Technology transfer is a buzz word of the 1990's; in many cases this
means making research results and technical information available to
construction practitioners. Large government and professional organizations
own, manage and distribute tomes of information to a wide selection of
clients. In the existing situation the default medium is paper; most agencies
in an industry work independently of each other; and the distribution network
for the information is slow and uncoordinated.
Conventional computer technology provides an inexpensive alternative to
the paper medium. Compact Disk Read Only Memory is one of many
technologies available to information suppliers; others include read-write
optical disks, Compact Disk-Interactive and distributed networks such as
Gopher or the World Wide Web. Off-the-shelf packages now enable
information suppliers to produce and distribute their information using
in-house resources without having to go to outside sources. Many
technologies permit cooperative publishing and distribution ventures between
industry-related suppliers without affecting the suppliers ' document pricing.
In light of these new technologies, distribution could be near instantaneous
and accomplished at significantly reduced costs, In addition, many software
companies are now providing turnkey services to capture, organize and
distribute electronic information for the information suppliers.
This paper outlines the information technology activities of the Institute
for Research in Construction -- past, present, and future. It describes the
experience gained from the production of the Construction Resources compact
disk by the Institute and summarizes the findings of a survey of the beta test
sites using user-friendly, interactive software. The paper outlines technologies
available to information suppliers including distributed networks, the Internet,
and optical disk technology.


Problem statement: The nascent development of ecotourism in Lagong Hill faces an
interesting challenge. The aim of this research note is to evaluate the nascent development of
ecotourism in Lagong Hill, Malaysia based on the common core precepts of ecotourism. Approach:
The research methods comprise of secondary data collection and field survey via an in-depth interview
with selected key informants. This is aided by on-field observation to verify and complement the
research findings. Results and Discussion: The ecotourism park management has exhibited
environmentally responsible behavior. Nature conservation, tourism management, solid waste
management and water utilization adopt the core precepts of ecosystem protection, minimal
environmental impact and environmental education. However, there is a lack of outreach towards the
indigenous people who are residing within this forest reserve. The Orang Asli, the indigenous people
of this area, have profound and in-depth knowledge of the forest and its terrains. This local knowledge
and cultural heritage has yet to be tapped as part of community-based ecotourism. In addition, there is
a lack of scientific research on the impact of quarrying and timber production on ecotourism.
Conclusion: The ecotourism venture in Lagong Hill fulfills the core precepts of ecotourism with the
exception of the participation of indigenous people. There is a need to inculcate community-based
ecotourism rather than primarily focusing on environmental or economic impacts. More scientific
research is required to determine carrying capacity, and the impact of quarrying and timber production
on ecotourism.


We propose a conservative extension of the polymorphic lambda calculus (Fω) as an intermediate language for compiling languages with name-based class and interface hierarchies. Our extension enriches standard Fω with recursive types, existential types, and row polymorphism, but only ordered records with no subtyping. Basing our language on Fω makes it also a suitable target for translation from other higher-order languages; this enables the safe interoperation between class-based and higher-order languages and the reuse of common type-directed optimization techniques, compiler back ends, and runtime support.We present the formal semantics of our intermediate language and illustrate its features by providing a formal translation from a subset of Java, including classes, interfaces, and private instance variables. The translation preserves the name-based hierarchical relation between Java classes and interfaces, and allows access to private instance variables of parameters of the same class as the one defining the method. It also exposes the details of method invocation and instance variable access and allows many standard optimizations to be performed on the object-oriented code.


We release the next installment of the Stripe 82 X-ray survey point-source catalog, which currently covers 31.3 deg2 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82 Legacy field. In total, 6181 unique X-ray sources are significantly detected with XMM-Newton (>5σ) and Chandra (>4.5σ). This catalog release includes data from XMM-Newton cycle AO 13, which approximately doubled the Stripe 82X survey area. The flux limits of the Stripe 82X survey are 8.7 × 10−16 erg s−1 cm−2, 4.7 × 10−15 erg s−1 cm−2, and 2.1 × 10−15 erg s−1 cm−2 in the soft (0.5–2 keV), hard (2–10 keV), and full bands (0.5–10 keV), respectively, with approximate half-area survey flux limits of 5.4 × 10−15 erg s−1 cm−2, 2.9 × 10−14 erg s−1 cm−2, and 1.7 × 10−14 erg s−1 cm−2. We matched the X-ray source lists to available multi-wavelength catalogs, including updated matches to the previous release of the Stripe 82X survey; 88% of the sample is matched to a multi-wavelength counterpart. Due to the wide area of Stripe 82X and rich ancillary multi-wavelength data, including coadded SDSS photometry, mid-infrared WISE coverage, near-infrared coverage from UKIDSS and VISTA Hemisphere Survey, ultraviolet coverage from GALEX, radio coverage from FIRST, and far-infrared coverage from Herschel, as well as existing ∼30% optical spectroscopic completeness, we are beginning to uncover rare objects, such as obscured high-luminosity active galactic nuclei at high-redshift. The Stripe 82X point source catalog is a valuable data set for constraining how this population grows and evolves, as well as for studying how they interact with the galaxies in which they live.


For nearly fifty years, J. Edgar Hoover held great power in the United States. The creator of the FBI and its Director until his death, he played a role in nearly every major tragedy and scandal in America during the twentieth century. Hoover was lauded when he died as an American hero. Anthony Summers' controversial bestseller, "Official & Confidential, The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover", draws on more than 800 interviews to explode the myths, exposing the dark secrets that remained hidden throughout Hoover's lifetime. Hoover used his intimate knowledge of the John F. Kennedy's sex life to ensure that Lyndon B. Johnson became Vice President, and suppressed evidence about J.F.K's assassination. Hoover himself, meanwhile, was a closet homosexual, which allegedly led to him being blackmailed by the Mafia. This fascinating book reveals that even Hoover's death, on the eve of Watergate, was clouded with mystery. Witnesses have indicated that, in the panic over the secrets he was holding over President Nixon, an operation was mounted to break into his house - possibly even to murder him.


Background: Patellar tendinopathy (PT) is a common degenerative condition in physically active populations. Knowledge regarding the biomechanics of landing in populations with symptomatic PT is limited, but altered mechanics may play a role in the development or perpetuation of PT. Purpose: To identify whether study participants with PT exhibited different landing kinematics compared with healthy controls. Study Design: Controlled laboratory study. Methods: Sixty recreationally active participants took part in this study; 30 had current signs and symptoms of PT, including self-reported pain within the patellar tendon during loading activities for at least 3 months and ≤80 on the Victorian Institute of Sport Assessment Scale–Patella (VISA-P). Thirty healthy participants with no history of PT or other knee joint pathology were matched by sex, age, height, and weight. Participants completed 5 trials of a 40-cm, 2-legged drop jump followed immediately by a 50% maximum vertical jump. Dependent variables of interest included hip, knee, and ankle joint angles at initial ground contact, peak angles, and maximum angular displacements during the landing phase in 3 planes. Independent-samples t tests (P ≤ .05) were utilized to compare the joint angles and angular displacements between PT and control participants. Results: Individuals with PT displayed significantly decreased peak hip (PT, 59.2° ± 14.6°; control, 67.2° ± 13.9°; P = .03) and knee flexion angles (PT, 74.8° ± 13.2°; control, 82.5° ± 9.0°; P = .01) compared with control subjects. The PT group displayed decreased maximum angular displacement in the sagittal plane at the hip (PT, 49.3° ± 10.8°; control, 55.2° ± 11.4°; P = .04) and knee (PT, 71.6° ± 8.4°; control, 79.7° ± 8.3°; P < .001) compared with the control group. Conclusion: Participants with PT displayed decreased maximum flexion and angular displacement in the sagittal plane, at both the knee and the hip. The altered movement patterns in those with PT may be perpetuating symptoms associated with PT and could be due to the contributions of the rectus femoris during dynamic movement. Clinical Relevance: Based on kinematic alterations in symptomatic participants, rehabilitation efforts may benefit from focusing on both the knee and the hip to treat symptoms associated with PT.


This paper provides simulation practitioners and consumers with a grounding in how discrete event simulation software works. Topics include discrete event systems; entities, resources, control elements and operations; simulation runs; entity states; entity lists; and entity list management. The implementation of these generic ideas in AutoMod, SLX, and Extend is described. The paper concludes with several examples of "why it matters" for modelers to know how their simulation software works, including coverage of SIMAN (Arena), ProModel, and GPSS/H as well as the other three tools.


Ranging in size from very small to tremendous, landslides often cause loss of life and damage to infrastructure, property and the environment. They are triggered by a variety and combinations of causes among which the role of water and seismic shaking have the most serious consequences. In this regard, seismic wave amplification due to topography as well as to the impedance contrast between the landslide mass and its underlying bedrock are of particular interest. Therefore, high resolution reconstruction of the lateral confinement of the landslide mass and the exact measurement of the mechanical properties are a necessity.
A global chronological database was created to study and compare 2D and 3D geometries of landslides, i.e. of landslides properly sliding on a rupture surface. It contains 277 seismically and non-seismically induced landslides whose rupture masses were measured in all available details allowing for statistical analyses of their shapes and to create numerical models thereupon based.
Detailed studies reveal that values of distinct geometrical parameters have different statistical behaviors. As for dimension related parameters, occurrence frequencies follow decreasing exponential distributions and mean values progressively increase with landslide magnitude. In contrast, occurrence frequencies of shape-related parameters follow normal distributions and mean values are constant throughout different landslide magnitudes. Dimensions and shapes of landslides are thus to be regarded in a precise and distinctive manner when analyzing seismically induced slope displacements.


