We propose the first black-box construction of non-malleable commitments according to the standard notion of non-malleability with respect to commitment. Our construction additionally only requires a constant number of rounds and is based only on (black-box use of) one-way functions. Prior to our work, no black-box construction of non-malleable commitments was known (except for relaxed notions of security) in any (polynomial) number of rounds based on any cryptographic assumption. This closes the wide gap existent between black-box and non-black-box constructions for the problem of non-malleable commitments. Our construction relies on (and can be seen as a generalization of) the recent non-malleable commitment scheme of Goyal (STOC 2011). We also show how to get black-box constructions for a host of other cryptographic primitives. We extend our construction to get constant-round concurrent non-malleable commitments, constant-round multi-party coin tossing, and non-malleable statistically hiding commitments (satisfying the notion of non-malleability with respect to opening). All of the mentioned results make only a black-box use of one-way functions. Our primary technical contribution is a novel way of implementing the proof of consistency typically required in the constructions of non-malleable commitments (and other related primitives). We do this by relying on ideas from the ``zero-knowledge from secure multi-party computation" paradigm of Ishai, Kushilevitz, Ostrovsky, and Sahai (STOC 2007). We extend in a novel way this ``computation in the head" paradigm (which can be though of as bringing powerful error-correcting codes into purely computational setting). To construct a non-malleable commitment scheme, we apply our computation in the head techniques to the recent (constant-round) construction of Goyal. Along the way, we also present a simplification of the construction of Goyal where a part of the protocol is implemented in an information theoretic manner. Such a simplification is crucial for getting a black-box construction. This is done by making use of pair wise-independent hash functions and strong randomness extractors. We show that our techniques have multiple applications, as elaborated in the paper. Hence, we believe our techniques might be useful in other settings in future.


ABSTRACT During molt, birds replace their feathers to retain feather quality and maintain flight performance. However, wing gaps inherent of this process can also reduce flight capacities, which could be detrimental when foraging or escaping predators. Still, many bird species will not cease their normal activities when molting. In this study, we investigated whether and how birds adjust their escape flight behavior to compensate for the reduction in performance when flying with wing gaps. Using stereoscopic high-speed videography, we filmed 146 upward-directed escape flights of 19 and 22 pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca) with and without simulated molt gaps, respectively. We then reconstructed the three-dimensional body and wing movements throughout each maneuver. By comparing flights with and without gaps, we determined how wing molt gaps affected wing morphology and escape flight performance, and how the birds adjusted their flight kinematics in order to negate possible negative aerodynamic effects. Our manipulations resulted in a lower second moment of area of the wings, but flight speed and net aerodynamic force production did not differ between the two groups. We found that in manipulated birds, the size of the gap was reduced as the flight feathers adjacent to the gap had moved towards each other. Moreover, the experimental decrease in second moment of area was associated with an increase in angle of attack, whereas changes in wingbeat-induced speeds were associated with variations in aerodynamic force production. This suggests that the control of escape flight in molting birds might be modular, allowing relatively simple flight control, thus reducing the burden on the neuro-muscular flight control system. Highlighted Article: To compensate for the detrimental aerodynamic effect of wing molt on flight, upward escaping pied flycatchers reduce the molt gap size and increase the angle of attack of the wing.


OBJECTIVE To compare the efficacy of an extended insulin regimen using correction of hyperketonemia as endpoint with a more conventional regimen in the treatment of diabetic ketoacidosis. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A total of 22 patients admitted to a Belfast teaching hospital with clinical and biochemical features of diabetic ketoacidosis (pH < 7.25 and/or bicarbonate < 16 mmol/l) were randomized to either conventional or extended insulin regimens. In the conventional regimen, insulin was administered at 5 U/h until near-normoglycemia (blood glucose ≤ 10 mmol/l) and then administered at a reduced rate until clinical recovery. In the extended regimen, administration of insulin at 5 U/h was continued beyond attainment of normoglycemia, until resolution of hyperketonemia (3-hydroxybutyrate < 0.5 mmol/l). Main outcome measures were 3-hydroxybutyrate and bicarbonate levels during the 24 h after attainment of near-normoglycemia. RESULTS After near-normoglycemia, correction of hyperketonemia was achieved earlier with the extended treatment (5.9 ± 0.8 vs. 21.8 ± 3.4 h, P = 0.0004 [mean ± SD]). The area under the curve of 3-hydroxybutyrate against time for 24 h after near-normoglycemia was reduced with the extended treatment (24.9 ± 3.8 vs. 55.9 ± 6.7 mmol·l−1·h−1 P = 0.001). These differences remained statistically significant after adjustment for higher baseline levels of 3-hydroxybutyrate at near-normoglycemia in the extended treatment group. Bicarbonate levels at 6 and 12 h after near-normoglycemia were not significantly different between groups. CONCLUSIONS The extended insulin regimen, which was easy to implement at ward level, produced a more rapid resolution of ketosis than the conventional regimen.


A new paradigm of 'process knowledge' has emerged in recent years, distinct from the dominant 'product knowledge' paradigm in social work. While the latter refers to existent knowledge, which may be applied, the former refers to the development of knowledge about the 'methodology of practice decision making', focusing on the processes by which judgements are made. At its heart is the emerging idea of a reflexivity for practice, but studies have been, until recently, theoretical. A very small number of empirical studies have begun to identify some key elements of process knowledge. These have developed a range of concepts relating to critical appraisal, hypothesis development and hypothesis testing which characterize social work process knowledge. These include, for example, focused attention, querying information, causal inferences, partial case, procedural, and speculative hypotheses. A process of quasi triangulation is characteristic of social work practice methodology, together with a combination of inductive and deductive thinking. This paper seeks to develop our understanding by focusing on how social workers develop and appraise hypotheses, and in particular how the substantive content of hypotheses emerges (these enable social workers to make sense of, define, and respond to, situations). To understand this, the notion of rules is used, and social workers emerge as analysts employing three types of rules: substantive, application, and practice rules. A significant link between process knowledge and the content of product knowledge is identified in the form of technical language. The concept of 'probabilistic causation' is identified as a key epistemological dimension in the conduct of rigorous practice.


Introduction Among the extensive collections from the Des Moines series, or Lower Coal Measures, of Missouri, sent during the last few years to the United States National Museum or the United States Geological Survey,[†][1] is a series of specimens which throw much interesting light on the unique and somewhat problematic species described by Professor Lesquereux as Lepidodendron cyclostigma .[‡][2]

Pitcher's coal mine, in Henry county, the source of most of the new material, seems, as indicated both by the associated species and by the matrix, to have been the source of the types of the original species, now numbers 5501 and 5502 of the Lacoe collection in the National Museum. In any event it is certain, as is shown by the records and labels, that the fossils described by Lesquereux came from the same vicinity. The species has not been found elsewhere.

Since the recently acquired material includes examples exhibiting many . . .

 [1]: #fn-2
 [2]: #fn-3


Abstract. A new way to document and visualize the as-built condition of an urban tunnel project with high accuracy is described in this paper, based on recent developments of laser scanning technology. In traditional surveying, the components of a tunnel are organized on the basis of the location of stations and offsets along the project alignment specified in the drawings. It is difficult for people without an engineering background to understand the information involved in surveying reports, drawings, and engineering data. However, in the interest of transparency, public agencies that commission construction projects have to make project information available to government officials and to the general public. This paper discusses the combined use of laser scanning technology and web mapping services to improve the documentation and visualization of an urban metro tunnel. Laser scanning technology is introduced to perform the surveyor's task, document the as-built condition, and geo-reference the construction elements. A set of panoramic pictures is generated by laser scanning that allows for taking measurements and extracting 3D coordinates. An XML file that contains geo-reference information is appended to each panoramic picture. Using application programming interface (API), this information is referenced to a web mapping service. A case study of the CTA Red line Tunnel in Chicago, IL demonstrates this method in a real life project.


Many state-of-art mobile application testing frameworks (e.g., Dynodroid [1], EvoDroid [2]) enjoy Emma [3] or other code coverage libraries to measure the coverage achieved. The underlying assumption for these frameworks is availability of the app source code. Yet, application markets and security researchers face the need to test third-party mobile applications in the absence of the source code. There exists a number of frameworks both for manual and automated test generation that address this challenge. However, these frameworks often do not provide any statistics on the code coverage achieved, or provide coarse-grained ones like a number of activities or methods covered. At the same time, given two test reports generated by different frameworks, there is no way to understand which one achieved better coverage if the reported metrics were different (or no coverage results were provided). To address these issues we designed a framework called BBOXTESTER that is able to generate code coverage reports and produce uniform coverage metrics in testing without the source code. Security researchers can automatically execute applications exploiting current state-of-art tools, and use the results of our framework to assess if the security-critical code was covered by the tests. In this paper we report on design and implementation of BBOXTESTER and assess its efficiency and effectiveness.


Measuring the semantic similarity between words is an important component in various tasks on the web such as relation extraction, community mining, document clustering, and automatic metadata extraction. Despite the usefulness of semantic similarity measures in these applications, accurately measuring semantic similarity between two words (or entities) remains a challenging task. We propose an empirical method to estimate semantic similarity using page counts and text snippets retrieved from a web search engine for two words. Specifically, we define various word co-occurrence measures using page counts and integrate those with lexical patterns extracted from text snippets. To identify the numerous semantic relations that exist between two given words, we propose a novel pattern extraction algorithm and a pattern clustering algorithm. The optimal combination of page counts-based co-occurrence measures and lexical pattern clusters is learned using support vector machines. The proposed method outperforms various baselines and previously proposed web-based semantic similarity measures on three benchmark data sets showing a high correlation with human ratings. Moreover, the proposed method significantly improves the accuracy in a community mining task.


