This paper considers the experiences of people ordered by the courts in one area of England to attend parenting education classes and also parents who voluntarily attend these programmes. There has been increasing intervention into family life, designed to improve 'poor' parenting, most notably the use of parenting education programmes. These programmes deliver skills training with the aim of enhancing parenting practices and improving the behaviour of children. The paper provides analysis of parenting programmes delivered by a voluntary organisation service and considers how the parents are surveilled by the parenting workers, who in turn are also subject to scrutiny and monitoring by their managers, using the Foucauldian concepts of pastoral power and governmentality. While there are many theoretical analyses of welfare interventions this paper uses in-depth interviews with those providing and receiving these interventions (n = 22), in one service in the north of England.


The fabrication of SiC MEMS-based sensors requires new processes able to realize microstructures on bulk material or on the SiC surface. The hetero-epitaxial growth of 3C-SiC on silicon substrates allows one to overcome the traditional limitations of SiC micro-fabrication. This approach puts together the standard silicon bulk microfabrication methodologies with the robust mechanical properties of 3C-SiC. Using this approach we were able to fabricate SiC cantilevers for a new class of pressure sensor. In the present research, chemical vapour deposition (CVD) in the low pressure regime of 3C–SiC on silicon substrates was carried out using silane (SiH4), propane (C3 H8) and hydrogen (H2) as the silicon supply, carbon supply and gas carrier, respectively. The resulting bow in the MEMS structures was evaluated optically and the residual stress in the films calculated using the modified stoney equation and determined to be approximately 300 MPa.


Improving society's ability to prepare for, respond to and recover from flooding requires integrated, anticipatory flood risk management (FRM). However, most countries still focus their efforts on responding to flooding events if and when they occur rather than addressing their current and future vulnerability to flooding. Flood insurance is one mechanism that could promote a more ex ante approach to risk by supporting risk reduction activities. This paper uses an adapted version of Easton's System Theory to investigate the role of insurance for FRM in Germany and England. We introduce an anticipatory FRM framework, which allows flood insurance to be considered as part of a broader policy field. We analyze if and how flood insurance can catalyze a change toward a more anticipatory approach to FRM. In particular we consider insurance's role in influencing five key components of anticipatory FRM: risk knowledge, prevention through better planning, property‐level protection measures, structural protection and preparedness (for response). We find that in both countries FRM is still a reactive, event‐driven process, while anticipatory FRM remains underdeveloped. Collaboration between insurers and FRM decision‐makers has already been successful, for example in improving risk knowledge and awareness, while in other areas insurance acts as a disincentive for more risk reduction action. In both countries there is evidence that insurance can play a significant role in encouraging anticipatory FRM, but this remains underutilized. Effective collaboration between insurers and government should not be seen as a cost, but as an investment to secure future insurability through flood resilience.


This study analysed the reservoir of HIV-1 in semen and the effects of seminal plasma on the functional and phenotypic characteristics of dendritic cells (DCs), both in relation to immunoregulatory capabilities and susceptibility to infection with HIV. The reservoir of HIV-1 in semen was defined in order to assess the feasibility of 'sperm washing' as a means of reducing the risk of transmission in HTV-1-discordant couples. The fact that neither viral RNA or DNA could be detected in spermatozoa and the lack of expression of CD4 both at the protein and mRNA levels suggests that spermatozoa are not susceptible to HTV-1 infection. Viral RNA was detected in seminal plasma and both RNA and DNA were detected in non-sperm cells. As a result of this study, sperm washing is a service that is now available at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital to HTV-l-discordant couples. This service has resulted in several births and no seroconversions in any woman who has undergone the procedure. The effects of seminal plasma on the phenotype and function of monocyte-derived DCs were investigated. Seminal plasma had suppressive effects on the allostimulatory capacity of DCs and such effects appeared to be due to down-
regulation of co-stimulatory molecule expression on these cells. The suppressive effect of seminal plasma was abrogated by the removal of lipids. However, prostaglandins on their own did not have suppressive effects on DC function, suggesting that other seminal components are required to induce theobserved induction of suppression. The suppressive effect of seminal plasma on the allostimulatory function of DCs was overcome with TNF-a, as did the presence of HIV. The expression of HIV co-receptors was assessed on DCs. TNF-a induced maturation of DCs as demonstrated by reduced expression of CCR5 and increased CXCR4. Seminal plasma also enhanced expression of CXCR4 and infection with X4 strains of HIV, but down-regulated CCR5 expression and infection with R5 strains of HIV. Therefore, the regulation of co-receptor expression by DCs was associated with their susceptibility to infection with a HIV strain displaying the corresponding co-receptor usage. In summary, semen is an important vehicle for transmission of HIV. Seminal plasma was demonstrated to have profound effects on DC phenotype, maturation and function. Such alterations would influence the outcome, in terms of HIV transmission, of the interaction between the DC and HIV-1 at the mucosal surface.


This paper presents an architecture that supports Quality of Service (QoS) in an Arrowhead-compliant System of Systems (SoS). The Arrowhead Framework supports local cloud functionalities for automation applications, provided by means of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), by offering a number of services that ease application development. On such applications the QoS guarantees are required for service fruition, and are themselves requested as services from the framework. To fulfil this objective we start by describing the Arrowhead architecture and the components needed to dynamically in run-time negotiate a system configuration that guarantees the QoS requirements between application services.


Low-threshold spontaneous pulsations are known to occur in the output beams of certain high-gain gas lasers, and good agreement between the experimental observations and numerical models has been achieved. There have also been several analytical studies of threshold criteria for spontaneously pulsing lasers. However, the analytical studies are mostly not applicable to the lasers in which the pulsations have been observed. Stability criteria for high-gain gas lasers are derived in this study, and these criteria are compared with a previously modeled gas laser instability.


Inappropriate use and overuse of antibiotics are among the most important factors in resistance development, and effective antibiotic stewardship measures are needed to optimize outcomes. Selection of appropriate antimicrobials relies on accurate and timely antimicrobial susceptibility testing. However, the availability of clinical breakpoints and in vitro susceptibility testing often lags behind regulatory approval by several years for new antimicrobials. A Working Group of clinical/medical microbiologists from Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Russia and the UK recently examined issues surrounding antimicrobial susceptibility testing for novel antibiotics. While commercially available tests are being developed, potential surrogate antibiotics may be used as marker of susceptibility. Using tedizolid as an example of a new antibiotic, this special report makes recommendations to optimize routine susceptibility reporting.


Two-wave mixing in a He+-implanted waveguide fabricated with a BaTiO3 substrate is investigated at 514.5 nm. The study is conducted for several directions of the grating vector relative to the optical c axis. The maximum gain of 58 cm-1 is far higher than the value of 15 cm-1 that is measurable in the same conditions in bulk samples. Taking into account the mode losses, we show that the experimental values for the gain are in good agreement with theory. The feasibility of photorefractive interactions between TE guided waves with different mode orders is demonstrated. The characteristics of the photorefractive effect in the waveguide are shown to be different from those in the bulk (opposite transfer direction, shorter response time), which suggests that the nature of the dominant charge carriers and the electro-optic properties are modified by the implantation.


This study describes the multi-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS) method for the determination of n(233U)/n(238U), n(234U)/n(238U), n(235U)/n(238U), and n(236U)/n(238U) isotope ratios in purified uranium solutions. The used Neptune Plus™ MC-ICP-MS is equipped with the so-called "Jet Interface", which comprises a high capacity interface pump and specially designed sample and skimmer cones. Together with a high-efficiency sample introduction system (Aridus II™, Cetac Technologies, NE, USA), absolute U registration efficiencies of typically 1.5% to 2.5% can be achieved under routine operation. A mass bias correction, background/memory effect correction, hydride formation correction, yield and dead time correction of the multi-collector ion counters, and peak-tailing correction are performed for isotope ratio measurements. The effect of potential molecular interferences is assessed by the screening of concentrations of interfering elements in uranium fractions. The new MC-ICP-MS makes possible the determination of n(235U)/n(238U) with relative expanded uncertainties (k = 2) lower than 0.2% and allows achieving detection limits of 1 × 10−7 for n(233U)/n(238U) and 6 × 10−8 for n(236U)/n(238U) in solution aliquots containing 0.4 ng to 0.6 ng uranium. The relative expanded uncertainties (k = 2) of n(234U)/n(238U) and n(236U)/n(238U) ratios (>10−5) are below 1% and the absolute accuracy for minor isotope ratios n(234U)/n(238U) and n(236U)/n(238U) measured in CRMs is below the 1 ppm level. The developed method has been validated by comparative measurements with the previously used thermal ionisation mass spectrometry (TIMS) method by analysing test samples from an inter-laboratory comparison exercise. The MC-ICP-MS method has been applied for analysis of U isotope ratios in U fractions obtained from cotton swipe samples.


