We present the VISAR keyboard: An augmented reality (AR) head-mounted display (HMD) system that supports text entry via a virtualised input surface. Users select keys on the virtual keyboard by imitating the process of single-hand typing on a physical touchscreen display. Our system uses a statistical decoder to infer users' intended text and to provide error-tolerant predictions. There is also a high-precision fall-back mechanism to support users in indicating which keys should be unmodified by the auto-correction process. A unique advantage of leveraging the well-established touch input paradigm is that our system enables text entry with minimal visual clutter on the see-through display, thus preserving the user's field-of-view. We iteratively designed and evaluated our system and show that the final iteration of the system supports a mean entry rate of 17.75wpm with a mean character error rate less than 1%. This performance represents a 19.6% improvement relative to the state-of-the-art baseline investigated: A gaze-then-gesture text entry technique derived from the system keyboard on the Microsoft HoloLens. Finally, we validate that the system is effective in supporting text entry in a fully mobile usage scenario likely to be encountered in industrial applications of AR HMDs.


Lawyers are not very engaged in the public discourse about class inequality in America, reflecting a belief that class inequality is primarily an economic and political problem rather than a legal one. Because lawyers are not commonly perceived to be a cause of the class problem, some believe that lawyers should not be part of the solution. This article challenges the legal profession's passive stance on class inequality, arguing that all lawyers have an important role to play in the fight against inequality.The article first identifies a class challenge for lawyers, the rise of an increasingly segregated and stratified legal profession, based on attorneys' socioeconomic status, showing that the well-documented and growing opportunity gap among our kids will result in a growing opportunity gap among our lawyers. It then disproves an enticing retort dismissing the growing opportunity gaps among our kids and lawyers as somebody else's problems, asserting that lawyers in their (neglected) role as public citizens have a special duty to address inequalities affecting our kids, and that lawyers as officers of the legal system must combat inequality within the profession.The rest of the article explores the means by which law schools, law firms, lawyers and the organized bar can and should help fight class inequality. Its main claim is that all lawyers must take part in a capital campaign designed to narrow our kids' and lawyers' opportunity gaps, a campaign involving no expenditure of economic capital. Rather, American lawyers, the affluent as well as the less prosperous, possess ample social and cultural capital — connections, relationships, and ties, as well as knowledge, information, and experience — which are the very assets that explain the opportunity gaps. Law schools amplify lawyers' opportunity gap by using admission, teaching and grading policies that privilege the affluent at the expense of the less fortunate, and can become part of the solution by replacing these criteria with policies that give everybody an equal opportunity to be admitted and excel based on merit considerations. Law firms systematically, if implicitly, trade in and rely on their lawyers' social, cultural, and identity capital to make hiring and promotion decisions. They can become part of the solution by transparently acknowledging the role of social, cultural, and identity capital in their practices and providing all lawyers equal opportunities to acquire the requisite capital needed for success within their ranks. Lawyers, in turn, must lend their social and cultural capital assets to help build the capital endowments of the underprivileged. Finally, the organized bar must act as an intermediary connecting lawyers with disadvantaged kids and lawyers, and support the roles of lawyers as public citizens and officers of the legal system. In sum, the legal profession can and should play a meaningful role in narrowing the opportunity gap afflicting our kids and our lawyers.


War with Mexico! America's Reporters Cover the Battlefront. Tom Reilly, edited by Manley Witten. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010. 335 pp. $39.95 hbk. From the perspective of the early twenty-first century, the U.S. war against Mexico (1846-1848) is easy to overlook. It was a relatively short war, after all, pitting the nascent power of the United States against a divided Mexico and its irrepressible leader, Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Yet the Mexican War looms large in the history of American war reporting as the first U.S. foreign conflict covered by an enterprising band of professional journalists and amateur correspondents. As documented by the late Tom Reilly, a journalism historian at California State University-Northridge, Mexican War reporting was an important test of American journalism's newfound energy and its fraught relations with the military, issues tliat would surface in later U.S. wars. Reilly's goals here are straightforward and descriptive: "to reconstruct the efforts, methods, lifestyles, achievements, and failures of the individual American correspondents and, to a lesser degree, the journalistic system in which they functioned." In this, he is largely successful, providing a detailed chronicle of an enthusiastically imperialistic era in American war reporting. Reilly's subjects include such reporting stars as George W. Kendall of the New Orleans Picayune and James L. Freaner - known as "Mustang" - of the New Orleans Delta. Both men were fearless, dedicated, and well organized, employing multiple couriers to elude Mexican guerillas and carry their dispatches from the front lines to Veracruz, where U.S. ships carried them to New Orleans. New Orleans was front and center in Mexican War news. As the nation's fourth largest city at the time, and the principal port for ships arriving from Mexico, New Orleans had a highly competitive newspaper scene. The New Orleans papers, Reilly concludes, "provided the tone, direction, and content for the reporting of the conflict - and in the journalism style of the day, most of the nation's press followed their lead." Reilly also unearths the war reporting of several lesser-known correspondents, including William C. Tobey of the Philadelphia North American. In the aftermath of the U.S. victory at Cerro Gordo, Tobey described the terrible cost of combat: "While the fight is raging men can look upon death and shrink not from his bloody features; but to walk coldly over hundreds of human bodies, blackened and bloated in the sun... sickens the senses and the soul; strips even victory of its gaudy plumage and stamps the whole with an unspeakable horror." Another notable journalist was the outspoken Jane McManus Storms, the only woman war correspondent. Writing for the New York Sun, Storms reported from Veracruz, where she criticized one of her favorite targets, the U.S. Navy, for its "deplorable inefficiency." She also slammed Santa Anna and other Mexican generals for inflicting on their citizens "more burdens and outrages than the Americans dare impose. …


This paper estimates the causal effect of perceived job insecurity { i.e. the fear of involuntary job loss { on health in a sample of men from 22 European countries. We rely on an original instrumental variable approach based on the idea that workers perceive greater job security in countries where employment is strongly protected by the law, and relatively more so if employed in industries where employment protection legislation is more binding, i.e. in industries with a higher natural rate of dismissals. Using cross-country data from the 2010 European Working Conditions Survey, we show that when the potential endogeneity of job insecurity is not accounted for, the latter appears to deteriorate almost all health outcomes. When tackling the endogeneity issue by estimating an IV model and dealing with potential weak-instrument issues, the health-damaging effect of job insecurity is confirmed for a limited subgroup of health outcomes, namely suffering from headaches or eyestrain and skin problems. As for other health variables, the impact of job insecurity appears to be insignificant at conventional levels.


We consider the problem of online nonparametric regression with arbitrary deterministic sequences. Using ideas from the chaining technique, we design an algorithm that achieves a Dudley-type regret bound similar to the one obtained in a non-constructive fashion by Rakhlin and Sridharan (2014). Our regret bound is expressed in terms of the metric entropy in the sup norm, which yields optimal guarantees when the metric and sequential entropies are of the same order of magnitude. In particular our algorithm is the first one that achieves optimal rates for online regression over H{\"o}lder balls. In addition we show for this example how to adapt our chaining algorithm to get a reasonable computational efficiency with similar regret guarantees (up to a log factor).


ABSTRACT Painful Diabetic Neuropathy (PDN) is a common complication of diabetes mellitus (DM). Disruption in presynaptic inhibition in dorsal horn of the spinal cord has been proposed as one of the pathomechanism of PDN. Previous research showed that presynaptic inhibition can be detected by H-reflex examination. The aim of this study was to know whether the reduction of presynaptic inhibition in spinal dorsal horn of PDN patients really exist, and detectable by H-reflex examination. It was cohort prospective involving 141 (58 men, 83 women) patients with DM and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) between the ages of 40 and 61 years from several health facilities in Yogyakarta. All patients underwent clinical, laboratory and electrodiagnostic examination. Demographic, clinical and electrodiagnostic data were collected and analyzed. By survival analysis there were 25 new cases of PDN (12.12% cumulative incidence). Using survival Kaplan Meier analysis, the significant hazard ratio for PDN were 12.81 for median motor nerve amplitude, 5.74 for median nerve distal latency, 3.71 for median sensory nerve amplitude, 6.33 for median sensory latency, 3.4 for tibial nerve amplitude, 3.48 for tibial nerve distal latency, 2.29 for sural nerve amplitude, 4.47 for sural nerve latency, 3.99 for H-reflex latency, 5.88 for H-reflex amplitude, and 17.83 for Diabetic Neuropathy (DN) status. Using hazard proportional cox analysis, only H amplitude and DN status (DNS score) were significantly correlated with PDN (p= 0.026; hazard ratio = 15.450; CI 95%= 1.39 – 171.62 for H amplitude and p= 0.030; hazard ratio = 10.766; CI 95%=1.26 – 92.09 for DN status). This study showed that depression of H-reflex amplitude was correlated with the occurrence of PDN. This result proves that there was presynaptic inhibition process in PDN that manifests as low H-reflex amplitude.


Objectives: To explore staff views on their roles, skills and training to deliver high quality and local intrapartum services in remote and rural settings against national recommendations. Design: Interview and postal survey. Setting: A stratified representative sample of remote and rural maternity units in Scotland (December 2002 to May 2003). Participants: Staff proportionally representative of professional groups involved in maternity care. Results: Staff interviews took place at 11 units (response rate 93%). A subsequent postal survey included the interview sample and staff in a further 11 units (response rate 78%). Medical specialisation, workforce issues, and proposed regulatory evaluation of competencies linked to throughput raised concerns about the sustainability and safety of services, particularly for "generalists" in rural maternity care teams and for medical cover in small district general hospitals with large rural catchments. Risk assessment and decision making to transfer were seen as central for effective rural practice and these were influenced by rural context. Staff self-reported competence and confidence varied according to procedure, but noted service change appeared to be underway ahead of their preparedness. Self-reported competence in managing obstetric emergencies was surprisingly high, with the caveat that they were not independently assessed in this study. Staff with access to video conference technology reported low actual use although there was enthusiasm about its potential use. Conclusions: Considerable uncertainties remain around staffing models and training to maintain maternity care team skills and competencies. Further research is required to test how this will impact on safety, appropriateness, and access and acceptability to rural communities.