This paper presents a unified framework that optimizes out-of-core programs by exploiting locality and parallelism, and reducing communication overhead. For out-of-core problems where the data set sizes far exceed the size of the available in-core memory, it is particularly important to exploit the memory hierarchy by optimizing the I/O accesses. We present algorithms that consider both iteration space (loop) and data space (file layout) transformations in a unified framework. We show that the performance of an out-of-core loop nest containing references to out-of-core arrays can be improved by using a suitable combination of file layout choices and loop restructuring transformations. Our approach considers array references one-by-one and attempts to optimize each reference for parallelism and locality. When there are references for which parallelism optimizations do not work, communication is vectorized so that data transfer can be performed before the innermost loop. Results from hand-compiles on IBM SP-2 and Inter Paragon distributed-memory message-passing architectures show that this approach reduces the execution times and improves the overall speedups. In addition, we extend the base algorithm to work with file layout constraints and show how it is useful for optimizing programs that consist of multiple loop nests.


The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) associated tuberculosis (TB) epidemic remains an enormous challenge to TB control in countries with a high prevalence of HIV. In their 1999 article entitled 'Will DOTS do it?', De Cock and Chaisson questioned whether the World Health Organization's DOTS Strategy could control this epidemic. Data over the past 10 years have clearly shown that DOTS is insufficient as a single TB control intervention in such settings because it does not address the fundamental epidemiological interactions between TB and HIV. Immunodeficiency is a principal driver of this epidemic, and the solution must therefore include immune recovery using antiretroviral therapy (ART). Thus, in the era of global ART scale-up, we now ask the question, 'Will ART do it?' ART reduces the risk of TB by 67% (95%CI 61-73), halves TB recurrence rates, reduces mortality risk by 64-95% in cohorts and prolongs survival in patients with HIV-associated drug-resistant TB. However, the cumulative lifetime risk of TB in HIV-infected individuals is a function of time spent at various CD4-defined levels of risk, both before and during ART. Current initiation of ART at low CD4 cell counts (by which time much HIV-associated TB has already occurred) and low effective coverage greatly undermine the potential impact of ART at a population level. Thus, while ART has proven a critical intervention for case management of HIV-associated TB, much of its preventive potential for TB control is currently being squandered. Much earlier ART initiation with high coverage is required if ART is to substantially influence the incidence of TB.


The current state of knowledge regarding nonstationary processes is significantly poorer then in the case of stationary signals. In many applications, signals are treated as stationary only because in this way it is easier to analyze them; in fact, they are nonstationary. Nonstationary processes are undoubtedly more difficult to analyze and their diversity makes application of universal tools impossible. In this paper we propose a new class of generalized regression neural networks working in nonstationary environment. The generalized regession neural networks (GRNN) studied in this paper are able to follow changes of the best model, i.e., time-varying regression functions. The novelty is summarized as follows: 1) We present adaptive GRNN tracking time-varying regression functions. 2) We prove convergence of the GRNN based on general learning theorems presented in Section IV. 3) We design in detail special GRNN based on the Parzen and orthogonal series kernels. In each case we precise conditions ensuring convergence of the GRNN to the best models described by regression function. 4) We investigate speed of convergence of the GRNN and compare performance of specific structures based on the Parzen kernel and orthogonal series kernel. 5) We study various nonstationarities (multiplicative, additive, "scale change," "movable argument") and design in each case the GRNN based on the Parzen kernel and orthogonal series kernel.


Automatic visual scene understanding is one of the ultimate goals in computer vision and has been in the field's focus since its early beginning. Despite continuous effort over several years, applications such as autonomous driving and robotics are still unsolved and subject to active research. In recent years, improved probabilistic methods became a popular tool for current state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms. Additionally, high resolution digital imaging devices and increased computational power became available. By leveraging these methodical and technical advancements current methods obtain encouraging results in well defined environments for robust object class detection, tracking and pixel-wise semantic scene labeling and give rise to renewed hope for further progress in scene understanding for real environments. This thesis improves state-of-the-art scene understanding with monocular cameras and aims for applications on mobile platforms such as service robots or driver assistance for automotive safety. It develops and improves approaches for object class detection and semantic scene labeling and integrates those into models for global scene reasoning which exploit context at different levels. To enhance object class detection, we perform a thorough evaluation for people and pedestrian detection with the popular sliding window framework. In particular, we address pedestrian detection from a moving camera and provide new benchmark datasets for this task. As frequently used single-window metrics can fail to predict algorithm performance, we argue for application-driven image-based evaluation metrics, which allow a better system assessment. We propose and analyze features and their combination based on visual and motion cues. Detection performance is evaluated systematically for different feature-classifiers combinations which is crucial to yield best results. Our results indicate that cue combination with complementary features allow improved performance. Despite camera ego-motion, we obtain significantly better detection results for motion-enhanced pedestrian detectors. Realistic onboard applications demand real-time processing with frame rates of 10 Hz and higher. In this thesis we propose to exploit parallelism in order to achieve the required runtime performance for sliding window object detection. In a case study we employ commodity graphics hardware for the popular histograms of oriented gradients (HOG) detection approach and achieve a significant speed-up compared to a baseline CPU implementation. Furthermore, we propose an integrated dynamic conditional random field model for joint semantic scene labeling and object detection in highly dynamic scenes. Our model improves semantic context modeling and fuses low-level filter bank responses with more global object detections. Recognition performance is increased for object as well as scene classes. Integration over time needs to account for different dynamics of objects and scene classes but yields more robust results. Finally, we propose a probabilistic 3D scene model that encompasses multi-class object detection, object tracking, scene labeling, and 3D geometric relations. This integrated 3D model is able to represent complex interactions like inter-object occlusion, physical exclusion between objects, and geometric context. Inference in this model allows to recover 3D scene context and perform 3D multi-object tracking from a mobile observer, for objects of multiple categories, using only monocular video as input. Our results indicate that our joint scene tracklet model for the evidence collected over multiple frames substantially improves performance. All experiments throughout this thesis are performed on challenging real world data. We contribute several datasets that were recorded from moving cars in urban and sub-urban environments. Highly dynamic scenes are obtained while driving in normal traffic on rural roads. Our experiments support that joint models, which integrate semantic scene labeling, object detection and tracking, are well suited to improve the individual stand-alone tasks' performance.


A Severan mosaic in the South Stoa in Corinth, Greece, depicts a victorious athlete and a seated, semidraped goddess. Holding an inscribed shield as well as a vessel from which water streams into a basin, she recalls two famous Corinthian trademarks, the Aphrodite of Acrocorinth and the nymph Peirene. They are but two reference points among her many explicit and implicit associations, and it is argued that her syncretic form would have inspired rich and textured readings by contemporary viewers. The mosaic is interpreted as an allegory of the Isthmian Games and the goddess as Corinth herself. The inscription on the shield, "eutychia" (good luck), reflects on the fortune of the victor and offers the same to the viewer. Iconographic and contextual analyses offer insights into the circumstances in which the work was installed, maintained, and viewed, as well as its relationship to broader concerns in Corinth and across the Roman empire. Color images of some of the figures herein can be found under this article's abstract on AJA Online.


The objective of this study was to evaluate whether the nitric oxide (NO) released from vascular endothelial cells would decrease vessel wall oxygen consumption by decreasing the energy expenditure of mechanical work by vascular smooth muscle. The oxygen consumption rate of arteriolar walls in rat cremaster muscle was determined in vivo during NO-dependent and -independent vasodilation on the basis of the intra- and perivascular oxygen tension (Po2) measured by phosphorescence quenching laser microscopy. NO-dependent vasodilation was induced by increased NO production due to increased blood flow, whereas NO-independent vasodilation was induced by topical administration of papaverine. The energy efficiency of vessel walls was evaluated by the variable ratio of circumferential wall stress (amount of mechanical work) to vessel wall oxygen consumption rate (energy cost) in the arteriole between normal and vasodilated conditions. NO-dependent and -independent dilation increased arteriolar diameters by 13 and 17%, respectively, relative to the values under normal condition. Vessel wall oxygen consumption decreased significantly during both NO-dependent and -independent vasodilation compared with that under normal condition. However, vessel wall oxygen consumption during NO-independent vasodilation was significantly lower than that during NO-dependent vasodilation. On the other hand, there was no significant difference between the energy efficiency of vessel walls during NO-dependent and -independent vasodilation, suggesting the decrease in vessel wall oxygen consumption produced by NO to be related to reduced mechanical work of vascular smooth muscle.


A set diagram represents the membership relation among data elements. It is often visualized as secondary information on top of primary information, such as the spatial positions of elements on maps and charts. Visualizing the temporal evolution of such set diagrams as well as their primary features is quite important; however, conventional approaches have only focused on the temporal behavior of the primary features and do not provide an effective means to highlight notable transitions within the set relationships. This paper presents an approach for generating a stepwise animation between set diagrams by decomposing the entire transition into atomic changes associated with individual data elements. The key idea behind our approach is to optimize the ordering of the atomic changes such that the synthesized animation minimizes unwanted set occlusions by considering their depth ordering and reduces the gaze shift between two consecutive stepwise changes. Experimental results and a user study demonstrate that the proposed approach effectively facilitates the visual identification of the detailed transitions inherent in dynamic set diagrams.