Personal selling and sales management play a critical role in the short and long term success of the firm, and have thus received substantial academic interest since the 1970s. Sales research has examined the role of the sales manager in some depth, defining a number of key technical and interpersonal roles which sales managers have in influencing sales force effectiveness. However, one aspect of sales management which appears to remain unexplored is that of their resolution of salesperson-related problems. This study represents the first attempt to address this gap by reporting on the conceptual and empirical development of an instrument designed to measure sales managers' problem resolution styles. A comprehensive literature review and qualitative research study identified three key constructs relating to sales managers' problem resolution styles. The three constructs identified were termed; sales manager willingness to respond, sales manager caring, and sales manager aggressiveness. Building on this, existing literature was used to develop a conceptual model of salesperson-specific consequences of the three problem resolution style constructs. The quantitative phase of the study consisted of a mail survey of UK salespeople, achieving a total sample of 140 fully usable responses. Rigorous statistical assessment of the sales manager problem resolution style measures was undertaken, and construct validity examined. Following this, the conceptual model was tested using latent variable path analysis. The results for the model were encouraging overall, and also with regard to the individual hypotheses. Sales manager problem resolution styles were found individually to have significant impacts on the salesperson-specific variables of role ambiguity, emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, organisational commitment and organisational citizenship behaviours. The findings, theoretical and managerial implications, limitations and directions for future research are discussed.


Leaf oils and waxes of 29 native Tasmanian Eucalyptus species were studied from primarily a taxonomic aspect and their effects on insect-plant selection were evaluated. E. nitens, an important introduced pulpwood species that is not indigenous to Tasmania was also investigated in detail.

The chemical compositions of leaf oils and waxes of both juvenile and adult leaf samples of each species were examined by GC-MS. Results indicated that the distribution of both oil and wax components within Tasmanian eucalypts and their relative proportions between subgenera and species have taxonomic importance. A chemotaxonomic classification based on these data was constructed and this classification more functionally describes insect-host-tree relationships as opposed to the classification based on morphological differences.

The results of this study indicated that differences in leaf oils of eucalypt species are correlated to genetic divergence in the biosynthesis of terpenoid compounds and that biochemically related terpenoid compounds provide sensitive taxonomic characteristics for the identification of eucalypt species. A study, using material from species/provenance trials, indicated that seasonal variation in leaf oil chemicals was influenced by time, ontogenetic and physiological aging effects. The variation pattern of leaf oils between different species was found to be under strong genetic control and environmental factors tended to affect leaf oils quantitatively but not qualitatively.

For the first time the chemical composition of eucalypt leaf waxes of trees from a large number of species localities has been determined by the direct analysis of crude wax. In a representative number of species localities, wax morphology was examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Two general wax categories, amorphous and structured were found, the latter including three types. The results indicated that wax structure was correlated with chemical composition and that the distribution and variation ,- in both wax chemicals and wax types has relevance at all levels of the taxonomic hierarchy.

The chemical composition of leaf oils and waxes among most provenances and localities of E. nitens were examined. The differences in leaf oil characteristics of two forms of E. nitens has supported the separation of the two morphological forms into separate species, E. nitens and E. denticulata. Results indicated that the chemical composition of leaf oils and waxes of E. nitens was similar to most Symphyomyrtus species but that oil yields from all E. nitens populations were significantly lower.

Commercially important eucalypt species are attacked by two paropsine defoliating beetles: Chrysophtharta bimaculata and C. agricola (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae, Paropsini). The feeding and oviposition preferences of these beetles and the feeding response of their larvae to eucalypt leaves were examined in laboratory bioassay in which the effects of leaf oils and waxes were evaluated. The results indicated that leaf acceptance or rejection by C. bimaculata and C. agricola was correlated to differences in leaf oils and waxes which were chemotaxonomically correlated among Tasmanian eucalypt species. The toxic effects of 1,8-cineole and related chemicals on C. bimuculata beetles were confirmed by leaf extract and chemical bioassay. It was found that the leaves of E. nitens were successfully attacked by C. bimuculata through the lack of chemical defence, notably low levels of 1,8-cineole. The wax bloom on juvenile foliage acts also as a physical defence against adult C. bimaculata beetles. Results also indicated that leaf preference of C. agricola was related more to variation in the triterpenoid class of wax chemicals.

The inheritance of leaf oils and waxes in interspecific F1 hybrids of Eucalyptus was analysed. Results indicated that both oil and wax chemicals were strongly inherited in F1 hybrids and were valuable for identification of tree hybrids. Bioassay results indicated that feeding resistance was related to the inheritance of leaf oils in interspecific F1 hybrids. Hybrids between high and low cineole species had intermediate cineole levels and were therefore more resistant to C. bimaculata attack than the low cineole parent.


Managing global-scale threats such as climate change, loss of biological diversity and pandemics each constitute a global social dilemma, in which collectively countries are better off cooperating but individually they are better off free riding on the cooperative effort of others. Effective international institutions, or agreements, are required to better align the collective and individual incentives, but sovereignty demands that countries voluntarily agree to take action and then voluntarily comply with their commitments. Here we use experimental methods to test an agreement structure that, in theory, encourages meaningful participation and compliance. One of the defining features of the agreement is that it requires members to pay refundable deposits upon ratification. Our results show that this agreement structure can be successful at increasing the provision of public goods in the absence of a strong regulatory body. Most importantly, the agreement remains highly effective even in the face of uncertainty regarding the benefits from public good provision. Our results suggest that making ex ante deposits, even non-deterrent ones, serves as a coordination device that allows countries to achieve meaningful international cooperation.


This paper examines the long-run behavior of learning with bandit feedback in non-cooperative concave games. The bandit framework accounts for extremely low-information environments where the agents may not even know they are playing a game; as such, the agents' most sensible choice in this setting would be to employ a no-regret learning algorithm. In general, this does not mean that the players' behavior stabilizes in the long run: no-regret learning may lead to cycles, even with perfect gradient information. However, if a standard monotonicity condition is satisfied, our analysis shows that no-regret learning based on mirror descent with bandit feedback converges to Nash equilibrium with probability 1. We also derive an upper bound for the convergence rate of the process that nearly matches the best attainable rate for single-agent bandit stochastic optimization.


In this paper we describe how to efficiently record the entire genetic history of a population in forwards-time, individual-based population genetics simulations with arbitrary breeding models, population structure and demography. This approach dramatically reduces the computational burden of tracking individual genomes by allowing us to simulate only those loci that may affect reproduction (those having non-neutral variants). The genetic history of the population is recorded as a succinct tree sequence as introduced in the software package msprime, on which neutral mutations can be quickly placed afterwards. Recording the results of each breeding event requires storage that grows linearly with time, but there is a great deal of redundancy in this information. We solve this storage problem by providing an algorithm to quickly 'simplify' a tree sequence by removing this irrelevant history for a given set of genomes. By periodically simplifying the history with respect to the extant population, we show that the total storage space required is modest and overall large efficiency gains can be made over classical forward-time simulations. We implement a general-purpose framework for recording and simplifying genealogical data, which can be used to make simulations of any population model more efficient. We modify two popular forwards-time simulation frameworks to use this new approach and observe efficiency gains in large, whole-genome simulations of one to two orders of magnitude. In addition to speed, our method for recording pedigrees has several advantages: (1) All marginal genealogies of the simulated individuals are recorded, rather than just genotypes. (2) A population of N individuals with M polymorphic sites can be stored in O(N log N + M) space, making it feasible to store a simulation's entire final generation as well as its history. (3) A simulation can easily be initialized with a more efficient coalescent simulation of deep history. The software for recording and processing tree sequences is named tskit. Author Summary Sexually reproducing organisms are related to the others in their species by the complex web of parent-offspring relationships that constitute the pedigree. In this paper, we describe a way to record all of these relationships, as well as how genetic material is passed down through the pedigree, during a forwards-time population genetic simulation. To make effective use of this information, we describe both efficient storage methods for this embellished pedigree as well as a way to remove all information that is irrelevant to the genetic history of a given set of individuals, which dramatically reduces the required amount of storage space. Storing this information allows us to produce whole-genome sequence from simulations of large populations in which we have not explicitly recorded new genomic mutations; we find that this results in computational run times of up to 50 times faster than simulations forced to explicitly carry along that information.


Objectives The aim of this study was to determine how the diurnal rhythm of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis is affected by a fast forward-rotating 24-hour shift schedule and to explore possible relationships with self-reported health, sleep-related problems, and recovery-related problems.

Methods Shift workers on their morning (N=45) or afternoon (N=32) shift were compared with daytime workers (N=39) from the same worksite and with an external daytime working reference group with early (N=50) or late (N=130) waking. Cortisol in saliva was sampled at waking, after 30 minutes, after 8 hours, and at 2100 on a daytime workday for all of the groups and also on a day off for the shift workers. Sleep and subjective health complaints were assessed with a questionnaire.

Results The morning shift workers showed a deviant cortisol pattern over the workday, with a lower cortisol level at waking and a lower morning peak level. The morning and afternoon shift workers did not differ with respect to the cortisol level on the day off. The shift workers also reported lower self-rated health and more problems with sleep and recovery.

Conclusions The results suggest that a partial adaptation of the circadian cortisol rhythm to night work does not re-adjust during 4 days off, and hence the early waking on morning shift days occurs during an earlier phase of the diurnal cortisol rhythm than for daytime workers waking up at similar hours. The results may contribute to the understanding of reduced alertness during morning shifts and have implications for the planning of, and adaptation to, shift schedules.


