Renal dopamine receptors participate in the regulation of blood pressure. Genetic factors, including polymorphisms of the dopamine D2 receptor gene (DRD2) are associated with essential hypertension, but the mechanisms of their contribution are incompletely understood. Mice lacking Drd2 (D2−/−) have elevated blood pressure, increased renal expression of inflammatory factors, and renal injury. We tested the hypothesis that decreased dopamine D2 receptor (D2R) function increases vulnerability to renal inflammation independently of blood pressure, is an immediate cause of renal injury, and contributes to the subsequent development of hypertension. In D2−/− mice, treatment with apocynin normalized blood pressure and decreased oxidative stress, but did not affect the expression of inflammatory factors. In mouse RPTCs Drd2 silencing increased the expression of TNFα and MCP-1, while treatment with a D2R agonist abolished the angiotensin II-induced increase in TNF-α and MCP-1. In uni-nephrectomized wild-type mice, selective Drd2 silencing by subcapsular infusion of Drd2 siRNA into the remaining kidney produced the same increase in renal cytokines/chemokines that occurs after Drd2 deletion, increased the expression of markers of renal injury, and increased blood pressure. Moreover, in mice with two intact kidneys, short-term Drd2 silencing in one kidney, leaving the other kidney undisturbed, induced inflammatory factors and markers of renal injury in the treated kidney without increasing blood pressure. Our results demonstrate that the impact of decreased D2R function on renal inflammation is a primary effect, not necessarily associated with enhanced oxidant activity, or blood pressure; renal damage is the cause, not the result, of hypertension. Deficient renal D2R function may be of clinical relevance since common polymorphisms of the human DRD2 gene result in decreased D2R expression and function.


The theory of short-term average modulation transfer function developed by Fried is extended by considering the correlation between the turbulence-induced phase distortion and the residual phase aberrations after adaptive phase compensations. Calculation of the optical resolution shows that the original approximation is valid for the normalized lens diameter D/r0 less than 4.0; conversely, for D/r0 greater than 4.0 the optical resolution becomes arbitrarily large because the MTF is unrealistically overcorrected at high spatial frequencies. The extended formulation is then applied to the cases with higher-order phase compensations such as focus and astigmatism. The peak optical resolution occurs at larger values of D/r0 when the higher-order corrections are included.


The genome of the tuberculosis agent Mycobacterium tuberculosis encodes a putative cellulose-binding protein (CBD2), one candidate cellulase (Cel12), and one fully active cellulase (Cel6). This observation is puzzling, because cellulose is a major component of plant cell walls, whereas M. tuberculosis is a human pathogen without known contact with plants. In order to investigate the biological role of such cellulose-targeting genes in M. tuberculosis we report here the search for and transcription analysis of this set of genes in the genus Mycobacterium. An in silico search for cellulose-targeting orthologues found that only 2.5 % of the sequenced bacterial genomes encode the Cel6, Cel12 and CBD2 gene set simultaneously, including those of the M. tuberculosis complex (MTC) members. PCR amplification and sequencing further demonstrated the presence of these three genes in five non-sequenced MTC bacteria. Among mycobacteria, the combination of Cel6, Cel12 and CBD2 was unique to MTC members, with the exception of Mycobacterium bovis BCG Pasteur, which lacked CBD2. RT-PCR in M. tuberculosis H37Rv indicated that the three cellulose-targeting genes were transcribed into mRNA. The present work shows that MTC organisms are the sole mycobacteria among very few organisms to encode the three cellulose-targeting genes CBD2, Cel6 and Cel12. Our data point toward a unique, yet unknown, relationship with non-plant cellulose-producing hosts such as amoebae.


The application of a service-oriented perspective in the IT sector has become the paradigm, making managers highly aware of the importance of being service oriented and customer focused. In the IT sector, a service-oriented perspective is encompassed in the widespread field of IT Service Management (ITSM). However, while ITSM practitioners are, to a certain degree, becoming aware of the benefits of the contemporary Service-Dominant Logic perspective, the primary market view still adheres to Goods-Dominant Logic. The majority of IT organisations around the globe rely on the ITSM framework ITIL in order to adopt and adapt a service perspective. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the ITIL® Practitioner Guidance (the latest ITIL book) aligns with Service-Dominant Logic. The paper discusses findings in relation to four codes: Definition of service, The role of the service provider, Value and value propositions, and Co-creation.


Tuberculosis (TB) remains a global health pandemic. Infection is spread by the aerosol route and Mycobacterium tuberculosis must drive lung destruction to be transmitted to new hosts. Such inflammatory tissue damage is responsible for morbidity and mortality in patients. The underlying mechanisms of matrix destruction in TB remain poorly understood but consideration of the lung extracellular matrix predicts that matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) will play a central role, owing to their unique ability to degrade fibrillar collagens and other matrix components. Since we proposed the concept of a matrix degrading phenotype in TB a decade ago, diverse data implicating MMPs as key mediators in TB pathology have accumulated. We review the lines of investigation that have indicated a critical role for MMPs in TB pathogenesis, consider regulatory pathways driving MMPs and propose that inhibition of MMP activity is a realistic goal as adjunctive therapy to limit immunopathology in TB.


This Article focuses attention on two recent and notable federal court opinions considering challenges to Trump administration deportation decisions. While finding no statutory bar to the noncitizens' detention and deportation in these cases, the court in each instance paused to highlight the injustice of the removal decisions. This Article places the opinions in the context of emerging immigration enforcement trends, which reflect a growing indifference to disproportionate treatment as well as enforcement actions founded on retaliation for the exercise of constitutional rights. Judicial decisions like the ones considered here serve vital functions in the cause of immigration law reform even as they uphold government enforcement decisions. They help motivate advocates, promote inter-branch dialogue, and provide progress toward judicial innovation. This Article focuses particular attention on this steps-on-the-way function, suggesting how the concerns these courts have expressed may one day soon produce a greater measure of judicial scrutiny of removal decisions on proportionality grounds.


This paper investigates the term structure implications of a simple structural model with nonseparable preferences and habit formation. The distinguishing features of the model are that the drift of equilibrium spot interest rates is non-linear, interest rates depend on lagged values of monetary and consumption shocks, and the price of risk is not a constant multiple of interest rates volatility. We solve the model in closed-form and investigate its empirical properties. We find that habit persistence can help reproduce (i) the non-linearity of the spot rate process, (ii) the empirical Campbell and Shiller (1991) linear projection coefficients and the documented deviations from the expectations hypothesis, (iii) the extent of the persistence of conditional volatility of interest rates, (iv) the lead/lag relationship between interest rates and monetary aggregates, and (v) the dynamics of the inflation risk premium. We also describe the limitations of this particular form of habit persistence. Although the model improves some traditional models with respect to several dimensions, its ability to reproduce, at the same time, the equity risk premium and the conditional second moments of interest rates is still limited. JEL classification: D9, E3, E4, G12


Community surveys are necessary sources of information needed to properly manage fisheries. These surveys detail important historical data concerning past fish assemblages and the previous status of recreational game fish. Historically, Lake Champlain has received little attention with regard to fish community assemblage research. We undertook a beach, seine net survey at four locations along the northwestern shores of Lake Champlain. We surveyed several unique nearshore habitat types and recorded abiotic factors, fishes, and plant communities. Our results revealed 17 different taxa with four being non-native to the basin. Lakeview Park had the highest species richness and abundance, which we believe results from the presence of vegetation at the sampling site. The scope of our survey was limited (i.e., small species or young of the year game fish), thus we recommend future comprehensive surveys that include a variety of fish sampling methods.


The seismic reflection characteristics of a coal-bed methane reservoir are studied with synthetic modeling and a seismic field survey. The reservoir consiste of two coal seams encountered at depths of 404 m and 414 m below surface. The coals are understood to be saturated with an aqueous phase. A simple rock physics model is assumed in order to investigate the AVO response of the existing wet coals and that of hypothetical "dry" coals. The model results show that the seismic reflectivities of the wet and dry coals are sufficiently distinct that the AVO response should discriminate between the two states of water saturation. In the summer of 2006, two 1C-2D seismic lines were acquired by the University of Calgary at the study site using an ENVI mini-vibe source. Although the source sweep was 10-200 Hz, the reflected energy had lesser bandwidth with a major peak in the amplitude spectrum at ~30 Hz and a lesser peak ~75 Hz. The signal to noise ratio diminishes above 100 Hz. Reflection continuity and frequency content improve by excluding near-offsets from the stack. Radial trace filtering is successfully used to remove linear noise from the shot gathers. Various methods of boosting amplitudes at higher frequencies (spectral whitening, surface-consistent deconvolution, Gabor deconvolution) improve data quality in the 0-100 Hz range. Although the signal bandwidth is limited and the target are thin, closely space beds, the coals are resolved as two distinct events in the migrated seismic section.


The Eastern Pontide orogenic belt is divided into three subzones (northern, southern and axial zones) based on present lithologies and facies associations. NE-SW-, NW-SE- and E-W-trending fault systems, which play an important role in palaeotectonics and neotectonics of the Eastern Pontides, separate these zones. Three different methods were used to estimate the Moho depth from observed gravity value, namely (i) empirical relationship between Moho depth and Bouguer anomaly; (ii) spectral analysis of the radial wave number and; (iii) by the gravity inversion method. Power spectrum, a statistical approach, is a widely used technique to determine the depth of geological sources successfully. The empirical linear relations between the Bouguer anomalies and seismically determined crustal thicknesses have been used to compute depths to the Conrad and Moho discontinuities, which are consistent with the average depths obtained from the power spectrum method. The crustal structure was also determined from the inversion of a Bouguer anomaly profile along longitude 39°. Gravity inversion results are consistent with those obtained from the empirical relations and power spectrum methods. We calculated the maximum crustal thickness of 43.8 km in the studied region by using the gravity inversion method, which also showed that crustal thickness increases from north to south.