Abstract Inertial Confinement Fusion experiments are conducted in polymer capsule in which nuclear products are located. The polymer capsule is based on polystyrene polymer and are obtained by using a triphasic emulsion process. The capsule characteristics mainly depend on the number average molecular weight, the molecular weight dispersity and finally the atomic composition. It has been shown that the surface quality of capsule is directly connected to the polydispersity index. The best results have been obtained by using polystyrene which exhibited polydispersity index inferior to 1.20. The aim of this study is to develop organometallic polymers by using living radical controlled polymerization process in order to control physical properties and final composition.


The glycolytic enzyme glucokinase plays a primary role in the glucose-responsive secretion of insulin, and defects of this enzyme can cause NIDDM. As a step toward understanding the molecular basis of glucokinase (GK) gene regulation, we assessed the structure and regulation of the human GK gene β-cell-type promoter. The results of reporter gene analyses using HIT-T15 cells revealed that the gene promoter was comprised of multiple cis-acting elements, including two primarily important cis-motifs: a palindrome structure, hPal-1, and the insulin gene cis-motif A element-like hUPE3. While both elements were bound specifically by nuclear proteins, it was the homeodomain-containing transcription factor insulin promoter factor 1 (IPF1)/STF-1/PDX-1 that bound to the hUPE3 site: IPF1, when expressed in CHO-K1 cells, became bound to the hUPE3 site and activated transcription. An anti-IPF1 antiserum used in gel-mobility shift analysis supershifted the DNA protein complex formed with the hUPE3 probe and nuclear extracts from HIT-T15 cells, thus supporting the involvement of IPF1 in GK gene activation in HIT-T15 cells. In contrast to the insulin gene, however, neither the synergistic effect of the Pan1 expression on the IPF1-induced promoter activation nor the glucose responsiveness of the activity was observed for the GK gene promoter. These results revealed some conservative but unique features for the transcriptional regulation of the β-cell-specific genes in humans. Being implicated in insulin and GK gene regulations as a common transcription factor, IPF1/STF-1/PDX-1 is likely to play an essential role in maintaining normal β-cell functions.


We present an online distributed algorithm, the Causation Logging Algorithm (CLA), in which Autonomous Systems (ASes) in the Internet individually report route oscillations/flaps they experience to a central Internet Routing Registry (IRR). The IRR aggregates these reports and may observe what we call causation chains where each node on the chain caused a route flap at the next node along the chain. A chain may also have a causation cycle. The type of an observed causation chain/cycle allows the IRR to infer the underlying policy routing configuration (i.e., the system of economic relationships and constraints on route/path preferences). Our algorithm is based on a formal policy routing model that captures the propagation dynamics of route flaps under arbitrary changes in topology or path preferences. We derive invariant properties of causation chains/cycles for ASes which conform to economic relationships based on the popular Gao-Rexford model. The Gao-Rexford model is known to be safe in the sense that the system always converges to a stable set of paths under static conditions. Our CLA algorithm recovers the type/property of an observed causation chain of an underlying system and determines whether it conforms to the safe economic Gao-Rexford model. Causes for nonconformity can be diagnosed by comparing the properties of the causation chains with those predicted from different variants of the Gao-Rexford model.


Governments lie. They do so for many different reasons to a wide range of audiences on a variety of topics. Although courts and commentators have extensively explored whether and when the First Amendment permits the government to regulate lies told by private speakers, relatively little attention has yet been paid to the constitutional implications of the government's intentional falsehoods. This Article helps fill that gap by exploring when, if ever, the Constitution prohibits our government from lying to us. The government's lies can be devastating. This is the case, for example, of its lies told to resist legal and political accountability for its misconduct, to inflict economic and reputational harm, or to enable the exercise of its powers to imprison, to deploy lethal force, and to commit precious national resources. On the other hand, the government's lies can sometimes be helpful: consider its lies told to thwart a military adversary or to identify wrongdoing through undercover police work. The number of lies, the diversity of reasons for which they are told, and the variety of their effects combine to suggest that efforts to enforce blanket prohibitions against the government's deliberate falsehoods would be both difficult and unwise. The Article proposes a framework for assessing the constitutionality of the government's deliberate falsehoods. To this end, it builds on due process and free speech theory and doctrine to identify when and how the government's lies inflict the harms of deception and breach of trust in ways that endanger specific constitutional rights. More specifically, it proposes that the government's lies violate the Due Process Clause when they directly deprive individuals of life, liberty, or property; when they are sufficiently coercive of their targets to constitute the functional equivalent of such deprivations; and in those extreme circumstances when they lack any reasonable justification and thus constitute an abuse of governmental power. Examples include prosecutors' lies to judges and juries that lead to a defendant's imprisonment; law enforcement officers' lies that coerce the involuntary waiver of constitutional rights; and government lies that deprive their targets of the meaningful opportunity to exercise voting, reproductive, or other protected rights. The Article further proposes that the government's lies violate the Free Speech Clause when they are sufficiently coercive of their targets' beliefs or speech to constitute the functional equivalent of the government's direct regulation of those expressive choices. Examples include the government's lies to or about its critics to silence, deter, or otherwise retaliate against them for their speech, or the government's lies to captive or otherwise vulnerable audiences to manipulate their expressive choices. Because the Constitution does not provide the only possible constraint on the government's deliberate falsehoods, the Article then explores a variety of nonconstitutional means for addressing certain harmful government lies. It identifies a menu of possibilities that include statutory as well as political remedies that target the government's deliberate falsehoods on certain subjects, to certain audiences, by certain speakers, or in other settings that threaten especially grave harms. It concludes by applying these approaches, both constitutional and nonconstitutional, to a range of problems. In so doing, it seeks to start a conversation about how courts, policymakers, and the public might think about the constitutional and other implications of our government's lies.


Graphene oxide (GO) has emerged as the worldwide promising candidate for biomedical application, such as for drug delivery, bio‐sensing and anti‐cancer therapy. This study was focused on the zebrafish and RAW264.7 cell line as in vivo and in vitro models to assess the potential developmental neurotoxicity and immunotoxicity of GO. No obvious acute developmental toxicity was observed upon treatments with 0.01, 0.1, and 1 μg/mL GO for five consecutive days. However, decreased hatching rate, increased malformation rate, heart beat rate and hypoactivity of locomotor behavior were detected when exposed to 10 μg/mL GO. Also, RT‐PCR analysis revealed that expressions of genes related to the nervous system were up‐regulated. The potential risk of GO for developmental neurotoxicity may be ascribed to the high level of oxidative stress induced by high concentration of GO. Most importantly, the mRNA levels of immune response associated genes, such as interleukin‐6 (IL‐6), interleukin‐8 (IL‐8), tumor necrosis factor‐α (TNFα), interferon‐γ (IFN‐γ) were significantly increased under environmental concentration exposure. The activation of pro‐inflammatory immune response was also observed in macrophage cell line. Taken together, our results demonstrated that immunotoxicity is a sensitive indicator for assessment of bio‐compatibility of GO.


This study was undertaken to characterize otic microflora encountered in dogs with clinical signs of otitis externa and to determine its role in causing the disease. For this purpose 73 otic samples from normal dogs and 149 otic samples from dogs with different clinical stages of otitis were microbiological evaluated. The most common pathogens in the etiology of otitis include members of Staphylococcus genus, Streptococcus genus and yeast from Malassezia genus. From normal dogs Malassezia canis was isolated as a pure culture or with staphylococci and streptococci in 32 samples, representing 43.8%, staphylococci were recorded at a frequency of isolation (in pure and mixed cultures) of 32.9% and streptococci were isolated in 17 pure or mixed cultures, representing 23.3%. Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Proteus spp. were not isolated in samples taken from dogs without ear problems. From dogs with varied clinical stages of otitis, Malassezia canis reported a frequency of isolation (in pure or mixed cultures) of 33.3%, staphylococci were isolated in 22.4% and streptococci in 19% from samples, in pure or mixed cultures. Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were isolated both in pure cultures and mixed cultures and Proteus spp. only in mixed cultures.


Objectives: to evaluate the fluid responsiveness according to fluid bolus triggers and their combination in severe sepsis and septic shock.
Design: observational study.
Patients and Methods: patients with severe sepsis and septic shock who already received fluid after rescue phase of resuscitation. Fluid bolus (FB) was prescribed upon perceived hypovolemic manifestations: low central venous pressure (CVP), low blood pressure, tachycardia, low urine output (UOP), hyperlactatemia. FB was performed by Ringer lactate 500 ml/30 min and responsiveness was defined by increasing in stroke volume (SV) ≥15%.
Results: 84 patients were enrolled, among them 30 responded to FB (35.7%). Demographic and hemodynamic profile before fluid bolus were similar between responders and non-responders, except CVP was lower in responders (7.3 ± 3.4 mmHg vs 9.2 ± 3.6 mmHg) (p 0.018). Fluid response in low CVP, low blood pressure, tachycardia, low UOP, hyperlactatemia were 48.6%, 47.4%, 38.5%, 37.0%, 36.8% making the odd ratio (OR) of these triggers were 2.81 (1.09-7.27), 1.60 (0.54-4.78), 1.89 (0.58-6.18), 1.15 (0.41-3.27) and 1.27 (0.46-3.53) respectively. Although CVP < 8 mmHg had a higher response rate, the association was not consistent at lower cut-offs. The combination of these triggers appeared to raise fluid response but did not reach statistical significance: 26.7% (1 trigger), 31.0% (2 triggers), 35.7% (3 triggers), 55.6% (4 triggers), 100% (5 triggers).
Conclusions: fluid responsiveness was low in optimization phase of resuscitation. No fluid bolus trigger was superior to the others in term of providing a higher responsiveness, their combination did not improve fluid responsiveness as well.