The objective of this study is to develop a practical statistical model for imperfect predictive maintenance based scheduling of multi-state systems (MSS) with reliability dependent elements and multiple failure modes. The system is modeled using a Markov state diagram and reliability analysis is performed using the Universal Generating Function (UGF) technique. The model is simulated for a case study of a power generation - transmission system. The various factors influencing the predictive maintenance (PdM) policy such as maintenance quality and user threshold demand are examined and the impact of the variation of these factors on system performance is quantitatively studied. The model is found to be useful in determining downtime schedules and estimating times to replacement of an MSS under the PdM policy. The maintenance schedules are devised based on a "system-perspective" where failure times are estimated by analyzing the overall performance distribution of the system. Simulation results of the model reveal that a slight improvement in the "maintenance quality" can postpone the system replacement time by manifold. The consistency in the quality of maintenance work with minimal variance is also identified as a very important factor that enhances the system's future operational and downtime event predictability. Moreover, the studies reveal that in order to reduce the frequency of maintenance actions, it is necessary to lower the minimum user expectations from the system, ensuring at the same time that the system still performs its intended function effectively. The model proposed can be utilized to implement a PdM program in the industry with a few modifications to suit the individual industry's needs.


In this paper1, we revisit and extend the analysis in Shiller, 1981 to an updated sample. The main puzzling result of the paper is that the fundamental present value model of stock prices predicts a volatility at odds with the data: the stock prices are much more volatile compared to what discounted future dividends would imply. Our paper closely replicates the results for the S&P 500 index. For an updated sample between 1963 and 2018, we find that the excess volatility puzzle is still strong, but it has diminished by a third relative to the sample period in Shiller, 1981.


This article forms part of the Conservation compendium, which aims to improve the way engineers handle historic fabric through the study of historic materials, conservation philosophy, forms of construction and project examples. Articles in the series are written by
Conservation Accredited Engineers. The series editor is James Miller.


As autonomous agents proliferate in the real world, both in software and robotic settings, they will increasingly need to band together for cooperative activities with previously unfamiliar teammates. In such ad hoc team settings, team strategies cannot be developed a priori. Rather, an agent must be prepared to cooperate with many types of teammates: it must collaborate without pre-coordination. This paper challenges the AI community to develop theory and to implement prototypes of ad hoc team agents. It defines the concept of ad hoc team agents, specifies an evaluation paradigm, and provides examples of possible theoretical and empirical approaches to challenge. The goal is to encourage progress towards this ambitious, newly realistic, and increasingly important research goal.


Evolutionary psychology and memetics are used here to propose a model of war. Population growth leads to a resource crisis. An impending resource crisis activates a behavioral switch in humans allowing the build-up of memes (i.e., learned elements of culture), which lead to synchronized attacks on neighboring tribes. Hamilton's criterion of inclusive fitness is invoked to account for the evolution of this species typical behavior. War, as a species typical behavior in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness (EEA) of humans is discussed, first as a response to an attack and then as an unprovoked attack. Unprovoked attacks are more common when the aggressor population anticipates "looming privation." The well-known reduction in the ability of humans to think rationally in war situations is explained in evolutionary terms as a divergence in interest between the individual and his genes. Population growth at a higher rate than economic growth is seen as a major causal factor for wars.


Clearly, UA myopathy is not a major contributing factor to OSA pathogenesis for most patients. Rather, state-dependent reductions in neural drive to UAMs would appear to be a more critical pathogenic mechanism. While there are subtle changes in UA structure and function, there is little evidence to suggest that myopathy per se is important in OSA. Furthermore, most OSA patients are indeed capable of achieving stable periods of breathing at least part of the night, an effect believed to be importantly mediated via compensation of UA dilator muscles. It is extremely difficult to conceptualize how this may occur if myopathy were fundamentally important in OSA pathogenesis. Furthermore, disease progression appears to be modest at best and is largely explained by increased weight gain. Nonetheless, it is acknowledged that subtle changes in UAM output due to factors such as repeated UA vibration, trauma, inflammation, and hypoxia may contribute to this effect. However, the current evidence would suggest that, if present, most of these changes would appear to be neurogenic rather than truly myopathic in origin. Adaptive processes to preserve UAM function in OSA in spite of these changes also appear to occur. In addition, these apparent changes may be an epiphenomenon rather than functionally important. Finally, some patients may be more vulnerable to UAM weakness with greater consequential functional effects than others, although this remains scarcely studied. Thus, future studies should carefully explore the functional consequences of UAM abnormalities and define which patients, if any, are susceptible to these potentially detrimental effects.


Detailed fast transient absorption measurements have been performed at low temperature on reaction centers from Rhodobacter sphaeroides strain R-26 and on a double mutant, [LH(L131) + LH-(M160)], in which the P/P+ oxidation potential is roughly 140 mV (1100 cm-1) above that of wild-type reaction centers. In both samples, the decay of the excited singlet state of the initial electron donor is not well described by a single-exponential decay term. This is particularly true for reaction centers from the double mutant where at least three exponential kinetic components are required to describe the decay, with time constants ranging from a few picoseconds to hundreds of picoseconds. However, singular value decomposition analysis of the time-dependent absorption change spectra indicates the presence of only two spectrally distinct states in reaction centers from both R-26 and the double mutant. Thus, the complex decay of P* at low temperature does not appear to be due to formation of either the state P+BA- as a distinct intermediate in electron transfer or P+BB- as an equilibrated side product of electron transfer. Instead, the decay kinetics are modeled by assuming dynamic solvation of the charge-separated state, as was done for the long-lived fluorescence decay in the accompanying paper [Peloquin, J. M., Williams, J. C., Lin, X., Alden, R. G., Taguchi, A. K. W., Allen, J.P., & Woodbury, N. W. (1994) Biochemistry 33, 8089-8100]. The results of assuming a static distribution of electron-transfer rates at early times followed by dynamic solvation of the charge-separated states on longer time scales are also presented. Regardless of which model is used to describe the early time kinetics of excited-state decay, the time-dependent excited-state population on the 100-ps or longer time scale is best described in terms of thermal repopulation of P* from the charge-separated state, even at 20 K. This results in a time- and temperature-dependent driving force estimated for initial electron transfer of less than 200 cm-1 on all time scales from picoseconds to nanoseconds. Assuming a nonzero internal reorganization energy associated with charge separation, the small driving force does not appear to be consistent with the lack of temperature dependence of electron transfer and the fact that a mutant with a P/P+ oxidation potential 140 mV (1100 cm-1) higher than wild type is still able to undergo electron transfer, even at low temperature.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)


The focus of this review is on the use of non-conventional heterogeneous catalysts for biodiesel synthesis. The review is based on published works that have utilized these non-conventional catalysts for biodiesel synthesis with very good biodiesel yield. The non-conventional catalysts under consideration in this review are those obtained majorly from egg shells. These materials are generally waste materials which several publications had reported to contain high content of calcium oxide. Utilization of these waste materials as catalysts reduces catalyst cost, promotes environmentally benign process and serves as source of income if biodiesel is to be commercialized. Results reported 80 to 90% yield of biodiesel using some of these non-conventional catalysts.


BACKGROUND
Patients with a previous history of cancer of the upper respiratory and digestive tracts (URDT) frequently develop a bronchial carcinoma (synchronous or metachronous) that may affect their survival.

OBJECTIVE
To determine the prevalence of bronchial carcinoma at an early stage in a population of patients treated for cancer of the URDT.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This was a single centre prospective study (2002-2006). Patients in remission following treatment of cancers of the buccal cavity, pharynx (stages I -II) and larynx (stages I - III), were examined by a spiral CT scan and fibreoptic bronchoscopy (white light and autofluorescence), with biopsies, and cytology of the bronchial aspirate.

RESULTS
60 patients (55 men) were included. Two peripheral bronchial carcinomas were detected by scanning and two more (proximal) by endoscopy. All 4 bronchial tumours were squamous carcinomas (stage IA). Three patients had surgery, the fourth declined intervention.

CONCLUSION
Our study confirms the high prevalence (6.7%) of bronchial carcinoma in patients with a past history of cancer of the URDT. It emphasises the complimentary roles of spiral scanning and bronchoscopy in early diagnosis. It is still too early to evaluate the impact of these investigations on the survival of the patients.


Natural stone of many types is used in a wide range of monuments and buildings dating from many periods and located in widely differing environmental conditions around the world. Thus, there is a great need for better understanding of the durability of stone, in terms of its resilience in the face of a wide range of deteriorative processes. Such knowledge will allow better conservation and management of both historic stonework and new build. This paper reviews the current challenges facing attempts to link studies of durability to conservation, and proposes a way forward. First, it outlines the current complexity of factors surrounding the use, deterioration and conservation of natural stone today, in the light of climatic change, globalization and sustainability. Second, it reviews three important issues surrounding durability; that is, the meaning of durability, how we measure durability, and the challenges for modelling and predicting durability. Third, it proposes a new approach to conceptualizing and assessing durability to make it more relevant and useful for practical conservation.


