The two most important tasks in information extraction from the Web are webpage structure understanding and natural language sentences processing. However, little work has been done toward an integrated statistical model for understanding webpage structures and processing natural language sentences within the HTML elements. Our recent work on webpage understanding introduces a joint model of Hierarchical Conditional Random Fields (HCRFs) and extended Semi-Markov Conditional Random Fields (Semi-CRFs) to leverage the page structure understanding results in free text segmentation and labeling. In this top-down integration model, the decision of the HCRF model could guide the decision making of the Semi-CRF model. However, the drawback of the top-down integration strategy is also apparent, i.e., the decision of the Semi-CRF model could not be used by the HCRF model to guide its decision making. This paper proposed a novel framework called WebNLP, which enables bidirectional integration of page structure understanding and text understanding in an iterative manner. We have applied the proposed framework to local business entity extraction and Chinese person and organization name extraction. Experiments show that the WebNLP framework achieved significantly better performance than existing methods.


Leaking organic solutes form an elongated plume in the wake of a sinking aggregate. These solutes may both be assimilated by suspended bacteria and guide bacteria with chemokinetic swimming behavior toward the aggregate. We used modifications of previously published models of the flow and concentration fields around sinking aggregates and of chemokinetic behavior of bacteria to identify the behavior that optimizes aggregate colonization and plume utilization. The optimal solution is governed by physical constraints and is a trade off between a high sensitivity to chemical signals and a long signal integration time. For a runߚandߚtumble swimming behavior, the predicted tumbling frequency is between 1 and 10 s21, similar to that reported for marine bacteria. The predicted optimal sensitivity to chemical signals is similar to or greater than that known for Escherichia coli. The optimal behavior was used to examine the potential contribution of aggregateߚgenerated solute plumes for water column bacterial production. Despite occupying only a small volume fraction, the plumes may provide important growth habitats for free bacteria and account for a significant proportion of water column bacterial production at typical concentrations of marine snow aggregates.


This study considers the evidence for 'demand-side' theories seeking to explain the outcome of the Brexit referendum and subsequent divisions in UK politics. Economic theories suggest that the Leave decision was driven mainly by the 'left-behinds' in jobs or wages, such as those living in struggling communities in the North of England, the Midlands, and Wales. By contrast cultural accounts emphasize political attitudes and values, including long-term British suspicion about the European Union project, public disgust with the political class at Westminster, anxiety about the effects of the refugee crisis and migration from other EU countries, and opposition to the government's austerity cuts. These theories can also be regarded as complimentary rather than rivals, for example if economic deprivation catalyzed resentment about immigrants and the rejection of open borders. To examine these issues, Part I sets out the electoral context and historical background in the run up to Brexit--and its implications for party competition in the UK. Drawing upon a larger book-length study, Part II sets out the arguments based on economic and cultural theories about the British electorate. Part III describes the evidence from the British Election Study panel surveys, which allows us to examine the factors dividing supporters in the Leave and Remain camps in the 2016 Brexit referendum, as well as those predicting support for UKIP from 2015-17. Part IV examines the impact of demographic control factors like age and sex, indicators of economic grievances, and the cultural profile of voters in their authoritarian and populist values, as well as their attitudes towards the Europe Union, immigration, and left-right ideology. The conclusion in Part V considers developments since Brexit and their implications for the future of populism in the UK. The main advocate of Brexit, UKIP, succeeded in attaining this goal, but then failed to achieve a decisive break through as a parliamentary party. Yet authoritarian-populism remains alive and well in post-Brexit Britain, absorbed into the bloodstream of the body politic, disrupting and dividing both major parties.


We present a simple model of a stock market where a random communication structure between agents generically gives rise to heavy tails in the distribution of stock price variations in the form of an exponentially truncated power law, similar to distributions observed in recent empirical studies of high-frequency market data. Our model provides a link between two well-known market phenomena: the heavy tails observed in the distribution of stock market returns on one hand and herding behavior in financial markets on the other hand. In particular, our study suggests a relation between the excess kurtosis observed in asset returns, the market order flow, and the tendency of market participants to imitate each other.


The effect of starch irradiation on the properties of fish crackers in relation to
microstructure of starch in 'keropok' was investigated. Wheat, tapioca and sago
starch were used. Linear expansion of 'keropok' was best when the swelling of
granules, leaching of amylose and amylopectin were high. Irradiation has been
investigated as a means of degrading the starch polymers, which leads to an increase
in the amount of soluble materials leached. Microwave, electron beam and gamma
ray irradiation were used to degrade the starch polymers. The Brabender
Viscograph, Texture Analyser (TAXT2-i), Falling Ball Viscometer and Haake
Rheometer were used to determine the rheological properties of the starch pastes and
gels. Results showed that irradiation caused an increase in leaching, a concomitant
drastic reduction in swelling volumes of starch granules, and rate of gelation. It also
showed that the strength of starch gels, viscosity, viscoelasticity and intrinsic
viscosity decreased as the levels of irradiation was increased, indicating a decrease in
the molecular weight of starch polymers. These changes were due to the cleavage of
the amylose and amylopectin fractions by radiation energy. Fish crackers made from
irradiated wheat starches expanded significantly better than the native starch and were cnspler. However, after a certain level of irradiation, the expansion decreased
although the values remained higher than the expansion values for 'keropok' from
native starch. The expansion of some of these wheat and sago starches improved
greatly as the values exceeded the acceptable level i.e., 77% expansion. 'Keropok'
from microwave irradiated tapioca starch expanded significantly better than its native
starch. On the other hand, electron beam and gamma irradiated tapioca starches
seemed to produce 'keropok' with poor expansion properties and worse than the
native starch. Good expansion was found in 'keropok' made from starches with high
amounts of leaching and high molecular weight. Irradiated starch fish crackers were
found to fracture at lower energy and had better crispiness properties despite that
some crackers did not expand well. As a conclusion, irradiation of starch can
improve the expansion and crispiness of fish crackers as it increases the leaching of
amylose and amylopectin from the starch granules. The amylose and amylopectin
can then be involved in the formation of starch-fish network, which allows the
entrapment of water and will aid expansion during frying. The presence of higher
molecular weight amylose and amylopectin will further contribute to better
fonnation of this network. The ratio of amylose and amylopectin in the leachate
would play a role in expansion, where higher amounts of amylopectin would give a
better expanded fish crackers. High swelling ability and protein contents in starch
are also contributing factors to expansion.


Intimate partners commit approximately one in three homicides against women worldwide. Little is known about situational factors that contribute to intimate partner homicides (IPH) and how they may differ across nations. This article provides a cross-national exploration of one situational factor, the use of firearms in the commission of homicides, and considers whether nations have laws designed specifically to keep firearms out of the hands of batterers. We conducted a systematic search of peer-reviewed research and governmental and nongovernmental reports for data on weapon use in IPH. Data were located for 15 nations and subnational areas, which varied from firearms being involved in no IPHs in Fiji to 59% in Antalya, Turkey. Seven nations have legislation that addresses gun ownership as it relates to those who have been charged with, convicted of, or show a propensity toward the commission of intimate partner violence. These laws vary in whether domestic violence is a factor considered in whether to allow firearm ownership or whether it served to disqualify ownership. Due to the small number of nations for which data on weapon use in IPH were located, we did not conduct any hypothesis testing. There is a need for detailed homicide surveillance systems among nations so that researchers can explore the epidemiology of these homicides and ultimately identify opportunities for intervention.


The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has changed the world, creating the need for new actions from society, including universities and companies. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are part of a global agenda, but this priority is not significant to university students. Although some research has focused on SDGs and university students, there is a lack of evaluation and comparison in Latin American countries. The current study aims to evaluate student knowledge of the SDGs, the relation of student professional careers to the SDGs, the importance of the SDGs for economic development after the COVID-19 pandemic, and student interest research in SDG issues. The study is carried out with students in Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru. The instrument was developed and validated. The highest score of level of knowledge was reported in Mexico and the lowest score in Colombia. This outcome can be explained by the availability of training programs in the universities about SDGs. The availability of programs created and promoted by the governments can also be a reason; however, students from Mexico are the ones who felt the most that the authorities are not making efforts to promote the SDGs. With research interests, interests in creating sustainable cities and communities, and responsible consumption and production were recognized for the four countries. The outcomes reveal several interesting insights through comparisons among the four countries considered according to descriptive analyses. Some SDGs were found to be more important for some countries than others. Interests were noted in research on some SDGs.


Objective: The goals of this study were to identify feet and leg indicator traits to be used in beef breed genetic evaluations and develop a scoring method that can be easily adopted by cattle producers. Description: Data were analyzed on 1,885 Red Angus cattle, and after editing, 1,720 records were used for analysis. Feet and leg phenotypes were obtained from August 2015 through September 2017 for 14 traits shown in the following table. Trained livestock evaluators collected measurements using an electronic tablet with offline data storage capabilities. Heritability estimates for all 14 traits were calculated from two different measurements of scale, the original 1-100 scale (1 and 100 are extreme, 50 is desirable), and scores truncated to a 1-9 scale (1 and 9 are extreme, 5 is desirable). Genetic parameters were estimated using maximum log likelihood procedures. The Bottom Line: Feet and leg traits are moderately to lowly heritable; however, producers can still select on traits for improved soundness. Scoring on a simpler, less granular measurement of scale (1-9) is appropriate to be used in further research.


