The presentations made, as well as the discussions, in the panels at the workshop, Thermal Challenges in Next Generation Electronic Systems (THERMES), are summarized in this paper. The panels dealt with diverse topics including thermal management roadmaps, microscale cooling systems, numerical modeling from the component to system levels, hardware for future high performance and Internet computing architectures, and transport issues in the manufacturing of electronic packages. The focus of the panels was to identify barriers to further progress in each area that require the attention of the research community.


Predictive state representations (PSRs) use predictions of a set of tests to represent the state of controlled dynamical systems. One reason why this representation is exciting as an alternative to partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) is that PSR models of dynamical systems may be much more compact than POMDP models. Empirical work on PSRs to date has focused on linear PSRs, which have not allowed for compression relative to POMDPs. We introduce a new notion of tests which allows us to define a new type of PSR that is nonlinear in general and allows for exponential compression in some deterministic dynamical systems. These new tests, called e-tests, are related to the tests used by Rivest and Schapire [1] in their work with the diversity representation, but our PSR avoids some of the pitfalls of their representation—in particular, its potential to be exponentially larger than the equivalent POMDP.


We address whether transaction flows in foreign exchange markets convey fundamental information. Our General Equilibrium model includes fundamental information that first manifests at the micro level and is not symmetrically observed by all agents. This produces foreign exchange transactions that play a central role in information aggregation, providing testable links between transaction flows, exchange rates, and future fundamentals. We test these links using data on all end-user currency trades received at Citibank over 6.5 years, a sample sufficiently long to analyze real-time forecasts at the quarterly horizon. The predictions are borne out in four empirical findings that define this paper's main contribution: (1) transaction flows forecast future macro variables such as output growth, money growth, and inflation, (2) transaction flows forecast these macro variables significantly better than the exchange rate does, (3) transaction flows (proprietary) forecast future exchange rates, and (4) the forecasted part of fundamentals is better at explaining exchange rates than standard measured fundamentals.


In "Abductive and Inductive Reasoning," F. Buccafurri, T. Eiter, G. Gottlob, and N. Leone provided a first step toward integrating model-checking methods with AI. They developed an abstract concept of a system repair problem that is solved by applying logic-based abduction. S. H. Muggleton and F. A. Marginean noted that datarefinement operators in inductive logic programming have been viewed as functions from clauses to sets of clauses. Searches carried out by genetic algorithms allow larger changes by comThe Workshop on Logic-Based Artificial Intelligence (LBAI), sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, was held in Washington, D.C., on 13 to 15 June 1999. The workshop was organized by Jack Minker and John McCarthy. The Program Committee members were Krzysztof Apt, John Horty, Sarit Kraus, Vladimir Lifschitz, John McCarthy, Jack Minker, Don Perlis, and Ray Reiter. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together researchers who use logic as a fundamental tool in AI to permit them to review accomplishments, assess future directions, and share their research in LBAI. This article is a summary of the workshop. The areas selected for discussion at the workshop were abductive and inductive reasoning, applications of theorem proving, commonsense reasoning, computational logic, constraints, logic and high-level robotics, logic and language, logic and planning, logic for agents and actions, logic of causation and action, logic, probability and decision theory, nonmonotonic reasoning, theories of belief, and knowledge representation. Sessions consisted of one to four lectures. Following the lectures in each session, a discussion was held to assess accomplishments and directions of research related to the topic of the session. In addition, 12 different logicbased systems were discussed briefly, and the systems were demonstrated. A brief synopsis of the lectures and the systems demonstrated follows. and the Rockwell-Collins JEM1 microprocessor (the world's first silicon JAVA virtual machine). The use of ACL2 uncovered at least four hardware design bugs—bugs that had survived hundreds of millions of test cases—in time to fix them before the processor was shipped. A. Levy addressed dataintegration systems that require a flexible mechanism to describe contents of sources. He surveyed the main logic-based languages that have been considered for describing data sources in data-integration systems and the specialized inference techniques developed in this context. P. Nayak and B. Williams dealt with a reactive self-configuring system installed in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Deep Space 1 spacecraft now in flight. This autonomous system performs failure analysis and correction for a variety of tasks during the years of active service of the spacecraft. D. Gunning spoke about knowledge base projects at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, where general reasoning systems are needed both to handle the general question-answering problem and to reason from first principles in unanticipated situations. In "Commonsense Reasoning," McCarthy noted that logical AI involves representing knowledge of an agent's world, its goals, and the current situation by sentences in logic. He characterized a large number of concepts that have arisen in research in logical AI. E. Sandewall addressed what the appropriate research methodology is when logic is used in our field. He argued that any research methodology must specify what is to be counted as relevant results in the research and what is the evidence that is expected to be seen to accept proposed results. In "Computational Logic," G. Gottlob discussed an application of a restricted form of logic programming admitting negation but not function symbols to hardware verification. The idea is to use a fragment of this restricted form that can be processed in linear time (data complexity). The fragment is relevant to databases because it allows constructs such as transitive closure and, thus, recursive queries and to AI concerns such as frame problems, The Workshop on LogicBased Artificial Intelligence


The main purpose of the new China Green Low-Carbon City Index (CGLCI, or City Index) is to evaluate the status of green and low-carbon development for a large number of Chinese cities.[1] Chinese cities are formulating plans and implementing programs to address national initiatives, especially the national low-carbon pilot program for 36 cities and six provinces.[2] However, there is not yet an established framework for measuring, reporting, or evaluating low-carbon progress across Chinese cities, despite the development of a number of Chinese and international city indicator systems. The new China City Index highlights energy use and carbon emissions of Chinese cities, along with environmental and socio-economic indicators. We selected metrics (indicators) that have data available in China's statistical system, are commonly used internationally, and reflect Chinese policy goals. (See Table ES-1.) We then benchmarked and ranked Chinese cities in terms of their status and progress, identified potential areas for improvement, and identified top-runners.[1] By "low-carbon" we mean reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), with a focus on energy-related CO2. The term "carbon" is used as short-hand for these GHGs throughout the report. By "green" we recognize multiple environmental parameters related to urbanization and climate change: air quality, water use, solid waste, transport networks, and urban green space.[2] In early 2017, China expanded its low-carbon pilot cities program, adding 45 more cities.


Background: No studies have estimated the population-level burden of morbidity in individuals diagnosed with cancer as children (ages 0–19 years). We updated prevalence estimates of childhood cancer survivors as of 2011 and burden of morbidity in this population reflected by chronic conditions, neurocognitive dysfunction, compromised health-related quality of life, and health status (general health, mental health, functional impairment, functional limitations, pain, and fear/anxiety). Methods: Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program data from 1975 to 2011 were used to update the prevalence of survivors of childhood cancers in the United States. Childhood Cancer Survivor Study data were used to obtain estimates of morbidity burden indicators, which were then extrapolated to SEER data to obtain population-level estimates. Results: There were an estimated 388,501 survivors of childhood cancer in the United States as of January 1, 2011, of whom 83.5% are ≥5 years after diagnosis. The prevalence of any chronic condition among ≥5-year survivors ranged from 66% (ages 5–19) to 88% (ages 40–49). Estimates for specific morbidities ranged from 12% (pain) to 35% (neurocognitive dysfunction). Generally, morbidities increased by age. However, mental health and anxiety remained fairly stable, and neurocognitive dysfunction exhibited initial decline and then remained stable by time since diagnosis. Conclusions: The estimated prevalence of survivors of childhood cancer is increasing, as is the estimated prevalence of morbidity in those ≥5 years after diagnosis. Impact: Efforts to understand how to effectively decrease morbidity burden and incorporate effective care coordination and rehabilitation models to optimize longevity and well-being in this population should be a priority. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 24(4); 653–63. ©2015 AACR.


There has been real upward convergence between non-euro area member states of the European Union (EU) and the euro area in the last decade. However, this positive trend is slowing down and in some cases reversing. Discussions of required reforms often do not go beyond macroeconomic considerations surrounding the Copenhagen criteria for euro area accession. However, increasing institutional quality and efficiency is crucial for these member states' accession to the euro area and long-term resilience. EU funds absorption rates, economic resilience during shocks, investment rates and general economic efficiency, among others, are all highly impacted by the effectiveness and quality of public and private institutions. And here, these member states are some of the poorest performers in the Union, and have seen little progress in the past decade. Current instruments such as the Structural Reform Support Service that provides technical assistance for public institutional reform have had successes in member state reform processes. Building upon and integrating these instruments in a future euro area accession platform could prove invaluable.


The published papers and accompanying essay which make up this doctoral thesis examine economic aspects of the competitive process in mature product industrial markets and draw implications for competition policy. The analysis of price competition relates patterns of price leadership and discount competition to features of market structure (using the UK petrol market as a case study) and examines the influence of large buyers on price determination. Policies towards buying power and price discrimination in several countries are compared and appraised. The analysis of long-run adjustment and competitive equilibrium focuses on the diversification process, analysing the industry structure determinants of the inter-industry pattern of diversification within a risk/return framework. The same risk/return optimisation provides the basis for an examination of the role of risk differentials in determining inter-firm and inter-industry differences in return on capital. Some implications are drawn for the interpretation by competition authorities of the returns earned by dominant firms.


