Phonological awareness is believed to play a major role in the auditory contribution to spelling skills. The previous paper reports low-level auditory deficits in five different subdomains in 33-70% of the dyslexics. The first study of this paper reports the results of an attempt to improve low-level auditory skills by systematic daily practice of those tasks that had not been passed in previous diagnostic sessions. The data of 140 dyslexics indicate that the average number of unsolved tasks can be reduced from 3 of 5 to 1 of 5. The success rates have values of 70-80% for intensity and frequency discrimination and for gap detection, but reach only 36% for time-order judgement and 6% for side-order judgement. The second study reports that successful low-level auditory training transfers completely to language-related phonological skills and also to spelling with the largest profit in spelling errors due to poor auditory analysis. Control groups (waiting and placebo) did not exhibit significant improvements. It is concluded that low-level auditory deficits should be considered and improved by practice in order to give the dyslexics more phonological help when trying to transfer what they hear to spelling.


Japanese special expression "Kandoh" refers to a positive emotional state which is deeply impressed by certain things that move the heart. Kandoh is often well-used, specifically for explaining the impressive experience of watching sports. Harada (2008) pointed out the importance of Kandoh experiences in terms of the management of sports teams. Despite the increased importance, no empirical research on this topic has been conducted in the field of sport management. The purposes of this study are to (1) develop a scale for measuring specific of scenes that capture sports spectators' emotional Kandoh experiences, (2) investigate gender differences with respect to Kandoh scenes, and examine what impact Kandoh scenes have on spectators' intentions to attend future games. The results indicate that the construct of Kandoh experience consists of, an eight dimensions, gender differences exist, and some Kandoh scenes have significant effects on customer satisfaction and attendance intentions.


This article is based on research on a foundation degree programme in paralegal education in England. The content explores the pedagogical benefits of this academic programme with its work-related focus. The research has been completed with academic tutors and students who are associated with a foundation degree programme in paralegal education in the north of England. The researchers have adopted an ethnographic paradigm in their exploration of learning and teaching within this academic programme. The research is 'field based' as it is situated in a particular context and it has occurred over four years of investigation. The article advocates the development of a transformative learning ethos that is based on a sound philosophy of teaching and learning in order to support the development of understandings of ethics within a vocational foundation degree context. The originality of the article rests in the observation that paralegal education is ideally situated within a foundation degree structure due to its vocational emphasis and its philosophy of pedagogy. The combination of practical work experience on the foundation degree and a clear vision of pedagogy has led to the emergence of a vibrant curriculum within a post-compulsory educational context.


Based on Virginia Woolf's The Waves, The Saturated Moment is a solo for a dancer with an original electro-acoustic sound track. It was choreographed by Nigel Stewart, danced by Dominique Bulgin, composed by Lisa Whistlecroft, and lit by Nigel Stewart with Mat Hale and Steph Sims. Produced by Sap Dance, the show was funded by the Artists' Programme of Chisenhale Dance Space, London; the Research & Enterprise Fund of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Lancaster University. the show toured to Chisenhale Dance Space, London (30/08/2006, 26/11/2006); Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, Bratislava, Slovakia (08/10/06); Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster (02/12/06); Workshop Theatre, Leeds (30/06/2007); and the Linbury Theatre of the Royal Opera House, London (20 & 21/11/2007).


Televisions (TVs) and VR Head-Mounted Displays (VR HMDs) are used in shared and social spaces in the home. This thesis posits that these displays do not sufficiently reflect the collocated, social contexts in which they reside, nor do they sufficiently support shared experiences at-a-distance. This thesis explores how the role of TVs and VR HMDs can go beyond presenting a single entertainment experience, instead supporting social and shared use in both collocated and at-a-distance contexts. For collocated TV, this thesis demonstrates that the TV can be augmented to facilitate multi-user interaction, support shared and independent activities and multi-user use through multi-view display technology, and provide awareness of the multi-screen activity of those in the room, allowing the TV to reflect the social context in which it resides. For at-a-distance TV, existing smart TVs are shown to be capable of supporting synchronous at-a-distance activity, broadening the scope of media consumption beyond the four walls of the home. For VR HMDs, collocated proximate persons can be seamlessly brought into mixed reality VR experiences based on engagement, improving VR HMD usability. Applied to at-a-distance interactions, these shared mixed reality VR experiences can enable more immersive social experiences that approximate viewing together as if in person, compared to at-a-distance TV. Through an examination of TVs and VR HMDs, this thesis demonstrates that consumer display technology can better support users to interact, and share experiences and activities, with those they are close to.


Although much research on emotion and morality has treated emotion as a relatively undifferentiated construct, recent work shows that moral transgressions can evoke a variety of distinct emotions. To accommodate these results, we propose a multiple-appraisal model in which distinct appraisals lead to different moral emotions. The implications of this model for our understanding of the relationship between appraisals, emotions and judgments are discussed. The complexity of moral emotional experience presents a methodological challenge to researchers, but we submit that a complete understanding of human morality must acknowledge the differentiated nature of moral emotions.


Cinema's Doppelgängers is a counterfactual history of the cinema – or, perhaps, a work of speculative fiction in the guise of a scholarly history of film and movie guide. That is, it's a history of the movies written from an alternative unfolding of historical time – a world in which neither the Bolsheviks nor the Nazis came to power, and thus a world in which Sergei Eisenstein never made movies and German filmmakers like Fritz Lang never fled to Hollywood, a world in which the talkies were invented in 1936 rather than 1927, in which the French New Wave critics didn't become filmmakers, and in which Hitchcock never came to Hollywood. The book attempts, on the one hand, to explore and expand upon the intrinsically creative nature of all historical writing; like all works of fiction, its ultimate goal is to be a work of art in and of itself. But it also aims, on the other hand, to be a legitimate examination of the relationship between the economic and political organization of nations and film industries and the resulting aesthetics of film and thus of the dominant ideas and values of film scholarship and criticism.


OBJECTIVE
This study identified factors affecting sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among high school students in South Korea.

DESIGN AND SAMPLE
This study was a secondary data analysis using data from the eighth annual Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey conducted in 2012. Data from 2,387 high school students who reported having sexual intercourse were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and logistic regression by gender.

MEASURES
The survey questionnaire measured drug experience, Internet pornography preference, age at first intercourse, and method of contraception.

RESULTS
Overall, 7.2% of participants had experienced STIs. The common significant predictors of STIs in male and female students were drug experience, Internet pornography preference, and age at first intercourse. Contraceptive methods were statistically significant only for males; living arrangements and Internet usage were significant only for females.

CONCLUSIONS
Drug experiences, Internet pornography preference, and age at first intercourse were strong factors that affected both male and female students, suggesting the necessity to reinforce laws and regulations prohibiting drug use and pornography. Moreover, precise and detailed information on intercourse, sexual behaviors, and STIs offered by public health nurses should be officially provided starting in elementary school. For male students, the practice of condom use should be emphasized.


Abstract Little question exists that the main bodies of North American prairie (i.e., the tall-grass, mixed, and shortgrass) are among the most endangered resources on the continent. The purpose of this paper is to provide a past and present biological baseline by which to understand North American prairies and to provide a platform for future conservation. Events both immediate to the end of the Pleistocene and historic suggest that the present grassland conditions are different from those within which most of the grassland organisms evolved. Our analysis suggests that few grassland landscapes remain adequate in area and distribution to sustain diversity sufficient to include biota and ecological drivers native to the landscape. A robust and history-based scenario to conserve Great Plains grasslands is to 1) identify areas large enough to sustain an ecological system with all its biodiversity, 2) reverse significant losses in area of native grasslands, 3) ensure that restoration matches the grassland previously existing at that site, 4) refocus the profession of range management, and 5) establish a more meaningful agency design for grassland and natural resource management.


The Federal Trade Commission recently voted unanimously to close its antitrust investigation into Google's search practices after concluding that the firm's practice of favoring its own content in its search results did not violate U.S. antitrust laws. The agency determined that, although the practice (often called "search bias") may have an incidental negative impact on some competitors, it was a product improvement that likely benefited consumers. Additionally, it concluded that Google did not selectively change its search algorithm to exclude competition, and any disadvantage to competing websites was the collateral result of changes that likely improved the quality of Google searches.By declining to bring a case after determining that Google did not manipulate its search algorithms and search results pages to target particular competitors or to thwart competition, the FTC seemed to have implicitly rejected the notion that Google has a duty to adopt search "neutrality," as some have advocated. Search neutrality is generally understood to mean that a search engine should not prefer its own content in search results unless its own content is "objectively" superior to competing content based on the use of a "neutral" search algorithm. I suggest, in this essay, that the FTC's decision was correct. It is difficult to build an antitrust case (against any major search engine) around the notion of search neutrality for several reasons: first, search is inherently subjective and it is unclear what would constitute a "neutral" standard or algorithm, and who would or should have the right to make that judgment; second, there appears to be no identifiable antitrust theory of liability that would require neutral search, and the paper analyzes the essential facilities doctrine to explain why it is a poor fit; and third, any remedy imposing some form of neutral search is likely to be more harmful to consumers than the incidental exclusionary effects that the remedy is supposed to correct.