Abstract. An understanding of the hydrological cycle in stable isotopic terms requires the characterisation of rainfall. This paper reviews existing and new data for the British Isles. Rainfall at the Wallingford (Oxfordshire) collection station was collected daily from November 1979 to October 1980. Large variations in isotopic content were noted, sometimes from day to day. Winter rainfall was similar to summer in amount, and only slightly depleted isotopically. Amount and temperature correlations with δ18O were generally low, only the autumn and winter temperature relationships being significant. A 20-year monthly dataset from 1982 to 2001 for Wallingford gives the following regression: δ2H = 7.0δ18O + 1.2, a slope somewhat below the world meteoric line but consistent with the those from other long-term stations in NW Europe. The data showed uncorrelated maxima and minima for each year, but rather more consistent amount-weighted averages. Although there is only a small difference in gradient between summer and winter rainfall values, when plotted against the month of the year there are clear changes in the values of both isotopes, and the δ2H-δ18O relationship as demonstrated by the d-excess parameter. The isotope-amount correlation is low but significant, with summer months appearing to be well-correlated when considered in terms of month of the year. On this same seasonal basis temperature has a strong correlation throughout the year, giving a positive δ18O-temperature relationship of 0.25 ‰ per °C change. The Wallingford monthly record is compared with data from Keyworth (Nottinghamshire) and the Valentia station of the GNIP (IAEA-WMO Global Network for Isotopes in Precipitation) in SW Ireland. While not large, differences between the stations are broadly attributable to the balance between maritime and continental influences. Over the period September 1981 to August 1982 the maximum number of monthly collection stations was operating across the British Isles. While a comparison of the sites serves mostly to illustrate the variability of British weather in space and time, there is clear isotopic evidence for the predominance of frontal rainfall in winter and convective rainfall in summer. The effect of altitude on isotopic content was measured within a high-relief stream catchment in Scotland. The best correlations occurred during winter, when an average relationship of approximately –0.30 ‰ δ18O per 100 m increase in altitude was observed. It is well established that rainfall isotopic composition changes in response to alterations in climate. However these changes are difficult to detect isotopically in the short term, even when the changes are indexed, e.g. in the form of the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation). The brief duration of rainfall isotope records is a further hindrance; for the British Isles proxies such as tree-ring cellulose may have some value in extending the record back. Keywords: stable isotopes, rainfall,British Isles


Since the dawn of mankind, humans have demonstrated a remarkable capacity for violence, deceit and mayhem. With the advent of civilization and the creation of laws to uphold our sense of security and retribution, the notions of crime and punishment have come to play significant roles in societies the world over. But how and why do we penalize certain activities over others, and how effective are these penalties in punishing the wrongdoers and bringing a sense of justice to victims? An Eye for an Eye covers everything from petty wrongdoings to sexual offences, serial homicide, piracy and organized crime. Perhaps the most important development in the attempt to safeguard citizens was the birth of the prison and incarceration; today, the philosophy of rehabilitation is gaining increasing momentum. This book also explores execution throughout history, variously considered barbaric or justified by different cultures and societies: punishments such as stoning, hemlock, firing squad and lethal injection can incite abhorrence and support in equal measure. Written by an expert in the field, this book attempts to overcome the lack of historical written documentation, especially in non-Western cultures, by using an interdisciplinary approach that ranges from anthropology and archaeology to folklore, classical literature and oral traditions. It reveals that there is a remarkable continuity throughout history in what crimes are committed as well as the sanctions used to punish them. Perfect for students, academics and general readers alike, this book provides a fascinating insight into criminality and its consequences on a global scale.


In modern gas turbines for power generation and future aircraft engines, the necessity to reduce NOx emissions led to the implementation of a premixed combustion technology under fuel-lean conditions. In the combustion chamber of these systems, extreme pressure amplitudes can occur due to the unsteady heat release, reducing component life time or causing unexpected shutdown events. In order to understand and predict these instabilities, an accurate knowledge of the combustion process is inevitable. This study, which was provided by numerical methods, such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is based on a three-dimensional (3D) geometry representing a premixed swirl-stabilized methane-fired burner configuration with a known flow field in the vicinity of the burner and well defined operating conditions. Numerical simulations of the swirl-stabilized methane-fired burner have been carried out using the commercial code ANSYS Fluent. The main objective is to validate the performance of various combustion models with different complexity by comparing against experimental data. Experiments have been performed for the swirl-stabilized methane-fired burner applying different technologies. Velocity fluctuation measurements have been carried out and validated through several techniques, such as Laser Doppler Anemometry (LDA) and Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). Laser Interferometric Vibrometry (LIV) provided information on heat release fluctuations and OH*-chemiluminescence measurements have been done to identify the position of the main reaction zone. During the first part of the CFD investigation, the cold flow has been simulated applying different turbulence models and the velocity flow field obtained in the experiments has been compared with the numerical results. As next, the study focuses on the numerical analysis of the thermo-chemical processes in the main reaction zone. Few combustion models have been investigated beginning from Eddy Dissipation Model (EDM) and proceeding with increased complexity investigating the Steady Flamelet Model (SLF) and Flamelet Generated Manifold (FGM). An evaluation of the velocity field and temperature profile has been performed for all models used in order to test the validity of the numerical approach for the chosen geometry. The best option for future investigations of gas turbines has been identified.


The growing energy and performance costs of deep learning have driven the community to reduce the size of neural networks by selectively pruning components. Similarly to their biological counterparts, sparse networks generalize just as well, if not better than, the original dense networks. Sparsity can reduce the memory footprint of regular networks to fit mobile devices, as well as shorten training time for ever growing networks. In this paper, we survey prior work on sparsity in deep learning and provide an extensive tutorial of sparsification for both inference and training. We describe approaches to remove and add elements of neural networks, different training strategies to achieve model sparsity, and mechanisms to exploit sparsity in practice. Our work distills ideas from more than 300 research papers and provides guidance to practitioners who wish to utilize sparsity today, as well as to researchers whose goal is to push the frontier forward. We include the necessary background on mathematical methods in sparsification, describe phenomena such as early structure adaptation, the intricate relations between sparsity and the training process, and show techniques for achieving acceleration on real hardware. We also define a metric of pruned parameter efficiency that could serve as a baseline for comparison of different sparse networks. We close by speculating on how sparsity can improve future workloads and outline major open problems in the field.


The latent heat flux over snow near Ny-Alesund, Spitsbergen, was investigated for the 1999 snowmelt season to assess different methods of modelling the flux. Snow evaporation had hitherto been estimated as the residual of plot water balance calculations and was subject to measurement errors: hence a modelling solution was sought to make use of existing data. Precipitation, snow depth and albedo we.-e measured daily. Runoff from the plots was recorded continuously. Wind speed, relative humidity and air temperature were measured at two levels (2 and 10 m) every 10 minutes; wind direction was noted hourly. Three models which simulate latent heat were assessed against evaporation and condensation measured by weighing several snow-filled containers each day. Two employ the bulk profile method (within the SNTHERM and CROCUS snowmelt models), while the third is the aerodynamic profile method (APM). Each follows tie measured evaporation until snow-free patches develop after which the APM predicts evaporation whereas the snowmelt models predict condensation. The effect of wind is also noted. A major conclusion of this work is that the complexity of the land surface/atmosphere interactions, particularly when the snow cover breaks up, precludes the use of simple models for determining latent heat.


Although curved-surface solid modeling systems achieve a higher level of accuracy than faceted systems, they also introduce a host of topological, geometric, and numerical complications. A method for calculating accurate boundary representations of solid models is introduced that reduces the impact of these complications. The method uses a pair of bounding polyhedral approximations to enclose the boundary of each object. A structural analysis automatically determines where to make adaptive refinements to the polyhedrons to assure the topological validity of the results. Potential singularities are localized. The implementation is an experimental extension to the Geometric Design Processor (GDP) solid modeling system.<<ETX>>


