Streambank erosion hazard mapping has received much less attention than flood inundation mapping in the past due to the complexity of the task as well as bank protection works that have reduced bank erosion and unfortunately, the ecological functions of our watercourses at the same time. Damages due to streambank erosion in some flooding contexts are greater than the flood water damages (Loat and Petrasheck, 1997). For these reasons, streambank erosion hazard mapping should be an integral part of flood hazard mapping and methods must be developed to accomplish it. This research proposes a methodology for mapping streambank erosion hazards based on the directives of the Swiss Federal Office for Water and Geology (now within the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment). It permits the calculation of bank failure widths and their probability as opposed to future channel migration paths. This research also investigates the input data necessary for streambank erosion hazard modeling. Geomorphological mapping must be the first step to streambank erosion hazard mapping as it permits the identification of the sediment movements in the catchment. After this step, modeling of streambank erosion can be undertaken. Geofluvial models that combine hydraulic sediment transport and geotechnical modeling are well suited for streambank erosion modeling. The model CCHE1D is such a model and was adapted for the calculation of the streambank erosion hazard on an 8 kilometer reach of the Lower Venoge River, Switzerland. CCHE1D performs one dimensional hydraulic calculations. A shear stress correction function based on channel curvature distributes mean boundary shear stress appropriately to outer and inner bank toes and the phase lag of maximum toe shear stress compared to the apex of the bend curvature is ensured by a convolution of upstream shear stresses. Tension cracking was added to the slab failure algorithm due to its significant effect on bank failure widths. After a bank failure, the cross section shape does not change which allows the flow conditions to remain the same and in turn allows the probability of failure for the modeled bank profile to be evaluated. To gain a better understanding of streambank erosion on the Lower Venoge River, detailed erosion and flow depth monitoring were done on two 1 kilometer river reaches from November 2003 through September 2005. These measurements showed the mass failures to be mainly soil falls and cantilever failures. Measured bank erosion was linearly related to the product of maximum discharge and flood volume. Bank and bed sediment data were also collected for the study reach. Eighty-two cross sections were surveyed in 2004 in the 8 kilometer study reach. A new cross section tool was developed to properly reproduce scour holes in bends. It calculates transverse position and distance, graphs the cross section to allow identification of bank definition points, linearly interpolates, calibrates bed topography parameters based on surveyed cross sections, and interpolates with respect to channel curvature. Hydrological modeling allowed for the generation of input hydrographs for the period January 1979 - February 2005. This information was combined with historically based low probability floods to construct three 300 year discharge series. Flow and erosion measurements allowed for the calibration of roughness and critical shear stress parameters, respectively, in the CCHE1D model. Where detailed erosion measurements were not available, past channel migration served as a guide for estimating the critical shear stress. Calibrated critical shear stress was poorly correlated with measured bank properties indicating the necessity of measuring critical shear stress. A regression equation involving the percentage of fine sand – large silt and the fraction of non-vegetated bank explained 75% of the variation. The three 300 year discharge series were simulated with CCHE1D. Bank failures series were output for each of the banks of the 1149 computational nodes in the study reach. Empirical frequency was used to determine the bank failure width of a given probability. These bank failure widths and their probabilities were used to calculate a streambank erosion danger. To further qualify this danger, it was mapped with a bar proportional to the mean annual simulated erosion rate. The extreme failure width for the entire reach was determined by multiplying the maximum simulated failure width by a safety factor. The erosion hazard in straight reaches is too high showing that the shear stress reduction due to the highly vegetated banks needs to be taken into account better in the shear stress correction function. This research has demonstrated the feasibility of streambank erosion hazard mapping, although the quantity of input data necessary is prohibitive. Data acquisition methods must be researched and improved to reduce costs, and research must be continued to improve understanding of bank failure processes to be included in geofluvial models.


Forensic science includes any science that is conducted for use in the legal system. The need for science in the courtroom has greatly increased as a result of legal rulings and the positioning of forensic science in popular culture. The forensic science degree program provides students with an education in the use of science, mathematics, and statistics in legal proceedings. There are four options of study: Forensic Biology, Crime Scene Investigation, Forensic Chemistry, and the Pre-Law 3-3 Program.


The word regulation is often associated with detailed procedures, rules, and controls and over time it has come to be perceived in a negative sense, and sometimes self-serving. However, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) views regulation in a highly positive way. It is seen as being the legitimate and appropriate means—governmental, professional and private—whereby order, consistency, identity, and control are brought to the profession. Regulation defines the profession and its members, determines the scope of practice, sets the standards of education and ethical and competent practice, and establishes the systems of accountability.1 Additionally, for over 100 years, the ICN has advocated for professional self-regulation—a form of self-governance—whereby nurses govern nurses in the public interest.1 Self-regulation acts to protect the public from practitioners who are unqualified, incompetent, or unethical. Self-regulation supports and promotes modern professional practice frameworks, including promoting good practice, preventing poor practice, and intervening when practice is unacceptable.

Professional regulatory systems involve varying degrees of self-regulation. Empowering the profession through professional self-regulation is legitimate only if the primary purpose of regulation is concerned with improving the service and protecting the public. These are both linked to professional standards and behavior. Benefits to the profession and its practitioners are secondary considerations. Self-regulation is a privilege granted by governments, and that can be taken away, and to maintain this privilege, a profession must preserve the trust of the public.2

Professional self-regulation ranges from the pure form, where the profession alone regulates itself, to systems involving varying levels of collaboration with the government. Thus, professional self-regulation, other than the pure form, works within both professional and legal frameworks where legislation provides external controls, and the profession contributes the internal controls by way of standards, guidelines, and professional development.2

In Oman, systems and processes for professional regulation exist but lack consistency, rigor, and completeness. In the absence of proper mechanisms, the profession is unable to take responsibility and obtain the required authority to undertake important regulatory activities. These activities include taking action when practice is unacceptable, setting standards, monitoring and periodically reviewing and updating professional standards, and ensuring that the standards of education, practice, conduct, and licensing are applied and remain consistent with current and future developments and needs of the profession.

Profession and society have a special relationship, but it is one that becomes binding only if the terms are achievable and can be honored by both parties. Society expects the best from nurses and midwives individually, and as a profession collectively. Society anticipates that 'caring' lies at the heart of professional practice and that it will be ethical and infused with competence, effectiveness, and compassion.

The current model of regulation in Oman is under the authority of the Ministry of Health, which is also the largest health service provider. Such a model can generate a conflict of interest as the same body is acting as both service provider and regulator. Introducing a form of self-regulation involves other stakeholders such as individual practitioners, the public, employers and, other key stakeholders.

While the degree and form of self-regulation adopted is an area for further discussion, we would argue that nursing and midwifery professionals in Oman are sufficiently mature to exercise their duty for public protection, and have the special knowledge required to set professional standards and assess the conduct of its members. Thus, the time has come to create a modern and effective professional regulatory system where the government fulfills its mandate to protect the public through establishing legislation, which ensures a sufficient degree of self-regulatory powers and authority to the profession concerned in governing the profession and the practice of its members.


Multiple-input multiple-output systems with spatial modulation (MIMO-SM) have been recently proposed for high data rate, low complexity transmission schemes. However, in the SM, the antenna of the transmitter is randomly activated by the spatially modulated information bit sequence. Due to bad conditions of the active antenna's channel determined by the SM technique, the system would be likely to transmit frame with errors. This causes a significant reduction in the system performance. In this letter, to eliminate the bad effects of the channel assignment of the SM, we propose a novel SM-based MIMO system with index modulation technique (SM-MIMO-IM) when operating over i.n.d. and i.i.d. Rayleigh fading channels. The average symbol error rate (SER) and bit error rate (BER) of the proposed scheme are derived. It can be seen from numerical results that SM-MIMO-IM provides significant performance improvements and additional diversity gain compared to the classical SM and other some techniques given in the literature. Furthermore, the proposed mathematical analyses have been verified through the Monte-Carlo simulations.


Metropolis is a monumental work. On its release in 1925, after sixteen months' filming, it was Germany's most expensive feature film, a canvas for director Fritz Lang's increasingly extravagant ambitions. Lang, inspired by the skyline of New York, created a whole new vision of cities. One of the greatest works of science fiction, the film also tells human stories about love and family. Thomas Elsaesser explores the cultural phenomenon of Metropolis: its different versions (there is no definitive one), its changing meanings, and its role as a database of twentieth-century imagery and ideologies. In his foreword to this special edition, published to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the BFI Film Classics series, Elsaesser discusses the impact of the 27 minutes of 'lost' footage discovered in Buenos Aires in 2008, and incorporated in a restored edition, which premiered in 2010.


Today's reasonable expectation test and the third-party doctrine have little to nothing to offer by way of privacy protection if users today are at least conflicted about whether transactional noncontent data should be shared with third parties, including law enforcement officials. This uncertainty about how to define public expectation as a descriptive matter has compelled courts to defer to legislatures to find out what public expectation ought to be more as a matter of prudence than doctrine. Courts and others presume that legislatures are far better than courts at defining public expectations about emergent technologies.This Essay argues that the reasonable expectation standard is particularly flawed if it has the effect of encouraging judges to seek guidance from legislatures on constitutional norms and principles. Judicial review is the vital antimajoritarian check against excessive government intrusions on individual liberty under our constitutional scheme. This is a responsibility that courts cannot pass off to the political branches when, as is the case today, most people expect that the cost of network connection is total surveillance. It is beyond irony that, today, courts consult public expectation to determine private entitlements. This Essays argues that court-administered privacy law doctrine must change if the protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures" is to have any positive legal meaning. The current court-created doctrine will not be able to keep up if it compels judges to measure public expectation. It is time for courts to reassert their positive duty to say what privacy law is.