Several G protein-coupled receptors that interact with pertussis toxin-sensitive heterotrimeric G proteins mediate Ras-dependent activation of mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinases. The mechanism involves Gβγ subunit-mediated increases in tyrosine phosphorylation of the Shc adapter protein, Shc·Grb2 complex formation, and recruitment of Ras guanine nucleotide exchange factor activity. We have investigated the role of the ubiquitous nonreceptor tyrosine kinase c-Src in activation of the MAP kinase pathway via endogenous G protein-coupled lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) receptors or by transient expression of Gβγ subunits in COS-7 cells. In vitro kinase assays of Shc immunoprecipitates following LPA stimulation demonstrated rapid, transient recruitment of tyrosine kinase activity into Shc immune complexes. Recruitment of tyrosine kinase activity was pertussis toxin-sensitive and mimicked by cellular expression of Gβγ subunits. Immunoblots for coprecipitated proteins in Shc immunoprecipitates revealed a transient association of Shc and c-Src following LPA stimulation, which coincided with increases in Shc-associated tyrosine kinase activity and Shc tyrosine phosphorylation. LPA stimulation or expression of Gβγ subunits resulted in c-Src activation, as assessed by increased c-Src autophosphorylation. Overexpression of wild-type or constitutively active mutant c-Src, but not kinase inactive mutant c-Src, lead to increased tyrosine kinase activity in Shc immunoprecipitates, increased Shc tyrosine phosphorylation, and Shc·Grb2 complex formation. MAP kinase activation resulting from LPA receptor stimulation, expression of Gβγ subunits, or expression of c-Src was sensitive to dominant negatives of mSos, Ras, and Raf. Coexpression of Csk, which inactivates Src family kinases by phosphorylating the regulatory C-terminal tyrosine residue, inhibited LPA stimulation of Shc tyrosine phosphorylation, Shc·Grb2 complex formation, and MAP kinase activation. These data suggest that Gβγ subunit-mediated formation of Shc·c-Src complexes and c-Src kinase activation are early events in Ras-dependent activation of MAP kinase via pertussis toxin-sensitive G protein-coupled receptors.


Many important natural products contain the furan-2(5H)-one structure. The structure of this molecule lends itself to manipulation using combinatorial techniques due to the presence of more than one site for the attachment of different suhstituents. By developing different reaction schemes at the three sites available for attachment on the furan-2(5H)-one scaffold, combinatorial chemistry techniques can be employed to assemble libraries of novel furan 2(5H)-ones. These libraries can then be entered into various biological screening programmes. This approach will enable a vast diversity or compounds to be examined, in the hope or finding new biologically active Iead structures. The work in this thesis has investigated the potential that combinatorial chemistry has in the quest for new biologically active lead structures based on the furan-2(5H)-one structure. Different reactions were investigated with respect to their suitability for inclusion in a library. Once sets of reactions at the various sites had been established, the viability of these reactions in the assembly of combinatorial libraries was investigated. Purification methods were developed, and the purified products entered into suitable biological screening tests. Results from some of these tests were optimised using structure activity relationships, and the resulting products re-screened. The screening tests performed were for anticancer and antimicrobial activity, cholecystokinin (CCK-B) antagonism and anti-inflammatory activity (in the quest for novel cyclo-oxygenase (COX-2) selective non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs). It has been shown that many reactions undergone by the furan-2(5H)-one structure are suitable for the assembly of a combinatorial library. Investigation into the assembly of different libraries has been carried out with initial screening results included. From this work, further investigation into combinatorial library assembly and structure activity relationships of screened reaction products can be undertaken.


Abstract. Measurements of mixing ratios and stable carbon isotope ratios of aromatic volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the atmosphere were made in Toronto (Canada) in 2009 and 2010. Consistent with the kinetic isotope effect for reactions of aromatic VOC with the OH radical the observed stable carbon isotope ratios are on average significantly heavier than the isotope ratios of their emissions. The change of carbon isotope ratio between emission and observation is used to determine the extent of photochemical processing (photochemical age, ∫  [OH]dt) of the different VOC. It is found that ∫  [OH]dt of different VOC depends strongly on the VOC reactivity. This demonstrates that for this set of observations the assumption of a uniform ∫  [OH]dt for VOC with different reactivity is not justified and that the observed values for ∫  [OH]dt are the result of mixing of VOC from air masses with different values for ∫  [OH]dt. Based on comparison between carbon isotope ratios and VOC concentration ratios it is also found that the varying influence of sources with different VOC emission ratios has a larger impact on VOC concentration ratios than photochemical processing. It is concluded that for this data set the use of VOC concentration ratios to determine ∫  [OH]dt would result in values for ∫  [OH]dt inconsistent with carbon isotope ratios and that the concept of a uniform ∫  [OH]dt for an air mass has to be replaced by the concept of individual values of an average ∫  [OH]dt for VOC with different reactivity.


Due to population upsurge and urbanization, solid waste management is now one of the chief issues to deal with as it affects quality of life. Ahmedabad is the 7th largest city of India and generates about 4000 Metric tons of waste daily. The foremost segments responsible for the emission of GHGs are energy supply with 26% followed by industrial activities with 19%, while the commercial areas including buildings and residential with 8% and waste sector with 3%. Out of the total emissions from waste sector, the solid waste contributes nearly 22 % of total greenhouse gas emission in Indian context which in turn is the 3% of the total sectorial emissions. The studies reveal that this MSW comprises of more than 50% of organic waste in Indian context as it contains vegetable, food waste, animal dung, paper, cloth and other biodegradable components as well. This study aims at providing an overview of the stages of waste management i.e. Prevention, Minimization, Reuse, Recycle, Energy recovery, Disposal and its composition at the Ahmedabad city level. It also provides a further insight of feasibility and aids of adopting segregation at source and decentralisation of swm in order to provide better future. A sample survey of Ghatlodiya that was carried out by JTC Agency which revealed that vast majority of people are willing to segregate as per law (87%+). [2] Decentralization and segregation at source can be beneficial as compared to current cost of INR 1000 per ton for solid waste management, cost can reduce to 418 per ton and also can lead to better standard of living of society. Out of 4000 MT generated daily only 800 MT would be needed to dispose daily which would lead to 80% volume reduction then current scenario. As only 800MT tones would be disposed, it would further lead to reduction in GHGs emission and thus would help lower carbon footprint.


Problem. Despite the exponential numerical growth of the Seventh-day Adventist church in Zambia, there are noticeable evidences that many in the church still struggle to maintain consistency in their faith commitments. This means that the church's great emphasis on evangelistic efforts that lead people to accept Christ must be balanced with a matching emphasis on helping them to walk with him in daily life. Yet the Zambia Union Conference lacks a sufficient and contextualized discipling strategy for both new and longtime members. The purpose of this project is to address this need by developing a biblical and tri-focal discipling strategy for multi-church districts in Zambia. Method. Through library research, the theological foundations for the nature and goals of Christian discipleship were established. With this framework, a literature review was conducted on different local church approaches to disciple-making. Through an analysis of Zambian society, some of the challenges to the goals of discipleship in Zambia were revealed. The SWOT analysis of the Zambian Union Conference reveals some of the challenges that hinder local churches from becoming intentional and effective disciple-making communities. Results. This project established the need for a clear vision for disciple-making so that the methods match the objectives, a functional equipping environment in the local church as the primary context for discipleship, a renewal of pastoral leadership that focuses on developing people, and continued "equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God" through a systematic study of God's Word. Conclusion. This project outlines a tri-focal discipling strategy for multi-church districts in Zambia. The strategy includes local church ministry structure that stipulate, in organizational flow, a process that meets the basic growth needs of members and addresses each of the four dimensions of our vision for discipling in a balanced way. Relevant topics are selected and a curriculum for discipling is developed. A Christian growth evaluation process is developed for assessing the progress being made. Furthermore, pastoral leadership practices for disciple-making churches together with a project implementation outline are defined. Overall the strategy weighs heavily on connecting God's people in intentional relationships for mutual discipling.


Computer Network and Internet is growing every day. Computer networks allow communicating faster than any other facilities. These networks allow the user to access local and remote databases. It is impossible to protect every system on the network. In industries, the network and its security are important issues, as a breach in the system can cause major problems. Intrusion detection system (IDS) is used for monitoring the processes on a system or a network for examining the threats and alerts the administrator about attack. And IDS provide a solution only for the large scale industries, but there is no solution for the small scale industries so model is proposed for honeypot to solve the problem of small scale industries which is the hybrid structure of Snort, Nmap, Xprobe2, and P0f (2). This model captures the activities of attackers and maintains a log for all these activities. Virtualization is performed with the help of virtual machine. The focus of this report is primarily on preventing the attacks from external and internal attackers and maintaining the log file using honeypot with virtual machine (6).


In Ut-Ma'in (Benue-Congo, Kainji), the temporal interpretation of a Bare Verb stem is based on the discourse context established by something other than the verb form itself. Contexts in which this verb form occurs vary. Adverbials and overt verbal morphology on other verbs are among the devices used to establish the conceptual/mental space within which each Bare Verb form is understood. Depending on context, tense-aspect interpretations of the Bare Verb may cover a range of notions, including 'past', 'present', and 'habitual'. Once a conceptual space has been established, the Bare Verb can be used to express sequential main events; but its use is not limited to this function.