Effie's world comes to life with a magical GLOW-IN-THE-DARK cover 'Some people think opening a book is a simple thing. It's not. Most people don't realise that you can get truly lost in a book. You can. Especially you.' AFTER THE WORLDQUAKE, MAGIC IS SEEPING INTO OUR WORLD Effie Truelove is a new pupil at the Tusitala School for the Gifted, Troubled and Strange, with its twisted grey spires and an English teacher so frightening she gives the class nightmares. When her beloved grandfather is brutally attacked, Effie promises to look after his magical books. But then shady book-collector Leonard Levar gets his hands on them and Effie has to embark on the most dangerous adventure of her life ...Effie must travel to the mysterious Otherworld, unlock the hidden meaning of an old book called Dragon's Green, and brave the terrifying Diberi, a secret organisation with plans that could destroy the entire universe. But Effie can't face the Diberi alone. Can her new school-friends Maximilian, Wolf, Lexy and Raven combine their gifts and discover their true powers in time?


A Middle–Late Miocene andesitic arc named the Mohakatino Volcanic Centre is buried beneath younger sediments in the northern part of the Taranaki Basin, New Zealand's primary oil production province. Volcanoes of the centre cover an area of about 3200 km2. An estimated 7000±3000 km3 of andesite were erupted from the centre and between 1000 to 2500 km3 of magma were intruded into the basement beneath the volcanic cones. The key element of the petroleum system altered by magmatism is the maturity of source rocks and the timing of expulsion, although volcanism also contributes to the formation of potential reservoirs and traps. In the northern Taranaki Basin, two periods of hydrocarbon expulsion occurred: following magmatism (14 Ma to about 8 Ma), and following renewed burial (since about 4 Ma). Thermal models indicate that Late Cretaceous terrestrial source rocks close to large magmatic intrusions became fully mature during magmatism. Overlying marine source rocks are modelled to still be generating and expelling hydrocarbons to the present day. Hence hydrocarbon expulsion and the charge history of this basin is partly governed by Miocene magmatism. Results are also relevant to many petroleum basins that contain similar andesitic arc volcanic rocks.


The year to year variability and trends of animal phenological phases (honey bee, cockchafer, 3 butterfly species, swallow and cuckoo) of the Austrian phenological observational network were related to each other and to mean monthly temperatures over the time period 1951-1998. Insect phases were well correlated with each other (r 2 = 0.4 to 0.6) and with temperature (r 2 = 0.25 to 0.55), whereas both bird phases were only well correlated with each other (r 2 = 0.57), but showed low common variance values with temperature and with other animal phases. The slope of the temperature-pheno regression, also termed as temperature sensitivity of the phenological phase, was high in the case of the insect phases (-3 to -5 days/°C), but low in the cases of both bird phases (about -1 days/°C). All animal phenological time series showed a trend towards later occurrence dates. The trends of the bird phases were even significant (p<0.1). There was a marked discrepancy between the trends of all animal phenological and temperature time series, especially between the insects and temperature: the mean temperature time series of February, March and April with the highest common variance with the insect phases showed a strongly increasing trend (0.027°C/year), whereas the first appearance dates of the insects tended to occur later (0.06 to 0.15 days/year). Both bird phases correlated weakly with the mean April temperature (r 2 about 0.1). The temperature trend of April was 0.0003°C/year, whereas the trend of the bird phases was 0.2 days/year for the cuckoo and 0.25 days/year for the swallow. From these observations we conclude that a strong temperature sensitivity of the phenological phase based on the year to year variability (in days/°C) does not necessarily result in corresponding trends of temperature and phenological phase. A strong trend of non-atmospheric factors such as population density influencing the animal phases is suspected. Factors other than local atmospheric temperature, like climatic conditions in the overwintering area and on the migration route, probably govern the arrival times of the migratory birds.


Partnerships between medical schools and their clinical associates, which we describe in this article as academic clinical partnerships (ACPs), are powerful economic and social actors through their roles as major employers and procurers of goods and services. A broad spectrum of effects extending beyond the tripartite mission shapes the social contract between ACPs and the communities they serve. The authors present a model for identifying and measuring effects across this spectrum and illustrate the model's application with reference to specific case studies set in the United Kingdom. This model categorizes effects into five different domains: economic, human capital, social capital, knowledge, and place. These different effects express themselves along a spatial scale that varies from the very local to the global. The authors describe the theoretical background for each domain, as well as the methods required to identify and measure effects. These methods range from a quantitative economic impact analysis using extended input-output models to qualitative methods to capture social capital and place effects. The authors demonstrate how leaders in academic medicine can use the model to build a holistic picture of the societal effects of ACPs. Evidence of impact is of value to ACP leaders in engaging with both national and local stakeholders, and the approach is likely transferable to different countries.


The performance of services sectors can have significant impacts on industries that use services as intermediate inputs. In this paper we complement the literature analyzing the productivity effects of services trade policies by investigating the relationship between services policy reforms and employment in manufacturing industries. Using a panel of sector-level data for 24 transition economies for the 1990-2012 period, we find find that moving towards best practice services policies is associated with an economically significant reduction of manufacturing employment. This negative effect is mitigated or disappears for countries with high levels of economic governance and human capital. The decline in manufacturing employment is observed only in the first decade of transition, with the major driver being reforms in the utilities sector. The estimated negative effect of policy reforms is of a contemporaneous nature; it does not persist along the lag structure.


Abstract Throughout Asia, the relationship between the state and the rural sector has shifted from taxation to subsidy. The political tussles over subsistence between resistant peasants and taxing states, eloquently described by James Scott, have been replaced by a more affluent political dynamic focussed on subsidy and productivity. This article explores this transformation by means of a comparative study of Thailand and South Korea. Like many other countries, Thailand and South Korea have followed the path from taxation to subsidy but Thailand has never successfully addressed its legacy of low agricultural productivity. Contemporary South Korean agriculture, by contrast, is a result of a century-long investment in productivity improvement, in both its taxation and subsidy phases. The interaction between government policy and agricultural productivity has important political implications. Whereas South Korea has made a successful democratic transition and achieved a broad consensus on support for the agricultural sector, Thailand has failed to effectively manage the contemporary dilemmas of exchange between rural people and the state.


Purpose
Applying social exchange theory as the theoretical basis, this paper aims to examine the impacts of two forms of digital social interaction on social well-being and helping behavior of customers: moderator–customer interaction quality and customer–customer social support. Furthermore, this paper investigates customer exchange ideology as a moderator of these impacts.

Design/methodology/approach
This paper adopted a purposive sampling method for survey materials sent to customers of firm-hosted virtual communities (FHVCs) using a consumer panel service company. The self-administered survey was developed from existing scales, and 265 usable responses were obtained.

Findings
Both forms of digital social interaction within FHVCs positively impact social well-being, which in turn positively influences helping behavior in the community. Social well-being is decomposed into social integration and social contribution, and each partially mediates the impact of customer–customer social support and moderator–customer interaction quality on helping behavior. This finding provides greater explanatory power for the role that digital social interactions have in predicting customer helping behavior in an FHVC. In addition, an exchange ideology positively moderates the impact of customer–customer social support on helping behavior via social integration.

Originality/value
This paper demonstrates that resource exchange dynamics occur digitally within FHVCs, which then affect social well-being and helping behaviors in customers. From a practical point of view, this study indicates the potential that digital interactions have in generating social and economic value through helping behaviors.


Researchers for the first time have engineered a "gene drive" in lab mice to speed the inheritance of a gene. Gene drives, which have worked in insect experiments done in laboratories, have received intense scrutiny because some researchers hope to use them in the wild to eliminate disease-causing or crop-destroying pests, but this experiment sidestepped the controversy by focusing on creating a simpler way to genetically alter traits in lab mice. The team from the University of California, San Diego, used the genome editor CRISPR to put a gene in the mice that modifies their coat colors. But they also engineered these same mice to pass on the genes that create CRISPR itself so that progeny edit their own genomes to carry the coat color–modifying gene. When they mated an engineered mouse to a normal one, it should have created a pup with the coat color–modifying gene in one of two chromosomes. But because the pup also inherited CRISPR, it altered the unmodified chromosome passed down from the normal parent so that it, too, had the gene. The experiment, in bioRxiv—a preprint server that is not peer reviewed—only worked when the researcher controlled the timing of the CRISPR reaction so that it happened during meiosis—and it didn9t work in males. The researchers stressed that the use of gene drives in mammals to control pests is still a long way from becoming a reality.


Abstract A lower Cambrian eodiscoid trilobite fauna and an associated holmiid trilobite, Holmia sp., are described from a bioclastic limestone at the top of the Torneträsk Formation in the Luobákti section, south of Lake Torneträsk, northern Sweden. Other associated polymerid trilobites include Orodes? lapponica and Strenuaeva inflata. The precise age of the trilobite fauna cannot be determined, but its generic composition and stratigraphical position at the top of the lower Cambrian suggest that it was recovered from the Ornamentaspis? linnarssoni Assemblage Zone. Two species of eodiscoids are present: Neocobboldia aff. dentata and Chelediscus acifer. The latter species is known previously from England and southeastern Newfoundland, and provides a novel link between upper lower Cambrian successions in Baltica and Avalonia.