This book examines the ways in which collective bargaining addresses a variety of workplace concerns in the context of today's global economy. Globalization can contribute to growth and development, but as the recent financial crisis demonstrated, it also puts employment, earnings and labour standards at risk. This book examines the role that collective bargaining plays in ensuring that workers are able to obtain a fair share of the benefits arising from participation in the global economy and in providing a measure of security against the risk to employment and wages. It focuses on a commonly neglected side of the story and demonstrates the positive contribution that collective bargaining can make to both economic and social goals. The various contributions examine how this fundamental principle and right at work is realized in different countries and how its practice can be reinforced across borders. They highlight the numerous resulting challenges and the critically important role that governments play in rebalancing bargaining power in a global economy. The chapters are written in an accessible style and deal with practical subjects, including employment security, workplace change and productivity, and working time.


Mobile devices are an integrated aspect of contemporary society in both business and social contexts. To facilitate the continued development of more effective and efficient user interface designs and devices, it is necessary to employ appropriate Usability Evaluation Methods. However, the changing nature of mobile device interactions has created new and increasing demands on users of these devices. The additional capabilities and features have required increased attention and more complex thought patterns from users to interact effectively and efficiently. For efficient and effective device operation, the 'user experience' needs to be considered at three layers: the hardware; the operating system and other installed applications. This paper presents a task-based review of user experiences while interacting with three different mobile devices, through the novel three layer method of breaking down the user experience, and outlines how this approach is applicable for future research.


Abstract : Analysis and design of buildings for static forces is a routine affair these days because of availability of affordable computers and specialized programs which can be used for the analysis. On the other hand, dynamic analysis is a time consuming process and requires additional input related to mass of the structure, and an understanding of structural dynamics for interpretation of analytical results. Reinforced Concrete (RC) frame buildings are most common type of constructions in urban India, which are subjected to several types of forces during their lifetime, such as static forces due to dead and live loads and dynamic forces due to earthquake. Here the present study describes the effect of earthquake load which is one of the most important dynamic loads along with its consideration during the analysis of the structure. In the present study a multi-storied framed structure of (G+9) pattern is selected. Linear seismic analysis is done for the building by static method (Seismic Coefficient Method) and dynamic method (Response Spectrum Method) using STAAD-Pro as per the IS-1893-2002-Part-1. A comparison is done between the static and dynamic analysis, the results such as Bending moment, Nodal Displacements, Mode shapes are observed, compared and summarized for Beams, Columns and Structure as a whole during both the analysis.


Energy efficiency and sensing accuracy have both been attractive research fields in sensor networks. Achieving both objectives is possible in a compromise model. In this paper we formulate one such problem and use a game theoretic approach for its solution. The interaction between sensor nodes is modeled as a cooperative bargaining game, where individual sensors cooperate for achieving the application sensing requirements while minimizing and balancing the energy consumption. We use Kalai-Smordinsky Bargaining Solution to find a distribution rule that optimizes the trade-off in the compromise problem. Based on the distribution rule, we propose a lightweight distributed algorithm in order to schedule nodes for performing the sensing task. Simulation shows a superiority in terms of scalability over a similar earlier work, while a comparable achievement in network lifetime improvement is obtained at the same time.


In its struggle to gain mass adoption, Virtual Reality (VR) industry and independent creators are exploring various types of content that may attract audiences. This paper presents a potential feature content for VR: Interactive Fiction in cinematic Virtual reality (IFcVR), a media and narrative hybrid resulting from the encounter between Interactive Fiction (IF), hypertextual fiction stories or hyperfiction, and cinematic Virtual Reality (cVR), that is the use of 360° videos. This hybridization of art and media creates immersive and interactive fiction films, in which the 'interactor' is placed within the scenic space and has the agency to change the course of the story. In the light of a new narrative and media product, the question of whether this can be considered a narrative text or not arises. This paper sheds some light on IFcVR and its narrative features according to Seymour Chatman's structuralist model of narrative text, as well as its digital and interactive nature according to current research on the field of interactive narratives. The aim is to highlight the potential of IFcVR to become an entertainment content for the VR public.


With social policies increasingly directed toward enhancing equity through health programs, it is important that methods for estimating the health and economic benefits of these programs by subpopulation be developed, to assess both equity concerns and the programs' total impact. We estimated the differential health impact (measured as the number of deaths averted) and household economic impact (measured as the number of cases of medical impoverishment averted) of ten antigens and their corresponding vaccines across income quintiles for forty-one low- and middle-income countries. Our analysis indicated that benefits across these vaccines would accrue predominantly in the lowest income quintiles. Policy makers should be informed about the large health and economic distributional impact that vaccines could have, and they should view vaccination policies as potentially important channels for improving health equity. Our results provide insight into the distribution of vaccine-preventable diseases and the health benefits associated with their prevention.


Because the tax law makes many distinctions not based on fundamental economic differences, taxpayers can exploit these inconsistencies to create opportunities for tax arbitrage. This article argues that any interpretative system which requires consistency in the application of rules where the system itself is based on fundamental inconsistencies will always allow for arbitrage. This result applies equally to purposive interpretations of the tax law as well as to more formal or literal systems of interpretation. That is, the problem of tax arbitrage is concomitant with the existence of non-economic principles of tax law embedded in a system that interprets these rules in a consistent manner. While this idea has been applied to questions of whether a tax system can impede the ability of the economy to reach equilibrium, it has not been applied to the legal analysis of tax shelters themselves. The result of this line of reasoning is that tax shelters are the inevitable result of any tax system with inherent inconsistencies which attempts to bring an artificial consistency to these non-economic based distinctions. The article goes on to argue that one of the methods by which tax shelters are addressed by the courts is the use of inconsistent methods of applying the law to these transactions.


Background & Aim: Lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) is a common condition. This congenital or acquired stenosis has multiple etiologies. The goal of this study was to describe intraoperative pathoanatomic findings of lumbar spinal stenosis observed within a black African population. Methods & Materials/Patients: It was a retrospective and descriptive study performed at Departmental Teaching Hospital of Borgou in Republic of Benin (West Africa) from January 2008 to June 2014. All black African patients who underwent surgery for LSS were included. Intra operative aetiologies were recorded. Patients with extruded lumbar discopathy were excluded. Results: During study period, 199 patients were selected. It was 109 men (54.8%) and 90 women (42.2%). Patients mean age was 53.2 years ± 10.96, mean weight 77.11kg ± 14.37 and mean height 171 cm ± 8.64cm. The LSS was acquired in 157 patients (78.9%), congenital in 29 (14.6%) and in 13 cases (6.5%) it was mixed origin. A hypertrophyof ligamentum flavum was observed in 101 patients (50.8%), zygapophyseal joint hypertrophy in 15 cases (7.2%) and in 74 cases (37.2%) the two factors were associated. A disc bulge were observed in 9 cases (4.5%) Conclusion: The ligamentum flavum hypertrophy is the main cause of LSS in black Africans. Studies to determine the mechanism of hypertrophy will be useful in order to initiate preventive treatment.


The Swedish armed forces are facing a change, a change in both organization and profession. From a conscript military service system, the Swedish Armed Forces has changed to having full-time contracted soldiers. Conscript military service has a history of over a hundred years; it was introduced in 1901 and has survived two world wars and the Cold War.The Swedish armed forces have changed to have contracted soldiers. My reflection is whether the armed forces really have had time for this changes that the new professionalization has meant. Today the Swedish armed forces consists of contracted soldiers, soldiers who are employed full time and costs the armed forces a lot of money. It's too expensive to have the same number of soldiers now compared to the older system in the defense against invasion by conscript soldiers. This has enabled us with a lower mass and cannot always perform the same tasks as we could before.In this study, I will analyze if the professionalization really needs changes in the approach, and how these changes have been met by the Swedish armed services.