Since the 1970s Ordovician carbonate rocks from Kazakhstan have provided well-preserved radiolarian faunas and this country remains one of the most important areas in the world to learn about Lower Palaeozoic radiolarian taxonomy and biostratigraphy. Here we describe a new lower Arenigian radiolarian assemblage and discuss all currently available Ordovician radiolarian data from Kazakhstan. The newly discovered assemblage is curiously oligospecific, despite its good state of preservation. Four morphospecies are recognised, including a new genus and two new species : Inanihella bakanasensis (NAZAROV) and I.(?) akzhala n.sp, which characterise the assemblage, together with Triplococcus acanthicus n.gen n.sp. and Proventocitum sp.cf. P. procerulum. This is the oldest radiolarian assemblage from limestone lithologies of Kazakhstan and one of the very few Lower Ordovician assemblages discovered worldwide. We specify in this study the age range of the succeeding Haplentactinia armillata-Proventocitum procerulum assemblage, defined earlier by Nazarov and Popov [1980], which now covers the middle Arenigian -- lower Llanvirnian (lower Abereiddian) interval. The succeeding upper Llanvirnian (Llandeilian) Haplentactinia juncta -- Inanigutta unica assemblage reported by Nazarov and Popov [1980] reflects a substantial increase in radiolarian diversity, due largely to the introduction of new members of the family Inaniguttidae.


On 30th June 2002 Pierluigi Collina, universally acknowledged to be the world's finest referee, officiated over Brazil and Germany in the World Cup Final. A matter of weeks later, he was back on the field refereeing a Italian Cup first round encounter between Sampdoria and Siena. This unique vantage point makes Collina perfectly placed to comment on the game, on the stars, the media and the matches he has overseen, including England's world cup victory over Argentina and Manchester United's dramatic treble winning European Cup Final. "The Rules of the Game" takes us as never before into the world of the referee, the preparation needed for each game, the managing of players and the other officials and the camaraderie behind the scenes. Collina describes how it feels to make a difficult decision, the pressures from the crowd and from the players while taking us through the most significant matches he has refereed. But more than anything this is Pierluigi Collina's chance to speak out about the game he loves. His passionate, expert and, sometimes controversial views are compulsory reading for anyone with a passing interest in the beautiful game. 'In my opinion, Collina is the best referee in the game' - David Beckham.


The experience of dyslexic students in higher education is examined in this thesis in
four studies: two major and two minor. The first study focuses on autobiographical
information and describes how the hypothesis and the general theme of the study
emerged from personal experience. Study two presents a set of qualitative case
studies, which employ Jonathan Smith's Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
(IPA) technique in order to generate a set of key themes (looking for a reason, social
comparison, low self-esteem and need for appropriate support) which are then
developed into the questionnaire which constitutes study three. The questionnaire
comprised 54 items and was retumed by 86 respondents, 38 male and 48 female. The
high agree response rate; confirmed that the statements generated accurately reflected
the views of respondents. Furthermore, a rich source of data was gathered from the
free comment section. The information gathered from the three stUdies is then used to
develop a preliminary model of dyslexia support, suggesting provision of support across
the whole institution, rather than allocation of support on an individual basis. The model
is evaluated in study four, via peer group review in the form of a questionnaire.
The first chapter introduces the theoretical background to the thesis, reviewing the
relevant psychological literature and highlighting the situation in practice and policy in the
present system.
Chapter two presents the writer's own personal experience in the form of an
autobiographical case study (study one), thus presenting the reasoning behind the
generation of the hypothesis explored within the thesis.
Chapter three offers the rationale behind the employment of mixed methods within the
thesis, a variety of qualitative methodological tools are discussed, including Interpretative
phenomenological analysis (IPA); grounded theory and symbolic interaction ism. Chapter
four discusses the underlying theoretical/philosophical assumptions behind the utilisation
of the particular qualitative method (IPA) employed in the analysis of the case studies
presented in study two.
4
Chapters five to eight evaluate and discuss the findings from studies two and three and
consider the implications that these have in relation to the restrictions of the present
system; offering a preliminary model of support for dyslexic students in higher education.
Chapter nine presents the findings from study four (peer review questionnaire), evaluating
the preliminary model of dyslexia support put forward in the previous chapter.
The thesis concludes with a review of its findings (Chapter 10) and a discussion of its
contribution to a wider understanding of the issues involved in supporting dyslexic
students in higher education, together with implications for policy, practice and pedagogy.


Atmospheric particle size distributions were measured on Crete island, Greece in the Eastern Mediterranean during an intensive field campaign between 28 August and 20 October, 2005. Our instrumentation combined a differential mobility particle sizer (DMPS) and an aerodynamic particle sizer (APS) and measured number size distributions in the size range 0.018 µm–10 µm. Four time periods with distinct aerosol characteristics were discriminated, two corresponding to marine and polluted air masses, respectively. In marine air, the sub-µm size distributions showed two particle modes centered at 67 nm and 195 nm having total number concentrations between 900 and 2000 cm −3. In polluted air masses, the size distributions were mainly unimodal with a mode typically centered at 140 nm, with number concentrations varying between 1800 and 2900 cm −3. Super-µm particles showed number concentrations in the range from 0.01 to 2.5 cm −3 without any clear relation to air mass origin. A small number of short-lived particle nucleation events were recorded, where the calculated particle formation rates ranged between 1.1–1.7 cm −3 s −1. However, no particle nu-cleation and growth events comparable to those typical for the continental boundary layer were observed. Particles concentrations (Diameter <50 nm) were low compared to continental boundary layer conditions with an average concentration of 300 cm −3. The production of sulfuric acid and its subsequently condensation on preexisting particles was examined with the use of a simplistic box model. These calculations suggested that the daytime evolution of the Aitken particle population was governed mainly by coagulation and that particle formation was absent during most days.


At the present time, Bayesian networks (BNs), presumably the most popular uncertainty inference framework, are still widely used as standalone systems. When the problem itself is distributed, domain knowledge has to be centralized and unified before a single BN can be created. Alternatively, separate BNs describing related sub-domains or different aspects of the same domain may be created, but it is difficult to combine them for problem solving even if the interdependent relations between variables across these BNs are available. Existing approaches have greatly restricted expressiveness and applicability as they either impose very strong constraints on the distributed domain knowledge or only focus on a specific application. What is missing is a principled framework that can support probabilistic inference over separately developed BNs.
In this thesis, we propose a theoretical framework, named Semantically-Linked Bayesian Networks (SLBN), to fill this blank. SLBN is distinguished from existing work in that it defines linkages between semantically similar variables and probabilistic influences are carried by variable linkage from one BN to another by soft evidences and virtual evidences. To support SLBN's inference, we have developed two algorithms for belief update with soft evidences. Both of these algorithms have clear computational and practical advantages over the methods proposed by others in the past. To justify SLBN's inference process, we propose J-graph to represent the jointed knowledge of the linked BNs and the variable linkages. Finally, SLBN is applied to the problem of concept mapping between semantic web ontologies.


As the next generation of high-speed rail transportation, the high-speed maglev train has a design speed of 600km/h, whose Mach number is about 0.49. The severe aerodynamic effect caused by this high speed has a substantial impact on the train's stability and safety. In this paper, the aerodynamic moments of two three-carriage maglev trains passing by each other in open air are investigated by numerical simulation. To get transient moments acting on the train, this study adopted the sliding mesh method and the k-ε turbulent model, and a user-defined function was compiled to define the motion of maglev. The results show that the pitching moment is the most important factor for the steady of maglev trains running in the open air. The oscillation of the total aerodynamic moment mainly comes from the moment acting on the lower part. The coupling of the pitching moment acting on the upper and lower part of carriages make the peak of the total pitching moment behind the total yawing moment.


Cross-cultural psychologists seek to understand the nature of culture, a concept that can only be understood at the collective, supra-individual level. In most areas of psychology, researchers treat each individual as a separate source of data. Cross-cultural psychologists therefore need a clear understanding of the relationship between individual-level and group or collective-level analysis. Selected studies are reviewed that illustrate the way in which research may yield results that differ at different levels of analysis. Indications are given as to how cross-cultural psychologists can best handle the complexities of culture-related measurements for individuals and groups.


Narrating death: primordial fears and modern anguish. Death is one of the events of human experience that most influences the symbolic production of the collective imagination. Aim of the research will be try to underline the ways in which this fear manifests itself in modern western society. The methodological approach that I will use for this analysis will be a phenomenological type supported by the study of the great cinematographic narrators and their expressive means that are ideal for penetrating the anthropological horizon characteristic of our modern world. On one side, the cinema has spectacularized the death triggering a phenomenon of distancing from the real event; on the other side, it shows itself as an available archive of our dreams, our fears, our most intimate desires, and collective visions: the cinema has staged some of the anguishes and the most common cravings that populate the modern western imaginary.


The human resources management literature offers considerable evidence that mentoring programs can positively influence a variety of measures of both individual and organizational performance. This study examines the use and effectiveness of faculty mentoring programs at business schools in the United States. A survey of 118 schools accredited by the Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business found that mentoring programs are the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, many existing mentoring programs lack the strategic focus and structure that are critical to program success. Statistical results indicated that mentoring programs employing best practices achieved greater career and psychosocial benefits as predicted in the mentoring literature. The study offers insights that institutions can use in developing successful mentoring programs, and using them to more effectively leverage faculty resources.