Here we describe software tools for the automated detection of DNA restriction fragments resolved on agarose fingerprinting gels. We present a mathematical model for the location and shape of the restriction fragments as a function of fragment size, with model parameters determined empirically from "marker" lanes containing molecular size standards. Automated identification of restriction fragments involves several steps, including: image preprocessing, to put the data in a form consistent with a linear model; marker lane analysis, for determination of the model parameters; and data lane analysis, a procedure for detecting restriction fragment multiplets while simultaneously determining the amplitude curve that describes restriction fragment amplitude as a function of mobility. In validation experiments conducted on fingerprinted and sequenced Bacterial Artificial Chromosome (BAC) clones, sensitivity and specificity of restriction fragment identification exceeded 96% on restriction fragments ranging in size from 600 base pairs (bp) to 30,000 bp. The integrated suite of software tools, written in MATLAB and collectively called BandLeader, is in use at the BC Cancer Agency Genome Sciences Centre (GSC) and the Washington University Genome Sequencing Center, and has been provided to the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Whitehead Institute. Employed in a production mode at the GSC, BandLeader has been used to perform automated restriction fragment identification for more than 850,000 BAC clones for mouse, rat, bovine, and poplar fingerprint mapping projects.


Essentials of Christian Community: Essays for Daniel W Hardy. Edited by David F. Ford and Dennis L. Stamps. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996. 380 pp. $59.95 (cloth). Essentials of Christian Community is not an easy book to review for the simple reason that it tries to accomplish a number of things under one cover. On one level, it is indeed a collection of essays that, as the title suggests seeks to highlight the essentials of Christian community. On another, it presents to the general public the life and thought of a theologian who has made an enormous contribution to the life of the churches in England and America but who has made this contribution as much through his "behind the scenes" encouragement of the theological enterprise as through his writings. Finally, it provides Prof. Hardy an opportunity to display his own theological commitments in dialogue with the students and colleagues who have contributed to this volume. The editors display what they hold to be "the essentials of Christian community" by means of the various subdivisions of the volume. Thus, they organize the collected essays under the following headings: "Worship," "Faith and Love," "Scripture," "The Church as Institution," "Christian Formation," and "Hope." The essays in a collection of this sort are apt to vary widely in quality, but in this case, the quality of the essays is uniformly high. Some stand out. Jeremy Begbie's essay in the worship section on the relation between theology and music is both original and important. Stephen Pickard's on the significance of the doctrine of the Trinity in the section entitled "Faith and Love" is remarkably suggestive for the importance of the doctrine in the life of the church. Peter Sedgwick's article on Anglican polity provides a superb apologia for the relation between the Church of England and the society of which it is so much a part. Francis Young's article on Christian formation in the first four centuries charts a way ahead for the contemporary church as it seeks to form a new generation of believers in circumstances where its more recent methods seem remarkably ineffective. The essays that Ford and Stamps have collected in this volume cover an extraordinary range of topics. Stanley Hauerwas offers a fine treatment of the relation between worship and the teaching of Christian ethics, Stephen Sykes presents a timely discussion of the relation between "Orthodoxy" and "Liberalism," and James Dunn provides a helpful treatment of the various ways in which the Bible functions in the life of the church. These are but a few of the topics covered under the headings listed above. What the reader misses, however, is a discussion by the editors of the particular ordering they have chosen for the essays they present. Why are these the essentials of Christian community and why are they presented in this particular order? …


This paper addresses the wireless mobile robot deployment problem in disaster rescues, which aims to maximise the coverage of important locations of an ad hoc network through deploying wireless mobile robots of the network at suitable locations. Nowadays, most of current approaches deploy wireless mobile robots to cover important locations in disaster environments based on greedy algorithms. Due to the myopia of greedy algorithms, these approaches can only maximise the coverage of important locations of each wireless mobile robot rather than all of them in an ad hoc network. To this end, two mathematical programming-based wireless mobile robot deployment approaches are proposed in this paper. The proposed approaches can create the optimal deployment locations for all wireless mobile robots in an ad hoc network. The experimental results demonstrate that wireless mobile robots in the proposed approaches can cover more important locations than that of in greedy algorithm-based approaches in most disaster environments.


Significant effort has been made to quantify and predict roll damping of vessels in the past. Similarly, efforts have been made to provide effective methods for calculating the roll gyradius of vessels. Both the damping and the gyradius of a vessel are traditionally quantified through the use of a sally test. Experience with the USS Midway showed that shallow water has significant effect on the rolling period and thus the experimentally determined roll gyradius. To date, little effort has been directed to the problem of the effect of shallow water on roll damping and roll period except when trying to match model and full scale experimental data. No clear guidelines exist for the boundary between deep and shallow water or the amount of overprediction of roll period that is likely for a given water depth. In order to provide greater understanding of the effects of shallow water on roll period and roll damping, this thesis performed experiments in varying scale water depths for 5 models: 4 box barges and a model of the USS Essex. The following conclusions were reached: As water depth to draft ratio, d/T, approaches 1 the roll period can increase as much as 14%. The boundary between deep and shallow water is a water depth somewhere between 4 and 7 times the vessel draft depending on the particulars of the vessel's hull form. Vessels with a larger beam to draft ratio will experience shallow water effects in relatively deeper water, that is to say the depth to draft ratio will be greater at the upper limit of deep water. Additionally, vessels with a higher beam to draft ratio will experience larger shallow water effects for a given depth to draft ratio. Finally, for vessels of very fine hull forms, the boundary between deep and shallow water will occur a relatively shallower depths, in other terms, the boundary will occur at a lower depth to draft ratio.


Human platelet granule deficiency disorders include the gray platelet syndrome (GPS), α δ storage pool deficiency, the Hermansky–Pudlak syndrome and the White platelet syndrome. The present study describes a patient with a lifelong history of easy bleeding, thrombocytopenia and giant platelets. Her cells were found to have normal numbers of dense bodies, but a markedly decreased number of α granules. Many platelets had no α granules and resembled the gray platelets of patients with GPS. However, the empty vacuoles without granule contents that fill the cytoplasm of GPS platelets were not present in significant numbers in her platelets. In addition to the decrease in α granules the patients platelets contained membranous inclusions resembling cigars or scrolls. Usually, only one scroll open at each end was present, but many platelets contained two and some as many as five. Freeze-fracture revealed an absence of intramembranous particles in many layers of the scrolls. They occur in no other human platelet disorder, but are common in platelets from the Wistar–Furth rat. Thus, the patient is a unique variant of human platelet granule deficiency disorders unlike any described previously.


This paper poses the problem of fabricating physical construction sets from example geometry: A construction set provides a small number of different types of building blocks from which the example model as well as many similar variants can be reassembled. This process is formalized by tiling grammars. Our core contribution is an approach for simplifying tiling grammars such that we obtain physically manufacturable building blocks of controllable granularity while retaining variability, i.e., the ability to construct many different, related shapes. Simplification is performed by sequences of two types of elementary Operations: non‐local joint edge collapses in the tile graphs reduce the granularity of the decomposition and approximate replacement Operations reduce redundancy. We evaluate our method on abstract graph grammars in addition to computing several physical construction sets, which are manufactured using a commodity 3D printer.


This paper proposes a novel exact approach that relies on integer programming for association rule hiding. A large panorama of solutions exists for the complex problem of itemset hiding: from practical heuristic approaches to more accurate exact approaches. Exact approaches provide better solutions while suffering from the lack of performance and existing exact approaches still augment their methods with heuristics to make the problem solvable. In this case, the solution may not be optimum. This work presents a full-exact method, without any need for heuristics. Extensive tests are conducted on 10 real datasets to analyze distance and information loss performances of the algorithm in comparison to a former similar algorithm. Since the approach provides the optimum solution to the problem, it should be considered as a reference method.


Without any doubt Martin Luther was the most important leader of the Reformation in central Europe and especially in Germany. He was initially friendly to the Jews because he hoped they would convert to his reformed church. Because he sought to strip Christianity of its medieval accretions, Luther narrowed the gap between Judaism and Christianity. Just as the Pharisees had built a new form of Judaism apart from the Temple cult at Jerusalem, so Luther also built a new and dynamic form of Christianity apart from the Catholic hierarchical and cultic center at Rome. Luther and the other Reformation leaders swept away many of the pagan and non-Jewish elements that had crept into Christianity over the ages. Gone were the adoration of saints and of Mary and the use of incense; in their place was a renewed emphasis on God the Father and the authority of Scriptures. Significantly, Luther's translation of the Hebrew Scriptures was based on the Jewish, not the Catholic, version; hence, Maccabees I and II were omitted in the Lutheran Bible. In the decade 1513-23, when Luther had hoped for the conversion of the Jews, he openly declared that both he and the Jews had suffered from Catholic bigotry. Shortly before he nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, he wrote that the Catholic clergy, not the Jews, were the ones who truly profaned the eucharist. (During the Middle Ages Jews were burned at the stake on the charge that they profaned the eucharist.) Significantly, these comments were included in Luther's lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews, which was written by an author who sought to prove that faith in Christ was the fulfillment of Judaism. The Jews, Luther thought, were merely theologically misguided and would accept baptism once the truth of Christianity was revealed to them. A year after he made these comments, Luther again defended the Jews and criticized the Catholic Church for its attitudes toward the Jews. He pointed out that during Holy Week priests often inflamed the masses against the Jews for their alleged role in the Crucifixion. He then wrote his best-known defense of the Jews, "That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew," in which he again blamed the Catholic Church for the refusal of most Jews to accept Christianity. The life of a pig, Luther exclaimed in his essay, was better than that of a Jew under the thumb of the Catholic hierarchy. He called on his followers to show only Christian love toward the Jews and to abolish the economic restrictions that had forced them into such occupations as money-lending. Everywhere Jews greeted Luther's pro-Jewish writings, which were distributed among both confessing Jews and Marranos. (1) Many Protestants also approved of his defense of the Jews, and translations of his pro-Jewish essay as well as his other writings were distributed among French and Spanish intellectuals. Although many Jews did not like his emphasis on the Pauline doctrine of salvation by faith alone, they welcomed the split that he brought about in the unity of Western Christianity. No doubt, Luther probably knew that his call for a change in Christian attitudes toward the Jews would be used by his opponents to attack him; indeed, his Catholic enemies branded him a half-Jew. His emphasis on the Bible as the sole religious authority for Christians provided more evidence to his enemies that this allegation was indeed true. Cardinal Girolamo Aleandro, the papal legate at the Diet of Worms, spread the rumor that Luther really was a converted Jew. Luther's enemies were wrong: He did not want to Judaize Christians but, rather, to Christianize Jews. During the years 1513-23, Luther hoped for the success of his mission among the Jews of Germany. No doubt, he was encouraged by the conversion of two Jews who reportedly visited him while he attended the Diet of Worms. But, when Luther realized that, with few exceptions, the Jews would not convert to Protestantism any more than they had to Catholicism, he turned in bitter disappointment and deep anger against them. …


