It is proved that cloud computing has many benefits, and cloud services with flexible licensing model and cost saving features bring opportunities to enterprise's IT operations. Conventional ERP system, an important component of enterprises, is impacted by on-demand cloud services also. Integrating conventional ERP system with cloud services becomes a trend because it brings new processing capabilities without introducing significant changes to existing system. But previous studies about integrating ERP and cloud usually focused on SaaS (Software as a Service). PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) are not discussed much. People sometimes even confuse cloud service with SaaS. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to present a framework that can describe respective implications of integrating ERP with three types of cloud services: SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. Qualitative methods such as systematic literature review and interviews are adopted to execute the research, so data collected through different sources can complement each other in order to support presenting the framework of integrating conventional ERP system and cloud services. The integration at SaaS level is for achieving immediate business value and productivity enhancement. At PaaS level the objective of integration is to enhance software development life cycle management. And the main integrating intent at IaaS level is to enable scalability and reliability of hardware resources without changing existing IT infrastructure. Furthermore, challenges and opportunities for integrating ERP with different cloud services are studied and motivation is derived from analyzing. Finally the key points are arranged in the presented framework of integration between conventional ERP systems and cloud services.


State Requirements for Childhood Vaccination Exemption Forms in the United States Katherine Elizabeth Hill College of Nursing, BYU Master of Science Background: In the United States, children must be vaccinated in order to attend school, although parents also have the right to request a vaccine exemption. The type of vaccine exemption varies by state but can include exemption for religious, philosophical, medical, and temporary medical reasons. The purpose of this research was to identify the use of provider signature requirements and fees in states during the vaccine exemption process. Methods: A questionnaire was sent to immunization managers in the 50 United States, District of Columbia, the United States Indian Health Service, and eight United States territories. The managers were asked if their states required a provider, or other individual, to sign the exemption form prior to granting a vaccine exemption. If a provider signature was required to validate the vaccine exemption form, immunization managers were then asked to identify what type of provider was allowed to sign the form. Immunization managers also reported on whether parents needed to pay a fee in order to obtain a vaccine exemption. Results: A provider signature was most frequently required on medical vaccine exemption forms. For religious exemptions, only two states required a signature from a religious leader. Three states allowed a physician, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, and naturopath to sign philosophical vaccine exemption forms. For medical and temporary medical vaccine exemption forms, the majority of states allowed a physician, nurse practitioner or physician assistant to sign the form. Only one state, Utah, confirmed that a fee was required to obtain religious or philosophical vaccine exemptions. Conclusion: With the hope of reducing vaccine exemption rates, some states employ various obstacles to obtaining and validating a vaccine exemption form, such as requiring a provider signature or charging a fee to process the exemption form. Surprisingly, only a few states required a provider signature on religious and philosophical exemption forms and only one state reported charging a fee to obtain a vaccine exemption form. Identifying these data provides opportunities to further study the effectiveness of various vaccine exemption obstacles.


The methodology for dynamical climate downscaling is studied using the second-generation regional climate model (RegCM2). The question addressed is, in order to simulate high-resolution details as accurately as possible, what strategy should be taken: continuous long-term integration in climate prediction mode or consecutive shortterm integrations in weather forcasting mode? To investigate this problem, the model was run for 5 months in three different ways: 1) a 5-month continuous simulation, 2) monthly reinitialized simulations, and 3) 10-day reinitialized simulations. Compared to the observed precipitation, the 10-day reinitialized simulation results in the smallest error, while the continuous run shows larger error. Analysis shows that the long-term continuous simulation is contaminated by the systematic errors associated with the steep Andes Mountains and the uncertainties in the moisture processes in the planetary boundary layer near the coast. The method of 10-day reinitialization effectively mitigates the problem of systematic errors and makes a difference in the subtle precipitation processes in the regional climate model, therefore improving the accuracy in dynamic downscaling.


The Spirit of Bandung and the struggle for freedom in South Africa This paper analyses the work of a conference that took place in April 1955 at Bandung, Central Jawa, Indonesia. The conference was and is still an important event in the lives of the oppressed people. Representatives came from 29 African and Asian underdeveloped countries. They came to promote economic and cultural co-operation and to oppose colonialism. Most of the Afro-Asian and international conflicts were on the agenda. The conference finally agreed on 10 principles as an orientation for the formation of their mutual internal relationships, which includes respecting sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations, equality of all races and all nations, mutual agreement on non-intervention into internal affairs and non-violent conflict solutions. This paper seeks to evaluate the work on Bandung and suggests a way forward to the 50th anniversary of the conference that will take place in 2005.


Abstract In Swedish determiner phrases definiteness can be realised both pre-nominally with a definite article and post-nominally with a definite suffix on the head noun. This paper discusses the distribution of definiteness morphology in a number of morphosyntactic contexts. Separate patterns of definiteness marking emerge when considering the following morphosyntactic contexts: DPs modified with a prepositional phrase, DPs followed by a restrictive relative clause, and DPs with adjectival pre-nominal modification. This paper synthesizes various proposals in the literature to develop the working analysis: in particular, LaCara's (2011) analysis which includes two component features of definiteness and insights about DEN-omission from Simonenko (2014: Chapter 2). This working analysis demonstrates that the distribution under discussion can be unified using while maintaining a straightforward mapping between the semantics and the morphosyntax. The following avenues are identified as promising areas for future work: the distribution of definiteness morphology in additional morphosyntactic or semantic contexts and between varieties of Swedish; the semantic features adopted here and their alternatives; typological work concerning the semantic and morphosyntax definiteness cross-linguistically, including the properties of adjectival modification in definite DPs.


Two conventional views on the development of public elementary schooling in colonial Korea fail to explain why the increase in the public school enrollment rate was limited. Rather than the conventional views - the ideological-device theory and the self- empowerment theory -- we offer an alternative theory based on the elite-biased growth of colonial public schools. The alternative theory was tested using newly constructed province and county level data. The empirical results support the view that the rise of Korean public elementary schooling was biased toward elites during the colonial period. Local Korean elites chose to pay more fees for their own children, instead of paying tax for everyone. The elites also successfully limited the opportunities for public schooling through the discretionary admission process.


Thomas Mann, though married and the father of six children, had strong homoerotic urges, which he obliquely portrayed in Tonio Kroger's love for Hans Hansen, Gustav von Aschenbach's love for the Polish boy Tadzio in "Death in Venice" and Hans Castorp's love for Pribislav Hippe (another beautiful Slav) in The Magic Mountain. Mann--who had written a story and a novel about incest, "The Blood of the Walsungs" and The Holy Sinner--even confessed in his secret diary of 1920 an incestuous attraction to his fourteen-year-old son, Klaus: "Am enraptured with Essi [Klaus], terribly handsome in his swimming trunks. Find it quite natural that I should fall in love with my son" (Mann, Diaries, 1918-1939, ed. Hermann Kester, NY: Abrams, 1982, 101). The quintessential modern German author rarely mentioned American or English writers. Yet, like many others of his fin-de-siecle generation, Mann was powerfully drawn to and liberated by the "Calamus" poems, and wrote extensively about Whitman in a major essay, "The German Republic" (1923). And Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric" inspired one of the greatest scenes in The Magic Mountain (1924): Hans Castorp's declaration of love to Clavdia Chauchat (a cat in heat) during the unconstrained revelries of carnival night. In "The German Republic," originally a speech delivered to students in Berlin in October 1923 to celebrate the birthday of the playwright Gerhart Hauptmann, Mann tried to persuade young intellectuals to support the five-year-old Weimar Republic. In a surprising conjunction the buttoned-up Mann, co-opting the bohemian Whitman, looked to an American, whose country had just helped defeat Germany, to provide a political solution to the country's disastrous problems and help rebuild the national spirit. In a forced analogy, Mann compared Whitman's America after the Civil War to his own Germany after World War I. As early as the uncompleted "Geist und Kunst" (Spirit and Art, 1910), Mann wrote that the "influence of Whitman on the youngest people is greater than that of Wagner" (T. J. Reed, Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition, Oxford: Clarendon, 1974, 137). After reading Hans Reisiger's "noble" two-volume German translation of Whitman's poetry and prose (1922), which "made a very great impression" on him, he "proclaimed the unity of humanity and democracy." Mann quotes three passages from "I sing the body electric," three from "Calamus" and four from Democratic Vistas. Mann called Whitman the "lover of mankind across the ocean," "the herald of athletic democracy and of free states holding each other embraced" and "the hectic dreamer of perpetual bridal night." He praised Whitman's "dithyrambic Americanism" and the "erotic, all-embracing democratism" of his "raging and reverent song-sequence." In a rare burst of lyrical enthusiasm, a notable contrast to his formal and conventional eulogy of Gerhart Hauptmann, Mann extolled the "social eroticism," "the pure, sweet-smelling primitive healthiness of the singer of Manhattan . . . bursting with racial freshness, which just now let us bring into touch for a moment democracy and aestheticism" (Mann, "The German Republic," Order of the Day, NY: Knopf, 1942, 37, 43, 44, 25, 39, 38, 27, 42, 43). Mann's translator H.T. Lowe-Porter, frightened by Mann's bold suggestion--in his plea for sexual freedom--that democracy has emancipated the homosexual, excised three pages. She cut a passage prophesying that beautiful, narcissistic, "adoring youth, joined in a dream of themselves as gods, or young males drawn to their own mirror image, [would be] bound in a passionate community" (Anthony Heilbut, Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature, NY: Knopf, 1996, 380). But, as T. J. Reed observes, Mann's argument "was little short of ludicrous to expand on Whitmanesque homosexual feeling as a force binding society" (Reed, Uses of Tradition, 293). In The Magic Mountain Hans Castorp comes to a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps on a three-week visit to his cousin. …


The debate on the European Union's democratic deficit usually operates within a national-democratic framework of analysis. This article argues for a change in methodology. It follows the thesis that the EU is a 'demoicracy'– a polity of multiple demoi– and has to be evaluated as such. Core principles of demoicracy are developed and the EU is assessed accordingly. Such an evaluation is not only more adequate, but also provides original insights: it is found that, whereas the constitutional development of the EU has approached demoicratic standards in general, major deficits remain at the national level.