Stakeholders have long pressured firms to provide societal benefits in addition to generating shareholder wealth. Such benefits have traditionally come in the form of corporate social responsibility. However, many stakeholders now expect firms to demonstrate their values by expressing public support for or opposition to one side of a partisan sociopolitical issue, a phenomenon the authors call "corporate sociopolitical activism" (CSA). Such activities differ from commonly favored corporate social responsibility and have the potential to both strengthen and sever stakeholder relationships, thus making their impact on firm value uncertain. Using signaling and screening theories, the authors analyze 293 CSA events initiated by 149 firms across 39 industries, and find that, on average, CSA elicits an adverse reaction from investors. Investors evaluate CSA as a signal of a firm's allocation of resources away from profit-oriented objectives and toward a risky activity with uncertain outcomes. The authors further identify two sets of moderators: (1) CSA's deviation from key stakeholders' values and brand image and (2) characteristics of CSA's resource implementation, which affect investor and customer responses. The findings provide new and important implications for marketing theory and practice.


Besides traditional risk factor, it has been proved that genetics and gene–environment interaction have a possible independent role in the development and progression of peripheral arterial disease (PAD). Knowledge about such genetic factors will increases our understanding about pathophysiologic mechanisms of PAD and could facilitate the therapeutic approaches. Human genetics has gone through an advanced improvement and it increases our chance to acquire better diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. In this chapter, we try to provide an update on the genetics of PAD, which is mostly about genome-wide association studies, linkage analyses, heritability, candidate gene studies, and epigenetics. Finally, we discuss challenges and future developments of researches in PAD genetics.


A major challenge for marketers is how to spend a marketing budget such that the impact on a target market is maximized. There are numerous organizations including marketing agencies, media experts and sales agents that promise to deliver more impact for the money a firm allocates to marketing. The service that these organizations offer are to organize and coordinate spending such that a higher fraction of the potential market is effectively reached by a firm's marketing effort. My objective is to understand the optimal strategy that marketing agencies, media experts and sales agents should use to sell these services. In particular, I analyze how these services should be priced and whether a seller gains by selling such services exclusively. The model consists of a seller of marketing services and two symmetric firms that compete in a differentiated market. A downstream firm that purchases the services reaches a higher fraction of the potential market due to the efficiency provided by the services. The analysis shows that the optimal selling strategy for the services is a function of three factors: a) the degree of differentiation between firms, b) the fraction of the target that is reached by firms (prior to using the seller's services) and c) the increase in "reach" provided by the seller's services. Non-exclusive selling is likely to be optimal, the less that downstream firms compete with each other due to strong differentiation in the downstream market or a low level of overlap in the customers reached by the marketing of each downstream firm. In contrast, exclusive selling is advantageous when many customers have been reached by the marketing of both firms or the level of differentiation between the firms is low. Surprisingly, in many situations, the seller's profit is inversely related to the level of differentiation.


Caffeine exposure sensitizes tumor cells to ionizing radiation and other genotoxic agents. The radiosensitizing effects of caffeine are associated with the disruption of multiple DNA damage-responsive cell cycle checkpoints. The similarity of these checkpoint defects to those seen in ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T) suggested that caffeine might inhibit one or more components in an A-T mutated (ATM)-dependent checkpoint pathway in DNA-damaged cells. We now show that caffeine inhibits the catalytic activity of both ATM and the related kinase, ATM and Rad3-related (ATR), at drug concentrations similar to those that induce radiosensitization. Moreover, like ATM-deficient cells, caffeine-treated A549 lung carcinoma cells irradiated in G2 fail to arrest progression into mitosis, and S-phase-irradiated cells exhibit radioresistant DNA synthesis. Similar concentrations of caffeine also inhibit gamma- and UV radiation-induced phosphorylation of p53 on Ser15, a modification that may be directly mediated by the ATM and ATR kinases. DNA-dependent protein kinase, another ATM-related protein involved in DNA damage repair, was resistant to the inhibitory effects of caffeine. Likewise, the catalytic activity of the G2 checkpoint kinase, hChk1, was only marginally suppressed by caffeine but was inhibited potently by the structurally distinct radiosensitizer, UCN-01. These data suggest that the radiosensitizing effects of caffeine are related to inhibition of the protein kinase activities of ATM and ATR and that both proteins are relevant targets for the development of novel anticancer agents.


This study empirically analyzes the effects of de jure financial openness on institutional quality as captured by indicators on investment risk, corruption level, impartiality of judiciary system, and the effectiveness of bureaucracy. We show that a higher degree of financial openness improves institutional quality mainly by reducing investment risks. We also study the effect of a single liberalization reform. Again, we find evidence for the beneficial impact of financial liberalization with the exception of corruption. We additionally show that the benign consequences of financial opening for the institutional development are even larger if financial liberalization is supported by simultaneous political liberalization, while financial deregulation in former socialist countries tends to worsen institutional quality.


This work aims at exploring the Igbo/African metaphysical sense of death
and its traditional value and inter-communality. In this study, I intend to use
the Igbo as a paradigm for an African experience of death. I begin by
explaining that while thanatology is
the systematic study of death, metaphysics is a study of reality as it concerns
the phases of human existence from life to death. In doing so, I want to
examine the African being in its wholeness. Interestingly, African philosophy
conceives of being as dynamic and a force to be record with. The African world
itself is best described as one of becoming: it is a world where there are constant interactions
between the dead and the living, between the spirit-land and the human world.
Thus, existence-in-relation aptly depicts the African view of life and reality.
For the Igbo, however, life and death are intimately connected. To the extent
that the latter paves the way to the ancestral dwelling, it is an urgent
longing to join his forebears. Ultimately, the Igbo/African attaches a great
value to ancestral abode which death makes possible. Through initiation the Igbo
anticipates death. Only then does death become a phenomenon of life, entering
the Igbo ontological being. Thus
death for the Igbo does not constitute an end. Rather it intimates an authentic
being (another beginning), which expressly embodies eschatology. I argue that
eschatology aims at overcoming time.


Epigenetics has progressed rapidly from an obscure quirk of heredity into a data-heavy 'omic' science. Our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of epigenomic regulation, and the extent of its importance in nature, are far from complete, but in spite of such drawbacks, population-level studies are extremely valuable: epigenomic regulation is involved in several processes central to evolutionary biology including phenotypic plasticity, evolvability and the mediation of intragenomic conflicts. The first studies of epigenomic variation within populations suggest high levels of phenotypically relevant variation, with the patterns of epigenetic regulation varying between individuals and genome regions as well as with environment. Epigenetic mechanisms appear to function primarily as genome defences, but result in the maintenance of plasticity together with a degree of buffering of developmental programmes; periodic breakdown of epigenetic buffering could potentially cause variation in rates of phenotypic evolution. Heredity (2010) 105, 113–121; doi:10.1038/hdy.2010.25; published online 24 March 2010


Abstract Following a request from the European Commission, the Panel on Additives and Products or Substances used in Animal Feed (FEEDAP) was asked to deliver a scientific opinion on the safety and efficacy of Belfeed B MP/ML as a feed additive for sows in order to have benefits in piglets and for all porcine species. This additive contains endo‐1,4‐β‐xylanase produced by a genetically modified strain of Bacillus subtilis and it is authorised in the European Union as a feed additive for poultry for fattening, weaned piglets and pigs for fattening. The applicant requested the extension of use of the additive to sows in order to have benefits in piglets and to all porcine species at any developmental stage at 10 IU/kg feed. The FEEDAP Panel concluded that there are no concerns for consumer safety and no risks for the environment are expected from the use of Belfeed B MP/ML in all Suidae species. The additive is not irritant for skin or eye but it should be considered a potential respiratory sensitiser for the users, the Panel could not conclude on the potential of the additive as a potential dermal sensitiser. Considering the results from a tolerance trial done in weaned piglets, those in a subchronic oral toxicity study and the nature/origin of the product under assessment the Panel concluded that the additive is safe for all porcine species at any developmental stage. The data previously assessed in piglets and pigs for fattening allowed to conclude that the additive is efficacious at 10 IU/kg feed in suckling piglets and all Suidae species from suckling to slaughter. The data submitted to support the efficacy for sows was considered insufficient and therefore the Panel could not conclude on the efficacy in sows.


In current CMOS nanometer technologies, aging effects may appear after relatively short operating times, compared to the expected lifetime of circuits. Therefore, there is an increasing need for on-chip aging monitoring, especially in high-performance, safety critical systems. This paper presents a programmable aging sensor that can be embedded in field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based designs, using standard resources available in those devices and with minimal impact on the standard FPGA design flow. Given the limited amount of resources required by the sensor, it can be instantiated not only in the critical paths of a circuit, but also in those that may be identified to be more likely affected by aging effects. Experimental results, obtained in circuits of increasing complexity (where several sensors need to be used), are presented and discussed, demonstrating the good performance of the proposed sensor, as well as its low cost in terms of area overhead and power consumption. Results of aging experiments based on the standard US MIL-STD-883 Method 1015.50 "Burn-In Test" are also reported, demonstrating that the effect of aging on the sensor is negligible compared to that on the circuit under test, which is a key point for practical applicability. The proposed approach provides a novel and efficient solution to the specific FPGA design problems in this context, which are different from those addressed in application-specific integrated circuit design.