Background: Several disease indications have been researched for homeopathic treatment. However, the degree of evidence of studies is not yet investigated for the whole of homeopathic care. Three levels of care are identified: 1. Basic/ community health level. 2. Professional/ primary care level, 3. Advanced/ specialist care level
Methods: Browser searches were made to identify studies at the three levels; from major reviews the last 20 years. The degrees of evidence were further subdivided into the levels of care. Each care level was documented for 7 major areas of pathology: cardiovascular, respiratory, gastro intestinal, urogenital, Neuro-endocrino-immunological, infectious, degenerative-oncological diseases. Criteria for inclusion: for RCT's a minimum of Jadad score 3.
Results: A matrix yields an overview of studies of sufficient quality to make recommendations for health services to integrate homeopathic treatment into their package of service delivery. 75% of the included studies are performed at community health level only.
Discussion: A disproportionate segment of RCT's on community health level has been conducted, in relation to the actual teaching priorities on individual treatment in homeopathic practice, and professional profiling as 'specialists'. External and model validity enhancing recommendations for RCTs are provided, and some disease-categories with sufficient evidence presented.


Digit-serial/parallel multipliers with improved throughput and latency are presented. The multipliers are based on unfolded bit-serial/parallel multipliers. The unfolding yields long critical paths that are reduced by splitting the multiplication as a sum of partial multiplications. Using a sum of two partial multiplications yields an increased throughput with between 50 and 120 percent and the latency is reduced with up to 50 percent, compared with the basic digit-serial/parallel multiplier based on unfolding


Substituting a short-season, spring-planted crop for summer fallow when soil water is sufficient at planting might reduce soil degradation without significantly increasing the risk of crop failure. The objectives of this study were to determine the relationship of crop grain or forage yield to plant available soil water at planting. The study was conducted on silt loam soils in 2004 and 2005 at Sidney, NE, and Akron, CO. A range of soil water levels was established with supplemental irrigation before planting. Four crops [spring triticale (X Triticosecale rimpaui Wittm.) for forage, dry pea (Pisum sativum L.) for grain, proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) for grain, and foxtail millet (Setaria italica L. Beauv.) for forage] were no-till seeded into corn (Zea mays L.) residue in a split-plot design with four replications per location. Triticale forage yield increased by 229 kg ha 21 for each centimeter of soil water available at planting in 2004. Foxtail millet forage yield and grain yield of proso millet increased by 399 kg ha 21 cm 21 and 148 kg ha 21 cm 21 , respectively, at Akron in 2004. Spring triticale, foxtail millet, and proso millet did not respond to soil water at planting in 2005, when precipitation was above the long-term average. Dry pea did not demonstrate a consistent positive response to soil water availability at planting. Soil water at planting may be a useful indicator of potential yield for selected short-season spring-planted summer crops, particularly when crop production is limited by growing season precipitation.


Economic theory has struggled to produce a coherent narrative justifying the implementation of intellectual property regimes, although a variety of rationales have been advanced as explanations. The most prevalent justification characterizes the subject matter of intellectual property in terms of public goods, which are nonrivalrously and nonexclusively consumed and thus likely to be underproduced due to free-riding problems. On this view, intellectual property regimes are intended to provide an incentive for investment in valuable intangible goods. But because the social costs of intellectual property may be significant, this explanation is not an entirely persuasive justification. Consequently, other rationales, such as incentives to disclosure, or coordination of resources, have been advanced. Given the vast variety of innovative and creative activities subject to intellectual property protection, it may be that no one explanation is adequate but rather that different rationales, or different combinations of rationales, apply in different industries.


Objectives
External beam radiation therapy (EBRT) is one of the most common treatments for primary prostate cancer. The primary limitation for EBRT is the potential for damage to surrounding tissues. Epidemiological evidence indicates that tomato products are associated with reduced PCa progression. Tomatoes contain carotenoids and other potent antioxidants that may protect the surrounding tissue from the detrimental effects of EBRT. The objective of this pilot study is to determine if tomato feeding can alter early inflammatory and oxidative events following a single dose of radiation that may predict a more successful therapeutic outcome.

Methods
To test this hypothesis, male TRAMP mice (n = 60) were provided a powdered AIN-93 G diet (Control) or an AIN-93 G diet modified to contain 10% lyophilized tomato paste (TP; n = 30) beginning at 4 weeks of age. Mice were monitored by ultrasound biweekly for in vivo tumor detection and 3-D volumetric growth measurement. Tumors were irradiated with 7.5 gy (n = 15 per diet) or 0 gy (sham, n = 15 per diet) of radiation by a Cobolt-60 source once the animal had a 1000 mm3 tumor. Animals were euthanized after 24 hours and carotenoids were measured by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in the tumor and liver. Sections of tumor, liver, kidneys, bladder, lymph, bladder and intestines were stained by hematoxylin and eosin-stained (H&E) and were assessed for tumor grade and inflammatory markers. Pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-6 and TNFα) will be measured from the serum and tumor tissues by ELISA. Oxidative damage will be analyzed through the γH2AX assay and through measurement of reduced glutathione.

Results
This study will be the first to explore the effects of tomato powder on the PCa tumor microenvironment following irradiation. We hypothesize that lifelong tomato consumption will delay tumor growth; will protect surrounding tissues from inflammatory and oxidative damage (reducing circulating pro-inflammatory cytokines); and will reduce histopathological markers of inflammation in surrounding tissues following a single exposure to 60-CO radiation in the TRAMP model.

Conclusions
This study will provide important preclinical data to inform future clinical trials that may positively affect dietary recommendations for EBRT to improve therapeutic outcomes.

Funding Sources
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.


Nowadays, a process can be observed in Germany where electricity producing and trading firms react to the electricity market liberalisation by merging market shares, since the year 2000, which reduces the number of suppliers and influences production and consumer prices. This paper discusses whether the liberalisation process will have positive or negative impacts on the environmental situation and whether this process together with a phase out of nuclear power can guarantee the intended improvement of environmental conditions without governmental regulation in Germany. This is done by modelling different strategic options of energy suppliers and their impacts on the economic and environmental situation in the liberalised German electricity market by a computational game theoretic model. Calculations with this model show that when German firms act strategically (e.g. a change in action of one firm affects the electricity price and, hence, the payoffs of other firms), the environment is better off at the cost of higher electricity prices. This result is robust to perturbations as shows by performing a sensitivity analysis.


Diane Arbus (1923-1971) is renowned for her provocative and unsettling portraits of modern Americans. This book presents a significant body of previously unpublished pictures by Arbus and proposes a radically new way to understand her goals, strategies, and overall work. "Diane Arbus: Family Albums" examines unknown contact sheets from several of Arbus's portrait sessions, including more than 300 photographs she took of a New York family one weekend in 1969. Anthony Lee and John Pultz put to the test Arbus's claim that she was developing a "family album". They present other images Arbus shot for "Esquire" magazine (including pictures of the families of Ricky Nelson, Jayne Mansfield, and Ogden Reid) and discuss her interest in photographic groupings of both traditional and alternative families. Challenging common interpretations of Arbus, the authors reveal a photographer far more savvy with the camera, more aware of photography as an artistic and commercial practice, and more sensitive to the social and cultural tensions of the 1960s than has been acknowledged before.


The study of the European Union (EU) as an international actor has expanded rapidly in the last 15 years. The early years of informal European Political Cooperation (EPC) amongst the Member States and the external relations of the then European Community (EC) in the 1970s through late the 1980s inspired little academic interest as the EU's role in the world was limited and often undervalued. With the institutionalization of European foreign policymaking through the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and later the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) in the 1990s more scholars of European integration and International Relations especially, began to focus their efforts on understanding this newly visible international role of the EU. Yet the EU's role as an international actor goes beyond merely the CFSP and the ESDP, it also includes policy areas such as development, environment, and trade. Furthermore, through these policies the EU has built up an extensive network of relations across the globe ranging from its immediate neighborhood and extending to Africa, Asia, Latin and North America. This bibliography provides an overview of the scholarly literature and academic debates that accompanied the evolution of the EU as an international actor. It seeks to examine the topic from historical, theoretical, and conceptual perspectives; provides a broad overview of the various EU policy areas with an external dimension; looks at the numerous geographical areas of the EU's external relations; and explores some newer avenues for research for better understanding the EU as an international actor.


In the six years since the then Chief of Staff of the JCT pronounced transfer pricing enforcement to be dead, numerous case studies have demonstrated the truth of his observation, starting with the JCTs own examination of six US based multinationals (MNEs) in 2010 and followed by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearings on Microsoft, HP and Apple in 2012-13. There is little doubt that the current transfer pricing rules, in conjunction with the dysfunctional Subpart F rules, allow US-based MNEs to shift most of their profits to low tax jurisdictions. It is estimated that there are currently about 2 trillion dollars of such profits that benefit from deferral and cannot be repatriated because they are not subject to foreign tax and therefore would be subject to full US taxation upon repatriation under current law. Hence the push to adopt territoriality and allow the MNEs to distribute these trapped profits as dividends to their US parent, which can then in turn use them to pay dividends to its shareholders. The OECD has recently come to recognize that the transfer pricing system does not work as intended. In its report on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, the OECD recognizes that BEPS results in revenue losses that affect all states, especially poorer ones; that systematic tax avoidance by the richest and most powerful companies in the world undermines the general legitimacy of taxation; that it gives MNEs significant competitive advantages over purely domestic firms, resulting in inefficient allocations of investment and major distortions to economic activity; and that it skews the decisions of the MNEs themselves, resulting in overall economic welfare losses.This article will contrast three approaches to dealing with the BEPS problem: adopting a unitary taxation regime; ending deferral; and adopting anti base erosion measures. It concludes that while the first approach is the best long term option, the other two are more promising as immediate candidates for adoption in the context of US tax reform and the OECD BEPS project.


