of experiments are collected and are freely available. Building up a data archive that integrates (merges) existing data is very laborious and requires substantial scientific inputs of interested researchers.


Abstract Discussions of support and intervention in undergraduate university education are dominated by discussion of attrition. This study quests more broadly in arguing that support and intervention for undergraduate students may also benefit from models of engagement and success as well as conventional risk and failure. Supporting this proposition is a study that involved multifactorial approaches based in a combination of aspects of social network theory and social ecology theory. Analysis was enacted through social network analysis of archival data sets derived from a single cohort of 4065 undergraduate students at a regional Australian university. The findings suggest that models of academic success are suited to examination of the broader issues of student agency and undergraduate university education. The success networks developed are uniquely student-centred and place-based and may serve as more nuanced models for university intervention and support structures and mechanisms.


Preface 1. Introduction 2. William Herschel opens up the invisible universe 3. 1800-1950: slow progress - the moon, planets, bright stars, and the discovery of interstellar dust 4. Dying stars shrouded in dust and stars being born: the emergence of infrared astronomy in the 60s and 70s 5. Birth of far infrared and submillimetre astronomy: clouds of dust and molecules in our Galaxy 6. The cosmic microwave background, echo of the Big Bang 7. The Infrared Astronomical Satellite and the opening up of extragalactic infrared astronomy: starbursts and active galactic nuclei 8. The Cosmic Background Explorer and the ripples, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Explorer, and dark energy 9. Giant ground-based infrared and submillimetre telescopes 10. The Infrared Space Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope: the star-formation history of the universe and infrared galaxy populations 11. Our dusty Solar System, debris disks and the search for exoplanets 12. The future: pioneering space missions and giant ground-based telescopes Notes Credits for illustrations Further reading Bibliography Glossary Index of names Index.


Since the days of Senator William Proxmire's Golden Fleece awards, often given to laboratory projects he considered a waste of taxpayers' money, scientists and politicians have found themselves on opposite sides of a fundamental issue: how much control should government have over the research it pays for? The debate has become particularly bitter since last spring, when a Congressional committee investigating "scientific misconduct" enlisted Secret Service agents to examine the notebooks of Thereza Imanishi-Kari, a scientist who collaborated with David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate in medicine, on a paper describing immunology experiments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In this essay, reprinted from The New York Times of 30 July 1989, Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard geology professor, gives his view of the issue. © The New York Times Company.


Archives and justice: a South African perspective, by Verne Harris. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2007. 447pp. ISBN 1-931666-18-0. $56 (SAA Members' price $46) Archives and justice is a collection of thirty-six previously published articles by the South African archivist Verne Harris, with an introduction by Terry Cook. Harris is currently Director of the Centre of Memory and Dialogue at the Nelson Mandela Foundation. He previously headed the South African History Archives and worked for the State Archives Service (now the National Archives) of South Africa. The pieces in this volume were all published after the transition to majority rule in South Africa in 1994. They represent the development of Harris's thinking, both on the engagement of the archival profession with broader social and political dynamics, and on the deconstructionist challenge posed by the work of Jacques Derrida in particular. The first section, 'Discourses', tilts head-on at the theoretical ideas that hold much influence in the archival world in South Africa. 'Transformation discourse' - the thinking accompanying the transition to majority rule, which acknowledges the political role of archivists and casts them in the new role of shaping collective memory - is still underpinned, Harris argues, by positivist ideas. In his view, however, such positivism is inadequate because reality is slippery and uncertain: "if archival records reflect reality, they do so complicitly, and in a deeply fractured and shifting way" (p. 13). Our ability to comprehend and fix the past is further compromised by the fluid nature of the means of recording it, especially in the electronic age. The essays that follow show a deep (although not uncritical) engagement with Derrida's work. In chapter 3, for example, ? shaft of darkness: Derrida in the archive', Harris uses the philosopher's ideas on seeing and blindness to argue for the archive, not as dialectic, but as 'trilectic', 'an open-ended process of remembering, forgetting and imagining' (p. 47). In Section 2, 'Narratives', Harris re-examines aspects of archival practice in the light of the theoretical understandings discussed in Section 1. He starts by critiquing South African methods of selecting records for long-term preservation, arguing the case (as in the Canadian model) for taking much more account of the provenance and organisational context of records. Chapter 7, 'Postmodernism and archival appraisal: seven theses', goes further and brilliantly summarises the conditionality and subjectivity that are an integral part of the process of appraisal, which "will always be closer to storytelling than to scientific endeavour". This, in Harris's view, is not a criticism, since stories matter; moreover, appraisers are scholars and are therefore ". . .bound to hang their narratives, their stories, around the analytical framework established by policies, programs, theories and methodologies" (p. 103). Other essays in this section discuss the use of electronic records as legal evidence, and related ideas about the nature of records and record-keeping; with Wendy M. Duff, the advantages and limitations of fonds-based and series-based archival description systems, the dangers of standardisation, and questions of archivists and power; and both the difficulties and power relations attendant on the increasing creation of records in electronic form in the South African context. …