Abstract: Gwendolen Carter frequently mentioned communism in her seminal 1958 book, The Politics of Inequality: South Africa Since 1948. This paper will analyze South African communism in the opening decade and a half of apartheid. It will consider the characterization of communism in opposition as presented in Carter's book, in light of recently published autobiographies and biographies of communists and African nationalists who were active in the 1940s and 1950s. The 1950 Suppression of Communism Act forced the formerly legal Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) to transform itself into the underground South African Communist Party (SACP). The paper delineates the important features of organized communism underground up to its near collapse as a result of the arrests at its Rivonia headquarters in 1963. It then briefly examines its deepening collaboration with the African National Congress over the next 30 years and concludes with observations on the significance of this early apartheid era history for the SACP's position in post-apartheid South Africa. "The Government thus made it impossible for a Communist to be chosen a Native representative by the Cape Africans. It is less sure that its victory was more than a surface one."[1] "Detention without trial, isolation in police cells, physical and psychological torture--[were] practices which in my experience in the 50's and 40's were never engaged in by the security services."[2] INTRODUCTION In her 1957 assessment of efforts by the National Party government to block white communists elected to represent Africans in the lower house of South Africa's parliament, Gwendolen Carter suggested that the government's 'success' was limited. Neither she, nor apparently anyone outside communist ranks, were then aware that South African communists in 1953 had founded the South African Communist Party (SACP), a successor to the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) that had been dissolved by its central committee in June, 1950. Only recently, following the publication of autobiographies and memoirs of longtime communists, in tandem with biographies of deceased communist leaders, has sufficient new information come to light that permits a more detailed examination of the fashion in which the SACP came into existence and the dynamics of its clandestine activities in the 1950s. Drawing from these sources, the analysis that follows delineates the important features of organized communism in South Africa during the first years of its underground existence. [3] In a brief conclusion, observations are offered on the significance of this period for the SACP in the post-apartheid years since 1994. In the decade that followed the dissolution of the CPSA, communists and other radical opponents of apartheid, most notably the African National Congress (ANC), were actively engaged in organizing challenges to the National Party government. They operated in a political environment in which the government both repressed and tolerated its radical opponents. Repression was intensified through the passage of new legislation and the utilization of existing police power and practices to control and harass its opponents. The Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 symbolized the primacy that the government gave to expanding its arsenal to counter the 'threat' of communism. The broad powers of this legislation empowered the government to prosecute and ban organizations and individuals deemed 'communist' under a loose and encompassing definition. These powers, combined with those already in the hands of the government under the Riotous Assemblies Act, and augmented by those of the Public Safety Act of 1953 and the Criminal Laws Amendment Act of 1953, allowed the government to regulate and ban organizations and individuals that acted to protest the deepening of segregation and discrimination that was apartheid. Toleration of anti-apartheid opposition by the government was unwilling and grudging, particularly as ANC-led opposition grew through the 1950's, but legal rights were generally respected and police practices continued largely as they had been in the pre-1948 period. …


On-bottom stability of subsea pipelines has been the focus of substantial research in recent years with particular emphasis on the topic of pipe-soil interaction. Numerous models have been developed to predict the pipe-soil interaction behavior under combined vertical and horizontal loading scenarios. The Verley and Sotberg energy based soil resistance model for silica sand is among these models. The model is recommended by Det Norske Veritas (DNV) and widely accepted and used by subsea pipeline design industry to model the pipe-soil interaction on silica sand soils. Calcareous sand soils are found in many of the world's offshore hydrocarbon development regions including offshore of Western Australia. The engineering characteristics of the calcareous sand are different from those of the typical silica sand soils. As such, Verley and Sotberg parameters for silica sand soils are not suitable for calcareous sand soils. This paper presents a calibration of the Verley and Sotberg silica sand soil resistance model for calcareous sand soil conditions using the results of a set of centrifuge tests of a pipe model on calcareous sand soil.


Monetary policy is one of the two principal means (the other being fiscal policy) by which government authorities in a market economy regularly influence the pace and direction of overall economic activity, importantly including not only the level of aggregate output and employment but also the general rate at which prices rise or fall. The ability of central banks to carry out monetary policy stems from their monopoly position as suppliers of their own liabilities, which banks in turn need (either as legally required reserves or as balances for settling interbank claims) in order to create the money and credit used in everyday economic transactions. Important developments both in research and in the actual conduct of monetary policy in recent decades have revolved around the choice of a short-term interest rate versus a reserve quantity as the central bank's direct operating instrument, whether to use some measure of money as an intermediate target, whether to constrain the central bank to follow some fairly simple policy rule, what degree of political independence a central bank should have, and whether to target inflation. Some key areas of ongoing research in this area, as of the beginning of the 21st century, are whether the behavioral process by which monetary policy affects nonfinancial economic activity centers more on money or on credit, quantitative measurement of whatever is the mechanism at work, the trade-off between price inflation and real aspects of economic activity like output and employment, and just why it is that the public in most industrialized countries is as averse to inflation as is apparently the case.


We investigate the problem of speaker adaptation of DNN acoustic models in two settings: the traditional unsupervised adaptation and a supervised adaptation (SuA) where a few minutes of transcribed speech is available. SuA presents additional difficulties when a test speaker's adaptation information does not match the registered speaker's information. Employing feature-space maximum likelihood linear regression (fMLLR) transformed features as side-information to the DNN, we reintroduce some classical ideas for combining adapted and unadapted features: early and late fusion methods, as well as the estimation of the fMLLR transforms using simple target models (STM). Results show that early fusion helps DNNs generalize better when features are combined after a non-linear bottleneck layer, while late fusion improves robustness, specifically in mismatched cases. STM give consistent improvements in both settings.


Limbic encephalitis is characterized by acute or subacute changes in mood and behaviour, by recent memory changes, seizures and cognitive dysfunction. In this article, the authors present a case report of a 53-year-old woman that resorted to consultation with clinical presentation suggestive of major depressive episode. However, the worsening of symptoms despite treatment and the testimony of seizures put on the trail of another diagnosis. She was admitted in Neurology Service of home area hospital, where she was diagnosed with Autoimmune Limbic Encephalitis (Anti-LGI1 positive). Currently, the patient keeps mensal immunotherapy and daily treatment with levetiracetam and valproic acid, without new seizures. However, she maintains memory and behavioural changes which interfere substantially with her daily functioning. The Family Physician had an essential role not only in the diagnosis of Limbic Encephalitis, but also in helping the patient, through holistic and longitudinal care, to accept and adapt to her illness and related limitations, relieving the suffering.


Valentina was the twentieth century's first American fashion designer celebrity, working and living on equal social footing with the clientele she dressed (Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, Katharine Hepburn, Millicent Rogers, and Audrey Hepburn, among others). One of the few designers who proved that America could live without the Parisian haute couture, her career is a much needed missing link in the history of American fashion. Beyond merely turning out show-stopping evening gowns, Valentina's exotic beauty, dramatic personality, and incomparable style earned her a legendary reputation. Kohle Yohannan explores the carefully constructed persona and lore of this designer who helped define American Couture. Published in association with the Museum of the City of New York's exhibition Valentina: New York Couture and the Cult of Celebrity, this book includes photographs, never-before-seen personal ephemera, sketches, and original platinum prints from master photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst, and George Hoyningen-Huene.


The formulas presented in an earlier paper for the first-degree chromatic paraxial-aberration coefficients of a symmetric system with inhomogeneous media are specialized to two cases of practical importance, those of axial and cylindrical index distributions. For a given medium, the distribution of dispersion is not independent of the distribution of index for the base wavelength. From some simple assumptions pertaining to the origin of the inhomogeneities, one possible form of this dependence is deduced. On the basis of this, it is shown by numerical examples that it is possible to utilize a cylindrical distribution to achromatize a singlet, whereas this is not the case for an axial distribution.


Introduction. Continuous noise exposure is potentially harmful to infants\' auditory systems and wellbeing. Although the effects of noise on infants in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) have been well researched overseas, limited studies have
been conducted in South Africa.
Aim. To conduct a detailed noise assessment in a state hospital NICU in the Cape metropole.
Study design and setting. Non-experimental descriptive design involving measurement, analysis and description of the noise levels and events in the NICU, Tygerberg Children\'s Hospital, Western Cape.
Method. Noise levels were measured over two 12-hour periods in both NICU rooms, during which observations were made to identify the sources and frequency of occurrence of NICU noises. Measurements of sound decay were made to determine whether the noise levels were a result of direct noise or reverberant noise from room reinforcements.
Results. Noise levels ranged from 62.3 to 66.7 dBA (LAeq), which exceeds American and British NICU standards (50 - 60 dBA). Staff conversations were the largest single contributor to the number of noise events. The largest single non-human contributor was monitor alarm noise. The NICU was found to be an extremely reverberant environment, suggesting that high noise levels were largely a result of reverberant room reinforcements.
Conclusion. Results highlight the need for noise reduction, which is vital to optimise newborn care, reduce acoustic trauma risks and enhance the infants\' wellbeing and physiological stability in the NICU. Moreover, it is especially important to limit NICU noise levels in developing countries as premature infants in the NICU are often at increased risk for developing noiseinduced sensorineural hearing loss as a result of NICU noise exposure and/or treatment with ototoxic medication and are often not routinely screened for hearing loss. Recommendations. Practical suggestions for noise reduction in the NICU are made. South African Journal of Child Health Vol. 2 (2) 2008: pp. 50-54


Fluorescence disturbance is the primary limiting factor of biomedical Raman spectroscopy. This paper proposed a dual-excitation difference technique for fluorescence rejection. In this research, a low-cost dual-excitation system was built for Raman detection, and a robust deconvolution algorithm was developed for spectrum recovery. Simulation and experimental results demonstrated that this method could effectively eliminate the fluorescence background in Raman spectroscopy.


In Japan-Taxes on Alcoholic Beverages, the Appellate Body of the WTO upheld the conclusions of a Panel report finding Japan's Liquor Tax Law in violation of Article Ill of the GATT 1994. Considering that Japan has agreed to comply with the ruling, the Appellate Body seems to have successfully dealt with the issue. Yet analysis of the case brings to question the Appellate Body's interpretations of law. Though the dispute settlement procedures of the WTO resulted from recognition of a need for predictability and security in international trade law, the Appellate Body's interpretations fail to provide such law. As this inadequacy is likely to continue, the Body's interpretative powers should be restricted. In compliance with a strict construction of Article IX:2 of the WTO Agreement, interpretations should be made by the more political and representative entities of the Ministerial Conference and the General Council.