The volume of existing graph-structured data requires improved parallel tools and algorithms. Finding communities, smaller sub graphs densely connected within the sub graph than to the rest of the graph, plays a role both in developing new parallel algorithms as well as opening smaller portions of the data to current analysis tools. We improve performance of our parallel community detection algorithm by 20% on the massively multithreaded Cray XMT, evaluate its performance on the next-generation Cray XMT2, and extend its reach to Intel-based platforms with OpenMP. To our knowledge, not only is this the first massively parallel community detection algorithm but also the only such algorithm that achieves excellent performance and good parallel scalability across all these platforms. Our implementation analyzes a moderate sized graph with 105 million vertices and 3.3 billion edges in around 500 seconds on a four processor, 80-logical-core Intel-based system and 1100 seconds on a 64-processor Cray XMT2.


This volume is a collection of the most important essays written by Franz Boas on the science of anthropology. "Franz Boas is the father of American anthropology and one of the founders of the field of modern anthropology. The book, "Race, Language, and Culture," is a collection of some of his most important essays."-David Schneider, University of Chicago "An exceptional book. Exceptional because it brings into one volume sixty-two papers written by the most influential figure in American anthropology. . . . Exceptional in that it exhibits the wide range of interests and scientific exactness which made it possible for one man to exert such a profound influence on the growing science of anthropology. . . . This is a volume every student of anthropology will wish to possess; it will also have a wide distribution among other students of the social sciences, and all interested in the problems of race."-Fay-Cooper Cole, "American Anthropologist"


This paper studies the employment effects of the influx of millions of German expellees to West Germany after World War II. The expellees were forced to relocate to post-war Germany. They represented a complete cross-section of society, were close substitutes to the native West German population, and were very unevenly distributed across labor market segments in West Germany. We find a substantial negative effect of expellee inflows on native employment. The effect was, however, limited to labor market segments with very high inflow rates. IV regressions that exploit variation in geographical proximity and in pre-war occupations confirm the OLS results.


The aim of this article is to further the understanding of how content is learned in classrooms, using conversation analysis (CA) and variation theory for the analysis. Classroom video materials from two mathematics classrooms in Sweden and the USA are analysed. A result of the study is the empirical explication of the tension between the need for teacher content control and the simultaneous contradictory need for student participation in educational interaction. The article also develops variation theory toward a more sensitive understanding of the sequential implications of interaction and suggests CA can benefit from more systematic understandings of content orientation in interaction. In doing so, the presumed gulf between acquisitionist and participation understandings of learning is challenged.


W W W . t i k k u n . o r g W i n t e r 2 0 1 2 L ike a rose that has sprouted in a weed garden and induced the weeds to back away in awe, the restorative justice movement has entered American legal culture and is posing an important challenge to core assumptions about human beings and about the very nature of human reality that our legal culture has taken for granted for more than two hundred years. The United States itself was founded on a principle of human freedom that presupposed an inherent antagonism between self and other, a belief that the essential meaning of liberty was that we need to be protected against other people. This Fear of the Other was in part a rational response to the religious, social, and economic persecution that had in part characterized previous historical forms of social life, but it also introduced its own distortion into our liberal social fabric: it gave rise to a conception of social being that conceived of human beings as socially separated "individuals" who might form voluntary relationships with others through love, or through contracts, or through voluntary religious and civic organizations, or through democratically elected governments with strictly limited powers, but who at bottom needed always to hold in reserve the memory that the other posed a threat to one's liberty and who therefore required a binding legal culture that placed "the rights of the individual" above all other social goods. Implicit in this worldview has been the conviction that we are not inherently connected beings whose fulfillment comes through our mutual recognition of one another, through the inherent bond of our social nature that is completed through the embrace of love and solidarity, but rather that we are cast into the world as disconnected monads who only come into relation after the fact of our individual incarnations, with the borders between us being in need of constant policing to make sure that the seduction of trust never leads us to let down our guard. While we might "voluntarily" engage in any foolish dependency on the other that we choose, the law is always there to guarantee "as a matter of law" that nothing actually binds us except our mutual and solemn commitment to our everlasting ontological separation. Liberty as Spiritual Separation in American Law As you read this from within your own private space, as you float through the solitude of your day, consider how the institutions of American law condition and envelop you in the spiritual prison of your separation. You are a citizen in a democracy, but the most fundamental right that defines that democracy is the "secret ballot" rather than a process expressive of any communal bond that unites us. You are legally bound to all others through a "constitution" that protects you against, and therefore affirms the constant threat of, infringement on your right to freedom of speech, of religion, of association, and your right to be protected against others searching your house or making you quarter soldiers or taking away your guns ... but that binding constitution affirms nothing about our connection to one another and therefore offers no commitment to making From Individual Rights to the Beloved Community: A New Vision of Justice


Although specific genes have been found to be associated with skin pigmentation, the global gene expression profile for the early stage of skin pigmentation and development in mammals is still not well understood. Here we reported a rare natural group of goat (Youzhou dark goat) featuring the dark skin of body including the visible mucous membranes, which may be an exclusive kind of large mammalian species with this special phenotype so far. In the present study, we characterized the 100-day-old fetal skin transcriptome in hyperpigmented (dark-skinned) and wild-type (white-skinned) goats using deep RNA-sequencing. A total of 923,013,870 raw reads from 6 libraries were obtained, and a large number of alternative splicing events were identified in the transcriptome of fetal skin, including the well-known melanogenic genes ASIP, TYRP1, and DCT, which were differentially expressed in the skin between the dark-skinned and white-skinned goats. Further analysis demonstrated that differential genes including ASIP, TYRP1, DCT, WNT2, RAB27A, FZD4, and CREB3L1 were significantly overrepresented in the melanogenesis pathway and several biological process associated with pigmentation. On the other hand, we identified 1616 novel transcripts in goat skin based on the characteristics of their expression level and gene composition. These novel transcripts may represent two distinct groups of nucleic acid molecules. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the characteristics of global gene expression at early stages of skin pigmentation and development, as well as describe an animal model for human diseases associated with pigmentation.


A society relying upon public goods must avoid a tragedy of the commons; it will otherwise wither owing to the collapse of cooperative enterprises. This long recognized phenomenon has repeatedly caught the attention of thinkers across a variety of fields. Game theory has, through stylized quantitative models, served to unfold core processes governing the nature of cooperation on public goods. While caught between oversimplification and intractability, research is pushing to understand cooperation in complex systems. Large organizational units, such as whole communities, are typically subdivided into a multiple of different localized groups between which individuals may transfer. Although the group structure of such heterogeneous units is known to be important to the success of cooperation, knowledge on how group structures dynamically unfold and develop jointly with cooperative efforts is limited. Public economist Charles Tiebout suggested in 1956 that foot voting as an inter-group migration behavior could constitute a powerful bottom-up solution to the free-rider problem in local governance, as he believed that large communities would self-organize into an optimal type of group-structure. We apply evolutionary game-theory to social group-formation, and find that foot voting spontaneously emerges in large self-organized, public-goods communities. In turn, the emergence of foot voting makes way for cooperation to develop in non-cooperative communities which transform into highly cooperative group-structured societies. As such, the Tiebout hypothesis gets support in evolutionary game theory, and at the same time is revealed as an example of a wider concept, as it builds on a sorting principle that appears inevitable and that may represent a general mechanism for triggering invasion of altruism, potentially at many, and much more basic, levels of social and biological organization.


We have experienced the emergence of New World wine producing countries (the Americas, South Africa and Oceania) in the last 10-15 years as they have successfully increased their market share in European markets. In this paper we perform a two stage model on a panel of most of the major wine producing countries over the period 1995-2007. We estimate a Cobb-Douglas production function and technical inefficiency using stochastic frontier analysis. We show that there is a significant difference between the major Old and New World countries in terms of technical efficiency in favour of the latter group. The analysis supports our hypothesis that the more efficient functioning of the sector in the New Wine World can be one of the drivers of their success. Moreover, inefficiency is related to some macroeconomic factors such as the development of the financial system, the quality of human capital and per capita wine consumption.