The thesis contains five chapters that attempt to extend our understanding of Mental Toughness (MT) in relation to personality, swimming performance, training behaviours and MT behaviours. The thesis focuses predominantly on swimming environments, which can be very stressful and often require athletes to train long hours and perform under intense pressure. As such, it provides a useful context to investigate MT.
Chapter 1 critically reviews some of the previous MT research in the domains of qualitative research and quantitative research. The Chapter introduces personality as a possible trait explanation of MT and proposes that, even though training behaviours has been indicated as an important source of MT, it is yet relatively unexplored. The Chapter then sets out a series of questions upon which the thesis is based.
Chapter 2 focused on three aims. First, an informant rating of MT in swimming was developed (Coach Rated MT). Second, to replicate previous findings (Hardy, Bell, & Beattie, 2014), revised Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (McNaughton & Gray, 2000) was used to predict coach rated MT behaviour. Our findings supported that of Hardy et al. (2014), that is, when reward sensitivity is low, increasing levels of punishment sensitivity positively related to MT behaviour; but when reward sensitivity was high, increasing levels of punishment sensitivity negatively relate to MT behaviour. Third, the thesis set out to investigate whether punishment and reward sensitivities could actually predict swimming performance. Our findings showed there was a significant punishment sensitivity and reward sensitivity interaction. That is, when reward sensitivity was low, as punishment sensitivity increased, swimming times improved. However, with high reward sensitivity as punishment sensitivity increased, swimming times reduced. However, findings showed that there was no significant correlation between coach assessed MT and actual swimming performance.
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Chapter 3 examined the mediating role of training behaviours on self-report MT and MT behaviour in swimming. In this chapter swimmers completed three self-report MT measurements; the Psychological Performance Inventory-Alternative (PPI-A; Golby, Sheard, & van Wersch, 2007); the Sport Mental Toughness Questionnaire (SMTQ; Sheard, Golby, Wersch, 2009); and the Mental Toughness Index (MTI; Gucciardi, Hanton, Gordon, Mallett, &Temby, 2014). Swimmers and coaches also completed a measure of Self-Regulated Training Behaviours (SRTB) and the coach completed the Swimming MT Inventory (SMTI) to assess MT behaviour. Findings supported our hypothesis that self-regulated training behaviours (coach and self-rated) had a positive relationship with coach and self-rated MT. Further, training behaviours mediated the relationship between self-report MT and coach rated MT behaviour.
Chapter 4, examined three main personality profiles of psychoticism, extraversion, and neuroticism in relation to MT and training behaviours. To assess the swimmer's personality profiles we utilized the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire–Revised Short version (EPQR-S; Eysenck, Eysenck, & Barrett, 1985). Coaches completed the MT behaviour measure (CRTB) and the Quality of Training Inventory consisting of distractibility and coping with adversity. Findings revealed that swimmers characterized by high levels of both psychoticism and MT skills displayed higher levels of training and MT behaviours. That is, self-rated MT only had a positive relationship with training and MT behaviour when psychoticism was high.
Chapter 5 concludes the thesis. More specifically, the chapter provides a summary and integrated discussion of the thesis findings, implications, limitations, strengths and avenues for future research.


History of Science and Technology (HST) courses are increasingly becoming part of core curriculums for undergraduate students due to an increased emphasis on scientific literacy. HST courses should aim to help students gain an understanding of the nature of science and should enable them to reflect epistemologically. The authors suggest teaching HST courses through several interchangeable content blocks, and herein, present the material and discussion topics that they believe should be implemented in a content block on cognitive sciences through a linguistic component. Language has a special meaning for humankind as it indicates its unique ability in the evolutionary development and in creating a new social environment. Therefore, paying special attention to the linguistic component when teaching HST courses helps students obtain a basic level of linguistic knowledge as its interdisciplinary approaches are increased through the study of cognitive sciences such as evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics, and artificial intelligence.In order to represent a practical meaning of linguistics in the processes of constructing social environment, the authors conducted an empirical study based on the analysis of media texts. We asked 63 sophomores majoring in social sciences and humanities, who are affiliated with the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations to choose 60 media texts, both broadsheets and tabloids, on social and political content. Estimating and analyzing the surveys allowed the authors to determine students' abilities to identify communicative strategies that were used in the media texts, to understand the role of the strategies in forming the social environment of a person or a group, and to recognize how using the tools of cognitive linguistics enhances sophisticated thinking and develops synergetic perceptions of every individual.

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Informally, an indulgent algorithm is a distributed algorithm that tolerates unreliable failure detection: the algorithm is indulgent towards its failure detector. This paper formally characterizes such algorithms and states some of their interesting features. We show that indulgent algorithms are inherently safe and uniform. We also state impossibility results for indulgent solutions to divergent problems like consensus, and failure-sensitive problems like non-blocking atomic commit and terminating reliable broadcast.


Biological drug products are poised to overtake traditional pharmaceuticals as the best selling products in the pharmaceutical industry. Accordingly, both innovator and generic drug companies have a vested interest in the rules and regulations governing the approval and market entry of follow-on ("generic") biologic drug products as well as relevant procedures for litigating disputes involving biologic drug products. The U.S. and Canada both regulate the development and sale of traditional generic drugs through complex legal and regulatory schemes that seek to maintain a balance of interests between the innovator and generic sectors of the pharmaceutical industry. With the continued emergence of biological drugs, both countries have recently set forth legal and regulatory schemes to address the unique issues presented by generic biologic drug products. These issues include the requirements needed to submit an application for a generic biologic; biosimilarity vs. interchangeability designations; market and data exclusivity; and procedures for litigating disputes involving biologic drugs. Like the respective rules governing traditional pharmaceuticals, the recent U.S. and Canadian regulations addressing biological drugs contain both similarities and differences. As such, an understanding of both countries regulatory schemes will help both innovators and generics in decision making and legal strategy related to biological drugs. This article provides a comparative overview of the two systems to assist in such an understanding.


In this paper an ink-jet printed write once read many (WORM) resistive memory fabricated on paper substrate is presented. The memory elements are programmed for different resistance states by printing triethylene glycol monoethyl ether on the substrate before the actual memory element is printed using silver nano particle ink. The resistance is thus able to be set to a broad range of values without changing the geometry of the elements. A memory card consisting of 16 elements is manufactured for which the elements are each programmed to one of four defined logic levels, providing a total of 4294 967 296 unique possible combinations. Using a readout circuit, originally developed for resistive sensors to avoid crosstalk between elements, a memory card reader is manufactured that is able to read the values of the memory card and transfer the data to a PC. Such printed memory cards can be used in various applications.


Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), one of the most influential of modern thinkers, is also one of the most misunderstood. Malthus's "Essay on Population" is a work that everyone cites but typically without having read it. This book offers a comprehensive and accurate exposition of his thought, integrating his better-known theory on population with his somewhat neglected analysis of economic development and social structure. In Petersen's "Malthus" both the general reader and the social scientist are given a basis for contrasting Malthus with competing theories. As a background to his exposition, Petersen discusses the trends since Malthus' day in fertility, mortality and population growth. The book also has an accessible comparison of Malthus' economics with that of his contemporary, David Ricardo, as well as the links to the Keynesian thought of recent time. Petersen also comments on Malthus' stand on birth control, as well as on the rise of the neo-Malthusian movement and its successor in today's less developed countries. The review of both population trends and demographic theory over the past century and a half gives the reader a base from which he can judge in what respects Malthus did, or did not, forecast the future accurately. As Petersen points out, Malthus also influenced the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, as well as its offshoot, Social Darwinism. "Malthus" is an essential work not only for demographers and economists but for anyone interested in intellectual history. The late Robert Nisbet, in his review of the book for the "New Republic", called it "the best exposition of Malthus to be found anywhere".


Hypertension is an extremely common condition and quantitatively the most important risk factor for cardiovascular disease and mortality. Cardiovascular risk factors other than hypertension occur more frequently in hypertensive subjects and contribute to the elevated cardiovascular risk. Management of hypertensive subjects includes lifestyle modification and, usually, treatment with antihypertensive agents. Due to the limited blood pressure lowering effect of a single antihypertensive agent, more than 2/3 of hypertensive patients require at least two or more antihypertensive agents to achieve target blood pressure. For combination therapy combining an agent that interferes with the renin-angiotensin system with an agent that does not is recommended. Treatment adherence and persistence can be improved by using fixed-dose combinations instead of single agents.


Background Population based genetics studies are dependent on large numbers of individuals in the pursuit of small effect sizes. Recruiting and consenting a large number of participants is both costly and time consuming. We explored whether an online consent process for large-scale genetics studies is acceptable for prospective participants using an example online genetics study. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with 42 members of the public stratified by age group, gender and newspaper readership (a measure of social status). Respondents were asked to use a website designed to recruit for a large-scale genetic study. After using the website a semi-structured interview was conducted to explore opinions and any issues they would have. Responses were analysed using thematic content analysis. Results The majority of respondents said they would take part in the research (32/42). Those who said they would decline to participate saw fewer benefits from the research, wanted more information and expressed a greater number of concerns about the study. Younger respondents had concerns over time commitment. Middle aged respondents were concerned about privacy and security. Older respondents were more altruistic in their motivation to participate. Common themes included trust in the authenticity of the website, security of personal data, curiosity about their own genetic profile, operational concerns and a desire for more information about the research. Conclusions Online consent to large-scale genetic studies is likely to be acceptable to the public. The online consent process must establish trust quickly and effectively by asserting authenticity and credentials, and provide access to a range of information to suit different information preferences.


A generation ago, the Supreme Court upended the voting rights world. In the breakthrough case of Thornburg v. Gingles, the Court held that minority groups that are residentially segregated and electorally polarized are entitled to districts in which they can elect their preferred candidates. But while the legal standard for vote dilution has been clear ever since, the real-world impact of the Court's decision has remained a mystery. Scholars have failed to answer basic empirical questions about the operation of the Gingles framework. To wit: Did minorities' descriptive representation improve due to the case? If so, did this improvement come about through the mechanisms — racial segregation and polarization — contemplated by the Court? And is there a tradeoff between minorities' descriptive and substantive representation, or can both be raised in tandem?In this Article, I tackle these questions using a series of novel datasets. For the first time, I am able to quantify all of Gingles's elements: racial segregation and polarization, and descriptive and substantive representation. I am also able to track them at the state legislative level, over the entire modern redistricting era, and for black and Hispanic voters. Compared to the cross-sectional congressional studies of black representation that form the bulk of the literature, these features provide far more analytical leverage. I find that the proportion of black legislators in the South rose precipitously after the Court's intervention. But neither this proportion in the non-South, nor the share of Hispanic legislators nationwide, increased much. I also find that Gingles worked exactly as intended for segregated and polarized black populations. These groups now elect many more of their preferred candidates than they did prior to the decision. But this progress has not materialized for Hispanics, suggesting that their votes often continue to be diluted. Lastly, I find a modest tradeoff between minorities' descriptive representation and both the share of seats held by Democrats and the liberalism of the median legislator. But this tradeoff disappears when Democrats are responsible for redistricting, and intensifies when Republicans are in charge. In combination, these results provide fodder for both Gingles's advocates and its critics. More importantly, they mean that the decision's impact can finally be assessed empirically.


