We have investigated proposed all-optical switching by use of cascading of phase-matched sum-frequency-generation (SFG) and difference-frequency-generation (DFG) processes. The switching operation is accomplished by both a π phase change and an amplitude change of the signal field in SFG–DFG processes. We theoretically confirmed that the proposed switch requires the least operation power of any switch that uses cascading SFG–DFG processes. The switching characteristics have been numerically clarified, and the experimental full-switching characteristics when a bulk-type periodically poled LiNbO3 is used correspond to the numerical analysis. An ultrafast all-optical switch with low switching power and small size can be expected from use of waveguide-type devices.


The sudden passing of Justice Antonin Scalia disturbed the Supreme Court's predictable rhythm. This Foreword will analyze the contentious period from Justice Scalia's death until President Trump's inauguration, and draw four lessons about the Court, the Constitution, consistency, and Congress. First, this interregnum allows us to study how the short-handed Court engaged in self-help in the short term, and in the long run, how the Court may remain evenly-divided Court for years at a time. Second, with a possible liberal replacement for Justice Scalia, the conservative legal movement's faced a near-death experience. Part II analyzes how this brush with fate may impact the Roberts Court's views on incrementalism, institutionalism, and originalism. Third, the change-in-administrations offers an opportunity to lay down markers and chart future movements on the left and right with respect to three important areas: federalism as a check on federal power, deference to the administrative state, and state-led litigation against the federal government. Part III discusses how constitutional consistency will evolve during the Trump Presidency with respect to federalism, administrative law, and state-standing to pursue nationwide injunctions.
Finally, Part IV considers how the unexpected outcome of the election — whereby the Presidency and Senate were both in Republican control — simply delayed the inevitable: at some point, the President and Senate will be of different parties, and they will not be able to agree on a Supreme Court nominee. Through a novel approach developed in this Foreword, the Senate can offer preliminary votes on several possible candidates to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Though not bound by those resolutions, the President would be wise to consider the Senate's counsel before making the nomination. By offering Senatorial "advice" before the President's nomination is made, the "consent" process between the two branches becomes more collaborative and less antagonistic.
It is important, not to simply shrug off the past year as an outlier in the Court's history. The atypical October 2015 term may, soon enough, become the new normal.


The regulation of guns has been one of the most hotly debated public policy issues in the United States throughout the country's history. But, up until recently, it has always been just that — a debate about public policy. Two recent developments have changed the landscape and moved the debate about publicly carrying firearms from the realm of public policy, to the realm of private decision-making and private law. First, laws related to publicly carrying firearms have been dramatically loosened throughout the United States to the point that, in the vast majority of states, anyone who is legally allowed to carry a firearm is also eligible to legally carry a gun in public. Second, truly public spaces — spaces owned by state and local governments and open to all — have shrunk considerably and been replaced by spaces that are owned by private businesses but open to the public such as big box stores, shopping malls, building plazas, and even sidewalks. The upshot of these two trends is that the decisions businesses make about whether to allow guns on their property will have a large impact on the degree to which the general public is exposed to guns when going about their daily lives.

This Article argues that businesses can be held accountable for the consequences of these decisions through tort liability. Specifically, most businesses should be subject to premises liability if they do not have an explicit and clearly communicated policy prohibiting customers from bringing guns into their stores when the failure to have such a policy causes a customer's injury. The Article explains that assigning such liability will not interfere with the goals of permissive concealed carry laws or the rights protected by the Second Amendment. Indeed, such liability would not even force businesses to ban guns, instead it would only force businesses to internalize the costs of those decisions. The Article concludes by situating the controversy over guns in private businesses within a larger trend of the privatization of the gun debate.


Anti-malware testing methodology remains a contentious area because many testers are insufficiently aware of the complexities of malware and anti-malware technology. This results in the frequent publication of comparative test results that are misleading and often totally invalid because they don't accurately reflect the detection capability of the products under test. Because many tests are based purely on static testing, where products are tested by using them to scan presumed infected objects passively, those products that use more proactive techniques such as active heuristics, emulation and sandboxing are frequently disadvantaged in such tests, even assuming that sample sets are correctly validated. Recent examples of misleading published statistical data include the ranking of anti-malware products according to reports returned by multi-scanner sample submission sites, even though the better examples of such sites are clear that this is not an appropriate use of their services, and the use of similar reports to generate other statistical data such as the assumed prevalence of specific malware. These problems, especially when combined with other testing problem areas such as accurate sample validation and classification, introduce major statistical anomalies. In this paper, it is proposed to review the most common mainstream anti-malware detection techniques (search strings and simple signatures, generic signatures, passive heuristics, active heuristics and behaviour analysis) in the context of anti-malware testing for purposes of single product testing, comparative detection testing, and generation of prevalence and global detection data. Specifically, issues around static and dynamic testing will be examined. Issues with additional impact, such as sample classification and false positives, will be considered not only false identification of innocent applications as malware, but also contentious classification issues such as (1) the trapping of samples, especially corrupted or truncated honeypot and honeynet samples intended maliciously but unable to pose a direct threat to target systems (2) use of such criteria as packing and obfuscation status as a primary heuristic for the identification of malware.


Agencification is the creation of semi-autonomous agencies: organizations charged with public tasks like policy implementation, regulation, and public service delivery, operating at arm's length from the government. Although not a new development, agencification became very popular from the 1980s on as part of the New Public Management reforms. Three types of agencies can be distinguished, based predominantly on their formal legal features. Type 1 agencies have some managerial autonomy but do not have their own legal identity separate from the state or their parent ministry. Type 2 agencies are organizations and bodies with managerial autonomy that have their own legal identity separate from the state or their parent ministry. Type 3 organizations have their own legal identity vested in, and defined by, private law and are established by, or on behalf of, the government in the form of a private law corporation, company, or a foundation, but they are predominantly controlled by government and are at least partially involved in executing public tasks. Specific characteristics of agencies differ between countries and findings show few systematic patterns: similar tasks are charged to different types of agencies. A crucial element in the functioning of agencies is the formal and de facto interplay of autonomy and control, and how this can be explained in a static and dynamic way. Studies about agencification list three main categories of its effects: economic, organizational, and political effects. However, there is still a lot that needs to be studied about agencification, its forms, and its effects.


Time synchronization is essential in wireless sensor networks as it is needed by many applications for basic communication. The inherent characteristics of sensor networks do not permit simply applying traditional time synchronization algorithms. Therefore, many new time synchronization algorithms have been proposed, and a few of them provide security measures against various degrees of attacks. In this article we review the most commonly used time synchronization algorithms and evaluate these algorithms based on factors such as their countermeasures against various attacks and the types of techniques used.


This paper, a chapter in the forthcoming Immigration Law Stories, describes the cases establishing the legal foundations of the constitutional law of immigration. Chae Chan Ping v. United States (1889) involved a resident noncitizen who left the United States with a document allowing his return; in furtherance of its policy of restricting Chinese immigration (at this time immigration by members of other races was not numerically restricted) Congress voided the reentry documents while Chae Chan Ping was on the boat back to the U.S. Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893) involved a challenge to a federal statute requiring Chinese noncitizens (but not foreign nationals of other racial groups) to register on pain of deportation. The cases represent an early example of an impact litigation campaign. The Chinese in these cases (and in other immigration cases in the Supreme Court) were represented by the leaders of the American bar, men with wide legal and political experience, who were paid by contributions from members of the Chinese community across the country. Notwithstanding the eminence and skill of the counsel for the Chinese, the Supreme Court upheld the actions of Congress. Given the important individual interests involved and the racially discriminatory purposes and effects of the laws, these decisions were portentous. Although dating to an earlier time when racial discrimination was an open goal of public policy, they continue to define the broad scope of federal power over immigration.


Skeptical of the arguments put forth in Robert Duncan's long-awaited, posthumously published The H. D. Book, this review essay questions the elevation of Pre-Raphaelite, Aestheticist, and Decadent poetry that forms the basis of Duncan's revisionist canon—a revision in which Wallace Stevens and T. S. Eliot are dismissed as "merely rational," while H. D. and Duncan himself are elevated to the uppermost ranks, just beneath Ezra Pound. The essay focuses on the peculiarity of "Wardour Street" diction returning to poetry in the postmodern era (especially in the verse of Gjertrud Schnackenberg) and connects this development to the nostalgia evidenced in Duncan's occultism. Placing the New Critics with the poets Karl Shapiro and Richard Wilbur, Duncan dismisses them all as "academics" and "descendants of those ministers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, holding out against the magic of poetry as once they held out against the magic-religion of witch cults." Emphasizing that it is the witch cults with which Duncan evidently sides, the essay concludes that Duncan's reranking of poets is no more reliable than his attitude toward rationality.


Traditional univariate control charts designed to monitor single variable quality characteristic have been successfully used in manufacturing processes. However, in manufacturing environment, variable settings are essentially multivariate that univariate control charts are not suitable for monitoring purposes. The Hotelling's T 2 multivariate control chart is a powerful statistical tool for modeling multivariate production systems and can shed light on how variables are interrelated to facilitate better understanding of process variations. This study deploys a multivariate control-charting scheme to monitor the quality of a manufactured part in a Malaysian-based automotive parts manufacturing company, as a case study. Three major steps in the Hotelling's T 2 retrospective operation are outlier deletion, variable selection and parameter estimation are methodically described in this paper. When applied to new sample observations of selected quality variables, the T 2 control chart reveals an 'out-of-control' condition, thus confirming the need for quality enhancement in the locally produced stamped part .