Arc flash generally refers to the dangerous exposure to thermal energy released by an arcing fault on an electrical power system, and in recent years, arc flash hazards have become a prominent safety issue in many industries. This problem, however, has not been effectively addressed in the mining industry. Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) data for the period 1990 through 2001 attribute 836 injuries to "noncontact electric arc burns," making them the most common cause of electrical injury in mining. This paper presents results from several elements of a recent National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health study of arc flash hazards in mining and provides information and recommendations that can help reduce these injuries. The characteristics of past arc flash injuries in mining are first outlined, such as the electrical components and work activities involved (based on MSHA data). This is followed by a review of important concepts and terminology needed to understand this hazard. Next, methods for identifying, measuring, and managing arc flash hazards on a power system are covered, with emphasis on recommendations found in NFPA 70E, Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace. Finally, results are presented from a detailed arc flash hazard analysis performed on a sample mine electrical power system using IEEE 1584-2004a, focusing on components and locations presenting severe hazards, as well as engineering solutions for reducing the risk to personnel.


A simple and rapid method to prepare water‐saturated wood by vacuum‐pressure prewetting is presented. Submerged wood pieces can be prepared easily for any experimental purposes without long periods of prewetting and without additional tools for holding the wood under water. The particular wood piece must be submerged in a water filled suction flask that is connected to a diaphragm vacuum pump. Due to the evacuation of the air from the flask the wood rapidly soaks up water until it is saturated. In the experiments, branches displayed a logarithmic water saturation curve soaking up the highest amount of water during the first 10 s of air evacuation. Most branches were water saturated during this time. The method works best for wood pieces with a low or medium density supporting a rapid soaking of water, whereas very dense wood needs much more time to become water saturated. The main problem of the method is the loss of bark material from natural branches and the splitting of larger woods due to the rapid swelling caused by the water uptake. However, this method could be used for any experimental purposes needing standardized submerged wood, like investigations of epixylic biofilm development, colonization of wood by aquatic invertebrates, decomposition of submerged wood, or invertebrate food choice experiments.


Device and tuning characteristics of sampled grating tunable twin-guide laser diodes are presented. The vertically integrated, monolithic widely tunable laser requires only two tuning currents to fully cover a wavelength range of more than 40 nm by electrooptic tuning. Its tuning behavior is quasi-continuous with up to 8.2-nm broad continuous tuning regions. High sidemode suppression (SMSR /spl ges/ 35 dB) as well as large output power (P /spl ges/ 10 mW) are obtained over the wavelength range from 1520.5 to 1561.5 nm.


Climate change is real, and extreme weather events are its physical manifestations. These extreme events affect how we live and work in cities, and subsequently the way we design, plan, and govern them. Taking action 'for the environment' is not only a moral imperative; instead, it is activated by our everyday experience in the city. Based on the author's site visits and interviews in Darwin (Australia), Tulsa (Oklahoma), Cleveland (Ohio), and Cape Town (South Africa), Ihnji Jon's Cities in the Anthropocene: New Ecology and Urban Politics (Pluto Press, 2021) tells the story of how cities can lead a transformative pro-environment politics. National governments often fail to make binding agreements that bring about radical actions for the environment. This book shows how cities, as local sites of mobilizing a collective, political agenda, can be frontiers for activating the kind of environmental politics that appreciates the role of 'nature' in the everyday functioning of our urban life.


The high complexity of modern electronic systems has resulted in a substantial increase in the time-to-market as well as in the cost of design, production, and testing. Recently, in order to reduce the design cost, many electronic systems have employed a core-based system-on-chip (SoC) implementation technique, which integrates pre-defined and pre-verified intellectual property cores into a single silicon die. Accordingly, the testing of manufactured SoCs adopts a modular approach in which test patterns are generated for individual cores and are applied to the corresponding cores separately. Among many techniques that reduce the cost of modular SoC testing, test scheduling is widely adopted to reduce the test application time. This thesis addresses the problem of minimizing the test application time for modular SoC tests with considerations on three critical issues: high testing temperature, temperature-dependent failures, and defect probabilities. High temperature occurs in testing modern SoCs and it may cause damages to the cores under test. We address the temperature-aware test scheduling problem aiming to minimize the test application time and to avoid the temperature of the cores under test exceeding a certain limit. We have developed a test set partitioning and interleaving technique and a set of test scheduling algorithms to solve the addressed problem. Complicated temperature dependences and defect-induced parametric failures are more and more visible in SoCs manufactured with nanometer technology. In order to detect the temperature-dependent defects, a chip should be tested at different temperature levels. We address the SoC multi-temperature testing issue where tests are applied to a core only when the temperature of that core is within a given temperature interval. We have developed test scheduling algorithms for multi-temperature testing of SoCs. Volume production tests often employ an abort-on-first-fail (AOFF) approach which terminates the chip test as soon as the first fault is detected. Defect probabilities of individual cores in SoCs can be used to compute the expected test application time of modular SoC tests using the AOFF approach. We address the defect-probability driven SoC test scheduling problem aiming to minimize the expected test application time with a power constraint. We have proposed techniques which utilize the defect probability to generate efficient test schedules. Extensive experiments based on benchmark designs have been performed to demonstrate the efficiency and applicability of the developed techniques.


Experiments conducted between August 1999 and April 2002 evaluated anhydrous ammonia manifold distribution
during field application at 84- and 168-kg N/ha (75- and 150-lb N/acre) application rates. Multiple manifolds including
the conventional (Continental NH3 Model 3497, Dallas, Tex.), Vertical-Dam (Continental NH3 Dallas, Tex.), RotaflowTM(H.I.
Fraser Pty Ltd, Sydney, Australia), Equa-flowTM(PGI International, Houston, Tex.), FD-1200 prototype (CDS John Blue Co.,
Huntsville, Ala.), and the Impellicone prototype manifold were tested. Temperature and pressure data were collected along
the flow path.
Results showed high distribution variation by the conventional manifold at both application rates, with average coefficient
of variation (CV) values in excess of 16%. At the 84-kg N/ha (75-lb N/acre) rate, all other manifolds tested had significantly
lower application variation (. = 0.05). At the 168-kg N/ha (150-lb N/acre) rate, the conventional manifold grouped
statistically with the Vertical-Dam with a corn ring and the FD-1200 prototype, producing CV values between 9.5% and
16.2%. All other manifolds had significantly lower application variation. The Impellicone, Rotaflow., and Equa-flow.,
manifolds performed with the lowest measured variation at both rates, yielding best performance at the 168-kg N/ha (150-lb
N/acre) rate with CV in the 6% range.
Analysis of recorded temperature and pressure data indicate that NH3 flowing through the system very closely follows the
saturation line and acts as a saturated mixture. Predictions of NH3 quality based on calculations of an ideal adiabatic mixture
are supported by this result. Investigation for correlation between CV, air temperature, and percent of volume in the vapor
phase of NH3 resulted in only a visual trend that may suggest a reduction in CV with lower percent of volume in the vapor
phase.
Results suggest that replacement of a conventional manifold with a Vertical-Dam manifold or any of the other manifolds
tested could reduce application variation between 7.0% and 16.5% at 84 kg N/ha (75 lb N/acre) and 1.0% and 10.2% at 168 kg
N/ha (150 lb N/acre). This change could reduce application rate by eliminating the need for over-application to compensate
for variations.


The Institute is a world leader in macroeconomic modelling and forecasting. It has produced quarterly economic forecasts for around sixty years, supported by macroeconomic models. The aim of the original builders of macroeconomic models was to transform understanding of how economies worked and use that knowledge to improve economic policy. In the early years, when computers were rare, macroeconomic modelling was a new frontier and Institute economists were among the first to produce a working model of the UK economy. It is remarkable how quickly models were being used to produce forecasts, assess policy and influence the international macroeconomic research agenda. The models built at the Institute were mainstream in the sense that they followed the contents of standard macroeconomic textbooks, developed with the subject, and fitted the facts as they were known at the time. There were continual improvements in understanding as the subject developed in response to new ideas and developments in the global economy. This article celebrates the development of macroeconomic modelling at the Institute and the contribution it has made to public life.


The significant extraterritorial scope of the derivatives regulation within the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act promises to foster rigorous international standards for financial regulation that will restore transparency and stability to the global derivatives market. At present, that market exceeds $700 trillion notional value, or over ten times the world GDP. Despite opposition from Wall Street to the present extraterritorial application of almost all of Dodd-Frank's derivatives regulation, the plain language of the statute requires implementing that regulation on an appropriate extraterritorial basis in order to protect U.S. taxpayers from bailing out financial institutions engaging in foreign derivatives trading, as was required of those taxpayers after the subprime credit meltdown of 2008. The unregulated nature of the global derivatives market exposes the world to continued systemic risk, especially in a time of worry about sovereign defaults and the defaults of banks that hold or a have insured through synthetic derivatives sovereign debt. Defaults of that nature are conceded by almost everyone as having the ability to trigger undercapitalized and non-transparent credit derivatives of the kind that compounded the 2008 subprime fiasco and that led to the U.S. taxpayers' near-$13 trillion bailout of the financial industry. With worldwide economic stability at stake, tough, but appropriate, extraterritorial regulatory protections for the derivatives markets are needed instantaneously. This article shows that the extraterritorial reach of Dodd-Frank derivatives rules on capitalization, collateralization, and transparency will restore stability and integrity to the global derivatives market. To this end, the article is divided into five parts. First, the article demonstrates how Dodd-Frank aims to regulate derivatives trading so as to avoid, inter alia, the kind of systemic risk that presented itself in the wake of the subprime mortgage meltdown. Second, it establishes that Congress, pursuant to its constitutional authority, intended U.S. financial reforms to apply on extraterritorial basis so long as the United States has a vested relationship to the derivatives transactions in question. Third, the article discusses the current controversy caused by worldwide "Too Big to Fail" banks and the European Union surrounding the extraterritorial scope of Dodd-Frank-mandated reforms. Fourth, the article defends the extraterritorial application of Dodd-Frank regulations when a derivatives trade either involves a U.S. party or has the potential to substantially threaten the U.S. economy: it demonstrates that Congress has the constitutional authority to direct the extraterritorial application of U.S. derivatives regulations and that such an application aligns with U.S. regulators' standard enforcement practices. Fifth, the article shows that the extraterritorial scope of Dodd-Frank regulation is necessary to protect U.S. taxpayers from the risks posed by the global derivatives market as it affects U.S. interests and that that scope will benefit U.S. banks and the U.S. economy by establishing a more stable derivatives market. For that matter, the extraterritorial application of Dodd-Frank derivatives standards will protect foreign taxpayers from further bailouts of defaulting and the world economy from systemically risky banking institutions.


