We present X-ray, UV/optical, and radio observations of the stripped-envelope, core-collapse supernova (SN) 2011ei, one of the least luminous SNe IIb or Ib observed to date. Our observations begin with a discovery within ∼1 day of explosion and span several months afterward. Early optical spectra exhibit broad, Type II-like hydrogen Balmer profiles that subside rapidly and are replaced by Type Ib-like He-rich features on a timescale of one week. High-cadence monitoring of this transition suggests absorption attributable to a high-velocity (≳ 12, 000 km s−1) H-rich shell, which is likely present in many Type Ib events. Radio observations imply a shock velocity of v ≈ 0.13 c and a progenitor star average mass-loss rate of (assuming wind velocity vw = 103 km s−1). This is consistent with independent constraints from deep X-ray observations with Swift-XRT and Chandra. Overall, the multi-wavelength properties of SN 2011ei are consistent with the explosion of a lower-mass (3–4 M☉), compact (R* ≲ 1 × 1011 cm), He-core star. The star retained a thin hydrogen envelope at the time of explosion, and was embedded in an inhomogeneous circumstellar wind suggestive of modest episodic mass loss. We conclude that SN 2011ei's rapid spectral metamorphosis is indicative of time-dependent classifications that bias estimates of the relative explosion rates for Type IIb and Ib objects, and that important information about a progenitor star's evolutionary state and mass loss immediately prior to SN explosion can be inferred from timely multi-wavelength observations.


The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) jointly initiated the National Cleaner Production Centres (NCPCs) Programme in 1995. As of January 2003, there were 25 Centres. The Centres do not deliver ready-made solutions, but rather they train and advise their clients on how to find the best solutions for specific problems. An evaluation of the first eight Centres found that about 75% of the Cleaner Technology (CT) measures implemented by plants were primarily in the lower order of complexity and investment. The most obvious reasons for this outcome were the need for investment and time to implement more complex changes. Very few of the options included transfer of technology from abroad. The potential for the NCPCs to promote transfer of more complex technologies would have required specialisation in sector-specific technologies, links with suppliers of cross-sectoral cleaner technologies and incremental innovations brought about by partnerships.


The fifth volume of Carpatho-Rusyn Studies follows the same format as previous volumes. It includes nearly 800 entries listing books, articles in journals, and chapters in books published during the years 2004 through 2009, and which deal with various aspects of Carpathian Rus' in Europe and of Carpatho-Rusyns wherever they may live. Each entry includes full bibliographical data followed by an extended annotation. Journals that focus on Carpatho-Rusyn studies each have their own entry and include content analysis in the annotation.The material listed covers a wide variety of subject areas in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts, among the most important of which-in terms of number of entries-are: history, language, religious studies, literature, ethnography and folklore, the nationality (identity) question, Carpatho-Rusyn diasporas, historiography and scholarship, education, and book publishing and the press.The volume begins with a survey of the highlights of Carpatho-Rusyn scholarship during the five-year period, 2004-2009. Appended are several charts with publication data. The volume concludes with an extensive index of authors, editors, compilers, placenames, and persons who are the subject of studies.


Objective: The prevalence of allergic disease in children has been increasing in the recent years. There is no previous study on the prevalence of allergic disease in Malatya, Turkey. We aimed to investigate the prevalence of allergic disease and related risk factors among children aged 6-7 years in Malatya. Materials and Methods: We administered the questionnaire of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) translated into the Turkish language to 480 children aged 6-7 years living in Malatya. The questionnaires were completed by the parents for 413 (86%) of the children. Results: There were 210 (50.8%) males and the overall mean age was 6.6±0.49 years. The lifetime prevalence of wheezing, rhinitis and eczema was 20.3%, 37% and 7.5% respectively and the reported prevalence for the last 12 months was 12.3%, 32% and 6.5% respectively. When the risk factors associated with allergic disease were analyzed; male gender (p=0.001), history of parental asthma (p=0.002), doctor's diagnosis of allergic rhinitis (p=0.025) and having cockroaches at the home (p=0.002) were associated with asthma. A history of doctor's diagnosis of asthma (p<0.001) and atopic eczema (p=0.001) were associated with rhinitis as risk factors. History of parental atopic eczema (p<0.001) and doctor's diagnosis of asthma (p=0.006) were associated with atopic eczema as risk factors. Conclusion: This study is the first to investigate the prevalence of allergic disease in the 6-7 years age group in Malatya using the ISAAC questionnaire. The current study shows the prevalence of allergic diseases is considerable in children living in Malatya.


ABSTRACT The isotype and epitope specificities of antibodies both contribute to the efficacy of antibodies that mediate immunity toCryptococcus neoformans, but the relationship between these properties is only partially understood. In this study, we analyzed the efficacy of protection of two sets of immunoglobulin G (IgG) isotype switch variants from two IgG3 monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) which are either not protective or disease enhancing, depending on the mouse model used. The two IgG3 MAbs 3E5 and 4H3 have different epitope specificities. Protection experiments were done with A/JCr mice infected intravenously with C. neoformans and administered with 3E5 IgG3 and its IgG1, IgG2a, and IgG2b switch variants. These experiments revealed that IgG1, IgG2b, and IgG2a were each more effective than IgG3. For 4H3 IgG3 and its IgG1 and IgG2b switch variants, the relative efficacy was IgG2b > IgG1 >> IgG3. The combination of 3E5 IgG3 and 4H3 IgG3 was more deleterious than either IgG3 alone. All IgG isotypes were opsonic for mouse bronchoalveolar cells, with the relative efficacy being IgG2b > IgG2a > IgG1 > IgG3. These results (i) confirm that a nonprotective IgG3 MAb can be converted to a protective MAb by isotype switching, (ii) indicate that the efficacy of protection of an IgG1 MAb can be increased by isotype switching to another subclass, (iii) show that protective and nonprotective IgG MAbs are opsonic, and (iv) provide additional evidence for the concept that the efficacy of the antibody response to C. neoformans is dependent on the type of MAb elicited.