We provide an introduction to optimal fiscal and monetary policy using the primal approach to optimal taxation. We use this approach to address how fiscal and monetary policy should be set over the long run and over the business cycle. We find four substantive lessons for policymaking: Capital income taxes should be high initially and then roughly zero; tax rates on labor and consumption should be roughly constant; state-contingent taxes on assets should be used to provide insurance against adverse shocks; and monetary policy should be conducted so as to keep nominal interest rates close to zero. We begin optimal taxation in a static context. We then develop a general framework to analyze optimal fiscal policy. Finally, we analyze optimal monetary policy in three commonly used models of money: a cash-credit economy, a money-in-the-utility-function economy


...eminently readable ...admirably picks up the spirit of what Hegel is saying...more readable and accurate than Hartmann's, and it trans-lates a more readable text than does Nisbet's. It includes (as Hartmann's does not) an excerpt, which serves as chapter five, from 'The Geo-graphical Basis of History' (particularly interesting for what it says of America), and a brief chapter six, entitled 'The Division of History.' The volume closes with an appendix, translating 341--360 of Hegel's Philosophy of Right and deals directly with the very concept of 'World History.' It constitutes a big help in coming to grips with what Hegel means by 'Spirit.' --Quentin Lauer, SJ, Fordham University, in International Philosophical Quarterly


In this study, we consider the integrated inventory replenishment and transportation operations in a supply chain where the orders placed by the downstream retailer are dispatched by the upstream warehouse via an in-house fleet of limited size. We first consider the single-item single-echelon case where the retailer operates with a quantity based replenishment policy, (r,Q), and the warehouse is an ample supplier. We model the transportation operations as a queueing system and derive the operating characteristics of the system in exact terms. We extend this basic model to a two-echelon supply chain where the warehouse employs a base-stock policy. The departure process of the warehouse is characterized in distribution, which is then approximated by an Erlang arrival process by matching the first two moments for the analysis of the transportation queueing system. The operating characteristics and the expected cost rate are derived. An extension of this system to multiple retailers is also discussed. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the performance and the sensitivity of the models and the value of coordinating inventory and transportation operations.


This thesis provides new insights into the mechanism and kinetics of reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerizations. Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy experiments to determine the rate coefficients governing the RAFT equilibrium were developed. The equilibrium constant, Keq, is deduced from the concentration ratio of the intermediate species, INT, and propagating radicals, P, via an EPR spectrum taken during stationary RAFT polymerization. Another approach uses highly time-resolved EPR spectroscopy to trace INT and P concentrations in single-pulse laser-initiated RAFT polymerizations (SP-PLP-EPRRAFT). Predici simulations of the experimental data result in rate coefficients for addition, kad, fragmentation, kbeta , and cross-termination, ktcross. Both methods have been applied to xanthate-, trithiocarbonate- and dithiobenzoate-mediated RAFT polymerizations of butyl acrylate at −40 °C. The equilibrium constants, Keq = kad/k , obtained from the stationary approach are in excellent agreement with the ones from SP-PLP-EPR-RAFT, indicating that both experimental approaches provide access to reliable data for RAFT kinetics. Fast fragmentation of INT has been observed in all polymerizations under investigation. The values for the fragmentation rate coefficient, kbeta , are 2.3×10^3 s^−1 for the xanthate, 1.4×10^2 s^−1 and
4.5 × 10^1 s^−1 for the trithiocarbonates, and 4.7 s^−1 for the dithiobenzoate. The corresponding equilibrium constants are 12 L · mol^−1, 2.6×10^4 L · mol^−1, 8×10^4 L · mol^−1, and 3×10^5 L · mol^−1, respectively. Keq is highest for the dithiobenzoate and lowest for the xanthate, which is consistent with the better control of dithiobenzoate-mediated acrylate polymerization as compared with the xanthate. Cross-termination plays a minor role when xanthates or trithiocarbonates are used as the RAFT agent, but is an important reaction step when dithiobenzoates are employed. In the latter case, adopting a chain-length dependent ktcross is necessary to explain the experimental data. To gain further insight into the rate retardation phenomenon observed in some
dithiobenzoate-mediated polymerizations and to evaluate the accuracy of ab initio
calculated Keq values reported by Coote et al., the EPR experiments were carried
out on monomer-free model systems. These systems were composed of a radical, RAFT agent bearing a leaving group, which was identical to the initiator-derived
radical, i. e., a tert-butyl, a cyano-iso-propyl or a phenylethyl group. The corresponding equilibrium constants at 20 °C are between 10^5 and 10^8 L · mol^−1, 53 L · mol^−1 and 2.2 × 10^3 L · mol^−1, respectively.
The trends in Keq for the different model systems correlate with the stability of
the intermediate radical and the stabilization energy of the radical which adds to
the thiocarbonyl bond of the RAFT agent. The theoretical values show the same
trends but are up to six orders of magnitude above the experimentally obtained
equilibrium constants. In addition, ab initio calculations predict a pronounced chainlength dependence of Keq, which was tested using macromolecular RAFT agents for stationary EPR experiments and by comparing the macromolecular systems with monomer-free model systems. Only a minor influence of the chain length was observed. The experimental results thus question ab initio calculations predicting slow fragmentation of INT and a pronounced chain-length dependence of Keq.
In addition, the product mixtures of the model systems were analyzed by nuclear
magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The results of EPR and NMR measurements show that cross-termination with subsequent "missing step" reactions of unstable cross-termination products are responsible for the rate retardation observed in dithiobenzoate-mediated polymerizations.


Current conservation ethics, based on the preservation of authentic roatcrial, are of little impactanee to an artist likc Ger van Elk, to whom the conceptual message is more important than its material realization. This is illustrated by a recent conservation project in which the artist was involved. Ethica! questions are raised, and judged against the background of an art-historica! survey of the meaning of the artist's workin relaûon to the matcrials and techniques used. When prevent:ive conservaûon fails and the museum seeks a salution in cooperation with the artist, the end result might be an authorized copy but what is leftof the artistic value? Since photographic matcrials have their own charaderistics and often show the effects of time, an alternative form of conservation treatment is proposed with respect to the original materiaL Colonred light is uscd as a 'retouching medium' to enhance a severely discoJoured photograph which forms part of Roquebrune, a sculpture by Ger Van Elk from 1979. INTRODUCTION Brightly lit exhibition spaces and unsuitable starage facilities alter most artworks in which colour photographs are incorporated, as in the paintings and sculptural installations of Ger van Elk (b. Amsterdam, 1941). The artist's own solution, as carried out recently to reproduce photographs which are nearly 30 years old and aften painted or hand-manipulated, using the latest digital imaging techniquesraises questions about authenticity, patina, the meaning of matcrials and the artist's intention, then and now. 1 The conservator of modern art thus not only faces the challenge of solving problems relating to possible discrepancies between the meaning of the artwork, its original appearance and its current condition, but also bas to act as a mediator between the artist and art history. PHOTOGRAPHICMATERIAL MATTERS Photography is aften considered an irnmaterial, impersonal and therefore an 'objective' medium. This suited conceptual artists, in particular, since they wanted to suppress all personal touches intheir work. Although Ger van Elk cannot be considered a true conceptual art i st, bis work may be looked at against this background. He considers photography mainly as a practical means of realizing his ideas. He has stated that the photograph in itself has no artistic value; it is the image that counts. This is why replacement of discolaured photographs in bis work seems justified, and is generally assurned to be the solutionto this problem.


In wireless communication environments, backoff is traditionally based on the IEEE binary exponential backoff (BEB). Using BEB results in a high delay in message transmission, collisions, and ultimately wasting the limited available bandwidth. As each node has to obtain medium access before transmitting a message, in dense networks, the collision probability in the medium access control (MAC) layer becomes very high, when a poor backoff algorithm is used. The logarithmic algorithm proposes some improvements to the backoff algorithms that aim to efficiently use the channel and to reduce collisions. The algorithm under study is based on changing the incremental behavior of the backoff value. The BEB is used by the local area networks (LANs) standards, IEEE 802.11, MAC. BEB uses a uniform random distribution to choose the backoff value; this often leads to reducing the effect of a window-sized increment. This paper carries out a deeper study and analysis of the logarithmic backoff algorithm that uses logarithmic increments, instead of an exponential extension of the window size to eliminate the degrading effect of random number distribution. Results from simulation experiments reveal that the algorithm subject under study achieves higher throughput and less packet loss, when in a mobile ad hoc environment.


This is a published brief, which was submitted by a group of constitutional law professors as amici curiae to the United States Supreme Court in the Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood cases (i.e., the partial birth abortion cases) during the October, 2006 Term. The brief, along with an accompanying introduction, will be published shortly in the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly. The question the brief addresses is whether the Supreme Court should defer to congressional findings of fact, when the factual questions at issue help to determine the scope of a basic, constitutional right. The argument presented in the brief is as follows: The question of what level of deference is owed legislative findings of fact (whether made by Congress or by state legislatures) in constitutional litigation is not a new one. It divided the Supreme Court in First Amendment cases in the 1920s, and again arose in the 1940s in the Japanese-American Internment case. In the modern era, however, and contrary to the position Solicitor General advanced in the above cases, the Supreme Court has consistently refused to defer to legislative findings regarding facts and mixed questions of law and fact where, as here, the resolution of such questions serves to define the scope of a fundamental constitutional right. Put differently, when legislation is subject to heightened scrutiny because it burdens a basic right, the Supreme Court has always engaged in a searching, independent review of constitutionally relevant factual findings and conclusions. This is not to say that legislatures may not make factual findings that affect the scope of rights, or that courts should ignore such findings when they exist. To the contrary, legislatures should be encouraged to make such findings, and when courts are faced with the obligation to determine constitutional facts upon which legislative findings are based, they should accord due respect to the legislature's work. But judicial determinations of such facts should not be wholly deferential to legislative findings, nor are courts limited in their review to a record compiled by legislative bodies. Rather, courts must conduct an independent judicial review of legislative facts in constitutional cases and must remain free to gather and evaluate additional relevant facts, where they exist. A contrary rule would permit legislative bodies to evade and effectively overrule, through the guise of "fact-finding," the most critical decisions of the Supreme Court, thereby undermining the Court's preeminent role in constitutional interpretation mandated by Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).