This systematic review focuses on the impact of Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) on teaching and learning. Learning is interpreted through a Vygotskian constructivist lens, emphasizing quality through dialogic interaction. Classroom interactions and achievement in standardized tests are considered formative and summative assessment tools, respectively. Thus, our aim was to investigate whether the IWB technology had any effect on teaching and learning, reflected in standardized forms of testing or in-classroom quality measures. An online search through Proquest and First Search resulted in sixteen studies of diverse methodologies. Qualitative synthesis of quantitative data indicated that IWBs have not raised the levels of pupils' achievement and do not necessarily impact the quality of classroom learning. More longitudinal studies should focus on particular subjects taught, the age of pupils and particular type(s) of use. Overall, quality teaching is an important condition for improved learning, which does not necessarily result from IWB use. However, there is a general consensus across all studies that learning can be facilitated and improved through the use of IWB. Synchronizing theory with technological applications seems to be key in answering such assumptions positively. More importantly, concerns are raised regarding the unfolded relation between achievement and classroom interaction.


In many science and engineering applications, the discretization of linear ill-posed problems gives rise to large ill-conditioned linear systems with right-hand
side degraded by noise. The solution of such linear systems requires the solution of a minimization problem with one quadratic constraint depending on
an estimate of the variance of the noise. This strategy is known as regularization. In this work, we propose to use Lagrangian methods for the solution of the
noise constrained regularization problem. Moreover, we introduce a new method based on Lagrangian methods and the discrepancy principle. We present numerical results on numerous test problems, image restoration and medical imaging
denoising. Our results indicate that the proposed strategies are effective and efficient in computing good regularized solutions of ill-conditioned linear systems
as well as the corresponding regularization parameters. Therefore, the proposed methods are actually a promising approach to deal with ill-posed problems.


T he Second Coming of Steve Jobs, Alan Deutschman. After 12 years of exile, Steve Jobs returned to the helm of Apple Computers as acting CEO and turned a billion dollar deficit into a $600 million profit last year. Based on interviews with rivals, colleagues, and friends who have worked with (and against) Jobs over the years, this book presents the story of Jobs's career; how and why he almost gave it up; the details of his negotiations with Disney's Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner; and his methods of leadership , management, and creativity. The San Francisco Application Business Components project from IBM provides a platform-independent infrastructure and ready-built components for constructing business applications. This book explains the purpose, design, and implementation of foundational, structural , process, and dynamic behavioral patterns. O pen Modeling with UML, Brian Hen-derson-Sellers and Bhuvan Unhelkar. Object-oriented process, environment, and notation (OPEN) addresses the challenge of migration, component integration , and Internet-based development, as well as high-level process and project management issues. OPEN is a tai-lorable environment that helps cus-tomize the development process to an organization's needs. This text targets software developers looking for an adaptable process for modeling with the Using both state models and Java programs , this book introduces a systematic approach to designing, analyzing, and implementing concurrent programs. With support for concurrency, Java provides an ideal implementation language. The book uses examples such as an automobile cruise control and a game of space invaders to illustrate the models and programs. Topics covered include interfer-A utomatic Algorithm Recognition and Replacement: A New Approach to Program Optimization, Robert Metzger and Zhaofang Wen. There are currently two approaches to applying parallelism to applications. One is to write completely new applications in new languages ; the other is to convert existing applications to a parallel form. This book describes a new theoretical framework for finding poor algorithms in an application's program and replacing them with algorithms that parallelize the code. U se Cases: Requirements in Context, Daryl Kulak and Eamonn Guiney. This book describes how to gather and define software requirements using a process based on use cases. It shows systems analysts and designers how use cases can reduce duplicate and inconsistent requirements and help document the entire requirements process clearly and efficiently. The book also covers the stakeholder interview, use case name filters , the context matrix, and user interface requirements.


Interferon (IFN) is a crucial first line of defense against viral infection. This cytokine induces the expression of several IFN-Stimulated Genes (ISGs), some of which act as restriction factors. Upon IFN stimulation, cells also express ISG15 and SUMO, two key ubiquitin-like (Ubl) modifiers that play important roles in the antiviral response. IFN itself increases the global cellular SUMOylation in a PML-dependent manner. Mass spectrometry-based proteomics enables the large-scale identification of Ubl protein conjugates to determine the sites of modification and the quantitative changes in protein abundance. Importantly, a key difference amongst SUMO paralogs is the ability of SUMO2/3 to form poly-SUMO chains that recruit SUMO ubiquitin ligases such RING finger protein RNF4 and RNF111, thus resulting in the proteasomal degradation of conjugated substrates. Crosstalk between poly-SUMOylation and ISG15 has been reported recently, where increased poly-SUMOylation in response to IFN enhances IFN-induced ISGylation, stabilizes several ISG products in a TRIM25-dependent fashion, and results in enhanced IFN-induced antiviral activities. This contribution will highlight the relevance of the global SUMO proteome and the crosstalk between SUMO, ubiquitin and ISG15 in controlling both the stability and function of specific restriction factors that mediate IFN antiviral defense.


Asymmetric cell division is a fundamental process that produces cellular diversity during development. In C. elegans, the Wnt signaling pathway regulates the asymmetric divisions of a number of cells including the T blast cell. We found that the let-19 and dpy-22 mutants have defects in their T-cell lineage, and lineage analyses showed that the defects were caused by disruption in the asymmetry of the T-cell division. We found that let-19 and dpy-22 encode homologs of the human proteins MED13/TRAP240 and MED12/TRAP230, respectively, which are components of the Mediator complex. Mediator is a multi-component complex that can regulate transcription by transducing the signals between activators and RNA polymerase in vitro. We also showed that LET-19 and DPY-22 form a complex in vivo with other components of Mediator, SUR-2/MED23 and LET-425/MED6. In the let-19 and dpy-22 mutants, tlp-1, which is normally expressed asymmetrically between the T-cell daughters through the function of the Wnt pathway, was expressed symmetrically in both daughter cells. Furthermore, we found that the let-19 and dpy-22 mutants were defective in the fusion of the Pn.p cell, a process that is regulated by bar-1/β-catenin. Ectopic cell fusion in bar-1 mutants was suppressed by the let-19 or dpy-22 mutations, while defective cell fusion in let-19 mutants was suppressed by lin-39/Hox mutations, suggesting that let-19 and dpy-22 repress the transcription of lin-39. These results suggest that LET-19 and DPY-22 in the Mediator complex repress the transcription of Wnt target genes.


Recent studies in anthropology have stressed the need to reconsider the issue of otherness and pluralism by drawing inspiration from indigenous ontologies and, thus, reassessing human/non-human relations. Starting from this premise, this article develops an analogous paradigm by offering the case study of ethnographic research on an aboriginal group (ādivāsī), the Kuttia Kondhs, living in one of the most remote and pristine jungles of India (Odisha). It presents a twofold journey through the symbolic analysis of the Myth of Creation (Kui Gaani) and the unprecedented documentation of a sacred site that is believed to be the centre of the cosmos. This is Sopāngaḍā, a sacred hill covered with forest, the womb of mother earth, from which beings emerged. One of the earliest pieces evidence is the close kinship and consubstantiality among human/non-human agencies composing the hill, a real living entity that embodies the ādivāsī macrocosm.


Growth of the U.S. Latino population translates into policy interest of how business owner, firm, and local characteristics may be different for Latinos. To explore ethnicity and business ownership, this study merges restricted-access data from 11 million businesses. Multinomial logistic regression estimates how characteristics associate with the probability of the business being Latino-owned relative to White-owned, Black-owned, or Asian-owned. There are differences in the source and amount of start-up funds, gender, and the sector of the business. The differences depend on the group to which Latinos are being compared; for example, manufacturing firms are less likely to be Latino owned than White owned, but more likely to be Latino owned than Black owned. An exception is college education and rurality; Latino owners are consistently less likely to be college educated and more likely to locate in rural areas than the other ethnic minorities. The results should be helpful to groups attempting to improve Latino business outcomes.


[1] Satellite observations of tropospheric chemical constituents (such as carbon monoxide, CO) reveal a persistent maximum in the upper troposphere―lower stratosphere (UTLS) associated with the Asian summer monsoon anticyclone. Diagnostic studies suggest that the strong anticyclonic circulation acts to confine air masses, but the sources of pollution and transport pathways to altitudes near the tropopause are the subject of debate. Here we use the Model for Ozone and Related Tracers 4 (MOZART-4) global chemistry transport model, driven by analyzed meteorological fields, to study the source and transport of CO in the Asian monsoon circulation. A MOZART-4 simulation for one summer is performed, and results are compared with satellite observations of CO from the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder and the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment Fourier Transform Spectrometer. Overall, good agreement is found between the modeled and observed CO in the UTLS, promoting confidence in the model simulation. The model results are then analyzed to understand the sources and transport pathways of CO in the Asian monsoon region, and within the anticyclone in particular. The results show that CO is transported upward by monsoon deep convection, with the main surface sources from India and Southeast Asia. The uppermost altitude of the convective transport is ∼12 km, near the level of main deep convective outflow, and much of the CO is then advected in the upper troposphere northeastward across the Pacific Ocean and southwestward with the cross-equatorial Hadley flow. However, some of the CO is also advected vertically to altitudes near the tropopause (∼16 km) by the large-scale upward circulation on the eastern side of the anticyclone, and this air then becomes trapped within the anticyclone (to the west of the convection, extending to the Middle East). Within the anticyclone, the modeled CO shows a relative maximum near 15 km, in good agreement with observations.