Knowledge transferability, or transfer learning, has been widely adopted to allow a pre-trained model in the source domain to be effectively adapted to downstream tasks in the target domain. It is thus important to explore and understand the factors affecting knowledge transferability. In this paper, as the first work, we analyze and demonstrate the connections between knowledge transferability and another important phenomenon--adversarial transferability, \emph{i.e.}, adversarial examples generated against one model can be transferred to attack other models. Our theoretical studies show that adversarial transferability indicates knowledge transferability and vice versa. Moreover, based on the theoretical insights, we propose two practical adversarial transferability metrics to characterize this process, serving as bidirectional indicators between adversarial and knowledge transferability. We conduct extensive experiments for different scenarios on diverse datasets, showing a positive correlation between adversarial transferability and knowledge transferability. Our findings will shed light on future research about effective knowledge transfer learning and adversarial transferability analyses.


The focus in the paper is on the information criteria approach and especially the Akaike information criterion which is used to obtain the Akaike weights. This approach enables to receive not one best model, but several plausible models for which the ranking can be built using the Akaike weights. This set of candidate models is the basis of calculating individual forecasts, and then for combining forecasts using the Akaike weights. The procedure of obtaining the combined forecasts using the AIC weights is proposed. The performance of combining forecasts with the AIC weights and equal weights with regard to individual forecasts obtained from models selected by the AIC criterion and the a posteriori selection method is compared in simulation experiment. The conditions when the Akaike weights are worth to use in combining forecasts were indicated. The use of the information criteria approach to obtain combined forecasts as an alternative to formal hypothesis testing was recommended.


The prevalent use mobile learning technology and the nearly universal access to the Internet have transformed educators' perspectives of how students learn and how teachers teach. In an educational climate where teacher effectiveness is tied to student achievement, it is necessary for teacher educators to identify and respond to factors that contribute to the development of preservice teachers' creativity and effective use of mobile learning technology. This qualitative study focused on examining preservice teachers' perceptions of the ways creativity is displayed within their instructional practices when mobile learning technology is utilized. The study participants included 30 preservice teachers enrolled in a methods block of courses focusing on teaching in grades 1-4 within an Early Childhood PreK-4th Grade teacher education preparation program at a public university. The researcher utilized the Mobile Learning Technology and Creativity (MLTC) survey, focus group interviews, and collection of written methods courses assignments to collect data. The data gathered from the instruments suggested that preservice teachers, who are members of the current generation of students known as the Net Generation, perceive themselves to be prolific, knowledgeable, and creative users of mobile learning technology for improving their instructional practices through modification of existing resources. The data also suggested that they perceived the use of their mobile learning technology as significantly contributing to that creativity. Qualitative data gathered from the participants' responses to interview questions provided insight into preservice teachers' perceptions about their personal creative abilities, creativity within their instructional practices, and their uses of mobile learning technology. The findings of the data can be used to inform discussions concerning the development of curricula that will strengthen preservice teachers' creativity and applications of mobile learning technology for instructional practice.


This paper focuses on our research in Maun village, near Okavango Delta, a World Heritage Site (OD-WHS), Botswana. We hoped to illuminate the presence and strength of 'dormant' community cultural identities, and to learn how they are constituted in cultural values and tied to landscapes that have become re-branded as nature-tourism areas. To unveil these 'dormant' cultural values, we conducted ethnographic interviews among the Maun village traditional leaders, Dikgosi (Chiefs), who are cultural custodians of communal heritage, to identify and re-acknowledge cultural and heritage values from communal memory. The aim was to create a balance between the nature tourism identity and the more fluid socio-cultural identities of people. Our results show that Maun village has communal cultural values that can complement the gateway tourism image. This work provides a model for other nature-tourism gateway communities who wish to salvage and safeguard the cultural heritage identities connected to their particular landscapes.


Let me go far away so I shall not hear The deep insistent throbbing of the guns; they beat Forever day and night--my tired heart and brain Can find no rest, but beat and throb in unison. (1) In her poem "The Sound of Flanders' Guns," Mary Beasley describes the physical proximity of southeast England to the soldiers in the trenches during the Great War of 1914-18. The metaphor of the speaker's heart beating in unison with the sound of the guns emphasizes the inescapable emotional and physical links between those at home and those at the front, and the shared tension and suffering they implied. The connections between home and front and between men and women form an integral theme of British women's poetry written during and about the Great War. Such connections have been recently explored in works on wartime citizenship by Nicoletta Gullace, Laura Nym Mayhall and Janet Watson, who argue that the war created new models of citizenship in which women of many political backgrounds sought a greater stake. (2) In this paper, women's wartime claims to participation in economic and political spheres during the war will be explored through their poetry. British women were active subjects during the war, working, organizing, observing, and writing. (3) in this article, I want to go beyond a historiographical assessment of the war that sets up a boundary between the Western Front as a producer of meaning and authentic experience and the home front as essential and uncomprehending. The public civilian realm was the arena in which the causes and meanings of the war for Britain were first articulated, and new readings of civilian culture offer insights into how the war was conceived and waged at home, and how women presented their roles in war and politics. Thus I will read women's published poetry of the Great War as political and as feminist. (4) Poetry was one of the most popular cultural forms of the 1914-18 war. As the Times noted, "In a time of stress like this, poetry's ancient claim to be the great consoler, the great lifegiver, justifies itself. And any poetry which has something to say, and says it truly and finely, is more read now that it has been for a long time." (5) The Georgian poets, anthologized by Edward Marsh from 1912 to 1922, had created and fed a new appetite for modern poetry, which the "psychological changes during the world-war" amplified. (6) Poetry was thus a powerful cultural and political medium, in which the contested meanings of the war could be expressed in metaphor and allusion. Poetry was also an art form accessible to British women. The arts had traditionally been more open to women than politics or science, and in the nineteenth century women writers had staked out their literary territory on a wide political spectrum. Women were a substantial part of the poetic tradition in wartime Britain, as writers and readers, and their wartime works offer an opportunity to examine how women writers positioned their sex as central to the war effort. Poetry also had the advantage of being widely read and easily reproducible in newspapers, other periodicals, and anthologies. Volumes of poetry were perceived as good reading to bring or send to the soldiers at the front--small volumes could fit into a pocket, unlike a bulky Victorian novel, and poems could be read in short bursts. Even more important, poetry is a powerfully allusive form, in which poets refer to larger cultural traditions of which they claim to be a part. Poets could refer to classical and national military victories and a national literary canon in order to instill pride and to make the Great War a part of military tradition. Poetry was thus a large part of what Vincent Sherry identifies as the "public civilian culture of English War." (7) Of two thousand wartime poets, Catherine Reilly has identified over five hundred women poets; their work accounts for a quarter of all verse published in Britain between 1914 and 1918. …


This paper describes the use of integrated heaters and closed-loop applications for temperature control of planar waveguide circuits. The history of AWG temperature control is discussed along with the difficulties in applying this control. Modeling and measurement results for external and integrated heaters will be presented. Fundamental considerations as well as modeling and measurement of the thermal characteristics of various physical constructions are discussed, and the rationale for applying these disciplines to a given problem is highlighted. In this work, we will present the evolution of these unique integrated thin film heaters and review thermal-optical modeling to experimental demonstration of arrayed waveguide gratings (AWG). The goal of the work is to provide a solution path for integration of multiple optical devices on a single substrate from a thereto-mechanical as well as optical discipline point of view.


The end of World War II caused numerous changes in the urban toponymy of Central and Eastern Europe. For instance, Brașov, one of the most important Romanian cities, bore the name Orașul Stalin ("Stalin city") for 10 years. It was an homage paid to the Soviet leader, whose name could be identified in another 13 oikonyms in the Eastern bloc, behind the Iron Curtain: Stalingrad — Volgograd (USSR), Stalin — Varna (Bulgaria), Stalinstadt — Eisenhüttenstadt (German Democratic Republic), Stalinograd — Katowice (Poland), Stalino — Donețk (Ukraine), and Sztálinváros — Dunaújváros (Hungary), among others. Some of the city names abusively altered during communism were readopted after the Revolution of 1989, which brought about the demise of the totalitarian regime in Romania. However, this was not the case with several hundred villages and communes whose names had been changed in 1964 because central authorities believed they displayed negative or inappropriate connotations.