France has a tradition of state influence in many spheres of life & not least in the
economy. Colbertism dates back to Louis XIV- famous for the dictum: "L'Etat c'est
moi";. It was reinforced by centralisation under Napoleon and became embedded in
the French constitution and the French psyche. The idea that the state govern a
meritocracy and ensure "liberte, egalite et fraternite" was built into the educational
system of the 'grandes ecoles'; and was later reinforced with the establishment in 1945
of the ENA creating a technocratic elite which has governed France for decades.
However, the final 'dirigiste' stand which was taken by Mitterrand in the form of an
extensive programme of nationalisation in 1982 was partially derailed by the growing
pressures of international competition and interdependence. This paper will examine
the post-war era focussing on the nationalisation experience and analyse the extent to
which France has retained a unique form of state influence in order to maintain social
cohesion. It will identify changes in industrial structure and it will examine the
evidence of social fracture as the pressures of globalisation have forced change. It will
explore the state's accommodation of the pressures in its attempt to change traditional
structures and expectations. A final assessment of change will be posited in
comparative indicators at national, European and global levels. The French model has
long endured, but as ENA is transferred to the provinces how much longer will the
state continue to be able to withstand the pressures of Anglo-Saxon capitalism?


Cerebrospinal fluid bathes the central nervous system, providing mechanical support and maintaining a stable environment. Alterations in its production, circulation or absorption result in a pathological condition termed hydrocephalus, characterized by an accumulation of fluid within the cranium, usually in the ventricles of the brain. Similarly, aberrations in the circulation or absorption of cerebrospinal fluid around the spinal cord can create a condition termed syringomyelia. Hydrocephalus can be life-threatening due to increased intracranial pressure. The most common causes of hydrocephalus are related to obstruction of cerebrospinal fluid flow. In the pediatric population, causes of hydrocephalus include developmental abnormalities, infectious aetiologies, mass lesions, and haemorrhage. Causes of high pressure hydrocephalus in adulthood are primarily related to haemorrhage and tumour, although idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) is also encountered. The management of hydrocephalus and syringomyelia relies primarily on neurosurgical interventions such as insertion of shunt devices.

Key Concepts

CSF provides a mechanical support for the brain and spinal cord.

Overproduction of CSF, obstruction to CSF flow or impaired absorption of CSF may lead to disease states such as hydrocephalus or syringomyelia.

CSF diversion by means of shunting with catheter implantation or fenestration of anatomic barriers is the primary treatment for diseases of CSF disturbances.

Keywords:

central nervous system;
cerebrospinal fluid;
hydrocephalus;
ventricles;
syringomyelia


This study develops software that provides optimum lathe cutting conditions for specific materials and parameters. This is accomplished by developing a model, based on empirical and analytical relationships, which estimates the optimum cutting conditions, (i.e. spindle speed, feed rate and depth of cut) for a single pass, external turning operation. These parameters are optimized to yield the minimum production cost, while satisfying constraints imposed by workpiece specifications and equipment limitations. The equipment limitations considered include the available machine power, maximum workholding force of the lathe, range of spindle speeds, feed rates for the lathe and tool, and the range of depth of cut of the tool. The workpiece constraints are the surface finish specification for the part and the maximum allowable deflection of the part at each cross section. The effects of each of these limitations are discussed. The developed analytical model introduces manufacturing economics, along with the above constraints, into a decision making process which heretofore relied primarily on the lathe operator's experience and standard handbooks. Typically, the determination of the metal cutting conditions is based on the machinist's experience. This method of specifying cutting conditions tends to emphasize the requirements of the workpiece specifications i.e. surface finish and dimensional tolerances excluding economic considerations. On the other hand, a pure rate of production analysis would maximize the ratio of actual cutting time to total machining time without considering workpiece specifications or the implications of operating the equipment at the maximum production rate. While minimizing the production time generally reduces production costs, there is a trade off to be considered. A higher production rate requires an increase in spindle speed or tool feedrate resulting in a decreased tool life. This reduction in tool life adds the associated costs of additional tools and tool changing times to the production cost. Hence, it is necessary to find the operating conditions which will minimize cost while considering all aspects of the manufacturing process. With the increasing usage of CNC lathes which involve large capital expenditures, the use of an economic analysis combined with technical considerations becomes imperative for minimizing the overall production cost. Further, an effective optimization procedure allows low volume runs on many different part numbers with the first part being both cost effective and fit for function. The methodology used to develop the model was based on published literature, experimentation, and several well known and widely accepted equations defining tool-life and tool-workpiece relationships. Through the use of a statistically designed experiment, data was obtained and a set of equations was determined to estimate the cutting forces generated in the turning operation. The data compared favorably with the published equations for calculating cutting forces which were used in this model. The parameters for this experiment, which was conducted on an instrumented lathe at Renesselaer Polytechnic Institute, were feed rate and depth of cut. An additional experiment was conducted to determine the tool life corresponding to the maximum allowable tool flank wear for several feed rates. These values are unique for a tool-workpiece material combination. For the purpose of applying the model, the experimentation was restricted to the use of a carbide coated tool insert and a free machining stainless steel, AISI 416. The work was based on the actual needs and production tooling of a major company. The determination of the empirical constants for other tool-workpiece material combinations would extend the model's application. The optimization procedure is incorporated into a computer program to calculate the economical machining parameters in a finishing operation.


The paper treats on a comparative basis the development of the flow and pressure maps in deep, and respectively, shallow hydrostatic bearing pockets. The numerical simulation uses a dimensionless formulation of the Navier-Stokes equations written for a body fitted coordinates system, and applied through a collocated grid. The present work is a continuation of the simulations performed by Braun et al. (1993, 1994a, 1994b) to cases where the length and diameter of the restrictor feedline is of consequence to the flow in both the shallow and the deep pocket. The model includes the coupling between the pocket flow and a finite length feedline flow, on one hand, and the pocket and the adjacent lands on the other hand. Geometrically, all pockets have the same projected footprint, lands length, and capillary feedline. This numerical study uses the Reynolds numbe Re based on the runner velocity (laminar range only), and the inlet jet strength F as the dynamic similarity parameters, while the dimensionless clearance C is used as a geometric parameter. The flow structures, and the physical reasons underlying the causes of the pressure variation inside the deep and shallow pockets [either longitudinally (radially) or transversally (circumferentially)], are discussed quantitatively and comparatively. It is further shown that the transversal pressure distributions under the runner are highly dependent on whethr the flow is dominated by the rotation of the runner (hydrodynamic effects), or by the strength of the hydrostatic jet (F). Finally the longitudinal pressure curves in the depth of the pocket, and restrictor are presented and the nature of their variation discussed. The back step and Rayleigh step effects are also discussed on a comparative basis for the two types of pockets, and in conjunction with the Couette, and the jet dominated flow. the modification of the central vortical zones of the deep pockets into oblong vortical zones for the shallow pockets is presented, and its consequences are discussed


Soils have often been viewed as a black box. Soil biology is difficult to study with the precision we would wish, due to the presence of considerable soil heterogeneity, a huge diversity of organisms, and a plethora of interacting processes taking place in a complex physical‐chemical environment. We have isolated a tiny fraction of the known organisms, and the possible interactions of soil parent materials, landscape, land use, depth and time with the biota mean that we are to some extent still fumbling in the dark. There have been great advances, but we argue that the pace of advance could be faster. To progress, science needs new theory and concepts but also acceptable methodologies. Coherent and generally accepted theoretical knowledge exists in many areas, but there is a shortage of valid and exact methods to test new and sometimes even old hypotheses. New methods add knowledge, but they also can add to the confusion if they are not tied to the existing knowledge base. We speculate on how to improve soil biology through improving the way we perform and interpret research. Can we deal with soil variability? Can we measure the critical variables with adequate precision to test our hypotheses? Can we avoid reinventing the wheel? Can we find a balance between the freedom to test new and maybe even controversial ideas and the control and direction of research required by society?


In evaluative conditioning, the liking of a stimulus (the conditioned stimulus; CS) is being changed by pairing it with another either liked or disliked stimulus (the unconditioned stimulus; US). In terms of classical Pavlovian conditioning, the shift in the evaluative response can be referred to as a conditioned response. In the last two decades, there has been a great deal of research on whether this type of Pavlovian conditioning depends on controlled (conscious) processes, and particularly the participants' explicit knowledge about the stimulus pairings (contingency awareness). The empirical evidence on the (causal) role of contingency awareness in evaluative conditioning, however, is rather inconsistent. Whereas some studies found conditioning effects in the absence of contingency knowledge, others reported the effect to be restricted to contingency-aware participants. Most researchers refer to contingency knowledge as the recognition of CS-US pairings in a test after conditioning. The contingency recognition performance is thus expected to depend on several cognitive resources like attention and working memory. Only a few studies separately addressed the role of these cognitive factors in the acquisition awareness and evaluative conditioning. Furthermore, the propositional knowledge about the CS-US contingency may be more or less sophisticated. In addition to merely memorizing the stimulus pairings (contiguities), a participant might, for example, learn something about the statistical contingency between stimuli, as well. The effects of these cognitive factors on evaluative learning was investigated in the experiments of this dissertation.
A model describing the relation between different propositional-learning processes that may influence the acquisition of contingency knowledge and evaluative conditioning is presented in the synopsis.
The thesis comprises three manuscripts that are reporting five experiments in total on the impact of attention, working memory and propositional knowledge about the CS-US contingencies (contingency judgments) on the occurrence and the magnitude of evaluative conditioning.