OBJECT
The use of endoscopic endonasal surgery (EES) for skull base pathologies in the pediatric population presents unique challenges and has not been well described. The authors reviewed their experience with endoscopic endonasal approaches in pediatric skull base surgery to assess surgical outcomes and complications in the context of presenting patient demographics and pathologies.

METHODS
A retrospective review of 133 pediatric patients who underwent EES at our institution from July 1999 to May 2011 was performed.

RESULTS
A total of 171 EESs were performed for skull base tumors in 112 patients and bony lesions in 21. Eighty-five patients (63.9%) were male, and the mean age at the time of surgery was 12.7 years (range 2.3-18.0 years). Skull base tumors included angiofibromas (n = 24), craniopharyngiomas (n = 16), Rathke cleft cysts (n = 12), pituitary adenomas (n = 11), chordomas/chondrosarcomas (n = 10), dermoid/epidermoid tumors (n = 9), and 30 other pathologies. In total, 19 tumors were malignant (17.0%). Among patients with follow-up data, gross-total resection was achieved in 16 cases of angiofibromas (76.2%), 9 of craniopharyngiomas (56.2%), 8 of Rathke cleft cysts (72.7%), 7 of pituitary adenomas (70%), 5 of chordomas/chondrosarcomas (50%), 6 of dermoid/epidermoid tumors (85.7%), and 9 cases of other pathologies (31%). Fourteen patients received adjuvant radiotherapy, and 5 received chemotherapy. Sixteen patients (15.4%) showed tumor recurrence and underwent reoperation. Bony abnormalities included skull base defects (n = 12), basilar invagination (n = 4), optic nerve compression (n = 3) and trauma (n = 2); preexisting neurological dysfunction resolved in 12 patients (57.1%), improved in 7 (33.3%), and remained unchanged in 2 (9.5%). Overall, complications included CSF leak in 14 cases (10.5%), meningitis in 5 (3.8%), transient diabetes insipidus in 8 patients (6.0%), and permanent diabetes insipidus in 12 (9.0%). Five patients (3.8%) had transient and 3 (2.3%) had permanent cranial nerve palsies. The mean follow-up time was 22.7 months (range 1-122 months); 5 patients were lost to follow-up.

CONCLUSIONS
Endoscopic endonasal surgery has proved to be a safe and feasible approach for the management of a variety of pediatric skull base pathologies. When appropriately indicated, EES may achieve optimal outcomes in the pediatric population.


This article examines the English law of petit treason (murder of a husband by his wife or a master by a servant or a religious superior by a religious inferior) and its implications for married women charged with murdering their husbands. From 1351-1828, a woman accused of killing her husband was liable to be indicted not for willful murder but for the aggravated offense of petit treason and, until 1790, she faced public execution by burning if convicted. Relying on eighteenth century legal treatises, reported cases, press accounts of women's trials, and second my sources, the author discusses the cases of several women tried for petit treason. The general legal position of married women in eighteenth century England is also examined, and it is argued that the law of petit treason was a logical extension and consistent expression of women's unequal position in marriage and subordinate status more generally.With the elimination of the aggravated penalty of burning at the stake, and the ultimate repeal of petit treason altogether, married women who killed their husbands achieved a measure of formal equality previously denied them. However; the author argues that the significance of petit treason cannot be explained adequately by a trans-historical concept of patriarchy or male dominance. Analysis of both the form of Iaw, and the form of patriarchal relations enforced and reinforced, is identified as of paramount importance.


According to the traditional theory of judicial decision-making, legal rules constrain judicial creativity because they entail an objectively correct legal answer. Therefore, even if judges want to engage in judicial legislation they are nonetheless constrained by legal rules. This article argues that this understanding is flawed. First, the selection effect ensures that most cases that reach international courts revolve around uncertain legal rules. Second, various cannons of construction will usually allow judges to ascertain several equally plausible legal rules; judges are likely to select those rules which favor their preferred outcome of the case; and their preferred outcome will be largely based on non-legalistic grounds, such as fairness or specific policy preferences. None of this means that legal rules are worthless. It does mean, however, that the traditional theory of judicial decision-making overrates the importance of legal rules as a possible check on judicial creativity.


The ultra-narrow-row (UNR) cotton system is defined as planting a cotton field with closely spaced rows (typically less than 38.1 centimeters). Because this narrow-row spacing provides the potential for increased yield, it has caught the attention of U.S. cotton producers, ginners, and textile mills. While these three groups share an interest in UNR cotton, they do not share the same opinion on its merits. Producers favor UNR because of the potential for increased yield, a shorter growing season, and lower equipment costs. Conversely, cotton ginners, buyers, and spinners are wary of UNR cotton because of perceived increased levels of non-lint material. For gins not prepared to handle UNR stripperharvested cotton, increased non-lint content can reduce the cleaning efficiency of the gin and increase wear on ginning equipment. Spinners are wary of UNR cotton because studies have shown that increased non-lint content in cotton fiber can cause an increased number of ends-down in spinning, increased waste in the card room, and reduced yarn and fabric quality. Little research has been conducted on the impact of UNR cotton in the textile plant. This study focuses on the impact of harvesting methods on waste, percentage efficiency, and processing and yarn quality, which are important factors to the yarn spinner. The results indicate that an alternative harvesting method could make UNR an attractive planting choice, particularly in marginal fields.


The Landsat 5 mission is in jeopardy. Therefore, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) is exploring ways to alleviate a data gap if both Landsat 5 and 7 missions fail prior to the planned launch of Landsat 8 (known as the Landsat Data Continuity Mission) in 2013 [Randy, 2012]. Using the Chinese HJ1-CCD remote sensing data, analyses were performed on the spectral signature of these two different sensors to investigate the substitution of existing sensors for Landsat 5 TM in certain fields of research. In particular, a comparison was made between Landsat 5 TM and the HJ1-CCD in terms of orbital parameters, imaging features and spectral response characteristics, among other characteristics. Thereafter, a comparative analysis was performed on the "at-satellite" reflectance of nine pairs of remote sensing images of different land cover in China, and a mutual quantitative relationship was established. The results indicate that Landsat 5 TM and HJ1-CCD have similar orbital parameters, and the latter has a higher time resolution with advantages in its breadth and the quantity of sensors, although both have the same spatial resolution. Regarding the imaging and spectral response characteristics, although the at-satellite reflectance of HJ1-CCD is different from that of Landsat 5 TM for red, green, blue and near infra-red bands, there is still a broad correlation between HJ1-CCD and Landsat 5 TM, and the coefficient of determination approaches unity. Therefore, a mutual complementation and substitution of the at-satellite reflectance between HJ1-CCD and Landsat 5 TM images is feasible.


The CMI Millennium "P vs NP Problem" can be resolved e.g. if one shows at least one counterexample to the "PP = NNPP" conjecture. A certain class of problems being such counterexamples will be formulated. This implies the rejection of the hypothesis "PP = NNPP" for any conditions satisfying the formulation of the problem. Thus, the solution "PP ≠ NNPP" of the problem in general is proved. The class of counterexamples can be interpreted as any quantum superposition of any finite set of quantum states. The Kochen-Specker theorem is involved. Any fundamentally random choice among a finite set of alternatives belong to "NP' but not to "P". The conjecture that the set complement of "P" to "NP" can be described by that kind of choice exhaustively is formulated.


In the 1920's, Louis de Broglie's observation that the integer sequence that could be related to the interference patterns produced by the various electromagnetic energy quanta emitted by hydrogen atoms was identical to those of very well known classical resonance processes, made him conclude that electrons were captive in resonance states within atoms. This led Schradinger to propose a wave function to represent these resonance states that still have not been reconciled with the electromagnetic properties of electrons. This article is meant to identify and discuss the electromagnetic harmonic oscillation properties that the electron must possess as a resonator in order to explain the resonance volume described by the wave function, as well as the electromagnetic interactions between the elementary charged particles making up atomic structures that could explain electronic and nucleonic orbitals stability. An unexpected benefit of the expanded space geometry required to establish these properties and interactions is that the fundamental symmetry requirement is respected by structure for all aspects of the distribution of energy within electromagnetic quanta.


This Note examines the countervailing duty law and how it was applied in Railcars. Part I discusses the MTA's decision to award the subway car contract to Bombardier, Inc., a Canadian corporation. The countervailing duty proceeding and other legal actions initiated in response to the allegedly subsidized contract are also described. Part II provides a general background on the Act. Part III explains the procedure for conducting a countervailing duty proceeding under the Act. After each step in a countervailing duty proceeding is outlined, its application in Railcars is discussed. Finally, Part IV analyzes how the Act was misapplied in Railcars. RAIL CARS FROM CANADA: A MISAPPLICATION OF THE COUNTERVAILING DUTY LAW


The triplet Markov field (TMF) model is powerful in the nonstationary synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image analysis. Taking the speckle noise and the correlation of nonstationarities in two multitemporal SAR images into account, we propose a change-detection method based on the TMF model in this letter. The third field U in the TMF model is redefined to describe the nonstationary textural similarity between the two images for change detection. The corresponding prior energy of (X, U) is reconstructed. The adaptive weight parameter in prior energy is introduced to cope with the detection tradeoff issue. An automatic estimation of the parameter is obtained with low level of complexity. The Bayesian maximum posterior marginal criterion is utilized with the TMF model to obtain change detection. Experimental results on real SAR images validate the superiority of the proposed TMF method over the Markov random field method.