Despite educational reforms, the annual results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress continue to indicate that the majority of American fourth-graders struggle to master the crucial skill of reading. In the last decade, the percentage of students who read at or above a proficient level hovers around 30 percent, which draws attention to the fact that the academic institutions may not be fully to blame for the decline of reading competency (NAEP, 2011). The real reason for the incompetency could be attributed to the amount of time that children spend reading as average fourth-graders spend less than two hours a week reading (Juster, Ono, & Stafford, 2004, p. 11). This Digital Generation lives in a world full of distractions in which reading cannot compete. Although the American educational system is stressing reading instruction, children are not putting what they are learning into practice outside of school. Instead of reading, children immerse themselves into the world of interactive digital media and electronic devices. If children do not increase the time they spend reading, their proficiency will not improve. To revive reading within the Digital Generation, authors of children's literature may need to reevaluate their role in the literacy problem because their traditional print-form content appears to be unsuccessful in reaching their young audience. To create reading material that children are eager to read, authors need to produce content in a format that will entice a response from the newest generation. One way children's authors can accomplish this is by publishing transmedia storytelling ecosystems. By combining storytelling with digital media to meet the modern literary needs of today's children reading proficiency should begin to improve, along with a renewed interest in literature. This research provides insight into today's "digital TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING FOR THE DIGITAL GENERATION 3 children" and suggests a methodology for creating transmedia literature using the Adobe® Digital Publishing Suite.


This paper evaluates whether the learning mechanisms of the European Cohesion policy have contributed to improve the economic impact of Structural Fund expenditure over time. It analyses whether the evolution of the policy in response to greater internal monitoring and external scrutiny has resulted in a more efficient and better targeted Cohesion policy. This is tested using an econometric model which evaluates the effect of Structural Fund expenditure on the growth of regional GDP per capita —conditional on factor endowments, institutional quality and initial conditions— during the last programming periods for which full sets of data are available (1994-1999 and 2000-2006). The results of the analysis unveil an increase in the effectiveness of the policy in successive periods. This positive association is robust to controlling for the level of development of the country and the relative economic position of a region within a country. The results also show that, when structural factors are taken into consideration, Structural Fund investment tends to yield higher returns in better-off countries and wealthier regions within countries.


We introduce an efficient camera relocalization approach which can be easily integrated into real-time 3D reconstruction methods, such as KinectFusion. Our approach makes use of compact encoding of whole image frames which enables both online harvesting of keyframes in tracking mode, and fast retrieval of pose proposals when tracking is lost. The encoding scheme is based on randomized ferns and simple binary feature tests. Each fern generates a small block code, and the concatenation of codes yields a compact representation of each camera frame. Based on those representations we introduce an efficient frame dissimilarity measure which is defined via the block-wise hamming distance (BlockHD). We illustrate how BlockHDs between a query frame and a large set of keyframes can be simultaneously evaluated by traversing the nodes of the ferns and counting image co-occurrences in corresponding code tables. In tracking mode, this mechanism allows us to consider every frame/pose pair as a potential keyframe. A new keyframe is added only if it is sufficiently dissimilar from all previously stored keyframes. For tracking recovery, camera poses are retrieved that correspond to the keyframes with smallest BlockHDs. The pose proposals are then used to reinitialize the tracking algorithm. Harvesting of keyframes and pose retrieval are computationally efficient with only small impact on the run-time performance of the 3D reconstruction. Integrating our relocalization method into KinectFusion allows seamless continuation of mapping even when tracking is frequently lost. Additionally, we demonstrate how marker-free augmented reality, in particular, can benefit from this integration by enabling a smoother and continuous AR experience.


While city migrants see their welfare increase much more than those moving to towns, many more rural-urban migrants end up in towns. This phenomenon, documented in detail in Kagera, Tanzania, begs the question why migrants move to seemingly suboptimal destinations. Using an 18-year panel of individuals from this region and information on the possible destinations from the census, this study documents, through dyadic regressions and controlling for individual heterogeneity, how the deterrence of further distance to cities (compared to towns) largely trumps the attraction from their promise of greater wealth, making towns more appealing destinations. Education mitigates these effects (lesser deterrence from distance; greater attraction from wealth), while poverty reduces the attraction of wealth, consistent with the notion of urban sorting. With about two thirds of the rural population in low-income countries living within two hours from a town, these findings underscore the importance of vibrant towns for inclusive development.


Sharma, S., Upadhyaya, H. D., Gowda, C. L. L., Kumar, S. and Singh, S. 2013. Genetic analysis for seed size in three crosses of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). Can. J. Plant Sci. 93: 387-395. Seed size (determined by 100-seed weight) is an important component of trade and yield in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). The present investigation was undertaken to study the possibility of maternal inheritance for seed size and to estimate relative importance of additive and non-additive gene effects on seed size in three chickpea crosses involving two desi (ICC 5002 and ICC 7672) and two kabuli (ICC 11255 and ICC 17109) genotypes. The study included parents, F1, F2, backcross generations, and their reciprocals. Differences in the reciprocal mean 100-seed weight of F1, F2, and backcross generations were not detected in any cross. No definite major gene segregation pattern was observed in the F2 generation, and the continuous variation observed indicated quantitative inheritance. Generation mean analysis indicated the presence of additive gene effects controlling seed size in three crosses. Additive×additive type of non-allelic interactions were found significant in desi×kabuli crosses, ICC 5002×ICC 17109 and ICC 7672×ICC 11255. The selection and breeding procedure may be modified for maximum exploitation of the fixable additive×additive epistasis by delaying selection in later generations and by maintaining large populations prior to selection for maximum recombination of genes to occur.


Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine intra-industry contagion and the following apparent violations of the efficient market hypothesis around large one-day price decline events in individual stocks. Design/methodology/approach - The paper examines daily stock returns around one-day price declines of 10 percent or more for event stocks and their rivals. Using techniques similar to those used in Bremer and Sweeney and Cox and Peterson, the paper includes event stocks whose prices are at least $10 per share prior to the event to reduce the possible price reversal induced by bid-ask price bounce. As is typical for the literature, the stock daily abnormal return (AR) is calculated as the difference between the actual daily stock return and the estimated stock return based on the market model estimated over a 200-trading-day pre-event period [-220, -21]. Cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) for each stock are formed by aggregating the individual daily stock ARs. Denoting the large price decline event day as day 0, we examine the ARs of 41 trading days [-20,+20], the CARs for the [+1,+3] period, and the CARs for the [+4,+20] period. Cross-sectional average ARs and CARs are calculated and tested for statistical significance. Furthermore, the paper examines whether the post-event abnormal stock returns for the event firm and its rivals can be explained by prior event firm and industry variables. Findings - On average, after an event, the event stock experiences a positive three-day AR (S&P 600 stocks) followed by a 17-day negative AR (both S&P 500 and 600 stocks). Moreover, for that 17-day period: the rivals' stocks outperform the event firms' stocks and the event firms' returns are statistically significantly related to prior variables. The paper also finds statistically significant relationships between the prior variables and the rivals' post-event stock returns. It provides an intra-industry effects explanation for these results. Originality/value - The paper offers insights into abnormal stock returns, for the event firm and its rivals, following the event firm's large one-day stock price drop.


Peace agreements are instrumental not only in ensuring that peace prevails but also in setting up a new relationship between conflicting parties. Peace agreements have proven to be an important tool for indigenous peoples and states in establishing new relationship. The numerous recent peace agreements signed between states and indigenous peoples have been instrumental in establishing an agenda for social justice and equality for indigenous peoples. The chapter analyses to what extent such peace agreements have been successful in establishing new relationships between governments and indigenous peoples, notably by looking at central issues of self-determination, land rights and cultural rights. As the chapters examines one of the limitations of the peace agreements is their lack of implementation by states' governments and the lack of monitoring of the implementation by the international community. The chapters examine to what extent international bodies such as the International Labour Organisation or the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Bodies can play an important role in monitoring the implementation of such agreements.


Anthrax is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. It came into public notability in 2001 during the bioterrorism attack in the United States. Because of the potential threat and the emergence of antibiotic resistance B. anthracis, novel antibiotics are needed to overcome this problem. One way is to develop antibiotics that inhibit novel targets. One such target is the de novo purine biosynthesis pathway. The enzyme, Adenylosuccinate synthetase (PurA), catalyses the first committed step in the synthesis of adenosine, an important component for bacterial purine biosynthesis pathway. This metallo-enzyme is a homo-dimer which catalyses formation of adenylosuccinate from IMP in presence of GTP and aspartate and releases an inorganic phosphate (Pi). PurA is found in all life forms with few exceptions and because of its essential role in the biosynthesis of adenine nucleotides and ultimately nucleic acids, it is potentially an excellent target for anti-bacterial drug development. The goal of this project is to identify inhibitors that exhibit antibacterial activity against the Category A pathogen, B. anthracis.
We used combination of different approaches to identify novel lead inhibitors against B. anthracis adenylosuccinate syntheatse. The purA gene was cloned and the enzyme was expressed and purified. MESG assay was employed to determine the substrate kinetics for PurA. Subsequently, malachite green assay was optimized for high throughput screening of the Chembridge and the Life Chemicals library totaling 75,000 compounds to identify inhibitors against PurA. The hits were validated and assay interference from the hits from high throughput screening was corrected using the artifact assay. To confirm the hits from artifact assay, an independent binding assay was performed to determine the binding and equilibrium dissociation constant of these compounds.
Here we present data describing the optimization of the assays and various strategies for identification and characterization of inhibitors of PurA. We have identified two compounds as promising hits for further development in a hit-to-lead optimization process. Both these compounds have good inhibition in HTS, a good MIC and bind to the enzyme.