In manuscript A, an experiment is reported (N=109) that investigated the kind of attention required in evaluative learning. Particularly, it was tested whether attention, rather than contingency awareness, is sufficient for evaluative conditioning to occur. In principle, attention can be focused either on the stimuli (the CS and the US) or on the contingency between the stimuli. Since the acquisition of contingency awareness might require a focus on the CS-US contingency, it would be interesting to see whether evaluative conditioning occurs if attention is paid to the stimuli but not to the contingencies.
Therefore, three secondary tasks were implemented during conditioning in which the focus of attention was either directed to the stimulus contingencies, diverted completely from the stimuli, or diverted selectively only from the contingencies while maintaining a stimulus focus.
Evaluative conditioning effects occurred only in those participants who attended the CS-US contingencies, but not when attention was diverted from the stimuli or from the contingencies. These results show that mere attention is not sufficient for evaluative conditioning to occur, if attention is diverted selectively from the CS-US contingencies.
Since a contingency focus is assumed to be essential for the acquisition of contingency awareness, the results are in line with the assumption that evaluative conditioning relies on the participants' CS-US awareness during the acquisition.

In addition to requiring a specific form of attention, the acquisition of contingency knowledge is assumed to depend on working memory resources being available during the exposure to the CS-US pairings. In a series of three experiments (N=109) reported in manuscript B, working memory capacity was manipulated during evaluative conditioning by means of phonological distraction. Particularly, in a verbal conditioning paradigm, the encoding of the CS-US contingencies (pairs of words) was disrupted by the playback of irrelevant speech which is assumed to gain automatic access to the same working memory module. Both, the processing and the production of irrelevant speech were shown to reduce both contingency memory and the magnitude of evaluative conditioning. These results imply that evaluative learning requires working memory resources, and they challenge the assumption that evaluative conditioning relies on automatic processes. However, the conditioning effect was not restricted to participants who were able to recall the CS-US contingencies in these experiments. Thus, though working memory may be important during conditioning in order to encode the CS-US contingencies, evaluative learning does not necessarily depend on the acquisition of long-term knowledge about the contingencies.

Manuscript C is concerned with the content of the contingency knowledge. According to the propositional account, evaluative conditioning is assumed to rely on the formation and evaluation of propositional knowledge about the predictive relation between CS and US. Thus, stronger evaluative conditioning effects may be expected if the participants perceive a strong statistical CS-US contingency than if they perceive a weak contingency. In the experiment reported in manuscript C (N=31), the evaluative conditioning procedure was combined with a contingency learning paradigm requiring the participants to simultaneously judge the contingencies of four CS-US pairings. The subjective appraisal of contingency was manipulated by varying (a) the objective CS-US contingency and (b) the density of the US which is known to bias contingency judgments (the outcome density effect). This method allows to modulate propositional knowledge about the contingency independently of objective values of contingency during the acquisition of evaluative conditioning. Indeed, contingencies were judged to be stronger in case of low US density irrespective of the level of the objective contingency. More importantly, comparable effects of evaluative conditioning occurred with low and with high objective contingency, but the magnitude of conditioning increased with subjective contingency judgments. These results indicate that evaluative conditioning is sensitive to propositional knowledge about the CS-US relations (i.e. contingency judgments). Evaluative conditioning appears to (a) depend on contingency awareness and (b) vary with subjective beliefs about the CS-US contingency. This result is in line with the propositional account of evaluative conditioning.

Taken together, the results show (a) that evaluative conditioning depends on those cognitive resources (i.e. attention and working memory) which enable the acquisition of contingency knowledge and (b) that propositional knowledge modulates the magnitude of the conditioning effect. It is difficult to explain these findings by referring to evaluative conditioning as an automatic process of association formation. Rather, the results imply that propositional learning about the CS-US contingencies is involved in the acquisition of evaluative responses.
This form of affective-evaluative learning was shown to require a specific focus of attention (a contingency focus) as well as working memory resources to be available during acquisition. Furthermore, the liking of a CS seems change as a function of the subjective appraisal of the statistical CS-US contingency.


The pycnogonid fauna of the genus Colossendeis collected during the Italica XIX cruise to Victoria Land (Ross Sea, Antarctica) was studied. A total of 19 specimens of six species were collected: Colossendeis australis (6), C. wilsoni (3), C. scotti (2), C. robusta (3), C. lilliei (2) and C. megalonyx (3). In the present contribution the observed variability of all collected Colossendeis species is described and illustrated. The previously synonymised C. lilliei is considered a different species from C. robusta . The observations made in this study lead us to discuss a controversy about the total number of oviger segments in this genus. Despite the currently established 10-segmented status, a short basal element is here considered to be a possible 11th segment. A detailed SEM study of the last oviger segment is carried out in all collected species, showing some intraspecific and the interspecific variability in the structures examined (shape and number of rows of compound spines, morphology of terminal claw, etc.). Finally, we discuss the taxonomic value of these characters of the last strigilis segment for distinguishing the Colossendeis species, and their possible utility in establishing internal phylogenetic relationships in future contributions.


All things must pass. But how, why and when all the stuff people take for granted will cease to be and what comes after are the questions. From the personal to the cosmic and the avoidable to the inevitable, 13 endings that will transform the world as people know it are examined. Here, Campbell focuses on the end of milky way


This single-case study addresses the lack of qualitative research describing the instructional role of the superintendent. Guiding this study are two research questions, "How does the goal implementation process as an element of the superintendent's organizational approach impact student success?" and "How does defined autonomy as an element of the superintendent's organizational approach impact student success?" In 2002 the No Child Left Behind Act instilled a sense of urgency for the education community to implement an accountability reform placing an emphasis on schools to demonstrate effective instructional leadership at the district level. The sense of urgency caused by this political mandate, created a demand for data pertaining to the superintendent's instructional role and in 2006 Waters and Marzano completed their exhaustive quantitative meta-analysis on this subject. Their study discovered statistical data suggesting six responsibilities comprised of 51 observable practices of a superintendent that positively correlate with student success. Despite this effort, the lack of research concerning the qualitative data describing the superintendent's instructional role was still evident. The purpose of this qualitative single-case study was to collect data in a real-life, holistic environment to ascertain if the superintendent's organizational approaches did impact student success. To guide the data collection process, the six superintendent responsibilities were divided into two categories: defined autonomy and the goal implementation process. Waters and Marzano (2006) further broke these two categories into 51 observable practices (propositional theories) that statistically correlated with student success. Through Yin's (2003) guidance this researcher conducted interviews, purposeful observation and document analysis, to pattern-match data with empirical evidence. The findings suggest the organizational approaches of the superintendent did impact student success. Furthermore, new research ground was broken by discovering a process of five observable steps, that when followed will impact student success. The steps are: (1) Develop a shared vision, (2) Implement district goals, (3) Consistently communicate expectations, (4) Allow principals to implement, (5) Hold principals accountable through monitoring.


Advancements in hardware development have given rise to a novel paradigm of computing called ubiquitous computing. In ubiquitous computing, applications provide various services across heterogeneous hardware platforms, over standard protocols. These hardware can range from mobile devices to small devices with wireless communication capabilities, which can be embedded into appliances utilized in daily life. Wireless ad-hoc networks is an important ingredient in the deployment of ubiquitous computing applications. It acts as the communication backbone, which enables the flexible deployment of devices required by most of the ubiquitous applications. In general, wireless ad-hoc networks do not have a pre-defined topology, hence form a mesh network over wireless communication medium. Routing in wireless ad-hoc networks is a challenging task compared to fixed infrastructure networks. It has to deal with the dynamics of the network topology, due to the unpredictable wireless communication behavior. Geographic routing is a routing paradigm, especially proposed for wireless ad-hoc networks. In geometric routing, routing decisions are made based on the geometric position of the nodes. Initially geometric routing tries to forward a packet to the closest node towards the destination, namely greedy routing. If greedy routing fails, it explores the graph systematically to reach the destination, namely face routing. As routing is based on the geometric coordinates of the nodes, it avoids building and maintaining the routing tables as in classical routing protocols. Hence, it provides scalability and robustness in networks with dynamic topologies. Despite the ingenuity of seminal proposal in geometric routing, it has not thrive to become a standard for wireless ad-hoc networks. This is mainly due to the unrealistic assumptions of the algorithms. Also as geometric routing requires the nodes to be equipped with geometric coordinates, an auxiliary location service has to be in place. Such a service can be expensive and unrealistic in most of the wireless ad-hoc network deployments. In this thesis, geometric routing is investigated on virtual coordinate systems. In the first contribution of the thesis, an efficient coordinate system called virtual raw anchor coordinates (VRAC) has been investigated and geometric routing algorithms are formulated on it. Further more, it establishes results on the possibility of greedy routing with delivery guarantees on VRAC. Second contribution of the thesis is the proposal of greedy zone routing protocol considering the reliability and scalability aspects of large scale wireless ad-hoc networks. Greedy zone routing protocol design not only free of unrealistic assumptions but also based on simple techniques which can be applied in real network settings. In the third contribution, an application layer framework is presented over existing routing protocols for wireless ad-hoc networks. This framework is then applied to solve a smart building use case.