Objective: The purpose of the present investigation was to analyze the effectiveness of using the EndoActivator™ (EA) system (DENTSPLY Tulsa Dental Specialties, Tulsa, OK) throughout the cleaning and shaping process to disinfect root canals contaminated with Candida albicans . Materials and Methods: Forty-six extracted human single-rooted teeth were selected. Except for those used as negative controls, the teeth were standardized and then infected with C. albicans . Infected teeth were randomly divided into four experimental irrigation protocol groups (n = 10); normal saline, normal saline with EA activation, 6% sodium hypochlorite (NaOCL), or 6% NaOCL with the EA activation. Three teeth were left untreated to serve as positive controls. Teeth not included in control groups were instrumented with ISO Profile rotary files (DENTSPLY-Tulsa Dental, York, PA). In groups that utilized the EA, the irrigant was activated throughout the procedure. Results: All samples of the positive control and saline groups showed C. albicans growth. The negative controls had no growth and NaOCL alone groups showed one sample growth. When the EA was used with NaOCL, three samples showed C. albicans growth. Conclusion: EA activation throughout the procedure did not add any benefit to disinfect root canal system against C. albicans .


Conclusions * The Defense Science Board Summer Study report recognizes a "new and ominous trend--a transnational threat with a proclivity towards much greater levels of violence." The report states that transnational groups have both access to, as well as the motivation to use, weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Military and civil defense planners are increasingly concerned about possible state and non-state use of radiological dispersal devices (RDD) against U.S. forces and population centers abroad and at home. * Practically any state or non-state actor can build and detonate RDDs as technological barriers have fallen and radiological materials have become more plentiful. However, weapons design experts contend that the physical threat from these RDDs may be overstated. * The psychological and political effects of RDD use are not well understood and are potentially more significant than the lethality effects of such use. * While RDDs may not be well suited as "military weapons" in the classic sense, the use of RDDs could be powerfully coercive and could trigger enormous political reactions within host countries or among allies in a coalition. These reactions could produce major strategic consequences for the military campaign. * With protective and decontamination equipment, and training, U.S. forces should be able to withstand the physical effects of most RDDs. At home, U.S. civil defense planners--including first responders being trained under the Nunn-Lugar-Dominici initiative--must also be prepared to deal with the RDD threat. Radiological Dispersal Devices Defined The Department of Defense (DOD) defines an RDD as, "any device, including any weapon or equipment, other than a nuclear explosive device, specifically designed to employ radioactive material by disseminating it to cause destruction, damage, or injury by means of the radiation produced by the decay of such material." Almost any radioactive material can be used to construct an RDD, including fission products, spent fuel from nuclear reactors, and relatively low-level materials, such as medical, industrial and research waste. Weapons grade materials (i.e., highly enriched uranium or plutonium) are not needed although they could be used. An RDD is designed to scatter radioactive debris over a wide area, thereby contaminating it and possibly causing casualties through radiation sickness, as well as denying its use to military forces or others for some period of time. According to a recent DOD report, the RDD threat is threefold: the blast and fragmentation effects from the conventional explosive, the radiation exposure from the radioactive material used, and the fear and panic that its use would spread among the target group or population. This paper examines this threat and differentiates the physical from the psychological--and therefore political--impact on a targeted population. Background The possibility of employing radioactive materials as a weapon was first considered during World War II. In 1941, the National Academy of Sciences proposed radiological warfare as a military application of atomic energy. In its report, the Academy's first option was the "production of violently radioactive materials ... carried by airplanes to be scattered as bombs over enemy territory." After British physicists demonstrated the technical feasibility of nuclear explosive weapons, attention quickly turned to their development throughout the remainder of the war. In 1946, the United States conducted the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The widespread contamination of ships used in these tests gave dramatic evidence of the potential of so-called radiological warfare. In 1947, the Defense Department began creating panels of experts to study the offensive and defensive aspects of what it termed "Rad War." This led to an active test program, including releases of radiation into the atmosphere in the 1940s and 1950s. …


[Publisher's description of the book that contains this chapter:] These essays explore the nature and limits of individual autonomy in law, policy and the work of regulatory agencies. Authors ask searching questions about the nature and scope of the regulation of 'private' lives, from intimacies, personal relationships and domestic lives to reproduction. They question the extent to which the law does, or should, protect individual autonomy. Recent rapid advances in the development of new technologies - particularly those concerned with human genetics and assisted reproduction - have generated new questions (practical, social, legal and ethical) about how far the state should intervene in individual decision making. Is there an inevitable tension between individual liberty and the common good? How might a workable balance between the public and the private be struck? How, indeed, should we think about 'autonomy'?

The essays explore the arguments used to create and maintain the boundaries of autonomy - for example, the protection of the vulnerable, public goods of various kinds, and the maintenance of tradition and respect for cultural practices. Contributors address how those boundaries should be drawn and interventions justified. How are contemporary ethical debates about autonomy constructed, and what principles do they embody? What happens when those principles become manifest in law?


Platform organizations such as Uber, eBay and Airbnb represent a growing disruptive phenomenon in contemporary capitalism, transforming economic organization, the nature of work, and the distribution of wealth. This paper investigates the accounting practices that underpin this new form of organizing, and in doing so confronts a significant challenge within the accounting literature: the need to escape what Hopwood (1996) describes as its "hierarchical consciousness". In order to do so, this paper develops the concept of evaluative infrastructure which describes accounting practices that enable platform based organization. They are evaluative because they deploy a plethora of interacting devices, including rankings, ratings, reviews, and audits to establish orders of worth. They are infrastructures because they provide the invisible yet essential mechanisms for the flow of economic activity and exchange on platforms. Illustrating the concept of evaluative infrastructure with the example of eBay, the paper's contribution is to (1) provide an analytical vocabulary to capture the accounting practices underpinning platforms as new organizational forms, and in so doing (2) extend accounting scholars' analytical focus from hierarchical settings towards heterarchies. Conceptually, this shift from management accounting to evaluative infrastructures entails a focus on relationality (evaluative infrastructures do not represent or reference but relate things, people and ideas with each other); generativity (evaluative infrastructures do not territorialize objects but disclose new worlds); and new forms of control (evaluative infrastructures are not centres of calculation; rather, control is radically distributed, whilst power remains centralized).


ABSTRACT Desert streams occur in abundance in the mountain regions of the Arabian Peninsula, where massive areas are covered by phototrophic microbial mats. In this study, 11 different phototrophic microbial mats were screened for their carbohydrate and lipid contents and their ability to produce methane, and mats with potential were further used for biofuel production. A maximum bioethanol yield of 0.76 ± 0.1 g/L was obtained by enzymatic saccharification of one mat, which was dominated by the alga Spirogyra, followed by fermentation of the produced sugars using the native Clostridium strain AK-1. A lipid content of 9–18 wt% was measured from the microbial mats. An increase of 4% and 9% was observed, when the mat with the highest lipid content was incubated under 3% salinity and nitrogen deprivation conditions, respectively. Anaerobic digestion of one selected cyanobacterial mat for biomethane production yielded a maximum of 95 mL CH4/g VS (volatile solids) after 49 days. MiSeq analysis revealed that the microbial community of this mat was 99.5% dominated by archaea, mainly belonging to the genera Methanoculleus (56.7%), Methanobacterium (27%) and Methanosarcina (7.6%). Our results demonstrate the potential of using microbial mats from desert streams to produce bioethanol, biodiesel and biomethane.


Abstract With 20,000 speakers across Northern Australia, Australian Kriol is well known to exhibit geographic variation but this has never been systematically studied. This article stems from the first dialectological study of Kriol, focusing on the eastern portion of the Kriol-speaking area. It analyses variation in forms of the Kriol reflexive, which is derived from the English form 'myself/meself' but is invariant for person and number. The analysis utilises random forests modelling to analyse the importance of factors, a new method available to variation studies that is particularly useful when applied to small languages with small datasets. With geography confirmed as the major factor accounting for variation, areal patterns showing variation in lexical form of the reflexive, the medial consonant, the final vowel and the final consonant are considered. This study also documents new variants of the Kriol reflexive and incorporates perceptual dialectology, combining to better inform classifications of Kriol dialects.