BACKGROUND
Before symptomatic memory loss, healthy apolipoprotein E epsilon4 (APOE epsilon4) (OMIM 104310) carriers demonstrate accelerated longitudinal decline on memory tests, suggesting the existence of a transitional state between normal aging and mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which we have called amnestic pre-MCI.

OBJECTIVE
To support our neuropsychological construct of pre-MCI by characterizing and comparing the relationship between measurements of baseline regional hypometabolism and subsequent rates of memory decline in a group of individuals with neuropsychologically defined asymptomatic memory decline (pre-MCI group) and in nondecliners after controlling for APOE epsilon4 gene dose.

DESIGN
Longitudinal study.

SETTING
Academic medical center.

PARTICIPANTS
Of 139 healthy individuals in the Arizona APOE Cohort aged 50 to 69 years who underwent longitudinal neuropsychological testing and fludeoxyglucose F 18-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) since 1994, 10 met our criteria for amnestic pre-MCI, and 15 showed no decline.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Correlations between lower regional cerebral metabolic rates for glucose (CMRgl) and rates of verbal memory test decline that occurred at a mean of 41 months after baseline FDG-PET using an automated brain mapping algorithm (SPM5).

RESULTS
The pre-MCI and nondecliner groups did not differ in mean (SD) age (56.8 [4.8] years), education (16.5 [2.3] years), sex (19 women [76%]), or APOE epsilon4 carrier status (12 epsilon4 carriers [48%)]. After controlling for APOE epsilon4 gene dose, the pre-MCI group had significant correlations between lower baseline CMRgl in the posterior cingulate, bilateral parietal, and left prefrontal regions (known to be preferentially affected by Alzheimer disease) and subsequent verbal memory decline. Nondecliners had significant correlations bilaterally in the posterior and midcingulate cortices. Correlations in the left parietal, left temporal, and bilateral frontal regions were significantly greater in the pre-MCI group than those in the nondecliner group.

CONCLUSION
Individuals with amnestic pre-MCI showed significantly greater correlations between cerebral hypometabolism and subsequent long-term memory decline than nondecliners in Alzheimer disease-affected brain regions.


Background Advances in molecular therapeutics in the past decade have opened up new possibilities for treating cancer patients with personalized therapies, using biomarkers to determine which treatments are most likely to benefit them, but there are difficulties and unresolved issues in the development and validation of biomarker-based personalized therapies. We develop a new clinical trial design to address some of these issues. The goal is to capture the strengths of the frequentist and Bayesian approaches to address this problem in the recent literature and to circumvent their limitations. Methods We use generalized likelihood ratio tests of the intersection null and enriched strategy null hypotheses to derive a novel clinical trial design for the problem of advancing promising biomarker-guided strategies toward eventual validation. We also investigate the usefulness of adaptive randomization (AR) and futility stopping proposed in the recent literature. Results Simulation studies demonstrate the advantages of testing both the narrowly focused enriched strategy null hypothesis related to validating a proposed strategy and the intersection null hypothesis that can accommodate to a potentially successful strategy. AR and early termination of ineffective treatments offer increased probability of receiving the preferred treatment and better response rates for patients in the trial, at the expense of more complicated inference under small-to-moderate total sample sizes and some reduction in power. Limitations The binary response used in the development phase may not be a reliable indicator of treatment benefit on long-term clinical outcomes. In the proposed design, the biomarker-guided strategy (BGS) is not compared to 'standard of care', such as physician's choice that may be informed by patient characteristics. Therefore, a positive result does not imply superiority of the BGS to 'standard of care'. The proposed design and tests are valid asymptotically. Simulations are used to examine small-to-moderate sample properties. Conclusion Innovative clinical trial designs are needed to address the difficulties and issues in the development and validation of biomarker-based personalized therapies. The article shows the advantages of using likelihood inference and interim analysis to meet the challenges in the sample size needed and in the constantly evolving biomarker landscape and genomic and proteomic technologies.


From race to speech, from religion to school funding, from discipline to special education, few aspects of education policy have escaped the courtroom over the past fifty years. Predictably, much controversy has ensued. Supporters of education litigation contend that the courts are essential to secure student (and civil) rights, while critics insist that the courts distort policy and that the mere threat of litigation undermines the authority of teachers and administrators. From Schoolhouse to Courthouse brings together experts on law, political science, and education policy to test these claims. Shep Melnick (Boston College) and James Ryan (University of Virginia School of Law) draw lessons from judicial efforts to promote school desegregation and civil rights. Martha Derthick (University of Virginia), John Dinan (Wake Forest University), and Michael Heise (Cornell Law School) discuss litigation over high-stakes testing and school finance in the era of No Child Left Behind. Richard Arum (New York University), Samuel R. Bagenstos (Washington University Law School), and Frederick M. Hess (American Enterprise Institute) analyze the consequences of court rulings for school discipline, special education, and district management. Finally, editors Joshua Dunn and Martin R. West probe the tangled relationship between religious freedom, student speech, and school choice.


Abstract : The purposes of this research are to experimentally and theoretically prove the concept of a directional pair-production spectrometer to detect and locate the tailings that are created when making Special Nuclear Material (SNM) at stand-off distances from a remotely piloted vehicle (RPV). A directional pair-production spectrometer uses the information garnered from the high energy gamma rays emitted by these SNM manufacturing tailings to perform pair-production spectroscopy and identify the isotope of interest. Through simultaneous operation as a Compton camera, the detection system will be able to measure rudimentary directional information from the medium energy gamma decays. The detector used for this research is constructed of four LaBr3 detectors and operated in coincidence to allow for the reduction of background. The directional efficiency of the detector in measuring the radioactive decay of a 6.7 μCi Co-60 source is validated with a Geant4 simulation. The simulation is used to predict the directional efficiency of a detector system using six detector elements and the pair-production spectrum that would be seen when measuring a higher energy gamma ray source.


This paper summarizes the findings of an evaluation of the Programme of Advancement through Health and Education (PATH), a conditional cash transfer programme implemented by the Government of Jamaica. We find that PATH was generally implemented as intended; exhibited better targeting to the poor than other similar social assistance programmes in Jamaica; and had positive and statistically significant impacts on school attendance and number of preventive health care visits for children. We find no evidence, however, that PATH was able to affect longer-term outcomes such as marks, grade progression, or health care status.


Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a controversial communications discipline that emerged in the 1970s (Bandler and Grinder, 1975; Grinder and Bandler, 1976), drawing upon fields as diverse as cybernetics (Miller, et al., 1960) and transformational grammar (Chomsky, 1957; Grinder and Elgin, 1973). NLP has garnered little academic support until recently. Now there is growing recognition that NLP might have a role to play in teaching and learning in formal education (Craft, 2001; Ben-Avie et al., 2003; Tosey and Mathison, 2003a, 2003b; Day, 2005) and recent discoveries in neuroscience offer support for a neurological basis for the NLP constructs of rapport, sensory acuity and behavioural modelling (Gallese et al., 2004; Iacoboni et al., 2005; Fogassi et al., 2005; Rizzolatti et al., 2006). Drawing upon learning theory and pedagogical practice (Day, 2008), this paper considers three ways in which NLP might contribute to the teaching and learning of academic writing. The first is the use of perceptual positioning – metaphorically stepping into the shoes of others, including the reader of your writing (Hickman and Jacobson, 1997). The second is the crafting of language to encourage multi-modal representations in the reader's inner landscape. Both these approaches relate to addressivity and, in particular, the 'responsive understanding' of the reader (Bakhtin, 1986; Cheyne and Tarulli, 1999). The third approach is the use of behavioural modelling (Dilts, 1998) to reveal key elements that contribute to the effective practice of writers, including their choice of how, where and when to write.


A method for evaluating the size of optically soft spheroidal particles by use of the angular structure of scattered light is proposed. It is based on the use of multilevel neural networks with a linear activation function. The retrieval errors of radius R of the equivolume sphere and aspect ratio e are investigated. The ranges of the size of R, e, and the refractive index are 0.3-1.51 microns, 0.2-1, and 1.01-1.02, respectively. The retrieval errors of the equivolume radius and aspect ratio are 0.004 micron and 0.02, respectively, for a three-level neural network (at a precisely measured angular distribution of scattered light). The retrieval errors of R and e for a one-level neural network are 2-5 times greater. The errors for a multilevel neural network increase faster than those for a single-level network.