Abstract: Mean seasonal extreme temperatures on the seafloor calculated from the shell δ18O of the scallop Placopecten clintonius from the basal part of the early Pliocene Sunken Meadow Member (Yorktown Formation) in Virginia are very similar to those from the same horizon at the latitude of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina (∼ 210 km to the south). The lowest and highest temperatures calculated from each shell (using δ18Oseawater = +0.7‰) give mean values for winter and summer of 8.4 ± 1.1 °C (± 1σ) and 18.2 ± 0.6 °C in Virginia, and 8.6 ± 0.4 °C and 16.5 ± 1.1 °C in North Carolina (respective median temperatures: 13.3 °C and 12.6 °C). Patterns of ontogenetic variation in δ18O, δ13C and microgrowth increment size indicate summer water-column stratification in both areas, with summer surface temperatures perhaps 6 °C higher than on the seafloor. The low winter paleotemperatures in both areas are most simply explained by the greater southward penetration of cool northern waters in the absence of a feature equivalent to Cape Hatteras. The same current configuration but a warmer general climate can account for the high benthic seasonal range (over 15.0 °C in some cases) but warmer median temperatures (15.7–21.3 °C) derived from existing δ18O data from scallops of the higher Yorktown Formation (using δ18Oseawater = +0.7‰ for the upper Sunken Meadow Member and δ18Oseawater = +1.1‰ for the mid-Pliocene Rushmere, Morgarts Beach, and Moore House members). Existing δ18O data from the infaunal bivalve Mercenaria of the Rushmere Member yields a similarly high median temperature (21.6 °C) but a low seasonal range (9.2 °C), pointing to the periodic influence of warm currents, possibly at times when the Gulf Stream was exceptionally vigorous.


Crop yield depends on efficient allocation of sucrose from leaves to seeds. In Arabidopsis, phloem loading is mediated by a combination of SWEET sucrose effluxers and subsequent uptake by SUT1/SUC2 sucrose/H+ symporters. ZmSUT1 is essential for carbon allocation in maize, but the relative contribution to apoplasmic phloem loading and retrieval of sucrose leaking from the translocation path is not known. We therefor tested whether SWEETs are important for phloem loading in maize. Here we identified three leaf-expressed SWEET sucrose transporters as key components of apoplasmic phloem loading in Zea mays L. Notably, ZmSWEET13 paralogs (a, b, c) are among the highest expressed genes in the leaf vasculature. Genome-edited triple knock-out mutants are severely stunted. Photosynthesis of mutants was impaired and leaves accumulated starch and soluble sugars. RNA-seq revealed profound transcriptional deregulation of genes associated with the photosynthetic apparatus and carbohydrate metabolism. GWAS analyses may indicate that variability in ZmSWEET13s is correlated with agronomical traits, specifically flowering time and leaf angle. This work provides support for cooperation of three ZmSWEET13s with ZmSUT1 in phloem loading in Zea mays L. Our study highlights these three ZmSWEET13 sucrose transporters as possible candidates for the engineering of crop yield. One Sentence Summary Three SWEET sucrose transporter paralogs are necessary for phloem loading in maize.


There have been numerous calls for applying quality of life measurement concepts in assessing the rehabilitation outcome of persons with physical disabilities (e.g., Anderson, 1982; Freed, 1984; Kottke, 1982), and others have begun exploring their applicability in assessing mental retardation (Schalock, Keith, Hoffman, & Karan, 1989) and mental illness interventions (Blau, 1977; Fabian, 1990). The growing concern regarding quality of life stems from a variety of disability-related issues (Brown, 1988). However, the overriding appeal of quality of life assessment is that it is conceptually consistent with the holistic orientation of rehabilitation. Despite attractiveness of the measurement concept, there are a number of problems that must be addressed before its potential utility can be realized (Fabian, 1991). These include further clarification of the quality of life construct, development of appropriate measures to use with persons with disabilities, and gaining a better understanding of how quality of life assessment can be fitted into the rehabilitation evaluation process. Calls for development and utilization of quality of life assessment approaches have been especially widespread within the mental retardation field. Continuing debate has followed the movement toward deinstitutionalization of persons who are mentally retarded (Alexander, Huganir, & Zigler, 1985). To a large extent, the debate centers around questions such as whether the numerous alternative living environments enhance life quality, which settings can maximize the life quality for individuals functioning at different levels, and whether traditional institutional settings can be altered to the extent that their environment is more supportive of life quality for some individuals than the alternatives (Walker, 1988). It has been suggested that quality of life is likely to become the issue of the 1990's, superseding normalization, deinstitutionalization, and community adjustment issues (Schalock, Keith, Hoffman, & Karan, 1989). This view is consistent with that of Landesman (1986), who earlier identified quality of life and personal life satisfaction as the new buzz words in the field of mental retardation. At the same time, Landesman urged the American Association on Mental Deficiency to take leadership in developing the means by which to measure those qualities. Moreover, Walker (1988) indicated that care needed to be exercised in attempting to define quality of life from the standpoint of the mentally retarded population. She emphasized that consideration be given not only factors such as where these individuals are living and working, but their ability to make decisions and have choices within their life. The need to develop effective, meaningful quality of life assessment tools and methods provided the impetus for implementing a multi-faceted study centered on assessing the quality of life supported by a regional service system in South Carolina for its citizens with mental retardation. A primary objective was to assess the quality of life of persons with mental retardation residing in a variety of residential settings used for placement. The study was also designed to explore the feasibility and utility of an assessment strategy or methodology designed to address a number of the needs expressed by authorities in the field. In that respect, the stvategy followed a multidimensional quality of life assessment model similar to that described by Lawton (1991). Lawton's model rests on utilization of intra-personal and socio-normative criteria in assessing the person-environment system of individuals, with the resulting assessment considered to reflect on life quality. The model was based on three assumptions. First, there are unique, internal standards and evaluations of life generated within individuals that are not totally represented by external elements. This aspect or domain is commonly referred to as the perceived or subjective domain of quality of life. …


Monetary Policy Uncertainty, Money Elasticities, and Interest Rates One of the hypotheses advanced to explain the persistence of high interest rates after 1979 is that the volatility of monetary policy, particularly after the October policy change, increased the riskiness of financial asset ownership. We present a theory in which volatility affects asset choices between risky and riskless assets and is a determinant of changes in the elasticities of money demand and supply. We show that the model is useful in explaining responses to monetary volatility as well as interest rate volatility. In the theory, a change in policy rules that affects volatility causes a structural shift in the coefficients of both money demand and supply, which complicates the task of finding the appropriate setting of instruments in the new regime. This implies that an important prior condition for a change of policy rules should be that the volatility implications are understood. Three hypotheses are tested: (1) that the elasticities as well as the level of money demand and supply are affected by interest rate volatility, (2) that similar affects are associated with money volatility, and (3) that money volatility increased interest rates in the policy regime between October 1979 and October 1982, and relative stability contributed to lower interest rates after 1982.(1) (1) We use measured volatility differences across policy regimes, but it is not a goal of the paper to explain these differences. For a survey and discussion, see [25]. Although there are numerous studies showing that shocks from money announcements are associated with volatility in interest rates and in various market prices [4, 7, 8, 10, 15, 19, 22, 28, 30, 31, 33, 35, 39], there are few direct tests of the theory that uncertain monetary policy raises the level of rates for longer than the immediate time period. Long-established theories in economics, however, suggest that this should be the case, if uncertainty in policy generates uncertainty in interest rates. For example, Tobin [37] shows that greater interest rate risk increases money demand in portfolios, and Turnovsky [38] relates the demand for money to uncertainty in the future rate of interest through simultaneous portfolio and intertemporal consumption decisions under uncertainty. More recently, Grauer and Litzenberger [18] found that when money varies stochastically, nominal interest rates are affected through a premium associated with purchasing power risk. Also, uncertainties about interest rates have been shown to affect demand for money through holding costs in an inventory theoretic model [36]. Among the few empirical investigations of the longer-term connection between interest rate level and volatility, Mascaro and Meltzer [27], using a IS-LM model incorporating risk, and Klemkosky and Jun [21], using a capital asset pricing model, find evidence that money variability raises risk premia and hence interest rates. For use in a single equation money demand model, Slovin and Sushka [36] construct a proxy for interest rate volatility at a given time from the variance of interest rates over the recent past. In their results, volatility affects the level of demand. While they do not test for a monetary policy role in volatility, they suggest that framing monetary policy in terms of monetary aggregates may increase the demand for money if interest rate volatility rises. In a reduced form macroeconomic model, Peek and Wilcox [29] show that interest rate reduced form coefficients, associated with structural shift parameters in money supply, change in response to policy regime transitions. Their model with a policy regime variable provides an improved explanation of the high interest rate levels in the early 1980s, although Antoncic [1] makes a case that April 1980, well after the change in policy in 1979, begins the period of high and volatile real rates. None of the empirical work cited analyzes the impact of policy-associated changes in volatility on the elasticities of money demand and supply, although theories of the behavioral response to policy argue that elasticities as well as levels could change, for example [17, 24, 40]. …


Zeolites are the workhorses of today's chemical industry. For decades they have been successfully applied, however many features of zeolite catalysis are only superficially understood and in particular the kinetics and mechanism of individual reaction steps at operating conditions. Herein we use state-of-the-art advanced ab initio molecular dynamics techniques to study the influence of catalyst topology and acidity, reaction temperature and the presence of additional guest molecules on elementary reactions. Such advanced modeling techniques provide complementary insight to experimental knowledge as the impact of individual factors on the reaction mechanism and kinetics of zeolite-catalyzed reactions may be unraveled. We study key reaction steps in the conversion of methanol to hydrocarbons, namely benzene and propene methylation. These reactions may occur either in a concerted or stepwise fashion, i.e. methanol directly transfers its methyl group to a hydrocarbon or the reaction goes through a framework-bound methoxide intermediate. The DFT-based dynamical approach enables mimicking reaction conditions as close as possible and studying the competition between two methylation mechanisms in an integrated fashion. The reactions are studied in the unidirectional AFI-structured H-SSZ-24, H-SAPO-5 and TON-structured H-ZSM-22 materials. We show that varying the temperature, topology, acidity and number of protic molecules surrounding the active site may tune the reaction mechanism at the molecular level. Obtaining molecular control is crucial in optimizing current zeolite processes and designing emerging new technologies bearing alternative feedstocks.