The landmark case of Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, which denied standing to indirect purchasers to sue antitrust violators, has been subjected to steady and widespread criticism since it was decided in 1977. Despite three decades of dissatisfaction, however, debate over indirect purchaser standing has failed to generate satisfying solutions that meet the objectives of antitrust law and reflect its underlying principles. We attribute the lack of creative alternatives to an undue emphasis on legal formalism, fostered both by the Supreme Court's elaboration of the indirect purchaser rule and the doctrine's failure to recognize the pervasiveness of multilayer supply chains. In this Article, we argue for a return to functionalist antitrust objectives. We review the development of the doctrine, explain its descent into formalism, identify its significant shortcomings, and offer a comprehensive framework that addresses the difficult problem of antitrust standing. Building off that framework, and drawing on lessons from securities law, we propose a mechanism that opens antitrust suits to indirect purchasers, consolidates multiple claims into a single proceeding, and designates a presumptive lead plaintiff. Such a mechanism will enhance the impact of underenforced antitrust laws, restore compensation to injured parties, and reduce the administrative and agency costs of parallel litigation.


Over the last ten years, behavioral biology has become an important tool for legal scholars. In fact, an informal survey rated behavioral biology as the second most important development in the legal academy since 2000. This paper will present the basics of behavioral biology for legal scholars. After giving an introduction to brain science, it will discuss such topics as the selfish gene and reciprocal altruism, universals, sexual selection, morality, culture, and the social contract.


: Knowledge of connectivity pathways in the marine environment is crucial for understanding the spatial structure of populations and for developing appropriate monitoring and management strategies. Here, we used the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis as a model species to in-vestigate connectivity patterns within the Berlengas and Arrábida Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) along the central Portuguese west coast. We generated an atlas of location-specific environmental markers based on the microchemistry of bivalve larval shells (using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry). This atlas was then employed to trace the natal origins of newly settled mussels and generate connectivity matrices among populations. Our results reflected 3 distinctive chemical signatures in larval shells, corresponding to 3 regions: Estremadura, Cascais and Arrábida. Linear discriminant analyses allowed for a high reclassification success (average of 79.5% of jackknifed cross-validated cases correctly assigned) based on 8 of the 16 trace elements analyzed (B, P, Co, Cu, Zn, Ce, Pb and U). The population connectivity matrix identified different dispersal pathways for mussel larvae, in particular a predominantly northward dispersion pattern in July 2013. This pattern was consistent with simultaneous environmental physical data, which confirmed an extended period of wind reversal and upwelling relaxation. The Arrábida MPA was an important source population for the other 2 regions and showed high rates of self-recruitment but limited connectivity to the Berlengas MPA. These direct measures of demographic connectivity can be a powerful tool to inform policymakers on the conservation and management of ecologically coherent networks of protected areas in coastal marine ecosystems.


The Semail Ophiolite in eastern Arabia is the largest and best-exposed slice of oceanic lithosphere on land. Detailed knowledge of the tectonic evolution of the shallow crust, in particular during and after ophiolite obduction in Late Cretaceous times is contrasted by few constraints on physical and compositional properties of the middle and lower continental crust below the obducted units. The role of inherited, pre-obduction crustal architecture remains therefore unaccounted for in our understanding of crustal evolution and the present-day geology. Based on seismological data acquired during a 27-month campaign in northern Oman, Ambient Seismic Noise Tomography and Receiver Function analysis provide for the first time a 3-D radially anisotropic shear-wave velocity (VS) model and a consistent Moho map below the iconic Semail Ophiolite. The model highlights deep crustal boundaries that segment the eastern Arabian basement in two distinct units. The previously undescribed Western Jabal Akhdar Zone separates Arabian crust with typical continental properties and a thickness of ∼40 – 45 km in the northwest from a compositionally different terrane in the southeast that is interpreted as a terrane accreted during the Pan-African orogeny in Neoproterozoic times. East of the Ibra Zone, another deep crustal boundary, crustal thickness decreases to 30 – 35 km and very high lower crustal VS suggest large-scale mafic intrusions into, and possible underplating of the Arabian continental crust that occurred most likely during Permian breakup of Pangea. Mafic reworking is sharply bounded by the (upper crustal) Semail Gap Fault Zone, northwest of which no such high velocities are found in the crust. Topography of the Oman Mountains is supported by a mild crustal root and Moho depth below the highest topography, the Jabal Akhdar Dome, is ∼42 km. Radial anisotropy is robustly resolved in the upper crust and aids in discriminating dipping allochthonous units from autochthonous sedimentary rocks that are indistinguishable by isotropic VS alone. Lateral thickness variations of the ophiolite highlight the Haylayn Ophiolite Massif on the northern flank of Jabal Akhdar Dome and the Hawasina Window as the deepest reaching unit. Ophiolite thickness is ∼10 km in the southern and northern massifs, and ≤5 km elsewhere.


It is well-documented in the literature that the orthostatic stress during flight maneuvers induces changes in pilots' cardiovascular system by imposing dramatic changes to the blood circulation process. Research reported for prediction of cardiovascular system dynamic response during G-transition is limited. As such, more models are needed to gain insight into the behavior of cardiovascular response during G-transition. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to develop two novel models based on: (1) artificial neural network (ANN) and (2) adaptive-network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) to predict the variations of the blood pressure (BP) with respect to flight maneuver's parameters, i.e., dwell time, during G-transitions. The proposed models will be used to provide operational recommendations and pilot selection for any routinepredefined flight maneuver. The training data for ANN and ANFIS are based on experimental data sets collected from a man-rated electronic tilt table that applies gigahertz-acceleration transition from +0.861 Gz (head-up (HU)) to -0.767Gz (head-down (HD)) and back to +0.861 Gz (HU) using either pitch or roll rotation. A case study is presented on how the model is intended to be used in future to predict pilot's cardiovascular response and evaluate the pilot's qualification for a specific maneuver.


The conditional independence assumption imposed by the hidden Markov models (HMMs) makes it difficult to model temporal correlation patterns in human speech. Traditionally, this limitation is circumvented by appending the first and second-order regression coefficients to the observation feature vectors. Although this leads to improved performance in recognition tasks, we argue that a straightforward use of dynamic features in HMMs will result in an inferior model, due to the incorrect handling of dynamic constraints. In this thesis I will show that an HMM can be transformed into a Trajectory-HMM capable of generating smoothed output mean trajectories, by performing a per-utterance normalisation. The resulting model can be trained by either maximising model log-likelihood or minimising mean generation errors on the training data. To combat the exponential growth of paths in searching, the idea of delayed path merging is proposed and a new time-synchronous decoding algorithm built on the concept of token-passing is designed for use in the recognition task. The Trajectory-HMM brings a new way of sharing knowledge between speech recognition and synthesis components, by tackling both problems in a coherent statistical framework. I evaluated the Trajectory-HMM on two different speech tasks using the speaker-dependent MOCHA-TIMIT database. First as a generative model to recover articulatory features from speech signal, where the Trajectory-HMM was used in a complementary way to the conventional HMM modelling techniques, within a joint Acoustic-Articulatory framework. Experiments indicate that the jointly trained acoustic-articulatory models are more accurate (having a lower Root Mean Square error) than the separately trained ones, and that Trajectory-HMM training results in greater accuracy compared with conventional Baum-Welch parameter updating. In addition, the Root Mean Square (RMS) training objective proves to be consistently better than the Maximum Likelihood objective. However, experiment of the phone recognition task shows that the MLE trained Trajectory-HMM, while retaining attractive properties of being a proper generative model, tends to favour over-smoothed trajectories among competing hypothesises, and does not perform better than a conventional HMM. We use this to build an argument that models giving a better fit on training data may suffer a reduction of discrimination by being too faithful to the training data. Finally, experiments on using triphone models show that increasing modelling detail is an effective way to leverage modelling performance with little added complexity in training.


Abstract Surinabant [5-(4-bromophenyl)-1-(2,4-dichlorophenyl)-4-ethyl-N-(1-piperidinyl)-1H-pyrazole-3-carboxamide] is a cannabinoid receptor type 1 antagonist which is believed to indirectly inhibit the dopamine-mediated reward system for food, alcohol and nicotine addiction. Currently, there is no analytical method reported for the determination of surinabant in biological matrices. In this work, a liquid chromatographic (LC) method with both ultraviolet (UV) and electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometric (ESI-MS/MS) detection has been developed and validated for the quantitative measurement of surinabant in human plasma to support the clinical investigation of this new drug. The compound AM251 was used for internal calibration. A protein precipitation procedure was employed for plasma sample preparation. Chromatographic separation of surinabant and internal standard was carried out on a Waters YMC™ Pro C4 cartridge column using a mobile phase containing 99.9% CH3CN/H2O (50:50, v/v) and 0.1% HCOOH. The LC-UV detection was accomplished by monitoring the absorption at 258 nm, which had an LLOQ of 100 ng/mL and a calibration range of 100–1500 ng/mL for surinabant. The LC-ESI-MS/MS detection was achieved using positive multiple-reaction-monitoring (MRM) mode for surinabant (m/z 523 → 423) and the internal standard (m/z 555 → 455), which had an LLOQ of 5.00 ng/mL and a calibration curve of 5.00–1000 ng/mL.