Domain Generalization (DG) aims to train a model, from multiple observed source domains, in order to perform well on unseen target domains. To obtain the generalization capability, prior DG approaches have focused on extracting domain-invariant information across sources to generalize on target domains, while useful domain-specific information which strongly correlates with labels in individual domains and the generalization to target domains is usually ignored. In this paper, we propose meta-Domain Specific-Domain Invariant (mDSDI) - a novel theoretically sound framework that extends beyond the invariance view to further capture the usefulness of domain-specific information. Our key insight is to disentangle features in the latent space while jointly learning both domain-invariant and domain-specific features in a unified framework. The domain-specific representation is optimized through the meta-learning framework to adapt from source domains, targeting a robust generalization on unseen domains. We empirically show that mDSDI provides competitive results with state-of-the-art techniques in DG. A further ablation study with our generated dataset, Background-Colored-MNIST, confirms the hypothesis that domain-specific is essential, leading to better results when compared with only using domain-invariant.


ABSTRACT This article is based on a meta-ethnographic analysis of educational research from rural and urban areas in Finland, Norway and Sweden following the reorganisation of educational supply there in line with market policies. Edward Soja's concept of spatial justice shapes the analysis. Using meta-ethnography, we try to present a contextualising narrative account of spatial justice and injustice in the education systems in the three countries. Thirty-one Nordic ethnographic publications (a mix of monographs, book chapters and articles) have been used in the meta-analysis. Just over half of them come from Sweden, and most are from urban education studies. The other half are relatively evenly divided between Norway and Finland. All were published between 2000 and 2017. Sweden represents an extreme position in relation to the new politics of education markets. Its promotion of school choice and schools-for-profit has attracted significant attention from ethnographic researchers in recent decades and is given particular attention in the article.


We would like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, and most recently, the territory of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Ojibwe and allied nations peaceably to share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. This territory is also covered by the Upper Canada Treaties.


In the framework of a research project focusing on mitigation measures for hydropeaking, a lateral embayment at the channel bank is studied as a fish refuge. Systematic experiments with different refuge configurations were carried out. The basic configuration is rectangular with a length of 2 m and a width of 1.2 m installed at the right bank of a 12 m long and 1.2 m wide flume supplied with freshwater from a natural river. In order to trigger water exchange between the flume and the rectangular refuge a wall acting like a groyne was installed inside the refuge protruding slightly in the main channel. Position, inclination and protrusion rate of this groyne were varied systematically in order to obtain an optimal water exchange and the best attractiveness of the shelter for fishes during hydropeaking. Each configuration was tested three times with juvenile wild brown trout (Salmo trutta fario) (0+ and 1+), with 2 different groups of 10 and the combined group of 20 brown trout. They where exposed during 3 hours each time to a hydropeaking flow of 220 l/s in the main channel. During every test, the movements of the fish were recorded continuously by video camera and their positions were observed every 20 minutes. 6 series of 20 fishes were used for 36 sequences corresponding to the 12 configurations tested. For each configuration the analysis of the fish positions gave a global frequentation rate as well as the favorite staying places in the shelter. Some in- and outgoing fish trajectories were obtained by the treatment of video pictures. A particular focus was given to the interface section between the refuge and the main channel in order to relate the spatial distribution and the frequency of fish passage from up- and downstream into the shelter. In order to link the swimming trajectories of the trout with the flow conditions, systematic measurement of the velocity field was performed using UVP technique. The flow velocities were analysed in several horizontal and vertical transects across the refuge and flume. Comparing the velocity patterns with the fish trajectories, the attractiveness of different configurations of fish refuges could be analyzed. The tests reveal that a very basic refuge configuration, with low water exchange between shelter and channel, is not interesting for fish. When forcing a water exchange by introducing a deviation groyne into the shelter, its frequentation can be increased significantly. The fish can easily detect the refuge by the exchange flux when searching its way upstream. The refuge attractiveness can be optimized by testing different groyne orientations, creating an expanded velocity field close to the exit and the entrance. Important is a high velocity field leaving the refuge at its lower end but also a backwater zone near the groyne. The high velocity field attracts the fish and the close backwater zone allows the fish to enter the shelter. For the best configuration, more than 80% of the fish found the refuge by swimming mainly from downstream, 20 minutes after the beginning of hydropeaking.


Proteolytic digestion by larval Diabrotica undecimpunctata howardi (Barber) (D.undecimpunctata) has been investigated with the aim of producing transgenic plants possessing enhanced resistance to this economically important crop pest. Biochemical characterisation in vitro by pH dependent hydrolysis and inhibition assays incorporating E-64, pepstatin A and soybean Kunitz trypsin inhibitor showed the majority of hydrolytic activity occurs at pH 5.5 and is performed by cysteine and aspartic endopeptidases. Cysteine and aspartic proteinase encoding clones were isolated from a larval alimentary tract cDNA library. Four cathepsin L-like cysteine proteinases and two cathepsin D-like aspartic proteinase cDNA clones were identified by codmg homology to known proteinase sequences. Analysis of primary and secondary sequence features revealed D. undecimpunctata aspartic proteinase 1 exhibits features associated with cathepsins E and is proposed to be a D. undecimpunctata cathepsm E-like aspartic proteinase.Cathepsin D-like aspartic proteinase inhibitors of the potato Kunitz protemase inhibitor (PKPI) family have been isolated by PCR and expressed employing the pET expression system (Novagen). In vitro assays demonstrated the inhibitory activity of PKPI-A and PKPl-B inhibitors against larval D. undecimpunctata alimentary tract proteolytic enzymes. To the authors knowledge this work represents the first reporting of the expression and purification of biologically active PKPI proteins. In vitro assays incorporating oryzacystatin I and PKPI proteins resulted in increased inhibition of proteolytic activity compared to single inhibitor and uninhibited control reactions. Inhibition assays provide evidence for the potential of a dual protemase inhibitor strategy to arrest protein hydrolysis by larval D. undecimpunctata, preventing essential amino acid absorption. Further research is necessary to characterise the properties of the digestive enzymes isolated in this work and the inhibitory spectrum of PKPI proteins. Transgenic crops expressing a combination of oryzacystatin and PKPI proteins would be predicted to show enhanced resistance to insect herbivores by virtue of digestive proteolysis inhibition.


An increasing body of evidence suggests that the behavior of the economy has changed in many fundamental ways over the last decades. In particular, greater financial deregulation, larger wealth accumulation, and better policies might have helped lower uncertainty about future income and lengthen private sectors' planning horizon. In an overlapping-generations model, in which individuals discount the future more rapidly than implied by the market rate of interest, we find indeed evidence of a falling degree of impatience, providing empirical support for this hypothesis. The degree of persistence of 'windfall' shocks to disposable income also appears to have varied over time. Shifts of this kind are shown to have a key impact on the average marginal propensity to consume and on the size of policy multipliers.


By 2030, it is estimated that the earth's population will be ten billion. Significant quantities of resources will be required to provide buildings for this population. Questions concerning the capability of the earth to support such a large population have arisen. Moreover, the extraction and utilisation of these resources can have negative impacts on the environment. Efforts are underway to find solutions in several aspects of the building process, including the selection and specification of materials. This paper explores the adverse environmental impacts of building materials. A mailed questionnaire survey was used to study the awareness level of architects in Singapore regarding the environmental impacts of materials and the actions they are taking to protect the environment. It was found that the architects are knowledgeable about the environmental impacts of building materials. However, they are not consciously selecting materials with regard to their environmental implications. It is suggested that architects and other parties must act to enable the Singapore construction industry to minimise its environmental impacts.


Pseudocercospora macadamiae causes husk spot of macadamia. Husk spot control would be improved by verifying the stages in fruit development susceptible to infection, and determine some of the climatic conditions likely to lead to high disease pressure periods in the field. Our results showed that the percent conidia germination and growth of germ tubes and mycelia of P. macadamiae were greatest at 26°C, with better conidia germination associated with high relative humidity and free water. The exposure of match-head-sized and pea-sized fruit stages to natural P. macadamiae inoculum in the field led to 2–5-fold increases in husk spot incidence, and up to 8.5-fold increases in premature abscission, compared with unexposed fruit. Exposure of fruit stages later than match-head-sized and pea-sized fruit generally caused no further increases in disease incidence or premature abscission. Climatic conditions were found to have a strong influence on the behaviour of P. macadamiae, the host, oil accumulation, and the subsequent impact of husk spot on premature abscission. Our findings suggest that fungicide application should target fruit at the match-head-sized stage of development in order to best reduce yield losses, particularly in seasons where oil accumulation in fruit is prolonged and climatic conditions are optimal for P. macadamiae.