An announcement by Kenya's Central Bank indicating that the country had experienced 5.8 percent economic growth in 2006 was dismissed by the media and the government opposition as political propaganda. Under former President Daniel Arap Moi's government in the late 1990s, Kenya's economic growth fluctuated from negative values to highs of 2.3 percent. In spite of an upturn in economic growth, however, other indicators were not as promising. The number of people unable to afford 2,250 calories per day hit a staggering 14.4 million out of a population of 32 million. This represented an increase in poverty levels from 47 to 53 percent in rural areas and 29 to 49 percent in urban areas. Despite these signs of increased poverty levels, Kenyans have sent a strong signal to the government that they would like to control and take over state-owned corporations. This was manifested in the overwhelming response received when Kenya Generating Electricity Company offered shares to the public; shares were over-subscribed by 233 percent. Scan Group, a privately owned company that floated shares to the public, was also over-subscribed by 521 percent. The Nairobi Stock Exchange has witnessed a beehive of activity in recent months, with many ordinary Kenyans moving to invest in shares. The Kenyan middle class constitutes the majority of the people investing in ordinary shares in the Nairobi Stock Market. The middle class population, coupled with remittances from Kenyans in diaspora that constitute an estimated US$700 million, has played a crucial role in the growth of the economy. Another key factor has been the entry of China and India as major players in the global economy. It is estimated that Africa as a whole has witnessed a five percent increase in economic activity due to China and India's quests for raw materials in Africa. However, ending dependence of economic growth on the export of raw materials poses one of the continent's greatest challenges. Africans have no reason to settle for economies that are driven by raw-material export after three centuries of being in contact with wealthier civilizations. Continuing this type of relationship with developed countries will limit the ability of local entrepreneurs to diversify their local industrial bases and offer products in the global market. Kenyans wanting to own shares in businesses run by the government is a sure indicator that if given a chance, Africans would be eager to invest in value-added industries. Kenyan government policymakers ought to give their citizens the opportunity to stem the tide of raw-material exports to emerging and developed economies by creating an environment that rewards business initiatives. Instead of engaging in agricultural, mining, and service-oriented industries, African governments should facilitate their citizens' ownership of such industries. They could do so by offering shares in already existing enterprises and opening their markets to new competitors. Addressing Poverty In order to fight poverty, Africans must not wait for others to generate wealth for them. Each aspect of government failure in service delivery has the potential to turn into a business opportunity. For instance, in areas that receive sufficient rainfall, individuals can invest as little as US$300 to protect springs and ensure for the clean provision of water. Clean water will not only keep populations from incurring the expenses caused by water-borne diseases, but will also provide jobs for rural people in water services. A similar approach can be used in the fight against diseases such as malaria. Individuals need US$800 to purchase pumps for indoor spraying, certified chemical sachets, protective gear, and spray against mosquitoes. After this expenditure, individuals would earn an estimated US$5 per sprayed house. Tackling poverty effectively requires transforming the 70 percent subsistence-farmer population into a society with a substantial middle and upper class. …


Canfield and Mason have conjectured that for all subgroups $G$ of the automorphism group of the Boolean lattice $B_n$ (which can be regarded as the symmetric group $S_n$), the quotient order $B_n/G$ is a symmetric chain order.  We provide a straightforward proof of a generalization of a result of K. K. Jordan: namely, $B_n/G$ is an SCO whenever $G$ is generated by powers of disjoint cycles. In addition, the Boolean lattice $B_n$ can be replaced by any product of finite chains. The symmetric chain decompositions of Greene and Kleitman provide the basis for partitions of these quotients.


Expectation maximization (EM) is a popular algorithm for parameter estimation in situations with incomplete data. The EM algorithm has, despite its popularity, the disadvantage of often converging to local but non-global optima. Several techniques have been proposed to address this problem, for example initializing EM from multiple random starting points and then selecting the run with the highest likelihood. Unfortunately, this method is computationally expensive. In this paper, our goal is to reduce computational cost while at the same time maximizing likelihood. We propose a Genetic Algorithm for Expectation Maximization (GAEM) for learning parameters in Bayesian networks. GAEM combines the global search property of a genetic algorithm with the local search property of EM. We prove GAEM's global convergence theoretically. Experimentally, we show that GAEM provides significant speed-ups since it tends to select more fit individuals, which converge faster, as parents for the next generation. Specifically, GAEM converges 1:5 to 7 times faster while producing better log-likelihood scores than the traditional EM algorithm.


ABSTRACT  In the beech-maple forest at Warren Woods State Park, the importance values of Fagus grandifolia and Acer saccharum have increased compared with their values from the 1829 Government Land Office survey of the same area—a small increase for F. grandifolia and a large increase for A. saccharum. For F. grandifolia the greatest increase between 1829 and 2014 was in basal area per tree, suggesting that numbers had not increased as much as size; while for A. saccharum the greatest increase was in all relative metrics, but not in basal per tree, indicating that abundance only had increased. From 1933 to the present, all size classes of F. grandifolia, except for the juvenile size class, decreased in density, while only the juvenile size class of A. saccharum decreased. Seedling densities for both species are highly variable from year to year, the highest densities occurring in years with deepest snow cover. For A. saccharum, high densities were probably the result of optimal germination temperatures due to prolonged snow cover. For F. grandifolia, the high seedling density in 2014 may have been due to an abundant seed crop and low seed predation on snow-covered seeds. The relative increase in A. saccharum and the concomitant decrease in F. grandifolia may be due, in part, to higher mortality of larger F. grandifolia trees due to windthrow. This differential mortality may be exacerbated with the increased frequency and severity of storms predicted to occur with global climate change.


Seedlings are rejected every year in forest nurseries because of insufficient root development and root plug cohesion. Adequate substrate bulk density and aeration properties are of critical importance for root growth and water and nutrient uptake. The quality norms for nursery substrates, based in part on the ratio of coarse to fine particle sizes, have recently been questioned with respect to substrate performance. We conducted experiments in 2008 and 2009 under commercial nursery conditions to determine the effects of substrate physicochemical properties on seedling growth and nutrition. Seedlings were grown in 13 different substrates composed of coarse and fine peat particles (threshold size: 0.5 mm), perlite, and vermiculite, covering a broad range of physical properties with adequate available water and various coarse/fine particle ratios and aeration properties. Substrate properties had significant effects on growth parameters in both years. Seedling growth was affected by water stress in 2008 and low gas diffusivity in 2009. This study emphasizes the importance of management on substrate performance, indicating that short periods of moderate water stress (matric potential lower than −10 kPa) may hinder seedling growth. It also suggests that when irrigated substrates are maintained within the 0 to −5 kPa matric potential range, gas diffusivity should not be lower than 0.003 to 0.005 cm2 s cm−2 s−1, in agreement with the modeled O2 profiles in root plugs. Hence, when designing and using substrates at the nursery scale, more attention should be paid to aeration properties after potting and to the management rather than to the coarse/fine particle ratio.


This article examines the recognition of servicewomen as combatants in the late 1970s and the introduction of small arms training in the early 1980s. Using archive material, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (2000) and recollections of senior officers, it reveals external pressures and issues within the Ministry of Defence that led to new policies. Preliminary steps in widening servicewomen's employment, they made a greater impact in the Royal Air Force than for the Women's Royal Army Corps, while the Women's Royal Naval Service continued to lag behind developments.


Pressures to redesign public policies in ways that account for more flexibility, responsiveness, and private participation present an opportunity to revisit law's traditional emphasis on adversarialism. Rather than aligning legality with conflict and informality with cooperation, a new concept of administrative governance expands the framework of the legal process. In the context of workplace regulation, new governance structures must reflect the conditions of the new economy and the relationships between employers and workers. Studying the field of occupational safety, the article advances three arguments. First, the introduction of third-way governance-based approaches, including regulatory requirements on internal safety planning and worker participation at the individual firm-level, complementing regulatory and market approaches, is necessary for occupational risk prevention. Second, normative and methodological principles can be developed to evaluate the consequences and legitimacy of shifts away from the command-and-control approach to occupational safety, and in particular, to distinguish new governance approaches from deregulation. Third, the article argues that central doctrines of administrative procedure and labor law have served as impediments for diversifying state action in regulating the new labor market. In particular, two key reforms - combining targeted enforcement with a cooperative choice and mandating employee safety committees - were abandoned following legal disputes and the use of categories which rely on an adversarial understanding of legal action. A set of understandings, embedded in legal doctrine from former eras, continues to impede the shift to a more comprehensive, effective, and legitimate worker safety regime. The distinction in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) between substantive rule-making and procedural policy-making and the distinction of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) between bargainable issues and managerial prerogatives have limited the legal reach of workplace governance. Both policy areas are based on concepts of hierarchy, autonomy, control, conflict, and adversarial one-shot interactions.