Considerable evidence supports the claim that a hyperactive sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is involved in most cases of human hypertension, and therefore a more thorough understanding of the central regulation of the SNS may help elucidate novel therapeutic options. The paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN) is a key region in SNS regulation of blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR). Stimulation of the parvocellular PVN neurons has been shown to enhance sympathetic outflow and thereby increase BP. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a modulator of neuronal activity is upregulated in the PVN in response to several hypertensive stimuli such as stress and hyperosmolarity, and previous studies from our lab demonstrated that both acute injections or chronic overexpression of BDNF in the PVN elevate SNS activity and BP. However, the BDNF-mediated hypertensive mechanisms are not completely understood. PVN neurons are under tonic inhibition from NTS catecholaminergic projections under baseline condition as indicated by significant BP increase after selective lesioning of NTS NE-ergic neurons. In addition, BDNF has been shown to alter NE-ergic signaling in multiple brain regions raising the possibility that BDNF may increase SNS activity and BP by interfering with NE-ergic inhibition of PVN sympathoregulatory neurons. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis that BDNF increases SNS activity and BP in part by disabling inhibitory actions of NTS catecholaminergic projections to the PVN by altering the expression of adrenergic receptors and NET in the PVN. First, blood pressure was recorded using radiotelemetry in male Sprague-Dawley rats following bilateral microinjections of adeno-associated viral vectors expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) or myc-tagged BDNF in the PVN and microinjections of phosphate saline buffer (PBS) or Anti-Dopaine Beta Hydroxylase (DBH)-conjugated saporin (DSAP), a catecholaminergic neuron-specific neurotoxin, into the NTS. Blood pressure was monitored both during resting conditions and during acute stress tests. A second group of rats received bilateral microinjections of adeno-associated viral vectors expressing GFP or myc-tagged BDNF in the PVN, and were sacrificed after 5 weeks. PVN and NTS samples were then selectively isolated using a brain punch tool, and expression of TH, DBH, a1a, a1b, a2a, b1, b2 receptors, and norepinephrine transporter (NET) was analyzed using quantitative RT-PCR. Our results show that BDNF overexpression in the PVN leads to increased expression of catecholamine synthesizing enzymes in the NTS. In addition, both BDNF overexpression in the PVN, and DSAP lesioning in the NTS increased MAP compared to control rats. However, combined treatment with BDNF and DSAP failed to have any additional hypertensive effects suggesting that BDNF treatment may abolish the inhibitory effect of NTS catecholaminergic projections. Lesioning the NTS catecholaminergic neurons didn't appear to have a significant effect on mean arterial pressure response to the stress tests, although DSAP treatment appeared to decrease the initial heart rate response to acute stress, and this effect was most pronounced in GFP rats. These results indicate that BDNF overexpression in the PVN desensitizes sympathoregulatory neurons to inhibitory NTS catecholaminergic projections during baseline conditions.


Free spaces are arenas insulated from the control of elites in organizations and societies. A basic question is whether they incubate challenges to authority. We suggest that free spaces foster collective empowerment when they assemble large numbers of people, arouse intense emotion, trigger collective identities, and enable individuals to engage in costly collective action. We analyze challenges to authority that invite repression: mutinies of regiments in the East India Company's Bengal Native Army in India in 1857. We take advantage of an exogenous source of variation in the availability of free spaces—religious festivals. We predict that mutinies are most likely to occur at or right after a religious festival and find that the hazard of mutiny declines with time since a festival. We expect community ties to offer alternate avenues of mobilization, such as when regiments were stationed close to the towns and villages from which they were recruited. Moreover, festivals are likely to be more potent instantiations of free spaces when regiments were exposed to an oppositional identity, such as a Christian mission. Yet even free spaces have a limited ability to trigger collective action, such as when the political opportunity structure is adverse and prospective participants are deterred by greater chances of failure. These predictions are supported by analyses of daily event-history data of mutinies in 1857, suggesting that free spaces are an organizational weapon of the weak and not a substitute for dissent.


Polymer gel dosimeters in conjunction with the nuclear magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) are potentially useful for verification of complex dose distributions in three
dimensions (3D) applied in radiotherapy treatment planning. The radiation-induced
normoxic polymer gels of polyhydroxyethylacrylate (PHEAG) and
polyhydroxyethylmethacrylate (PHEMAG) have been studied using Raman
spectroscopy and MRI scanner. The studies are focused on PHEAG and PHEMAG
because these monomers belong to acrylic group. Most of the monomer in the acrylic
group will indicate physical changes dramatically due to radiation given. The PHEAG and PHEMAG were synthesized from 2-hdroxyethylacrylate (HEA) and
hydroxyethylmethacrylate (HEMA) monomer (2 to 5% w/w) respectively and
together with methylene-bis-acrylamide (BIS) crosslinker (1 to 4% w/w), gelatine
(3% w/w), ascorbic acid (5 mM to 15 mM) and completed with de-ionized water. The
dosimeters were irradiated with 60Co teletherapy γ-rays source at a constant dose rate
of 0.177 Gy/min, receiving doses up 20 Gy for the single point dose measurement and
the 3D dose distributions scanning.
The polymerization intended for PHEMAG was followed by the change of Raman
intensity at Raman shift of 812 cm-1, 1978 cm-1 and 2885 cm-1 assigned for C-C
stretching, C=O stretching and CH3 stretching respectively and at 812 cm-1 assigned
for C-C stretching in favour of PHEAG. The Raman intensity y corresponding to the
amount of polymer formed in both PHEAG and PHEMAG increases with increasing
dose D and follows a mono-exponential equation given as ( / 0 )
0 y = y + A1− e−D D . The
dose sensitivity 0 D derived from the equation and k factor derived from a linear
relationship between 0 D and co-monomer concentration were found increasing with
the increase of initial concentrations of monomer, cross-linker and anti-oxidant. The
consumptions of co-monomers in PHEAG were studied by a decrease intensity of
C=C stretching at 2887 cm-1 and 2602 cm-1 of HEA and BIS respectively and at 2602
cm-1 and 2369 cm-1 of HEMA and BIS respectively in favour of PHEMAG. The
intensity decreases with increasing dose and follows mono-exponential equation
given as ( / 0 )
0 y = y − A1− e−D D . The dose sensitivity 0 D and k factor were also found to increase with the increase of monomer, cross-linker and anti-oxidant
concentrations.
The PHEMAG phantoms synthesized from HEMA monomer (3% w/w), BIS
crosslinker (2 to 4% w/w), gelatine (3%), anti-oxygen ascorbic acid (15 mM to 55
mM) and completed with de-ionized water were exposed with single and crossed
beams to simulate radiotherapy treatment. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
scanner was used to scan dose distribution of the phantoms and the 3D images were
evaluated using a digital densitometer. It was found that the absorbed dose decreases
with the increase of depth dose inside the phantom and the consequently two crossed
beams of 20 Gy each produced less than 35 Gy beyond 3 cm depth dose. There is a
slightly increase in dose with the increase of ascorbic acid concentration for all the
radiation beams tested, indicating the use of ascorbic acid alone as anti-oxidant agent
in PHEMAG was able to produce normoxic polymer gel dosimeters. Referring to the
results of dose correlation factor k, it can be concluded that kHEMA is more significant
than kHEA.


Today team effectiveness is more and more important in many enterprises, especially in China. The general objective of this research is to determine the impact of team
leadership factors (coaching, communication, conflict resolution, and motivation),which have many influences on team effectiveness and age, gender and education level, which play a significant role in the relationship between team leadership and team effectiveness. The literature review provides detail description of former research on how these variables influence team effectiveness. The sample of
this study is employees in Haier Enterprise in Qingdao, China. A sample of 200 employees were targeted, however, only 168 questionnaires were returned and collected for analyzing. For this study, the research used questionnaires as the main study instrument. Seven hypotheses were constructed and tested using SPSS program of multiple regression and hierarchical regression. The research discovered the team leadership factors (coaching, communication, motivation) have a significant impact on
team effectiveness but, team leadership factor (conflict resolution) does not have a notable impact on team effectiveness. Age, gender and education level do not play a
moderate role in the relationship between team leadership and team effectiveness.


We present a method to fabricate fiber Bragg gratings with adjustable refractive index contrast by using the standard phase mask technique. A theoretical analysis of the diffracted field from the phase mask is performed by considering the effect of the spatial coherence of the incident UV beam. The numerical results show that the grating index contrast decreases as the separation between the fiber and the phase mask increases. Strong gratings with various index contrasts have been inscribed in hydrogen-loaded single mode fibers at different writing distances, and the measured index contrast values are in good agreement with the simulation results. Furthermore, thermal decay tests on the gratings demonstrate that the thermal stability of the grating reflectivity is improved for those gratings fabricated at larger separations between the fiber and the phase mask. These results suggest a one-step process to fabricate gratings with an enhanced thermal stability.


Nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT) is an important biotransforming enzyme that catalyzes the transfer of a labile methyl group from the ubiquitous cofactor S-5'-adenosyl-l-methionine (SAM) to endogenous and exogenous small molecules to form methylated end products. NNMT has been implicated in a number of chronic disease conditions, including metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disease, cancer, osteoarthritis, kidney disease, and Parkinson's disease. We have developed a novel noncoupled fluorescence-based methyltransferase assay that allows direct ultrasensitive real-time detection of the NNMT reaction product 1-methylquinolinium. This is the first assay reported to date to utilize fluorescence spectroscopy to directly monitor NNMT product formation and activity in real time. This assay provided accurate kinetic data that allowed detailed comparative analysis of the NNMT reaction mechanism and kinetic parameters. A reaction model based on a random bireactant mechanism produced global curve fits that were most consistent with steady-state initial velocity data collected across an array of substrate concentrations. On the basis of the reaction mechanism, each substrate could independently bind to the NNMT apoenzyme; however, both substrates bound to the complementary binary complexes with an affinity ∼20-fold stronger compared to their binding to the apoenzyme. This reaction mechanism implies either substrate-induced conformational changes or bireactant intermolecular interactions may stabilize the binding of the substrate to the binary complex and formation of the ternary complex. Importantly, this assay could rapidly generate concentration response curves for known NNMT inhibitors, suggesting its applicability for high-throughput screening of chemical libraries to identify novel NNMT inhibitors. Furthermore, our novel assay potentially offers a robust detection technology for use in SAM substrate competition assays for the discovery and development of SAM-dependent methyltransferase inhibitors.


In this fascinating new history, Judith Stein argues that in order to understand our current economic crisis we need to look back to the 1970s and the end of the age of the factory - the era of postwar liberalism, created by the New Deal, whose practices, high wages, and regulated capital produced both robust economic growth and greater income equality. When high oil prices and economic competition from Japan and Germany battered the American economy, new policies - both international and domestic - became necessary. But war was waged against inflation, rather than against unemployment, and the government promoted a balanced budget instead of growth. This, says Stein, marked the beginning of the age of finance and subsequent deregulation, free trade, low taxation, and weak unions that has fostered inequality and now the worst recession in sixty years. Drawing on extensive archival research and covering the economic, intellectual, political, and labour history of the decade, Stein provides a wealth of information on the 1970s. She also shows that to restore prosperity today, America needs a new model: more factories and fewer financial houses.


Polygon meshes are an efficient representation of 3D geometry, and are of central importance in computer graphics, robotics and games development. Existing learning-based approaches have avoided the challenges of working with 3D meshes, instead using alternative object representations that are more compatible with neural architectures and training approaches. We present an approach which models the mesh directly, predicting mesh vertices and faces sequentially using a Transformer-based architecture. Our model can condition on a range of inputs, including object classes, voxels, and images, and because the model is probabilistic it can produce samples that capture uncertainty in ambiguous scenarios. We show that the model is capable of producing high-quality, usable meshes, and establish log-likelihood benchmarks for the mesh-modelling task. We also evaluate the conditional models on surface reconstruction metrics against alternative methods, and demonstrate competitive performance despite not training directly on this task.


The Wanderer's Nightsong II Curated and in Collaboration with Ian Dawson 3rd April -10th May 2015 Private View 2nd April 6-9pm Gavin Turk Neil Gall Kate Atkin Cathy De Monchaux Chris Hawtin The Wanderer's Nightsong II; exploring the relationship between artists and new forms of technological representation; who are the new authors and co-authors of art and what are the consequences? Taking its title from Goethe's classic eight-line poem scratched into the walls of a mountain lodge on September 7th 1780 (or 1783), the poem describes a progression from mineral through animal to human, of a natural process becoming language. The poems power lies in three simple factual statements followed by an assertion for the future, without the use of simile, metaphor or symbol, the poem is untranslatable. But who is addressing the wanderer? This was the exact question Friedrich Kittler posed in 'Discourse Networks' when revealing how the mechanisms of the development of language are wholly bound within the essence of the poem- the medium itself is very much the message. The curator/collaborator, Ian Dawson asks similar questions over ideas of technical evolution and translation. For Dawson's role is not just as curator but extended as technician and collaborator - translating the work of each artist via 3D scanning and printing into copies of themselves- asking questions of mediation, re-mediation, authorship and originality. This though is more than a show of doubles and doubletakes as each artist and artwork responds to this feedback loop, to consider itself in a new role with algorithmic appropriation and mimesis. A picnolepticage is upon us, an epileptic condition of consciousness shaped by speed and acceleration. It's an age of paradoxical vision where the distance in time and space between the image and the event has been closed to a simultaneous capture and broadcast scenario. As the eye absorbs the smartphone image, we are becoming dromomaniac's as we desert the environment for the virtual. And if we are to believe what we read 3D printing is part of this ubiquitous reality, printed gun, printed house, printed hip-joints and heart valves; part of the ever-accelerating algorithmic potential of computing. A new future is upon us. Of designing and printing our own cutlery for our Sunday roast, of not having to visit Ikea ever again. Science, medicine and design seems to have many worthy and immediate applications for these technologies but the 3D print technologies have entered visual culture as the personalized kitsch novelty figurine to adorn the top of wedding cakes . And just as the photograph altered our perception of reality to include the blur we have yet to see what the 3D scan and print will do to the art object. What new forms of blindness will they induce? Here in the Wanderer's Nightsong II, the work of five artists will begin to dialogue with bastard versions of themselves, to communicate across this space.The final two lines of Goethe's poem are- Just wait soon, You will rest too There is a point in the not too distant future when computational power overtakes that of the human brain, a point when the baton for our evolutionary progress is fully transferred. So perhaps these last two lines signal the demise of humankind and perhaps the question that arises here is who or what is the work being made for anymore. O'er all the hilltops Is quiet now, In all the treetops Hearest thou Hardly a breath; The birds are asleep in the trees: Wait, soon like these Thou too shalt rest.


Previous work has reported that it is not difficult to give people the illusion of ownership over an artificial body, providing a powerful tool for the investigation of the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying body perception and self consciousness. We present an experimental study that uses immersive virtual reality focused on identifying the perceptual building blocks of this illusion. We systematically manipulated visuotactile and visual sensorimotor contingencies, visual perspective, and the appearance of the virtual body in order to assess their relative role and mutual interaction. Consistent results from subjective reports and physiological measures showed that a first person perspective over a fake humanoid body is essential for eliciting a body ownership illusion. We found that the level of realism of the virtual body, in particular the realism of skin tone, plays a critical role: when high enough, the illusion can be triggered by the sole effect of the spatial overlap between the real and virtual bodies, providing congruent visuoproprioceptive information, with no need for the additional contribution of congruent visuotactile and/or visual sensorimotor cues. Additionally, we found that the processing of incongruent perceptual cues can be modulated by the level of the illusion: when the illusion is strong, incongruent cues are not experienced as incorrect. Participants exposed to asynchronous visuotactile stimulation can experience the ownership illusion and perceive touch as originating from an object seen to contact the virtual body. Analogously, when the level of realism of the virtual body and/or the spatial overlap of the two bodies is not high enough, the contribution of congruent multisensory and/or sensorimotor cues is required for evoking the illusion. On the basis of these results and inspired by findings from neurophysiological recordings in the monkey, we propose a model that accounts for many of the results reported in the literature.


The koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) is an iconic Australian animal. Koalas are both biologically unique and evolutionarily distinct as the only living representative of the marsupial family Phascolarctidae. Their unique and highly specific diet of eucalyptus leaves, combined with the increasing threats of predation and habitat loss through urbanisation, mean that koalas are particularly vulnerable to the deleterious effects of fragmented habitat and population bottlenecks. They are further threatened by disease such as Chlamydia and there is increasing interest in the varying strains of the Koala Retrovirus. We present preliminary transcriptome and genome data for the koala and introduce the Koala Genome Consortium (KGC), a group working towards the production of a high quality draft assembly of the koala genome. The KGC is currently comprised of several Australian research institutes and Universities although our intention is to recruit researchers from around the world to contribute to the genome assembly and annotation process and ultimately make use of the assembled genome. Once available as an annotated draft, we anticipate the genome sequence will add significant value to the extensive body of existing research for koalas.


Many studies and scientific papers have been published that consider the integration of renewable sources in energy systems, using the least-cost optimization models as a long-term generation expansion planning tool. Supplementary to these analyses, this paper focuses on the transmission network capacity for acceptance of variable renewable energy. The hypothesis is that the simplified electric power transmissions system in the long-term planning modelling tools does not reflect properly the capacity for integration of the variable renewable energy. An integrated approach is applied with aim to incorporate the grid expansion needs and costs (using direct current load flow analysis), necessary for increased renewable electricity penetration. The already developed MARKAL-Macedonia model will be used as a case study. After several iterations and feedback loops between the MARKAL-Macedonia and the network model, the expected outcome is to achieve a new cost-effective solution for deployment of variable energy on a larger scale.


'Foamy' alveolar macrophages (FAM) observed in nonclinical toxicology studies during inhaled drug development may indicate drug-induced phospholipidosis, but can also derive from adaptive non-adverse mechanisms. Orally administered amiodarone is currently used as a model of pulmonary phospholipidosis and it was hypothesized that aerosol administration would produce phospholipidosis-induced FAM that could be characterized and used in comparative inhalation toxicology. Han-Wistar rats were given amiodarone via (1) intranasal administration (6.25 mg/kg) on two days, (2) aerosol administration (3 mg/kg) on two days, (3) aerosol administration (10 mg/kg) followed by three days of 30 mg/kg or (4) oral administration (100 mg/kg) for 7 days. Alveolar macrophages in bronchoalveolar lavage were evaluated by differential cell counting and high content fluorescence imaging. Histopathology and mass-spectrometry imaging (MSI) were performed on lung slices. The higher dose aerosolised amiodarone caused transient pulmonary inflammation (p < 0.05), but only oral amiodarone resulted in FAM (p < 0.001). MSI of the lungs of orally treated rats revealed a homogenous distribution of amiodarone and a putative phospholipidosis marker, di-22:6 bis-monoacylglycerol, throughout lung tissue whereas aerosol administration resulted in localization of both compounds around the airway lumen. Thus, unlike oral administration, aerosolised amiodarone failed to produce the expected FAM responses.