This article is part of a series of studies related to the impact of Indiana's photo identification law during the two presidential election cycles at which it has been implemented — 2008 and 2012. This article tracks the number of provisional ballots cast and not counted because of a lack of voter identification at Indiana's 2012 general election. Importantly, this article also addresses an argument against photo identification laws that has became more prominent in recent years — the idea that photo identification laws disparately disfranchise female voters. This article addresses that argument by tracking the gender of those persons who cast provisional ballots due to a lack of valid photo identification — something that does not seem to have been previously done anywhere in the literature. While the research presented here allows for several conclusions, the most important of those conclusions are as follows. First, Indiana's photo identification law has a relatively small (in relation to the total number of ballots cast) overall actual disfranchising impact on the electorate. Second, Indiana's photo identification law's actual disfranchising impact seems to be headed in a downward direction when one compares data from the 2012 general election to the 2008 general election. Third, Indiana's photo identification law appears to have a disparate impact on women.


When agrochemical spray solutions are prepared, unforeseen circumstances can prevent spray solution application, resulting in agrochemical remaining in the spray tank for 1 or more days. Information about the impact of delayed applications on agrochemical performance is limited. Experiments were conducted in 2009 and 2010 to determine the effect of delayed spray applications on efficacy of defoliants, insecticides, and plant growth regulators commonly applied to cotton. Each agrochemical was mixed individually on the day of application and 3, 6, and 9 d prior to application using the same water source, and all applications were made on the same day. Defoliation by ethephon and thidiazuron was affected when products were left in solution for extended periods of time. Efficacy of ethephon, indoxacarb, methomyl, spinosad, and thidiazuron was influenced when spray solution application was delayed, whereas efficacy of acephate, carfentrazone, diuron plus thidiazuron, ethephon plus cyclanalide, indoxacarb, lambda-cyhalothrin, lambda-cyhalothrin plus thiamethoxam, methomyl, thiadiazuron, and thiodicarb was not affected by mixing interval. When changes in efficacy occurred, the magnitude of the effect was relatively minor and most likely would be of little biological significance.


BACKGROUND
A hub-and-spoke telestroke network is an effective way to extend quality emergency stroke care to remote hospitals and improve patient outcomes.

OBJECTIVES
To evaluate the cost utility of a telestroke network in the management of acute ischemic stroke from the societal perspective.

STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS
A lifetime Markov model was developed to compare the incremental costs and effectiveness of a telestroke network. One-year transition probabilities between the 3 health states based on the modified Rankin scale--minimal-to-no disability, moderate-to-severe disability, and death--were derived from literature. Costs included telemedicine setup and maintenance, initial and recurrent stroke treatment, rehabilitation, long-term care, and caregiver costs. Effectiveness was defined as quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs). Model inputs were obtained from the literature supplemented by data from Georgia Health Sciences University and Mayo Clinic. The base case network included 1 hub and 7 spokes, and assumed no survival benefits from acute treatment in a network. One-way sensitivity analyses were conducted.

RESULTS
Compared with no network, patients treated in a telestroke network incurred $1436 lower costs and gained 0.02 QALYs over a lifetime. Incremental costs decreased from $444 for the first year to -$1436 over a lifetime; incremental QALYs increased from 0.002 for the first year to 0.02 over a lifetime. Overall, results were robust in the 1-way sensitivity analyses. A telestroke network became less cost-effective with increasing spoke-to-hub transfer rates.

CONCLUSIONS
A telestroke network is cost savingand more effective compared with no network from the societal perspective in most modeled scenarios.


Research suggests that to adequately prepare teachers for the task of classroom assessment, attention should be given to the educational measurement instruction. In addition, the literature indicates that the use of computer-mediated instruction has the potential to affect student knowledge, skills, and attitudes. This study compared the effects of a traditional face-to-face instruction of an undergraduate level educational measurement course to a computer-mediated instruction on academic course performance, educational measurement knowledge, skills, and attitudes of teacher education students (N = 51) at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, using a posttest-only control group design. Results revealed statistically significant group differences favoring the computer-mediated instruction. Implications and recommendations for educational measurement instruction and research are discussed. Educational Measurement Instruction Assessment of student's learning is one of the many job responsibilities of teachers (Mertler, 2003). It has been estimated that teachers spend up to a half of their professional time in classroom assessment activities (Plake, 1993). Appropriate implementation of these activities requires strong knowledge and skills in and positive attitudes toward educational measurement (Alkharusi, Kazem, & Al-Musawi, 2008; Popham, 2006). Unfortunately, many students enrolled in educational measurement course encounter difficulties. They view the course as less relevant to their prospective profession as teachers, expect it to be difficult, and often try to avoid taking it for as long as possible (Bryant & Barnes, 1997; Hills, 1991; Kottke, 2000; VanZile-Tamsen & Boes, 1997). As might be expected, this situation may result in negative attitudes and poor course performance (Alkharusi, 2009). In addition, studies investigating classroom assessment literacy and practices have repeatedly expressed a concern about teachers' knowledge and skills in educational measurement (e.g., Alkharusi et al., 2008; McMillan, Myran, & Workamn, 2002; Mertler, 1999, 2003). These difficulties imply that to adequately prepare teachers for the task of classroom assessment, attention should be given to the educational measurement instruction. The present study aimed at investigating the comparative effects of a traditional face-to-face instruction and a computer-mediated instruction on educational measurement academic course performance, knowledge, skills, and attitudes. When reviewing the literature related to educational measurement, we found only one study that specifically focused on educational measurement instruction, and that this study is outdated. Muller (1974) developed instructional materials to enable students to take a graduate level educational measurement course by self-instruction. Results indicated that students in the self-instructional section performed as well as did students in the lecture-discussion section on unit exams. Also, most of the students were very satisfied with the self-instructional experience and the self-instructional materials. In 1990, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), and the National Education Association (NEA) jointly developed Standards for Teacher Competence in Educational Assessment of Students. These standards are intended to guide the preparation of teachers in educational measurement (AFT, NCME, & NEA, 1990). The standards hold that teachers should be skilled in choosing and developing assessment methods appropriate for instructional decisions; administering, scoring, and interpreting results of externally- and teacher-produced assessment methods; using assessment results in making decisions for individual students, planning teaching, developing curriculum, and making school improvements; developing valid assessment-based procedures; communicating assessment results to students, parents, and other audiences; and recognizing methods and uses of assessments that are unethical, illegal, or otherwise inappropriate. …


Air quality in the Lake Tahoe region has been a concern for a number of years. This study was designed to examine some of the sources of the air pollution in the Lake Tahoe basin. The first step was an evaluation of the Air Resources Board sampling of 1973. From this data, the local contribution of different gas and particulate pollutants was postulated. A sampling station was then established at South Lake Tahoe and particulates in three size regions were collected and analyzed for elemental content. To determine if the data from this station were representative of the basin, a profile of Lake Tahoe was developed. It was determined that the concentrations of the major elements were quite different from site to site. It was also found that the most polluted site was South Lake Tahoe. A spatial profile in South Lake Tahoe was then conducted to determine the sources in this region. It was possible to identify automotive traffic as one source in the area. The origin of the sulfur aerosols was not identified.


Many scholars and policymakers are concerned that the emergence of drone warfare—a first step toward the robotics age—will promote instability and conflict at the international level. This view depends on the widely shared assumption among International Relations scholars that military hardware spreads easily, especially in the age of globalization and real-time communications. In this article, we question this consensus. Drawing from the literature in management, we advance a new theory of diffusion of military innovations and test its two underlying causal mechanisms. First, we argue that designing, developing, and manufacturing advanced weapon systems require laboratories, and testing and production facilities, as well as know-how and experience that cannot be easily borrowed from other fields. Second, we argue that the adoption of military innovations requires both organizational and infrastructural support. We test our two claims on three types of combat-effective drones: loitering attack munitions (LAMs), intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance drones (ISR), and unmanned combat autonomous vehicles (UCAVs). We find that even wealthy, advanced, and militarily capable countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France have struggled to produce or adopt such platforms. We conclude that concerns about the diffusion of drone warfare appear significantly exaggerated, as do claims that globalization redistributes military power at the global level. More generally, our analysis sheds light on how the interaction between platform and adoption challenges affects the rate and speed of diffusion of different military innovations.