Although there were several studies regarding the benefits of soybean to health, only a
few focused on neuroprotective effects. Furthermore, the role of fermented soybean
has not been documented as neuroprotective agent. The present study is therefore
aimed to compare the neuroprotective effects of total isoflavones from soybean and
tempeh extracts. Total isoflavones were extracted from soybean and tempeh. The
methanolic extracts were subjected to HPLC analysis to quantify the amount of
isoflavones present in soybean and tempeh. The animal study was set up for two
models as normal and scopolamine-induced (dementia model). The rats (n=6) were
given oral administration of soybean and tempeh extracts (10, 20 and 40 mg/kg),
piracetam (400 mg/kg) as standard and normal saline as control for 15 days. Both
models were tested for radial arm maze task (RAM) and elevated plus maze (EPM)
task for the measurement of memory and learning behavior. On 30th day, after the
behavior study and treatment, the animals were sacrificed. The brain and serum were
collected for superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), glutathione (GSH),
glutathione reductase (GR), thiobarbituric acid (TBARS), nitric oxide (NO),
acetylcholine (ACh) and acetylcholinesterase (AChE) measurement. For
neuroinflammatory analysis, two cytokines (IL-10 and IL-1P) were also measured.
The HPLC analysis showed that tempeh possessed higher aglycone level which indicated higher bioavailability as compared to soybean glycoside. The results of the in vitro studies highlighted that tempeh extract exerted more radical scavenging effect and ferrous ion chelating as compared to soybean extract. For p-secretase (BACE1) inhibition, tempeh extract also showed a lower IC50 value as compared to soybean extract although not enough evidence to statistically significant. In vivo memory models, showed significant improvement of memory enhancing by both extracts as compared to control in both normal and scopolamine-induced models. Significant values (p < 0.05) were higher in tempeh treated groups. Similarly, the improvement of antioxidants SOD, CAT, GSH, GR and reduction in oxidative parameters LPO and NO were higher in tempeh compared to control. Furthermore, higher cholinergic activity such as improved the Ach level and declined the AChE activity were observed in tempeh as compared to control. For the inflammatory study, IL-10 was significantly up-regulated while IL-ip was significantly down-regulated in both soybean and tempeh treated group as compared to control and scopolamine group. This suggested soybean and tempeh as a beneficial food for anti-inflammation within the brain. As a conclusion, tempeh extract exerted higher neuroprotective activities than soybean. Hence, consumption of tempeh, is more health beneficial than soybean.


If a foreign government enacts a law that would be unconstitutional if passed in the United States, can a foreign judgment based on that law be enforced in an American court? For example, can an American court enforce an English judgment based on English defamation law, which is more pro-plaintiff than the First Amendment permits American law to be? The same issue was presented by recent litigation involving Yahoo!, where a federal district court considered whether it could enforce a French judgment based on a French law that regulated hate speech more broadly than the First American allows American polities to regulate. American courts to date uniformly have concluded that enforcing such foreign judgments would be unconstitutional. This Article argues that these courts' analysis is mistaken: While such a foreign judgment may well be un-American insofar as it comes from a non-American polity and reflects political values that diverge from American constitutional law, neither the foreign judgment itself, nor its enforcement by an American court, is unconstitutional. The Article shows that the American courts' analyses are based on a misunderstanding of post-Shelley v. Kraemer jurisprudence. The Article also explains why a legal requirement that foreign judgments be enforced does not qualify as a generally applicable legal rule that would trigger constitutional scrutiny. The American courts' mistaken constitutional analysis has begotten pernicious consequences. The illusion of unconstitutionality has obscured the fact that whether un-American judgments are to be enforced must be decided on the basis of policy. The courts' constitutional confusion also has hidden the fact that the more political branches of government are best institutionally suited on purely functional grounds to making such value-laden judgments. As a doctrinal matter, the courts' erroneous analysis threatens to wrongly narrow the scope of the President's power to pursue an executive agreement or to negotiate an enforcement treaty with other countries, thereby depriving the President and Congress of powers in respect of foreign affairs that are constitutionally theirs to exercise. Finally, the courts' faulty constitutional conclusion has led to a wholly American-centered analysis that categorically disregards a range of considerations that, on virtually any normative theory, are relevant to deciding whether un-American judgments should be enforced. (A companion piece explores in detail the policy considerations that appropriately determine whether un-American judgments should be enforced, see Should Un-American Foreign Judgments be Enforced?, 88 Minnesota Law Review 783 (2004)). This is a particularly opportune time to correct the constitutional misperceptions concerning un-American judgments because the United States is in the process of negotiating an international treaty dealing with the enforcement of foreign judgments. It is important that American negotiators not be constrained by illusions of constitutional limitations when they attend to their task of forging a multilateral treaty.


Epidemiological studies over the last 15 years have shown that size at birth, early postnatal catch-up growth and excess childhood weight gain are associated with an increased risk of adult cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. At the same time, rising rates of obesity and overweight in children, even at pre-school ages, have shifted efforts towards the identification of very early factors that predict risk of subsequent obesity, which may allow early targeted interventions. Overall, higher birth weight is positively associated with subsequent greater body mass index in childhood and later life; however, the relationship is complex. Higher birth weight is associated with greater subsequent lean mass, rather than fat mass. In contrast, lower birth weight is associated with a subsequent higher ratio of fat mass to lean mass, and greater central fat and insulin resistance. This paradoxical effect of lower birth weight is at least partly explained by the observation that infants who have been growth restrained in utero tend to gain weight more rapidly, or 'catch up', during the early postnatal period, which leads to increased central fat deposition. There is still debate as to whether there are critical early periods for obesity: does excess weight gain during infancy, childhood or even very early neonatal life have a greater impact on long-term fat deposition and insulin resistance? Early identification of childhood obesity risk will be aided by identification of maternal and fetal genes that regulate fetal nutrition and growth, and postnatal genes that regulate appetite, energy expenditure and the partitioning of energy intake into fat or lean tissue growth.


OBJECTIVE
To measure the implications of the new Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education duty hour regulations for education, well-being, and burnout.

DESIGN
Longitudinal study.

SETTING
Eleven university-based general surgery residency programs from July 2011 to May 2012.

PARTICIPANTS
Two hundred thirteen surgical interns.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Perceptions of the impact of the new duty hours on various aspects of surgical training, including the 6 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education core competencies, were measured on 3-point scales. Quality of life, burnout, balance between personal and professional life, and career satisfaction were measured using validated instruments.

RESULTS
Half of all interns felt that the duty hour changes have decreased the coordination of patient care (53%), their ability to achieve continuity with hospitalized patients (70%), and their time spent in the operating room (57%). Less than half (44%) of interns believed that the new standards have decreased resident fatigue. In longitudinal analysis, residents' beliefs had significantly changed in 2 categories: less likely to believe that practice-based learning and improvement had improved and more likely to report no change to resident fatigue (P < .01, χ2 tests). The majority (82%) of residents reported a neutral or good overall quality of life. Compared with the normal US population, 50 interns (32%) were 0.5 SD less than the mean on the 8-item Short Form Health Survey mental quality of life score. Approximately one-third of interns demonstrated weekly symptoms of emotional exhaustion (28%) or depersonalization (28%) or reported that their personal-professional balance was either "very poor" or "not great" (32%). Although many interns (67%) reported that they daily or weekly reflect on their satisfaction from being a surgeon, 1 in 7 considered giving up their career as a surgeon on at least a weekly basis.

CONCLUSIONS
The first cohort of surgical interns to train under the new regulations report decreased continuity with patients, coordination of patient care, and time spent in the operating room. Furthermore, suboptimal quality of life, burnout, and thoughts of giving up surgery were common, even under the new paradigm of reduced work hours.


In this essay, I discuss the presence of the categories rudeness and offence in the discourse on friendship produced by a group of middle class English people resident in London. The frequent reference to these categories, rather than to the so called positive emotions, reveals the tensions regarding the negotiation of personal space which crosscut this discourse, which in turn highlight the problematic space that friendship occupies within the field of social relations. This essay draws on the analytical tools of a pragmatic approach within the area known as "anthropology of emotions", developed in the last decade in the Unites States. If at first emotion concepts were mainly studied cross-culturally, nowadays they are seen as discursive practices situated within the wider field of social relations and negotiations of power. As such, emotions cease to be treated as an internal, purely subjective experience, in order to be analysed as a discursive practice with external effects on both private and public spheres.