'Instrumentation Fault Simulation Training Module' or known as FAST.tool
is essentially a learning tool which serves as a training kit for instrument
troubleshooting. This tool is enthused by numerous complaints concerning new
engineers who are inadequately performing troubleshooting. Believing that the
engineers' deficiencies are due to lack of experience and substantial training, this tool
will optimistically solve the problem. Understanding of various type of
instrumentation faults are the key points in order to accomplish this project as well as
good knowledge in Visual Basic scripting and coding. To accomplish the project, the
prototyping process model approached is applied. The model process begins with a
requirements capture activity, followed by a quick design and build of a prototype or
mock-up of the product. After analyzing the first built model, further modifications to
the requirements are generated and the process begins again to build the second
model. These processes continue until the final model satisfied the objectives of the
project. Taking into consideration all interactive enhancement suggestions towards
the project, new and better user interface design is created and introduced. This
project aims to lay the solid foundation for the troubleshooting skill development
using multimedia aid become to overcome the troubleshooting deficiency.


The hard X-ray continuum and gamma-ray lines from a Type Ia supernova dominate its integrated photon emissions and can provide unique diagnostics of the mass of the ejecta, the 56Ni yield and spatial distribution, its kinetic energy and expansion speed, and the mechanism of explosion. Such signatures and their time behavior "X-ray" the bulk debris field in direct fashion, and do not depend on the ofttimes problematic and elaborate UV, optical, and near-infrared spectroscopy and radiative transfer that have informed the study of these events for decades. However, to date no hard photons have ever been detected from a Type Ia supernova in explosion. With the advent of the supernova SN 2014J in M82, at a distance of ∼3.5 Mpc, this situation may soon change. Both NuSTAR and INTEGRAL have the potential to detect SN 2014J, and, if spectra and light curves can be measured, would usefully constrain the various explosion models published during the last ∼30 yr. In support of these observational campaigns, we provide predictions for the hard X-ray continuum and gamma-line emissions for 15 Type Ia explosion models gleaned from the literature. The model set, containing as it does deflagration, delayed detonation, merger detonation, pulsational delayed detonation, and sub-Chandrasekhar helium detonation models, collectively spans a wide range of properties, and hence signatures. We provide a brief discussion of various diagnostics (with examples), but importantly make the spectral and line results available electronically to aid in the interpretation of the anticipated data.


The United States is almost alone among nations in permitting the execution of juvenile offenders. Citing this fact, along with a variety of legal materials, litigants and scholars are increasingly claiming that the United States' use of the juvenile death penalty violates international law. This Article examines the validity of this claim, from the perspective of both the international legal system and the U.S. legal system. Based on a detailed examination of the United States' interaction with treaty regimes and international institutions since the late 1940s, the Article concludes that the international law arguments against the juvenile death penalty have significant weaknesses. As the Article documents, for a number of reasons the United States has consistently declined to consent to treaty provisions restricting the juvenile death penalty, and it has consistently declared the human rights treaties that contain such restrictions to be non-self-executing. In addition, since at least the mid-1980s, the United States has persistently objected to - and thereby legally opted out of - any customary international law restriction on the juvenile death penalty. The Article also argues that, even if these international law arguments were more persuasive, they would not provide a basis for relief in U.S. courts. For separation of powers reasons, courts properly will decline to apply international law to override the considered choices of the President and Senate in their ratification of treaties. In addition, because of concerns relating to both separation of powers and federalism, courts properly will decline to apply customary international law to override state criminal punishment, especially when (as is the case here) the political branches have expressly declined to do so by treaty. This potential gap between evolving international law norms and U.S. judicial enforcement is less disturbing than some commentators appear to assume - it simply means that the juvenile death penalty issue, like other difficult issues of social policy in the United States, must be resolved through U.S. democratic and constitutional processes. Although important on its own terms, the juvenile death penalty issue may also have broader implications for the relationship between U.S. law and international human rights law. Litigants and scholars have met with at least modest success in attempting to have international human rights law incorporated into the U.S. legal system. This success, however, has primarily come in the context of civil lawsuits seeking damages for human rights abuses committed in foreign countries. Increasingly, litigants and scholars are seeking to build on this success and persuade U.S. courts to apply international human rights law internally as a basis for overriding domestic laws and practices. The juvenile death penalty has become a central focus of this effort, and the way in which the international law challenges are resolved in this context may have a significant impact on the viability of other attempts to "domesticate" international human rights law.


Problem statement: Map creation remains a very active field in the rob otics and AI community, however it contains some challenge points like data association and the high degree of accuracy of localization which are seems to be diff icult in some cases, more than that, most of these study focus on the robot navigation, without any co nsideration for the semantic of the environment, to serve human like blind persons. Approach: This study introduced a monocular SLAM method, which uses the Scale Invariant Features Transform (SIFT) representation for the scene. The scene represented as clouds of sift features within the map; this hie rarchical representation of space, serving to estim ate the current direction in the environment within the current session. The system exploited the tracking of the same features of successive frames to calcul ate scalar weights for these features, to build a m ap of the environment indicating the camera movement, then by comparing the camera movement of the current moving with the true pathway within the same session the system can help and advice the blind person to navigate more confidently, through audito ry information for the path way in the surroundings. Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) used to estimate the camera movement within the successive frames. Results: The experimental work tested using the proposed method with a hand-held camera walking in indoor environment. The results s how a good estimation on the spatial locations of the camera within few milliseconds. Tracking of the true pathway in addition to semantic environment within the session can give a good support to the b lind person for navigation. Conclusion: The study presented new semantic features model helping the b lind person for navigation environment using these clouds of features, for long-term appearance- based localization of a cane with web camera vision as the external sensor.


Background Robot-mediated telerehabilitation has the potential to provide patient-tailored cost-effective rehabilitation. However, compliance with therapy can be a problem that undermines the prospective advantages of telerehabilitation technologies. Lack of motivation has been identified as a major factor that hampers compliance. Exploring various motivational interventions, the integration of citizen science activities in robotics-based rehabilitation has been shown to increase patients' motivation to engage in otherwise tedious exercises by tapping into a vast array of intrinsic motivational drivers. Patient engagement can be further enhanced by the incorporation of social interactions. Objective Herein, we explored the possibility of bolstering engagement in physical therapy by leveraging cooperation among users in an environmental citizen science project. Specifically, we studied how the integration of cooperation into citizen science influences user engagement, enjoyment, and motor performance. Furthermore, we investigated how the degree of interdependence among users, such that is imposed through independent or joint termination (JT), affects participation in citizen science-based telerehabilitation. Methods We developed a Web-based citizen science platform in which users work in pairs to classify images collected by an aquatic robot in a polluted water canal. The classification was carried out by labeling objects that appear in the images and trashing irrelevant labels. The system was interfaced by a haptic device for fine motor rehabilitation. We recruited 120 healthy volunteers to operate the platform. Of these volunteers, 98 were cooperating in pairs, with 1 user tagging images and the other trashing labels. The other 22 volunteers performed both tasks alone. To vary the degree of interdependence within cooperation, we implemented independent and JTs. Results We found that users' engagement and motor performance are modulated by their assigned task and the degree of interdependence. Motor performance increased when users were subjected to independent termination (P=.02), yet enjoyment decreased when users were subjected to JT (P=.005). A significant interaction between the type of termination and the task was found to influence productivity (P<.001) as well as mean speed, peak speed, and path length of the controller (P=.01, P=.006, and P<.001, respectively). Conclusions Depending on the type of termination, cooperation was not always positively associated with engagement, enjoyment, and motor performance. Therefore, enhancing user engagement, satisfaction, and motor performance through cooperative citizen science tasks relies on both the degree of interdependence among users and the perceived nature of the task. Cooperative citizen science may enhance motivation in robotics-based telerehabilitation, if designed attentively.


Polypyrrole–zinc sulfide (PPy-ZnS) and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)–zinc sulfide (PEDOT–ZnS) composite films were synthesized and characterized. Their electrochemical behaviors were investigated. The synthesis of PPy-ZnS and PEDOT-ZnS composite films was carried out by electropolymerization of pyrrole and 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene in the presence of ZnS nanoparticles dispersed in the electrolytic solution. The structures of the PPy–ZnS and PEDOT–ZnS composite films were characterized by the use of scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and UV–vis spectroscopy. Cyclic voltammetry was used to determine the electrochemical behavior of the resulting materials. The Energy Dispersive X-Ray mapping (EDX mapping) method was used to detect the existence of Zn and S ions on PPy-ZnS and the Zn ion on PEDOT-ZnS composite films. A four-probe technique was used to measure the conductivity of PPy–ZnS and PEDOT–ZnS composite films along with PPy and PEDOT.


The current study examines the Stock Market Anomalies in Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE); Sri Lanka during the period of 2004 to 2013. The existences of both Day of the Week Effect and Monthly Effect have been tested using daily and monthly data respectively. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method and GARCH (1, 1) model were employed to capture the Day of the Week effects and Monthly Effects along with the daily volatility behavior. The sample period was divided in to two periods as War Period and Post War Period in order to take the impacts of the War in to account. The results indicate the presence of negative Monday effect and the positive effects for all other days only for the war period. Further, the positive volatility effect on Monday and the negative volatility effect on Friday have been examined for both war period and the entire sample period with significant Wald F statistics. Despite, the positive January effects are common for all sample periods, the negative December effects cannot be identified for post war period. Hence, the study confirms the existence of Stock Market anomalies; both day of the week effect and monthly effect particularly during the war period. Moreover, these seasonality patterns limit the validity of Efficient Market Hypothesis in the context of Colombo Stock Exchange.