Ammons, Douglas, Masters, 1988 Psychology Long-term retention of a simple motor skill Director: Laurence H. Berger Historically in motor skills research, there has been an emphasis on acquisition and limited work on retention. Recent reviews by Adams (1987) and Schendel, Shields, and Katz (1978) summarize the empirical retention research as vague, qualitative ''principles," which do not integrate retention results with acquisition phenomena. The present study describes pursuit rotor retention over a much longer period than any previous research. Thirteen subjects who had taken part in an earlier rotary pursuit acquisition study were re tested an average of 15.5 years after original practice. Matched age control groups were given the same amount of acquisition prac tice and retested after a one-week retention interval, so that all subjects had the same amount of total practice but differed in length of retention interval. The results provided data for testing and revising two principles of retention: (i) forgetting increases as a positive function of the retention interval; (ii) relearning is more rapid than the original learning. It was found that subjects retested after a 15.5 year period of no practice perform much like naive subjects, with essentially a slow, linear increase in perfor mance during initial continuous practice. After the first rest, performance jumps in one large increment up to the performance pat tern and level of the control groups, but shows more rapid decrement in the later parts of the practice period. A reinterpretation of these and other retention phenomena as schedule-induced differences in performance was made, showing that forgetting is simply the decay in reminiscence over long periods of time and not the decay of learn ing. Apparent losses in performance upon initial retest measure merely the predictable changes in reminiscence as its reappearance is depressed by the continuous or highly massed retest conditions, and rapid "relearning" to previous acquisition levels is simply the predictable reappearance of reminiscence after the first postrest practice during retesting. Four principles of pursuit rotor perfor mance are stated and used to describe retention phenomena in terms of acquisition phenomena. Finally, some preliminary suggestions are made for the extention of Kimble's theory of skill acquisition.


Connecting reading and writing has become an important trend in teaching the language arts. Poetry, as a salient facet of the reading curriculum, integrates well with different purposes in writing. ********** Carefully chosen poems should be read aloud to pupils in class. Poetry read aloud to pupils should: * encourage optimal listening on the learner's part. * emphasize securing the interests of listeners. * stress meaningful learning in that the content read makes sense. * possess purpose for reading. * provide intrinsic motivation for pupils to do more reading of diverse kinds of poems. * assist learners to enjoy reading activities. * help listeners in wanting to write poems. * guide learners to perceive relationships between reading poetry and writing. * develop the feeling and aesthetic dimension of learning. * stimulate wanting to learn more about creative use of words and language (See Gunning, 2000). There are a plethora of kinds of poems which need to be emphasized in teaching and learning situations. Each kind involves a newness in reading poetry. Boring experiences must be avoided in poetry reading. Poetry stressed in the language arts needs to be on the developmental level of each pupil so that understanding of content is in evidence. Introducing Poetry to Pupils The teacher needs to have a definite strategy planned to introduce a poem to learners. When supervising student teachers in the public schools, the author noticed that an entire unit on poetry was taught by a student teacher with cooperative teacher assistance. The two teachers, in many cases, had worked together as a teaching team. Whether it be an entire unit taught on poetry or a poem is correlated with a science, mathematics, or social studies unit, it is vital that a proper introduction should be in the offing The teacher may then read orally a poem to pupils using appropriate stress, pitch, and juncture to actively engage pupils in learning. If there are related pictures pertaining to the poem being read aloud, they should be shown to learners as the oral reading progresses. Young children, in particular, need to see illustrations dealing with the poem read so that meaning is attached to the read aloud. Reading poetry emphasizes holism in that the entire poem is read to pupils before a discussion to analyze its contents follows. Holism in poetry reading needs to stress providing background information to pupils prior to the read aloud. Background information provides readiness for listening and for later reading of the poem by pupils (Ediger, 2001, Chapter Seven). Thus to understand the ensuing poem to be read by the teacher, pupils may need the following experiences: * knowledge on the subject matter content. An illustration, object, and discussion, directly related to the poem, may provide the prerequisite knowledge. * novel use of selected words in the poem need attention at this point. The teacher may print these words contextually on the chalkboard for pupils to see and discuss, prior to reading the poem. Holism in poetry study is needed so that pupils reflect upon the inherent ideas, not on segments. Beauty of language needs to be noticed in the poem. To take care of word recognition problems, pupils should follow the print discourse from their textbooks or from duplicated content at their desks, as the teacher reads aloud. The second reading should involve pupils in the read aloud. Rereading can be good as long as pupils remain interested in the poetry selection. Unknown and unrecognized words by pupils might then be mastered within the poem. A discussion in small groups may follow the reading of the poem. How much segmentation of a poem should occur? Wholeness and meaning of the poem needs to remain intact. However, there are salient questions which may be raised by the teacher and the pupils to stimulate interest in the latter's literary achievement. …


CASE DESCRIPTION"The Most Dangerous Woman in American" is Paula Deen who was described in these terms by one of her fellow chefs on the Food Network. Ms. Deen was originally criticized for the unhealthy ingredients which she featured in her recipes, but the criticism increased when she announced that she had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. In fact, Ms. Deen had amassed considerable wealth with her unhealthy recipes and was viewed by some as promoting an unhealthy lifestyle. Since obesity is a risk factor for diabetes, she was accused of hypocrisy in that she continued in her usual mode three years after her diagnosis. She added insult to injury by timing her announcement of her diagnosis to coincide with her affiliation with a new diabetes drug. She became the target of criticism for allegedly promoting the kind of food that is a risk factor for diabetes and then capitalizing on a drug endorsement for the treatment.The case provides a forum for discussion of the ethics of a decision that was personal but had business consequences. The issues of how to move past this crisis has an ethical dimension as well. This case has a level four difficulty. Seniors in Strategic Management courses are encouraged to consider the ethical aspects of decisions. This case allows both analysis in hindsight of what might or should have been done and requires decisions about how to maintain brand loyalty going forward.This case is designed to be taught in a 50- minute class and is expected to require about an hour of outside preparation by students.CASE SYNOPSISHowever, that food is not the only cause and that people may not eat something just because they see it prepared on television.Deen Enterprises' On January 17, 2012, Paula Deen, famous for high calorie Southern cooking, went public with what amounted to an open secret: She had been diagnosed three years earlier with Type 2 Diabetes. During that three year period, she had continued to promote the type of foods that most people view as causing or at least contributing to diabetes. It appeared that people were lining up to sneer at her, to question her judgment, and her ethics. There is an often quoted test for judging the ethics of a decision: Imagine yourself explaining your decision on TV. The popular Food Network chef found herself in this situation as she explained her decision to keep her diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes a secret for three years. She timed her announcement to coincide with the announcement of her endorsement and contract with a diabetes drug.While diet is a risk factor for diabetes, it is far from the only risk factor. Other factors include age, activity level, and family history. Diabetes is a serious disease and can lead to other conditions which are life-threating. Approximately 23 million Americans have the condition and because early symptoms are mild or nonexistent may not be aware of it. Students should realize, holdings and interests go well beyond food and are estimated to be worth approximately $10 million annually. The case requires students to review the ethical and financial implications of her decision. What is the responsibility of a personality such as Paula Deen to her fans? How should this responsibility affect her business decisions in the future? What steps should be taken to control damage to the Paula Deen brand?THE ANNOUNCEMENTOn January 17, 2012, Paula Deen, chef, TV personality, and brand name, confirmed rumors that she has Type 2 diabetes. The diagnosis was three years old and had already been suspected and discussed in some quarters. In the past year, a Food Network rival, Anthony Bourdain had castigated her penchant for recipes loaded with butter, sugar, and other unhealthy ingredients and called her the "most dangerous person in America." Her response was that Mr. Bourdain should "get a life." He denied calling her "a diabetic scam artist" as reported by one website but did have some harsh comments (a Tweet actually) for her decision to become a paid spokeswoman for a diabetes medication and the timing of the two announcements. …


The present experiments were performed to investigate whether neurogenic inflammation in rat trachea (with edema formation and protein extravasation when the circulation is intact) induced by electrical field stimulation of neuropeptide-containing C fibers in the vagal nerve is accompanied by increased negativity of interstitial fluid pressure (P(if)). Increased negativity of P(if) in the trachea occurs in dextran anaphylaxis and mast cell degranulation and facilitates edema formation under these circumstances. Experiments were performed after circulatory arrest had been induced in pentobarbital anesthesia to prevent edema formation, which will raise P(if) and potentially cause underestimation of an increased negativity of P(if). After induction of circulatory arrest, the vagal nerve was isolated and placed in a stimulating electrode. The trachea was then exposed and covered with mineral oil, and measurement of P(if) was started as soon as possible thereafter. P(if) was measured with sharpened glass capillaries (tip diameter, 3 to 7 microns) connected to a servocontrolled counterpressure system. P(if) in the control group (n = 12) did not change throughout the observation period. Electrical stimulation of the left vagal nerve caused P(if) to fall in all experiments, from -1.1 +/- 1.1 mm Hg in the control condition to an average of -10.6 +/- 3.4 mm Hg (n = 9, P < .01). In some experiments, a continuous recording of P(if) was obtained, showing that the reduction of P(if) started within 30 seconds after onset of stimulation to reach and later remain at a stable level within a few minutes. The experimental protocol was repeated after the C fibers had been nearly depleted of neuropeptides with capsaicin.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


The assumption of continuity of mineralisation between sampling points, as stated in the JORC Code, requires a "confident interpretation of the geological framework". The elements of relevance to a geological framework vary greatly depending on th e commodity and style of mineralisation. In general terms, at least two elements must be considered to underpin a geological framework: space and time. The geometry and location of a mineralised body are controlled by physical and/or chemical elements, which can be unravelled by detailed geological mapping, adequate geochemical (including a quality analysis-quality control program) and structural interpretations, and by 3D geological modelling. These elements may involve, among other, aspects of stratigraphy, chemical or physical properties of the rocks (e.g. texture, grain size) and structural features such as faults, fractures and folds. Mineralisation events that lead to economic deposits are often relatively short-lived periods of focused fluid transfer and element-exchange, which result in mobilisation and deposition of metals in well-defined areas. Understanding the temporal framework and interaction of structural elements and mineralising events (determining genetic relationships, e.g. pre-, syn- and post-mineralisation) results in the development of more accurate geological models and can lead to predictive capabilities and new discoveries. We present case studies in regional metamorphic, igneous, sedimentary and surficial geological environments, demonstrating how understanding the mineralisation system not only results in increased confidence in the resource, but also facilitates reduction of exploration risks.