This article examines the reasons for the 360-year longevity of the Ipswich (Mass.) Grammar School trust, which was in force from 1652 to 2012, the longest-running charitable trust in American history. It concludes that the cornerstone of the trust's longevity was the emphasis of its major donor, the Puritan William Paine, on open-handed contribution to the community, rather than dead hand control. A wealthy merchant and landowner and friend of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and his son, Paine imbued his commercial activities with a profound civic-mindedness. A 1647 law required the establishment of a grammar school by any town within the Colony that had 100 families or more. The town of Ipswich, where Paine then resided, established a formal trust in 1652 to fund the school. Upon his death in 1660, Paine devised a unique parcel of land called Little Neck to the trust, whose trustees ("feoffees") were the elders of Ipswich. The only restriction on Paine's gift of the land "forever" was that the property not be "sold or wasted." Although the trust was terminated by agreement of the feoffees and their tenants, and approved by the Massachusetts Attorney General and Courts, the author contends that it could easily have survived with Paine's vision intact had the feoffees, many of whom were conflicted and inexperienced, been replaced by more professional trustees. The article compares and contrasts the Ipswich trust to the less successful 17th century Hopkins trust and to the modern Barnes Foundation trust in Pennsylvania. The Hopkins trust, which created the Cambridge (Mass.) Grammar School among other entities, spawned litigation lasting 135 years. The Barnes trust, founded in the early- and mid- 20th century and containing some of the most important art works in the world, likewise triggered much litigation, which may not be over, even today. The article concludes that "the longevity a donor's charity achieves depends on the donor's swallowing his or her ego and leaving the charitable vehicle open to change by the living."


The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) experiences overwelming demand for patents in Class 705: Business Methods. The current resources and process design are not sufficient to handle the incoming patents, and the result is extremely long wait times for patents to be granted. This technical note describes the history of the USPTO, the Business Methods Class, and the process for granting patents.


Due to technological development, stateof-the-art high-resolution X-ray computed tomography (CT) systems can be developed, enabling the internal visualization of geomaterials in three dimensions. However, in order to obtain structural information one also needs proper three-dimensional (3D) analysis software. In this paper, the potential for petrographic purposes of high-resolution X-ray CT in combination with the 3D analysis software Morpho+ is explored for a Belgian sandstone sample. The advantage of the CT technique is the fact that it is an ideal tool to characterize the internal structure of a rock in three dimensions in a nondestructive way while a limitation of this CT technique is that only small samples can be combined with a high spatial resolution and therefore often many samples will need to be scanned in order to obtain representative volumes. The relationship between sample size and obtained spatial resolution are discussed as well as the infl uence on the spatial resolution exerted by some important technical aspects like the used X-ray source and detector. This paper focuses in detail on the structures that can be determined by means of micro- and high-resolution X-ray CT in combination with 3D algorithms.


OBJECTIVE
Personalized normative feedback (PNF) interventions have received empirical support, are presumed to work by reducing normative misperceptions, and have been found to be particularly efficacious for those who drink for social reasons. However, PNF interventions also offer direct comparisons between one's own drinking and normative drinking, which may be especially important for coping drinkers. The present research evaluated whether reduced perceived norms and drinking at follow-ups varied as a function of coping motives.

METHOD
Aims were examined as a secondary analysis of a PNF intervention study among 252 U.S. college students. Following baseline assessment, participants were randomly assigned to receive PNF or assessment only. Follow-up assessments occurred 3 and 6 months after baseline.

RESULTS
Findings indicated that the PNF intervention was more effective at both follow-ups in reducing drinking, but not alcohol use problems, for participants scoring higher in coping motives. Furthermore, coping motives were the only drinking motive that uniquely moderated PNF efficacy. Analyses indicated that intervention effects on drinking varied as a function of coping drinking motives; however, intervention effects on norms did not vary by coping motives. Finally, coping motives were found to moderate associations between perceived norms and drinking.

CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that coping motives may be useful for identifying young adults-and presumably others-who can most benefit from PNF approaches. Furthermore, PNF may influence future drinking behavior through mechanisms other than changes in perceived norms. Future investigations could examine other pathways through which PNF may reduce drinking.


Universities have always been acknowledged as important drivers of economic development. Traditionally Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) contributed indirectly by disseminating knowledge and providing educated personnel to industries. A shift in the primary missions of universities encourages universities to take a more active role in economic development. Creating entrepreneurial capacity through Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) education, and the commercialization of knowledge generated by IHEs is one of the new proposed roles. Although universities recognize the value of I&E, many are working under conditions of financial distress. The article attempts to answer the following question: how to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship when resources are scarce? The paper uses as evidence the initiatives adopted by a Pathways to Innovation Team. The strategic objective of the team was to develop I&E mindsets by (1) increasing I&E awareness, (2) creating spaces for interdisciplinary interaction and (3) fostering collaboration between faculty and students across disciplines. The article highlights: (1) the theoretical foundations to build entrepreneurial potential (I&E mindsets) in IHEs, (2) how the Pathways to Innovation Program provided the foundations to draw a map by examining the existing infrastructure, (3) the initiatives placed to stimulate entrepreneurial potential, (4) the assessment strategies to evaluate the initiatives, (5) and strategies to overcome key challenges and move forward.


OBJECTIVE: The objective of this selective EBM review is to determine if the addition of telaprevir reduces treatment time and is more effective than the presently available pegylated interferon α2a-ribavirin combination 48 week therapy. STUDY DESIGN: Review of three English language primary studies published in 2011. DATA SOURCES: Articles selected for review, are randomized, double blind, placebo controlled trials found in peer-reviewed journals using Cochrane, Medline and PubMed databases. OUTCOMES MEASURED: Effectiveness of telaprevir was measured by determining the potentiality of reducing treatment outcome from 48 weeks to 24 weeks and the overall success rate of telaprevir as an add-on drug to the current therapy. RESULTS: Jacobsen et al. (2011) found that 75% of patients using telaprevir as an add-on medication had SVR rates compared to 44% using placebo add-on. Sherman et al. (2011) found that a 24 week regimen of the currently available therapy with telaprevir added in the first 12 weeks was non-inferior to the same regimen at 48 weeks duration. No statistical differences were seen in variable dosing frequencies and intervals (P ≥0.787) and SVR was achieved in most patients with similar adverse reactions (Marcellin et al., 2011). The safety profile monitored adverse reactions seen including anemia, nausea, diarrhea and skin rashes. Similar adverse reactions are seen with the current therapy; however incidence rate does increase with the triple therapy regimen. All adverse reactions dissipated once medication was discontinued. CONCLUSIONS: Data shows that telaprevir is an effective addition to the currently available therapy of peginterferon α-2a/ribavirin for chronic HCV genotype 1 patients. The three studies selected for review suggest that a large proportion of patients would show promising results with addition of telaprevir for a 24 week treatment duration being used twice daily for the first 12 weeks with similar adverse reactions and greater patient compliance than seen with the currently available therapy.


This publication is intended to raise awareness amongst all stakeholders and galvanise wider action to boost drylands conservation and development. The book is designed to inform and remind us of the beauty of dryland biodiversity and its intrinsic and instrumental value. It demonstrates the mutual dependency of dryland biological and cultural diversity. The book includes new analyses of drylands biodiversity and an overview of approaches that promote sustainable development as well as conservation goals. It strongly underlines the importance of indigenous knowledge and culture to dryland conservation, and demonstrates an unrivalled opportunity for sustainable growth and biodiversity protection.


We present a study of two-beam coupling energy transfer arising from electronic and nuclear (i.e., Raman) contributions to the third-order refractive nonlinearity. Calculations of transient two-beam coupling in fused silica with no free parameters agree reasonably well with experiments. Numerical calculations of two-beam coupling in a medium with a purely electronic nonlinearity modeled by a Debye-type response are presented. The calculations indicate that it should be possible, although challenging, to measure electronic two-beam coupling for response times as short as ∼0.1 fs. Experiments designed to isolate the electronic response fail to produce two-beam coupling signals but do indicate that the time scale of the electronic response is well below 1 fs.


The concentration of amyloid-β (Aβ) within the brain extracellular space is one determinant of whether the peptide will aggregate into toxic species that are important in Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis. Some types of synaptic activity can regulate Aβ levels. Here we demonstrate two distinct mechanisms that are simultaneously activated by NMDA receptors and regulate brain interstitial fluid (ISF) Aβ levels in opposite directions in the living mouse. Depending on the dose of NMDA administered locally to the brain, ISF Aβ levels either increase or decrease. Low doses of NMDA increase action potentials and synaptic transmission which leads to an elevation in synaptic Aβ generation. In contrast, high doses of NMDA activate signaling pathways that lead to ERK (extracellular-regulated kinase) activation, which reduces processing of APP into Aβ. This depression in Aβ via APP processing occurs despite dramatically elevated synaptic activity. Both of these synaptic mechanisms are simultaneously active, with the balance between them determining whether ISF Aβ levels will increase or decrease. NMDA receptor antagonists increase ISF Aβ levels, suggesting that basal activity at these receptors normally suppresses Aβ levels in vivo. This has implications for understanding normal Aβ metabolism as well as AD pathogenesis.


The purpose of this document is twofold. First, it describes various
alternatives for exchanging inter-domain routing information across
domain boundaries, where one of the peering domain is CIDR-capable and
another is not. Second, it addresses the implications of running CIDR-
capable inter-domain routing protocols (e.g., BGP-4, IDRP) on intra-
domain routing. This memo provides information for the Internet
community. It does not specify an Internet standard.


It is well known that pesticides are widely used compounds. In fact, their use in agriculture, forestry, fishery and the food industry has granted a huge improvement in terms of productive efficiency. However, a great number of epidemiological surveys have demonstrated that these toxic compounds can interact and exert negative effects not only with their targets (pests, herbs and fungi), but also with the rest of the environment, including humans. This is particularly relevant in the case of workers involved in the production, transportation, preparation and application of these toxicants. Accordingly, a growing body of evidence has demonstrated the correlation between occupational exposure to pesticides and the development of a wide spectrum of pathologies, ranging from eczema to neurological diseases and cancer. Pesticide exposure is often quite difficult to establish, as many currently used modules do not take into account all of the many variables that can occur in a diverse environment, such as the agricultural sector, and the assessment of the real risk for every single worker is problematic. Indeed, the use of personal protection equipment is necessary while handling these toxic compounds, but education of workers can be even more important: personal contamination with pesticides may occur even in apparently harmless situations. This review summarises the most recent findings describing the association between pesticide occupational exposure and the development of chronic diseases.