In this paper we propose and evaluate an approach to the so far unsolved problem of robust _individual_ identification of patterned animals based on video filmed in widely unconstrained, natural habitats. Experimental results are presented for a prototype system trained on African penguins operating in a real-world animal colony of thousands. The system exploits the individuality of Turing-like camouflage patterns as identity cues since, for a wide range of species, these contain highly unique and compact distributions of phase singularities. The key problem solved in this paper is a distortion robust detection and individual comparison of non-linearly _deforming_ animals. We address the problem using a coarse-to-fine methodology that task-specifically extends and combines vision techniques in a three-stage approach: 1) Using a recently suggested integration of multiple instances of appearance detectors (Viola-Jones) and sparse feature trackers (Lucas-Kanade), a coarse, robust real-time detection of animals in appropriate poses is achieved. 2) An estimation of the 3D-deformed pose is derived by a fast, guided search on a precalculated pose-configuration model, we refer to as _Feature Prediction Tree_, which is learned off-line based on an animated, deformable 3D species-model. The estimate is refined using bundle adjustment posing a polygonal model into the scene. Following, a back-projection of the visible animal surface yields a normalised 2D texture map. 3) An extended variant of _Shape Context_ descriptors (built from filter-extracted phase singularities of characteristic texture areas) are employed as biometric templates. Finally, a distortion-robust identification is achieved by solving associated bipartite graph matching tasks for pairs of these descriptors.


BACKGROUND
Reduction or modification of dietary fat can improve total cholesterol levels, but may also have a variety of effects, both positive and negative, on other cardiovascular risk factors.

OBJECTIVES
The aim of this systematic review was to assess the effect of reduction or modification of dietary fats on total and cardiovascular mortality and cardiovascular morbidity over at least 6 months, using all available randomized clinical trials.

SEARCH STRATEGY
The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CAB Abstracts, CVRCT registry and related Cochrane Groups' trial registers were searched through spring 1998, SIGLE to January 1999. Trials known to experts in the field and biographies were included through May 1999.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Trials fulfilled the following criteria: 1) randomized with appropriate control group, 2) intention to reduce or modify fat or cholesterol intake (excluding exclusively omega-3 fat interventions), 3) not multi factorial, 4) healthy adult humans, 5) intervention at least six months, 6) mortality or cardiovascular morbidity data available. Inclusion decisions were duplicated, disagreement resolved by discussion or a third party.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Rate data were extracted by two independent reviewers and meta-analysis performed using random effects methodology. Meta-regression and funnel plots were used.

MAIN RESULTS
Twenty seven studies were included (40 intervention arms, 30,901 person-years). There was no significant effect on total mortality (rate ratio 0.98, 95% CI 0.86 to 1.12), a trend towards protection form cardiovascular mortality (rate ratio 0.91, 95% CI 0.77 to 1.07), and significant protection from cardiovascular events (rate ratio 0.84, 95% CI 0.72 to 0.99). The latter became non-significant on sensitivity analysis. Trials where participants were involved for more than 2 years showed significant reductions in the rate of cardiovascular events and a suggestion of protection from total mortality. The degree of protection from cardiovascular events appeared similar in high and low risk groups, but was statistically significant only in the former.

REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS
The findings are suggestive of a small but potentially important reduction in cardiovascular risk in trials longer than two years. Lifestyle advice to all those at high risk of cardiovascular disease (especially where statins are unavailable or rationed), and to lower risk population groups, should continue to include permanent reduction of dietary saturated fat and partial replacement by unsaturates.


Amid the long-standing debate about the nature and purposes of physical education (PE) in schools, comparatively little research has examined the ways in which PE is viewed by young people themselves. This study set out, therefore, to explore young people's views on the nature and purposes of PE from a sociological perspective in the belief that a more adequate understanding of the process of PE requires us to appreciate something of the ways in which the subject is viewed and experienced in reality by pupils in schools. The study involved focus group interviews with 38 15–16-year-old white British young people (17 males; 21 females) from one secondary school in the north-west of England during February 2005. The main finding of the study was that young people held an amalgam of views regarding the nature and purposes of PE that centred, for the most part, upon perceptions of fun and enjoyment and the extent to which sociability is recurrently generated in lessons. In addition, young people also offered justifications based on the role of PE in health promotion and the development of game- and sport-related skills and knowledge of a kind more in tune with conventional justifications found in academic literature. It is argued that young people's views on the nature and purposes of PE are characterized by a number of well-understood, shared meanings that can only be adequately understood if we locate them within the networks of relationships characteristic of their lives more broadly. The paper concludes by arguing for the need to engage more in the realities of PE as practice, and to develop a more adequate understanding of what PE is for the young people involved, not least if government, policy-makers and teachers are to provide a more valuable and meaningful PE curriculum for them.


At the heart of an effective extractive resource-based economic transformation and development is an effective regulatory framework that guides the promotion of investments into the sector, the procedure for responsible extraction, and the management of the utilization of such resources. Ghana's endowment with significant amount of ferrous and non-ferrous minerals, including gold, bauxite, manganese, diamonds, and iron ore, as well as hydrocarbons, is well known. The country has been mining gold for over a century, ranking second in production in Africa. The country has also undergone various regulatory transformations that have resulted in improvements in the mining sector in the country. Drawing largely on the case of Ghana, this paper seeks to share the experience of a regulator and offers some perspectives on the purpose, content, and challenges of the practical regulation of an extractives sector in a lower middle-income economy. The paper looks at both the design and content of a regulatory system in the mining sector of Ghana and throws light on the practical challenges (technical and political) of implementation. In light of the increasing allure of resource nationalism in current times, the paper also briefly explores the manner in which relationships are established and maintained by the regulatory bodies with both large multinational companies and small artisanal mining operations. It also offers a brief reflection on three key international standards and arrangements (the International Finance Corporation, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, and the International Council on Minerals and Metals) to highlight their impact on domestic regulations. Conclusions are drawn to underscore the importance of effective and collaborative regulations in maximizing the transformative potential of resource extraction in less developed, resource-endowed countries.


The ethical commentator, in response to the abject failure of the global war on drugs, the harms it generates and the apparent lunacy of its continuing application, may be forgiven for an appeal to scientism. Indeed, a common refrain among drug war critics is the need for social policy decision-making that sidesteps moralising and ideology, and instead focuses on 'the facts'. In The Drug Effect: Health, Crime and Society, Suzanne Fraser and David Moore have collected a range of voices that question the objectivity of the scientific approach, and, more fundamentally, the 'epistemological naivete' of positivism - that is, the view that it is possible to produce objective, value-free knowledge about the world. Instead, they argue for constructionism, and the view that everything we think we know about 'drugs' is determined by discourse, values, history and politics. This isn't necessarily to say that there is nothing whatsoever material about matter (although the authors are interestingly inconsistent on this) and that a fatal heroin overdose is 'merely a discursive construction', but it is at the very least a warning that the supposed 'facts' may be no less subject to discourse and social norm than are the transparently moral judgements they wish to circumvent.


The supply of water for irrigation is subject to climatic and policy uncertainty. The object of the present paper is to show how the linear and non-linear programming models commonly used in modelling problems such as those arising in the Murray-Darling Basin may be adapted to incorporate a state-contingent representation of uncertainty. Estimates showing the potential value of improved water use are also derived.


Ammonium perchlorate (AP), an oxidizer, has been used in solid propellants. Although AP exposure has been suspected as a risk factor for the development of pulmonary fibrosis, data are still inconclusive. To evaluate the pulmonary toxicity and the potential pulmonary fibrosis caused by occupational exposure to this compound, 25 male rabbits were randomly allocated into five groups to receive AP or bleomycin or saline by intratracheal injection. All rabbits were sacrificed and total RNA from the lungs was extracted. Expressions of types I and III collagens, transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) and tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) messenger RNA (mRNA) were measured by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The expressions of type I and III collagen mRNA in low, moderate and high dose AP groups were significantly higher (p < 0.01 or p < 0.05) than that in the saline group. There was also a significant increased level of TGF-β1 and TNF-α mRNA in the three AP groups compared with saline control group (p < 0.01 or p < 0.05). These results reveal that AP can increase gene expressions of types I, III collagens, TGF-β1 and TNF-α in lung of rabbits exposed to AP. The overexpression of these biomarkers were considered as effective indicator linking to the development of pulmonary fibrosis and finally demonstrated that AP has potential to induce pulmonary fibrosis.


A pressure wave generator (PWG) is the most critical component of a high frequency pulse tube cooler which is finding increased use in aerospace and ground applications, including the telecommunication sector. High efficiency, compactness, low weight, high reliability and low vibration are some of the most challenging attributes in its design. This paper describes the developmental studies of a moving magnet linear motor PWG of 2 cc swept volume with a dual opposed piston configuration. The generative and restoring force characteristics of the magnetic circuit have been evaluated using a force measurement set up. Spiral arm flexures have been designed using FEM, fabricated and qualified by test. The linear motors alone are tested under resonant conditions without gas spring forces to estimate the iron losses of the motors. The influences of coil wire cross-section and number of coil turns on the performance of the PWG have been studied experimentally. The paper describes the significant effect of compressor flow discharge line cross section on the efficiency of the system. The performances of the PWG at different gas fill pressures and operating frequencies have been investigated. With an input power of 35.2 W, the PWG has produced a shaft power of 26.8 W and an acoustic power of 18.7 W.