An important function of a water distribution system (WDS) is to supply drinking water to each demand point using a pipe network that has minimal impact on the surroundings. To produce a reliable WDS, planning usually requires a significant amount of geo-spatial information. Current planning practices for pipeline systems, which gather geographic information based on maps, are time-consuming and cumbersome. With the rapid developments in computer and information technology, it is necessary to propose a new WDS planning method that enhances the current planning practices and facilitates the decision-making process. The proposed method allows project information in building information modeling (BIM) to be incorporated into a geographic information system (GIS) model, using semantic mapping to incorporate WDS project data and geo-spatial information to facilitate the WDS planning process. Moreover, a 3D visualization model of the proposed WDS project and its surroundings is provided. In addition, topological rules are set to identify any conflicts between the WDS project and its surroundings. A real WDS project was used to validate the method. The proposed method can help project participants better understand the WDS project and its surroundings and identify any errors in the planning process, thus improving sustainable development.


Mixture modeling is a general technique for making any simple model more expressive through weighted combination. This generality and simplicity in part explains the success of the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm, in which updates are easy to derive for a wide class of mixture models. However, the likelihood of a mixture model is non-convex, so EM has no known global convergence guarantees. Recently, method of moments approaches offer global guarantees for some mixture models, but they do not extend easily to the range of mixture models that exist. In this work, we present Polymom, an unifying framework based on method of moments in which estimation procedures are easily derivable, just as in EM. Polymom is applicable when the moments of a single mixture component are polynomials of the parameters. Our key observation is that the moments of the mixture model are a mixture of these polynomials, which allows us to cast estimation as a Generalized Moment Problem. We solve its relaxations using semidefinite optimization, and then extract parameters using ideas from computer algebra. This framework allows us to draw insights and apply tools from convex optimization, computer algebra and the theory of moments to study problems in statistical estimation. Simulations show good empirical performance on several models.


The γn → π−p and γp → π+n reactions are essential probes of the transition from meson‐nucleon degrees of freedom to quark‐gluon degrees of freedom in exclusive processes. The cross sections of these processes are also advantageous, for the investigation of oscillatory behavior around the quark counting prediction, since they decrease relatively slower with energy compared with other photon‐induced processes. In this talk, we discuss recent results on the γp → π+n and γn → π−p processes from Jefferson Lab experiment E94‐104. We also discuss a new experiment in which singles γp → π+n measurement from hydrogen, and coincidence γn → π−p measurements at the quasifree kinematics from deuterium for center‐of‐mass energies between 2.3 GeV to 3.4 GeV in fine steps at a center‐of‐mass angle of 90° are planned. The proposed measurement will allow a detailed investigation of the oscillatory scaling behavior in photopion production processes.


Article history: Received October 2 2016 Received in Revised Format October 28 2016 Accepted December 2 2016 Available online December 2 2016 Inconel 718 is among difficult to machine materials because of its abrasiveness and high strength even at high temperature. This alloy is mainly used in aircraft and aerospace industries. Therefore, it is very important to reveal and evaluate cutting tools behavior during machining of this kind of alloy. The experimental study presented in this research work has been carried out in order to elucidate surface roughness and productivity mathematical models during turning of Inconel 718 superalloy (35 HRC) with SiC Whisker ceramic tool at various cutting parameters (depth of cut, feed rate, cutting speed and radius nose). A small central composite design (SCCD) including 16 basics runs replicated three times (48 runs), was adopted and graphically evaluated using Fraction of design space (FDS) graph, completed by a statistical analysis of variance (ANOVA). Mathematical models for surface roughness and productivity were developed and normality was improved using the Box-Cox transformation. Results show that surface roughness criterion Ra was mainly influenced by cutting speed, radius nose and feed rate, and that the depth of cut had major effect on productivity. Finally, ranges of optimized cutting conditions were proposed for serial industrial production. Industrial benefit was illustrated in terms of high surface quality accompanied with high productivity. Indeed, results show that the use of optimal cutting condition had an industrial benefit to 46.9 % as an improvement in surface quality Ra and 160.54 % in productivity MRR. © 2017 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved


Epstein and Eckoff in 1967 devised a scheme to summarize population differences in the rise of mean values of systolic blood pressure by age in accordance with their slopes and levels. For the first time, the validity of this scheme can be examined with data from a single study, INTERSALT. This study included 52 populations in 32 countries. On the basis of these data, collected in an exceptionally well-standardized mode under a common protocol, the diversity of populations in the slopes of age differences in median values of systolic blood pressure has been strongly reconfirmed. Populations with no increase in median systolic blood pressure were again observed and remained exceptional. The analyses of these data also indicate a positive relation between the slope of rising systolic blood pressure with age and urinary sodium, urinary sodium-potassium ratio, and reported alcohol consumption as well as a negative association between urinary potassium excretion and blood pressure slope. The present analyses therefore add to the previous knowledge and results published by the INTERSALT investigators in the following three respects: (1) they relate INTERSALT results to the postulated biological gradient of variation among populations as presented by Epstein and Eckoff, including explanatory variables; (2) they demonstrate strong correlation between ranks of median blood pressure at 40 to 49 years and values at 20 to 29 years; and (3) they therefore support the original Epstein and Eckoff concept of population variation, link this with blood pressure risk factors, and call attention to the large degree of population differences already evident among populations at 20 to 29 years of age.


Today's Digital era causes escalation of datasets. These datasets are termed as "Big Data" due to its massive amount of volume, variety and velocity and is stored in distributed file system architecture. Hadoop is framework that supports Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS)for storing and MapReduce for processing of large data sets in a distributed computing environment. Task assignment is possible by schedulers. Schedulers guarantee the fair allocation of resources among users. When a job is submitted by user, it will be placed into a job queue. A job will be then divided into tasks and distributed among different nodes. Proper assignment of tasks will reduce job completion time. This can guarantee improved performance of the job. In this paper we study Map Reduce model and evaluated task scheduling algorithms such as FIFO, Fair share, Capacity, Delay, IWRR and MTL of Hadoop platform.


Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterised by chronic airflow limitation (obstruction), not fully reversible, some significant extrapulmonary effects and important co-morbidities, all of which may contribute to the severity of the disease. 1 Comorbidity may be myocardial infarction, osteoporosis, respiratory infection, bone fractures from osteoporosis, depression, diabetes, sleep disorders, anaemia and glaucoma.

COPD is an important cause of death and morbidity worldwide. The estimated prevalence of COPD varies from 7% to 19% around the world. It is also true that COPD remains underdiagnosed.


A simple and efficient protocol for the preparative-scale synthesis of various lengths of oligo-N-acetyllactosamine (oligo-LacNAc) and its multi-sialylated extensions is described. The strategy utilizes one thermophilic bacterial thymidylyltransferase (RmlA) coupled with corresponding sugar-1-phosphate kinases to generate two uridine diphosphate sugars, UDP-galactose and UDP-N-acetylglucosamine. By incorporating glycosyltransferases, oligo-LacNAcs and their sialylated analogs were synthesized.


Abstract
Decision theory and logical reasoning are both methods for representing and solving medical decision problems. We analyze the usefulness of these two approaches to medical therapy planning by establishing a simple correspondence between decision theory and non-monotonic logic, a formalization of categorical logical reasoning. The analysis indicates that categorical approaches to planning can be viewed as comprising two decision-theoretic concepts: probabilities (degrees of belief in planning hypotheses) and utilities (degrees of desirability of planning outcomes). We present and discuss examples of the following lessons from this decision-theoretic view of categorical (nonmonotonic) reasoning: (1) Decision theory and artificial intelligence techniques are intended to solve different components of the planning problem. (2) When considered in the context of planning under uncertainty, nonmonotonic logics do not retain the domain-independent characteristics of classical logical reasoning for planning under certainty. (3) Because certain nonmonotonic programming paradigms (e.g., frame-based inheritance, rule-based planning, protocol-based reminders) are inherently problem-specific, they may be inappropriate to employ in the solution of certain types of planning problems. We discuss how these conclusions affect several current medical informatics research issues, including the construction of "very large" medical knowledge bases.


Recently on the dermatological fields, the serum levels and the roles of Zn, Cu and Mg have been studied especially in acne vulgaris, but the results were controversial. The aim of the present study is to investigate  a relationship between the severity of acne and the serum levels of zinc (Zn), copper (Cu) and magnesium (Mg) and to demonstrate the status of serum levels of zinc, copper, and magnesium in Iraqi male patients with acne vulgaris and to compare it with those of healthy controls.This case controlled study was conducted in the Department of Dermatology and Venerology and in the Poisoning Consultation Center of Baghdad Teaching Hospital between May 2009 to January 2010. Forty- five male patients with acne vulgaris, their ages ranged from 18-30 (21.82±3.77) years and 45 healthy male subjects as controls, their ages ranged from 18-30 (22.18±3.85) years were included in this study. Patients were subdivided into three groups according to the severity of their acne; mild acne group (n=15), moderate (n=15) and severe acne group (n=15). Investigations included serum estimation of Zn, Cu and Mg in both patient and control groups.The data obtained from this study showed that the (mean±SD) values of serum levels of Zn was significantly decreased in severe acne group compared with controls, mild and moderate type of acne group (P< 0.05). Serum Mg concentration was significantly lower in severe acne group compared with mild and moderate acne group (P< 0.05). With regard to serum Cu, there were no significant differences  among groups of patients with acne vulgaris.This study revealed a significant association between serum levels of either Zn or Mg with the severity of acne.
Key words: Acne vulgaris, zinc, copper, magnesium.