As several industries are moving towards modeling massive 3D virtual worlds, the need for content creation tools that can scale in terms of the quantity, quality, and diversity of 3D content is becoming evident. In our work, we aim to train performant 3D generative models that synthesize textured meshes which can be directly consumed by 3D rendering engines, thus immediately usable in downstream applications. Prior works on 3D generative modeling either lack geometric details, are limited in the mesh topology they can produce, typically do not support textures, or utilize neural renderers in the synthesis process, which makes their use in common 3D software non-trivial. In this work, we introduce GET3D, a Generative model that directly generates Explicit Textured 3D meshes with complex topology, rich geometric details, and high-fidelity textures. We bridge recent success in the differentiable surface modeling, differentiable rendering as well as 2D Generative Adversarial Networks to train our model from 2D image collections. GET3D is able to generate high-quality 3D textured meshes, ranging from cars, chairs, animals, motorbikes and human characters to buildings, achieving significant improvements over previous methods.


Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) learn highly discriminative representations from data, but how robust and structured are these representations? How does the data shape the internal network representation? We shed light on these questions by empirically measuring the invariance and equivariance properties of a large number of CNNs trained with various types of input transformations. We find that CNNs learn invariance wrt all 9 tested transformation types and that invariance extends to transformations outside the training range. We also measure the distance between CNN representations and show that similar input transformations lead to more similar internal representations. Transforms can be grouped by the way they affect the learned representation. Additionally, we also propose a loss function that aims to improve CNN equivariance.


Background Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an inherited blood disorder which affects 1 in every 2000 children born in the UK. Specialist clinics for children with SCD have identified that attending children live in areas of high deprivation, with many experiencing child protection issues. Aims This study aims to examine the burden of social issues on this population of children with SCD, and investigate the impact of these factors on adherence to medication, clinic attendance, and inpatient admissions. Method A retrospective notes audit of 360 children from two tertiary sickle cell referral centres was carried out and information on patient and family characteristics, social background and child protection issues, compliance with penicillin and immunisations was collated in line with national guidelines. Results Housing problems were present in 25.8% of patients, immigration in 10% and child protection issues in 9.2%. 22.7% of patients were from single-parent families. The hospitals had good records for immunisations, (93.3% up-to-date), but poor clinic attendance, (mean attendance rate 71.87%). Attendance was higher with a more severe phenotype but not significantly different with social issues. Poor compliance was identified in 15% of patients. Strong associations exist between poor compliance and poor clinic attendance, not being fully immunised and the presence of parental SCD. There was a significantly higher incidence of inpatient admissions in patients with housing issues as compared to those without at both hospitals (Unit 1: p ≤ 0.017; Unit 2 p ≤ 0.027; combined in multivariate model p ≤ 0.04). There was also a higher incidence of inpatient admissions in patients with immigration issues than those without, however this was not statistically significant (p ≤ 0.28). There was no difference in inpatient admissions between single-parent and two-parent households. Conclusion The significant burden of social problems and child protection issues in the paediatric sickle cell population studied must be recognised due to the impact on patients' health, admissions to hospital, ability to attend clinic, and maintain compliance. Further research on causation of poor clinic attendance and poor compliance would reduce waste and improve health service efficiency, as well as being of considerable benefit to patient health and wellbeing.


Black willow (Salix nigra Marsh.) has the potential to be a significant feedstock source for bioenergy and biofuels production in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (LMAV). This potential is based on a number of primary factors including rapid growth, ease of vegetative propagation, excellent rooting, and the ability to regenerate from coppice following harvest. To date, there has been no directed black willow improvement effort for the LMAV and production rates of this species in dedicated energy plantations is unknown. The focus of this program is to identify genetically superior black willow clones and define planting stock for use in regeneration of marginal agricultural sites. The Mississippi State University Forestry Department and the USDA Forest Service Center for Bottomland Hardwoods Research formed a joint venture in 2008 to pursue this effort. The initial selection strategy incorporated five geographic areas, four stands within each area, and five clones within each stand. The five geographic areas included two along the Mississippi River and one each along the Atchafalaya, Trinity, and the Brazos Rivers. From each stand 5-8 one to two year-old stems were collected during the winter of 2009. Over a two-year period a total of four screening trials were established. Data from ages one and two have provided insight into geographic origin performance and heritability. These early results allowed us to design a more highly replicated clone test of the better performing clones as well as to increase selections for the base population.


Background: Suicide and interpersonal violence (i.e. victimization and perpetration) represent pressing public health problems, and yet remain mostly addressed as separate topics. Aims: To identify the (1) frequency and overlap of suicide and interpersonal violence and (2) characteristics differentiating subgroups of violence-related experiences. Methods: A health survey was completed by 2,175 respondents comprised of three groups: college students (n = 702), adult members of a sexuality special interest organization (n = 816) and a community adult sample (n = 657). Latent class analysis was used to identify subgroups characterized by violence experiences; logistic regression was used to identify respondent characteristics differentiating subgroups. Results: Overall rates of violence perpetration were low; perpetration, victimization and self-directed violence all varied by sample. Adults with alternative sexual interests reported high rates of victimization and self-directed violence. Analyses indicated two subgroups: (1) victimization + self-directed violence and (2) self-directed violence only. The victimization + self-directed violence subgroup was characterized by older, White, female and sexual orientation minority persons. The self-directed violence subgroup was characterized by younger, non-White, male and straight counterparts engaging with more sexual partners and more frequent drug use. Conclusion: Findings support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) definition of suicide as self-directed violence. Suicide intervention and prevention should further account for the role of violent victimization by focusing on the joint conceptualization of self-directed and interpersonal violence. Additional prevention implications are discussed.


Scholars have in recent years raised a host of questions about Article III's provisions for judicial independence. In a provocative recent essay, Professors Sai Prakash and Steve Smith challenge the conventional view that federal judges may be removed from office only through the relatively cumbersome process of House impeachment followed by a trial in the Senate. Prakash and Smith base their argument against impeachment-and-removal exclusivity on the history of good behavior tenure and the role that courts played in adjudicating claims of misbehavior at common law. Prakash and Smith contend that this judicial mode of removing from office remains available for federal judges, something Congress may revive through the passage of appropriate legislation. This Essay disputes the Prakash and Smith thesis. It shows that the English common law mode of removal from office through judicial proceedings had essentially disappeared by the time of the framing. Both in England, where the Act of Settlement of 1701 regulated judicial office, and in the newly independent states, constitutional documents almost invariably assigned the ouster of superior court judges to the legislative branch of government. The drafting and ratification debates reveal that the framers of the federal Constitution made a similar choice, providing a legislative mode of removing misbehaving judges and foreclosing alternative modes. In the end, the evidence sustains the conventional view that the Constitution permits the removal of federal judges only through the legislative process.


How can we measure and compare the relative performance of production units? If input and output variables are one dimensional, then the simplest way is to compute efficiency by calculating and comparing the ratio of output and input for each production unit. This idea is inappropriate though, when multiple inputs or multiple outputs are observed. Consider a bank, for example, with three branches A, B, and C. The branches take the number of staff as the input, and measures outputs such as the number of transactions on personal and business accounts. Assume that the following statistics are observed: Branch A: 60000 personal transactions, 50000 business transactions, 25 people on staff, Branch B: 50000 personal transactions, 25000 business transactions, 15 people on staff, Branch C: 45000 personal transactions, 15000 business transactions, 10 people on staff. We observe that Branch C performed best in terms of personal transactions per staff, whereas Branch A has the highest ratio of business transactions per staff. By contrast Branch B performed better than Branch A in terms of personal transactions per staff, and better than Branch C in terms of business transactions per staff. How can we compare these business units in a fair way? Moreover, can we possibly create a virtual branch that reflects the input/output mechanism and thus creates a scale for the real branches? Productivity analysis provides a systematic approach to these problems. We review the basic concepts of productivity analysis and two popular methods DEA and FDH, which are given in Sections 12.1 and 12.2, respectively. Sections 12.3 and 12.4 contain illustrative examples with real data.


Although climate records from several locations around the world show nearly synchronous and abrupt changes, the nature of the inferred teleconnection is still poorly understood. On the basis of preserved laminations and molybdenum enrichments in open margin sediments we demonstrate that the oxygen content of northeast Pacific waters at 800 m depth during the Bolling-Allerod warm period (15–13 kyr) was greatly reduced. Existing oxygen isotopic records of benthic and planktonic foraminifera suggest that this was probably due to suppressed ventilation at higher latitudes of the North Pacific. Comparison with ventilation records for the North Atlantic indicates an antiphased pattern of convection relative to the North Pacific over the past 22 kyr, perhaps due to variations in water vapor transport across Central America.