The Supreme Court's jurisprudence on capital sentencing is a mess. That may be the only proposition that draws a consensus in this sharply divisive area. Critics and supporters of capital punishment agree that the system created by the Court fails to achieve its goals, although for different reasons. The entire body of case law is an exercise in judicial activism. That is, it consists of the decisions by the Supreme Court creating rules that shifting majorities believed were good policy at the time, unsupported by any demonstrable connection to the original understanding of the Eighth Amendment. I contend that the worst aspect of this body of case law–both in constitutional illegitimacy and in harmful effects–is the rule of Lockett v. Ohio that the defendant must be allowed to introduce and have considered virtually unlimited evidence in mitigation. The Court's inability to agree with itself from one year to the next on what this rule means has caused many wrongful reversals of well-deserved sentences. The unlimited potential it creates for attacking the competence of defense counsel continues to cause massive delay and expense, and all for evidence of limited probative value. This is a massive failure of judicial activism. I propose that the Court prune back the rule to only the circumstances of the crime, youth, and lack of a criminal record and return the question of the admissibility of all other mitigation to the people and the democratic process.


The lack of readily-available large corpora of aligned monolingual sentence pairs is a major obstacle to the development of Statistical Machine Translation-based paraphrase models. In this paper, we describe the use of annotated datasets and Support Vector Machines to induce larger monolingual paraphrase corpora from a comparable corpus of news clusters found on the World Wide Web. Features include: morphological variants; WordNet synonyms and hypernyms; loglikelihood-based word pairings dynamically obtained from baseline sentence alignments; and formal string features such as word-based edit distance. Use of this technique dramatically reduces the Alignment Error Rate of the extracted corpora over heuristic methods based on position of the sentences in the text.


The principle of proportionality is at the cornerstone of EU law, and precisely of the case-law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

In the law and economics literature, the general principles of law are commonly opposed to legal rules in terms of efficiency. On the one hand, the legal formalistic approach consists of apprehending the law as principled, whereby principles of law do not and should not encompass an efficiency rationale and should be self-sufficient. On the other hand, the legal nihilism denying the existence or relevance of the general principles of law favours legal rules that are said to incorporate an efficiency rationale. I intend to analyse the efficiency rationale of probably the most important general principles of EU law—the proportionality principle.

In this paper, I shall assert that not only does the EU proportionality principle encapsulate an efficiency rationale, but most importantly, it has been interpreted by the ECJ as such—hence, I propose the representation of the principle of proportionality as a principle of economic efficiency.

After having introduced the principle of proportionality (1), I shall decipher the proportionality principle both from a law and economics perspective, and from a comparative perspective (2). Then, I shall delve into the jurisprudence of the ECJ so that the judicial reasoning of the Court as this reasoning proves the relevance of the proposed representation (3). Finally, I conclude in light of the findings of this paper (4).


Conduct Disorder in children was a repeating and staying behavior, interrupting another person's rights and social norms with onset before 10 years. Like snapping, threatening, or intimidating somebody's else, playing truant often, out at night thought the parents forbid him and started before 13 years old. Often, the conduct disorder also signed by cruelness and lack of regret. The
effect could cause anti-social in the near future and effected in family and social relationship, study disturbance and the most important, influenced the next development if not seriously handled. The research aimed to find out the etiology of conduct disorder to the children who has conduct disorder. The subject were 2 children with conduct disorder.
This research was qualitative descriptive. Data collection method used was interview and observation, data validity used triangulation by source.
From the research, could be found that etiology of conduct disorder in children consisted of three factor related in causing the conduct disorder to both subjects. The three factors were : 1) Predisposing risk factor, in this thing, father subject who has temperamental, emotional, and
egoistic behavior ; 2) Risk factor, in this research, un-supporting and un-harmonic family condition, disorder which caused by parents fighting, and the wrong development pattern by parents in both subjects ; (3) Precipitating event, factor caused the disturbance behavior. In
subject 1 because of parents divorcing, and in subject 2, because of his sister birth, and the parents paid more attention to subjects' sister made the subject feel lack attention and love compared with subject's sister and the influence from subject's friends.


In this paper we consider the solution of scheduling problems that are inherently over-subscribed. In such problems, there are always more tasks to execute within a given time frame than available resource capacity will allow, and hence decisions must be made about which tasks should be included in the schedule and which should be excluded. We adopt a controlled, iterative repair search approach, and focus on improving the results of an initial priority-driven solution generation procedure. Central to our approach is a new retraction heuristic, termed max-flexibility, which is responsible for identifying which tasks to (temporarily) retract from the schedule for reassignment in an effort to incorporate additional tasks into the schedule. The max-flexibility heuristic chooses those tasks that have maximum flexibility for assignment within their feasible windows. We empirically evaluate the performance of max-flexibility using problem data and the basic scheduling procedure from a fielded airlift mission scheduling application. We show that it produces better improvement results than two contention-based retraction heuristics, including a variant of min-conflicts L Minton et al., 1992, with significantly less search and computational cost.


Crises are an integral part of our modern world; they are breaking points that disturb our sense of normalcy. While some of them are treated as 'normal incidents' that are bound to occur in a vast and complex array of governmental activities, others spark a blaze of media attention, public emotions, and political upheaval. This thesis explores how political office-holders respond to incidents that are perceived as blameworthy and how crisis-induced accountability processes affect their political careers. In an attempt to determine this, a series of case studies containing elements of high-pressure crisis-induced accountability were examined. Strategies employed by top political actors in coping with accountability and blame are identified and discussed. Crises often trigger discussions on accountability and top political actors engage in a framing contest over defining the causes of the crisis and who or what should be held responsible. This is a staged and dynamic process in which key actors employ different strategies in several arenas for managing and ultimately assigning blame for the unwanted event. These processes are shaped in relation to issues regarding causality, agency, and responsibility. In addition to the fact that crises can be managed on different 'levels' and arenas, we can also see that certain contextual and situational factors (such as personal experience and the constitutional framework of the cabinet) can constrain or enable how blame is managed and ultimately what the consequences will be for the careers of top political office-holders.


The impetus of this research is to meet the growing need for accurate and practical methods to support traffic analysis in work zones. Road construction and maintenance activities have become a common feature for the majority of U.S. roads over the last few years as a result of an aging infrastructure and increased funding in the last two highway bills. At the same time, traffic levels across the United States continue to surge, especially along urban corridors. Therefore, it is no surprise that concerns over traffic safety and delays in work zones continue to top national transportation priorities [8]. Recent transportation legislation has addressed work zone safety and mobility concerns by requiring states to develop a systematic process that starts early in project development and continues through project completion. In addition, every significant project must include a transportation management plan [14]. This research examines the application of two classes of traffic analysis models, macroscopic sketch analysis and microscopic traffic simulation, to work zones. The Excel-based QuickZone developed by the Federal Highway Administration provides a relatively easy to use macro-level analysis tool. Citilabs' Dynasim and PTV America's VISSIM are the two microscopic traffic simulation models used in this study. The research will evaluate the application of these tools to an urban interstate work zone. Specifically, this research will examine the following: 1) how the use of traffic analysis models relates to federal requirements about considering traffic impacts of major construction projects, 2) the accuracy of model results in comparison to real-world conditions, and 3) modeling effort and data requirements of these models. The primary objectives of this research are as follows: 1) determining the feasibility of applying a traffic-analysis model to a work-zone environment, 2) calibrating and validating the simulation models based on data collected in the work zone, 3) using the calibrated model to apply various work zone management strategies, and 4) documenting the research findings and lessons learned from the model applications.


Purpose: Responses to therapy with chimeric antigen receptor T cells recognizing CD19 (CART19, CTL019) may vary by histology. Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) represents a B-cell malignancy that remains incurable despite novel therapies such as the BTK inhibitor ibrutinib, and where data from CTL019 therapy are scant. Using MCL as a model, we sought to build upon the outcomes from CTL019 and from ibrutinib therapy by combining these in a rational manner. Experimental Design: MCL cell lines and primary MCL samples were combined with autologous or normal donor-derived anti-CD19 CAR T cells along with ibrutinib. The effect of the combination was studied in vitro and in mouse xenograft models. Results: MCL cells strongly activated multiple CTL019 effector functions, and MCL killing by CTL019 was further enhanced in the presence of ibrutinib. In a xenograft MCL model, we showed superior disease control in the CTL019- as compared with ibrutinib-treated mice (median survival not reached vs. 95 days, P < 0.005) but most mice receiving CTL019 monotherapy eventually relapsed. Therefore, we added ibrutinib to CTL019 and showed that 80% to 100% of mice in the CTL019 + ibrutinib arm and 0% to 20% of mice in the CTL019 arm, respectively, remained in long-term remission (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Combining CTL019 with ibrutinib represents a rational way to incorporate two of the most recent therapies in MCL. Our findings pave the way to a two-pronged therapeutic strategy in patients with MCL and other types of B-cell lymphoma. Clin Cancer Res; 22(11); 2684–96. ©2016 AACR.