Design response spectra were developed for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) for nine soil groups representative of deposits that can be found in Washington State. These response spectra differ from the spectra developed for and adopted by the Applied Technology Council (ATC). Unlike the ATC spectra, the WSDOT spectra are based on the subduction zone setting that dominates Pacific Northwest seismicity. Both sets of spectra are based on numerical studies using SHAKE. The new response spectra were developed using new dynamic moduli curves for cohesive soils which have been accepted as more representative of the properties of the soils in the region. SHAKE tends to attenuate high frequencies. SHAKE based analysis compared well with analysis based on a nonlinear finite element code. The basis of most recent ATC attenuation maps is outlined, and found to be based on similar assumptions and methodology as the original ATC attenuation maps and not compatible with Washington State seismicity.


This paper presents a preliminary susceptibility map of the flood hazard for the Somma-Vesuvius volcanic district, worked out by means of multi-disciplinary historical, geological, geomorphological and rainfall data processing. It is well known that the Somma-Vesuvius volcano, due to its explosive volcanism and the dense urbanization of the surrounding area, with a population exceeding 650,000 is one of the most dangerous active volcanoes of the world. Although this area has been extensively studied from the volcanological point of view with regards to its volcanic hazard, there are currently not many detailed studies about its flood hazard factors, despite the fact that, in the last century, many intense rainfall events in this area have produced several floods that invaded the surrounding plains affecting towns and roads, and causing much damages and loss of lives. Accordingly, in this paper high-resolution DEM (5×5 m pixel) and detailed geomorphological maps of the whole area have been analyzed and processed in GIS environment, carrying out a comparative study of the present-day morphology and the morphology of the 1900's volcanic edifice, including changes of infrastructures and buildings throughout the last century. These results, together with historical chronicles data and the rainfall accurate data for all flood events, have been processed in this paper for highlighting the drainage basins areas of Somma-Vesuvius where the flood phenomena could be more probable in the future, working out a preliminary zoning map, also suggesting in which sectors interventions useful for mitigation of flood risk should be implemented.


Aims Recent studies revealed convergent temperature sensitivity of ecosystem respiration (Re) within aquatic ecosystems and between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. We do not know yet whether various terrestrial ecosystems have consistent or divergent temperature sensitivity. Here, we synthesized 163 eddy covariance flux sites across the world and examined the global variation of the apparent activation energy (Ea), which characterizes the apparent temperature sensitivity of and its interannual variability (IAV) as well as their controlling factors. Methods We used carbon fluxes and meteorological data across FLUXNET sites to calculate mean annual temperature, temperature range, precipitation, global radiation, potential radiation, gross primary productivity and Re by averaging the daily values over the years in each site. Furthermore, we analyzed the sites with >8 years data to examine the IAV of Ea and calculated the standard deviation of Ea across years at each site to characterize IAV. Important Findings The results showed a widely global variation of Ea, with significantly lower values in the tropical and subtropical areas than in temperate and boreal areas, and significantly higher values in grasslands and wetlands than that in deciduous broadleaf forests and evergreen forests. Globally, spatial variations of Ea were explained by changes in temperature and an index of water availability with differing contribution of each explaining variable among climate zones and biomes. IAV and the corresponding coefficient of variation of Ea decreased with increasing latitude, but increased with radiation and corresponding mean annual temperature. The revealed patterns in the spatial and temporal variations of Ea and its controlling factors indicate divergent temperature sensitivity of R-e, which could help to improve our predictive understanding of R-e in response to climate change.


We are developing and exploring the imaging performance of, an in vivo, in-line holography, x-ray phase-contrast, micro-CT system with an ultrafast laser-based x-ray (ULX) source. By testing and refining our system, and by performing computer simulations, we plan to improve system performance in terms of contrast resolution and multi-energy imaging to a level beyond what can be obtained using a conventional microfocal x-ray tube. Initial CT projection sets at single energy (Mo Kα and Kβ lines) were acquired in the Fresnel regime and reconstructed for phantoms and a euthanized mouse. We also performed computer simulations of phase-contrast micro-CT scans for low-contrast, soft-tissue, tumor imaging. We determined that, in order to perform a phase-contrast, complete micro-CT scan using ULX, the following conditions must be met: (i) the x-ray source needs to be stable during the scan; (ii) the laser focal spot size needs to be less than 10 μm for source-to-object distance greater than 30 cm; (iii) the laser light intensity on the target needs to be in the range of 5 × 1017 to 5 × 1019 W/cm2; (iv) the ablation protection system needs to allow uninterrupted scans; (v) the laser light focusing on the target needs to remain accurate during the entire scan; (vi) a fresh surface of the target must be exposed to consecutive laser shots during the entire scan; (vii) the effective detector element size must be less than 12 μm. Based on the results obtained in this research project, we anticipate that the new 10 Hz, 200 TW laser with 50W average power that is being commissioned at ALLS will allow us practical implementation of in vivo x-ray phase-contrast micro-CT.


On 27 August 2013, during the Studies of Emissions and Atmospheric Composition, Clouds and Climate Coupling by Regional Surveys field mission, NASA's ER‐2 research aircraft encountered a region of enhanced water vapor, extending over a depth of approximately 2 km and a minimum areal extent of 20,000 km2 in the stratosphere (375 K to 415 K potential temperature), south of the Great Lakes (42°N, 90°W). Water vapor mixing ratios in this plume, measured by the Harvard Water Vapor instrument, constitute the highest values recorded in situ at these potential temperatures and latitudes. An analysis of geostationary satellite imagery in combination with trajectory calculations links this water vapor enhancement to its source, a deep tropopause‐penetrating convective storm system that developed over Minnesota 20 h prior to the aircraft plume encounter. High resolution, ground‐based radar data reveal that this system was composed of multiple individual storms, each with convective turrets that extended to a maximum of ~4 km above the tropopause level for several hours. In situ water vapor data show that this storm system irreversibly delivered between 6.6 kt and 13.5 kt of water to the stratosphere. This constitutes a 20–25% increase in water vapor abundance in a column extending from 115 hP to 70 hPa over the plume area. Both in situ and satellite climatologies show a high frequency of localized water vapor enhancements over the central U.S. in summer, suggesting that deep convection can contribute to the stratospheric water budget over this region and season.


I feel that my current research on eighteenth-century intersections of global capitalism, slavery, colonial legality and gender diversity in the Atlantic world, and their contemporary relevance, speaks to quite a few questions raised in the brief memo on the 'Beyond Inequality' project. For instance, the memo speaks of the need to analyse how historical patterns of double exploitation are continually reproduced within contemporary forms of work. I would like to respond to this call by examining both historical and present-day manifestations of racial capitalism in the (forceful) making of the gender binary in Louisiana (and perhaps elsewhere within the circum-Atlantic domain), with a focus on gender-non-conforming individuals and communities of colour whose (at least) triple dispossession took/takes place not only on the basis of their perceived race and class, but also due to their gender difference. Studying the forms of labour such dispossession has led to seems to me to be a task predicated on assembling an archive of inequality, or perhaps an archive beyond such intersectional forms of inequality, which would necessitate a radical rethinking of archival/archived subjectivities and socialities. We should ask (again) not only whose lives and labour count as 'historical evidence' but also where such repositories of the past are to be found, and under whose care and control. And, in so doing, I hope that recent critical insights of so many cross-disciplinary takes on the archive (anthropological, historical, legal, literary, feminist, queer…) can help us better understand, and account for, the forms of archival violence relative to work and gender-cum-racial capitalism.


Texture analysis is an extremely active and useful area of research. In texture analysis the invariance to rotation, scale and translation are the most typical requirements. Moreover, gray-scale invariance is another important issue. It arises due to the reason that a texture may be subject to different levels of illumination. The purpose of this study is to investigate some inexpensive approaches that are rotation and gray scale invariant and to large extent translation invariant as well. There are three different types of approaches, which have been addressed in this dissertation. In the first approach, we have done texture analysis using Radon Transform (RT) based Hidden Markov Model (HMM). We have introduced three different ways to extract feature vectors using RT. All three give rotation invariant features, while the last one gives rotation, as well as, gray scale invariant features. The textures in this case have been taken from Brodatz album. Due to the inherent property of the RT, we are able to capture the directional features of a certain texture having arbitrary orientation. This set of directional features is used for training of an HMM specifically for that particular texture. Once all the HMMs have been trained, the testing is carried out by using any one of these textures at random with arbitrary orientation. The second approach is somewhat similar to the above one except that the modified or Differential Radon Transform (DRT) has been used instead of the ordinary RT. Hence, we are able to capture the features which are not only rotation but are also gray scale invariant. The reason for the later property is that, unlike the ordinary RT, the DRT is based on the differences between adjacent pixels instead of summing up the pixel values. These features have been used for training of HMMs, one for each texture, and finally testing is carried out. Similar experimentation has been done to extract features using both RT and DRT to give low pass and high pass features. The training and testing process using HMM has been done in a similar manner as above. The third approach is quite different from the above two approaches. In this approach, some principal direction of a texture is defined. Once this direction is estimated, discrete wavelet transform is applied in that particular direction to extract features. These features are then used for classification by k-nearest neighbor classifier. There are two definitions of principal direction, which have been proposed in the dissertation. In case of the first definition, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has been used to estimate this principal direction. In the case of second definition, the direction has been found out by using DRT. This scheme is computationally lighter compared to the previous one. However, the third approach is limited to anisotrpic textures only unlike the previous method Considering the percentage of correct classification as figure of merit, we have carried out the performance evaluation of the above three approaches. The average result has been found to be 95% approximately and the best result has been close to 100% .