The safety and high operating reliability of nuclear reactors can be assured only by 100% noncontact monitoring of the geometrical parameters of the heat-producing assemblies that make them up. To solve this problem, a complex of optoelectronic facilities has been developed and created at the Design-Technological Institute of Scientific Instrumentation, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences. These include the KONTROL' system for measuring the geometrical parameters of the heat-producing elements (HPEs) of nuclear reactors VVER-1000 and VVER-440, the LMM laser measurement machine for monitoring the geometrical parameters of the spacer grids, system GRAD for dimensional monitoring of the end fittings of the HPEs, and the PROFIL' system for measuring the relief and depth of surface defects of the HPEs. The operating principles, the structure, the technical characteristics, and results of production tests of the resulting facilities are given.


Conventional ultra-high sensitivity detectors in the millimeter-wave range are usually cooled as their own thermal noise at room temperature would mask the weak received radiation. The need for cryogenic systems increases the cost and complexity of the instruments, hindering the development of, among others, airborne and space applications. In this work, the nonlinear parametric upconversion of millimeter-wave radiation to the optical domain inside high-quality (Q) lithium niobate whispering-gallery mode (WGM) resonators is proposed for ultra-low noise detection. We experimentally demonstrate coherent upconversion of millimeter-wave signals to a 1550 nm telecom carrier, with a photon conversion efficiency surpassing the state-of-the-art by 2 orders of magnitude. Moreover, a theoretical model shows that the thermal equilibrium of counterpropagating WGMs is broken by overcoupling the millimeter-wave WGM, effectively cooling the upconverted mode and allowing ultra-low noise detection. By theoretically estimating the sensitivity of a correlation radiometer based on the presented scheme, it is found that room-temperature radiometers with better sensitivity than state-of-the-art high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT)-based radiometers can be designed. This detection paradigm can be used to develop room-temperature instrumentation for radio astronomy, earth observation, planetary missions, and imaging systems.


In 1944 the Moslems in Yili, Xinjiang, rose in rebellion against the GMD, and established the Eastern Turkestan Republic in Yili, Tacheng and Ashan. The ETR existed until 1949 when it rejoined China under the CCP' s regime. This study deals with the Soviets' part in this event; the ETR's role in postwar Asia; it's influence on Xinjiang's political developments and the central Chinese government's policy in Xinjiang.
Chapter 1 discusses existing studies on the Yili Rebellion. While this Moslem Rebellion is interpreted by scholars in mainland China and the former Soviet Union as "a part of the Chinese democratic revolution", scholars in Taiwan claim that the Soviets intended to annex Xinjiang by helping this rebellion. In the West no one has examined in detail the Soviets' role in the Rebellion though some scholars tend to deny the Soviets' part in the event. Chapter 2 outlines the geographical and historical background of this Moslem movement.
Chapter 3 presents the domestic and international situation in which the Yili Rebellion occurred. In the early 1940s the Soviet Union reluctantly withdrew its personnel from Xinjiang. In order to re-gain its privileges in East Asia and to counter-balance the penetration of the American-British influence in Xinjiang, the Soviets encouraged this Moslem movement. When Stalin was maldng a deal with Roosevelt on some East Asian questions, the Moslems in Yili had won a decisive battle at Yining. In the negotiation with the Chinese government's representatives in Moscow in August 1945, the Xinjiang question became a trump card for Stalin. In order to free his hand from Xinjiang to cope with the CCP, Chiang Kai-shek had to come to terms with Stalin's demands on Outer Mongolia and Manchuria under the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1945.
Detailed accounts of the Soviets' part in the Yili Rebellion are given in Chapters 4, 5 and 6. While the misrules of Sheng Shicai and the GMD were the internal cause of the Rebellion, Soviet interference in the affair played a significant and decisive part in propaganda and preparation for the Rebellion. The Xinjiang Turkish-Peoples' National Liberation Committee (XTPNLC) in Alma-Ata was the body for the preparation for the Rebellion. The Soviet Union provided military training and arms supplies to the rebels. The Soviet Consulate in Yining was in charge of the rebels' Liberation Organizations. When Sheng Shicai had just been removed and before the GMD government could establish its authority in Xinjiang, the Yining Uprising occurred. Soviet military personnel entered Xinjiang, and the Soviet advisors' mission became the real power of the ETR. With the assistance of the Soviets, the ETR took over the Three Districts of Yili, Tacheng and Ashan by September 1945.
Chapter 7 is an analysis of the Xinjiang situation between September 1945 and October 1949. The confrontation between the Yili Regime of the Three Districts and the GM]) authorities of the Seven Districts was only one aspect of the event. Behind it was the antagonism between the pro-Soviet Moslems supported by the Soviet Union and the pro-US-UK pan-Islamic and pan-Turkist Moslems supported by the pro-US-UK GM]) government.
Chapters 8 and 9 deal with the Chinese policy in Xinjiang. The purpose of Chiang Kai-shek in sending pro-Soviet Zhang Zhizhong to Xinjiang was to stabilize Xinjiang. Under Zhang's pro-Soviet peace policy, the Coalition Government was formed. Under the Yili Regime's political offensives, however, the Coalition collapsed and Zhang Zhizhong resigned in 1947. Even under the Coalition the Yili Regime remained independent of the Chinese central government. The de facto independence of the Yili Regime, which is described in Chapter 10, was a useful tool for the Soviet Union in counter-balancing the US influence in Xinjiang.
Chapter 11 analyzes the Soviets' as well as Zhang Zhizhong's roles in the peaceful solution of the Xinjiang question and how through their actions the Chinese Communist Party without any roots in Xinjiang, was able to take over Xinjiang peacefully.


This study examined whether students who either had higher levels of cross-racial interaction during college or had same institution peers with higher average levels tend to report significantly larger developmental gains than their counterparts report. Unlike previous quantitative studies that tested cross-racial interaction using single-level linear models, this study more accurately modeled the structure of multilevel data by applying Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). The general pattern of findings suggests that higher individual levels of cross-racial interaction have positive effects on students' openness to diversity, cognitive development, and self-confidence. The results also show that even though a student's own level of cross-racial interaction is a more direct and powerful way to realize developmental gains, just being in an environment where other students are interacting frequently also contributes to students' self-reported development.


ABSTRACT It has been accepted for many years that eastern Borneo and western Sulawesi were close together in the Late Cretaceous but the mechanism and age of formation of the Makassar Straits, which now separate them, have been the subjects of much debate. Geological studies on land show that the straits formed by Eocene rifting. However, the nature of the crust beneath the straits remains controversial. The southern parts are likely to be underlain by extended continental crust but, in the northern Makassar Straits, it is more difficult to decide. Water depths are up to 2500 m, there is a very thick sedimentary cover, the basement is not well imaged on seismic lines and there is no way of directly sampling it. Field studies from the Borneo and Sulawesi margins have provided the basis for reconstructing the development of the straits, and suggesting they are underlain by oceanic crust. The rift and its margins are asymmetrical and wide, with up to 400 km of stretched crust on the Borneo side and about 200 km on the Sulawesi side, separated by about 200 km of the deepest crust in the northern Makassar Straits. Gravity data and flexural modelling on the Borneo side suggest a junction between continental and oceanic crust beneath the Mahakam delta. The oceanic crust is inferred to be of Middle Eocene age, similar to the Celebes Sea to the north; apparent conical structures on seismic lines have been interpreted as volcanic edifices. However, the earliest backstripping studies suggested thinned continental crust in the central straits and this has been supported by interpretations of new seismic data from the offshore area west of Sulawesi. Half-graben and graben are interpreted beneath thick sediments, there are low-angle extensional faults, and lineaments crossing basement can be traced into the deepest parts of the straits. These structures suggest an origin by oblique rifting of continental crust in which the apparent conical structures are interpreted as carbonate build-ups on tilted fault blocks.


Hurt, Matthew R. Ph. D., Purdue University, December 2013. Mass Spectrometric Studies on the Primary Products of Fast Pyrolysis of Carbohydrates and the Molecular Structures of Asphaltenes, and the Development of a Rastering Probe for Laser-Induced Acoustic Desorption into an Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Ionization Source. Major Professor: Hilkka I. Kenttämaa. Mass spectrometry (MS) has proven invaluable in the field of mixture analysis and structural elucidation. Tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) utilizing collisionactivated dissociation (CAD) has become the technique of choice for structural elucidation of unknown analytes in mixtures. When coupled with gas chromatography (GC) or high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), it allows for trace level analysis of mixture components. In spite of the utility of mass spectrometry in complex mixture analysis, it does have limitations. Traditional GC/MS methods used for the analysis of fast pyrolysis products cannot be used to analyze the primary products, thus limiting the knowledge that can be obtained regarding the true mechanisms of fast pyrolysis, ultimately restricting the level of control over what final products are formed. Analysis of mixtures of hydrocarbons, such as crude oil, is also still a problematic area for mass spectrometry due to the lack of suitable evaporation/ionization methods for the heavier components. Consequently, very little is known about the structures of molecules in asphaltenes, the heaviest fraction of crude oil and one of the most complex mixtures in xxi nature. Elucidating the structures of the compounds present in these mixtures is important for the rational design of methods to prevent the problems the cause. Experiments described in this thesis employed tandem mass spectrometry to achieve a better understanding of the primary products of fast pyrolysis of carbohydrates and structures of molecules in asphaltenes. Chapter 2 briefly describes the instrumentation used for the research presented in this dissertation. Chapter 3 discusses the development of on-line mass spectrometric methods for the determination of the primary products of fast pyrolysis of carbohydrates and their gasphase reactivity, demonstrating that there are many primary products that cannot be analyzed using traditional methods. Chapter 4 examines the differences in the molecular structures of petroleum and coal asphaltenes. Chapter 5 focuses on changes to asphaltenes' molecular structures when they are subjected to the hydrocracking process, a common practice in crude oil refinement. Chapter 6 compares field deposit asphaltenes, removed from a pipeline, to heptane precipitated asphaltenes from crude oil in a laboratory. Chapter 7 contrasts the effects of using different solvents in atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) of asphaltenes. Chapters 8 and 9 focus on advances for laser-induced acoustic desorption (LIAD). Chapter 8 discusses improvements LIAD/APCI, including the development of a highpower laser probe for more reproducible evaporation of high-mass compounds into the gas phase, and the development of a rastering assembly that greatly increases the surface area of the LIAD foil that can be sampled. Chapter 9 discusses a novel chamber for preparing sample foils for LIAD by using a drying gas to prepare foils. The new xxii chamber that helps in the production of foils with a more uniform sample layer than previously possible for nonpolar analytes to improve the reproducibility of LIAD.