(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)Roland Sussex and Paul Cubberley. The Slavic Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xx, 638 pp. Map. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. $150, cloth.This book, 7V/e Slavic Languages (hereafter SL), represents a massive undertaking. It has far loftier goals than the standard, language-by-language surveys of the Slavic languages (of which there are many), all the principal ones being mentioned in Si's bibliography (pp. 603-620). On p. 11, Sussex and Cubberley state this difference succinctly: "The present book differs from its predecessors in approaching Slavic from both a synchronic and a contrastive-typological point of view, following the model of the other books in this series." The "series" being referred to here is the Cambridge Language Surveys, and a full list of the languages which have so far been covered can be found on p. iv. Also on p. iv can be found the remit which Cambridge University Press imposes upon its audiors for this series: "This series offers general accounts of the major language families of the world, with volumes organized either on a purely genetic basis or on a geographical basis, whichever yields the most convenient and intelligible grouping in each case. Each volume compares and contrasts the typological features of the languages it deals widi. It also treats the relevant genetic relationships, historical development and sociolinguistic issues arising from their role and use in the world today." This remit then explains why SL does not treat the Slavic languages individually, each with its own discrete section, as is usually the case with surveys of language families.So exactly how is SL organized? The answer to this question can be found on pp. 1 718.1 will summarize what Sussex and Cubberley say here. Chapters 1 and 2 deal with the historical development of the Slavic languages, which, the authors freely admit, is by and large on a language-by-language basis. The next nine chapters treat topics from a crosslanguage perspective. There are no surprises concerning which topics are covered - for example, phonology, morphology, word formation, dialectology, and, importantly, sociolinguistic issues. The book is rounded off with three appendices: Appendix A, dealing with terminology; B, dealing with transliteration and orthography; and C, dealing with pointers for the non-Slavist scholar. Then, last but not least, come the Bibliography (which is, understandably, slanted towards works written in English) and the Index. In all SL runs to an impressive 638 pages.I find nodiing of substance to take issue with in chapter 1, "Linguistic Evolution," or chapter 2, "Socio-Historical Evolution." Of course, the points covered in ch. 1 are covered in far more detail elsewhere, but Sussex and Cubberley are not claiming to be exhaustive and have, on the whole, written a perfectly adequate summary of the main linguistic points, which (a) set the Slavic languages apart as one cohesive unit, and (b) separate the Slavic languages themselves into (give or take) three groups - east, south, and west. In ch. 2, Sussex and Cubberley handle deftly a number of thorny questions, among them the status of the languages in the former Yugoslavia, the status of Kashubian vis-a-vis Polish, the status of Lower Sorbian in relation to Upper Sorbian, and the role played by Church Slavonic in the formation of Contemporary Standard Russian. The stand that the authors take on these highly charged points will upset no fair-minded person.Chapters 3 through 9 comprise the guts of Si. Now, let it be said up front that the bulk of the material presented in these chapters is accurate and uncontroversial, but there arise, nonetheless, many bones of contention in these seven chapters, once SL is subjected to close analysis. However (and I repeat), SL is fundamentally a survey and does not claim to be an exhaustive treatment of each and every topic in the development of the Slavic languages; therefore, it is perhaps unfair to trawl through the work with a fine-toothed comb looking for omissions, slight inaccuracies, and the like. …


Scope: Particle-induced lung injury is a kind of comprehensive pulmonary disease with not only inflammation but also fibrosis. Bixin is a natural compound that is widely used as a food additive. Our previous studies demonstrated that bixin could alleviate inflammation in ventilation-induced acute lung injury as well as UV-exposure caused skin damage. But whether it could depress silica-induced long-term comprehensive lung injury and the mechanism of bixin in this protection have not yet been studied. Methods: A murine SiO2-induced long-term comprehensive lung injury model was established through silica intratracheal instillation. To elucidate the effects and mechanisms of bixin in silica-induced pulmonary inflammation and fibrosis, we treated mice with bixin following silica instillation. Results: Bixin treatment attenuated the accumulation of inflammatory cells which significantly ameliorated pathological inflammation and fibrotic development in the lungs. In addition, intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection of bixin in mice led to the upregulation of the NRF2 response in the lungs. Since alveolar macrophage activation plays a vital role in the initiation and progression of this injury, the mechanism was further studied in the THP-1 macrophage cells. Bixin activated NRF2 signals via blocking KEAP1 mediated ubiquitylation and degradation of NRF2. Conclusions: Our work has brought insights into exploring anti-particle-induced lung injury activities in the daily consumption of natural products. In addition, our study also inspires the discovery of new beneficial effects of bixin and its application in the treatment of other inflammatory diseases.


In this thesis, I use population genetics and statistical approaches to investigate early human demography, infer local adaptation in diverse sets of populations, and study the genetic basis for taste perception.In the first paper, I examine the genomic evidence for a severe bottleneck, which has been suggested based on paleontological and climate studies to coincide with the emergence of anatomically modern humans. Using a Bayesian approach, I evaluate the genetic evidence of a bottleneck between 190,000 and 130,000 years ago and find that the data is in favor of a model without bottleneck at this time point.I further develop a method to detect local adaptation based on frequencies of private haplotypes. I first show, using simulated data, that this method can detect local adaption. Applied to large-scale human genotype data, this method detects known signals of positive selection in human data such as the positive selection around the lactase gene in Europeans and East Africans. Also, this method permits to improve knowledge on potential adaptation events in humans as it finds several regions potentially selected that were not previously described. I further investigate patterns of adaptation in whole genome data based on a diverse set of African populations. The results from the regions potentially selected show that diet and pathogens are the common driving forces of adaptation in all studied populations.There is evidence that taste perception have evolved in concert with diet, environment, and the organismal needs in humans. For this reason, I study taste perception in populations differing on lifestyle (hunter-gatherers, farmers and nomad herders). I present taste perception phenotypes for all tastes (sweet, bitter, sour, salty and umami) and relate them to high density genotype data. I show that taste and taste-involved genes have evolved with lifestyle. By performing an association study, I also show that variation in taste perception involves more genes than only the taste receptors genes.In this thesis, by analyzing human genetic data with a population genetics approaches, I covered several topics of human ancient demography and adaptation and show the utility of using large-scale genetic data to better understand human history.


This paper presents a highly flexible and powerful language for the description of foods in food composition and food use databases and for the precise specification of recipes and food standards. The language is the conceptual foundation for a proposed master database of food descriptions which would offer vastly improved capabilities for retrieval and combination of data from food composition and food use databases. The language incorporates principles from classification theory, database theory, and artificial intelligence. It uses the entity-relationship approach to structuring food data in a way that mirrors the structure of the foods themselves. The entity types and relationship types needed to build food descriptions are detailed in the conceptual schema, and the most important ones are arrayed in a frame to guide indexers and searchers. The data structure uses hierarchical inheritance to avoid redundancy in storage. This paper also discusses food names and codes and their relationship to food description. It defines explicit names or codes that carry their own explanation and brief nonexplicit names or codes that merely refer to an explanation stored in one's memory or a database. In this context the paper discusses levels of specificity of the food products named, from product type to individual sample analyzed or portion consumed.


An approach to model the hidden neuronal and hemodynamic sources of the blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal observed in optogenetic functional MRI experiments is presented. In these experiments, genetically modified light-sensitive neurons are directly stimulated by laser light. A proof-of-principle demonstration is provided by estimating hidden hemodynamic and neuronal states in the Buxton-Mandeville-Friston BOLD model applied to simulated and experimental optogenetic fMRI data of the mouse. The estimation procedure is based on the continuous unscented Kalman filter. In simulations, under a given model, unobserved BOLD source signals such as cerebral blood flow and deoxygenation could be estimated with good accuracy, although neuronal signal sources appeared lagged in time. In experimental data, this approach was able to describe positive and negative BOLD signals. Translated into human applications, it could have the potential to provide novel functional markers for imaging cerebrovascular accidents or altered vascularity of brain tumors in a more specific way than standard clinical MRI protocols.


The BIP framework provides a methodology supported by a tool chain for developing software for embedded systems. The design of a BIP system follows the decomposition in behavior, interaction and priority. The first step comprises the division of desired behavior of a system into components. In a second step interactions and their priorities are added between the components. Finally, machine code is generated from the BIP model. While adding interactions it is possible to overconstrain a system resulting in potential deadlocks. The tool chain crucially depends on an automatic tool, D-Finder, which checks for deadlock-freedom. This paper reports on guaranteeing the correctness of the verdict of D-Finder. We address the problem of formally proving deadlock-freedom of an embedded system in a way that is comprehensible for third party users and other tools. We achieve this goal by automatically generating certificates for each BIP model declared safe by D-Finder. These certificates comprise a proof of deadlock-freedom of the BIP model which can be checked by an independent checker. We use the Coq theorem prover as certificate checker. Thus, bringing the high level of confidence of a formal proof to the deadlock analysis results. With the help of certificates one gets a deadlockfreedom guarantee of BIP models without having to trust or even take a look at the deadlock checking tool. Part of the proofs encapsulated in certificates are invariants of considered BIP models. Their checking is an important subtask to guarantee deadlock-freedom of the given BIP model.


ABSTRACT Sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas L. (Lam)) is a nutritious food security crop for most tropical households, but its utilisation is very low in Ghana compared to the other root and tuber crops due to lack of end-user-preferred cultivars. Knowledge on the genetic control of important traits such as dry matter, starch and sugar content of sweetpotato storage roots in a breeding population is critical for making breeding progress in developing sweetpotato varieties preferred by farmers and consumers. This study used diallel mating design to elucidate general combining ability and specific combining ability, to determine the gene action controlling storage root dry matter, starch and sugar content in sweetpotato and the heterotic potential of the traits to facilitate the crop's improvement for increased utilisation. A general model for estimating genetic effects, GEAN II, was used to analyse the data. Genetic variability was seen for dry matter, starch and sugar content of sweetpotato and much of this genetic variation was additive in nature. The study also revealed significant heterosis in sweetpotato which offers opportunity for breeding non-sweet, high dry matter sweetpotato varieties that are preferred by farmers and consumers in Ghana.