Dissolution, aggregation, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation are three major processes that silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) undergo in aqueous environments. In this study, the effects of AgNP surface coatings on these three processes were systematically evaluated under three irradiation conditions (UV-365, UV-254, and xenon lamp) to advance knowledge on the environmental fate and photochemical kinetics of AgNPs. The AgNPs used were (a) bare-AgNPs, (b) electrostatically stabilized citrate-AgNPs, and (c) sterically stabilized polyvinylpyrrolidone-AgNPs (PVP-AgNPs), and the light exposures greatly promoted the three processes. Both the 5-h released Ag(+) concentrations and the 2.5-h aggregation rate followed the order UV-365 > xenon lamp > UV-254 for all three types of AgNPs. For all irradiation conditions, the 5-h released Ag(+) concentration was highest for bare-AgNPs, followed by PVP-AgNPs and citrate-AgNPs; the 2.5-h aggregation rate was highest for bare-AgNPs, followed by citrate-AgNPs and PVP-AgNPs, which indicated that surface coating significantly determines the process kinetics of AgNPs. Under UV-365 irradiation, the bare-AgNPs generated superoxide and hydroxyl radicals, but the citrate-AgNPs yielded only superoxide radical, and the PVP-AgNPs did not generate any ROS. This study highlights the different fates and kinetic behaviors of AgNPs during photochemical interactions, providing important insight into the environmental implications of AgNP release.


We examine the effect of survey measurement error on the empirical relationship between child mental health and personal and family characteristics, and between child mental health and educational progress. Our contribution is to use unique UK survey data that contains (potentially biased) assessments of each child's mental state from three observers (parent, teacher and child), together with expert (quasi-) diagnoses, using an assumption of optimal diagnostic behaviour to adjust for reporting bias. We use three alternative restrictions to identify the effect of mental disorders on educational progress. Maternal education and mental health, family income, and major adverse life events, are all significant in explaining child mental health, and child mental health is found to have a large influence on educational progress. Our preferred estimate is that a 1-standard deviation reduction in 'true' latent child mental health leads to a 2-5 months loss in educational progress. We also and a strong tendency for observers to understate the problems of older children and adolescents compared to expert diagnosis.


Researchers designing the multiagent tools and techniques for computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments are often faced with high cost, time, and effort required to investigate the effectiveness of their tools and techniques in large scale and longitudinal studies in a real-world environment containing human users. Here, we propose SimCoL, a multiagent environment that simulates collaborative learning among students and agents providing support to the teacher and the students. Our goal with SimCoL is to provide a comprehensive test bed for multiagent researchers to investigate 1) theoretical multiagent research issues, e.g., coalition formation, multiagent learning, and communication, where humans are involved and 2) the impact and effectiveness of the design and implementation of various multiagent-based tools and techniques (e.g., multiagent-based human coalition formation) in a real world, distributed environment containing human users. Our results show that SimCoL 1) closely captures the individual and collective learning behaviors of the students in a CSCL environment; 2) identify the impact of various key elements of the CSCL environment (e.g., student attributes and group formation algorithm) on the collaborative learning of students; 3) compare and contrast the impact of agent-based versus nonagent-based group formation algorithms; and 4) provide insights into the effectiveness of agent-based instructor support for the students in a CSCL environment.


Given that outsourcing has become a fact of life, it is becoming increasingly obvious that we need to ensure that computer science students are taught the necessary skills to cope with global software development. Unfortunately, the enormous amount of time that it takes to coordinate and support such activities can deter even the most devoted educator. This paper describes a course that used a computer supported collaborative tool help teach distributed teams from Turkey and the US how to work together to solve programming problems. The system contains both collaborative tools that support groups, as well as course management software for helping instructors with administrative tasks. Examples of the usage of the system and data collected from the undergraduate computer science course that used the software are presented. Based on that experience, future plans to refine the system for early detection of problem teams, and the advantages of implementing the software as a Web service are also discussed. This information is designed to provide support for effective multi-institutional learning courses


Site-specific exchange of genetic information is mediated by DNA recombinases, such as FLP or Cre, and has become a valuable tool in modern molecular biology. The so far low number of suitable recombinating enzymes has driven current research activities towards alteration of catalytic properties, such as thermostability or recognition sequences. However, identification and analysis of new mutants requires sensitive in vitro activity assays, which traditionally are based on gel electrophoresis. Here, we describe the development of a new sensitive DNA recombination assay based on dual-color fluorescence cross-correlation spectroscopy (DC-FCCS), which works in homogenous solution and does not require any separation step such as electrophoresis. The assay was validated with unlabeled FLP recombinase and different fluorescently labeled DNA substrates containing the FLP recognition target (FRT). This strategy fulfills all requirements for possible application in high throughput screening and engineering of new site-specific DNA recombinases starting from the FLP-FRT system, and is easily adjustable to other systems like Cre/loxP.


COACHING, COUNSELING, AND CAREER MANAGEMENT The Psychology of Working: A New Perspective for Career Development, Counseling and Public Policy, by David L. Blustein 2006. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 376 pages, Softcover, $39.95 Intended Audience: B, E, F, G, I Major Headings from Table of Contents: Psychology and the experience of working. The changing nature of work: as a means of survival; as a means of social connection; as a means of self determination. Social barriers and working. Implications for research and testing. Toward an inclusive psychological practice where there is a place for work-related issues in psychological practice. The future of the psychology of working. How is the book most useful for its intended audience? This book illuminates the manner by which career counseling can be intertwined with personal therapy. No other text, currently available, so expansively pulls together the influence of our personal psychology with the environmental contexts of our working lives. The top five things you learned from reading this book: 1) The changing nature of work offers 36 pages of the pithy history of work and the "changing contracts" that affect our attitudes toward work. 2) We are often insensitive to work as a means of social connection and Blustein is relentless in forcing the reader to experience the intersection of work and relationships. 3) Blustein allows counselors to consider the self-determining and extrinsic reasons that motivate people to work. 4) The text provides a comprehensive framework for addressing social justice issues in the career counseling process. 5) Blustein presents a new agenda for individuals interested in pursuing career counseling research: social-constructionist thought and emancipating communitarianism. Years from now, we will all probably remember the transitions that were made in career counseling practice and theory from logical positivism through contextualism to the newest post-modern approaches of narra- tives and constructionism. Yet all of these memories may turn out to be less significant than David Blustein's fundamentalist attempt to integrate the research and practice of career counseling into a broader frame of psychological theory and practice. Unlike many career theorists writing today, Blustein draws from not only the psychological and counseling literature, but also from other social science disciplines exemplified by anthropology and politics to develop his multidimensional thesis on work in our lives. Counselors and other human services practitioners will be pleased to view how he defines work by embracing the psychological meanings he believes are attached to work. These include vocational identity, the potential for social interaction, the expenditure of energy and human capital, and the manner with which work ties all of us together through different times and cultures. The Blustein text updates practitioners and teachers about the effect of a variety of social and economic forces that impinge upon work and our current notion of career. These forces comprise the impact of technology and digitalization on work, globalization, and the isolation of working at home, care giving and the sandwich generation, and the loss of membership in the traditional labor unions. These issues all beg the perplexing existential question as to whether or not careers as a concept have died, or, at least for now, disappeared. What sets the Blustein work apart from other career literature is his askance criticism of what career counseling theory and practice have excluded. He speaks to the irony that in the advancement of career development theory and practice, those people who exist at the margins of society have not been well served by traditional career counseling: the poor, the disabled, most of the working class, those who suffer the ravages of discrimination, and young people who are not only unemployed but have given up looking for work. …


Like sighted people, visually impaired people want to share photographs on social networking services, but find it difficult to identify and select photos from their albums. We aimed to address this problem by incorporating state-of-the-art computer-generated descriptions into Facebook's photo-sharing feature. We interviewed 12 visually impaired participants to understand their photo-sharing experiences and designed a photo description feature for the Facebook mobile application. We evaluated this feature with six participants in a seven-day diary study. We found that participants used the descriptions to recall and organize their photos, but they hesitated to upload photos without a sighted person's input. In addition to basic information about photo content, participants wanted to know more details about salient objects and people, and whether the photos reflected their personal aesthetic. We discuss these findings from the lens of self-disclosure and self-presentation theories and propose new computer vision research directions that will better support visual content sharing by visually impaired people.