Economic empowerment of poor households is a key entry point for development organisations concerned with economic inequality. Over the decades, gender inequality has emerged as a key concern, and the result has been women's economic empowerment (WEE) programming. This article is a study of the impact of WEE programming on domestic violence (DV) against women. While this link has received some attention in gender and development literature, evaluations and impact assessments in development organisations have not consistently focused on the possibility of increased or decreased DV as a result of the challenge WEE represents to gender power relations. Drawing on the experience of Oxfam and other development organisations, we offer recommendations for practitioners aimed at better programme integration and more holistic empowerment. Aiming to challenge economic inequality between households involves better understanding of the impact of WEE programming on intra-household gender inequality, including rates of DV. This requires planning to anticipate these possible impacts and ensure women are able to gain from programming without placing themselves at risk.


Introduction Vaccinium myrtillus (bilberry) is a member of the Ericaceae family, and is also known as European blueberry, huckleberry, whortleberry, or blueberry. It is a shrubby perennial plant one to two feet in height and can be found in the mountains and forests of Europe and the northern United States. Its branches contain alternating, elliptical, bright green leaves, and its flowers, which appear from April to June, are reddish or pink, and bell-shaped. The fruit of the bilberry plant is blue-black or purple and differs from the American blueberry in that the meat of the fruit is purple, rather than cream or white. Fruit is harvested July through September, and time of ripeness is somewhat dependent on plant elevation. Plants growing at higher elevations generally ripen later than those at lower elevations. Bilberry has been used as food for centuries due to its high nutritive value, and today represents a precious wild delicacy. Bilberry's history of medicinal use dates back to the Middle Ages, but it did not become widely known to herbalists until the 16th century when its use was documented for treating bladder stones, biliary disorders, scurvy, coughs, and lung tuberculosis. More recently, bilberry fruit extracts have been used for the treatment of diarrhea, dysentery, and mouth and throat inflammations. Bilberry leaf decoctions have been used to lower blood sugar in diabetes. 1


Inherited photoreceptor dystrophies are a leading cause of blindness and have no effective treatment. Despite advances in our understanding of the genetic mechanisms underlying this diverse group of conditions, the sequence of events leading from genetic miscoding to photoreceptor death by apoptosis are still unknown, although influences from other cells within the retina have been implicated. Microglia, the macrophages of the central nervous system, have previously been shown to increase in number and migrate to the photoreceptor layer to phagocytose apoptotic cell debris. However increasing awareness of the cytotoxic potential of microglia, has led me to undertake this work with the primary remit of investigating the possible involvement of microglia in photoreceptor apoptosis using the rds mouse model of inherited photoreceptor degeneration. Using immunohistochemical and immunofluorescent methods I have demonstrated increased microglial numbers in the degenerating rds retina, resulting from both in situ proliferation and recruitment from the blood, with migration to the outer retinal layers and sub-retinal space. However, by closely scrutinising the period of greatest disease activity we have demonstrated that the peak rate of photoreceptor apoptosis precedes the peak in microglial numbers by approximately five days, suggesting that microglia respond to, rather than cause photoreceptor death. In addition, evidence of oxidative damage (a major mechanism of microglial cytotoxicity) is absent and depletion of retinal microglia using macrophage-depleting clodronate liposomes did not lead to a reduction in the rate of photoreceptor death, providing further evidence that microglia are not involved in causing photoreceptor apoptosis. Additional studies with the neuroprotective tetracycline antibiotic, minocycline showed that this drug was able to delay the onset of photoreceptor apoptosis in the rds mouse, possibly through a direct inhibitory effect on apoptosis and the caspase cascade. Delayed apoptosis was associated with a corresponding delay in microglial migration to the outer retina.


The possibility of imposing First Amendment limitations on copyright owner rights has arisen numerous times in U.S. case law, legislation, and commentary. Nevertheless, courts have almost never imposed First Amendment limitations on copyright, and most have summarily rejected copyright infringement free speech defenses. In taking this position, courts have regularly cited early commentators, who, after exploring possible areas of conflict between copyright and the First Amendment, concluded that the conflict is largely ameliorated by the fair use doctrine, copyright law's distinction between copyrightable expression and uncopyrightable fact and idea, and copyright's limited term. I argue in this Article that the courts have consistently gotten it wrong. In steadfastly following early commentary, they have largely ignored subsequent developments in both copyright law and First Amendment doctrine. As copyright law has metamorphisized over recent decades, copyright owner prerogatives have become increasingly bloated, raising serious questions about their need and fit for copyright's incentive-for-original-expression rationale and imposing an increasingly onerous burden on speech. And in parallel, even if free speech law might have presented little ground for subjecting copyright to First Amendment scrutiny in the past, the evolving precepts and analytic framework of First Amendment doctrine now fully support, if not demand, such scrutiny. I argue that, in line with prevailing First Amendment doctrine, copyright law constitutes content-neutral speech regulation and should be subject to intermediate scrutiny. Copyright law, however, falls within an emerging subcategory of content-neutral regulation. That subcategory consists of government regulation that distributes speech entitlements among prospective speakers, thus giving rise to a suspicion of successful rent-seeking by the highly organized interests to whom the entitlements are granted. In such instances what appears to be courts' implicit suspicion of improper government motive has sometimes led, and ought to lead, to a more rigorous, searching application of intermediate scrutiny than is often otherwise the case.


In a previous paper the Hartree-Fock method has been used to calculate electron excitation cross-sections for the ground configuration terms of O I. In the present paper the modifications required for similar calculations on positive ions are discussed, and cross-sections are calculated for electron excitation of the ground configuration terms of N II, O II, O III, Ne III and S II. These cross-sections are of fundamental importance in discussing the physical state and chemical composition of gaseous nebulae. A first approximation to the solution of the coupled integro-differential equations is obtained by neglecting energy differences (the E.R. approximation). A comparison is made between the cross-sections calculated using exact solutions of the E.R. equations and using weak coupling approximations to these solutions. It is found that, although allowance for distortion gives a considerable improvement, the weak coupling approximations cannot in general be relied upon to give accurate results. Estimates of the magnitudes of the terms omitted in the E.R. approximation are made by perturbation methods, and in all cases these terms are found to be reasonably small. Final values for the cross-sections are probably correct to within ±40% in absolute value and rather more accurate than this in the relative values. Cross-sections estimated for a number of other ions of astrophysical interest are considered to be correct to within a factor of 2. Hartree-Fock wave functions for N II are given in an appendix.


In both developed and developing countries, the government is turning to small and medium scale industries and entrepreneurs, as a means of economic development and a veritable means of solving problems. It is a seedbed of innovations, inventions and employment. Entrepreneurship is as old as Nigeria and had contributed to the growth of the economy. Presently in Nigeria, SMEs assist in promoting the growth of the country's economy, hence all the levels of government at different times have policies which promote the growth and sustenance of SMEs. This paper identifies the orientation of SME's and entrepreneurial trends in Nigeria, tackles the operational definition and scopes, and describes the role of the Nigerian government as a participant, regulator and facilitator, both legally and politically in the growth of SMEs and entrepreneurship. It identifies the marketing problems of SMEs and entrepreneurships in Nigeria, the provision and enactment of beneficial and supportive laws, the provision of infrastructural facilities, constant man-power and development, direct financial assistance to SMEs and the establishment of finance institutions to support SMEs. It identifies the roles of SMEs in Nigeria's development and growth. It discusses the entrepreneurial thoughts, problems and advance practical marketing solution. It concludes by clearly specifying the role of marketing to the survival of SMEs and entrepreneurship in Nigeria, and relevant recommendations. For SMEs to survive marketing practice and principles must be given prominence.


User-generated comments in online social media have recently been gaining increasing attention as a viable source of general-purpose descriptive annotations for digital objects like photos or videos. Because users have different levels of expertise, however, the quality of their comments can vary from very useful to entirely useless. Our aim is to provide automated support for the curation of useful user-generated comments from public collections of digital objects. After constructing a crowd-sourced gold standard of useful and not useful comments, we use standard machine learning methods to develop a usefulness classifier, exploring the impact of surface-level, syntactic, semantic, and topic-based features in addition to extra-linguistic attributes of the author and his or her social media activity. We then adapt an existing model of prevalence detection that uses the learned classifier to investigate patterns in the commenting culture of two popular social media platforms. We find that the prevalence of useful comments is platform-specific and is further influenced by the entity type of the media object being commented on (person, place, event), its time period (e.g., year of an event), and the degree of polarization among commenters.


Visual representation in architecture, urban-design and planning is critical for both the design and decision-making processes. Despite major advancements in the field of computer graphics, crafting visual representations is still a complex and costly task, usually carried out by highly-trained professionals. This is particularly true during preliminary design stages such as zoning exercises or schematic design in which key decisions are made yet partial information about final design details is available. This work attempts to substitute common practices of urban-design visualization with a machine-learnt, generative approach. By implementing a Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks (DCGAN) and a Tangible User Interface (TUI), this work aims to allow for realtime urban prototyping and visualizations. The DCGAN model was trained on Cityscapes, a semantic street-view dataset. A version of CityScope (CS), a rapid urban-prototyping platform is used as tangible design interface. Following each design iteration on CS, the DCGAN model generates a rendering associated with the selected street-view in the design space. A light-weight, web-based and platform-agnostic tool was also created visualization and UI. Unlike traditional rendering techniques, this tool could help designers focus on spatial organization, urban programming and massing exercises without the need for detailed design, complex visualization processes and costly setups. This approach could support rudimentary urban design processes that are enhanced by the visual atmosphere, impression and discussion around 'The Image of the City'.