Two possible substitutes of the Fourier transform in geopotential determination are windowed Fourier transform (WFT) and wavelet transform (WT). In this paper we introduce harmonic WFT and WT and show how it can be used to give information about the geopotential simultaneously in the space domain and the frequency (angular momentum) domain. The counterparts of the inverse Fourier transform are derived, which allow us to reconstruct the geopotential from its WFT and WT, respectively. Moreover, we derive a necessary and sufficient condition that an otherwise arbitrary function of space and frequency has to satisfy to be the WFT or WT of a potential. Finally, least - squares approximation and minimum norm (i.e. least - energy) representation, which will play a particular role in geodetic applications of both WFT and WT, are discussed in more detail.


This paper proposes a new Measurement Standardization Procedure to measure and quantify the acoustic noise produced by power transformers in audio and video equipment under normal and adverse mains conditions. These conditions and the physical mechanisms that cause the noise are discussed. A new measurement set up and units are proposed to measure and quantify the transformer noise. Examples of measurements on four transformers are given for comparision and illustration.


We demonstrate the validity of the Shackled-frequency-resolved-optical-gating technique for the complete characterization, both in space and in time, of ultrashort optical pulses that present strong angular dispersion. Combining a simple imaging grating with a Hartmann-Shack sensor and standard frequency-resolved-optical-gating detection at a single spatial position, we are able to retrieve the full spatiotemporal structure of a tilted pulse.


One of the legacies of the global financial crisis is a high ratio of public debt to GDP. While current levels may be sustainable, another series of bad shocks could easily tip the balance and lead to unsustainable debt ratios and to default. The quantitative exercises presented in this Policy Brief show that growth-indexed bonds can play an important role in that content. By decreasing payments when growth is low, they can substantially reduce the "tail risks" associated with explosive debt paths starting from today's high ratios. The introduction of growth-indexed bonds will benefit highly indebted advanced economies and, in the euro area, might provide a partial market-based solution to attain valuable insurance benefits well ahead of a formal fiscal union.


In this paper, we introduce a method of constructing Universal Cycles on sets by taking "sums" and "products" of smaller cycles. We demonstrate this new approach by proving that if there exist Universal Cycles on the 4-subsets of [18] and the 4-subsets of [26], then for any integer $n\ge18$ equivalent to $2 \pmod{8}$, there exists a Universal Cycle on the 4-subsets of [n].


The present study draws on field data from communities of Quechua-dominant late bilinguals in northern Ecuador, a configuration typical of literary and folkloric portrayals of Andean Spanish. A comparison of contemporary data with earlier literary imitations as well as more trustworthy transcriptions reveals a combination of (possibly Quechua-induced) L2 Spanish features and a group of traits that cannot be reasonably analyzed as arising spontaneously and consistently generation after generation. Among the latter are the enclitic particles - ca and -tan, gerunds instead of finite verbs, and some specific lexical variants. Since it has generally been assumed that Quechua-Spanish interlanguage is an idiolectally variable and transitory register used primarily with monolingual interlocutors, the trans-generational survival of a cluster of Andean Spanish traits requires further explanation. This study presents a model for intra-community recycling, using data from ethnographic interviews, sociolinguistic inquiries, and interactive tasks performed by a broad cross-section of Spanish-Quechua bilinguals. The approach is offered as an addition to the toolkit for the analysis of long-standing language contact environments.


It is bad enough that a man should be ignorant for it cuts him off from the commerce of other men's minds. It is perhaps worse that a man should be poor for this condemns him to a life of stint and scheming in which there is no time for dreams and no respite from weariness. But what is surely the worst is that a man should be ill for this prevents his doing anything much about either his poverty or his ignorance. (Nash, R. M., Amer. J. Public Health 58: 167, 1968, from George Kimble, Tropical Africa.)


Market participation has a potential to increase farmers' rural incomes and employment opportunities especially if farmers concentrate on production and marketing of local crops requiring low inputs such as sweet potatoes. The purpose of this research was to investigate the factors that determine farmers' shift in market participation from village to regional market in Vihiga County. Cross-sectional data was collected and a multinomial logit model was used for the analysis. Participation in local town market rather than village market was influenced by credit access, total income, transport mode to market, access to extension services, age, value addition done and the quantity of sweet potatoes supplied, while; transport mode, land size, quantity of sweet potatoes and gender determined participation for the regional option. It is recommended that the local and national government should: Increase its support in the establishment of sweet potato market; improve the rural road networks to cut down transport costs, and increase support to farmer groups or associations to increase farmers' market participation.


Neutrinos play a fundamental role in the understanding of the origin of ultrahigh- energy cosmic rays (UHECR). They interact through charged and neutral currents in the atmosphere generating extensive air showers. However, the very low rate of events potentially generated by neutrinos is a significant challenge for detection techniques and requires both sophisticated algorithms and high-resolution hardware. We developed the FPGA trigger which is generated by a neural network. The algorithm can recognize various waveform types. It has been developed and tested on ADC traces of the Pierre Auger surface detectors. We developed the algorithm of artificial neural network on a MATLAB platform. Trained network that we implemented into the largest Cyclone V E FPGA was used for the prototype of the front-end board for the Auger-Prime. We tested several variants, and the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm (trainlm) was the most efficient. The network was trained: (a) to recognize 'old' very inclined showers (real Auger data were used as patterns for both positive and negative markers: for reconstructed inclined showers and for triggered by time over threshold (ToT), respectively, (b) to recognize 'neutrino-induced showers'. Here, we used simulated data for positive markers and vertical real showers for negative ones.


Land use conflicts arise from information shortfalls, and avoiding them requires obtaining and using information. Yet traditional forms of land use control operate in relative ignorance about landowner intentions, about preferences for patterns of land use that do not presently exist, and, more fundamentally, about land use impacts as they are experienced on the ground. Because information is expensive to gather and use, this ignorance may be rational. New technological and theoretical advances, however, offer powerful ways to harness and deploy information that lies dispersed in the hands of the public. In this symposium essay, I assess the prospects for an increased role for crowdsourcing in managing land use, as well as the limits on this approach. Governments must do more than elicit, aggregate, coordinate, and channel the preferences, intentions, and experiences of current and potential land users; they must also set normative side constraints, manage agendas, and construct appropriately scaled platforms for compiling and using information.


The characterisation of regulated converters is addressed to enable the assessment of the stability, performance, supply and load interactions as well as transient responses. A canonical model of a converter is proposed and used to create a set of parameters that are able to fully describe the dynamics associated with a converter and therefore can be used to predict the dynamical behaviour of the converter to in changes in source and load interactions. System theory is used to develop methods to study the internal stability of cascaded subsystems such as an electromagnetic interference filter, load and converters. A framework is established that allows the evaluation of different converter topologies under different operation and control modes.


This phenomenological study explored the lived experience with "big body" size of Pacific Island women who migrated to Hawaii. Giorgi's descriptive phenomenological approach was utilized in this study. A purposive sample included six Pacific Island women. Five of the six women had migrated to Hawaii from the island nations of Micronesia. The sixth participant was a Native Hawaiian who had lived in Micronesia and had returned to Hawaii. The collection and transcription of data were done by the first author. Data were categorized into themes independently by the three authors and bracketing was maintained throughout the study. The women identified the dichotomy of "big body" versus "small body" and the connotation of each body size in how they viewed the world around them. They shared their lifestyle and transitional changes in trying to adapt and 'fit' into the new lifestyle in Hawaii. These changes impacted their eating habits and work schedule, level of activity, and financial security. The women identified biopsychosocial concerns in their lives and the need to re-evaluate their "big body" size in relation to their health and physical and psychosocial changes. Implications for future research are to include a diverse representation of women from island countries within the Pacific Basin. The results of this study provided valuable information related to cultural relevance and sensitivity in working with Pacific Island women in managing their health.


SUMMARY The objective of this study was to analyze the predictive power that parental practices have in adolescents' depressive symptomatology considering children's and parents' gender. A non-probabilistic sample was used, consisting of 1934 adolescents, from three different cities from the Mexican Republic (26.5% from Mexico City, 26.7% from Poza Rica, Veracruz, and 46.8% from Culiacan, Sinaloa). 51.4% were males and 48.6% were females, with an age range from 11 to 17 years old, and a mean of 13.3 years old. Nine dimensions of parental practices were evaluated, five for the mother: Communication, Autonomy, Imposition, Psychological control, and Behavioral control; and four dimensions for the father: Communication/Behavioral control, Autonomy, Imposition, and Psychological control. To evaluate the depressive symptomatology, a revised and adapted for Mexican population version of the Scale of Depression of the Epidemiologic Studies Center (CES-D-R) was used. The results showed that women obtained higher scores in depressive symptomatology than men. Depressive symptomatology was associated in a positive way to psychological control and imposition, in both parents, and in a negative way with communication, autonomy and behavioral control, both maternal and paternal. Linear regression analyses were done to determine the effect of parental practices in the depressive symptomatology, which were conducted by gender and by city. In general, the results showed that women had a higher percentage of explained variance (from 26% to 31%) than men (from 6% to 25%) and the dimension that explained the higher variance in most of the groups was maternal psychological control, except on men from Mexico City and Culiacan.