Introduction: Upper limb deformity caused by massive weight loss can be corrected by brachioplasty. This plastic surgery improves limb contour, facilitates hygiene, and enables use of certain clothing. Objective: To present the cases, describe interventions and complications, and evaluate the satisfaction of patients who underwent brachioplasty after bariatric surgery. Method: Herein, 34 patients (including 33 females) aged 46.6 ± 12 years, who underwent brachioplasty after bariatric surgery, were recruited for the study. Interventions and complications associated with the surgical procedure were described, and the satisfaction of 33 patients was evaluated by a qualitative interview and specific questionnaire. Results: As a minor complication, slight dehiscence was observed in five patients (14.7%), but no major surgical com plications were seen. Some degree of satisfaction was reported by 81.8% of the patients, and the outcome achieved in 69.7% was close to that expected. Conclusions: The brachioplasty techniques that were used restored proper arm contour with a low rate of minor complications, and a high degree of satisfaction among the patients evaluated.


Devising policy instruments and interventions that can manage and mitigate the risks associated with microbial watercourse pollution is a significant concern of the contemporary environmental protection agenda. This paper reports on the work of a citizens' jury that sought to elicit reasoned public judgments about the nature and acceptability of these risks as they relate to the role of livestock farming, and what might constitute socially acceptable and sustainable pathways to their management. By exploring this issue through a logical and sequential process of risk characterisation, risk assessment and risk management, the paper reveals how citizens' juries can be used to contextualise and structure science-policy apprehensions of microbial watercourse pollution, and highlight where priorities for innovation and intervention might lie. Reactions and responses of participants to the jury process and its outputs, including issues of social and practical impact of the exercise, are also considered. The jury technique is argued to be useful in the way it cuts across disparate domains of responsibility and expertise for the governance of environmental risks, and therein challenges decision makers to think more broadly about the political, moral and economic framings of otherwise narrowly conceived science-policy problems.


In November 2014, OPEC announced a new strategy geared towards improving its market share. Oil-market analysts interpreted this as an attempt to squeeze higher-cost producers including US shale oil out of the market. Over the next year, crude oil prices crashed, with large repercussions for the global economy. We present a simple equilibrium model that explains the fundamental market factors that can rationalize such a "regime switch" by OPEC. These include: (i) the growth of US shale oil production; (ii) the slowdown of global oil demand; (iii) reduced cohesiveness of the OPEC cartel; (iv) production ramp-ups in other non-OPEC countries. We show that these qualitative predictions are broadly consistent with oil market developments during 2014-15. The model is calibrated to oil market data; it predicts accommodation up to 2014 and a market-share strategy thereafter, and explains large oil-price swings as well as realistically high levels of OPEC output.


It is well accepted that households increase consumption of goods and services in response to an unexpected increase in wealth. Consensus estimates of this wealth effect are in the range of 3 to 5 cents of additional consumption spending in the long run for each additional dollar of wealth. Economic theory also suggests that consumption of leisure, like consumption of goods and services, should increase with positive shocks to wealth. In this paper, we ask whether the run-up in equity prices during the 1990s led older workers to retire earlier than they had previously planned. We identify the effect by exploiting unique data on retirement expectations from the Health and Retirement Survey. Our econometric results suggest that respondents who held corporate equity immediately prior to the bull market of the 1990s retired, on average, 7 months earlier than other respondents.


Huge storage tanks of Vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) are often regarded as major hazard installation because VCM is such a kind of flammable, explosive and toxic gas that leakage of liquid VCM would induce fire, explosion and toxic accidents. In this paper, index system of the safety of VCM storage tanks was established by analyzing four main factors including 18 indexes, based on accidents statistic and technology experience. Taking VCM storage tank in a petrochemical plant as a case, AHP-Fuzzy method was applied to achieve single VCM storage tank safety classification. The study could help companies develop preventive measures and emergency planning to reduce casualties and property losses.


As Chicago's public housing is demolished to make way for new mixed-income communities, an unknown number of homeless squatters living illegally in vacant public housing units will also lose their housing. As illegal squatters, these residents have neither legal right to relocation services nor the right to return to revitalized developments. This study has two main research objectives. The first is to count the number of homeless people illegally living in Ida B. Wells, a public housing development slated for demolition. We hope that quantifying the extent of the homelessness problem at Wells will assist policymakers in developing an effective response. The second objective is to understand the squatters' current living situations, the factors that contributed to their homelessness, and their service needs.


A longstanding, successful and frequently controversial career spanning more than four decades establishes David Bowie as charged with contemporary cultural relevance. That David Bowie has influenced many lives is undeniable to his fans. He requisitions and challenges his audiences, through frequently indirect lyrics and images, to critically question sanity, identity and essentially what it means to be 'us' and why we are here.

Enchanting David Bowie explores David Bowie as an anti-temporal figure and argues that we need to understand him across the many media platforms and art spaces he intersects with including theatre, film, television, the web, exhibition, installation, music, lyrics, video, and fashion. This exciting collection is organized according to the key themes of space, time, body, and memory - themes that literally and metaphorically address the key questions and intensities of his output.


This work selectively reviews the literature on exchange rate target zones and their theoretical and empirical methodologies and examines whether they can be used to clarify to what extent this type of exchange rate regime could contribute to greater exchange rate stability. We discuss the main contributions of the first and second generations of exchange rate target zone models. In an attempt to reconcile the poor empirical performance of the Krugman (1991) model with the reality of exchange rate target zone regimes, this line of research integrates target zones with alternative underlying economic models, such as imperfect credibility, intra-marginal interventions and sticky price models. It was thus possible to understand the correlations observed between the exchange rate, its fundamentals determinants and the interest rate differential, and to explain the fact that the statistical distribution of the exchange rate is hump-shaped rather than U-shaped. This implies that the initial emphasis of target zone models on nonlinearities, "honeymoon effect", "smooth pasting" and marginal interventions has vanished. Exchange rate target zones are better described as similar to managed floating regimes with intra-marginal interventions, with some marginal interventions when the exchange rate reaches the edges of the floating band.


One of the prime objectives of many robotic systems is the ability to judge depth for self
navigation. This depth or range information in a three-dimensional scene has traditionally
been obtained from point correspondences in static two-dimensional images, a process often
known as photogrammetry. This approach has the major difficulty that point pairs corresponding
to a common three-dimensional scene point are not easy to identify automatically
in images. In more recent years a wide range of alternative approaches for estimating depth
have emerged. One such group of techniques makes use of multiple images from a single
moving sensor. Known as shape from motion algorithms, they often employ a three step
process to estimating depth. The first step involves estimating the optical or image flow.
The second step then estimates the global motion parameters of the image sensor from
the image flow. The final step involves estimating the relative depth from the image flow
and motion parameters. Thus in order to make reliable depth estimates, accurate image
flow measures are required. This thesis, therefore, concentrates on the detailed analysis of
techniques employed for accurately determining image flow.
Preliminary chapters introduce basic computer vision concepts and image flow algorithms.
As some of the terminology used in this field is ambiguous, particular care has been placed
on presenting a well defined set of terms, notably defining: "camera motion", the "motion
field", "optical flow" and "image flow". Also defined is the "aperture problem" which
describes a fundamental inability to perceive or measure motion in directions were no change
in the image intensity function is present. It is demonstrated that all techniques rely on the
presence of non-zero second order differential terms of the image sensor intensity function
to overcome the aperture problem.
Following chapters present a review and comparison of a number of image flow techniques,
with particular emphasis placed on gradient methods. It is argued that the fundamental
problem of measuring image flow is to determine the velocity in as small an aperture as
possible. Based on this criteria it is concluded that the technique based on a weighted least
squares solution of first order differential terms of the image intensity is the best generalized
second order method for achieving this objective.
The practical issues of regularization of the gradient calculations and the influence of noise
corruption are investigated. Conclusions drawn show the importance of smoothing and the
effects of excessive smoothing, including a loss of spatial precision and an increase in numerical
error due to the computation of small gradient terms. Importantly it is demonstrated
that spatial and temporal gradients are not independent and consequentially their respective
errors are correlated. It is thus shown that many image flow estimation techniques
exhibit a systematic bias.
An investigation into methods of assessing the quality of image flow estimates is also made.
Indicators of the quality of an estimate are required in order to evaluate the accuracy of
subsequent estimates made from them; particularly depth estimates, segmentation of the
image flow field, and determining the optimal aperture size for making image flow estimates.
Findings illustrate that the correlation between many commonly used, or proposed,
indicators of image flow error are poor.
Some investigative work into two innovative approaches for estimating image flow, based on
the use of colour and actual camera motion parameters, is presented. It is shown that both
colour and camera motion parameters provide an additional constraint to the estimation
procedure, which can be used to improve the resolution of the image flow field by allowing
smaller apertures to be considered. Preliminary results from these studies suggest that both
sources of additional information improve the robustness of the algorithms.
The final part of this thesis presents some quantitative and qualitative results for image
flow estimates from real imagery. A summary of conclusions is presented and a number of
advanced issues and suggested extensions are outlined.


Theileria parva is an obligate intracellular protozoan parasite which is the causative agent of East Coast fever, an acute, leukemia-like disease of cattle. The intralymphocytic stage of the parasite induces blastogenesis and clonal expansion of quiescent bovid lymphocytes. Experiments in our laboratory have shown a marked increase of casein kinase II- (CK II-) like activity in T. parva-transformed lymphocytes. We have also detected CK II activity in purified T. parva schizonts. To explore the significance of this increase, we used a Drosophila melanogaster CK II alpha cDNA probe [Saxena et al. (1987) Mol. Cell Biol. 7, 3409-3417] to isolate a T. parva genomic clone encoding a CK II catalytic subunit. The clone contains a 1.3-kb open reading frame coding for a predicted protein of 420 amino acids (M(r) 50,200). Northern blot analysis revealed a single transcript of 1.65 kb. The deduced T. parva CK II catalytic subunit sequence shows, over 321 residues comprising the C-terminus of the molecule, extensive identity with CK II alpha and alpha' sequences from both vertebrate and invertebrate organisms. The T. parva CK II subunit amino acid sequence displays 68% identity with the Drosophila alpha subunit and 67% with the Caenorhabditis elegans alpha subunit but only 58% and 56% sequence identity with the Saccharomyces cerevisiae alpha and alpha' subunits, respectively. Comparison of the T. parva sequence with higher eukaryotic alpha and alpha' sequences reveals that it is most identical with the alpha subunit. A unique component of the T. parva CK II alpha subunit is a 99 amino acid sequence at the N-terminus, which contains a sequence motif with features characteristic of signal peptides.