How is spatial information represented in the developing human brain, and how are different representations combined to solve spatial problems Neuroscience indicates that mature spatial representations depend on networks of specialised mechanisms that normally interact but are experimentally dissociable. The present studies applied this framework of dissociable components to understanding the development of spatial memory. Two kinds of search task were used. Disoriented adults and 18-24 month olds used conjunctions of colour and room shape to find hidden objects. Three- to six-year-olds searched for toys hidden in an array bordered by landmarks, where the availability of different frames of reference was manipulated by moving subject and / or array before retrieval. Ability to resolve conjunctions of colour and room shape did not depend on language, either in children or in adults, but was mediated by disoriented subjects' erroneous sense of orientation. In small square enclosures, 18-24 month olds were able to use wall colour to reorient. These results argue against previous claims for information encapsulation, but supports the thesis combining different kinds of visual information is difficult in early development. In the array task, core components of adult spatial representation, including parallel egocentric and nonegocentric representations of space, were present as early as three years, and three-year-olds had and greatly favoured representations that were not purely egocentric. Five-year-olds solved viewpoint-independent recall dependent only on local landmarks, showing emergence of an "intrinsic" frame of reference. Distinctive patterns of impairment in use of these frames of reference were found in individuals with Williams Syndrome, and in children born premature or with focal lesions. These patterns, and correlations with other tests, provide evidence that cognitive and neural substrates for spatial memory are dissociable in development, and that children's early spatial errors can be explained by differential rates of maturation for different substrates of spatial representation.


Milan Kundera's choice to open his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) with two short chapters discussing Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence is, if nothing else, unconventional. It foregrounds his engagement with Nietzsche and suggests that the novel itself is something of a thought experiment, a working out of how such an abstract but compelling idea can have meaning in the world. The myth of eternal return poses, as Kundera's narrator implies, an ultimate question of existence: will we choose that our lives, and therefore our actions, have weight or lightness? Or, as Nietzsche says in The Gay Science (1882), "If this thought gained power over you, as you are it would transform and possibly crush you; the question in each and every thing, 'Do you want this again and innumerable times again' would lie on your actions as the heaviest weight!" (194). In other words, will this thought enslave an individual or will it empower them? Is there a paradoxical, controlling freedom an individual may obtain by embracing the vicissitudes of life, in willing that a chance event and its consequences might recur again and again?


We propose a camera-based assistive text reading framework to help blind persons read text labels and product packaging from hand-held objects in their daily lives. To isolate the object from cluttered backgrounds or other surrounding objects in the camera view, we first propose an efficient and effective motion based method to define a region of interest (ROI) in the video by asking the user to shake the object. This method extracts moving object region by a mixture-of-Gaussians-based background subtraction method. In the extracted ROI, text localization and recognition are conducted to acquire text information. To automatically localize the text regions from the object ROI, we propose a novel text localization algorithm by learning gradient features of stroke orientations and distributions of edge pixels in an Ad boost model. Text characters in the localized text regions are then binaries and recognized by off-the-shelf optical character recognition software. The recognized text codes are output to blind users in speech. Performance of the proposed text localization algorithm is quantitatively evaluated on ICDAR-2003 and ICDAR-2011 Robust Reading Datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm achieves the state of the arts. The proof-of-concept prototype is also evaluated on a dataset collected using ten blind persons to evaluate the effectiveness of the system's hardware. We explore user interface issues and assess robustness of the algorithm in extracting and reading text from different objects with complex backgrounds.


Understanding the principle underlying the coupling between coal seam stress and gas pressure will help prevent the occurrence of dynamic coal and gas disasters. However, previous studies have mainly focused on the macroscopic qualitative analyses of the coupling between coal seam stress and gas pressure. In fact, laboratory quantitative tests, which investigate gas pressure in sealed sample tanks, fail to represent the essential relationship between stress and gas pressure in real time. In this study, a model of the stress-porosity-gas pressure relationship was established based on the pore characteristics of gassy coals and gas adsorption theory to quantify the coupling between coal seam stress and gas pressure. In addition, a method for determining the law governing stress and gas pressure coupling was proposed based on stress-strain curves obtained through triaxial loading tests. Results show that the porosity and gas pressure of gassy coals first decrease and then increase as loading stress increases. Under various confining pressures and initial gas pressures, porosity declines at a lower rate with the increase in the initial gas pressure. Specifically, gas pressure increases with stress before the value of stress reaches that of the compressive strength of the coal. This behaviour demonstrates that gas pressure and stress are positively correlated. High initial gas pressures are associated with small increments (i.e., from 136% to 30%) in pore gas pressure under stress. When stress exceeds the compressive strength of the coal, gas pressure begins to decrease with stress. Thus, stress and gas pressure are negatively correlated. Finally, the validity of the research method was verified through afield experiment. The proposed method provides new concepts for the study of the mechanism, prevention, and control technology of dynamic coal and gas disasters.


The study focuses on a large gravel pit located adjacent to the Santa Cruz River between the confluences with the Rillito and Canada del Oro rivers in Tucson, Arizona. These gravel pits are large with depths on the order of 100 feet and are immediately adjacent to the surrounding streams. The berms along the pits are not protected and would be subject to erosion due to the flows in the rivers. Different failure scenarios were considered and the locations of possible pitwall failures were identified. The various factors influencing the headcut distance were identified and the methodology previously developed for headcut analysis of in-stream gravel pits were modified to account for the near channel pit. While the width of the pit is one of the major significant factors for the in-stream pits, the use of the pit width vs the channel width can lead to widely varying answers. Another important factor is the time of failure with respect to the flow hydrograph of the event. Methodology and results of the analysis will be presented.


Biology has always been a heavily technology limited field. Burgeoning fields such as systems biology require the development and implementation of new technologies, enabling high-throughput and high-fidelity measurements of large systems. Microfluidics promises to fulfil many of the requirements put forth. Here I will discuss the various approaches employed to date for performing high-throughput screening experiments on-chip, encompassing biochemical, biophysical, and cell-based assays.


In many channel measurement applications, one needs to estimate some characteristics of the channels based on a limited set of measurements. This is mainly due to the highly time varying characteristics of the channel. In this paper, it will be shown how free probability can be used for channel capacity estimation in MIMO systems. Free probability has already been applied in various application fields such as digital communications, nuclear physics, and mathematical finance, and has been shown to be an invaluable tool for describing the asymptotic behavior of many large-dimensional systems. In particular, using the concept of free deconvolution, we provide an asymptotically (with respect to the number of observations) unbiased capacity estimator for MIMO channels impaired with noise called the free probability based estimator. Another estimator, called the Gaussian matrix-mean-based estimator, is also introduced by slightly modifying the free-probability-based estimator. This estimator is shown to give unbiased estimation of the moments of the channel matrix for any number of observations. Also, the estimator has this property when we extend to MIMO channels with phase off-set and frequency drift, for which no estimator has been provided so far in the literature. It is also shown that both the free-probability-based and the Gaussian matrix-mean-based estimator are asymptotically unbiased capacity estimators as the number of transmit antennas go to infinity, regardless of whether phase off-set and frequency drift are present. The limitations in the two estimators are also explained. Simulations are run to assess the performance of the estimators for a low number of antennas and samples to confirm the usefulness of the asymptotic results.


Governments and development agencies spend considerable resources building property and company registries to protect property rights. When these efforts succeed, owners feel secure enough to invest in their property and banks are able use it as collateral for credit. Similarly, firms prosper when entrepreneurs can transform their firms into legal entities and thus contract more safely. Unfortunately, developing registries is harder than it may seem to observers, especially in developed countries, where registries are often taken for granted. As a result, policies in this area usually disappoint. Benito Arrunada aims to avoid such failures by deepening our understanding of both the value of registries and the organizational requirements for constructing them. Presenting a theory of how registries strengthen property rights and reduce transaction costs, he analyzes the major trade-offs and proposes principles for successfully building registries in countries at different stages of development. Arrunada focuses on land and company registries, explaining the difficulties they face, including current challenges like the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States and the dubious efforts made in developing countries toward universal land titling. Broadening the account, he extends his analytical framework to other registries, including intellectual property and organized exchanges of financial derivatives. With its nuanced presentation of the theoretical and practical implications, Institutional Foundations of Impersonal Exchange significantly expands our understanding of how public registries facilitate economic growth.