Assemblages of larval chironomids in a free-flowing section of the River Danube, east of Vienna, were examined over three years. Relationships between community attributes and environmental factors in the first year were used to predict assemblage characteristics for the subsequent two years. The accuracy of these predictions was then tested against the actual data obtained for the second and third years. Habitat stability and water velocity were the strongest predictors for total abundances (52 % of the variance in observed values explained by the predicted values), followed by community persistence (30 %, predicted from water temperature) and species aggregation (25 %, habitat stability and heterogeneity). Mean spatial resource width, evenness and 6-diversity accounted for 14 % predictability each, with again habitat stability as the dominant explanatory variable. In contrast, predictability was much higher among community attributes which accounted for up to 80 %. Since the slopes of the relationships were not significantly different between the years, deviations from the predictions were mainly due to differences in absolute values of community attributes. Comparisons of multivariate patterns in these relationships, obtained from Redundancy analyses by means of Procrustes analyses, showed no significant differences between the years. However, univariate and multivariate tests suggested a marked annual change in community composition, mainly with respect to patterns in dominance structure due to the replacement of the most abundant species. On the basis of discriminant functions obtained from environmental factors in the first year, 90 % of all samples from the two subsequent years were correctly classified to the four sampling sites, and correct classification on the basis of community attributes accounted for 52 % where evenness provided the highest discriminatory significance. It is concluded that most relationships, especially those among community attributes, were consistent for the three years. Because shifts in abundant species were reflected neither by total abundances nor by species richness, estimation of dominance structure has to be an essential tool for management purposes. Long-term investigations like this provide valuable information on the base-line variation of natural communities in terms of a data-basis for testable ecological theories and management strategies.


. Used singly, the fluorochrome tags tetracycline and calcein have yielded important insights into sea urchin biology, especially regarding growth. We present a new method of tagging using sequential fluorochrome markers, as well as a more precise method of quantifying growth. Such polyfluorochromes enable repeated markings that allow measurement of multiple growth points and unique identification of individuals or groups. We marked sea urchins, Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis, with four fluorochromes: alizarin complexone, calcein, calcein blue, and tetracycline. All fluorochromes marked both by injection and immersion. We examined the clarity of the mark produced with low, metabolically scaled doses, and higher doses similar to those that have been previously used. We tested the effect of fluorochromes on survival, growth, jaw size, and gonad size by marking a size range (3.9–44.3 mm in diameter) of urchins with either one or all four fluorochromes. We quantified growth using a nominal diameter, that is a fitted constant, times the cube root of weight, which increased the precision of measurements by a factor of six relative to measured diameter. Growth rate was a decreasing function of diameter except for a growth lag in the smallest urchins. Growth rate data for all sizes were fitted using: gamma distributions; Tanaka functions; and, for larger sizes, straight lines (von Bertalanffy model). All treatments produced clear marks, with higher doses producing more reliably clear marks. Tetracycline marking did not affect growth; other treatments produced only transient slowing of growth in the marking month. Growth rate, survival, gonad production, and jaw weight did not differ between control and treatments during the following 6 months. Thus, polyfluorochromes produce reliable marks that do not significantly affect growth or gonad production.


This study aims to reveal the tradeoff between working capital components and firm's profitability by using the data of the firms listed on Borsa Istanbul Industry Index in Turkey. Annual data of 41 firms are used for the period 2005-2016 in the study. The working capital components and firm's profitability tradeoff was examined via the fixed effects panel regression model. Dependent variable is defined as return on assets; independent variables are cash conversion cycle, inventory conversion period, and payables deferral period; and control variables are sales growth, the ratio of short-term financial debts to short-term debts, and the ratio of fixed assets to total assets. Findings show the existence of tradeoff working capital management profitability. A negative relationship exists between return on assets and payables deferral period, cash conversion cycle, the ratio of short-term financial debts to short-term debts, and the ratio of fixed assets to total assets while return on assets is positively related to inventory conversion period and sales growth.


Abstract This study explores the consequences of the housing price bubble and its collapse for the wealth of older households. We utilize micro survey data to follow the rise in home values to 2007, observing which households enjoyed home price appreciation and how they responded in terms of equity withdrawal. We then use the SCF survey data on wealth holdings from 2007 in combination with national price indexes to simulate the magnitude and distribution of wealth loss from the 2008-2009 financial crisis. The collapse of the housing market triggered a broad decline of asset prices that greatly reduced the wealth of all households. While older households mitigated their real estate and equity losses with relatively stable fixed-value assets and pension programs, no demographic group was left unscathed. Prior to the financial crisis, our study and others had concluded that the current baby-boom cohort of near retirees were surprisingly well-prepared for retirement compared with similarly aged households over the past quarter century. Unless there is a strong recovery of asset values in the next few years, that favorable assessment is no longer true.


In cognitive radio, secondary users require fast and accurate spectrum sensing, so that they can dynamically monitor the spectrum and rapidly tune their parameters to utilize the spectrum available, as well as avoid causing interference to primary users. The traditional spectrum sensing methods in a wideband cognitive radio are challenging to implement since they require very high sampling rates at or above the Nyquist rate. A new technique called compressive sensing (CS) can solve the problem, which exploits the sparsity of signal's frequency response. In this paper, a parallel spectrum sensing structure in cognitive radio is proposed. In the structure, we use compressive sensing and wavelet to process the signal in each branch. Then we get the final renconstruction output from the results of all branches. The modified sensing method based on this special structure is more accurate since it can reduce the effect of noise. Simulation results show the proposed method has performance improvement over traditional methods.


The title and purpose of this book, Liberating Service-Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement, is an intentional double entendre. On the one hand, Stoecker seeks a form of service learning that "liberates" all those who are involved in it, whether they are inside or outside of higher education. In the second sense, Stoecker aims to liberate institutionalized service learning's lack of significant accomplishments both in educating students and in enhancing communities. Stoecker proposes liberating service learning by making its current theory explicit, deconstructing it, and then building a new theory that leads to a new practice that yields different and better results.


Title of thesis: MECHANISMS OF VORTEX-INDUCED PARTICLE TRANSPORT FROM A MOBILE BED BELOW A HOVERING ROTOR Jaime Reel, Master of Science, 2014 Thesis directed by: Professor J. Gordon Leishman Department of Aerospace Engineering A study has been conducted to examine rotor-generated blade tip vortices that pass near to a ground plane covered with mobile sediment particles and to explore whether they induce a pressure field that may affect the problem of rotor-induced dust fields. It was hypothesized that fluctuating pressures lower than ambient at the ground could potentially affect the processes of sediment particle mobilization and uplift into the flow. To investigate the relationship between the vortex wake characteristics and the motion of the mobilized sediment particles, single-phase and dual-phase (particle) flow experiments were conducted using a small laboratory-scale rotor hovering overing a ground plane. Time-resolved particle image velocimetry was used to quantify the flow velocities in the rotor wake and near the ground plane, and particle tracking velocimetry was used to quantify the particle velocities. Measurements were also made of the unsteady pressure over the ground plane using pressure transducers that were sensitive enough to resolve the small induced pressures. Time-histories of the measured responses showed significant pressure fluctuations occurred before, during, and after the rotor wake impinged upon the ground. While it was not possible to separate out the effects of pressure forces from other forces acting on the particles, the present work has shown good evidence of vortex-induced pressure effects on the particles in that particle trajectories significantly deviated from the directions of the surrounding flow in the immediate presence of the vortices. The characteristics of the pressure responses produced at the ground by vortices passing nearby was also predicted using a model based on unsteady potential flow theory, and was used to help interpret the measurements. The vortex strength (circulation), height of the vortex above the ground, and the vortex convection velocity, were all shown to affect the pressures at the ground and were likely to affect particle motion. Mechanisms of Vortex-Induced Particle Transport from a Mobile Bed below a Hovering Rotor


Predicting stock market movements has always been of great interest to investors and an active area of research. Research has proven that popularity of products is highly influenced by what people talk about. Social media like Twitter, Reddit have become hotspots of such influences. This paper investigates the impact of social media posts on close price prediction of stocks using Twitter and Reddit posts. Our objective is to integrate sentiment of social media data with historical stock data and study its effect on closing prices using time series models. We carried out rigorous experiments and deep analysis using multiple deep learning based models on different datasets to study the influence of posts by executives and general people on the close price. Experimental results on multiple stocks (Apple and Tesla) and decentralised currencies (Bitcoin and Ethereum) consistently show improvements in prediction on including social media data and greater improvements on including executive posts.


Electroporation is a physical process that transiently permeabilizes prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell membranes with an electrical pulse, permitting cell uptake of a variety of biological molecules. Because of the advantages of high efficiency, low toxicity popularity, and controllability, it has been applied in the fields such as cell engineering, genetic engineering, and so on. The principles and characteristics of gene transfection apparatus which is made by us will be illustrated in this paper. The temperature influence is considered and the optical fiber sensor in the apparatus is proposed.