Current dosimetry protocols for clinical protons using ionization chambers do not take into account ionization chamber-dependent perturbation correction factors. In the present investigation, the relative response of 17 cylindrical ionization chambers was evaluated at three proton beam qualities: at two points in a modulated beam and one point in a non-modulated beam, all with an incident energy of 75 MeV. Thirteen of the ionization chambers had a Farmer-type geometry but consisted of different combinations of wall and central electrode materials. All ionization chambers were calibrated in terms of air kerma as well as in terms of absorbed dose to water in a 60Co beam. The relative response of the ionization chambers was compared with results of Monte Carlo simulations of proton and secondary electron transport in the phantom and the ionization chamber geometry. The results of the measurements for cylindrical ionization chambers show relative perturbation effects that are limited to 0.5-1%, resulting in perturbation correction factors that are larger than unity compared with an NE2571 ionization chamber. The experimental relative wall and total perturbation correction factors agree with Monte Carlo calculated values, indicating that the differences between the responses of different ionization chambers are due to secondary electron effects. This conclusion is supported by the comparison of our results with those from other investigators after re-analysis of their data. The central electrode perturbation correction factor for an aluminium electrode in a Farmer-type geometry was found to be unity within the experimental uncertainties.


This Note identifies ethical issues raised when criminal defense lawyers write nonfiction books about their clients, and it proposes new ethical rules that shift the balance of interests to weigh more heavily in favor of the client. Two principal ethical considerations arise for lawyers who write books about their clients. First, lawyer-authored publications may cause the attorney-client privilege to be waived and may result in adverse legal consequences for the client. Even where legal consequences do not inure, however, publication may violate the lawyer's duty of confidentiality, principles of client dignity and autonomy, or both. Second, the lawyerauthor's interest in the commercial viability of the client's story may conflict with the defendant-client's interests. This Note offers revisions to the American Bar Association (ABA) Model Rules of Professional Conduct that would impose a substantial waiting period before defense counsel may publish stories about their clients. The revisions strike a balance between the client's interest in effective representation, the lawyer's interest in self-promotion, and the public's interest in a transparent criminal justice system.


Purpose/Aim/Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the neuropsychological modifications and intellectual functioning parameters (such as predictors of school performance – Intelligence quotient - IQ) of children with surgically corrected congenital heart defects. By investigating these changes, we might be able to develop a screening tool which facilitates the early detection of psychological distress, optimizes psychological therapy.

Methods: The study was conducted in the Paediatric Cardiology Clinic of Tirgu Mure?, Romania, between 2016-2018, on 86 children with congenital heart disease (CHD), aged 6 to 17 years old, who have undergone surgical repair - compared to 102 healthy controls, matched by age. The study tested the hypothesis that children with CHD have lower intellectual function than the control group and analysed behavioural outcomes for these patients. Exclusion criteria: children aged less than 6 years old, confirmed genetic syndromes and a family history of psychiatric disorders.

Results: 59.3% of children in the eligible group were male, with a median age of 11.1 years ± 3.2 SD. The average IQ of the patients with cyanotic CHD was 84.09, while the control group had an average IQ of 91.10. Analysis of the psychological profile indicated that 33.7% of children with surgically corrected CHD had anxiety, and 11.6% of them had attention deficit disorder.

Conclusions: Children with surgically corrected cyanotic CHD had a lower IQ than the control group. Anxiety and attention deficit disorder were more frequent in children with CHD.


This thesis reports the use of capillary electrophoresis (CE) for the analysis of carrageenans,
anionic polysaccharides extracted from red seaweeds and widely used in the food industry
for their gelling and thickening properties. The three main types, kappa, iota and lambda,
differ in the number of sulfate groups and the presence or absence of a 3,6-anhydro bridge
in the disaccharide residue repeat unit. CE separates analytes according to their charge to
frictional coefficient ratios, therefore it is suitable to separate these biopolymers. In order
to detect polysaccharides in CE, our approach consisted in derivatising the reducing ends
of the saccharides by reductive arnination with a fluorophore, l-arninopyrene-3,6,8-
trisulfonate (APTS). This allowed sensitive detection by laser induced fluorescence.
Method development gave optimal conditions for separation using a polyvinyl alcohol
coated capillary and a 25 mM ammonium acetate, pH 8.0 background electrolyte. The
effects of changes of both instrumental parameters (temperature, injection mode, field
strength) and, the composition of the BGE (concentration and pH) are reported, and
explained in terms of the physical chemistry of the BGE and the biopolymers.
The conditions of the derivatisation reaction were studied in order to minimise degradation
due in particular to acid catalysis and to reduction of the reacting sites occurring in
competition with derivatisation. Characterisation of the derivatised carrageenans by SEC-MALLS-
RI was performed and showed that the extent of degradation occurring during the
labelling reaction was a maximum of 40 % for kappa and 20 % for iota and lambda. The
presence of the label APTS in excess and its reaction with the reagents during the labelling
reaction produces peaks interfering with those from the carrageenan. A sample clean-up was
therefore required before injection onto CEo A comparison was made of a range of clean-up
procedures (centrifugation, dialysis, preparative SEC) to remove side products of the
reaction and salts and to concentrate the carrageenans.
Various seaweed extracts were analysed, including standards of carrageenans not available
commercially. This study revealed that carrageenans are complex structures, and often
occurring as hybrids between sUb-types. CE has the ability to characterise these hybrids,
unlike spectroscopic methods which detect individual residues.
When using actual food products, preliminary steps such as defatting and dialysis were
found to be necessary to allow satisfactory detection of carrageenans. Finally the strategy
for sample purification, derivatisation, clean-up and separation was successfully applied to
additive mixtures used as raw materials in the food industry and to finished products (jelly,
dairy products). CE has proved to be a fast and sensitive method to identify and provide
semi-quantitative information on carrageenans present in such mixtures.


Variational autoencoders (VAEs) learn representations of data by jointly training a probabilistic encoder and decoder network. Typically these models encode all features of the data into a single variable. Here we are interested in learning disentangled representations that encode distinct aspects of the data into separate variables. We propose to learn such representations using model architectures that generalise from standard VAEs, employing a general graphical model structure in the encoder and decoder. This allows us to train partially-specified models that make relatively strong assumptions about a subset of interpretable variables and rely on the flexibility of neural networks to learn representations for the remaining variables. We further define a general objective for semi-supervised learning in this model class, which can be approximated using an importance sampling procedure. We evaluate our framework's ability to learn disentangled representations, both by qualitative exploration of its generative capacity, and quantitative evaluation of its discriminative ability on a variety of models and datasets.


The proposed glossary is based on terms from the International Glossary of Tax Terms, the OECD Glossary of Tax Terms, the Glossary of Financial and Investment Terms and websites of the Tax Agencies. This dictionary contains the most commonly used terms in the tax field and has about 1600 terms that are of interest to both researchers and professionals in this field. We have paid special attention to the phenomenon that is currently only being implemented in Ukraine, namely the concept of "Base erosion and Profit Shifting" (BEPS), which refers to tax planning strategies that use gaps and inconsistencies in national and international tax law to artificially transfer profits to low- or zero-tax areas where economic activity is low or non-existent. In the future, it is planned to create a Swedish-Ukrainian dictionary of tax terms, which will contain more dictionary entries and help future professionals in this field.


Novae had not been widely considered as high-energy (>100 MeV) gamma-ray sources before the launch of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). In March 2010, the LAT made the first gamma-ray detection of a nova in the symbiotic binary V407 Cygni. The LAT observations uniquely probed the high-energy particle acceleration mechanism in the environs of the V407 Cyg binary system consisting of a white dwarf and its red giant companion. Subsequently in June 2012, two more novae were detected with the LAT, Nova Sco 2012 and Nova Mon 2012, thus heralding novae as a new gamma-ray source class. For Nova Mon 2012, the gamma-ray transient source was discovered first, followed by the optical confirmation of the nova, showcasing how novae can be found with the LAT independently from traditional optical searches. We discuss the LAT detected gamma-ray novae together with observational limits on other optical novae over the first four years of the Fermi mission and reconsider the possible high-energy gamma-ray production mechanisms in novae in light of the new detections.