Abstract The aim of this article is to study the relationship between tibia vara and external tibial torsion in adults. The following questions were asked: (1) what is the incidence of rotational deformity in patients with genu varum and (2) do patients who undergo correction of tibial torsion with genu varum have similar outcomes to those who undergo simple tibia vara correction? In this study, 69 patients (138 limbs) underwent bilateral proximal tibial osteotomy for the correction of genu varum. Patients with simple coronal plane deformity (varus alone) were treated with either a monolateral external fixator or a hexapod frame. Those with concomitant external tibial torsion were treated with circular external fixation. The primary outcome was the ability to achieve the desired correction of alignment in the coronal, sagittal, and axial planes. Secondary outcomes included a postoperative Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) and a routine patient satisfaction questionnaire. The incidence of tibial torsion among the entire group of patients with bilateral tibia vara was 46% and overwhelmingly external in direction. The two groups had some significant differences in demographics with torsion patients tending to be younger and thinner. The final mechanical axis deviation and medial proximal tibial angle values for both groups did not differ significantly (p = 0.956). The postcorrection thigh–foot axis was not significantly different between the two groups (p = 0.666). Time to union was not significant (p > 0.999). KOOS was not different between the two groups in symptoms, pain, activities of daily living, and return to sport. There was a difference in the quality of life score between the two groups (p = 0.044). There was no difference between the two groups regarding the patient questionnaire. Based on the finding of this analysis, the incidence of rotational malalignment with genu varum is close to 50%. The recognition of this close association with external tibial torsion deformity may allow for further insights into the role of rotation in varus deformity-related knee pathology and treatment. Patients can expect nearly identical outcomes from this surgery.


High school agricultural education programs face all sorts of challenges in their efforts to provide educational opportunities for their students. The results of these efforts have a tremendous impact on the social and economic health of the community. It is advantageous for all of the agencies in a community to work together to offer educational, training, employment, and even enrichment opportunities for its citizens. Agriculture teachers and their student "customers" can gain many benefits from developing relationships with other professionals in the local and even global community. The first relationships that most agriculture teachers begin to build in a community are with the students themselves. Often the initial introductions occur on the first day of classes, however the wise teachers will get to know their students long before classes begin by getting to know the feeder school teachers before the previous school year is over. High school teachers can collaborate with middle school teachers to identify and recruit potential agriculture students by offering field trips or other visits to the high school agriculture department. This builds excitement for the program and cultivates understanding of the courses offered. Each spring, before the middle school students register for their freshman year courses, all of the eighth graders take a tour of our high school campus. We, the advisors, along with our FFA members and officers, lead the groups through our agriculture department explaining the activities that go on in our classrooms, shop, greenhouse, and aquaculture laboratory. The FFA members answer student questions and provide a peer perspective that adults cannot. Meanwhile, we offer CDs to the middle school teachers that provide photos of our students in the classrooms and labs and engaged in FFA activities. We also send flyers and brochures back with the teachers so they can have more resources to help future students make informed choices about their educational plans. Other possible middle school partnership activities include using current high school students/FFA members in mentor programs or as agricultural ambassadors to help the middle school teachers teach special science labs or other agricultural activities. These types of efforts pay big dividends to both the teachers and the students by building familiarity and confidence making a smoother transition into the new school year. In our program, families are a huge part of our success. We have even called membership in our chapter a "Family Tradition." As a husband and wife teaching partner team, it seems to go with the territory. On open house nights our department gets more traffic than most areas of the school and more of the visits are social than academic. Parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends of our students flock to our rooms to visit, and to share stories about what it was like when they were in class. What may seem like casual conversations are really important networking sessions that help us make connections throughout the school year. The family members of our students are involved in all areas of our local community and have interests, hobbies, and skills that provide great resources for our students. When students have questions about their SAE programs that we may not have firsthand experience with, we often know who to call to ask for advice. Family members are great resources when students need SAE opportunities, help training Career Development Event teams or chaperoning field trips. Parent and family contacts are also helpful when our program needs business support in the form of donations or reduced rates for supplies and services. Of course, friends and family members are the foundation of a strong FFA Alumni Chapter or FFA Support Group. These relationships with student friends and family members provide a "tag team" effort in motivating students to perform at their best level and to make the most of the opportunities available. …


This paper collects some evidence from a now completed EU-funded project, aimed at the localisation and institutionalisation of two eParticipatory tools, DEMOS-Plan and the Electronic Town Meeting, within real public administration processes. The independent or combined usage of the two tools, supported by the Living Labs approach has been tested in 18 local pilots across several regions of Europe, from Ulster (UK) to Sicily and Tuscany (Italy), from Turku Archipelago (Finland) to Voroklini (Cyprus). Selected policy domains include (among others): Spatial Planning, Socio-Economic Programming, Strategic Environmental Assessment, and Open Government. Deployment has led to a number of interesting implications for the European public authorities, such as: i) building up of a cost effective ICT platform that enables regular or occasional consultation of remotely and sparsely located citizens and stakeholders; ii) gradually migrating the whole administrative system related to spatial data infrastructure towards a full digitalisation of the "legally compulsory" exchanges between planning agencies, local stakeholders and the general public; and iii) setting the stage for these two facilities to become practically interoperable to each other and across different EU Member States.


This thesis presents the results of an archaeological investigation of shell matrix sites, and in particular, shell mound sites that occur around the shores of Albatross Bay, near Weipa on northwest Cape York Peninsula, northern Australia. Earlier approaches to the investigation of shell mound sites in northern Australia have tended to place too much emphasis on developing long-term explanatory models that gloss over explanations for the specific roles of these unique sites in past economic systems. While long-term explanations represent important contributions, it is argued here that short-term decadal-scale modelling of the production systems associated with shell mound formation and use are required to fully understand the significance of the mid-to-late Holocene emergence of these types of sites. A focus on production – defined in a substantivist economic sense – is a suitable avenue through which archaeologists can expand our understanding of the role of these features in past gatherer-hunter societies, and their broader importance on longer-term time scales. A detailed model of the production strategies associated with the formation of shell mound sites around Albatross Bay is developed, while also considering the broader significance of this model, particularly within the context of Cape York Peninsula. It presents the results of field surveys and excavations carried out around Albatross Bay by the author, as well as a detailed review and analysis of work carried out by others. It is argued that shell mounds are the result of relatively specialised production activities focusing on a very specific resource base: mudflat shellfish species. Shell mounds offered a range of unique benefits for people engaged in these specialised activities, including as camp sites and as specialised activity areas. These events were inherently flexible in size and in terms of timing, reflecting the dynamic nature of the resource base itself; yet the flexible nature of this production strategy also enabled more regular small-scale social gatherings, along with a range of social and economic benefits to participants, than would have been otherwise possible. It is proposed that these types of strategies may represent an important characteristic of the production systems employed by gatherer-hunter peoples in late Holocene Cape York. Overall, this thesis makes a significant contribution to both our understanding of late Holocene lifeways at Albatross Bay as well as to our understanding of the broader significance of the emergence of shell mound sites in Cape York. Furthermore, it highlights the range of insights that can come from a focus on short-term modelling of gatherer-hunter lifeways alongside approaches oriented toward longer-term explanations of economic, social and environmental change.


The new generation of commodity graphics cards with significant on-board video memory has become widely
popular and provides high-performance rendering and flexibility. One of the features to be exploited with this
hardware is the use of the on-board video memory to store geometry information. This strategy significantly
reduces the data transfer overhead from sending geometry data over the (AGP) bus interface from main memory
to the graphics card. However, taking advantage of cached geometry is not a trivial task because the data models
often exceed the memory size of the graphics card. In this paper we present a dynamic Cached Geometry
Manager (CGM) to address this issue. We show how this technique improves the performance of real-time
view-dependent level-of-detail (LOD) selection and rendering algorithms of large data sets. Alternative caching
approaches have been analyzed over two different view-dependent progressive mesh (VDPM) frameworks: one
for rendering of arbitrary manifold 3D meshes, and one for terrain visualization.


In this research I have developed a new method for depicting historical sites using game-design concepts and technologies. I argue that using computer games, design environment researchers can integrate and consolidate historical documents, challenging the dichotomy of space and time as two discrete constructs, producing a dynamic rather than static "frozen" image of place. This method allows for movement from representation to simulation of historical places and events, and facilitates an active participation in the remaking of an historical place. While this method seeks to provide an accurate historical reconstruction, it also allows for the maintenance of a critical distance by exposing the mechanics of historiography. Stitching together various perspectives, I propose the making of a collage simulation of history in a game environment. To test this method, I studied the historical site of Machu Picchu in Peru, and the story of its discovery by explorer Hiram Bingham in 1911. Bingham's expedition remains today the constituting myth of the site, captured in multiple documents, primarily Bingham's travel journal, but also in photography and cartographic drawings, made by Bingham himself during his discovery. In the contest of my work, Bingham's materials were integrated into a 3D game environment. Taking-part in a collaborative project for 3D-scanning of Machu Picchu, on-site work produced accurate models of sections of the site. The 3D models became a basis-layer for my prototype, a hybrid of game and digital archive, producing a movement towards collage simulation of historical sites. Thesis Supervisor: Terry W. Knight, PhD Title: Professor of Design and Computation Thesis Supervisor: Takehiko Nagakura, MArch, PhD Title: Associate Professor of Design and Computation


Dysregulation of airway nerves leads to airway hyperreactivity, a hallmark of asthma. Although changes to nerve density and phenotype have been described in asthma, the relevance of these changes to nerve function has not been investigated due to anatomical limitations where afferent and efferent nerves run in the same nerve trunk, making it difficult to assess their independent contributions. We developed a unique and accessible system to activate specific airway nerves to investigate their function in mouse models of airway disease. We describe a method to specifically activate cholinergic neurons using light resulting in immediate, measurable increases in airway inflation pressure and decreases in heart rate. Expression of light-activated channelrhodopsin 2 in these neurons is governed by Cre expression under the endogenous choline acetyltransferase promoter, and we describe a method to decrease variability in channelrhodopsin expression in future experiments. Optogenetic activation of specific subsets of airway neurons will be useful for studying the functional relevance of other observed changes, such as changes to nerve morphology and protein expression, across many airway diseases, and may be used to study the function of subpopulations of autonomic neurons in lungs and other organs.