Cloud computing has been experiencing sharp development over the last years, leading to an increased demand for application migration to the cloud. Cloud providers, in an effort to attract more customers and earn their confidence, offer to tenants the illusion of an isolated network, exposing familiar abstractions. At the same time, creating this illusion poses challenging problems for the providers, as one tenant's traffic may interfere with another's in complicated, unpredictable ways. First, new challenges have arisen in administering access-control rules (ACLs). On the one hand, installing ACLs at the server is incompatible with bare-metal support and introduces unnecessary performance overhead. On the other hand, offloading the most popular ACLs on the limited hardware memory in Top-of-Rack (ToR) switches should not be conducted naively, as the existence of wildcard rules presents inter-rule dependencies that must be respected. Second, tenants' demands have evolved beyond requesting hardware resources; for instance, tenants may require bandwidth provisions between their resources or optimized access to a specific cloud service, e.g., a Mail server or a Database. Cloud providers have not adequately adapted to these expanding demands, therefore elevating hardware resources to "first class citizens," as non-hardware constraints are not considered during resource allocation, instead they are applied afterwards. In this thesis we propose two architectures that facilitate cloud providers in managing their shared network resources in a flexible way. First, we demonstrate virtual flow tables, a ToR architecture that handles ACLs using a two-level memory hierarchy. The most popular ACLs are stored in the limited hardware memory, respecting any dependencies between wildcard rules, while the ToR's supervisor engine maintains access to the entire ACL rule-set. Second, we present a two-tiered architecture for scheduling cloud resources, consisting of a resource-agnostic scheduling layer and a resource-specific enforcement layer. Network resources and constraints are taken into consideration during resource scheduling, instead of afterwards, while resource provisioning, as well as general network-management policies, are delegated to the resource-specific tier.


Using puzzles in IT is an introductory model that uses many kinds of puzzles, puzzle-like problems and games to illustrate abstraction and problem-solving concepts in IT with hands-on pedagogy. It is difficult for a novice to understand abstraction IT concepts and programming language at introductory step can be challenging. In order to ease the conceptual and language barrier, puzzle was developed for IT education. Puzzle has been used in IT programs in recent years and there are many kinds of puzzles. In this paper, three-dimensional puzzle was used for interests by hands-on activity. Abstraction and problem-solving concepts are parts of 'Programming Fundamentals and Algorithms' in CC2006 curriculum. When a student solves the puzzle, they develop their own problem-solving strategy. By analyzing student's thinking process, it is possible to construct student's thoughts into steps. At each step, a person's thought might differ from others and description of all the steps is referred as 'Think-Aloud'. Aside from developing their own problem-solving strategy, this paper also focuses on student's ability to group puzzles with similar problem-solving strategy and ability to generalize the problem-solving strategy. In 2006, an experiment was conducted which consisted of 25 students who are majoring in Computer Science Education in Korea University. Experimental results showed that students understood abstraction concepts easier by solving Puzzle. In addition, outstanding students had fewer problem-solving steps compared to the rest of the class. It was found that tendency to use more efficient processes promoted the acquisition of hints: analyzing structure, features and constraints of the Puzzle.


We previously identified the mouse RTVP-1 (mRTVP-1; related to testes-specific, vespid, and pathogenesis proteins) gene as a direct target of p53 with proapoptotic activities in various cancer cell lines, including prostate cancer. To test the therapeutic potential of mRTVP-1 we constructed an adenoviral vector capable of efficient transduction and expression of mRTVP-1 (AdmRTVP-1) and used this vector in an orthotopic, metastatic mouse model of prostate cancer. A single intratumoral administration of AdmRTVP-1 gene therapy significantly reduced primary tumor wet weight compared with control Adbetagal-injected tumors at two time points after injection with two different vector doses (p < or = 0.01 at 7 and 14 days). Spontaneous metastasis to lung was also significantly reduced (p < or = 0.02). Evaluation of treated tumors revealed increased apoptosis and lower microvessel density counts. In a rat aortic ring sprouting assay, AdmRTVP-1 inhibited endothelial cell sprouting compared with Adbetagal, confirming its antiangiogenic activity. These therapeutic activities were associated with a significant increase in survival from 22.9 to 26.8 days (p = 0.003) in this aggressive model of prostate cancer. Interestingly, there were significant increases in the infiltration of tumor-associated macrophages, dendritic cells, and CD8+ T cells, which persisted at 14 days posttreatment in the AdmRTVP-1-treated tumors compared with Adbetagal control-treated tumors. In addition, significantly increased natural killer and cytotoxic T lymphocyte activities were demonstrated in the mice with AdmRTVP-1-treated tumors. The unique therapeutic properties of AdmRTVP-1 gene therapy demonstrated in this study provide new opportunities for gene and immunotherapy of prostate cancer and potentially other malignancies.


Quantitative models of lithic technology tend to focus on hunter-gatherers as subjects of study. This model adopts and modifies some concepts from the literature on the organization of technology among hunter-gatherers to groups that have permanently occupied villages. The model is designed to evaluate the effects of individual mobility, core reduction technology, availability of lithic raw material, and forecasting of raw material shortages on the amount of work individuals are able to perform both at permanent settlements, and during movement across the landscape to and from those settlements. The model features a settlement occupied by agents, which are split into two groups: foragers and camp dwellers. Foragers move between raw material sources and the settlement, performing work and transporting raw material. Camp dwellers occupy the settlement and perform work. Each unit of work performed exhausts some amount (which varies by core reduction efficiency) of raw material. The model allows for evaluation of the conditions in which different technological, or mobility decisions are more likely to be made.


The demand of concrete is increased rapidly due to worldwide growth in infrastructural development. Consequently, consumption of concrete also raises the demand for Portland cement, because it is the fundamental material in concrete construction. The increasing demand for Portland cement is expected to be encountered by introducing new supplementary cementing materials. Considering the sustainability of construction, it is imperative to develop supplementary cementing materials from the industrial waste by-products; one of such waste is the coal bottom ash, produced by coal-based thermal power plants. Previously several studies have been conducted on the utilization of coal bottom ash in its original form as natural sand replacement but limited research has been reported on the coal bottom ash as replacement of cement. It was observed through the literature review that the original coal bottom ash is porous in nature, and cannot be used as a replacement of cement, but after the proper grinding, it possesses the good pozzolanic property and could be utilized as replacement of cement in concrete. The result of this review has indicated that ground coal bottom ash has a good potential to be utilized as supplementary cementing materials in concrete construction. The aim of this review is to summarize the previous findings on the utilization of coal bottom ash as supplementary cementing materials in concrete construction. Hence, this article will deliver the key information and valuable material for the researchers looking for the supplementary cementing materials in the field of advanced concrete technology.


SAFI, Mahmoud I., Abdelnabi FARDOUS., Mohammed MUDDABER., Said ELZURAIQI., Luna AL-HADIDI and Ibrahim BASHABSHEH, 2006. Chemical effect of reclaimed water on soil and carnation tissue, planted in soil and tuff media. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 12: 559-569 The experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of three irrigation regimes of low quality water, the effluent of reclaimed wastewater from Ramtha treating plant on soil, drained water and chemical composition in plant tissue of three carnation cultivars 'Voyore, Diana, and Chad' for two successive years, 2003 and 2004 in two planting media, soil and Zeotuff. Ca reached intermediate concentrations, K, Mg and Na were highly accumulated, P showed low levels, in both soil depths. Mn, Cu, and Zn showed no accumulation in the soil, while Fe reached high levels in both years of irrigation in the two depths. High salinity build up was observed from the three irrigation treatments in tuff drained water than in the soil, when planted with carnations regardless of cultivar. Both EC and SAR reached a steady status throughout the second year 2004 in both media. According to the optimum nutrient levels in tissue reported by the literature, the only macro and micro element accumulation was recorded for Mg in the tissue of the carnations regardless of cultivar in tuff medium during both years and Fe in both media during the first year only, regardless of water treatment.


In this paper we introduce an analysis of dependability of an elementary yet critical component of robotic systems designed to operate in environments shared with humans, i.e., the joint-level actuation system. We consider robot joints that implement the variable impedance actuation (VIA) paradigm. The VIA has been demonstrated to be an effective mean to achieve high performance while constantly keeping injury risks to humans by accidental impacts below a given threshold. The paper describe possible implementations of the VIA concept which use the Antagonistic Actuation (AA) in three different arrangements. This study follows a previously reported paper dealing with safety. Here a detailed comparative dependability and performability analysis in front of possible specific failure modes is conducted, whose results provide additional and useful guidelines for design of safe and dependable actuation systems for physical human-robot interaction.


The PirateBrowser is a Web browser that uses Tor privacy-enhancing technology to circumvent nationally implemented Internet filters blocking access to The Pirate Bay. This article analyzes the possible consequences of a mass influx of copyright pirates into the privacy domain. The article addresses the effects of the uptake of strong privacy technologies by pirates on copyright enforcement and on free speech and privacy technology domains. Also discussed are the norms and values reflected in the specific design choices taken by the developers of the PirateBrowser.


Teaching and learning as two educational activities are centrally important in education quality. However, the two often occur in separate timing and in the implied ordering of teaching first and learning happens afterwards. This paper proposes a concurrent teaching and learning approach via synchronization of the slide presentation by teacher and tag addition by students. Better learning is attained when students increase their active learning with tagging at the same time that students are in attendance of lecture. The synchronization is AJAX-enabled.


Northeast Asia stands at a turning point in its history. The key economies of China, Japan, and South Korea are growing increasingly interdependent, and the movement toward regionalism is gaining momentum. Yet interdependency, often set in a global context, also spurs nationalism in all three countries, and elsewhere in East Asia. Northeast Asia today feels the presence of all three complex forces --national, regional, and global --connecting, competing, and colliding in myriad ways. The authors of this book assess current interactions of national and regional forces in Northeast Asia, in the context of U.S. presence in the region. These seemingly contradictory forces must be considered together; the sparks they generate have important policy implications for the United States and for the region as a whole. Constructive reformulation of these interactions is one of Northeast Asia's most pressing contemporary challenges.