Morphogens can spread by simple diffusion to create gradients that establish future zones of differentiation in developing organisms. The spread of some morphogens, like Wingless (Wg), is regulated by heparan sulfate proteoglycans. However, Wg is also strongly bound to plasma membranes. Greco et al. now find that Wg spreads by a process of exosomal transmission in vesicles termed argosomes [named after Jason's ship (Argos) in ancient Greek mythology]. After secretion from Wg-producing cells, Wg interacts with extracellular heparan sulfate and becomes endocytosed. These endosomal vesicles then translocate to multivesicular bodies. These vesicles are then transported to the plasma membrane where argosomes are released containing the Wg-heparan sulfate complexes. Adjacent cells can then endocytose the high-density Wg-containing Wg argosomes, whereupon Wg remains associated with the plasma membrane. As supporting evidence, heparinase treatment of imaginal discs in Drosophila embryos greatly reduced the ability of Wg to localize in argosomes and to spread throughout the embryo. Thus, argosomal translocation appears to be a new method of dispersing morphogens through developing embryos. V. Greco, M. Hannus, S. Eaton, Argosomes: A potential vehicle for the spread of morphogens through epithelia. Cell 106, 633-645 (2001). [Online Journal]


The purposes of the study are to explore the effects among brand awareness, halal logo and religious beliefs on purchase decision and mediating effects of halal logo and religious beliefs on brand awareness and purchases decision. The samples of cross-sectional data are collected through a survey from consumer living in Malang Indonesia, and the research adopts path analysis and mediating test to examine the hypotheses. The results are: (a) The relations among the brand awareness, halal logo and religious beliefs for purchase decision are significant and positive effect and (b) halal logo and religious beliefs mediate partially the effects between brand awareness and purchase decision. The study suggests that food businesses ought to build a brand and promote its brand awareness of halal logo through sales promotion, advertising, and other marketing activities. When brand awareness on halal food is high, its decision purchase passes through halal logo and religious beliefs will also increase. Consumers will evaluate the quality of a product from halal food purchase experience. Aus. J. Isla. Finan. & Busi. Vol  4(1),  April 2018, P 28-37


Peaches are consumed in Mediterranean countries since ancient times. Nowadays there are few areas in Europe that produce peaches with Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), and the Calanda area is one of them. The aim of this work is to describe consumers' preferences towards late season PDO Calanda peaches in the city of Zaragoza, Spain, by a bottom-up model. The bottom-up model proves greater amount of information than top-down models. In this approach it is estimated one utility function per consumer. Thus, it is not necessary to make assumptions about preference distributions and correlations across respondents. It was observed that preference distributions were neither normal nor independently distributed. If those preferences were estimated by top-down models, conclusions would be biased. This paper also explores a new way to describe preferences through individual utility functions. Results show that the largest behavioural group gathered origin sensitive consumers. Their utility increased if the peaches were produced in the Calanda area and, especially, when peaches had the PDO Calanda brand. In sequence, the second most valuable attribute for consumers was the price. Peach size and packaging were not so important on purchase choice decision. Nevertheless, it is advisable to avoid trading smallest size peaches (weighting around 160 g/fruit). Traders also have to be careful by using active packaging. It was found that a group of consumers disliked this kind of product, probably, because they perceived it as less natural.


Teachers are held accountable for their students' success, yet they generally do not control the curricular decision-making process that affects students' performance. This study sought to ascertain K-12 public school teachers' concerns about five factors that impact curriculum, supervision and instruction: Administration; Collaboration; Work Conditions; Classroom Management, and Commitment to Teaching. A random sample of 250 teachers representing 11 school systems and 22 schools was selected to participate in the study. A two-part questionnaire was designed, pilot tested and used to collect data. The results reflected significant differences in three factors--trust in administration, collaboration, and commitment to teaching. The investigator concluded that finding solutions to educational problems must begin with dialogue with teachers. ********** Accountability is the catchword of the continuing movement of education reform. Teachers are held accountable for their students' success, yet they generally do not control the curricular decision-making process that affects students' performance. Referring to the lack of teacher input into decision-making in school matters, Boyer (1988) stated that teachers are "generally bypassed" in the decision-making process. More recently, demonstrating that teachers continue to lack empowerment, Ingersoll (2002) stated that in comparison to their counterparts in Canada, American teachers have far less say in school operations. He contended that U. S. school administrators reserve decisions about school operations for themselves, to the great frustration of their teachers who have to live with, and often are blamed for, the consequences. Earlier, Sergiovanni and Starratt (1998) also contended that, "American education has long labored under the mistaken notion that leadership is something for administrators to exercise, not teachers." They pointed out that too often teachers are seen as "subordinates in a hierarchically arranged system" and, as subordinates, are not deemed trustworthy. It is no surprise, then, that teachers have grave concerns about curricular and instructional matters. This investigator believes that although teachers have many concerns about curricular and instructional issues, teachers' concerns vary according to their level of experience. Glickman, Gordon, & Ross-Gordon (2004) found that teachers at different levels of experience tend to focus their concerns on different instructional matters. In earlier studies, Veenman (1984) found that classroom discipline ranked number one as the most frequently perceived problem of beginning teachers. Ingersoll (2002) pointed out that 33% of the newly hired teachers leave the profession altogether in the first three years, and 46% in the first five years. He also added that the best and the brightest among the newly hired are often the first to leave. Glickman, Gordon, & Ross-Gordon (2004) indicated that teachers who are more highly developed tend to be concerned with the teaching environment and teaching responsibilities. With regard to the environment, Ingersoll (2002) discovered in his research, that 43% of teachers leaving the profession out of dissatisfaction cited inadequate support from school administration. Kauffman, Johnson, Kardos, Liu, and Peske (2002) surmised that many new teachers who may leave teaching prematurely because of the overwhelming nature of the work and the pain of failing in the classroom could have succeeded with more support. In Ingersoll's research, 25% of teachers leaving the profession out of dissatisfaction cited student misbehavior as the main reason for leaving. Concerning responsibilities, Ingersoll found that some teachers leave the profession dissatisfied because of their failure to have more participation in key school decisions that impact their job. Stronge (2002) encouraged administrators to promote collaborative climates because such climates "create positive working relationships and help retain teachers. …


Online product reviews are a major source of business intelligence (BI) that helps managers and market researchers make important decisions on product development and promotion. However, the large volume of online product review data creates significant information overload problems, making it difficult to analyze users' concerns. In this paper, we employ a design science paradigm to develop a new framework for designing BI systems that correlate the textual content and the numerical ratings of online product reviews. Based on the framework, we developed a prototype for extracting the relationship between the user ratings and their textual comments posted on Amazon.com's Web site. Two data mining algorithms were implemented to extract automatically decision rules that guide the understanding of the relationship. We report on experimental results of using the prototype to extract rules from online reviews of three products and discuss the managerial implications.


PICO question

In horses with longitudinal tears of the deep digital flexor tendon within the digital flexor tendon sheath, is surgical repair as effective as tenoscopic debridement alone for returning to previous level of performance?
Clinical bottom line

Current literature on the efficacy of surgical repair or tenoscopic debridement is limited. Criteria to define and evaluate performance outcomes is not uniform and confounded with multiple variables, merely representing low quality evidence that is difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from. However, the literature suggests tenoscopic debridement alone has been associated with improved outcomes. A more definitive conclusion cannot be made until higher quality evidence is made available on this topic.


Developed by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), this engaging and authoritative book provides an overview of exercise science and related areas, such as athletic training and sports medicine, to help readers develop an understanding of the basics of exercise science and the range of career paths in the field. Now in striking full color, this Second Edition reflects the most current trends and theories in the field and is enhanced by dynamic new videos that showcase different careers in exercise science. Demonstrating how exercise science principles are applied in real world settings, the book covers all the core disciplines of exercise science, including biomechanics, exercise physiology, sports psychology, motor control and learning, nutrition, and sports injury. An ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine) publication, this book reflects the standards for quality and excellence set by the leading exercise science organization in the world. You can gain insight into what it takes to prepare for a successful career in the field through fascinating interviews with prominent exercise science professionals-now enhanced by NEW video clips. You can enhance your understanding of a wide range of exercise science careers through NEW Video Fieldtrips that explore different real world settings. You can master key concepts through chapter objectives, key terms and definitions, chapter summaries, review questions, and Thinking Critically boxes that pose questions to stimulate further thought.


The 2007 AHAR is the first AHAR based on an entire year of data about persons who use emergency and transitional housing programs. In addition, the report contains new information about the seasonal patterns of homelessness and long-term users of shelters and presents new appendices that provide community-level information on the number of homeless persons.


Like most other types of human activity, international legal practice relies heavily on deadlines. Yet deadlines have received very little attention in international legal scholarship. This is the case even though deadlines are heavily studied in other contexts, with research finding that people tend to set and respond to deadlines in ways consistent with bounded rather than perfect rationality. This book chapter takes up the topic of deadlines in international legal practice and makes four contributions. First, using the Chemical Weapons Convention as a case study, it explores various ways in which deadlines are used in international legal practice and highlights just how pervasive they can be. Second, it reviews some behavioral research on deadlines in other contexts and demonstrates that these findings have intriguing parallels with how the Convention's deadlines have functioned in practice. Third, it assesses the evidence available for evaluating the relevance of domestic research to international affairs in relation to deadlines. The chapter argues that, even though this evidence is currently limited, legal actors would do well to factor this research into their decision-making about how to structure and respond to deadlines. Finally, the chapter considers the extent to which these issues are common to both diplomacy and international law.