Cephalopod reproductive strategies are reviewed in order to clarify their current, confusing status. Based on the type of ovulation, spawning pattern and growth between egg batches or spawning periods, five comprehensive and flexible cephalopod reproductive strategies are defined. Accordingly, with these three factors the following classification is proposed. (a) Spawning once (formerly semelparity) consisting of simultaneous terminal spawning, with synchronous ovulation, monocyclic spawning and absence of growth between egg batches. (b) Spawning more than once (formerly iteroparity) including: (i) polycyclic spawning with egg‐laying occurring in separate batches during the spawning season and growth occurring between production of egg batches and spawning seasons; (ii) multiple spawning, with group‐synchronous ovulation, monocyclic spawning and growth between egg batches; (iii) intermittent terminal spawning, with group‐synchronous ovulation, monocyclic spawning and no growth between egg batches; (iv) continuous spawning, with asynchronous ovulation, monocyclic spawning and growth between egg batches. Examples of species exhibiting each of these reproductive strategies are given. The large amount of inter‐species variation in several life‐history traits related to reproductive events is discussed.


Vulnerabilities in privileged software layers have been exploited with severe consequences. Recently, Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) based technologies have emerged as a promising approach since they claim strong confidentiality and integrity guarantees regardless of the trustworthiness of the underlying system software. In this paper, we consider one of the most prominent TEE technologies, referred to as Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX). Despite many formal approaches, there is still a lack of formal proof of some critical processes of Intel SGX, such as remote attestation. To fill this gap, we propose a fully automated, rigorous, and sound formal approach to specify and verify the Enhanced Privacy ID (EPID)-based remote attestation in Intel SGX under the assumption that there are no side-channel attacks and no vulnerabilities inside the enclave. The evaluation indicates that the confidentiality of attestation keys is preserved against a Dolev-Yao adversary in this technology. We also present a few of the many inconsistencies found in the existing literature on Intel SGX attestation during formal specification.


The thesis is concerned with the synthesis, characterisation and reactivity of a variety of nickel(II) diphosphine complexes considered possible catalyst precursors for the copolymerisation of CO and ethene. [Ni(diphos)(o-tolyl)(py)]Y (1), [Ni(diphos)(_2)](Y)(_2) (2), and [Ni(diphos)(S)(_2)](Y)(_2) (3) {Y = OTs, OTf} are found to be catalyst precursors for the CO/ethene reaction (115 C, 1200psi, 1:1 CO: ethene) with high selectivity to polyketone formation, the activity depending on the phosphine ligand employed. However, the activity is low and attributed in part to the formation of the [Ni(diphos)(CO)(_2)] (4) complexes which are stable under the reaction conditions. The diphosphine hgand employed, particularly the nature of the backbone, is found to influence the synthesis and reaction chemistry of the complexes (1), (2) and (3).A series of complexes of the type [Ni(R(_2)P(CH(_2))(_a)PR(_2))(o-tolyl)Br] (5) {n = 2; R = Ph, Cy, 'Bu) have been synthesised and the complex [Ni(dppe)(o-tolyl)Cl] has been characterised by X-ray crystaliography. The influence of the chelating diphosphine on the structural characteristics and NMR parameters of these compounds has been investigated. When n > 2 the complexes of the type [Ni(diphos)(o-tolyl)X] were not isolated. The reaction of type (5) complexes with TIY (Y = OTs, BF(_4)) in pyridine led to the formation of complexes of the type [Ni(diphos)(o-tolyl)(py)]Y (1).A series of complexes of the type [Ni(diphos)Cl(_2)] (6) {diphos = dope, dBpe, dcpn} have been synthesised and characterised by X-ray crystallography. The influence of the chelating phosphine ligand on structural characteristics of these compounds has been investigated. Complexes of the type (2) and (3) can be synthesised from type (6) complexes. Detailed studies on the behaviour of a series of complexes of the type [Ni(diphos)(_2)](Y)(_2) (2) and [Ni(diphos)(Y)(_2)] (3) {Y = OTs and OTf), and the equilibrium between them in solution have been undertaken. The complex [Ni(dppe)(-2)](OTs)(_2) has been characterised by X-ray crystallography.


Acknowledgments are vital since students/researchers can demonstrate their genuine appreciation through them and more importantly shape their (local/global) academic identity. In line with this significance, the present study examined the move patterns of 503 Persian dissertation acknowledgements from two major universities in Iran, from 1981 to 2014 and from sixteen various disciplines including soft and hard science disciplines. Overall, 65,323 words were analyzed. By and large, a careful examination and analysis of the corpus indicated that Iranian university students follow a three-tier moves pattern in writing a dissertation acknowledgments, namely a "Framing move" (including six micro steps), a main "Thanking move" (consisting of nine micro steps), and a "Closing move" (containing four micro steps). Moreover, the results indicated that the longest and shortest acknowledgments were 986 and 4 words respectively. The results also indicated that there was a significant difference in the complexity of acknowledgments in hard and soft science disciplines. The results of this study can hold valuable implications for both university students and professors who aspire an appropriate, coherent, and to the point display of scholarly competence and academic identity.


The thesis is based on 205 sediment samples supplied by the British Geological Survey from the Trunch Borehole and various outcrop localities in Norfolk and Suffolk. At least 80,000 ostracod specimens were recovered, belonging to 151 species and 53 genera. These are fully illustrated and described in a large systematic taxonomy chapter. Seventeen species and I subspecies were described as new. A stepped pattern of origination and extinction occurs throughout the Upper Chalk of East Anglia and the Ostracoda thereby display high biostratigraphical potential. The large number of Lazarus taxa in the Santonian and Lower Campanian is a distinctive feature. An analysis of the percentage of filter feeding platycopid Ostracoda, as a measure of palaeoxygen levels, reveals large variations in the amounts of dissolved oxygen in the Upper Cretaceous of East Anglia. High percentages of platycopids equate to low oxygen and vice versa. This is confirmed by the fact that high levels of platycopids are always associated with low species diversity. Using this technique, it was shown that the Coniacian was a time of low to very low oxygen, except for the upper part (coranguinum Zone) which was better ventilated. The Santonian and Lower Campanian were low to very low in dissolved oxygen, while the Upper Campanian and Lower Maastrichtian had much higher levels of dissolved oxygen. The term "Kenoxic Event" can be used to describe such periods of lowered oxygen, when instar-brooding platycopids display a preferential survival potential compared to podocopids. Notwithstanding these general trends, oxygen levels appear to have fluctuated rapidly throughout the interval of study. These fluctuations are thought to be due to the Oxygen Minimum Zone and its migrations onto the continental shelf and subsequent retreat to the continental slope; low oxygen levels on the continental shelf being extremely deleterious to all other Ostracoda other than platycopids resulting in low diversity. High diversity and high oxygen are associated with the retreat of the OMZ onto the continental shelf. This in turn is related to sea level fluctuations and the technique shows good potential for use in sequence stratigraphy. A model showing the position of the Oxygen Minimum Zone during the Upper Cretaceous in East Anglia was produced from platycopid data generated by this study.


What role does labor play in a firm's market value? We explore this question using a production-based asset pricing model with frictions in the adjustment of both capital and labor. We posit that hiring of labor is akin to investment in capital and that the two interact, with the interaction being a crucial determinant of the time series behavior of market value. We use aggregate U.S. corporate sector data to estimate firms' optimal hiring and investment decisions and the consequences for firms' value. The model generates a good fit of the data. We decompose the estimated market value, thereby quantifying the link between firms' value and gross hiring flows, employment, gross investment flows, and physical capital. We find that a conventional specification -- quadratic adjustment costs for capital and no hiring costs -- performs poorly. Hiring and investment flows, unlike employment and capital stocks, are volatile and both are essential to account for market value volatility. A key result is that firms' value embodies the value of hiring and investment over and above the capital stock.