Challenges to jurisdiction arise when the United States seeks to charge a foreign national under U.S. laws for conduct occurring outside U.S. territorial jurisdiction. (1) Adding to those challenges are situations when the United States does not have an extradition treaty with the country in which the foreign defendant resides; therefore, the defendant is under no legal obligation to appear before a U.S. court. (2) In In re Hijazi, (3) the Seventh Circuit addressed whether a non-fugitive foreign defendant was required to travel to the United States to be arraigned before he was entitled to a ruling on his motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. (4) The court held that the defendant was under no legal obligation to travel to the United States and that he was entitled to a ruling on his motion prior to arraignment. (5) Ali Hijazi, a Lebanese citizen and resident of Kuwait, was indicted in 2005 in the Central District of Illinois for violations of the Major Fraud Act and the Wire Fraud Act for alleged acts in Kuwait. (6) The indictment alleged that Hijazi, and a co-defendant Jeff Mazon, defrauded the U.S. Government by submitting inflated invoices to the U.S. Army under a contract for fuel tankers and related services. (7) Hijazi, who was in Kuwait at the time of the indictment, turned himself over to Kuwaiti authorities. (8) Because the United States and Kuwait do not have an extradition treaty, neither Hijazi nor Kuwait were under any legal obligation to surrender Hijazi to the United States for arraignment. (9) With the assistance of U.S. counsel, Hijazi filed a motion to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that the U.S. District Court lacked jurisdiction over him. (10) The district court decided to hold the motion in abeyance, rather than rule on it, until Hijazi travelled to the United States for arraignment. (11) Hijazi filed a second motion to dismiss in December 2007, but the district court did not address it until September 2008 when the court ordered the motion be held in abeyance until Hijazi appeared before it. (12) In August 2008, more than three years after the indictment, Hijazi filed a petition for a writ of mandamus in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, requesting that the district court be directed to rule on the motion and dismiss the indictment. (13) The Seventh Circuit held the district court had a duty to rule on Hijazi's motion because Hijazi was under no legal obligation to surrender himself for arraignment and the lower court was in a better position than the circuit court to rule on the merits of the motion. (14) Customary international law recognizes that a state may prescribe laws with respect to conduct outside its territory that has substantial effects within its territory, unless exercising such jurisdiction would be unreasonable. (15) If the extraterritorial reach of a federal statute is ambiguous, U.S. courts ordinarily construe it "to avoid unreasonable interference with the sovereign authority of other nations." (16) Thus, the courts have created a rebuttable presumption that federal statutes regulate only domestic conduct. (17) In a criminal case, a defendant may challenge the court's jurisdiction over him prior to trial by claiming that the indictment was defective or failed to invoke the court's jurisdiction. (18) The court has discretion to dismiss an indictment prior to arraignment. (19) Certain circumstances, however, may limit the court's discretion to rule on a motion. (20) If the defendant is a fugitive, then the fugitive disentitlement doctrine permits the court to refuse to rule on a motion by the defendant until he has surrendered. (21) Also, if the defendant is not present at the beginning of trial, then the trial may not proceed in absentia of the defendant, unless the defendant has consented. (22) If a defendant believes that the court has exceeded its judicial authority or that it has failed to exercise a judicial duty with regard to the defendant's motion, he may petition a superior court for a writ of mandamus. …


Terror management theory posits that to maintain psychological security despite the awareness of personal mortality, humans must maintain faith in cultural worldviews. These worldviews provide ways for humans to believe they are significant enduring beings in a world of meaning rather than mere animals fated only to obliteration upon death. We review basic support for terror management theory and research exploring the implications of terror management theory for understanding prejudice, stereotyping, intergroup conflict, and political attitudes. This research shows that when the psychological need to defend these worldviews is heightened by reminders of death (mortality salience), prejudice, stereotyping, and support for charismatic leaders and aggression against outgroups is increased. Terror management concerns also lead targets of prejudice to disidentify with their ingroup and confirm negative stereotypes of their group. We conclude by considering the implications of terror management theory and research for the alleviation of prejudice and intergroup conflict.


Fluid power scientists and engineers have produced a large amount of high quality books so far, which cover a vast amount of technologies involved in this field. Names like H. Merritt, D. McCloy, H.R. Martin, W. Backe, J Watton, K. Edge, M. Ivantysynova, N.D. Manring among many others must be considered as the milestones in this field; their scientific publications and books have inspired generations of engineers.
The first author of this book was lucky to be able to closely work for over 10 years with Professor John Watton, and in fact, most of the original research presented in this volume was undertaken at Cardiff University.
The present book focuses on several components of fluid mechanics. The first three chapters are designed to give a proper background to the reader regarding the main fluid characteristics, chapter 1, the main fluid mechanics equations, chapter 2, and a strategic background of the Computer Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques, chapter 3. It must be kept in mind that nowadays, conventional mechanics, as well as fluid mechanics, are fully immersed in the CFD era, therefore the components design desperately needs the use of this relatively new tool.
Chapter 4 introduces original research based on fluid mechanics understanding of relief valves and servovalves, dynamic and stability considerations are being given in both cases, and hints to solve stability problems are provided. Chapter 5 also provides original research on, very likely, the most complex machines in the fluid power field; piston pumps and motors. In fact, chapter 5 focuses on axial piston pumps, although the information gathered in this chapter can be directly extrapolated to other piston pumps and motor configurations. In Chapter 5 the reader will find a thorough mathematical description of how slippers with non vented grooves can be designed, the effect of grooves on pistons is also thoroughly analyzed. The barrel dynamic movements and piston pump pressure dynamics under different operating conditions are also introduced in this chapter. In all cases, the reader will be able to extract ideas of how a proper design shall be obtained. It is important o highlight that all experiments presented in chapter 5 were done by the book's first author in the Professor John Watton Fluid Power laboratory at Cardiff University UK, this is why Professor John Watton has to be seen as a co-author of this particular chapter.
Chapters 6, 7 and 8 are designed to introduce some details which are often forgotten in many publications; these are the use of accumulators, the importance of proper filtration and the use of cartridge valves whenever fluid pressure and flow are overcoming a certain value. It is crucial to realize that accumulators can vastly improve a given circuit efficiency, often saving large amounts of energy. A proper filtration is crucial to increase the components life and prevent system failures.
According to the authors' understanding, the present book may very well be used as a design tool for several Fluid Power components. Manufacturers, Engineers and fluid Power Researchers may get some helpful ideas to improve their products


A theoretical and numerical investigation is presented of the behavior of magneto-optic TE–TM vector spatial solitons in the neighborhood of a waveguide discontinuity. A comprehensive perturbation theory is developed that leads to a global wave equation and a Lagrangian analysis of some of the soliton dynamics. The mathematics is supported by numerical simulations, and nonreciprocity, introduced by the magneto-optical influence, is clearly demonstrated. It is concluded that magneto-optic waveguides have great potential for use in nonlinear optics and in the anticipated improved chip technology.


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To explore the association between lesbians' knowledge of human papillomavirus (HPV) cancer risk with age, education, and openness with a woman's healthcare provider; and to explore the relationship between lesbians' knowledge of female-to-female HPV transmission with age, education, and openness with one's physician.

DESIGN
A descriptive correlational survey.

SETTING
Surveys were distributed at lesbian and gay community events such as Bingo A-Go-Go; Rainbow Support Group meetings; Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Student Union of the University of Delaware meetings; and the Second Annual Women's Conference of the Women's Project of CAMP (Create a More Positive) Rehoboth.

SAMPLE
96 women who self-identified as lesbian, bisexual, or transgender and lived in the state of Delaware.

METHODS
A 35-question survey, modified from an existing survey from the Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Health Interview Survey.

MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES
Knowledge of HPV transmission, age, education, openness about sexual preference with physician, sexual preference, and knowledge of the relationship between HPV and development of cancer.

FINDINGS
Twenty-nine women (30%) either did not know or did not believe that HPV could be spread by female-to-female sexual contact. Similarly, 29 (30%) of the women did not identify HPV as a cancer risk.

CONCLUSIONS
Lack of HPV knowledge was prevalent in this population of women.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
Cultural awareness by nurses is essential when discussing cancer prevention and early detection for this vulnerable population. Every woman, regardless of sexual orientation, needs to be informed about routine health screenings, vaccinations, and relative risk for the development of diseases. Culturally competent interventions are essential and are a priority for health professionals who screen and educate women about their healthcare needs.


This paper introduces a new hard-/ and software system for the interactive sonification of sports movement involving armand leg movements. Two different sonifications are designed to convey rhythmical patterns that become auditory gestalt so that listeners can identify features of the underlying coordinated movement. The Sonification is designed for the application to enable visually impaired users to participate in aerobics exercises, and also to enhance the perception of movements for sighted participants, which is useful for instance if the scene is occluded or the head posture is incompatible with the observation of the instructor or fitness professional who shows the practices in parallel. Furthermore, the system allows to monitor fine couplings in arm/leg coordination while jogging, as auditory feedback may help stabilizing the movement pattern. We present the sensing system, two sonification designs, and interaction examples that lead to coordination-specific sound gestalts. Finally, some qualitative observations are reported from the first uses of the prototype.


Explaining Heidegger's ideas on spatial phenomena simply and succinctly, this e-book will be provocative and invaluable to anyone interested in space and spatial theory. The author gives incisive, informative, and compelling analyses of Heidegger's overall philosophy and of his changing ideas about space, spatiality, the clearing, places, sites, and dwelling. This study also charts the legacy of these ideas in philosophy, geography, architecture, and anthropology and includes a bibliography of select works that examine or are influenced by Heidegger's ideas on space.