Accounting for anisotropy in P-wave data processing is now recognized as an important step in improving the quality of seismic data. The quality of final migrated images, prestack gathers, and any attributes derived from the seismic data can all be improved. Commonly, two forms of anisotropy are considered. The first and most common is vertical transverse isotropy (VTI), or the closely associated tilted transverse isotropy (TTI). This anisotropy is often caused by fine layering of sediments, with the layering smaller in scale than the seismic wavelength. In the case of VTI the bedding planes are horizontal, while in TTI they are dipping.


The relation between alcohol consumption and blood pressure is well recognized, and advice to reduce alcohol plays an important part in the management of hypertensive patients. We have evaluated the effectiveness of this advice in a randomized, controlled, single-blind clinical study. After a 2-week run-in period, hypertensive men regularly consuming more than 20 units/wk (1 unit = 10 g) of alcohol were randomly assigned either to the "advice" or control group and were seen at 2-week intervals over an 8-week study period. The outcome measures were: reported alcohol consumption (1-week retrospective diary), markers of alcohol consumption (serum gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase, aspartate aminotransferase, uric acid, mean corpuscular volume), and blood pressure (sitting and standing). Over 18 months, 67 men who drank more than 20 units/wk of alcohol were seen. Twenty-six either were excluded, refused to participate, or dropped out due to nonattendance. Forty-one patients completed the study. After intervention, reported alcohol consumption fell from 60 units/wk to around 30 units/wk in the advice group, whereas it remained between 50 and 60 units/wk in the control group (analysis of variance [ANOVA] F = 7.1, p less than 0.05). This was accompanied by falls in gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (20.9%) and aspartate aminotransferase (18.1%), but no significant changes were seen in the control group. Standing diastolic blood pressure fell significantly in the advice group (from 101.5 mm Hg to 96.3 mm Hg) compared with the control group (ANOVA F = 4.8, p less than 0.05). The results suggest that advice to reduce alcohol consumption is a useful form of treatment for hypertensive patients who drink excessively.


Unsolicited e-mail (spam) is a severe problem due to intrusion of privacy, online fraud, viruses and time spent reading unwanted messages. To solve this issue, Collaborative Filtering (CF) and Content-Based Filtering (CBF) solutions have been adopted. We propose a new CBF-CF hybrid approach called Symbiotic Data Mining (SDM), which aims at aggregating distinct local filters in order to improve filtering at a personalized level using collaboration while preserving privacy. We apply SDM to spam e-mail detection and compare it with a local CBF filter (i.e. Naive Bayes). Several experiments were conducted by using a novel corpus based on the well known Enron datasets mixed with recent spam. The results show that the symbiotic strategy is competitive in performance when compared to CBF and also more robust to contamination attacks.