The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impacts of future urban policy scenarios in the Lisbon region with the support of the Land Use and Transportation Impact Assessment integrated modelling framework for Lisbon (LUTIA-Lx). Three policy scenarios are analysed: (i) a business as usual scenario, consisting of minimum policy controls; (ii) a medium impact control scenario which builds on the propositions of national and regional policies; and (iii) a high impact control scenario which builds on strict urban development controls together with higher levels of service of public transportation and of soft modes infrastructures, and on benefits for cleaner vehicles and car usage taxation. It is concluded that achieving sustainability in the Lisbon region calls for: the implementation of integrative land use and transport policies; the stimulation of the use of public transportation and of soft modes; and for the conversion of the private car fleet.


This study evaluates the potential impact of clouds on ecosystem CO2 and CO2 isotope fluxes ("isofluxes") in two contrasting ecosystems (a broadleaf deciduous forest and a C4 grassland) in a region for which cloud cover, meteorological, and isotope data are available for driving the isotope‐enabled land surface model (ISOLSM). Our model results indicate a large impact of clouds on ecosystem CO2 fluxes and isofluxes. Despite lower irradiance on partly cloudy and cloudy days, predicted forest canopy photosynthesis was substantially higher than on clear, sunny days, and the highest carbon uptake was achieved on the cloudiest day. This effect was driven by a large increase in light‐limited shade leaf photosynthesis following an increase in the diffuse fraction of irradiance. Photosynthetic isofluxes, by contrast, were largest on partly cloudy days, as leaf water isotopic composition was only slightly depleted and photosynthesis was enhanced, as compared to adjacent clear‐sky days. On the cloudiest day, the forest exhibited intermediate isofluxes: although photosynthesis was highest on this day, leaf‐to‐atmosphere isofluxes were reduced from a feedback of transpiration on canopy relative humidity and leaf water. Photosynthesis and isofluxes were both reduced in the C4 grass canopy with increasing cloud cover and diffuse fraction as a result of near‐constant light limitation of photosynthesis. These results suggest that some of the unexplained variation in global mean δ18O of CO2 may be driven by large‐scale changes in clouds and aerosols and their impacts on diffuse radiation, photosynthesis, and relative humidity.


David Mitchell comes home - to England, 1982, and the cusp of adolescence. Jason Taylor is 13, doomed to be growing up in the most boring family in the deadest village ("Black Swan Green") in the dullest county (Worcestershire) in the most tedious nation (England) on earth. And he stammers. 13 chapters, each as self-contained as a short story, follow 13 months in his life as he negotiates the pitfalls of school and home and contends with bullies, girls and family politics. In the distance, the Falklands conflict breaks out; close at hand, the village mobilises against a gypsy camp. And through Jason's eyes, we see what he doesn't know he knows - and watch unfold what will make him wish his life had been as uneventful as he had believed. Vividly capturing the mood of the times - high unemployment, Cold War politics and the sunset of agrarian England - this is at once a portrait of an era and of an age: the black hole between childhood and teenagerdom.


Measurement of inequity in health care delivery has focused on the extent to which health care utilisation is or is not distributed according to need, irrespective of income. Studies using cross-sectional data have proposed various ways of measuring and standardizing for need, but inevitably much of the inter-individual variation in needs remains unobserved in cross-sections. This paper exploits panel data methods to improve the measurement by including the time-invariant part of unobserved heterogeneity into the need-standardization procedure. Using latent class hurdle models for GP and specialist visits estimated on 8 annual waves of the European Community Household Panel we compute indices of horizontal equity that partition total income-related variation in use into a needand a non-need related part, not only for the observed but also for the unobserved but timeinvariant component. We also propose and compare a more conservative index of horizontal inequity to the conventional statistic. We find that many of the cross-country comparative results appear fairly robust to the panel data test, although the panel-based methods lead to significantly higher estimates of horizontal inequity for most countries. This confirms that better estimation and control for need often reveals more pro-rich distributions of doctor utilisation. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


We have implemented an open-source additive synthesizer in the matlab language that reads sinusoidal models from SDIF files and synthesizes them with a variety of methods for interpolating frequency, amplitude, and phase between frames. Interpolation techniques currently implemented include linear frequency and amplitude ignoring all but initial phase, dB scale amplitude interpolation, stair-step, and cubic polynomial phase interpolation. A plug-in architecture separates the common handling of SDIF, births and deaths of partials, etc., from the specifics of each interpolation technique, making it easy to add more interpolation techniques as well as increasing code clarity and pedagogical value. We ran all synthesis interpolation techniques on a collection of 107 SDIF files and briefly discuss the perceptual differences among the techniques for various cases.


The use of exacted conservation easements is widespread. Yet, the study of the implications of their use has been minimal. Conservation easements are nonpossessory interests in land restricting a landowner's ability to use her land in an otherwise permissible way, with the goal of yielding a conservation benefit. Exacted conservation easements arise in permitting contexts where, in exchange for a government benefit, landowners either create conservation easements on their own property or arrange for conservation easements on other land. To explore the concern associated with the enforceability of exacted conservation easements in a concrete way, this article examines exacted conservation easements in California, demonstrating that despite their frequent use in the state, their enforceability is uncertain. The three California statutes governing conservation easements limit the ability to exact conservation easements. California caselaw, although thin, indicates that courts may be willing to uphold exacted conservation easements even when they conflict with the state statutes. This examination of the California situation highlights California-specific concerns while providing a framework for examining exacted conservation easements in other states.This article illustrates not only challenges of enforceability that arise with exacted conservation easements, but uncertainty in their fundamental validity and concerns about public accountability. This exploration illustrates that enforceability is not straightforward. This raises significant concerns about using exacted conservation easements to promote conservation goals, calling into question specifically the use of conservation easements as exactions.


Laura Auricchio's Adelaide Labille-Guiard: Artist in the Age of Revolution (Oxford, 2009) draws on archival research, cultural history, and French Revolutionary history to position Labille-Guiard (1749-1803) as a product of both the art world and the volatile political climate of Revolutionary-era France. Art Historian Auricchio's monograph draws from Anne-Marie Passez's Adelaide Labille-Guiard, 1749-1803, Biographie et catalogue raisonne de son oeuvre (1973), but instead of focusing on attributing paintings to the artist, Auricchio's project centers more on the ways in which Labille-Guiard's evolving career correlated with the political events of the French Revolution and their effects on the art world. Auricchio offers a comprehensive and compelling description of Labille-Guiard's artistic career, beginning with her early years as the daughter of a fashionable haberdasher, and continuing to the relative stability of her court position during the reign of Louis XVI, to her political involvement with the Feuillants during the Revolution, and finally to her posthumous influence over female pupils. Auricchio's general argument is that Labille-Guiard's career reveals important aspects of the era's artistic production and, given this, Auricchio offers an analysis of the political and social conditions of women artists during the French Revolution. Her beautifully illustrated book is biographically and contextually comprehensive. She chooses not to analyze each of Labille-Guiard's images in detail, using art objects primarily as evidence of how the artist successfully negotiated her various positions in Revolutionary France.Auricchio's book, arranged chronologically, is divided into five chapters that situate Labille-Guiard's life within the political events before, during, and after the French Revolution. She also includes an appendix, which both adds and subtracts attributions of works to Labille-Guiard that were originally made by Passez. In the introduction, Auricchio discusses the predicament of women artists, who had to transgress laws governing proper female deportment by working in the male-dominated art world while still maintaining their feminine virtue. Labille-Guiard, Auricchio explains, was different from many other female artists, as she had no artist father to show her the way. Consequently, she was forced to negotiate the virtually irreconcilable positions of artist and woman on her own through the personal and professional relationships she fostered with the French aristocracy and, later, with politicians, actors, and the Parisian urban elite (2). Discussions of women artists' delicate negotiation between the public world of art commerce and their proper place in the domestic realm as women has been previously examined by art historians Mary Sheriff, Melissa Hyde, and Angela Rosenthal.1 Auricchio adds to this scholarship, positioning Labille-Guiard as both subject to the same gendered limitations as the other female artists and as a product of the shifting political, economic, and social worlds of Revolutionary France.Auricchio's discussion of Labille-Guiard and other female artists' negotiation of their gendered position in the male-dominated art world sets the stage for what she sees as Labille-Guiard's many breaches with contemporary mores governing proper female deportment. Auricchio stresses Labille-Guiard's unconventional female behavior in chapter 1, "Painting in the Margins, 17741783," when describing Labille-Guiard's early artistic training, submissions to the Academy of St. Luke, and her father's influence on his daughter's ability to depict fabrics and costuming. Labille-Guiard's career, Auricchio posits, offers a model of how a woman draws attention to her work without jeopardizing her moral stature and, as a result, her career. Labille-Guiard's early success painting miniature portraits, a genre considered more suitable for women artists due to its imitation of the human figure and its small, portable size, diffused accusations of impropriety and ultimately paved the way for her success during the twilight of the French monarchy. …


These four pages of mixed-media material document bring to light our creative ideas, processes and performances with a simple number annotation system placed on two basic maps of the city of New York (USA) and the city of York (UK). The annotated artwork is cross-referenced to a critical and reflective talk for audiences scored with coffee breaks, pauses and childhood dreams. Our collaborative practice produced a 12-minute Super 8 mm film Kong Lear and a limited-edition boxed archive of loose-leaf pages made up of mixed-media images and performance texts, whose pages represent a range of what may be classed as ephemera stemming from the process of making the film, presenting it in a gallery exhibition and also its promotion and dissemination. The pages also surface some of the crossroads and meeting points of the material we are interested in and annotates those crossroads. We share the artistic process of documentation as performance for the page and manage the slippage between the ecologies of the live and the environments of the documented, which paradoxically are a movement of sorts—a body as a form—with a head, a skin, a heart and footsteps. The documentation makes a world, a world to be alive in and a silent world to sleep in; it accumulates information to produce semantic layers of past action through a lens of endless possibilities for the imaginal screen.