This article uses perspectives from science and technology studies to understand the working knowledge used by operators to understand and handle machines. Industrial production is seen as a heterogeneous assemblage of sociomaterial practices, where machines and humans interact in processes of mutual inscription and modification. Working knowledge is analysed as situated practices of knowing, or performances.This perspective is used in a meta-interpretation of earlier ethnographic research and other accounts of manual, industrial work, focusing on the mental, bodily and emotional understanding employed in crucial situations, as when learning to work, localizing machines, or coping with difficult or recalcitrant machines.


Nests provide a buffer against environmental variation, but conditions may also vary at different locations within a nest. Conditions can vary based on abiotic factors, such as moisture and temperature, as well as biotic factors, such as the presence of microbes and potential pathogens. Therefore, characterizing how animals adjust their position inside their nests to track microclimate preferences while at the same time preventing pathogen exposure is necessary to understand the benefits nests provide. Here we studied how colonies of the acorn-nesting ant Temnothorax curvispinosus responded to experimental manipulation of moisture, temperature, and microbial growth inside their nests. Colonies showed no response to differences in moisture and moved to the bottom of the acorn regardless of moisture treatment. When nests were heated from the top to simulate warming by the sun, workers preferentially moved brood to the warm, upper half of the acorn, which would stimulate brood development. Finally, the strongest factor that influenced colony position was the presence of microbes inside the nest—colonies avoided the bottom of the nest when it was inoculated with microbes, and colonies in new acorns shifted to the top of the acorn over time as mold and other microbes had time to grow. The relatively strong response of T. curvispinosus to microbial growth inside their nests suggests that pathogen pressures—in addition to microclimate—have a significant impact on how colonies use nest spaces. Social insects are known to invest heavily in antimicrobial compounds that kill or slow the growth of microbes, but avoidance may represent an additional line of defense to prevent pathogen exposure.


This article discusses the concept of suffering in the Old Testament. It first looks at passages in the Pentateuch that describe life before the fall, which paints a picture of human existence before suffering. It then examines what the Pentateuch and Proverbs teach about avoiding suffering through living a life of faithful obedience. Next, it examines suffering in the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, which tackle head-on the issue of the suffering of the righteous. It then moves to the New Testament to examine how suffering differs on this side of the cross and how modern-day Christians must live in light of the reality of suffering. The article concludes with few proposals for how to apply the biblical theology of suffering.


Abstract A critical subroutine of self-monitoring during speech production is to detect any deviance between expected and actual auditory feedback. Here we investigated the associated neural dynamics using MEG recording in mental-imagery-of-speech paradigms. Participants covertly articulated the vowel /a/; their own (individually recorded) speech was played back, with parametric manipulation using four levels of pitch shift, crossed with four levels of onset delay. A nonmonotonic function was observed in early auditory responses when the onset delay was shorter than 100 msec: Suppression was observed for normal playback, but enhancement for pitch-shifted playback; however, the magnitude of enhancement decreased at the largest level of pitch shift that was out of pitch range for normal conversion, as suggested in two behavioral experiments. No difference was observed among different types of playback when the onset delay was longer than 100 msec. These results suggest that the prediction suppresses the response to normal feedback, which mediates source monitoring. When auditory feedback does not match the prediction, an "error term" is generated, which underlies deviance detection. We argue that, based on the observed nonmonotonic function, a frequency window (addressing spectral difference) and a time window (constraining temporal difference) jointly regulate the comparison between prediction and feedback in speech.


Background The 'law of spatiotemporal concentrations of events' introduced major preventative shifts in policing communities. 'Hotspots' are at the forefront of these developments yet somewhat understudied in emergency medicine. Furthermore, little is known about interagency 'data-crossover', despite some developments through the Cardiff Model. Can police-ED interagency data-sharing be used to reduce community-violence using a hotspots methodology? Methods 12-month (2012) descriptive study and analysis of spatiotemporal clusters of police and emergency calls for service using hotspots methodology and assessing the degree of incident overlap. 3775 violent crime incidents and 775 assault incidents analysed using spatiotemporal clustering with k-means++ algorithm and Spearman's rho. Results Spatiotemporal location of calls for services to the police and the ambulance service are equally highly concentrated in a small number of geographical areas, primarily within intra-agency hotspots (33% and 53%, respectively) but across agencies' hotspots as well (25% and 15%, respectively). Datasets are statistically correlated with one another at the 0.57 and 0.34 levels, with 50% overlap when adjusted for the number of hotspots. At least one in every two police hotspots does not have an ambulance hotspot overlapping with it, suggesting half of assault spatiotemporal concentrations are unknown to the police. Data further suggest that more severely injured patients, as estimated by transfer to hospital, tend to be injured in the places with the highest number of police-recorded crimes. Conclusions A hotspots approach to sharing data circumvents the problem of disclosing person-identifiable data between different agencies. Practically, at least half of ambulance hotspots are unknown to the police; if causal, it suggests that data sharing leads to both reduced community violence by way of prevention (such as through anticipatory patrols or problem-oriented policing), particularly of more severe assaults, and improved efficiency of resource deployment.


The purpose of this note is to consider the judicial comments regarding s 211(3) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (the Constitution) made in two recent, unrelated judgments of the superior courts. These cases are Fosi v Road Accident Fund & another 2008 (3) SA 560 (C) and Gumede v President of the Republic of South Africa & others 2009 (3) SA 152 (CC). Section 211(3) of the Constitution reads :'The courts must apply customary law when that law is applicable, subject to the Constitution and any legislation that specifically deals with customary law.'
My intention is to comment on the meaning of the words 'must apply customary law when that law is applicable' as they appear in s 211(3). The facts of each case, and an analysis thereof, will be undertaken in turn. I do not wish to comment on the role of the courts in developing customary law in a more general sense, as this aspect has been sufficiently dealt in recent publications. (See, inter alia, the following : G J van Niekerk 'Succession, living indigenous law and ubuntu in the Constitutional Court' (2005) 26 Obiter 474; A J Kerr 'The Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the law of succession (2)' (2006) 20 Speculum Juris 20; Elmarie Knoetze and Morne Olivier 'To develop or not to develop the customary law : that is the question in Bhe' (2005) 26 Obiter 126; and Chuma Himonga 'Taking stock of customary law in a new South Africa' in Graham Glover (ed) Essays in Honour of AJ Kerr (2006) 215 at 232.)


Many studies have shown that speciation can be facilitated when a trait under divergent selection also causes assortative mating. In Müllerian mimetic butterflies, a change in wing colour pattern can cause reproductive isolation. However, colour pattern divergence does not always lead to reproductive isolation. Understanding how divergent selection affects speciation requires identifying the mechanisms that promote mate preference and/or choosiness. This study addresses whether shifts in wing colour pattern drives mate preference and reproductive isolation in the tropical butterfly genus Melinaea (Nymphalidae: Ithomiini), and focuses on five taxa that form a speciation continuum, from subspecies to fully recognized species. Using genetic markers, wing colour pattern quantification, male pheromone characterization and behavioural assays of mating preference, we characterize the extent of genetic and phenotypic differentiation between taxa and compare it to the level of reproductive isolation. We show strong premating isolation between the closely related species M. satevis and M. marsaeus, in addition to genetic and phenotypic (colour pattern and pheromones) differentiation. By contrast, M. menophilus and M. marsaeus consist of pairs of subspecies that differ for colour pattern but that cannot be differentiated genetically. Pheromonal differentiation of subspecies was significant only for M. marsaeus, although most individuals were indistinguishable. Melinaea menophilus and M. marsaeus also differ in the strength of assortative mating, suggesting that mate preference has evolved only in M. marsaeus, consistent with selection against maladaptive offspring, as subspecific 'hybrids' of M. marsaeus have intermediate, non-mimetic colour patterns, unlike those of M. menophilus which display either parental phenotypes. We conclude that a shift in colour pattern per se is not sufficient for reproductive isolation, but rather, the evolution of assortative mating may be caused by selection against maladaptive intermediate phenotypes. This study suggests that mate preference and assortative mating evolve when adaptive, and that even in the early stages of divergence, reproductive isolation can be nearly complete due to mating preferences.


Medicare insures about half of the people in the United States diagnosed with schizophrenia. More than 90 percent of these beneficiaries are eligible for a low-income subsidy for their Part D prescription drug benefit, and the great majority of them are randomly assigned to a stand-alone drug plan. We simulated savings from replacing random assignment with an "intelligent assignment" algorithm that would assign beneficiaries to the least expensive plan in 2010 based on their drug usage in the previous year. Doing so generated projected annual drug savings of $379 per dual-eligible (those enrolled in both Medicaid and Medicare) beneficiary with a low-income subsidy; $404 per non-dual eligible with the subsidy; and $604 per beneficiary for those without the subsidy who chose their own plans. This translates into savings of $466 per beneficiary with schizophrenia. Intelligent assignment could have saved about $150 million for Medicare and beneficiaries with schizophrenia combined in 2010. We recommend that Medicare use intelligent assignment as the default approach for all beneficiaries with schizophrenia who receive a low-income subsidy, and consider it as an option for all Part D beneficiaries, regardless of their income.