Several cleaning machines are required to prepare cotton for marketing. One of those machines, the saw-type lint cleaner, improves the appearance of ginned lint by removing foreign matter, motes, cottonseed, and other undesirable material, but it also removes as much or more good fiber as it does undesirable material. One stage of lint cleaning typically removes about 9.1 kg (20 lbs) of material. An experimental lint cleaner (ELC) designed to reduce the loss of good fiber and maintain fiber quality in the bale was developed, patented, and field tested. Studies to validate the operational characteristics of the ELC were conducted at a research facility and a commercial gin. Results at the research gin indicated that about 2.72 kg (6 lbs) of additional good fiber was retained by the ELC compared with standard Sixteen D and 24D lint cleaner models, and there were no significant differences in fiber properties measured from high volume instrumentation (HVI) or the Advanced Fiber Information System (AFIS). The ELC operated for two full seasons at a commercial gin without operational problems and processed about 10,000 bales. HVI and AFIS parameters of the baled lint from the ELC equaled or exceeded those of the standard lint cleaner.


Resisting authority is a really important way in which we assert our dignity and our political power as members of a democracy. In fact, resisting police authority is built into some of our most important Constitutional doctrines. The right to walk away, the right not to speak, and the right not to consent are core features of our legal and democratic processes.Disobedience is a legitimate form of democratic participation, even during an encounter with the police. It's one way we assert our political standing as equal members of the community. We have a democratic right to contest policing that's racist or picks on people for arbitrary or authoritarian reasons. But it's also the way in which we assert our legal standing. In fact, cases like Bostick, Schneckloth, and Miranda tell us that resisting authority is not just the primary way to assert our Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. It's the only way: our constitutional rights just are rights to walk away, to refuse to consent, and to decline to speak. The Constitution protects our rights against the police by requiring us to resist and dissent. Too often the police use their command presence, and the implicit threat of force, to demand that the public respect police authority. That command presence is often expressed through explicit threats of violence, or the implicit threat of officer standing in the exit to a bus or in the entryway to a factory. But we're also all aware that the officer's polite and persistent questioning is sometimes just as dangerous: a subterfuge to trick the suspect into relinquishing her rights. Policing is, after all, what Justice Jackson called a "competitive enterprise." The police use all the means at their disposal, not just threats, but also promises and psychological ploys, to get us to comply and cooperate and reveal information. But complying and cooperating and revealing information may be precisely what lands us in some sort of criminal proceeding. Procedural justice is treats civilian participation through voicing consent or concerns as the mark of legitimate policing. But at the level of constitutional justice, persuading people to speak — to give voice — is often precisely the way police officers undermine their right to walk away or refuse consent or to avoid self-incrimination. Consider Brewer v. Williams: When Williams responded to Officer Leaming's Christian Burial Speech by identifying the spot where he had buried Pamela Powers, his participation in a mutually respectful process of policing — giving voice — was precisely what led to his conviction. The same goes for a host of other cases in which the police encourage people to speak, from Seibert v. Missouri's two-step interrogation process to Florida v. Drayton's consent-based bus sweeps.If the police only prize compliant or respectful voices that do not challenge the legal or political basis of their authority or contest their right to stop civilian, then it is hard to see this sort of policing as democratically legitimate. It is the disobedient and adversarial voices that we sometimes need to remind the police of our rights and their limited powers.


This important and welcome volume is the first English-language anthology of writings on Latin American modern art of the twentieth century. The book includes some fifty seminal essays and documents - including statements, interviews, and manifestoes by artists - that encompass the broad diversity of this emerging field. Many of these materials are difficult to access and some are translated here for the first time. Together the selections explore the breadth and depth of Latin American modern art as well as its distinctive evolution apart from American and European art history. Included in this collection are fascinating ideas and insights on the impact of the avant-garde in the 1920s, the Mexican mural movement, Surrealism and other fantasy-based styles, modern architecture, geometric and optical art, concrete and neo-concrete art, and political conceptualism. For students and scholars of Latin American art, the volume offers an invaluable collection of primary and secondary sources.


Recently, a new international standard for video compression named H.264 / MPEG-4 Part 10 is developed. This new standard offers significantly better video compression efficiency than previous international standards. The variable block size motion estimation is the most compute-intensive part of an H.264 video encoder. The full search method is impractical for real-time implementations since it requires a high computational complexity. Therefore, many fast motion estimation algorithms have been developed for real-time implementations. In this thesis, we used an SAD reuse based hierarchical motion estimation algorithm for real-time H.264 / MPEG-4 Part 10 video coding. This algorithm uses the Lagrangian cost parameter (SAD+λR) for selecting the best motion vector. We designed a high performance and low cost hardware architecture for real-time implementation of this algorithm. We have considered several alternative designs and decided on this architecture based on a cost/performance analysis. This architecture uses a novel data flow resulting in a low cost and high performance hardware. This hardware is designed to be used as part of a complete H.264 video coding system for portable applications. The proposed architecture is implemented in Verilog HDL. The Verilog RTL code is verified to work at 63 MHz in a Xilinx Virtex II FPGA. The FPGA implementation can process 25 VGA frames (640x480) or 76 CIF frames (352x288) per second.


A previous study on seasonal variations in color preferences found that people like colors associated with a particular season more during that season than during other seasons (Nelson, Schloss, Parker, and Palmer, VSS2012). Color preferences were only assessed once during each season, so the time course of the shifts in color preference was unknown. In this study we investigated whether color preferences change with changes in environmental colors during a single season. In autumn in New England the environment continually changes color as the leaves turn from deep green to yellows, oranges and reds. We were interested in whether people's preferences for autumn leaf colors would increase as the leaves turned. We tested participants' preferences for the Berkeley Color Project (BCP) 37 colors during nine sessions that took place over the course of 11 weeks in autumn (within-subject longitudinal design). The first session (baseline) took place before the leaves began to change and the last session was conducted once the trees were bare. We documented the changes by taking photographs on the Brown University campus every week for the duration of the study. We also collected colorful autumn leaves, matched them to Munsell chips, and determined which of the BCP-37 colors best corresponded to the leaf colors. We tested whether there was a differential change in preference for autumn leaf colors compared to non-autumn leaf colors. As the leaves changed, there was a significant linear increase in preference for autumn leaf colors, but no significant change for the non-autumn leaf colors. At the end of the study, we assessed individuals' preferences for autumn and for fall specific objects/events, which we obtained from a different set of participants. These results provide the first evidence that changes in environmental colors are linked to changes in color preferences. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Abstract : This report presents a profile of the membership of the 109th Congress. Statistical information is included on selected characteristics of Members. This includes data on party affiliation; average age and length of service; occupation; religious affiliation; female and minority Members; foreign-born Members; and military service. Currently, in the House of Representatives, there are 232 Republicans (including the Resident Commissioner), 206 Democrats (including four Delegates), and one Independent, who is aligned with the Democrats. The Senate has 55 Republicans, 44 Democrats, and one Independent, who is aligned with the Democrats. The average age of Members of both houses is 56 years; of Representatives, 55 years; and of Senators, 60 years. The overwhelming majority of Members has a college education. The dominant profession of Members continues to be law, followed by public service/politics and business. Protestants collectively constitute the majority religious affiliation of Members. Roman Catholics account for the largest single religious denomination, and numerous other affiliations are represented. The average length of service in the House is about 9.3 years (slightly over 4.5 terms); in the Senate, 12.1 years (two terms). A record number of 83 women serve in the 109th Congress: 69 in the House, 14 in the Senate. An unprecedented number of black Members (43) are also serving. There are 42 black Members in the House, including two Delegates, and one in the Senate. In addition, there is a record 29 Hispanic Members serving; 27 in the House, including the Resident Commissioner, and two in the Senate. Eight Members (five Representatives, one Delegate, and two Senators) are Asian, Indian American (Asian), or Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander. There is one American Indian (Native American), who serves in the House. This report will be revised at the commencement of the 110th Congress or when significant changes occur in the 109th Congress.


The heroes of Greek mythology - Achilles, Orpheus, Herakles, Oedipus and others - preoccupied the minds of the ancient Greeks no less than the gods themselves. This study uses original sources, archaeological findings and psychological insight to provide an account of the lives of these mythical figures. The narrative is complemented by illustrations from vase paintings and genealogical tables of celebrated and lesser-known mythicl figures.


............................................................................................................................................. 2 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 2 Introducing Diagnosis-Driven Yield Analysis ........................................................................................ 3 Optimizing Diagnosis for Yield Analysis Purposes................................................................................ 4 Analyzing and Understanding Diagnosis Results ................................................................................. 6 Deploying a Diagnosis-Driven Yield Analysis Flow ............................................................................... 8 Diagnosis-Driven Yield Analysis in Practice ......................................................................................... 8 Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 13 References ........................................................................................................................................ 13 Faster time to root cause with diagnosis-driven yield analysis www.mentor.com/silicon-yield 2 ABSTRACT ICs developed at advanced technology nodes of 65 nm and below exhibit an increased sensitivity to small manufacturing variations. New design-specific and feature-sensitive failure mechanisms are on the rise. Complex variability issues that involve interactions between process and layout features can mask systematic yield issues. Without improved yield analysis methods, time-to-volume is delayed, mature yield is suboptimal, and product quality may suffer, thereby threatening a manufacturer's profitability. Diagnosis-driven yield analysis is a methodology that leverages production test results, volume scan diagnosis, and statistical analysis to identify the cause of yield loss prior to failure analysis. This methodology can reduce the root cause cycle time with 75-90%. The methodology can be expanded with DFM-aware yield analysis to help separate design and process related yield limiters. This whitepaper describes the benefits of implementing a diagnosis-driven yield analysis flow using the Tessent ® Diagnosis and Tessent YieldInsight ® software products.