The works of Edward Hallett Carr represent an important contribution to the historiography of Soviet Russia and to the study of international relations in general. Yet his work is often dismissed, primarily because Carr was considered 'ideologically unsound,' that is, a Stalinist. This essay examines the validity of that charge and concludes instead that Carr was in fact firmly realistic in his writings on the Soviet Union and on international relations. In the case of the Soviet Union, this paper argues that Carr's realism produced works of balance and judgement in a period - the Cold War- when such characteristics were anathema to the historiography of the subject. In at least one of his works on international relations, The Twenty Years' Crisis, this realism represented a novel and revolutionary approach to the the subject.


The article deals with the relevant theoretical and practical problem of delimitation between criminal and civil liability for evasion of property obligation by means of deception. Such a criminal deed has been involved into the three norms of chapter XXVIII of the new Lithuanian criminal code including norm of fraud. Such a regulation overcomes the limits of traditional apprehension of criminal deed, therefore requires developing a clear concept of the evasion of property obligation, as well as to find the criteria of its delimitation from a civil delict. The author overviews the traditional concept of delimitation between criminal and civil liability in general, then analyses examples of decisions of Supreme Court of Lithuania in this category of cases and its motives of confirming or denying the criminal liability for evasion of property obligation. The author concluded that the evasion of property obligation is to be considered as a criminal act only if a perpetrator, by means of deception, deprived a victim of real possibilities to protect his property right in civil court. As the examples of such deprivation might serve the false insolvency of the debtor, concealment of identity of the debtor, forged evidence of fulfilment of the obligation and so on. Moreover, the article examines the applicability of the traditional conception of deception to the cases of evasion of property of obligation.


The recent discoveries of gravitational wave events and in one case also its electromagnetic (EM) counterpart allow us to study the Universe in a novel way. The increased sensitivity of the LIGO and Virgo detectors has opened the possibility for regular detections of EM transient events from mergers of stellar remnants. Gravitational wave sources are expected to have sky localization up to a few hundred square degrees, thus Gaia as an all-sky multi-epoch photometric survey has the potential to be a good tool to search for the EM counterparts. In this paper, we study the possibility of detecting EM counterparts to gravitational wave sources using the Gaia Science Alerts system. We develop an extension to current used algorithms to find transients and test its capabilities in discovering candidate transients on a sample of events from the observation periods O1 and O2 of LIGO and Virgo. For the gravitational wave events from the current run O3, we expect that about 16 (25) per cent should fall in sky regions observed by Gaia 7 (10) d after gravitational wave. The new algorithm will provide about 21 candidates per day from the whole sky.


On January 1, 2008, the State of Michigan implemented a new tax, labeled a modified gross receipts tax (MGRT). The label is misleading. The tax is not on gross receipts but rather on gross receipts reduced by "purchases from other firms," defined generally to include inventory purchased during the taxable year, capital purchases, and material and supplies. In some respects, the tax resembles a value-added tax (VAT), although it has some important features not found in a traditional VAT or in any known variation of that tax. The purpose of the MGRT, other than to raise revenue, is unclear on its face and is not clarified by the legislative history, which is virtually nonexistent. In this article, we undertake to describe this new tax, classify it as best we can within the tax taxonomy, and speculate about its effects on Michigan taxpayers and on the Michigan economy. Section I, by way of introduction, summarizes the tax reform efforts that led to the adoption of the gross receipts tax. Section II discusses the problems of classifying the tax, comparing it to a traditional gross receipts tax and to a tax on value added. Section III begins with an overview of the salient features of the MGRT and then discusses in greater detail three important features of the tax, namely its nexus rules, its apportionment rules, and its unitary business rules. We speculate about the impact of the tax on Michigan and Michigan taxpayers in the conclusion.


Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to explore how the lack of staff engagement with a university's strategy on sustainability could be an enabling lever for organisational change. It examines the attitudes and views of employees of a business faculty at an Australian metropolitan university as it attempts to adopt a holistic approach to sustainability. Design/methodology/approach - – The paper opted for a case study using data from an on-line survey, semi-directed interviews with key management personnel and archival material. Responses were analysed using Piderit's (2000) notion of ambivalence. Findings - – The paper provides empirical insights into why staff lacked engagement with the university's strategy on sustainability. It suggests that staff were ambivalent, displaying dissonance in their personal beliefs on sustainability, the university's strategy and the extent of their intentions to support the university. Staff were willing to offer ideas on how the university could, in the future, change towards sustainability. These ideas allow the possibility for the university to learn to adjust the scope of the implementation of its sustainability strategy. Research limitations/implications - – The research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to further examine staff attitudes on sustainability in higher education using Piderit's notion of ambivalence. In-depth interviews and focus group discussions could allow a better understanding of harmony and dissonance in cognition of and intention for university sustainability strategies and initiatives by academic, professional and sessional staff. Practical implications - – The paper includes implications for staff engagement with sustainability in higher education. Originality/value - – This paper fulfils an identified need to study how staff engagement with sustainability in higher education can be enabled for organisational learning.


This paper summarises the approach taken in establishing and validating the stall zone of a main axial fan for an underground expansion project. The expansion of an operating underground bord and pillar mine required the use of a second fan in parallel at the start of the development project. To improve the level of confidence in the ventilation simulation model that incorporated an existing fan curve provided by the fan supplier necessitated an independent fan test. Therefore, performance and stall characteristics of the current fan and pressure-quantity (PQ) survey of the mine was conducted and the results were used to calibrate the ventilation simulation model. The main axial fan was tested through a range of operating points beyond the currently perceived pressure stall point of 2.1 kPa. A pitot traverse was conducted for two operating points and the remaining operating points were measured on fan instruments. This paper details the test procedures and instruments used to collect and analyse data, and the theory used in analysis and to calibrate fan differential pressure flow measurement instruments. The fan test study has validated the fan curves with different pitch setting for use in ventilation simulation studies with twin fan installations operating with the fan pitch set to 17.5o, which is to give a good operating safety margin from the stall zone of 2.6 kPa.


The traditional focus on Management Buy-Outs (MBOs) has been upon concluding deals. However, substantial numbers of MBOs fail to exit and this paper suggests that the time is ripe for attention to be redirected towards post-deal evolution. Three phases in the MBO post-deal process are identified. These are depicted as The Spirit of Optimism, The Zone of Indifference and The Spiral of Mistrust, reflecting, respectively, the moment of contractual agreement, subsequent stagnation and downward slide in performance. As the MBO evolves through these phases of decline, this study focuses upon the interactions of three main parties: The Management Team, The Venture Capitalists and The Investment Bankers. The key objective is to capture the difficulties accruing to these parties as the MBO declines. The failures of the three main parties lie in identities, increasing problems of interaction and lack of communication. By linking micro, meso and macro levels of analysis a novel way of looking at MBOs is suggested which helps to avoid the trap of focusing only upon the moment the deal is done.


This study uses longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey to examine the difference in the experience of financial hardship between permanent and two forms of non-permanent employment:-fixed-term and casual employment, separately for men and women. It estimates multivariate ordered logit fixed-effects models that account for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity, common macroeconomic shocks and a rich set of individual level characteristics, and finds that for both men and women, compared to permanent employment, casual employment is associated with increased financial hardship. Fixed-term employment is not associated with increased financial hardship for either men or women. For men, the strong positive association between casual employment and financial hardship is largely explained by fewer hours of work and a higher vulnerability to employment shocks (job loss and job change). For women, particularly those with caring responsibilities, working fewer hours and experiencing employment shocks (job loss and job change) explain some of the association between casual employment and financial hardship, but even after allowing for these factors casual employment per se continues to have a strong positive association with the experience of financial hardship.


We study class-posterior probability estimation (CPE) for binary responses where one class has much fewer data than the other. For example, events such as species co-occurrence in ecology and wars in political science are often much rarer than non-events. Logistic regression has been widely used for CPE, while it tends to underestimate the probability of rare events. Its main drawback is symmetry of the logit link—symmetric links can be misled by small and imbalanced samples because it is more incentivized to overestimate the majority class with finite samples. Parametric skewed links have been proposed to overcome this limitation, but their estimation usually results in nonconvex optimization unlike the logit link. Such nonconvexity is knotty not only from the computational viewpoint but also in terms of the parameter identifiability. In this paper, we provide a procedure to derive a convex loss for a skewed link based on the recently proposed FenchelYoung losses. The derived losses are always convex and have a nice property suitable for class imbalance. The simulation shows the practicality of the derived losses.