Quantification of pollutant mass fluxes is essential for assessing the impact of contaminated sites on their surrounding environment, particularly on adjacent surface water bodies. In this context, it is essential to quantify but also to be able to monitor the variations with time of Darcy fluxes in relation with changes in hydrogeological conditions and groundwater – surface water interactions. The Finite Volume Point Dilution Method (FVPDM) is a new tracer technique that generalizes the single-well point dilution method to the case of finite volumes of tracer fluid and water flush. It is based on an analytical solution derived from a mathematical model proposed recently to accurately model tracer injection into a well. After a brief description of the underlying concepts and mathematical model, an analytical solution is derived for calculating straightforwardly the evolution of concentration of the tracer in the injection well during and after injection operations. It is shown that this new tracer technique is easier to implement in the field than the classical point dilution method while it further allows monitoring changes with time of the magnitude of estimated Darcy fluxes, which is not the case for the former technique. In the scope of the EU FP6 AQUATERRA project, the FVPDM was applied in two experimental sites with contrasted objectives, geological and hydrogeological conditions, and field equipment facilities. In site A, the objective was to estimate contaminant travel times in groundwater to a spring while assessing vertical variations in groundwater fluxes, using a combined FVPDM – classical tracer test, with "non-ideal" experimental conditions. In site B, the purpose was to estimate, in very well controlled experimental conditions, groundwater fluxes flowing out from a contaminated site to a neighbouring river. In both cases, field tracer concentrations monitored in the injection wells were used to fit the calculated modelled concentrations by adjusting the apparent Darcy flux crossing the well screens. Modelling results are very satisfactory and indicate that the methodology is efficient and accurate, with a wide range of potential applications in different environments and experimental conditions, including the monitoring with time of changes in Darcy fluxes.


Spin waves in magnetic nanowires can be bound by a local bending of the wire. The eigenfrequency of a truly local magnon mode is determined by the curvature: a general analytical expression is established for any infinitesimally weak localized curvature of the wire. The interaction of the local mode with spin waves, propagating through the bend, results in scattering features, which is well confirmed by spin-lattice simulations.


Extracted from text ... TAX
Dear Mr Manuel...
In a few short days, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel
will be delivering a record 10th Budget to Parliament.
With R40-R50bn in the kitty, how will he mark this
auspicious occasion? And will taxpayers be joining the
party?
SPEECHES made by politicians
are invariably little more than a
whole lot of hot air, useful only to
insomniacs trying to restore their
sleep patterns. However, one
speech that takes place in the middle
of February each year proves to
be the exception, attracting more
than its fair share of attention.
Whilst even Valentine's Day may
be dismissed ..


Abstract A recently discovered dinosaur tracksite from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation, Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, contains abundant sauropod tracks that exhibit varying degrees of preservation. Most of these tracks appear as indistinct bulges on the bottoms of sandstone beds, but several are well preserved and show foot-pad and skin impressions. Three track morphotypes are recognized: a sauropod pes print, a Brontopodus-like manus print, and a diplodocid manus print. The Brontopodus-like manus print most likely represents the footprint of a brachiosaur. This morphotype also contains evidence of phalangeal nodes—the first reported for a sauropod manus. The diplodocid manus print is unique because it contains impressions of a substantial ungual on digit I and a heel pad. A partial sauropod track cast also contains an impression of interlocking, polygonal scales. This is only the second known North American sauropod footprint that contains skin impressions. The spectrum of preservational quality of the tracks and associated trace fossils is used to infer the relative moisture content of the original substrate. Moisture content of the original substrate is estimated to have been moist to borderline saturated. Observations of the tracks at the study areas also are used to establish a list of features that can be used to distinguish deep vertebrate tracks from load casts resulting from gravity-induced soft-sediment deformation.


The South African government's policy decision in 2001 to provide a basic amount of water free of charge to all citizens has been controversial. Traditional policy advice was that all water should be paid for, even if some costs were subsidized. A review of the implementation of the new policy suggests that the flexible approach adopted ensured wide applicability, although it has been criticized for defects of both exclusion and inclusion. However, it has helped not only to achieve social equity but also has supported the broader objectives of conservation and environmental sustainability. The political legitimacy conferred by the approach has enabled water supply organizations to recover their costs and achieve the economic objective of financial sustainability. South Africa's experience with free basic water thus demonstrates that addressing social and environmental dimensions together with economic dimensions can lead to more effective and sustainable policy.


The precise architectures of viruses and virus-like particles are highly advantageous in synthetic materials applications. These nano-size compartments are perfectly suited to act as containers of designed cargo. Not only can these nanocontainers be harnessed as active materials, but they can be exploited for examining the effects of in vivo "cell-like" crowding and confinement on the properties of the encapsulated cargo. The high concentration of many different types of mutually volume excluding macromolecules in the cell causes it to be a crowded and confining environment in which to carry out reactions. Herein, the molecular design of the bacteriophage P22 encapsulation system is described and utilized for the synthesis of active nanomaterials and to explore the effect of encapsulation on the entrapped proteins' properties. In the designed system, any gene can be inserted and results in the fusion of the insert to a truncated form of the P22 scaffold protein. This scaffold protein fusion templates the spontaneous in vivo assembly of P22 capsids and also acts as an encapsulation signal. Once encapsulated, we can examine how crowding and confinement affect inter-molecular communication and activity of the cargo molecules. The P22 system is unique in that the capsid morphology can be altered, without losing the encapsulated cargo, resulting in a doubling of the capsid volume. Thus, the encapsulated fusions can be examined at two different internal concentrations. The packaged capsids contain up to 300 copies of fusion and fill more than 24% of the internal volume with the internal concentration of the fusions in the millimolar range. Not only are these fusions densely and efficiently packaged, but they retain their activity. Described herein is the packaging of fluorescent proteins, enzymes, and active peptides. In all cases, it is shown that the enforced proximity via encapsulation greatly affects the fusions activity compared to the fusion free in solution. To expand the utility of the P22 capsid as a nanomaterial, the inherent asymmetry implored by the portal complex has also been exploited. The P22 encapsulation system has proved to be an effective and versatile vehicle for nanomaterials design.


We explore the use of two dependency parsers, Malt and MST, in a Lexical Functional Grammar parsing pipeline. We compare this to the traditional LFG parsing pipeline which uses constituency parsers. We train the dependency parsers not on classical LFG f-structures but rather on modified
dependency-tree versions of these in which all words in the input sentence are represented and multiple heads are removed. For the purposes of comparison, we also modify the existing CFG-based LFG parsing pipeline so that these "LFG-inspired" dependency trees are produced. We find that the differences in parsing accuracy over the various parsing architectures is small.


In this paper we define an evolution mechanism with formal semantics using the metamodeling methodology [Geisler et al.98] based on dynamic logic. A remarkable feature of the metamodeling methodology is the ability to define the relation of intentional and extensional entities within one level, allowing not only for the description of structural relations among the modeling entities, but also for a formal definition of structural constraints and dynamic semantics of the modeled entities. While dynamic semantics on the extensional level means run-time behavior, dynamic semantics on intentional level describes model evolution in the system life cycle.


Skyline queries is a rich area of research in the database community. Due to its great benefits, it has been integrated into many database applications including but not limited to personalized recommendation, multi-objective, decision support and decision-making systems. Many variations of skyline technique have been proposed in the literature addressing the issue of handling skyline queries in incomplete database. Nevertheless, these solutions are designed to fit with centralized incomplete database single access. However, in many real-world database systems, this might not be the case, particularly for a database witha large amount of incomplete data distributed over various remote locations such as cloud databases. It is inadequate to directly apply skyline solutions designed for the centralized incomplete database to work on cloud due to the prohibitive cost. Thus, this paper introduces a new approach called Incomplete-data Cloud Skylines (ICS) aiming at processing skyline queries in cloud databases with incomplete data. This approach emphasizes on reducing the amount of data transfer and domination tests during skyline process. It incorporates sorting technique that assists in arranging the data items in a way where dominating data items will be placed at the top of the list helping in eliminate dominated data items. Besides, ICS also employs a filtering technique to prune the dominated data items before applying skyline technique. It comprises a technique named local skyline joiner that helps in reducing the amount of data transfer between datacenters when deriving the final skylines. It limit the amount of data items to be transferred to only those local skylines of each relation. A comprehensive experiment have been performed on both synthetic and real-life datasets, which demonstrate the effectiveness and versatility of our approach in comparison to the current existing approaches. We argue that our approach is practical and can be adopted in many contemporary cloud database systems with incomplete data to process skyline queries.