Motivation: Stress has become a major predicament in business and leaders are increasingly susceptible to it. Stress has been implicated as an important determinant of leadership functioning. Their stress is proven to impact their followers (companies, countries, team members) and if not prevented or managed properly, it can result in anxiety, depression, and as a direct consequence: burnout, or worse. CEOs and management face many challenges, and critical failures and overwhelming odds can easily break anyone down and make them lose sight of their goals. They have to have the skills to overcome stressful situations and demonstrate conduct that will make a business, an organization or country, productive and profitable. The Problem: A leader's stress level will influence his or her behavior and that can impact the stress levels and potential for burnout in subordinates. A lack of resources and time are the most stressful demands experienced by leaders. Stress is caused by trying to do more with less, and to do it faster. For 88% of leaders, work is a primary source of stress in their lives and having a leadership role increases the level of stress. Unfortunately, very few (only 28%) companies provide tools to help management deal with stress more effectively. Methodology: Study & Results: During the many years, I have worked with business leaders, I have come to recognize the 7 most common stressor determinants and I have developed methodology to conquer them.


Superconducting 3D microwave cavities offer state-of-the-art coherence times and a well controlled environment for superconducting qubits. In order to realize at the same time fast readout and long-lived quantum information storage, one can couple the qubit both to a low-quality readout and a high-quality storage cavity. However, such systems are bulky compared to their less coherent 2D counterparts. A more compact and scalable approach is achieved by making use of the multimode structure of a 3D cavity. In our work, we investigate such a device where a transmon qubit is capacitively coupled to two modes of a single 3D cavity. The external coupling is engineered so that the memory mode has an about 100 times larger quality factor than the readout mode. Using an all-microwave second-order protocol, we realize a lifetime enhancement of the stored state over the qubit lifetime by a factor of $6$ with a $Z$-fidelity of $82\%$. We also find that this enhancement is not limited by fundamental constraints.


Abstract. Measurements of CH 4 mixing ratio, vertical gradients and turbulent fluxes were carried out in a tropical forest (Reserva Biologica Cuieiras), about 60 km north of Manaus, Brazil. The methane mixing ratio and flux measurements were performed at a height of 53 m (canopy height 35 m). In addition, vertical CH 4 gradients were measured within the canopy using custom made air samplers at levels of 2, 16 and 36 m above ground. The methane gradients within the canopy reveal that there is a continuous methane source at the surface. No clear evidence for aerobic methane emission from the canopy was found. The methane fluxes above the canopy are small but consistently upwards with a maximum early in the morning. The measured fluxes are in agreement with the observed CH 4 gradient in the canopy. In the morning hours, a strong canopy venting peak is observed for both CH 4 and CO 2 , but for CO 2 this peak is then superimposed by photosynthetic uptake, whereas the peak lasts longer for CH 4 . Monthly averaged diurnal cycles of the CH 4 mixing ratio show a decrease during daytime and increase during nighttime. The magnitude of the difference in CH 4 mixing ratio between day and night gradually increases throughout the wet season. The fluxes required to explain the nighttime increase are in agreement with the nighttime fluxes measured above the canopy, which implies that the CH 4 increase in the nighttime boundary layer originates from local sources.


American society has grown dramatically more unequal over the past quarter century. The economic gains of American workers after World War II have slowly been eroded uin part because organized labor has gone from encompassing one-third of the private sector workers to less than one-tenth. One reason for the labor movement's collapse is the existence of weak labor laws that, for example, impose only minimal penalties on employers who illegally fire workers for trying to organize a union. Attempts to reform labor law have fallen short because labor is caught in a political box: To achieve reform, labor needs the political power that comes from expanding union membership; to grow, however, unions need labor law reform. Labor Organizing as a Civil Right lays out the case for a new approach, one that takes the issue beyond the confines of labor law by amending the Civil Rights Act so that it prohibits discrimination against workers trying to organize a union. The authors argue that this strategy would have two significant benefits. First, enhanced penalties under the Civil Rights Act would provide a greater deterrent against the illegal firing of employees who try to organize. Second, as a political matter, identifying the ability to form a union as a civil right frames the issue in a way that Americans can readily understand. The book explains the American labor movement's historical importance to social change, it provides data on the failure of current law to deter employer abuses, and it compares U.S. labor protections to those of most other developed nations. It also contains a detailed discussion of what amending the Civil Rights Act to protect labor organizing would mean as well as an outline of the connection between civil rights and labor movements and analysis of the politics of civil rights and labor law reform.


Radio frequency identification (RFID) applications have grown rapidly in many industries, especially in indoor location identification. The advantage of using received signal strength indicator (RSSI) values as an indoor location measurement method is a cost-effective approach without installing extra hardware. Because the accuracy of many positioning schemes using RSSI values is limited by interference factors and the environment, thus it is challenging to use RFID location techniques based on integrating positioning algorithm design. This study proposes the location estimation approach and analyzes a scheme relying on RSSI values to minimize location errors. In addition, this paper examines different factors that affect location accuracy by integrating the backpropagation neural network (BPN) with the LANDMARC algorithm in a training phase and an online phase. First, the training phase computes coordinates obtained from the LANDMARC algorithm, which uses RSSI values and the real coordinates of reference tags as training data for constructing an appropriate BPN architecture and training length. Second, in the online phase, the LANDMARC algorithm calculates the coordinates of tracking tags, which are then used as BPN inputs to obtain location estimates. The results show that the proposed scheme can estimate locations more accurately compared to LANDMARC without extra devices. Keywords—BPNs, indoor location, location estimation, intelligent location identification.


Background: Both prostate cancer and androgenetic alopecia are strongly age-related conditions that are considered to be androgen dependent, but studies of the relationship between them have yielded inconsistent results. We aimed to assess whether androgenetic alopecia at ages 20 and 40 years are associated with risk of prostate cancer. Methods: At a follow-up of the Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study, men were asked to assess their hair pattern at ages 20 and 40 years relative to eight categories in showcards. Cases were men notified to the Victorian Cancer Registry with prostate cancer diagnosed between cohort enrollment (1990–1994) and follow-up attendance (2003–2009). Flexible parametric survival models were used to estimate age-varying HRs and predicted cumulative probabilities of prostate cancer by androgenetic alopecia categories. Results: Of 9,448 men that attended follow-up and provided data on androgenetic alopecia, we identified 476 prostate cancer cases during a median follow-up of 11 years four months. Cumulative probability of prostate cancer was greater at all ages up to 76 years, for men with vertex versus no androgenetic alopecia at age of 40 years. At age of 76 years, the estimated probabilities converged to 0.15. Vertex androgenetic alopecia at 40 years was also associated with younger age of diagnosis for prostate cancer cases. Conclusions: Vertex androgenetic alopecia at age of 40 years might be a marker of increased risk of early-onset prostate cancer. Impact: If confirmed, these results suggest that the apparently conflicting findings of previous studies might be explained by failure to adequately model the age-varying nature of the association between androgenetic alopecia and prostate cancer. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 22(2); 209–15. ©2012 AACR.


This clinical report reviews the nutritional options during pregnancy, lactation, and the first year of life that may affect the development of atopic disease (atopic dermatitis, asthma, food allergy) in early life. It replaces an earlier policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics that addressed the use of hypoallergenic infant formulas and included provisional recommendations for dietary management for the prevention of atopic disease. The documented benefits of nutritional intervention that may prevent or delay the onset of atopic disease are largely limited to infants at high risk of developing allergy (ie, infants with at least 1 first-degree relative [parent or sibling] with allergic disease). Current evidence does not support a major role for maternal dietary restrictions during pregnancy or lactation. There is evidence that breastfeeding for at least 4 months, compared with feeding formula made with intact cow milk protein, prevents or delays the occurrence of atopic dermatitis, cow milk allergy, and wheezing in early childhood. In studies of infants at high risk of atopy and who are not exclusively breastfed for 4 to 6 months, there is modest evidence that the onset of atopic disease may be delayed or prevented by the use of hydrolyzed formulas compared with formula made with intact cow milk protein, particularly for atopic dermatitis. Comparative studies of the various hydrolyzed formulas also indicate that not all formulas have the same protective benefit. There is also little evidence that delaying the timing of the introduction of complementary foods beyond 4 to 6 months of age prevents the occurrence of atopic disease. At present, there are insufficient data to document a protective effect of any dietary intervention beyond 4 to 6 months of age for the development of atopic disease.