© 2017 Deputy of Research and Technology of Baqiyatallah Hospital Abstract Introduction: Models and research that has been so far presented in the field of stress and its Principles have more focus on of physiological and psychological factors. So this study aimed to investigate the basics of stress according to the Quran and Hadith informations. Materials and Methods: The method of this study based on the prevailing framework is qualitative and qualitative analysis of the content of the Quran and Hadith were used. Sources of analysis were Holy Quran, Mizan Alhekmeh, Hadith Al-Kafi, Tafsier Maozoii of the Holy Quran due to Javadi Amoli. The key words of stress in Arabic in Islamic sources (include warn, painful, Dire, Liver, Alboads, adversity, fear, sin, sorrow, tax, purchase, regret, sadness, joyless, Abject) were identified. Then through open coding each of the units of analysis, import data were coded on sheets. Then, through interviews and providing panels, based on the categories extracted from the sources, meet 20 experts in psychology and also religious sources, and were asked to submit their comments. Then, for reliability between coders to achieve a clear definition of categories and after training three experts for coding categories, the agreement (reliability) between coders was estimated of 76 percent. Results: Our date are showed that factors of hardship and tribulation, disunity, disobedience and defiance of the God; oppression; wavering faith and the will; neglect of Armageddon, Put partner for God and disbelieve; trampling on the rights of others; plight and caught up as a means of tests and examinations, fear and love of God; standing up and doing God's covenant, fear of guilt, disobedience of Imam Mahdi (AS); audit and investigation actions; to think about the next world; viewpoint and attitude towards worldly affairs; affluence; follow the whims and pleasures of the flesh and usury as bases stress in the Quran and hadiths are expressed as stress stimulators. Conclusion: Understanding the basics of stress from the perspective of religious resources can be the basis for identifying and developing local models for stress management and ways to deal with and diminishing stress.


This work is the intellectual biography of the greatest of American philosophers. Peirce was not only a pioneer in logic and the creator of a philosophical movement pragmatism he also proposed a phenomenological theory, quite different from that of Husserl, but equal in profundity; and long before Saussure, and in a totally different spirit, a semiotic theory whose present interest owes nothing to passing fashion and everything to its fecundity. Throughout his life Peirce wrote continually about sign and phenomenon (or phaneron). Consequently his writings must be studied chronologically if they are not to appear incomprehensible or contradictory. One of the merits of this book is to clarify Peirce's thought by analysing its development chronologically. We follow the evolution of Peirce's thought from his critique of Kantian logic and Cartesianism (Chap. I, "Leaving the Cave": 1851-1870) to his discovery of modern logic and pragmatism (Chap. II, "The Eclipse of the Sun": 1870-1887) and finally to a semiotic founded on a phenomenology the base of which is the logic of relations and the crowning-point scientific metaphysics (Chap. III, "The Sun Set Free": 1887-1914). The book includes a detailed chronology, a general bibliography, and an index.


Academic programs in Design have always faced the challenge of providing the best education in a sphere so changing as Design discipline itself. This is especially true within the current renewal of curricula derived from the implementation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and, to a much more general level, the adaptation of the discipline of Design to the new challenges posed by the Knowledge Society. In this context, we present the educational experience of a serious games design workshop, which has been conducted at the Universitat de Barcelona's Design BA. This pedagogical activity emphasises on three aspects which we believe are fundamental to the current pedagogy of design: to give a more transverse view of this discipline, to value the role of Design as a means of innovation in today's Knowledge Society, and to rethink the social function of Design.


PURPOSE
This study investigated the acute warm-up effects of modified-implement bowling on bowling speed, accuracy, perceived rhythm and perceived sensation with a regular ball.

METHODS
A total of 13 male amateur pace bowlers completed 3 sessions in a randomized, counterbalanced order. Each session comprised a warm-up of 21 progressive-effort deliveries with either a regular (156 g), 10% heavier (171.6 g), or 10% lighter (140.4 g) cricket ball followed by a 4-over pace-bowling assessment with a regular ball. Bowling speed was assessed with a radar gun, while accuracy was calculated via the radial error. Subjects rated their perceived exertion (0%-100%), rhythm (1-5 Likert scale), and sensation (1-5 Likert scale) after each delivery.

RESULTS
The linear mixed models revealed a significant effect for warm-up condition on perceived delivery sensation (F2,916.404 = 24.137, P < .001), with a significant pairwise difference between the regular- and heavier-ball warm-up conditions of 0.20 ± 0.07 points (estimated marginal mean ± 95% confidence interval, P < .001). There were no statistically significant effects for warm-up condition on bowling speed, accuracy, and perceived delivery rhythm.

CONCLUSIONS
These findings indicate that although the regular ball felt lighter to bowl with after using the heavier ball, there were no overall potentiating or detrimental effects of using this particular modified-implement warm-up on bowling speed, accuracy, and perceived rhythm in amateur pace bowlers. Future research is encouraged to trial other protocols for eliciting potentiation to ultimately enhance bowling speed in training or in shorter match formats (eg, Twenty20).


The islands of Naoshima, Teshima, and Inujima in Japan's Seto Inland Sea are places of pilgrimage for friends of contemporary art and architecture. Alongside works in public spaces as well as site-specific installations, the islands are also full of numerous museums and collections of contemporary art. This publication offers a comprehensive documentation of this unique cultural landscape surrounded by Japan's inland sea. The photographs by the Dutch photographer Iwan Baan, ranging from tiny details to giant panoramas, create a comprehensive portrait of the islands with their fluid transitions between nature, art, and architecture. Numerous texts introduce readers to the individual areas and projects that are either permanently on display on the islands or have taken place there temporarily. In addition, other essays deal with the island as a cultural concept and phenomenon. Among others, the book presents buildings by Kazuyo Sejima, Ruye Nishizawa, Tadao Ando, and Hiroshi Sambuichi.


Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is the second most widely used synthetic polymer plastic, where the largest consumption is in the building and construction sector. PVC is mainly produced through the polymerization of the monomer vinyl chloride (VCM), which is formed through the process of thermal dehydrochlorination (cracking) of 1,2-dichloroethane (EDC). One such cracker reactor is operated by INEOS in Porsgrunn, which is part of their VCM plant at the Rafnes site. Operation of this EDC cracker requires the largest heat input of all the units in the VCM plant, and is thus of special interest with respect to optimization of the plant. In this study a simulation model for EDC cracking has been developed, which is based on a plug flow reactor (PFR) model and includes coupling of a heat transfer model with a kinetic model. Two kinetic models were implemented; one global kinetic model and one more extensive radical chain reaction model, where important byproducts in addition to one promotor and one inhibitor are included. The extensive kinetic model is based on a reaction mechanism developed by Schirmeister et al., which involves 31 reactions and 24 species. The developed heat transfer model includes radiative and convective heat transfer from the surrounding flue gas in the cracking furnace to the reaction coils. Simulations were performed with regard to model verification and validation, and to evaluate the effect of temperature, promotor and inhibitor on the cracking process. In general, the developed simulation model is in good agreement with plant data from INEOS. The simulations suggest that an increase in temperature gives an increase in conversion and consequently a larger byproduct formation. A great sensitivity with respect to the feed concentration of the promotor, carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), is observed for the extensive kinetic model. With increased inlet concentration of the promotor, the conversion and byproduct formation are increased, while the selectivity is observed to decrease. No clear effect of the inhibitor, 1,1-dichloroethane (1,1-EDC) is detected for


In 2003, Amale Andraos and Dan Wood founded WORKac with a clear objective: reinventing the profession through new relations between architecture, city and nature. The Public Farm 1, the Edible Schoolyards in New York and the future Convention Center at Libreville, Gabon, are, among others, the result of this objective. Their work has been extensively awarded, including capturing the recent number one spot at 'Architect 50': Top 50 Firms in Design 2017 by Architect Magazine and AIANY Architect Firm of the year 2018.
In parallel to the profession, Andraos and Wood have become leading actors in different architecture schools. Amale Andraos has taught at Harvard, Pennsylvania and Princeton, among other schools; and Dan Wood at UC Berkeley, Princeton, Yale, Cooper Union, among others. Nowadays, both are faculty at Columbia GSAPP, where Amale Andraos holds as dean since 2014.
In this interview, Amale Andraos and Dan Wood pose their office as a subject in dialogue, which is, at the heart of their work; and through this, they build their way to think and to make architecture 'in the world'.


Global textile and apparel value chain is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 5% per year and reach US $2,100 bn by 2025. Increased by 8 percent, world exports of textiles and apparel in 2013 reach 766 billion dollars, which is four times higher than the average growth (2 percent) for world exports. Vietnam overtook United States and became the sixth-largest exports of textiles and apparel. However, the Free Trade Agreement greatly supports the U.S. textile and apparel industry, and is expected to impact American employment in this sector since its labor-intensive nature. Based on historical data (1989-2014), this paper will perform a forecasting of U.S. total textiles and apparel export to the world for next 10 years (2015-2025) with two forecasting models: regression model and ARIMA model. The forecasting is then adjusted by taking into account of the trend and authors' future expectations.