Plants have evolved complex strategies to maintain phosphate (Pi) homeostasis and to maximize Pi acquisition when the macronutrient is limiting. Adjustment of root system architecture via changes in meristem initiation and activity is integral to the acclimation process. However, the mechanisms that monitor external Pi status and interpret the nutritional signal remain to be elucidated. Here, we present evidence that the Pi deficiency response, pdr2, mutation disrupts local Pi sensing. The sensitivity and amplitude of metabolic Pi-starvation responses, such as Pi-responsive gene expression or accumulation of anthocyanins and starch, are enhanced in pdr2 seedlings. However, the most conspicuous alteration of pdr2 is a conditional short-root phenotype that is specific for Pi deficiency and caused by selective inhibition of root cell division followed by cell death below a threshold concentration of about 0.1 mm external Pi. Measurements of general Pi uptake and of total phosphorus (P) in root tips exclude a defect in high-affinity Pi acquisition. Rescue of root meristem activity in Pi-starved pdr2 by phosphite (Phi), a non-metabolizable Pi analog, and divided-root experiments suggest that pdr2 disrupts sensing of low external Pi availability. Thus, PDR2 is proposed to function at a Pi-sensitive checkpoint in root development, which monitors environmental Pi status, maintains and fine-tunes meristematic activity, and finally adjusts root system architecture to maximize Pi acquisition.


Abstract There are over 3 billion searches globally on Google every day. This report examines whether Google search queries can be used to predict the present and the near future unemployment rate in Finland. Predicting the present and the near future is of interest, as the official records of the state of the economy are published with a delay. To assess the information contained in Google search queries, the report compares a simple predictive model of unemployment to a model that contains a variable, Google Index, formed from Google data. In addition, cross-correlation analysis and Granger-causality tests are performed. Compared to a simple benchmark, Google search queries improve the prediction of the present by 10 % measured by mean absolute error. Moreover, predictions using search terms perform 39 % better over the benchmark for near future unemployment 3 months ahead. Google search queries also tend to improve the prediction accuracy around turning points. The results suggest that Google searches contain useful information of the present and the near future unemployment rate in Finland.


1. The conservation of biodiversity depends upon both policy and regulatory frameworks. Here, we identify priority policy developments that would support conservation in the UK in the light of technological developments, changes in knowledge or environmental change. 2. A team of seven representatives from governmental organizations, 17 from non-governmental organizations and six academics provided an assessment of the priority issues. The representatives consulted widely and identified a long-list of 117 issues. 3. Following voting and discussion during a 2-day meeting, these were reduced to a final list of 25 issues and their potential policy options and research needs were identified. Many of the policies related to recent changes in approaches to conservation, such as increased interest in ecosystem services, adaptation to climate change and landscape ecology. 4. We anticipate that this paper will be useful for policy makers, nature conservation delivery agencies, the research community and conservation policy advocates. 5. Although many of the options have global significance, we suggest that other countries consider an equivalent exercise. We recommend that such an exercise be carried out in the UK at regular intervals, say every 5 years, to explore how biodiversity conservation can best be supported by linked policy development and research in a changing world. 6. Synthesis and applications. Opportunities for policy development were prioritized and for each of the top 25 we identified the current context, policy options and research questions. These largely addressed new issues relating to developing topics such as ecosystem services, landscape planning and nanotechnology. We envisage that this will largely be used by researchers wishing to make a contribution to potential policy debates.


Although cell polarity is an essential feature of living cells, it is far from being well-understood. Using a combination of computational modeling and biological experiments we closely examine an important prototype of cell polarity: the pheromone-induced formation of the yeast polarisome. Focusing on the role of noise and spatial heterogeneity, we develop and investigate two mechanistic spatial models of polarisome formation, one deterministic and the other stochastic, and compare the contrasting predictions of these two models against experimental phenotypes of wild-type and mutant cells. We find that the stochastic model can more robustly reproduce two fundamental characteristics observed in wild-type cells: a highly polarized phenotype via a mechanism that we refer to as spatial stochastic amplification, and the ability of the polarisome to track a moving pheromone input. Moreover, we find that only the stochastic model can simultaneously reproduce these characteristics of the wild-type phenotype and the multi-polarisome phenotype of a deletion mutant of the scaffolding protein Spa2. Significantly, our analysis also demonstrates that higher levels of stochastic noise results in increased robustness of polarization to parameter variation. Furthermore, our work suggests a novel role for a polarisome protein in the stabilization of actin cables. These findings elucidate the intricate role of spatial stochastic effects in cell polarity, giving support to a cellular model where noise and spatial heterogeneity combine to achieve robust biological function.


The theory and methodology of design of general-purpose machines that may be controlled by a computer to perform all the tasks of a set of special-purpose machines is the focus of modern machine design research. These seventeen contributions chronicle recent activity in the analysis and design of robot manipulators that are the prototype of these general-purpose machines. They focus particularly on kinematics, the geometry of rigid-body motion, which is an integral part of machine design theory.The challenges to kinematics researchers presented by general-purpose machines such as the manipulator are leading to new perspectives in the design and control of simpler machines with two, three, and more degrees of freedom. Researchers are rethinking the uses of gear trains, planar mechanisms, adjustable mechanisms, and computer controlled actuators in the design of modern machines.J. M. McCarthy is Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, with a secondary appointment in the Computer and Information Sciences Department, University of Pennsylvania. Kinematics of Robot Manipulators appeared as a special issue of the International Journal of Robotics Research.Contributors : Atul Bajpai, V. Parenti Castelli, Raymond J. Cipra, Arthur G. Erdman, E. F. Fichter, Ferdinand Freudenstein, K. C. Gupta, C. Innocenti, A. Kumar, Z. C. Lai, David J. LeBlanc, Chih-Chung Daniel Lin, F. L. Litvin, J. M. McCarthy, G. Naganathan, Theodore W. Nye, Mayank S. Patel, B. Paul, Richard P. Paul, G. R. Pennock, Donald R. Riley, J. Rosa, Bernard Roth, George N. Sandor, A. H. Soni, M. M. Stanisic, Thomas Thompson, M. J. Tsai, R. Vijaykumar, K. J. Waldron, Tzu-Chen Weng, Yongxian Xu, D. C. H. Yang, Zhang Yi, Hong Zhang.


OBJECTIVE
To describe the variability and appropriateness of antibiotic prescriptions in community-acquired acute respiratory infections (ARI) during childhood in Spain.

METHODS
A descriptive, multicenter study of variability in clinical practice was conducted by evaluating a prospective series of pediatric patients attending the emergency rooms of 11 Spanish hospitals and diagnosed with community-acquired ARI. The appropriateness of the antibiotic prescriptions was assessed by comparing our clinical practice with consensus guidelines developed for this study.

RESULTS
We collected data from 6,249 ARI emergencies studied on 30 separate days. Antibiotics were prescribed in 58.7% of the ARI (bronchiolitis, 11.5%; bronchitis, 40.2%; pharyngotonsillitis, 80.9%; nonspecified ARI, 34.8%; pneumonia, 92.4%; otitis, 93.4%; sinusitis, 92.6%). The most commonly used antibiotics were amoxicillin/clavulanate (33.2%), amoxicillin (30.2%), cefuroxime axetil (8.5%) and azithromycin (6%). According to the consensus guidelines developed for this study, therapy was considered to be appropriate in 63.1% of the ARI (first choice, 52.1%; alternative choice, 11.0%) and inappropriate in 36.9%. The percentages of inappropriate prescription according to ARI groups were: bronchiolitis, 11.5%; bronchitis, 31.5%; pharyngotonsillitis, 54.8%; nonspecified ARI, 34.7%; pneumonia, 13.9%; otitis, 25.6%; and sinusitis, 22.2%.

CONCLUSIONS
There is excessive use of antibiotics in acute respiratory infections that are presumably viral in origin. An important number of ARI of potentially bacterial origin are treated with antibiotics that are not sufficiently efficacious or that have a broader spectrum than necessary.


For the development of new kinds of refractive-index sensors for capillary electrophoresis, we investigated the scattering of an off-axis incident Gaussian beam by a homogeneous dielectric cylinder at normal incidence. The numerical calculations are based on the exact solution of the Helmholtz equation in circular cylindrical coordinates. Contrary to the procedures with geometrical and paraxial models, this procedure gives accurate results even when the beam dimensions are of the order of the wavelength of light and when the beam diameter is greater than the diameter of the dielectric cylinder. This rigorous electromagnetic treatment is verified by experimental measurements for cylinders with diameters from 5 to 100 μm.


The arctic is currently an important store of terrestrial carbon, but may become a net source of carbon to the atmosphere in the future in response to climate change. However, the intricacies of how the carbon cycle is likely to respond to predicted changes are unclear, as soil organic carbon (SOC) is a mixture of many different pools and compounds. Low molecular weight dissolved organic carbon (LMW-DOC) is a particularly important and dynamic C pool as it is highly available to microorganisms. This thesis explored the effects of freezing temperature and freeze-thaw cycles (FTC) on the composition, concentration and fate of this SOC pool, and on the carbon and nitrogen cycles in general, in arctic tundra soils.
FTC were shown to have the potential to increase LMW-DOC in arctic tundra soils. This was only observed after 1 or 2 FTC and this also depended on tundra type. The composition of this LMW-DOC also changed with new LMW-DOC compounds, changes to aromaticity and the fluorescence spectrum being observed. Plants were a source of LMW-DOC during FTC. Salix polaris vegetation produced similar compounds and fluorescence spectra to FTC subjected soil. Initial experiments on sterilised Zea mays showed plants as well as microbes could be a source of glucose and amino acids released into soil after FTC. The fate of some rapidly utilised LMW-DOC compounds was relatively unaffected by FTC in tundra soils suggesting rapid recovery of C and N cycling and the microbial community within 12 hours of thaw.
Freezing temperature decreased uptake and mineralisation of LMW-DOC in a manner that was substrate specific. Progress was made in measuring and modelling unfrozen water content. The mineralisation rate of glucose was modelled using temperature and unfrozen water content. Warmer winters seemed to increase nitrification and amino acid turnover early in the growing season and also to decrease microbial biomass carbon. Earlier thaws could promote soil CO2 emissions and increase susceptibility to FTC.
In conclusion, LMW DOC concentration, composition and dynamics can be affected by FTC with the vegetation being a notable source. Microbial use of LMW DOC is affected by freezing temperature and, whilst this recovers quickly on thaw, over winter freezing temperature can have longer term impacts on C and N cycling in the arctic tundra.