In this study, a total of 120 staphylococci strains, 46 coagulase positive and 74 coagulase negative, isolated from chickens were identified according to the characteristics of their cultural, biochemical and some antibiotic properties. The coagulase positive staphylococci consisted of 28 S. aureus, 9 S. delphini, 3 S. intermedius, 2 S. aureus subsp. anaerobicus, 1 S. schleiferi subsp. coagulans, 1 S. hyicus, and 2 unidentified strains. The coagulase negative staphylococci were identified as 16 S. simulans, 11 S. hyicus, 8 S. saprophyticus, 6 S. epidermidis, 4 S. schleiferi subsp. schleiferi, 4 S. arlettae, 4 S. lentus, 4 S. gallinarum, 3 S. chromogenes, 3 S. warneri, 3 S. haemolyticus, 2 S. caprae, 2 S. auricularis, 2 S. xylosus and 2 S. cohnii. These staphylococci strains were measured for susceptibility to erythromycin (15 µg), tetracycline (30 µg), oxytetracycline (30 µg), lincospectin (10 µg), ampicillin (10 µg), amoxicillin (25 µg), danofloxacin (5 µg), cotrimoxasole (25 µg), gentamicin (10 µg), cefuroxime (30 µg), neomycin (30 µg) and furazolidone (200 µg). As a result, we came to the conclusion that staphylococci isolated from chickens may represent different strains, and that the resistance of strains to some antibiotics may vary. However, in general, furazolidone, neomycin and cefuroxime were considered to be antibiotics which should have priority for treatment.


This paper reviews observed (1900-2000) and possible future (2000-2100) continent- wide changes in temperature and rainfall for Africa. For the historic period we draw upon a new observed global climate data set which allows us to explore aspects of regional climate change related to diurnal temperature range and rainfall variability. The latter includes an investigation of regions where seasonal rainfall is sensitive to El Nino climate variability. This review of past climate change provides the context for our scenarios of future greenhouse gas-induced climate change in Africa. These scenarios draw upon the draft emissions scenarios prepared for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Assessment Report, a suite of recent global climate model experi- ments, and a simple climate model to link these 2 sets of analyses. We present a range of 4 climate futures for Africa, focusing on changes in both continental and regional seasonal-mean temperature and rainfall. Estimates of associated changes in global CO2 concentration and global-mean sea-level change are also supplied. These scenarios draw upon some of the most recent climate modelling work. We also identify some fundamental limitations to knowledge with regard to future African cli- mate. These include the often poor representation of El Nino climate variability in global climate models, and the absence in these models of any representation of regional changes in land cover and dust and biomass aerosol loadings. These omitted processes may well have important consequences for future African climates, especially at regional scales. We conclude by discussing the value of the sort of climate change scenarios presented here and how best they should be used in national and regional vulnerability and adaptation assessments.


Stress-inducible linker histone variant is required for adaptive response of Arabidopsis to complex environmental stress. Linker (H1) histones play critical roles in chromatin compaction in higher eukaryotes. They are also the most variable of the histones, with numerous nonallelic variants cooccurring in the same cell. Plants contain a distinct subclass of minor H1 variants that are induced by drought and abscisic acid and have been implicated in mediating adaptive responses to stress. However, how these variants facilitate adaptation remains poorly understood. Here, we show that the single Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) stress-inducible variant H1.3 occurs in plants in two separate and most likely autonomous pools: a constitutive guard cell-specific pool and a facultative environmentally controlled pool localized in other tissues. Physiological and transcriptomic analyses of h1.3 null mutants demonstrate that H1.3 is required for both proper stomatal functioning under normal growth conditions and adaptive developmental responses to combined light and water deficiency. Using fluorescence recovery after photobleaching analysis, we show that H1.3 has superfast chromatin dynamics, and in contrast to the main Arabidopsis H1 variants H1.1 and H1.2, it has no stable bound fraction. The results of global occupancy studies demonstrate that, while H1.3 has the same overall binding properties as the main H1 variants, including predominant heterochromatin localization, it differs from them in its preferences for chromatin regions with epigenetic signatures of active and repressed transcription. We also show that H1.3 is required for a substantial part of DNA methylation associated with environmental stress, suggesting that the likely mechanism underlying H1.3 function may be the facilitation of chromatin accessibility by direct competition with the main H1 variants.


High nursing turnover and a shortage of nurses in acute hospital settings in Sweden challenge health care systems to deliver and ensure safe care. Advanced nursing roles implemented in other countries have offered nurses new career opportunities and had positive effects on patient safety, effectiveness of care, and patient satisfaction. The advanced nursing position of Nurse Practitioner has existed for many years in the United States, while similar extended nursing roles and changes in the scope of nursing practice are being developed in many other countries. In line with this international trend, the role of Nurse Practitioner in surgical care has been proposed for Sweden, and a master's programme for Acute Nurse Practitioners has been in development for many years. To optimize and facilitate the introduction of this new nursing role and its supporting programme, we elicited the experiences and support of the group who developed a Nurse Practitioner programme for a university in the US. This paper describes this collaboration and sharing of experiences during the process of developing a Swedish Nurse Practitioner programme. We also discuss the challenges of implement- ting any new nursing role in any national health care system. We would like to share our collaborative experiences and thoughts for the future and to open further national and international dialogue about how best to expand the scope of practice for nurses in acute hospital care, and thereby to improve patient care in Sweden and elsewhere.


Abstract We present an experimental investigation of flexible panels actuated with heave oscillations at their leading edge. Results are presented from kinematic video analysis, particle image velocimetry, and direct force measurements. Both the trailing edge amplitude and the mode shapes of the panel are found to scale with dimensionless parameters originating from the Euler–Bernoulli beam equation. The time-averaged net thrust increases with heaving frequency, but experiences localized boosts near resonant frequencies where the trailing edge amplitude is maximized. These boosts correspond to local maxima in the propulsive efficiency. For a constant heave amplitude, the time-averaged net thrust coefficient is shown to be a function of Strouhal number over a wide range of conditions. It appears, therefore, that self-propelled swimming (zero net thrust) only occurs over a small range of Strouhal numbers. Under these near-constant Strouhal number conditions, the propulsive economy increases with higher flexibilities and slower swimming speeds.


The explicit definition of variability in software product lines is a key difference between the development of single software systems and software product line engineering. More and more companies maintain several software product lines which focus on different types of products, market segments, and/or domains. Those product lines typically share commonalities and variability. The companies thus face the problem of managing communality and variability across different product lines. In this paper, we identify essential requirements for the documentation of requirements variability across product lines. We propose a meta model for structuring the variability information, sketch a prototypical realisation for managing variability across product lines in DOORS, and illustrate the use of the meta model in a small example. We further report on experiences made with the proposed variability modelling approach.


From 2003, the Zero Hunger Program and subsequently, in 2011, the Brazil Without Poverty Plan, marked a deliberate convergence of the purposes and actions focused on farmers and family farmers in Brazil. This allowed simultaneous access to social policies and polices focused on agriculture and livestock activities, through a permanent set of public policies, such as rural credit, climate and income insurance, technical assistance and commercialization. This happened in parallel to affirmative actions related to gender, ethnicity and rural youth. To deal with such complex themes such as eradicating hunger and extreme poverty, the Federal Government began to integrate traditionally independent actions and programs. The creation of institutional markets focused on family farming, such as the Program for Purchase of Food (PAA) and the National Program for School Meals (PNAE), is an example of combining public policies, such as social assistance, education, agriculture and land development. The creation of this integrated program was only made possible by the coordination and the strong commitment towards joint efforts by federal ministries and bodies, as well as the effective participation of state and municipal governments. The constant presence of organized civil society, with its councils and forums, and of the organized movements in the rural, helped to correct and increase the actions, and conferring legitimacy to the programs.


Recent evidence shows how patients' unique genetic makeup can affect disease outcomes and the increasing availability of targeted treatments promises a future in health care, whereby treatments will be tailored to individual needs. This article reports on the topics discussed at the 13th Annual Texas Conference on Health Disparities, organized by the Texas Center for Health Disparities at the University of North Texas Health Science Center; the meeting focused on the theme, "Diversity in the Era of Precision Medicine" and was held during June 2018 in Fort Worth, Texas. The primary focus of this conference, which brought together clinical and basic scientists, was on the inclusion of diversity in precision medicine to bridge the gap in health disparities. Here, we present the highlights of the conference that include the potential application of precision medicine at the population level, the effects of precision medicine and direct-to-consumer testing on health disparities, genetic basis of health disparities, pharmacogenomics, and strategies to enhance participation of under-represented populations in precision medicine. Furthermore, we conclude with recommendations for future implementation, including how to mitigate disparities in genomics services and enhance participation of diverse groups in clinical trials.


Based on the co-integration test theory, Financial Interrelation Ratio (FIR), level of financial efficiency (LFE), level of financial development (LFD) and other indices evaluating the rural financial development are selected by Granger Causality Test. The rural loan balance (RLB), rural deposit balance (RDB), total rural output (TRO), fixed assets investment(FAI), Financial Interrelation Ratio (FIR), economic efficiency (EE), level of financial efficiency (LFE), and level of financial development (LFD) in the years 1979-2007 are collected. Graphical method intuitively reflects the development trend and historical track of relevant indices; and Granger Causality Test verifies the relationship between rural financial development level and rural economic efficiency in the years 1979-2007. Result shows that rural financial development level has significant impact on rural economic growth, but rural economic growth has no significant impact on rural financial development; and rural financial development also has insignificant promotion impact on rural economic efficiency. Thus, conclusions are obtained. Although rural financial development has made certain contribution to the development of rural economy, this kind of contribution is only reflected in total quantity, but not efficiency. Therefore, government should further strengthen the promotion function of financial development for economic efficiency, and gradually establish a virtuous circle system for rural finance and economic development.