Determining whether inputs are out-of-distribution (OOD) is an essential building block for safely deploying machine learning models in the open world. However, previous methods relying on the softmax confidence score suffer from overconfident posterior distributions for OOD data. We propose a unified framework for OOD detection that uses an energy score. We show that energy scores better distinguish in- and out-of-distribution samples than the traditional approach using the softmax scores. Unlike softmax confidence scores, energy scores are theoretically aligned with the probability density of the inputs and are less susceptible to the overconfidence issue. Within this framework, energy can be flexibly used as a scoring function for any pre-trained neural classifier as well as a trainable cost function to shape the energy surface explicitly for OOD detection. On a CIFAR-10 pre-trained WideResNet, using the energy score reduces the average FPR (at TPR 95%) by 18.03% compared to the softmax confidence score. With energy-based training, our method outperforms the state-of-the-art on common benchmarks.


Few studies focus on how reflection seminars can support the learning of knowledge in caring science when inserted throughout the curriculum. The aim of this study was to describe students' experiences of participating in reflection seminars, using lifeworld theory and focusing on caring science. A qualitative descriptive study based on interviews was carried out, and ten students between 21 and 33 years of age volunteered to participate. A reflective lifeworld research approach was used. Reflection seminars contribute to developing students' ability to relate to caring and life. A deeper understanding is obtained when reflection sessions are spread over a longer period and when reflection becomes a process. The process helps caring science to become more natural and useful. Reflective seminaries based on a theoretical foundation contribute to facilitate learning more readily. A good atmosphere pervaded by a lifeworld perspective characterized by openness and thoughtfulness contributes to learning.


State-of-the-art Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have limited scalability with respect to the graph and model sizes. On large graphs, increasing the model depth often means exponential expansion of the scope (i.e., receptive field). Beyond just a few layers, two fundamental challenges emerge: 1. degraded expressivity due to oversmoothing, and 2. expensive computation due to neighborhood explosion. We propose a design principle to decouple the depth and scope of GNNs -- to generate representation of a target entity (i.e., a node or an edge), we first extract a localized subgraph as the bounded-size scope, and then apply a GNN of arbitrary depth on top of the subgraph. A properly extracted subgraph consists of a small number of critical neighbors, while excluding irrelevant ones. The GNN, no matter how deep it is, smooths the local neighborhood into informative representation rather than oversmoothing the global graph into"white noise". Theoretically, decoupling improves the GNN expressive power from the perspectives of graph signal processing (GCN), function approximation (GraphSAGE) and topological learning (GIN). Empirically, on seven graphs (with up to 110M nodes) and six backbone GNN architectures, our design achieves significant accuracy improvement with orders of magnitude reduction in computation and hardware cost.


Purpose – This paper uses an inductive approach to define "gray copyright." It is needed to describe those situations in which the practical degree of copyright protection can best be measured in shades of risk rather than in simple terms of black and white.Design/methodology/approach – Two methods are used. One is an inductive definition builds up the term's meaning example by example and layer by layer. The second is a behavioral experiment in the spirit of the prisoner's dilemma game.Findings – In the examples of gray copyrights the deciding factor in the grayness is not its legal status, but the economic value of enforcing the usage rights. In the experiment the students have an opportunity to acquire a personal sense of the risks and choices involved in copyright infringements.Originality/value – This analysis shifts the emphasis from the question of legal right and wrong to the economic issue of what risks are potential infringers and rights holders prepared to take.


Materials relating to general world history and historical topics that include many nations, including World War I and World War II.


Molecular Medicine is the application of genetic or DNA-based knowledge to the modern practice of medicine. "Molecular Medicine, 4/e", provides contemporary insights into how the genetic revolution is influencing medical thinking and practice. The new edition includes recent changes in personalized medicine, new growth in omics and direct-to-consumer DNA testing, while focusing on advances in the Human Genome project and implications of the advances in clinical medicine. Graduate students, researchers, clinicians and allied health professionals will appreciate the background history and clinical application of up-to-date molecular advances. This title is extensively revised to incorporate the results of the Human Genome Project, it provides the latest developments in molecular medicine. This is the only book in Molecular Medicine to reach its fourth edition. It identifies current practice as well as future developments and presents extensive tables, well presented figures and resources for further understanding.


Background: Early developmental conditions can influence within- and among-brood variation in the timing of hatching/birth, which has been shown to affect offspring survival, growth, and reproductive success across a range of species. Problem: How does within- and among-litter variation in the timing of birth affect offspring growth and survival in Egernia whitii? Organism: Egernia whitii, a long-lived social reptile that exhibits within-litter variation in its timing of birth (i.e. birthing asynchrony). Methods: We measured offspring growth and survival in a natural population of E whitii by following three cohorts of offspring from birth to their second year of life (the year before the onset of reproduction). Conclusions: (1) Year of birth is the strongest predictor of offspring survival over the first 2 years of life. (2) The effects of year of birth on offspring survival over the second year of life are independent of its effects over the first. (3) Within-year date of birth is the strongest predictor of offspring growth over the first 2 years of life, with offspring born early in the year having greater growth over their first 2 years of life than offspring born later in the year. (4) Examining only growth over the second year of life (i.e. controlling for growth over the first year) removed the effect of date of birth on offspring growth. (5) There are no effects of within-litter timing of birth (i.e. birthing asynchrony) on offspring growth or survival. (Less)


Sometime in the not-too-distant future ... unbeknownst to Earth, the Galaxy is home to a number of spacefaring societies. This confederation enforces a strict protocol forbidding any contact with civilizations that have not yet achieved both a substantial spacefaring capability and sufficient maturity to control the technology explosion before triggering their own extinction. While this policy is intended to only bring in peaceful new members, matters change entirely when the confederation is threatened by some unknown entity - is the menace real or imagined? The confederation decides to break with the rules and sends a delegate to Earth to hire one of the supposedly belligerent Earthlings to investigate and to revive the confederation s long-unused starfleet. The Earthman agrees, but demands a high price: should he succeed, the confederation will have to accept Earth as a new member. As the threat becomes ever more acute, the question soon becomes which mission will prove harder - saving the confederation or convincing it to accept the deal! The extensive appendix, written in non-technical language, reviews the scientific and technological topics underlying the plot - ranging from the Fermi paradox, space travel and artificial/collective intelligence to theories on possible universal convergences in technological and biological development


Aim: In this study, we compared the clinical follow-up results and complication and success rates of patients undergoing 1470 nm wavelength endovenous laser ablation (EVLA) or radiofrequency ablation (RFA) in our clinic. Material and Methods: The records of 581 patients treated in our clinic due to clinical symptoms arising from great saphenous vein insufficiency between January 2014 and September 2018 were examined retrospectively. Three hundred fifty-seven of these patients treated with EVLA or RFA and with no deficient data were included in the study. Patients with reflux in the saphenofemoral junction lasting at least 0.5 sec, with a great saphenous vein diameter of at least 7 mm, 2 cm distal to the saphenofemoral junction, and of at least 5.5 mm at knee level, and with CEAP stage C2-C5 were scheduled for endovenous ablation. The patients were randomly distributed between the established EVLA and RFA treatment groups. Data for patients' diagnostic and therapeutic processes were recorded and evaluated in the light of information in the literature. Results: The EVLA group consisted of 86 patients (42 male, 44 female; mean age 46 years, range 26-71), and the RFA group of 271 (113 male, 158 female; mean age 43.3 years; range 20-77). The mean follow-up time was 27.2 months. No significant differences were determined in terms of patients' demographic data, preoperative additional diagnoses, CEAP classification values, duration of reflux, or proximal and distal great saphenous vein diameter values. Thrombophlebitis developed in 14 patients and ecchymosis/ hematoma in 32. No significant difference was observed between the groups in terms of complications. Great saphenous vein occlusion rates at Doppler ultrasonography six months after treatment were 91.8% in the EVLA group and 94% in the RFA group (p=0.46). Conclusion: Our results suggest that neither of the two endovenous ablation methods is superior to the other.


In this article the author shows how the dramaturgy of Elelwani (wa-Luruli 2012) challenges theories around narration and audience interaction as articulated in the analysis of North American and European films, instead presenting a cinematic dramaturgy uniquely African. This is done by drawing upon two distinct, and often juxtaposed, modes of narration ‒ the classical linear cause and effect narration as exemplified by many Hollywood productions, and art-cinema narration based on symbolism and artistic expression (Bordwell 1985; 2005). In particular, the article draws on Israel's (1991) philosophical distinctions between the Anglo-Saxon narrative with links to a Cartesian dualism between body and mind, and the epiclyrical narrative linked to Hegel. It is argued that the dramaturgy of Elelwani not only overcomes the Cartesian dualism by giving the individual an active role in the knowledge creating process in the Hegelian tradition, but also draws on, as well as moves away from, a multi-layered epic-lyricism steeped in a European worldview of the self, and instead presents a novel, and uniquely African, dramaturgy steeped in a relational ethic and conceptualisation of self, linked to the Southern African philosophy of ubuntu.


The extent to which individuals are inclined to judge unfamiliar others as trustworthy can have important implications for social functioning. Using multivariate pattern analysis, a neural phenotype of trust bias was identified in 48 human adolescents (ages 14–18 years, 26 female). Adolescents who exhibited more similar brain response to faces at the extremes of a trustworthy gradient were more likely to rate neutral faces as trustworthy. This relation between neural pattern representation and trust bias was evinced in the amygdala. Amygdala–insula connectivity dissimilarity to faces at the extremes of the trustworthy gradient was associated with greater trust bias to neutral faces, serving as a distinct circuit-level contributor to decision-making over and above of amygdala pattern similarity. These findings aid understanding of neural mechanisms contributing to individual differences in social evaluations of ambiguity.