In the spring of 2006, for the first time ever, tens of thousands of Mexican citizens living in the U.S. received absentee ballots to vote for the next president of Mexico, crowning a major transformation in Mexican policy. This paper, published in advance of the 2006 election, explores this form of transnational migrant empowerment as a major step in the redefinition of the terms of Mexican nationality and citizenship which allows for permanent residence abroad and even de facto dual citizenship and binational civic participation—and explores how the new policy may open a new dimension of minority politics in the United States. The arrival of distance voting in Mexico's elections is part of a larger response to the rise of a new network of Mexican immigrant leaders, activists, and organizations in the U.S.—a network that the Mexican government helped develop and which is distinct from established U.S. Latino leadership. Both the U.S. and Mexico have repeatedly altered their basic policies toward the migration of Mexicans to the United States. This background paper places Mexico's policy today against the backdrop of the various ends it has pursued, the means it has employed, and the results it has achieved over time. It examines the evolving civic orientation of both Mexican immigrants and U.S.-born Mexican Americans, touches on the role of issues such as guest worker programs, and pays special attention to the role of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior—IME), a major new government agency.


In this paper, we present an educational innovation that is based on the use of the on-line educational platform provided by our University for providing feedback to students. In the last few years, undergraduate university courses with a practical orientation such as programming, have had a high drop-out rate and a low number of students who pass the course. This can be due to the difficulty that students have for understanding the lessons, which causes demotivation and increases the dropout rate. In this paper, we describe the design of this educational innovation, which uses the on-line educational platform and which also includes a collaborative lecture that is given during the on-site lessons. Finally, we analyze the impact of our proposal on a group of students of our University.


Byzantine-robustness has been gaining a lot of attention due to the growth of the interest in collaborative and federated learning. However, many fruitful directions, such as the usage of variance reduction for achieving robustness and communication compression for reducing communication costs, remain weakly explored in the field. This work addresses this gap and proposes Byz-VR-MARINA - a new Byzantine-tolerant method with variance reduction and compression. A key message of our paper is that variance reduction is key to fighting Byzantine workers more effectively. At the same time, communication compression is a bonus that makes the process more communication efficient. We derive theoretical convergence guarantees for Byz-VR-MARINA outperforming previous state-of-the-art for general non-convex and Polyak-Lojasiewicz loss functions. Unlike the concurrent Byzantine-robust methods with variance reduction and/or compression, our complexity results are tight and do not rely on restrictive assumptions such as boundedness of the gradients or limited compression. Moreover, we provide the first analysis of a Byzantine-tolerant method supporting non-uniform sampling of stochastic gradients. Numerical experiments corroborate our theoretical findings.


Globally increasing rates of mine site discontinuations are resulting in the need for immediate implementation of effective conservation and management strategies. Surveying vegetation structure is a common method of assessing restoration success; however, responses of fauna to mine site restoration remain largely overlooked and understudied despite their importance within ecosystems as ecological engineers, pollinators, and restoration facilitators. Here we review the current state of the use of fauna in assessments of mine site restoration success globally, and address biases or shortcomings that indicate the assessment approach may undershoot closure and restoration success. We identified just 101 peer-reviewed publications or book chapters over a 49-year period that assess responses of fauna to mine site restoration globally. Most studies originate in Australia, with an emphasis on just one company. Assessments favour general species diversity and richness, with a particular focus on invertebrate responses to mine site restoration. Noteworthy issues included biases towards origin of study, study type, and target taxa. Further searches of the grey literature relating to fauna monitoring in mine site restoration, which was far more difficult to access, yielded six monitoring/guidance documents, three conference proceedings, two book chapters without empirical data, and a bulletin. As with peer-reviewed publications, grey literature focussed on invertebrate responses to restoration, or mentioned fauna only at the most basic level. We emphasise the need for global re-evaluation of regulatory standards to address these major limitations in assessing the capacity of the mining industry to comprehensively and representatively restore faunal communities after mining.


This article examines key barriers to business sustainability discussed at a multidisciplinary conference held at the Harvard Business School in 2018. Drawing on perspectives from both the historical and business literatures, speakers debated the historical success of and future opportunities for voluntary business actions to advance sustainability. Roadblocks include misaligned incentives, missing institutions, inertia of economic systems, and the concept of sustainability itself. Overcoming these roadblocks will require systematic interventions and alternative normative concepts.


The purpose of this paper is to examine the idea that information searching and use may vary with the widespread use of internet capable mobile devices. It highlights areas of existing literature that report variation in information searching and use on mobile devices, in addition to reporting on the results of a small set of semi-structured interviews. This was a small qualitative study, interviewing five experienced and confident users of mobile devices, which will not show the full range of mobile behaviour in seeking for and using information on the move. It gives a starting point to consider how information behaviour may change between fixed and mobile environments.


The possible effect on avifaunas of a hypothetical future warmer climate has recently caused much speculation, frequently ill-founded. On the other hand the actual effects of past warmer interglacials on avifaunas have strangely enough attracted no interest. This paper is an effort to remedy this, by reviewing the avifaunas of the previous interglacial (MIS 5e, 117-130 Ka BP). This interglacial was significantly warmer than the present one, about 2°C in the North Temperate zone and 5°C or more in the Arctic, and may have been the warmest interval since the Pliocene. Most of the known Last Interglacial avifaunas are from the temperate parts of North America and Europe. The scarcity of avifaunas from other areas are due both to a scarcity of Pleistocene avifaunas in general and to rudimentary Quaternary chronologies, which makes it difficult to date faunas older than the last glaciation. In North America, the largest collections are from California and Florida. The Californian faunas are similar to modern faunas, both for seabirds and landbirds, while the Florida faunas contain a number of extralimital Central American and South American species. A small fauna from Arctic Canada (Old Crow Basin) is also similar to modern faunas. In Europe, several faunas from Central Europe differ little from extant faunas in the same areas, while faunas from Great Britain contain some southern (Iberian) species. Material from the southern hemisphere is very limited, and consists of one small fauna from New Zealand which is similar to modern faunas from the same area. The only LIG avifauna that shows dramatic differences from present-day conditions is from southwestern Egypt. This area is now extreme desert but had a rich Afrotropical avifauna during LIG, presumably due to a northward expansion of the African Monsoon. In general it seems that a temperature rise of the order of 2°C does not have a very dramatic impact on temperate avifaunas, while in the tropics changes in precipitation patterns may be more important than temperatures.


Early childhood education (ECE) intervention programs nowadays are the core of the educational disadvantage policy in the Netherlands. They offer institutional compensatory activities to young children who lack educational stimulation in the home environment. Target groups mainly comprise children from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds and of immigrant origin. ECE is confronted with several bottlenecks, including the definition of the target groups, the quality of ECE staff, and the ECE programs. Most important is the controversy surrounding the empirical evidence of effects of ECE provisions. This article presents a description of state-of-the-art Dutch ECE, with special attention to recent Dutch studies on the effectiveness of ECE programs.


Identifying a subset of features that preserves classification accuracy is a problem of growing importance, because of the increasing size and dimensionality of real-world data sets. We propose a new feature selection method, named Quadratic Programming Feature Selection (QPFS), that reduces the task to a quadratic optimization problem. In order to limit the computational complexity of solving the optimization problem, QPFS uses the Nystrom method for approximate matrix diagonalization. QPFS is thus capable of dealing with very large data sets, for which the use of other methods is computationally expensive. In experiments with small and medium data sets, the QPFS method leads to classification accuracy similar to that of other successful techniques. For large data sets, QPFS is superior in terms of computational efficiency.


Computer science and physics have been closely linked since the birth of modern computing. In recent years, an interdisciplinary area has blossomed at the junction of these fields, connecting insights from statistical physics with basic computational challenges. Researchers have successfully applied techniques from the study of phase transitions to analyze NP-complete problems such as satisfiability and graph coloring. This is leading to a new understanding of the structure of these problems, and of how algorithms perform on them. Computational Complexity and Statistical Physics will serve as a standard reference and pedagogical aid to statistical physics methods in computer science, with a particular focus on phase transitions in combinatorial problems. Addressed to a broad range of readers, the book includes substantial background material along with current research by leading computer scientists, mathematicians, and physicists. It will prepare students and researchers from all of these fields to contribute to this exciting area.


In this paper, we present an econometric analysis of the effects of a price floor on price dynamics and price volatility. A price floor (implemented as a part of government pricing policy) provides a censoring mechanism for price determination. We specify and estimate a dynamic Tobit model under time-varying volatility. The model is applied to analyze the effects of a price support program on price dynamics and price volatility in the U.S. American cheese market. The econometric analysis provides useful insights on price dynamics in the presence of a government-determined price floor.