This article examines how subsidiarity can limit the exercise of EU procedural criminal law competence. It argues for a narrow understanding of subsidiarity, suggesting that EU procedural criminal law legislation can only be directed at problems which are of a cross-border nature. By analysing a specific piece of EU legislation, the new Victims Directive, it is shown how the subsidiarity principle can be enforced. The article sustains that the Victims Directive can be criticised on subsidiarity grounds as the directive fails to adequately account for the link between victim rights and the application of the principle of mutual recognition, since the directive fails to explain properly the need to regulate local victim rights. The article also draws some broader reflections on the justifications for EU harmonization. It is argued that EU initiatives in procedural criminal law have not primarily been driven by the need to facilitate mutual recognition and free movement but rather motivated by a general concern to deliver a common European sense of justice. Whilst this approach from the EU legislator can be justified from a moral perspective, it flies in the face of the idea that decisions should be taken as closely as possible in respect of citizens.


n n @ n The Borana Plateau of southern Ethiopia is a pastoral region known for producing high-quality cattle. The sustainability of this pastoral system has been recently questioned, however, as livestock losses, poverty, and food insecurity are increasing. We used rainfall records and herd-history data from 56 pastoral households to characterize cattle population trends on the Borana Plateau during 1980-97. We supplemented these data with other findings to update the record through 1999. We wanted to learn to what extent drought and high stocking rates contribute to the high rates of cattle mortality in recent years. We also wanted to estimate economic losses from cattle deaths. Cattle population dynamics resembled a "boom and bust" pattern where longer periods of gradual herd growth were punctuated by sharp crashes in 1983-5, 1991-2, and 1998-9 when 37 to 62% of the cattle population perished. Cattle losses due to periodic starvation regulated the population—net sales or numbers slaughtered were relatively small. When extrapolated to the entire Borana Plateau, the monetary losses of cattle deaths may have exceeded USD 300 million from 1980 to 1997. Separating out the inter-twined effects of high stocking rates and drought on cattle mortality is difficult. We believe, however, that high stocking rates predispose the system to crash when a dry or drought year happens to occur. The higher the stocking rate and larger the annual rainfall deficit, the larger the crash. In some cases a high stocking rate only needs a slightly dry year to cause a crash. System stability appears to be decreasing because drought grazing reserves are reportedly being lost to cultivation, bush encroachment, insecurity, and over-population. We believe that a cattle crash occurs once every 5 to 6 years because this is the time required for the regional herd to grow to over 20 head per square kilometer, and this increases vulnerability. We thus expect the next cattle crash to occur no earlier than 2005. Capturing some of the wealth lost from cattle mortality is important, but the process is difficult. Development solutions could involve aspects of economic diversification for pastoral households if it is sustainable. Improved risk management could involve more timely livestock sales before crisis occurs and investment of some of the revenue into entrepreneurial ventures or community projects. Such system change requires improvements in education, marketing, and rural financial systems. Cattle Population Dynamics in the Southern Ethiopian Rangelands


This study examined whether a prolonged anoestrus had any long-term effect on subsequent fertility of cows and estimated the relationship between repletion and resumption of reproductive activity. Twelve low body-condition, non-milking, non-cycling (depletion state) F 1 crossbred dairy cows (Friesian × Boron and Simmental × Boran) were stratified to two diets (H: natural grass hay offered ad libitum and mineral lick +3 kg concentrate, and H + P: H + 7 h/day natural pasture grazing) according to parity, body weight, body condition score and calving intervals. Daily dry-matter intake was similar between cows on the two diets, but total intake of nitrogen was proportionately about 0·10 greater for cows with access to pasture. The calculated metabolizable energy intake was more than twice the estimated maintenance requirement for cows on both diets. Live weights increased from depletion to ovulation, to oestrus and to conception, but were not significantly different between cows on both diets. Body condition score increased from depletion time to first oestrus and to repletion and was greater for H + P than for H cows at first oestrus and at conception. After an average of 45 days of repletion, cows were already ovulating with no significant differences between cows on either diet. Days to onset of oestrus were 83 and 44 days for diet H and H + P, respectively. Time to conception was similar between coivs on both diets. Conception occurred when cows on H and H + P diets had recovered proportionately 0·51 and 0·58 of their live-weight and 0·84 and 1·27 of their body condition loss, respectively. Interval to repletion weight was 178 and 139 days for cows on the H and H + P diet, respectively. Cows subjected to an exceptionally long depletion period were able to resume ovarian cyclic activity and to conceive in less than 3 months when given twice maintenance requirements. These results have important management implication for on-farm situations in the tropics where fluctuations of food availability and quality occur.


A data discovery and dissemination protocol for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is responsible for updating configuration parameters of, and distributing management commands to, the sensor nodes. All existing data discovery and dissemination protocols suffer from two drawbacks. First, they are based on the centralized approach; only the base station can distribute data items. Such an approach is not suitable for emergent multi-owner-multi-user WSNs. Second, those protocols were not designed with security in mind and hence adversaries can easily launch attacks to harm the network. This paper proposes the first secure and distributed data discovery and dissemination protocol named DiDrip. It allows the network owners to authorize multiple network users with different privileges to simultaneously and directly disseminate data items to the sensor nodes. Moreover, as demonstrated by our theoretical analysis, it addresses a number of possible security vulnerabilities that we have identified. Extensive security analysis show DiDrip is provably secure. We also implement DiDrip in an experimental network of resource-limited sensor nodes to show its high efficiency in practice.


Although the Standard Model of elementary particles successfully describes
the Universe up to the smallest known scales, we know that there exists a number
of observational phenomena, which do not find explanation in the framework of
this theory. Among these problems are Neutrino Oscillations, Dark Matter and
the Baryon Asymmetry of the Universe. In this thesis, we are studying the Neutrino Minimal Standard Model (nuMSM), a minimalistic extension of the Standard Model, which can explain all these three phenomena simultaneously, by adding only three right-handed neutrinos to the known three left-handed neutrinos. It is shown that the two heavier sterile neutrinos with masses below the mass of pi-meson, could have been present in such large amounts in the early Universe
that they spoil the otherwise excellent agreement between the Standard-Model
prediction of light nuclei production during the Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis and the
astrophysical observations. In this way, masses of sterile neutrinos are excluded
from below, which reduces the potentially interesting parameter space for future
accelerator searches. Another effect of sterile neutrinos in the early Universe that is studied is the production of large-scale magnetic fields due to the so-called Chiral Magnetic Effect.


While the efficient market hypothesis suggests that stock price reflects the fundamental condition of companies, which could affect investors' decisions, this technical note reports empirical evidence that stock price is also influenced by the public's perception of the market situation. This note shows that the source of funds circulating in the Indonesia Stock Exchange is related to excess liquidity resulting from the policy of quantitative easing (QE) by developed countries' central banks. Banks funding assets with debt results in leverage relationships with the Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) negatively affected. Thus it is evident that the Indonesian banking strategy is "reactive" and is influenced by external factors. External factors can be influenced by global issues as well as internal (enterprise performance) issues. Therefore foreign and global issues may be important (perhaps dominant) in determining the perceptions of the Indonesian stock market.


Many scenarios involve merging of two B-tree indexes, both covering the same key range. Increasing demand for continuous availability and high performance requires that such merging be done online, with minimal interference to normal user transactions. In this paper we present an online B-tree merging method, in which the merging of leaf pages in two B-trees are piggybacked lazily with normal user transactions, thus making the merging I/O efficient and allowing user transactions to access only one index instead of both. The concurrency control mechanism is designed to interfere as little as possible with ongoing user transactions. Merging is made forward recoverable by following a conventional logging protocol, with a few extensions. Should a system failure occur, both indexes being merged can be recovered to a consistent state and no merging work is lost. Experiments and analysis show the I/O savings and the performance, and compare variations on the basic algorithm.


Crime scenes represent ephemeral and complex environments and the intelligence and evidence that they contain requires them to be documented and collected quickly and efficiently so as to limit any loss of evidence. With the continuous developments of new imaging and recording technologies, there is the opportunity for more innovative and appropriate methods for documenting and managing crime scenes that may improve investigative proffered to the Criminal Justice system and indeed the public. This thesis has explored the potential of new panoramic imaging technologies and crime scene management content software to assist and develop the way in which criminal investigations are investigated, and conducted starting with how crime scenes are recorded and evidence linked with them.
There is currently a vast array of differing panoramic imaging technologies available to Police services such as SceneVision Panorama, Panoscan MK-3, iStar
(NCTech), SceneCam (Spheron VR AG), ScanStation C10 (Leica) and Focus3D X
330 (FARO), with each reporting to offer unique merits to an investigation. This can present difficulties for police services when considering the purchase and use of such technologies. With declining budgets, Police services do not have the time and resources to evaluate technology prior to its adoption. Thorough research evaluating the technology would allow Police services to make informed decisions about the adoption of technology which is fit for purpose and cost effective.
This research explored panoramic technologies available to Police services and the considerations which organisations must account for prior to the adoption and integration into current standard operating procedures. An important adoption criteria is the accuracy and precision of capture and measurement of the technology's hardware and software and these factors are essential factors for the successful integration of such equipment within the Criminal Justice System. The accuracy and precision of measurements taken using a 360o panoramic imaging system, 'SceneCam' and its complimentary content management system,
'SceneCenter' (Spheron VR AG) was examined and compared to traditional
measurement methods. Measurements taken using the photogrammetry software were identified as being more reproducible than the any manual approach, and this offered flexibility with regards to the time and location of the documentation process in a crime scene.