The performance of Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) feedback system combined with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is investigated in this work. Two types of codebook based channel feedback techniques are used in this work. The first feedback technique uses a combination of both the long-term and short-term channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter, whereas the second technique uses only the short term CSI. The long-term and short-term CSI at the transmitter is used for efficient channel utilization. OFDM is a powerful technique employed in communication systems suffering from frequency selectivity. Combined with multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver, OFDM proves to be robust against delay spread. Moreover, it leads to significant data rates with improved bit error performance over links having only a single antenna at both the transmitter and receiver. The effectiveness of these techniques has been demonstrated through the simulation of a MIMO-OFDM feedback system. The results have been evaluated for 4x4 MIMO channels. Simulation results indicate the benefits of the MIMO-OFDM channel feedback system over the one without incorporating OFDM. Performance gain of about 3 dB is observed for MIMO-OFDM feedback system as compared to the one without employing OFDM. Hence MIMO-OFDM becomes an attractive approach for future high speed wireless communication system


This document proposes an IANA Registration extension to the Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP) Reason Header to be included in a BYE Method
Request as a result of a session preemption event, either at a user
agent (UA), or somewhere in the network involving a reservation-based
protocol such as the Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) or Next
Steps in Signaling (NSIS). This document does not attempt to address
routers failing in the packet path; instead, it addresses a deliberate
tear down of a flow between UAs, and informs the terminated UA(s) with
an indication of what occurred. [STANDARDS-TRACK]


There is no standard treatment for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We developed a product containing stem cells differentiation stage factors (SCDSF) that inhibits tumor growth in vivo and in vitro. The aim of this open randomized study was to assess its efficacy in patients with HCC not suitable for resection, transplantation, ablation therapy, or arterial chemoembolization. A total of 179 consecutive patients were enrolled. We randomly assigned the patients to receive either SCDSF or only conservative treatment. Primary end points were tumor response and survival. Secondary end points were performance status and patient tolerance. Randomization was stopped at the second interim analysis (6 months) of the first 32 patients recruited when the inspection detected a significant difference in favor of treatment (p = 0.037). The responses to the therapy obtained in 154 additional patients confirmed previous results. Evaluation of survival showed a significant difference between the group of patients who responded to treatment versus the group with progression of disease (p < 0.001). Of the 23 treated patients with a performance status (PS) of 1, 19 changed to 0. The study indicated the efficacy of SCDSF treatment of the patients with intermediate-advanced HCC.


Anatomy is a challenging subject to learn because it is voluminous, requires three-dimensional cognitive skills and is easily forgotten. Furthermore, anatomy is facing diminishing teaching attention and time. There is a scarcity of literature offering pedagogical guidance for teaching anatomy for physiotherapy in the UK, despite anatomical knowledge underpinning an ever widening scope of physiotherapy. The study provides a pedagogical theory and guidance on how anatomy for physiotherapy undergraduates could be taught more effectively in the UK.
The research design generated data through in-depth semi-structured interviews with eight anatomy teachers for physiotherapy from an identified sample of 50 participants in the UK who taught anatomy modules and were registered physiotherapists. The combined interview transcripts generated 72,292 words of data that were analysed using coding techniques of grounded theory.
Chronologically, the study found that anatomy teachers explicitly taught anatomy during the 1st year, largely through practical anatomy tutorials. During the 2nd and 3rd years, clinical physiotherapy lecturers implicitly revised anatomy during their teaching sessions, while student placement supervisors implicitly reinforced anatomical knowledge and skills during hospital placements. Conceptually, five pedagogical concepts emerged that are supported by literature for medical education and were explained using the Four-Component-Instructional-Design framework derived from the Cognitive-Load theory. The anatomy-teachers-for-physiotherapy used a spirally arranged curriculum, extensive use of visual anatomical imagery, promoted kinaesthetic anatomical skills, applied anatomical knowledge and skills to physiotherapy situations and used anatomical principles for metacognitive strategies. The study deviated from the Cognitive-Load theory in three ways. The long-term memories of physiotherapy students had limited capacities that stored temporary anatomical information, instead of having unlimited capacities for permanent information. The teachers used haptic learning that is ignored by the Cognitive-Load theory. Recommendations were made on how anatomical teaching could be improved and are addressed to Anatomy Theme-Leads, anatomy-teachers-for-physiotherapy and the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.


INTRODUCTION There is increasing worldwide interest in the assessment of wear in explanted hip components. This is due is part to high profile failures of orthopaedic components in the US, whilst in the UK hip resurfacings have been experiencing a higher than expected failure rate. The reasons for these failures are not well understood, with data from the NJR suggesting the 43% of MoM resurfacing failures are unexplained. Wear analysis is a vital tool in determining failure mechanisms and ultimately improving the longevity of joint replacements through improved design and manufacturing control. There are currently no relevant measurement standards for the evaluation of retrieved orthopaedic components. This paper will assess two of the most commonly used techniques namely roundness measurement and co-ordinate measurement. The advantages and disadvantages of both techniques are considered in this paper. ROUNDNESS MACHINE The Talyrond 365 is a stylus based roundness machine. The component is located on a rotating table and the stylus measures the deviation from a perfect circle as the component is slowly rotated. The Talyrond measures a single profile to an accuracy of 30 nm and up to 72,000 data points per revolution. The air spindle has a radial accuracy of COORDINATE MEASURING MACHINE Co-ordinate measuring machines (CMMs) have been widely used in manufacturing quality and research departments for a number of years and the CMM is recognised as a powerful and important tool capable of ascertaining geometric data from a component. The CMM used in this study was a Zeiss Prismo CMM (Carl Zeiss Ltd., Rugby, UK) with a probing error of 0.7 μm. Components are securely held in a chuck fixture arrangement and the dimensions of the component in the portion of the bearing that is unworn is ascertained through measurement. The initial measurements are used to produce a reverse engineered 3D CAD surface which represents the component 'pre-wear' surface. The surface of the component is then scanned and the deviation from this pre-wear surface is mapped. The maximum linear wear and wear volume are then calculated directly. DISCUSSION The main advantage of CMM and Talyrond is that they are available in most metrology and measurement rooms. The CMM is a particularly versatile machine and can be used to measure any orthopaedic components. There is a need to develop a suitable Standard for both machines detailing a protocol to measure explanted hip and quantify the wear. A study is underway to measure a set of explanted hip components to allow a detailed comparison between of measurements between the Talyrond and CMM. The result of this study will be included in the paper. CONCLUSIONS The CMM and Talyrond are both instruments suited to measuring wear of explanted hips. A full evaluation of the systems and the development of robust measurement protocol and standard would be advantageous to the orthopaedic industry.


Novel device concepts and better channel materials than Si are required to improve the performance of conventional metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). The exploration of III–V semiconductors is mainly driven by the extremely high electron mobility of the materials. Recently, several researches have demonstrated that III–V high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) can achieve high-speed operation at low supply voltage for applications beyond Si-CMOS technology. While the intrinsic device performance looks promising, current prototypes are dramatically influenced by high contact resistances. From a modeling point of view the understanding of the intrinsic device performance is now quite advanced, while the understanding of the contacts remains quite limited. Hence, a precise theoretical approach is required to model the contact characteristics. This work investigates the contact resistance physics of InAs HEMT transistors. The Nano-Electronic Modeling Tool (NEMO5) is used to solve the non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) formalism which embeds Schrödinger and Poisson equations self-consistently. For this study a real-space effective mass approximation with a simple phonon scattering is utilized.


Background:  Programme efficiency is a vital factor in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in an environment of scarce resources. The branch performance tool (BPT) developed by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) is an effective tool for continuous monitoring of programme efficiency in the health sector. Objectives:  The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of BPT in improving programme efficiencies and provide recommendations for further improvements. Methods:  The service delivery data, collected through an Internet-based Monitoring and Evaluation Information Management System (MEIMS), as well as costing data over a period of three consecutive years (2013–2015), were fed into the BPT. Data on performance against key efficiency indicators (KPI), measured through data envelopment analysis at each service delivery point (SDP), were used to inform the development of an action plan at the end of each year. Lessons learnt on the  best practices  of well-performing SDPs and on the  improvement opportunities  of low-efficient SDPs identified through the BPT were presented during programmatic review workshops and formed the basis of management action. Results:  The organisation met all its efficiency targets in 2013–2015, including increase in number of clients per staff day from 1.9 to 3.0, spike in the cost recovery ratio from 20% to 29%, reduction in cost per SRH service from $3.6 to $2.7 and decrease in overhead cost as a percentage of total organisation level cost from 20.5% to 12.8%. Conclusions:  Branch performance tool is effective for evidence-based decision-making on programme efficiency of service delivery interventions in the health sector. It has potential for further improvement and replication in the health sector, which will contribute to the pursuit of SDG3.