Consent: Tennessee to Follow an Objective Standard of Informed Consent-Ashe v. Radiation Oncology Assoc.1--The Supreme Court of Tennessee held that the standard to determine informed consent is whether a reasonable person in the patient's position would have consented to the procedure or treatment if adequately informed of all significant risks.2 The plaintiff, Patricia Ashe, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988. She underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. However, in 1993, she discovered that the cancer had moved to her lungs. Ashe was referred to the defendant, Dr. Steven Stroup, who prescribed radiation treatment. Subsequently, Ashe sustained radiation myelitis caused by a permanent radiation injury to her spinal cord and was rendered paraplegic. Ashe then brought an informed consent claim against Dr. Stroup.3 The trial court found that Ashes trial testimony conflicted with her deposition testimony regarding whether she would have consented to the procedure had she been warned of the risk of spinal cord injury. The trial court struck the trial testimony stating that she would not have undergone the procedure and granted Dr. Stroup a directed verdict on the deposition testimony where Ashe stated she was unsure whether she would have undergone the procedure. Ashe appealed and the appellate court held that as part of Ashes informed consent claim she was required to prove that a reasonable person knowing of the risk for spinal cord injury would have decided not to undergo the procedure. The court held that the discrepancy between the trial testimony and the deposition testimony went to the issue of credibility and that the trial court testimony should not have been stricken. The appellate court reversed the trial court's grant of a directed verdict and remanded the case for a new trial. The Supreme Court of Tennessee granted appeal to address the appropriate standard to be employed when assessing the issue of causation in a medical malpractice informed consent case.4 Under Tennessee law, the plaintiff in an informed consent medical malpractice case has the burden of proving: (1) what a reasonable medical practitioner in the same or similar community would have disclosed to the patient about the risk posed by the prospective treatment; (2) that the defendant departed from the norm; and (3) that this departure caused the plaintiff to suffer harm.5 The issue faced by the Supreme Court of Tennessee was whether an objective, subjective or a hybrid subjective/objective test should be employed when assessing the issue of causation in informed consent cases. …


Recovering variable types or other structural information from binaries is useful for reverse engineering in security, and to facilitate other kinds of analysis on binaries. However such reverse engineering tasks often lack precise problem definitions; some information is lost during compilation, and existing tools can exhibit a variety of errors. As a step in the direction of more principled reverse engineering algorithms, we isolate a sub-task of type inference, namely determining whether each integer variable is declared as signed or unsigned. The difficulty of this task arises from the fact that signedness information in a binary, when present at all, is associated with operations rather than with data locations. We propose a graphbased algorithm in which variables represent nodes and edges connect variables with the same signedness. In a program without casts or conversions, signed and unsigned variables would form distinct connected components, but when casts are present, signed and unsigned variables will be connected. Reasoning that developers prefer source code without casts, we compute a minimum cut between signed and unsigned variables, which corresponds to a minimal set of casts required for a legal typing. We evaluate this algorithm by erasing signedness information from debugging symbols, and testing how well our tool can recover it. Applying an intra-procedural version of the algorithm to the GNU Coreutils, we we observe that many variables are unconstrained as to signedness, but that it almost all cases our tool recovers either the type from the original source, or a type that yields the same program behavior.


Spectral clustering is a standard approach to label nodes on a graph by studying the (largest or lowest) eigenvalues of a symmetric real matrix such as e.g. the adjacency or the Laplacian. Recently, it has been argued that using instead a more complicated, non-symmetric and higher dimensional operator, related to the non-backtracking walk on the graph, leads to improved performance in detecting clusters, and even to optimal performance for the stochastic block model. Here, we propose to use instead a simpler object, a symmetric real matrix known as the Bethe Hessian operator, or deformed Laplacian. We show that this approach combines the performances of the non-backtracking operator, thus detecting clusters all the way down to the theoretical limit in the stochastic block model, with the computational, theoretical and memory advantages of real symmetric matrices.


Algorithms for spectral subtraction suffer from musical noise effects due to the large gaps in the frequency spectrum created by the subtractive process. Proposed methods to solve this problem used the auditory-masking model in the Wiener filter. Since the auditory-masking threshold (AMT) curve reveals that spectral components above it are perceptible, it can serve as a lower bound in the estimate of the short-term speech spectrum. We propose an improvement of the Wiener filter estimate using perceptual constraints that exploit the auditory masking curve. Using an LPC model, from psychoacoustics we derive an estimate of the spectral density of speech that tends to lower and spread the energy of the musical noise onto other frequencies in the critical band. Objective and subjective evaluations indicate a slightly improved performance over ordinary spectral subtraction and Wiener filtering methods.


Hypocholesterolaemic effect of ethanolic extract of fresh leaves of Cymbopogon citratus (lemongrass) was investigated using albino rats. Hypercholesterolaemia was induced in the animals by feeding with egg yolk fortified diet for 14 days. The plant extract was administered orally to two groups, doses of 200 and 100 mg/kg body weight respectively for 7 days. Physical activities, food and water intake and body weight increased before the administration of extract. These parameters, however, decreased after administration of extract. The elevated cholesterol concentration were significantly (P<05) lowered in the animals given the plant extract. This reduction was found to be dose dependent. This result shows that the extract possesses hypocholestecolaemic potential. This may explain its efficacy in the management of heart diseases.

 Key words: Cymbopogon citratus and hypocholesterolemia, rat serum.


Often, one connotes problem management with a postdelivery process for resolving problems within corrective maintenance. Very seldom, however, one relates it to the testing process within development, evolution and maintenance. In this paper, we propose a model of predelivery problem management. Using the model, we study the industrial status within eight companies situated in Greece. Our results show that all the organizations studied conduct a predelivery problem management process within system testing. However, only three out of eight companies perform it within central integration testing.


Background: Epidemiological studies have illustrated that exposure to atmospheric nitrogen oxides
(NO2/NOX) is responsible for an increased risk of acute or chronic diseases such as cancer. In this
study the health risks associated with nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were assessed in the city of Kermanshah,
the capital of Kermanshah province, Iran.
Methods: Data on hourly NO2 levels that had been measured with the Environ tech model M200 was
taken from the Kermanshah Environmental Protection Agency (KEPA). The AirQ2.2.3 model was
used to quantify data based on baseline incidence (BI), relative risk (RR), and attributable proportion
(AP). The number of cases of cardiovascular mortality (CM), acute myocardial infarction (MI), and
hospital admissions for chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (HACOPD) was estimated.
Results: The results of the current study show that there were 33, 16, and 13 cases of CM, acute MI,
and HACOPD, respectively, attributable to NO2 exposure. Furthermore, 26.85% of health impacts
occurred on days when NO2 levels did not exceed 40 μg/m3. For every 10 μg/m3 increase in the NO2
level, the risk of CM, MI, and HACOPD rose about 0.2%, 0.36%, and 0.38%, respectively.
Conclusion: In order to reduce the number of cases of mortality and morbidity caused by exposure to
NO2, several immediate steps should be taken by the government to control emissions from various
sources, particularly car exhaust, to reduce the levels of NO2 in the atmosphere.
Keywords: Health impact, Myocardial infarction, COPD, NO2, Kermanshah
Citation: Omidi Y, Goudarzi G, Heidari AM, Daryanoosh SM. Health impact assessment of shortterm
exposure to NO2 in Kermanshah, Iran using AirQ model. Environmental Health Engineering
and Management Journal 2016; 3(2): 91–97. doi: 10.15171/ehemj.2016.06.


Sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) is a pre-exercise alkalotic buffering agent that is ingested to
alleviate accumulation of hydrogen anions during exercise. As such, this supplement has been
extensively used in scientific literature to assess NaHCO3 ergogenic properties during high
intensity exercise. These ergogenic properties are likely to be apparent when exercise perturbs
the acid-base balance with excessive H+ accumulation; therefore, the lowest intensity at which
NaHCO3 may exert an ergogenic effect is during exercise performed within the severe intensity
domain. The physiological characteristics of severe intensity exercise include exacerbated rise
in [bla], and therefore acid-base perturbations, until the termination of exercise. The
environmental conditions can also have an additive physiological stress to exercise; indeed,
acute hypoxia increases the relative energy contribution of anaerobic glycolysis. The resultant
effect is an exacerbated rise in H+ during exercise, which may, at least in part, contribute to the
ergolytic effect of acute hypoxia on exercise performance and capacity. As such, severe
intensity exercise performed in acute hypoxic conditions may benefit from NaHCO3 ingestion
to alleviate acidic stress and mitigate for the ergolytic effect of acute hypoxia. The purpose of
this thesis was to evaluate the effect of NaHCO3 on severe intensity exercise performed in acute
hypoxic conditions. Furthermore, this effect was evaluated through the parameter of the powerduration
relationship (i.e. CP and !") during all-out, intermittent and constant load exercise to
exhaustion. Together, this series of investigations are the first to demonstrate that NaHCO3
may be an effective ergogenic aid in acute moderate hypoxic conditions. In particular, this
effect was observed during exercise in the severe intensity domain, with NaHCO3 enhancing
the capacity of !" during all-out and constant load exercise; along with increasing volume of
work that can be performed at this intensity during intermittent exercise. Indeed, Chapter six
demonstrated that NaHCO3 may accelerate the rate of !" recovery during intermittent exercise
when applied to the !#$%
" model. Interestingly, this thesis is the first to identify the presence of
an intensity dependant effect, with the magnitude of NaHCO3 ergogenicity diminishing as
exercise intensity rises from the severe intensity domain to supra-maximal intensities. Further
research should consider testing these hypotheses in alternative ambient conditions to
determine the efficacy of NaHCO3 (e.g. in normoxic conditions or in combined extreme
environmental conditions).


Linguistic interference in simultaneous interpreting is among those phenomena that many authors have written about, while few have actually investigated it. Following Daniel Gile's request for more empirical data, the authors have tried to analyse frequency and types of interference in a corpus of 36 interpretations by twelve professional conference interpreters. Results indicate the high incidence of interference (INT) in professional interpreters' output as well as the high variability in both frequency and type of INT among the subjects. The lack of correlations between INT and other investigated parameters seems to indicate a certain independence of INT from other output parameters (e.g. semantic deviations).