Background and Aim: Lack of attention to the principles of ergonomics and neglecting it in workplaces, will cause injuries and great expenses for employees, employers and reduces the efficiency and effectiveness of people. The aim of the present study was to determine the musculoskeletal disorder risk factors in the office staff with the ROSA method and its relation with efficiency. Methods: This study was an analytic study. The office staff of the Isfahan University of Medical Sciences were examined in 2015. The used tools were the efficiency and Nordic questionnaires. The staff posture was investigated with the Rapid Office Strain Assessment (ROSA) method. The SPSS 20 statistical software and the Pearson correlation coefficient statistical test were used for analyzing data. Results: In this study, the average age of the 56 studied employees was 40.75±6.62 years and the work experience average of 16.67±6.12 years. It is said that 41.1% of staff had high efficiency and 42.9% and 16.1% of the staff had mediocre and low efficiency respectively. The average score of staff efficiency was obtained 82.7±23.5 which was in mediocre level. The most frequency percent in ROSA method was score of 5 (42.9%). The ROSA score had an indirect relationship and significant correlation with efficiency (R=0.752, P<0.001). Conclusion: The efficiency of the office staff was medium and according to the average score of ROSA, in terms of ergonomic factor risks, the staff were in a warning stage. Therefore, in order to apply the principles of ergonomics in workplaces, job and equipment will have a significant role in increasing the efficiency of any organization and industrial organizations.


This study was conducted to investigate the possible protective role of (CoQ10) on reproductive dysfunction of male rats induced by sodium fluoride (NaF). thirty two rats were divided into four even groups and treated for 56 days as follows: the first group served as control (C) The second group (G1) received coenzyme Q10 at dose of 10 mg/Kg.B.W; while third group (G2) received 100ppmsodium fluoride in drinking water and fourth groups (G3) received NaF 100 ppm and CoQ10 10 mg/Kg.B.W for 56 days. The results showed that exposure of rats to NaF caused decrease in serum testosterone (T) and luteinizing hormones (LH) concentrations. Whereas Administration of CoQ10 caused an increase the concentrations of theses hormones in group G3 as compared with group G2. Testicular morphometric and histopathological alterations were observed in group G2 in the form of marked microvacuolation in the basal level of germinal cells, amyloid deposited within seminiferous tubules with disarrangement and depletion of germ cells. Whereas testicular histological alterations were improved in rats treated with CoQ10. In conclusion, the results of the present study showed that use of Co Q10 can alleviating the deleterious effects on male reproductive function following exposure to NaF, may be via improvement the testicular functions or other related endocrine glands.


Pavement evaluation is performed to assess the functional and structural conditions of roadways for routine monitoring in order to select proper corrective actions. Functional condition is related to the roughness and ride quality of a highway section. Structural condition deals with a pavement's ability to withstand traffic loads and environmental conditions, which can be measured by determining material properties, layer thicknesses, and surface deflections. The evaluation of pavement structural capacity and integrity is an important component of Pavement Management System (PMS) to assist in the selection of suitable maintenance and rehabilitation strategies. However, testing of in-service pavements is a major challenge due to traffic delays, lane closure, and safety of the travelling public and the highway workers. Traffic-speed pavement evaluation methods offer the potential to cost-effectively characterize the structural capacity of the road network without major delays or safety risks during measurements. These evaluation devices include innovative technologies such as continuous deflection testing including the Rolling Wheel Deflectometer (RWD) that collect data at traffic speeds that can be used to evaluate pavement structures. This study describes a detailed field evaluation of the RWD system in Louisiana in which pavement sites representing a wide array of pavement conditions were tested. The RWD consists of semitrailer applying a standard load on the pavement structure by means of a regular dual-tire assembly over the rear single axle. The RWD measures wheel deflections at the pavement surface by means of a spatially coincident method, which compares the profiles of the surface in both undeflected and deflected states. As the RWD travels on top of the pavement, triangulation lasers mounted are used to measure surface deflections. In this study, field measurements were used to assess the repeatability of RWD measurements, the effect of truck speeds, and to study the relationship between RWD and falling weight deflectometer (FWD) deflection measurements and pavement conditions. Based on the results of the experimental program, it was determined that the repeatability of RWD measurements was acceptable with an average coefficient of variation at all test speeds of 15 percent. In addition, the influence of the testing speed on the measured deflections was minimal. This study also developed and validated a direct and simple model for determining the pavement structural number (SN) using RWD deflection data. To develop this model, the relationship between the average RWD surface deflection and the peak FWD deflection was investigated. The developed model correlates a pavement's SN to two RWD-measured properties (average RWD deflection and RWD index). Results showed a good agreement between SN calculations obtained from FWD and RWD deflection testing. While the developed model is independent of the pavement thickness and layer properties, it provides promising results as an indicator of structural integrity of the pavement structure at the network level. The fitting statistics support the use of the proposed model as a screening tool for identifying structurally deficient pavements at the network level.


Theophilus (Gottlieb) Siegfried Bayer (1694-1738) is usually credited as the first person in modern times to address the history of the Greeks in Bactria in a serious way. Bayer's Historia Regni Graecorum Bactriani, brings together numismatic and historical research. He describes two Graeco-Bactrian coins which he was able to examine first hand, and collects and comments upon the Classical historical sources on the Greek kingdoms of Bactria and India. It was published in St. Petersburg in 1738, where Bayer, a German, held an academic position. In this short article, I am interested in two questions surrounding the Historia Regni Graecorum Bactriani. First (and relatively briefly), how Bayer conducted his research without first hand access to source material and without himself travelling in Bactria – or indeed further east than St. Petersburg. Secondly, the way in which Bayer's scholarship was received by some of his contemporaries and by later writers, outside the field of Bactrian studies.


Point 1: Deep learning algorithms are revolutionizing how hypothesis generation, pattern recognition, and prediction occurs in the sciences. In the life sciences, particularly biology and its subfields,  the use of deep learning is slowly but steadily increasing. However, prototyping or development of tools for practical applications remains in the domain of experienced coders. Furthermore, many tools can be quite costly and difficult to put together without expertise in Artificial intelligence (AI) computing.Point 2: We built a biological species classifier that leverages existing open-source tools and libraries. We designed the corresponding tutorial for users with basic skills in python and a small, but well-curated image dataset. We included annotated code in form of a Jupyter Notebook that can be adapted to any image dataset, ranging from satellite images, animals to bacteria. The prototype developer is publicly available and can be adapted for citizen science as well as other applications not envisioned in this paper.Point 3: We illustrate our approach with a case study of 219 images of 3 three seastar species. We show that with minimal parameter tuning of the AI pipeline we can create a classifier with superior accuracy. We include additional approaches to understand the misclassified images and to curate the dataset to increase accuracy.Point 4: The power of AI approaches is becoming increasingly accessible. We can now readily build and prototype species classifiers that can have a great impact on research that requires species identification and other types of image analysis. Such tools have implications for citizen science, biodiversity monitoring, and a wide range of ecological applications.


&NA; Figure. No Caption available. BACKGROUND: Thorough, consistent pain assessment and reassessment are critical to guide and evaluate interventions designed to improve pain. OBJECTIVES: Based on a literature review about functional pain assessment, clinicians selected and then implemented the Defense and Veterans Pain Rating Scale (DVPRS) as a pain assessment instrument option in a comprehensive cancer center. METHODS: The DVPRS was added as a pain assessment instrument in clinical oncology practice. From postimplementation chart review and clinician satisfaction surveys, the DVPRS was evaluated for the following: improved communication among patients, nurses, and providers regarding patient pain intensity; consistency by nurses and providers when treating pain intensity (mild, moderate, or severe); and clinician satisfaction using the DVPRS to assess a patient's functional status along with pain intensity. FINDINGS: Seventy‐eight percent of nurses surveyed (N = 64) preferred the DVPRS over any other pain assessment tool. Inpatient and ambulatory patients surveyed (N = 144) agreed that a Likert‐type scale in the DVPRS was easier to understand, easier to use, and better in describing their pain than the numeric rating scale.


In her article "A Moral Reading of Mahfouz's Fountain and Tomb (Hekayat Haretna)," Amal Al-Leithy analyses Naguib Mahfouz's Fountain and Tomb. In Al-Leithy's reading, Mahfouz delineates a gloomy picture of modern humanity still living in a struggle against destitution, ignorance, squalor, and the power of superstition. Society is portrayed as seeped in hopelessness as Mahfouz stresses the physical and moral degradation of his protagonists. He draws a dismal picture of life as swinging between two poles: the fountain of life and the tomb of death. In a symbolic alley in 1920s Cairo, Mahfouz describes humanity's predicament swaying between meaningfulness and absurdity and between the belief in God and belief in science. Through the episodes of the text, Mahfouz does not only refer to the implausibility of maintaining the sanctity previously associated with institutionalized religion if humanity wants to get rid of absurdity, but he also demythologizes the idea of an all-controlling, omnipotent God. Since he is not a dispassionate bystander, but, rather, a committed thinker with a clear stance, he asserts his belief in the dethronement of religion by modern science represented by the demolition of the famous takiya (a special building for mystic Sufis) in the alley and by the end of the myth of the High Sheikh, a God-like figure that has never been seen by any of the residents of the alley. Amal Al-Leithy, "A Moral Reading of Mahfouz's Fountain and Tomb (Hekayat Haretna)" page 2 of 9 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 10.3 (2008):