All evaluators face the challenge of striving to adhere to the highest possible standards of ethical conduct. Translating the AEA's Guiding Principles and the Joint Committee's Program Evaluation Standards into everyday practice, however, can be a complex, uncertain, and frustrating endeavor. Moreover, acting in an ethical fashion can require considerable risk-taking on the evaluator's part. In the Ethical Challengescolumn, commentators share their views of how evaluators might respond to specific problematic situations, linking their analyses to the principles and standards they believe are most relevant to the case. Not surprisingly, the perspectives that commentators offer are not always in agreement. When this occurs, reflection on the nature and sources of these differences of opinion can enhance our sensitivity to the ethical dimensions of our evaluation work, and our awareness of the options available for addressing them. Readers who wish to submit cases to Ethical Challenges , or serve as commentators, should contact Michael Morris, section editor, at mikepsyc@charger. newhaven.edu.


As research and development (R&D) in autonomous systems progresses further, more interdisciplinary knowledge is needed from domains as diverse as artificial intelligence (AI), bi-ology, psychology, modeling and simulation (M&S), and robotics. Such R&D efforts are necessarily interdisciplinary in nature and require technical as well as further soft skills of teamwork, communication and integration. In this paper, we introduce a 14 week, summer long internship for developing these skills in undergraduate science and engineering interns through R&D. The internship was designed to be modular and divided into three parts: training, innovation, and application/integration. The end result of the internship was 1) the development of an M&S ecosystem for autonomy concepts, 2) development and robotics testing of reasoning methods through both Bayesian methods and cognitive models of the basal ganglia, and 3) a process for future internships within the modular construct. Through collaboration with full-time professional staff, who actively learned with the interns, this internship incorporates a feedback loop to educate and per-form fundamental R&D. Future iterations of this internship can leverage the M&S ecosystem and adapt the modular internship framework to focus on different innovations, learning paradigms, and/or applications.


Hepatitis is one of the most common and dangerous diseases that affects humankind, and exposes millions of people to serious health risks every year. Diagnosis of Hepatitis has always been a challenge for physicians. This paper presents an effective method for diagnosis of hepatitis based on interval Type-II fuzzy. This proposed system includes three steps: pre-processing (feature selection), Type-I and Type-II fuzzy classification, and system evaluation. KNN-FD feature selection is used as the preprocessing step in order to exclude irrelevant features and to improve classification performance and efficiency in generating the classification model. In the fuzzy classification step, an "indirect approach" is used for fuzzy system modeling by implementing the exponential compactness and separation index for determining the number of rules in the fuzzy clustering approach. Therefore, we first proposed a Type-I fuzzy system that had an accuracy of approximately 90.9%. In the proposed system, the process of diagnosis faces vagueness and uncertainty in the final decision. Thus, the imprecise knowledge was managed by using interval Type-II fuzzy logic. The results that were obtained show that interval Type-II fuzzy has the ability to diagnose hepatitis with an average accuracy of 93.94%. The classification accuracy obtained is the highest one reached thus far. The aforementioned rate of accuracy demonstrates that the Type-II fuzzy system has a better performance in comparison to Type-I and indicates a higher capability of Type-II fuzzy system for modeling uncertainty. Keywords—Hepatitis disease, medical diagnosis, type-I fuzzy logic, type-II fuzzy logic, feature selection.


We present an extension to a previous work to study the collapse of a radiating, slow-rotating selfgravitating relativistic configuration. In order to simulate dissipation effects due to the transfer of photons and/or neutrinos within the matter configuration, we introduce the flux factor, the variable Eddington factor and a closure relation between them. Rotation in General Relativity is considered in the slow rotation approximation, i.e. tangential velocity of every fluid element is much less than the speed of light and the centrifugal forces are little compared with the gravitational ones. Solutions are properly matched, up to the first order in the Kerr parameter, to the exterior Kerr-Vaidya metric and the evolution of the physical variables are obtained inside the matter configuration. To illustrate the method we explore the influence of the closure relations on the dynamics of three models with different equations of state and two functional form of the flux factor. We have found that, for the six closure relations considered, the matching conditions implies that a total diffusion regime can not be attained at the surface of the configuration. It has also been obtained that the eccentricity at the surface of radiating configurations is greater for models near the diffusion approximation than for those in the free streaming out limit. At least for the static "seed" equations of state considered, the simulations we performed show that these models have differential rotation and that the more diffusive the model is, the slower it rotates.


We propose a two stage visual matching pipeline including a first step using VLAD signatures for filtering results, and a second step which reranks the top results using raw matching of SIFT descriptors. This enables adjusting the tradeoff between high computational cost of matching local descriptors and the insufficient accuracy of compact signatures in many application scenarios. We describe GPU accelerated extraction and matching algorithms for SIFT, which result in a speedup factor of at least 4. The VLAD filtering step reduces the number of images/frames for which the local descriptors need to be matched, thus speeding up retrieval by an additional factor of 9-10 without sacrificing mean average precision over full raw descriptor matching.


Three new species of Lepanthes from south-east Costa Rica are described and illustrated. Lepanthes erubescens resembles L. limbellata, from which it can be distinguished by the pendent plants, with inflorescences that borne above the leaf, the upper petal lobe ovate, acute, 1,3 mm wide, larger than the lower lobe, and the ovate lip. Lepanthes sandiorum resembles L. dolabriformis, however it can be distinguished by the smaller plants, the smaller flowers, the narrower petals, which are filiform, with the upper lobe oblong, rounded, entire and glabrous. Lepanthes sanjuanensis is similar to L. elegans, but it is distinguished by the green-purple, un-reticulated leaves, the petals with the upper lobe oblong, rounded, with the margins red, the lower lobe oblong, rounded, divergent at apex, and the pinkish or orange-red lip. Additional comments on the species are provided.


* ABSTRACT Live imaging of adult neural stem cells (aNSCs) in vivo is a technical challenge in the vertebrate brain. Here, we achieve long-term imaging of the adult zebrafish telencephalic neurogenic niche and track a population of >1000 aNSCs over weeks, by taking advantage of fish transparency at near-infrared wavelengths and of intrinsic multiphoton landmarks. This methodology enables us to describe the frequency, distribution and modes of aNSCs divisions across the entire germinal zone of the adult pallium, and to highlight regional differences in these


Today we can see how companies are making significant investments in various methods and tools to access and utilize the users' knowledge for the purpose of innovation efforts. What many highly innovative companies try to accomplish with these investments is to develop and establish sustained producer-user ecosystems. The aim of these ecosystems is often to encourage users to collaborate with each other and with the producer in order to generate innovations related to the offering of the producer. However, although these ecosystems are proven to create new innovation opportunities for companies, it has been shown that a close collaboration with many users brings about a number of challenges for companies. For example, it can be costly and time-consuming to establish and utilize large numbers of user relationships and it can be difficult to align the innovation interests of established producers with those of the users. Moreover, the fact that many innovating users have relationships to one another can contribute to conflicts of interests and established producers may have to balance stability and change within the ecosystem. Another challenge in the utilization of user relationships is that it is not only dependent on the direct interaction with users but also the internal dissemination and utilization of information related to the users' needs. This dissemination can be problematic since it is costly and difficult to forward timely and reliable information about the users' needs. Consequently, the aim of this thesis is to better understand how companies that are operating within sustained producer-user ecosystems can leverage user relationships for the purpose of innovation. The research forming the foundation for this thesis was carried out within two established medical technology companies that successfully had developed innovations within this type of ecosystems. Quantitative and qualitative data was collectedand a number of different analyses were conducted. The results reveal that these ecosystems can be understood as a system where direct and indirect user experiences are distributed among employees and users. This in turn implies that employees utilization of user relationships can be understood as a function of the extent to which employees knows and values the pertinence of their own as well as others direct and indirect user experiences as well as accessibility and cost of seeking user-information from other people. The results demonstrate that when companies experience high costs related to the acquisition of user experiences they may benefit from employing users to occupy boundary-spanning roles. However, the thesis reveals how the utilization of such boundary-spanning roles brings with it a number of organizational challenges. Moreover, an important aspect of success tends to be the utilization of relationships to so-called transformational users. These users experience problems with established producers' current products before the majority of users, they adopt new technologies earlier than their peers, and they cooperate with established producers for the purpose of transformation of a product field in order to obtain or maintain a central position within the ecosystem. Furthermore, the results reveal how established producers and users are jointly engaged in value creation through various collaborations. However, the results also indicate that the utilization of user relationships for innovation within these types of ecosystems is, to a large extent, a matter of managing tensions emerging within and around these collaborations. On a general level, this thesis points to the potential benefits of considering producer-user ecosystems as a comprehensive perspective, which may explain how companies gain and sustain a competitive edge, rather than one out of many approaches that companies can apply in order to leverage user relationships for innovation.