The Alta case and the Sami struggle for "rights to lands and waters" put political pressure on the Norwegian government to broadly explore the rights of the indigenous Sami people to such resources. Both Norway's ratification of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries in 1990, and the 2005 Finnmark Act are results of that exploration. To meet the obligations Norway undertook by signing the ILO Convention, the Finnmark Act authorises the Finnmark Commission to investigate land rights held by Sami and other people in the most central part of Sami areas in Norway. In March 2012, the Commission submitted its first report, which is the first specific legal clarification of a particular area after 30 years of examinations and discussions of Sami rights. The report is therefore met with high expectations. This article analyses the main findings of the Commission, including the interpretation of its mandate and thus also Norway's obligations in regards to the ILO Convention. The article concludes with reflections as to whether the investigation fulfils Norway's commitments to identify and recognise the lands of the Sami, both under national and international law.


In many problems of machine learning, the data are distributed nonlinearly. One way to address this kind of data is training a nonlinear classifier such as kernel support vector machine (kernel SVM). However, the computational burden of kernel SVM limits its application to large scale datasets. In this paper, we propose a Clustered Support Vector Machine (CSVM), which tackles the data in a divide and conquer manner. More specifically, CSVM groups the data into several clusters, followed which it trains a linear support vector machine in each cluster to separate the data locally. Meanwhile, CSVM has an additional global regularization, which requires the weight vector of each local linear SVM aligning with a global weight vector. The global regularization leverages the information from one cluster to another, and avoids over-fitting in each cluster. We derive a data-dependent generalization error bound for CSVM, which explains the advantage of CSVM over linear SVM. Experiments on several benchmark datasets show that the proposed method outperforms linear SVM and some other related locally linear classifiers. It is also comparable to a fine-tuned kernel SVM in terms of prediction performance, while it is more efficient than kernel SVM.


A suspension bushing separated from the disk on the rear wheel suspension of a racing vehicle while under operation on an express highway, causing the wheel to detach from the car. Visual inspection showed fresh turning grooves at four built-up fillet welds on the torus of the outside of the disk. The welding heat and rapid cooling caused the base material of the disk – already with a martensitic structure – to harden throughout the torus, both of which caused cracking in the inner and outer fillets at the transition from bushing to disk. Visual inspection of the other rear wheel showed similar stress cracks in the hardened base material of the transition region as well as the same four welds. Rough finishing and the sharp-edged formation of the cross section transition may have also contributed to the failure. The results of the investigation suggested that machine shops neither execute nor permit repair-welds on highly stressed machine parts and especially vehicle components.


A novel technique for the fabrication of binary-phase computer-generated reflection holograms is described. By use of integrated circuit technology, the holographic pattern is etched into a silicon wafer and then aluminum coated to make a reflection hologram. Because these holograms reflect virtually all the incident radiation, they may find application in machining with high-power lasers. A number of possible modifications of the hologram fabrication procedure are discussed.


This dissertation is based upon fieldwork performed between 2007 and 2011 in Cornwall, a region of Southwestern Britain notable for its ambiguous ethnic identity – caught between England and the Celtic nations – and its unique, revived Celtic language, Kernewek. During the course of the research, work focused upon the role of the language revival movement as a tool for ethnic identification: hardening boundaries, shoring up faltering communities and nationalist purification. However, the language movement is divided into three primary factions, which take differing approaches to the language, and to their corresponding language ideology based upon their relationship to Cornish identity. These relationships are based upon speakers' sense of ethnic self as formed through class, kinship, linguistic self-perception, religious and political affiliations and place of birth and childhood. However, since the 2006 recognition of the language by the British states, all of these debates have become intensified due to pressure to standardize. This study examines specific examples including: teaching materials and pedagogical approaches in the language, debates over the minutiae of spelling, aesthetic sensibilities, and practices of the naming and renaming of people and places. IN SEARCH OF A SINGLE VOICE: THE POLITICS OF FORM, USE AND BELIEF IN THE KERNEWEK LANGUAGE


Summarizing and analyzing Twitter content is an important and challenging task. In this paper, we propose to extract topical keyphrases as one way to summarize Twitter. We propose a context-sensitive topical PageRank method for keyword ranking and a probabilistic scoring function that considers both relevance and interestingness of keyphrases for keyphrase ranking. We evaluate our proposed methods on a large Twitter data set. Experiments show that these methods are very effective for topical keyphrase extraction.


In October 2017, numerous women accused producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment. Their stories encouraged other women to voice allegations of sexual harassment against many high profile men, including politicians, actors, and producers. These events are broadly referred to as the #MeToo movement, named for the use of the hashtag "#metoo" on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The movement has widely been referred to as "empowering" because it has amplified the voices of previously unheard women over those of traditionally powerful men. In this work, we investigate dynamics of sentiment, power and agency in online media coverage of these events. Using a corpus of online media articles about the #MeToo movement, we present a contextual affective analysis—an entity-centric approach that uses contextualized lexicons to examine how people are portrayed in media articles. We show that while these articles are sympathetic towards women who have experienced sexual harassment, they consistently present men as most powerful, even after sexual assault allegations. While we focus on media coverage of the #MeToo movement, our method for contextual affective analysis readily generalizes to other domains.1


The design of the Research project "Analysis of the influence of the assessor and assessee roles in the feed-up, feed-back and feed-forward processes and their impact on academic performance" (reference REDICE16-1460) and the innovation project "P2P4L2L (Peer to Peer for Learning to Learn)" (reference 2016PID-UB / 024) are presented. This project aims to incorporate peer review practices (peer to peer) to promote the development of the cross-curricular competence learning to learn. The innovation consists precisely in students assessing the work of their classmates through Moodle's 'Workshop'. It is evaluated the increase of the competence learning to learn these practices generate through an adaptation of the instrument proposed by Munoz et al. (2016), which is administered at the beginning and at the end of the innovation experience to determine if this practice has had a positive impact on students' learning to learn competence. Peer review is a reciprocal process whereby students produce feedback reviews on the work of peers and receive feedback reviews from peers on their own work (Nicol, Thomson and Breslin, 2014). An important process within this is shared assessment, which refers to student involvement in the assessment and learning practice, a process of dialogue and collaboration between teacher and students aimed at improving the learning process, both individually and collectively. In addition, at the end, the impact of the innovative experience on the perception of student learning is assessed through an adaptation of the questionnaire of Gallego et al. (2013). The results presented here seem to indicate that the Moodle's 'Workshop' has advantages, it makes it possible to obtain information about the activity of the students, which allows the teacher to influence more in their learning


Abstract The core physics investigations at the Nuclear Research Consultancy Group in the Netherlands, as part of the activities within the HTR-N project of the European Fifth Framework Program, are focused on the incineration of pure (first- and second-generation) Pu fuels in the reference pebble bed high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTR) HTR-MODUL with a continuous reload [MEDUL, (MEhrfach DUrchLauf, multipass)] fueling strategy in which the spherical fuel elements, or pebbles, pass through the core a number of times before being permanently discharged. For pebbles fueled with different loadings of plutonium, the feasibility of a sustained fuel cycle under nominal reactor conditions was investigated by means of the reactivity and temperature coefficients of the reactor. The HTR-MODUL was found to be a very effective reactor to reduce the stockpile of first-generation plutonium. It reduces the amount of plutonium to about one-sixth of the original and reduces the risk of proliferation by denaturing the plutonium vector. For second-generation plutonium the incineration is less favorable, as the amount of plutonium is only halved.


In this paper we consider the coupling between two diffusion-reaction problems, one taking place in a three-dimensional domain Ω, the other in a one-dimensional subdomain Λ. This coupled problem is the simplest model of fluid flow in a three-dimensional porous medium featuring fractures that can be described by one-dimensional manifolds. In particular this model can provide the basis for a multiscale analysis of blood flow through tissues, in which the capillary network is represented as a porous matrix, while the major blood vessels are described by thin tubular structures embedded into it: in this case, the model allows the computation of the 3D and 1D blood pressures respectively in the tissue and in the vessels. The mathematical analysis of the problem requires non-standard tools, since the mass conservation condition at the interface between the porous medium and the one-dimensional manifold has to be taken into account by means of a measure term in the 3D equation. In particular, the 3D solution is singular on Λ. In this work, suitable weighted Sobolev spaces are introduced to handle this singularity: the well-posedness of the coupled problem is established in the proposed functional setting. An advantage of such an approach is that it provides a Hilbertian framework which may be used for the convergence analysis of finite element approximation schemes. The investigation of the numerical approximation will be the subject of a forthcoming work.


Total phenolic content, phenolic composition, and total antioxidant capacity of neck and bottom parts of two strawberry cultivars, 'Chambly' and 'LL0220-10', were evaluated using the Folin-Ciocalteu method, high performance liquid chromatography, and ferric reducing/antioxidant power, respectively. A significant interaction (p < 0.05) was observed between examined parts and cultivars. The highest content of phenolics was detected in the bottom part of 'Chambly' when compared to its neck, while there was no difference between neck and bottom of 'LL0220-10'. The most evident group was the anthocyanins accounting for 83.53% of the total phenolic content. These data are a step in establishing a correlation between fruit anatomy and its chemical composition, which could be useful in breeding new strawberry cultivars more resistant to diseases.