Future mobile devices are anticipated to perceive, understand and react to the world on their own by running multiple correlated deep neural networks on-device. Yet the complexity of these neural networks needs to be trimmed down both within-model and cross-model to fit in mobile storage and memory. Previous studies focus on squeezing the redundancy within a single neural network. In this work, we aim to reduce the redundancy across multiple models. We propose Multi-Task Zipping (MTZ), a framework to automatically merge correlated, pre-trained deep neural networks for cross-model compression. Central in MTZ is a layer-wise neuron sharing and incoming weight updating scheme that induces a minimal change in the error function. MTZ inherits information from each model and demands light retraining to re-boost the accuracy of individual tasks. Evaluations show that MTZ is able to fully merge the hidden layers of two VGG-16 networks with a 3.18% increase in the test error averaged on ImageNet and CelebA, or share 39.61% parameters between the two networks with <0.5% increase in the test errors for both tasks. The number of iterations to retrain the combined network is at least 17.8 times lower than that of training a single VGG-16 network. Moreover, experiments show that MTZ is also able to effectively merge multiple residual networks.


T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) is an aggressive neoplastic disorder in which chemotherapy resistance and refractory relapses occur, with a poorer prognostic outcome. Constitutively active PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway is a common feature of T-ALL upregulating cell proliferation, survival and drug resistance. This pathway is currently under clinical trials with small molecules inhibitors (SMI). To verify whether a multi-inhibition treatment against Akt protein could enhance the efficacy of individual drug administration and overcome drug resistance as well as to obtain a decrease in single drug concentration, we tested on T-ALL cell lines the effects of combined treatments with three Akt inhibitors with different mode of action, GSK690693, MK-2206 and Perifosine. In cells with hyperactivated Akt, combined administration of the drugs displayed a significant synergistic and cytotoxic effect and affected PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway at much lower concentration than single drug use. Highest synergistic effect for full inhibition of Akt was also related to the timing of every drug administration. Furthermore the triple treatment had greater efficacy in inducing cell cycle arrest in G0/G1 phase and both apoptosis and autophagy. Targeting Akt as a key protein of PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway with multiple drugs might represent a new and promising pharmacological strategy for treatment of T-ALL patients.


This document provides a detailed description of IPv6 deployment and
integration methods and scenarios in wireless broadband access
networks in coexistence with deployed IPv4 services. In this document,
we will discuss the main components of IPv6 IEEE 802.16 access
networks and their differences from IPv4 IEEE 802.16 networks and how
IPv6 is deployed and integrated in each of the IEEE 802.16
technologies. This memo provides information for the Internet
community.


Standing ultralow frequency waves redistribute energy and momentum around the Earth's magnetosphere. The eigenfrequencies of these standing waves can be measured by applying the cross‐phase technique to ground magnetometer data. To make a detection, the flux tubes in the vicinity of the magnetometers must all be driven at their local eigenfrequencies by a source with a sufficient frequency width. Therefore, successful measurement of the local eigenfrequencies indicates that a broadband source is exciting the flux tubes. We have analyzed 10 years of magnetometer data with an automated cross‐phase algorithm and used correlations with the OMNI data set to understand under what conditions broadband excitation occurs and how the conditions affect the eigenfrequency values. This is the largest such survey of its kind to date. We found that lower eigenfrequencies at higher latitudes (L>5) and higher eigenfrequencies at lower latitudes (L<4) were excited under different conditions. It was also possible to directly compare the first and third harmonics at midlatitudes. The lower eigenfrequencies were excited during more disturbed conditions, and we suggest that these harmonics are driven by solar wind pressure pulses or the Kelvin‐Helmholtz instability at the magnetopause. The higher eigenfrequencies were excited when the magnetosphere was relatively quiet, and we suggest that the cause was waves generated upstream of the Earth's bow shock. The eigenfrequencies were observed to decrease in the middle magnetosphere during disturbed intervals. This is because the intensification of the ring current weakens the magnetic field. Variations in magnetic local time and latitude were also investigated.


Air pollution is among the environmental problems that adversely affect people's health. There is a close relationship between medicine and environment, and as a consequence, there are ethical considerations surrounding the problem of air pollution. The present research aimed to determine physicians' attitude toward their ethical responsibility regarding air pollution, and their role in reducing it. This was a qualitative research using content analysis, conducted in Tehran University of Medical Sciences. The focus group included 21 physicians with specialties and subspecialties in pediatrics, infectious diseases, pulmonology, gynecology, and midwifery selected through predetermined sampling along with 13 personal in-depth interviews. A number of questions were asked regarding physicians' ethical responsibility to decrease environmental crises, particularly air pollution. As a result, 4 themes and 20 subthemes were extracted by assessing the focus group and interviews. These four general themes included the role of a physician as 1) an ordinary person, 2) a special citizen and a role model, 3) a professional person with special personal and social commitments, and 4) an administrator of the healthcare system. In the present research, physicians acquired a special attitude toward air pollution. The research population mentioned physicians' impact as role models for the society, as well as their educational, supervisory, informative, promotional, and administrative roles among their most important obligations regarding air pollution. It is recommended to conduct further studies on physicians' knowledge, attitude and practice regarding their responsibility toward environmental issues in order to investigate this important matter further.


BACKGROUND
Accurate interpretation of chest radiographs (CXR) is essential as clinical decisions depend on readings.

OBJECTIVE
We sought to evaluate CXR interpretation ability at different levels of training and to determine factors associated with successful interpretation.

DESIGN
Ten CXR were selected from the teaching file of the internal medicine (IM) department. Participants were asked to record the most important diagnosis, their certainty in that diagnosis, interest in a pulmonary career and adequacy of CXR training. Two investigators independently scored each CXR on a scale of 0 to 2.

PARTICIPANTS
Participants (n=145) from a single teaching hospital were third year medical students (MS) (n=25), IM interns (n=44), IM residents (n=45), fellows from the divisions of cardiology and pulmonary/critical care (n=16), and radiology residents (n=15).

RESULTS
The median overall score was 11 of 20. An increased level of training was associated with overall score (MS 8, intern 10, IM resident 13, fellow 15, radiology resident 18, P<.001). Overall certainty was significantly correlated with overall score (r=.613, P<.001). Internal medicine interns and residents interested in a pulmonary career scored 14 of 20 while those not interested scored 11 (P=.027). Pneumothorax, misplaced central line, and pneumoperitoneum were diagnosed correctly 9%, 26%, and 46% of the time, respectively. Only 20 of 131 (15%) participants felt their CXR training sufficient.

CONCLUSION
We identified factors associated with successful CXR interpretation, including level of training, field of training, interest in a pulmonary career and overall certainty. Although interpretation improved with training, important diagnoses were missed.


The representation of women characters in cinema has been discussed for centuries. In cinema where dominant narrative codes prevail and scopophilic views exist over women characters, passive stereotypes of women are observed in the representation of women characters. In films shot from a woman's point of view in Turkish Cinema and even in the films outside the main stream in which the stories of women characters are told, the fact that women characters are discussed on the basis of feminist film theories triggers the question: 'Are feminist films produced in Turkish Cinema?' The spaces that are used in the representation of women characters are observed to be used as spaces that convert characters into passive subjects on the basis of the space factor in the narrative. The representation of women characters in the possible surveillance spaces integrates the characters and compresses them in these spaces. In this study, narrative analysis was used to investigate women characters representation in the surveillance spaces. For the study framework, firstly a case study films are selected, and in the second level, women characters representations in surveillance spaces are argued by narrative analysis using feminist film theories. Two questions are argued with feminist film theories: 'Why do especially women directors represent their female characters to viewers by representing them in surveillance spaces?' and 'Can this type of presentation contribute to the feminist film practice and become important with regard to feminist film theories?' The representation of women characters in a passive and observed way in surveillance spaces of the narrative reveals the questioning of also the discourses of films outside of the main stream. As films that produce alternative discourses and reveal different cinematic languages, those outside the main stream are expected to bring other points of view also to the representation of women characters in spaces. These questionings are selected as the baseline and Turkish films such as Watch Tower and Mustang, directed by women, were examined. This examination paves the way for discussions regarding the women characters in surveillance spaces. Outcomes can be argued from the viewpoint of representation in the genre by feminist film theories. In the context of feminist film theories and feminist film practice, alternatives should be found that can corporally reveal the existence of women in both the representation of women characters in spaces and in the usage of the space factor. Keywords—Feminist film theory, representation, space, women filmmaker, women characters.


This study focuses on the Tertiary tectonic evolution at the boundary between Western Alps and northern Apennines in central Liguria (Italy). The architecture of the two belts derives from the oblique convergence between the Europe and Adria plates and hence this area represents an ideal case to study the crustal structures that develop during oblique lithospheric convergence. The analysis of the Oligocene-Miocene brittle structures reveals: the occurrence of principal displacement zones with related minor structures that fit a transpressional dextral regime and a NE-SW direction of maximum shortening; a regional strain partitioning between wrench-dominated and contraction-dominated domains; a structural control on the orientation and development of brittle structures by the pre-existing weaker pathways, provided by the alpine foliations and ductile shear zones. The principal displacement zones can be easily framed in the Oligocene-Miocene geodynamics of the «Ligurian knot», where the right-hand strike-slip component of the system provided a release of the Ligurian Alps from their southeastern segment, thus allowing the tightening of the arc of the Western/Ligurian Alps.