Astrotectonics is the science of construction in space of both orbital and planetary structures and facilities, as well as orbitally assembled interplanetary spacecraft. The success of man's construction activities is dependent on the development of support equipment and assembly techniques using man alone, man and robotics, or robotics alone, depending on the work to be performed and the hazards present. The separation of Astrotectonics into distinct genre's of orbital and planetary facility construction due to subtle differences in the environment and subsequently, the equipment, is discussed.


The determinants of public approval for state legislatures have not received much attention, but one important finding is that more professionalized legislatures experience lower levels of public support.We argue that this result is an artifact of limited data and problematic model specifications. Analyzing a large national survey sample, we demonstrate that the negative relationship holds primarily for conservatives and to a lesser extent for moderates but not liberals. Additionally, we find that legislative approval in states with term limits and ballot initiatives is no different than in states without these institutions.


During an extraordinary political current event, how does a host community's reputation change, and how does the media attempt to influence public opinion towards, or away from, such a destination? What is the host community's perception of and response to these representations? This topical study explores the effects of the media on a refugee host community, through the conceptualisation of the host and the discourse of hospitality. Significant to this study is the framing of tourism as a cultural exchange and expression, how hosts and guests view the realm of "place" and boundaries, and the volatility of the tourism industry with regards to communication mediums, socioeconomic and current events. This study acknowledges the gravity of the current refugee crisis, and the refugee and migrant experiences on Kos Island from May 2015 to present, while exploring and attempting to understand a host community's reality while balancing political and ethical considerations in terms of hospitality towards guests, whether "invited" or "uninvited", and the related media representations. By applying concepts of hospitality, i.e. accommodating strangers, and the social constructs of hospitality, imagined communities and how these are shaped by the media, I seek to acquire a broader understanding of development communication in terms of the human rights that both communities are entitled to, as opposed to the reality afforded to them. Using media content analysis and qualitative methods, this exploratory study focuses on the case of Kos Island, Greece one of the main entry points for refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq due to the island's proximity to Turkey. By presenting a media content analysis, I frame how the host community was portrayed in the media to shape public opinion, by pinpointing the frequency and prism under which Kos Island was mentioned in the UK press during the height of the refugee crisis in 2015. I also conduct semi-structured interviews with local and international tourism industry gatekeepers, to uncover effects of the crisis on Kos Island's tourism industry. This qualitative data is reinforced with a personal ethnographic account from the summer of 2015. I anticipate that the topics surfacing from this discussion allow readers to gain a broader perspective into development communication, through the power relations between hosts and guests/tourists (including refugees and migrants), the importance of public spaces and how they are used by host community and guests (tourists and refugees), and the ethics of hospitality.


Educational institutions, including schools of nursing, find themselves in significant times, as they work to Indigenize programs, and strive to repair and heal relationships with Indigenous peoples as recommended in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015). Educators question where to begin the process, how such Indigenization should occur, and what the curricular end result should look like. In response, the authors considered many aspects from the literature, specific to nursing programs. The following themes were explored: partnering with community, cultural relevance, and faculty development. Through the utilization of a "two-eyed seeing" approach, institutional administrators need to partner with Indigenous Elders and community members to facilitate relationships required to provide the knowledge necessary to bring about change within educational programs. It is through such an approach that nursing curricula can be designed to be culturally safe and relevant for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous learners, and faculty can be supported in their growth and development in Indigenous knowledge. The authors propose that through "two-eyed seeing" and the integration of the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada (2009) core competencies, Indigenization of nursing curricula may ultimately move forward in a culturally reciprocal and respectful way.


Shrunken patterning for integrated device manufacturing requires surface cleanliness and surface smoothness in wet chemical processing [1]. It is necessary to control all process parameters perfectly especially for the common cleaning technique RCA clean (SC-1 and SC-2) [2]. In this paper the characteristic and effect of surface preparation parameters are discussed. The properties of RCA wet chemical processing in silicon technology is based on processing time, temperature, concentration and megasonic power of SC-1 and QDR. An improvement of wafer surface preparation by the enhanced variables of the wet cleaning chemical process is proposed. Keywords—RCA, SC-1, SC-2, QDR


This chapter focuses on the synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), AgNP composites, and its role in the structure and electrical properties modification. The research and its various applications of nanoparticles are interesting among others. Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are now becoming to take an essential role in the diverse field of application. Establishing the simple and inexpensive of AgNPs is greatly required, since it will also influence it used. Many different methods to obtain AgNPs have been reported. The inducing AgNPs on a various number of other materials has been investigating. We report a brief review of simple AgNP fabrication method at different MSA, PEG, and ultrasonic irradiations regarding its structure and conductivity. We also report the influence of AgNPs on the electrical conductivity of conducting polymers, i.e., PANI, flavonoids of Jatropha multifida L. (JML) and Pterocarpus indicus W. (PIW). It is found that in general, the increase of AgNP concentration gives rise to increase of its electrical conductivity. The conductivity of the AgNPs doped of polymers does not directly reflect by its crystallinity or crystal size. Some exciting aspect of crystal structure and its conductivity are discussed.


Open and distance learning (ODL) has created room for the emergence of virtual education. Not only are students found everywhere and anywhere undertaking their studies and earning their degrees, but geographical boundaries between nations no longer appear to have much relevance. As the new education paradigm irretrievably alters the way teaching and learning is conducted, the application of modern educational ICTs has a major role to play. With students of transnational or cross-border education dispersed into various nooks and crannies of Botswana, many others enlist for the "home-baked" distance learning programmes from their diverse locations. Like the face-to-face conventional students, distance learners also have information needs which have to be met. But blocking the distance learners' realization of their information needs is the digital divide, which further marginalizes the underclass of "info-poor." The survey method was used, and a questionnaire administered to 519 students of four tertiary level distance teaching institutions that met the criteria set for the study yielded a 70.1% response rate. The results showed that while the Government of Botswana has made considerable effort to ensure country-wide access to ICT, which now constitutes an effective instrument for meeting information needs, a number of problems still exist. The factors impeding easy access are unearthed. The findings of an empirical study portraying some learners as information-rich and others, information-poor, and the consequence of distance learners studying on both sides of the digital divide, are discussed. Suggestions on bridging the digital divide are offered.


Despite almost universal acceptance of the role of social influence on employee orientations and behaviour in relation to risk, to date, few mainstream studies have benefited from the richly patinated, data-driven, approach described here. This paper details the methodological benefits of an exploratory, qualitative approach, to gaining an appreciation of the, frequently complex, interplay of contextual variables that underpin employee behaviour in relation to risk. It is argued that this understanding is essential before proceeding with the design of change/improvement interventions. A uniqueness of this study is that the researcher was physically embedded within the study organisation, a large manufacturing plant, for three years. Having a desk in the company allowed for frequent interactions with the leaders and easy access to the shop-floor working groups. It is argued that the mainstream safety culture research is dominated by top-down extrapolations from established, fundamentally cognate, models of health and risk behaviour, rather than being the product of grounded, subject matter, insight. In this respect the perspective is data poor, published evidence on intervention design being dominated by what works; while remaining largely silent on key application elements surrounding why, how, and under what circumstances change and improvement can be achieved. The authors discuss the design of a sustainable safety culture intervention that they attempted to implement. Moreover, it is argued that many of the key insights into how to implement workplace behaviour change interventions are not to be found within the academic or even grey (practitioner) literatures, but remain unreported or, at best, under-reported. Therefore, this paper additionally, reports on a review of 'what works' in terms of operationalising behavioural change interventions, derived from the embedded knowledge of four groups of experts (N = 16): 1. Academics (N = 3), 2. H&S managers (N = 4), 3. External safety consultants (N = 4), 4. Leadership development coaches (N = 5). Questions were designed to elicit perspectives on factors that obstruct successful implementation of safety interventions. A thematic analysis was applied to interview transcripts.


A Kinetic Vlasov Model for Plasma Simulation Using Discontinuous Galerkin Method on Many-Core Architectures Noah Reddell Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Uri Shumlak Aeronautics and Astronautics Advances are reported in the three pillars of computational science achieving a new capability for understanding dynamic plasma phenomena outside of local thermodynamic equilibrium. A continuum kinetic model for plasma based on the Vlasov-Maxwell system for multiple particle species is developed. Consideration is added for boundary conditions in a truncated velocity domain and supporting wall interactions. A scheme to scale the velocity domain for multiple particle species with different temperatures and particle mass while sharing one computational mesh is described. A method for assessing the degree to which the kinetic solution differs from a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution is introduced and tested on a thoroughly studied test case. The discontinuous Galerkin numerical method is extended for efficient solution of hyperbolic conservation laws in five or more particle phase-space dimensions using tensor-product hypercube elements with arbitrary polynomial order. A scheme for velocity moment integration is integrated as required for coupling between the plasma species and electromagnetic waves. A new high performance simulation code WARPM is developed to efficiently implement the model and numerical method on emerging many-core supercomputing architectures. WARPM uses the OpenCL programming model for computational kernels and task parallelism to overlap computation with communication. WARPM single-node performance and parallel scaling efficiency are analyzed with bottlenecks identified guiding future directions for the implementation. The plasma modeling capability is validated against physical problems with analytic solutions and well established benchmark problems.