This work considers the study of chance constrained Model Predictive Control (MPC) for reliable spacecraft trajectory tracking and landing. Objectives of the master thesis: • To identify and study mathematical dynamic models of a spacecraft. • To study the trajectory design and landing schemes for a given mission. • To study the source of uncertainty in the model parameters and external disturbances. • To study the chance constrained MPC scheme for the reliable and optimal trajectory tracking and landing. • To testing the new analytic approximation approaches, Inner and Outer, for chance constraints. • To study appropriate MPC algorithms and implement on case-studies. In the first part of the thesis considers deterministic dynamical models of spacecraft are discussed. The first example is about the tracking of trajectory and soft landing on the surface of an asteroid EROS433, this model uses Cartesian coordinates. In the second example, in a similar way to the first example, the trajectory and soft landing is performed on the surface of a celestial body. It is assumed that the celestial body is a perfect sphere, something that does not happen in the first example. Thus, the second example uses a Spherical coordinate system. The third example is about a Lander that enters the Martian atmosphere. This Lander follows a designed trajectory until reaching a certain altitude over the Martian surface. At this altitude the Lander deploys a parachute to make the landing. To solve the deterministic examples described above, the following sequence of steps are: • pose the deterministic Nonlinear Optimal Control Problem (NOCP), • convert the infinite Optimal Control Problem (OCP) to a finite Nonlinear Programming Problem (NLP), applying the Runge-Kutta 4th order discretization method, • apply the Quasi-sequential method to the deterministic NLP obtained from the previous step, • solution of the reduced NLP obtained from the previous step using IpOpt software. Master thesis Augusto José, Tam Tapia i The steps outlined above are also part of the Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) approach. In the second part of the thesis, the same examples of the first part are used but now with stochastic variables. To find the control law in each model, the stochastic NMPC was used. The above mentioned approach begins with a chance constrained OCP. The latter is discretized obtaining an NLP. The problem with this NLP, with chance constraints, is that is very difficult to solve in analytic form. So these chance constraints are approached by a different method that exist in the state of the art. This thesis work is focused on approaching the chance constraints through Analytic Approximation Strategies, specifically by the recent: Inner and Outer Approximation methods. The chance constrained MPC is expensive from a computational point of view, but it allows to find a control law for a more reliable trajectory-tracking and soft landing . That is suitable for applications with random disturbances, model inaccuracies, and measurement errors.


An intense orographic precipitation event on 5 January 2013 is analyzed using a polarimetric C-band radar situated north of the Alps. The radar is operated at the meteorological observatory Hohenpeisenberg (MHP, 1006 m a.s.l. – above sea level) of the German Meteorological Service (DWD). The event lasted about 1.5 days and in total 44 mm precipitation was measured at Hohenpeisenberg. Detailed high resolution observation on the vertical structure of this event is obtained through a birdbath scan at 90° elevation which is part of the operational scanning. This scan is acquired every 5 min and provides meteorological profiles at high spatial resolution which are often not available in other radar networks. In the course of this event, the melting layer (ML) descends until the transition from rain into snow is observed at ground level. This transition from rain into snow is well documented by local weather observers and a present-weather sensor. The orographic precipitation event reveals mesoscale variability above the melting layer which can be attributed to a warm front. This variability manifests itself through substantially increased hydrometeor fall velocities. Radiosounding data indicate a layered structure in the thermodynamic field with increased moisture availability in relation to warm air advection. Rimed snowflakes and aggregation in a relatively warm environment lead to a signature in the radar data which is attributed to wet snow. The passage of the warm front leads to a substantial increase in rain rate at the surface. We use the newly implemented hydrometeor classification scheme "Hymec" to illustrate issues when relating radar products to local observations. For this, we employ data from the radar near Memmingen (MEM, 65 km west of MHP, 600 m a.s.l.) which is part of DWD's operational radar network. The detection, in location and timing, of the ML agrees well with the Hohenpeisenberg radar data. Considering the size of the Memmingen radar sensing volume, the detected hydrometeor (HM) types are consistent for measurements at or in a ML, even though surface observations indicate for example rain whereas the predominant HM is classified as wet snow. To better link the HM classification with the surface observation, either better thermodynamic input for Hymec or a statistical correction of the HM classification similar to a model output statistics (MOS) approach may be needed.


In The Value of Literature, Rafe McGregor employs a unique approach - the combination of philosophical work on value theory and critical work on the relationship between form and content - to present a new argument for, and defence of, literary humanism. He argues that literature has value for art, for culture, and for humanity - in short, that it matters. Unlike most contemporary defenders of literary value, the author's strategy does not involve arguing that literature is good as a means to one of the various ends that matter to human beings. It is not that literature necessarily makes us cleverer, more sensitive, more virtuous, more creative, or just generally better people. Nor is it true that there is a necessary relation between literature and edification, clarification, cultural critique, catharsis, or therapy. Rather than offer an argument that forges a tenuous link between literature and truth, or literature and virtue, or literature and the sacred, this book analyses the non-derivative, sui generic value characteristic of literature and demonstrates why that matters as an end in itself.


Passive acoustic tracking provides an unobtrusive method of studying the movement of sound-producing animals in the marine environment where traditional tracking methods may be costly or infeasible. We used passive acoustic tracking to characterize the fine-scale movements of singing humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) on a northwest Atlantic feeding ground. Male humpback whales produce complex songs, a phenomenon that is well documented in tropical regions during the winter breeding season, but also occurs at higher latitudes during other times of year. Acoustic recordings were made throughout 2009 using an array of autonomous recording units deployed in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Song was recorded during spring and fall, and individual singing whales were localized and tracked throughout the array using a correlation sum estimation method on the time-synchronized recordings. Tracks were constructed for forty-three song sessions, revealing a high level of variation in movement patterns in both the spring and fall seasons, ranging from slow meandering to faster directional movement. Tracks were 30 min to 8 h in duration, and singers traveled distances ranging from 0.9 to 20.1 km. Mean swimming speed was 2.06 km/h (SD 0.95). Patterns and rates of movement indicated that most singers were actively swimming. In one case, two singers were tracked simultaneously, revealing a potential acoustic interaction. Our results provide a first description of the movements of singers on a northwest Atlantic feeding ground, and demonstrate the utility of passive acoustic tracking for studying the fine-scale movements of cetaceans within the behavioral context of their calls. These methods have further applications for conservation and management purposes, particularly by enhancing our ability to estimate cetacean densities using passive acoustic monitoring.


This dissertation deals with the dynamics of collective action in free and open source software (FOSS) projects. Thereby the following questions are primarily answered:
i) Is the problem of collective action shaped by dynamical forces?
ii) How are different types of motivation related to the dynamics of collective action?

It is basically hypothesized that different development phases provide distinct incentives, opportunities, and limitations for contribution to FOSS. It is therefore assumed that developers with different types of motivation are differently attracted by diverse development phases. The relationship between development phases and motivation is firstly modulated by network externalities and switching costs respectively by the S-shaped production function of software. Secondly, the relationship is heavily affected by incremental decision making that changes payoffs for the developers. It improves the information of the successor and allows antecessors to make a credible commitment and fosters conditional cooperation.
The conducted empirica1 study supports the basic assumption that there is a relationship between development phases and motivation. Based on the findings of this dissertation one may presume that i) collective action is, depending on the production function of a collective good, to a greater or lesser extent shaped by dynamical forces and that ii) different types of motivation are related to the dynamics of collective action a1though there is no fix or universa1 relationship for a11 types of collective action.

As hypothesized the motivation related to human capital increases in the initia1 phase, decreases in the intermediate phase, and increases in the mature phase of FOSS development. The relationship between peer recognition and FOSS development is, as suggested, u-shaped. Investments in reputation increases with FOSS development going on not logarithmically as suggested but linearly.

However, not all predictions concerning the relationship between motivation and development phases proved to be correct (or almost correct). Contrary to the hypothesis pro socia1 motivation increases about linearly during development. Also not in line with the hypothesis personal requirement answers to human capital.

Fun seeking was wrongly thought to decrease linearly in FOSS development because autonomy was predicted to vanish linearly. The data shows, however, clearly that fun seeking remains almost constant. The reason for this rather surprising finding may be that autonomy remains a1so more or less stable in all development phases. This result may be connected to the self-selection mechanism found in FOSS development. Because fun seeking is the most important type of motivation in FOSS development this has far reaching implications.
Commercia1 projects may have a hard time to reproduce self-selection mechanisms. Employed programmers should select tasks to accomplish that are in the interest of the employer. In consequence, commercial projects that intend taking advantage of the FOSS production model should either deliberately foster other motivation types than fun seeking or treat the autonomy of their employees with special care.


Introduction: Drug induced allergy or hypersensitivity reaction is of great clinical significance in therapeutics. Various factors may contribute like age, genetic composition, disease of the patients and the types of drugs used. Such reactions increases the patient's suffering and lowers the therapeutic efficacy of any drug. Therefore, it is essential to collect data and investigate important drug reactions for safe therapy. Presentation of Case: A 27-years old female patient, with a history of drug allergy to ranitidine, experienced severe anaphylactic shock immediately after cesarean delivery. Post-operative medications include Ceftriaxone, Metronidazole, Tramadol, Metoclopramide and Pantoprazole. With intravenous injections of Adrenaline, Hydrocortisone, Dexamethasone, Atropine, Promethazine and intubation, she slowly recovered after three days and was discharged. Conclusion: Past history of the patient suggested a rare case of drug allergy to ranitidine. Therefore, instead of ranitidine, pantoprazole was used for this patient. Clinicians suspected this anaphylactic reaction may be induced by drug. However, the drug responsible for this reaction was not detected clearly but Pantoprazole may be a possibility. Though allergy due to H 2 receptor antagonists and proton-pump inhibitors are rare but may cause fatal consequences. Thus proper investigation of this case may help in designing the treatment schedule in an effective way, in future. Key words : Anaphylactic shock, Drug Hypersensitivity, H2 Receptor Antagonist, Pantoprazole, Proton-pump Inhibitors, Ranitidine.