Abstract. Organic nitrates are secondary species in the atmosphere.
Their fate is related to the chemical transport of pollutants from polluted
areas to more distant zones. While their gas-phase chemistry has been
studied, their reactivity in condensed phases is far from being understood.
However, these compounds represent an important fraction of organic matter
in condensed phases. In particular, their partition to the aqueous phase may
be especially important for oxidized organic nitrates for which water
solubility increases with functionalization. This work has studied for the
first time the aqueous-phase ⚫OH-oxidation kinetics of four alkyl
nitrates (isopropyl nitrate, isobutyl nitrate, 1-pentyl nitrate, and
isopentyl nitrate) and three functionalized organic nitrates (α-nitrooxyacetone, 1-nitrooxy-2-propanol, and isosorbide 5-mononitrate) by
developing a novel and accurate competition kinetic method. Low reactivity
was observed, with kOH ranging from 8×107 to 3.1×109 L mol−1 s−1 at 296±2 K. Using these
results, a previously developed aqueous-phase structure–activity
relationship (SAR) was extended, and the resulting parameters confirmed the
extreme deactivating effect of the nitrate group, up to two adjacent carbon
atoms. The achieved extended SAR was then used to determine the ⚫OH-oxidation rate constants of 49 organic nitrates, including hydroxy
nitrates, ketonitrates, aldehyde nitrates, nitrooxy carboxylic acids, and
more functionalized organic nitrates such as isoprene and terpene nitrates.
Their multiphase atmospheric lifetimes towards ⚫OH oxidation were
calculated using these rate constants, and they were compared to their
gas-phase lifetimes. Large differences were observed, especially for
polyfunctional organic nitrates: for 50 % of the proposed organic nitrates
for which the ⚫OH reaction occurs mainly in the aqueous phase (more
than 50 % of the overall removal), their ⚫OH-oxidation lifetimes
increased by 20 % to 155 % under cloud/fog conditions (liquid water content LWC = 0.35 g m−3). In particular, for 83 % of the proposed terpene nitrates, the
reactivity towards ⚫OH occurred mostly (>98 %) in
the aqueous phase, while for 60 % of these terpene nitrates, their
lifetimes increased by 25 % to 140 % compared to their gas-phase
reactivity. We demonstrate that these effects are of importance under
cloud/fog conditions but also under wet aerosol conditions, especially for
the terpene nitrates. These results suggest that considering aqueous-phase
⚫OH-oxidation reactivity of biogenic nitrates is necessary to
improve the predictions of their atmospheric fate.


Increasing rhizome production in tall fescue (Festuca arandinacea Schreb.) is a desirable breeding goal because rhizomes promote persistence under conditions of stress. Evaluating rhizome production in the field is time-consuming and difficult. This study was conducted to assess the possibility of using greenhouse evaluation to select endophyte-free tall fescue genotypes for rhizome production. The effects of pot size and plant age on rhizome expression of tall fescue seedlings were studied. Means and ranks of 73 genotypes evaluated in the greenhouse and field were compared. Numbers of rhizomes and tillers were affected by pot size X plant age interaction. Significant (P 0.05) rank correlation coefficients among genotypes were obtained. At least 7 mo of growth were required before rhizome expression occurred in tall fescue seedlings under greenhouse conditions. Greenhouse evaluation might be useful for screening tall fescue genotypes for tiller production, but under the conditions of this study it does not appear to be useful in screening for rhizome production.


A recent line of research focuses on the study of stochastic multi-armed bandits (MAB), in the case where temporal correlations of specific structure are imposed between the player's actions and the reward distributions of the arms. These correlations lead to (sub-)optimal solutions that exhibit interesting dynamical patterns – a phenomenon that yields new challenges both from an algorithmic as well as a learning perspective. In this work, we extend the above direction to a combinatorial semi-bandit setting and study a variant of stochastic MAB, where arms are subject to matroid constraints and each arm becomes unavailable (blocked) for a fixed number of rounds after each play. A natural common generalization of the state-of-the-art for blocking bandits, and that for matroid bandits, only guarantees a 1/2-approximation for general matroids. In this paper we develop the novel technique of correlated (interleaved) scheduling, which allows us to obtain a polynomial-time (1 1/e)-approximation algorithm (asymptotically and in expectation) for any matroid. Along the way, we discover an interesting connection to a variant of Submodular Welfare Maximization, for which we provide (asymptotically) matching upper and lower approximability bounds. In the case where the mean arm rewards are unknown, our technique naturally decouples the scheduling from the learning problem, and thus allows to control the (1 1/e)-approximate regret of a UCB-based adaptation of our online algorithm.


Reductive coupling of various carbonyl compounds to the corresponding symmetric ethers with dimethylphenylsilane is reported using a carbon-supported dioxo-molybdenum catalyst. The catalyst is air- and moisture-stable and can be easily separated from the reaction mixture for recycling. In addition, the catalyst is chemoselective, thus enabling the synthesis of functionalized ethers without requiring sacrificial ligands or protecting groups.


This paper addresses Hip-Hop lyric generation with conditional Neural Language Models. We develop a simple yet effective mechanism to extract and apply conditional templates from text snippets, and show—on the basis of a large-scale crowd-sourced manual evaluation—that these templates significantly improve the quality and realism of the generated snippets. Importantly, the proposed approach enables end-to-end training, targeting formal properties of text such as rhythm and rhyme, which are central characteristics of rap texts. Additionally, we explore how generating text at different scales (e.g. character-level or word-level) affects the quality of the output. We find that a hybrid form—a hierarchical model that aims to integrate Language Modeling at both word and character-level scales—yields significant improvements in text quality, yet surprisingly, cannot exploit conditional templates to their fullest extent. Our findings highlight that text generation models based on Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) are sensitive to the modeling scale and call for further research on the observed differences in effectiveness of the conditioning mechanism at different scales.


Reinforcement learning has become one of the most actively studied learning frameworks in the area of intelligent autonomous agents. This article describes the results of a three-day meeting of leading researchers in this area that was sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Because reinforcement learning is an interdisciplinary topic, the workshop brought together researchers from a variety of fields, including machine learning, neural networks, AI, robotics, and operations research. Thirty leading researchers from the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan, representing from many different universities, government, and industrial research laboratories participated in the workshop. The goals of the meeting were to (1) understand limitations of current reinforcement-learning systems and define promising directions for further research; (2) clarify the relationships between reinforcement learning and existing work in engineering fields, such as operations research; and (3) identify potential industrial applications of reinforcement learning.


International relations theory (IR) is widely recognized as a valuable tool for lawyers and legal scholars, especially in their social role as international policy-makers. The frameworks of IR help lawyers to analyze social problems in theoretically informed ways and develop ameliorative responses. Yet IR is famously divided among contending theoretical paradigms. Approaches such as Realism, Institutionalism, Liberalism and Constructivism direct attention to different actors (e.g., states, international organizations, domestic government agencies and officials, individual citizens and civil society groups) and to different causal factors and processes (e.g., power, interests and incentives, values, norms and identities, persuasion and socialization). IR has tended to treat these approaches as mutually exclusive and in competition. But that theoretical stance is increasingly problematic, given the rise of multi-faceted norm complexes such as sustainable development and collective security as reconceived by the Secretary-General's High-Level Panel, and of complex multi-stakeholder institutions like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. In both respects, international public policy manifestly involves actors, causal factors and processes that cut across theoretical lines; the same can be said of international law generally. The problem is especially serious for Institutionalist theory: logically, Institutionalism should provide a natural framework for lawyers and other policy-makers seeking innovative responses to global problems, but its relevance has been reduced by its identification with a relatively narrow state-centric, rationalist approach. What is needed is a richer Institutionalism, one that brings to bear significant insights from other IR approaches. For international law and policy, Institutionalist theory should incorporate Liberal insights into the role of non-state actors, government agencies and domestic politics; Constructivist insights into the role of values, norms, identities and processes such as shaming and persuasion; and Realist (and other) insights into the role of power. To be sure, there are significant ontological and epistemological differences among IR approaches that foreclose wholesale blending. Yet recent scholarship suggests that these problems are manageable in many instances. Without purporting to develop fully an enriched Institutionalism, this article identifies a number of insights that analysts could incorporate at three crucial stages of analysis: the social context in which problems arise and solutions are sought, the strategies followed by the actors interested in those problems, and the design and operations of international regimes.


In wild-type Caenorhabditis elegans hermaphrodites, two bilaterally symmetric sex myoblasts (SMs) migrate anteriorly to flank the precise center of the gonad, where they divide to generate the muscles required for egg laying (J. E. Sulston and H. R. Horvitz (1977) Devl Biol. 56, 110-156). Although this migration is largely independent of the gonad, a signal from the gonad attracts the SMs to their precise final positions (J. H. Thomas, M. J. Stern and H. R. Horvitz (1990) Cell 62, 1041-1052). Here we show that mutations in either of two genes, egl-15 and egl-17, cause the premature termination of the migrations of the SMs. This incomplete migration is caused by the repulsion of the SMs by the same cells in the somatic gonad that are the source of the attractive signal in wild-type animals.


In the Brazilian Amazon is not uncommon to find areas with intersecting occurrence of several tropical diseases, among these acute Chagas disease and visceral leishmaniasis (VL) are highlighted, particularly by changes in the epidemiology of these diseases in recent years. Clinical findings are also common in some cases and serological tests can present cross-reactivity between those diseases. The objective of this case report is to highlight the importance of careful clinical evaluation in order to obtain a correct interpretation of serological tests. A case with febrile syndrome with two months of evolution was presented, associated with wasting syndrome and hepatosplenomegaly, where the first diagnostic test for acute Chagas disease, using the indirect immunofluorescence method, was positive for IgM and IgG. It was obtained the same result with the hemagglutination test. Serological tests for VL was equally positive, with high titer IgG (1:2560). Other clinical findings such as hepatosplenomegaly and pancytopenia helped to elucidate the diagnosis of VL. The effective therapeutic response to the treatment with antimonial for VL was a final evidence for the diagnosis in this case. It is emphasized the necessity of a careful clinical evaluation for the proper interpretation of serological tests and also the development of more specific tests that is highlighted in a context of simultaneous occurrence of these health problems as occur in the Amazon region.