The rapid development of complex income taxation and welfare systems in the 20th century may give the impression that progressive wealth redistribution systems are uniquely modern. However, religious systems provided similar mechanisms for addressing economic injustice and poverty alleviation centuries earlier. Zakat is the obligation of almsgiving and is the third pillar of Islam - a requirement for all believers. In the early development of the Islamic community, zakat was collected as a tax by the state and the funds were distributed to a defined set of needy groups. As a theoretical matter, there are three insights that make zakat an especially relevant subject for modern legal scholars. First, zakat is an example of a modest wealth tax combined with an income tax that may be illustrative in the discourse regarding wealth taxes. Second, the jurisprudence of zakat supports the ethical conclusions of scholars who contend that property rights are attached to post rather than pre-tax income. Third, to the extent that zakat is considered a principal source of revenue for public programs, it might imply a limited role for government, focusing on equitable distribution of goods. This paper begins with a thorough evaluation and synthesis of the traditional Islamic jurisprudence related to zakat. The next section identifies three broad approaches to zakat adopted by modern Muslim states, with particular emphasis on ways that zakat is institutionalized legally. This is followed by an empirical analysis of the correlation of the approaches to zakat with (1) individual income and (2) wealth stratification. The article concludes with observations and policy recommendations related to zakat and broader legal theory based on the earlier qualitative analysis and empirical findings.


As the costs of higher education have soared, the value of Pell grants has declined, making it more difficult for lower-income students to obtain an education without being hopelessly mired in debt. This article traces the evolution of the Pell program and discusses the diametrically opposed proposals of Presidents Obama and Trump to reform federal funding for higher education. The article proposes an alternative plan that would require a redirection of a portion of the funds from the Pell program and a reshuffling of the current tax incentives for higher education. The advantages of this proposal are that it would provide more efficient funding for higher education because it would lower many of the barriers that lower-income students face, it would help alleviate the student debt crisis, and it would not involve an expenditure of additional federal funds.


Objective: To investigate whether White, African American and Hispanic individuals with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) express differences in neurobehavioural symptoms at 1 year post-injury after adjusting for demographic and injury characteristics. Design: Retrospective study. Participants: One thousand, three hundred and thirty-nine individuals from the TBI Model Systems National Database with primarily moderate-to-severe TBI (978 White, 288 African American and 73 Hispanic) hospitalized between 1996 and 2001. Main outcome measures: Neurobehavioural Functioning Inventory (NFI) at 1 year post-injury. Results: There were significant differences in NFI scores among the races/ethnicities for the depression, somatic, memory/attention, communication and motor subscales, after adjusting for demographic and injury characteristics; there were not significant differences in the aggression sub-scale. Hispanics had higher levels of symptom reporting than African Americans and Whites, while differences between African Americans and Whites were not significant. Conclusions: Hispanics scored significantly higher than Whites and African Americans on the sub-scales of the NFI, indicating more problems in these areas. Future research should focus on identifying factors that may contribute to the difference between the groups and treatment interventions should be implemented accordingly.


Marine protected areas (MPAs) may be important for protecting the marine environment, but they may also have substantial socio-cultural impacts about which very little is currently known, or acknowledged. In the Mediterranean, few data are available on the socio-economic consequences of MPAs. The present study reviews the existing data on MPAs in Spain, France, Italy and Greece. A general increase in tourist activities in Mediterranean MPAs is evident, as are increases in the abundances of larger fish species, although there are no data indicating yields for fisheries increase adjacent to MPAs. A large increase in the number of divers and vessels using MPAs has already had impacts on natural benthic communities as a result of diver damage, mooring and the feeding of large fish by divers. Emphasis has been given in only a few MPAs to promoting public awareness of these impacts. Although the conservation of nature should be considered the fundamental objective of MPAs, neglecting their social, cultural and economic impacts has at times led to poor local consensus, if not hostility. We believe that planning and managing MPAs should be conducted on a multidisciplinary basis. Nonetheless, no single model can be considered valid for the whole Mediterranean. The very variable characteristics of coastal areas, from those of small uninhabited islands to those of cities, require different weightings to be assigned for each factor in order to achieve a durable equilibrium and realize the original objectives of each MPA. Only with such flexibility of management will it be possible to reach a greater understanding of the MPA system and create a lasting consensus in favour of conservation, a consensus which would mean an overwhelming majority of people actively avoiding damaging nature and preventing others from doing so.


We describe an objective and automated method for detecting clusters of galaxies from optical imaging data. This method is a variant of the so-called "matched-filter" technique pioneered by Postman et al. (1996). Simultaneously using positions and apparent magnitudes of galaxies, this method can, not only find cluster candidates, but also estimate their redshifts and richnesses as byproducts of detection. We examine errors in the estimation of cluster's position, redshift, and richness with a number of Monte Carlo simulations. No systematic discrepancies between the true and estimated values are seen for either redshift or richness. For clusters with and with richness similar to that of the Coma cluster, typical errors in the estimation of position, redshift, and richness are evaluated as (one third of the projected core radius), 0.02, and 12%, respectively. Spurious detection rate of the method is about less than 10% of those of conventional ones which use only surface density of galaxies. A cluster survey in the North Galactic Pole region is executed to verify the performance characteristics of the method with real data. Despite poor quality of the data, two known real clusters are successfully detected. No unknown cluster with low or medium redshift ( 0.3) is detected. We expect these methods based on "matched-filter" technique to be essential tools for compiling large and homogeneous optically-selected cluster catalogs.


This paper reports a study on the dynamics of foil-based functional component self-alignment on big plastic substrates. We investigate the dependence of alignment time and final precision of stacking of foil dies on a number of system parameters, such as physical properties of assembly medium, size and weight of assembling dies and their initial misalignment. Using water as a medium for direct self-alignment, mm- and cm-sized square-shaped pre-marked foil dies were aligned with high accuracy (<30 µm) on patterned marked carriers. High-speed camera stage and image recognition tools were used for analyzing rapid capillary-driven self-alignment processes of marked foil dies. Experimental results were successfully benchmarked with analytical and numerical modeling. It is shown that there is a definite range of initial misalignment values allowing dies to align with high accuracy and yield within the same time window, whereas both under smaller and larger initial offsets, i.e. with dies correspondingly too close or too far from their target positions, yield and alignment precision is significantly lower. Our demonstration that mm- to cm-sized functional foils can be aligned with high accuracy opens the perspective of efficiently assembling interesting new systems such as separately manufactured sensors, paper batteries and RFIDs through this direct capillary-driven self-alignment approach.


1. Salt restriction is recommended in the treatment of hypertension and is included in national dietary guidelines, but its effect on exercise in hot conditions has not been extensively studied. 2. The effects of 2 weeks on two levels of salt intake (50 and 150 mmol/day) on the ability to exercise (60% of maximal oxygen uptake) in a hot environment (35 degrees C) were studied in eight healthy normotensive subjects. 3. All subjects were able to complete the exercise load on the two levels of salt intake. No differences in mean oxygen uptake, heart rate or rectal temperature during exercise were observed between the two salt intakes. 4. Plasma sodium, potassium and osmolality were similar on the two salt intakes both before and during exercise. Plasma renin activity and aldosterone concentration were elevated after 2 weeks on the reduced salt intake and remained so during exercise. 5. The estimated sweat rate during exercise was similar on the two salt intakes but the loss of sodium was less on the low salt intake. 6. On the basis of these results it is concluded that moderate salt restriction does not impair the ability to exercise in a hot environment.


We analyze various regulatory regimes for electricity transmission investment in the context of a power system transformation toward renewable energy. Distinctive developments of the generation mix are studied, assuming that a shift toward renewables may have temporary or permanent impacts on network congestion. We specifically analyze the relative performance of a combined merchant-regulatory price-cap mechanism, a cost-based rule, and a non-regulated approach in dynamic generation settings. We find that incentive regulation may perform better than cost-based regulation but only when appropriate weights are used. While quasi-ideal weights generally restore the beneficial properties that incentive regulatory mechanisms are well-known for, pure Laspeyres weights may either lead to over-investment or delayed investments as compared to the welfare-optimum benchmark. Laspeyres-Paasche weights, in turn, seem appropriate under permanently or temporarily increased network congestion. Thus, our analysis provides motivation for further research in order to characterize optimal regulation for transmission expansion in the context of renewable integration.


During the 21st century business environments have become more complex and dynamic than ever before. Companies operate in a world of change influenced by globalisation, volatile markets, legal changes and technical progress. As a result, they have to handle growing volumes of data and therefore require fast storage, reliable data access, intelligent retrieval of information and automated decision-making mechanisms, all provided at the highest level of service quality. Successful enterprises are aware of these challenges and efficiently respond to the dynamic environment in which their business operates. Business Intelligence (BI) and Performance Management (PM) offer solutions to these challenges and provide techniques to enable effective business change. The important aspects of both topics are discussed within this state-of-the-art volume. It covers the strategic support, business applications, methodologies and technologies from the field, and explores the benefits, issues and challenges of each. Issues are analysed from many different perspectives, ranging from strategic management to data technologies, and the different subjects are complimented and illustrated by numerous examples of industrial applications. Contributions are authored by leading academics and practitioners representing various universities, research centres and companies worldwide. Their experience covers multiple disciplines and industries, including finance, construction, logistics, and public services, amongst others. Business Intelligence and Performance Management is a valuable source of reference for graduates approaching MSc or PhD programs and for professionals in industry researching in the fields of BI and PM for industrial application.