OBJECTIVE: To analyze serum C3 and C4 complement system components with a view to their possible utility as biomarkers of intermittent atopic asthma. METHODS: Serum levels of the C3 and C4 complement components were assayed in 70 children aged from 3 to 14 years and with a history of "wheezy chest." After 2 years' outpatients follow-up and after application of inclusion and exclusion criteria, the children were divided into two groups: 40 children with intermittent atopic asthma and 30 children without asthma. None of the children in either group were treated with inhaled or systemic corticosteroids or long-acting bronchodilators. The two groups had similar ages according to Student's t test. The C3 and C4 component test results followed a normal distribution and were therefore compared using Student's t test with significance set at p < 0.05. RESULTS: The results for the group with intermittent atopic asthma were significantly elevated for C3 in 85.0% of the children, for C4 in 87.5% of the children, for both C3 and C4 in 72.5% of the children, and for either C3 or C4 in 97.5% of the children, when compared with the results for the children without asthma from the same age group. CONCLUSION: We observed an increase in the serum levels of the C3 and/or C4 components of the complement system in the majority of the patients with intermittent atopic asthma studied here, when compared with the results for children in the same age group without asthma. We conclude that the presence of elevated C3 and/or C4 complement components could represent a biomarker for diagnosis of intermittent atopic asthma.


As the noble gases play a major role in establishing the interconnection of escape routes from the interior to the exterior of nuclear reactor fuel, a realistic description of the release of volatile fission products (VFPs) must a priori include a realistic description of fission gas release and swelling. In addition, as the VFPs are, in general, quite soluble in the fuel matrix and are known to react with other elements to form compounds, a realistic description of VFP release must include the effects of VFP chemistry on VFP behavior. The steady-state and transient gas release and swelling subroutine, FASTGRASS, has been modified to include a mechanistic description of the behavior of VFPs (iodine, cesium, CsI, Cs/sub 2/MoO/sub 4/, and Cs/sub 2/ UO/sub 4/). Phenomena modeled are the chemical reactions between the VFPs, VFP migration through the fuel, and VFP interaction with the noble gases. Calculations were performed with FASTGRASS to describe the release of noble gases, iodine, cesium, and CsI from light water reactor fuel during steady-state and powerramping conditions. Key issues that are addressed in the analysis are the effects of (a) VFP chemistry, (b) various assumptions concerning mechanisms of VFP migration through solid UO/sub 2/, (c) fissionmore » gas behavior, and (d) an accident scenario on the chemical form of the released iodine and the rate of iodine release from water reactor fuel.« less


This article provides an overview of the unique tradition of the islanders of Kihnu of wearing headscarves. I discuss the importance of cotton print headscarves in the traditional clothing of Kihnu women and explain the meaning of kallisseltsi headscarves as an intra-community phenomenon, giving an overview of the origin and characteristics thereof. Cotton print headscarves are considered an integral part of Kihnu traditional clothing, but as purchased goods they have, up to the present, remained beyond the scope of ethnographic studies. Headscarves are classified by material, origin and purpose. Even today seven different types of headscarves are known: names were assigned to the different types based on their patterns. Headscarves must always be worn in harmony with the main item of clothing: the skirt. The colours and stripes of the skirt convey the events that take place in the course of a woman's life. Adherence to the rules is supervised by the elders of the community and the more knowledgeable members who look after the preservation of the island's traditions. As in the case of wearing, there are specific unwritten rules concerning the care, storage and folding of headscarves. In the Kihnu community the most valuable cotton headscarves are those made of red printed calico that were produced in the late 19th century and the early 20th century in Russia, in the Province of Vladimir in Aleksandrov County. Elsewhere in the world, the headscarves are also known by their main colour – Turkish red. The owning of kallisseltsi headscarves is in a way a status symbol in the Kihnu community: the owner of the largest number of headscarves is considered the proudest and richest. The circulation of headscarves is very carefully monitored and the most valuable ones are only worn during important life events.


This article explores a series of media policy and political-economic issues created by the United States Federal tax deduction for advertising. Because American companies are allowed to deduct the entire cost of an advertisement for the year in which they purchase it, this tax deduction serves as a kind of government subsidy for advertising and the media more generally. By channeling tax money to commercial media outlets, this deduction creates a hidden public media system that distorts and inverts the presumed policy goals of government media funding. I begin by offering a brief history of this tax deduction, which was first implemented in the early 20th century, before moving on to discuss tax expenditures—a tax policy concept used to call attention to the hidden impact of tax deductions and other preferential tax treatments. Finally, I quantify the economic impact of the United States Federal tax deduction for advertising and demonstrate the upside-down nature of the hidden media system it supports. Treating this deduction as a tax expenditure would force greater transparency regarding the funding it provides and open up the hidden media system to greater analysis and critique.


During graduate school, I spent a semester studying Hungarian literature; I realized then that a European literature was not my own literary heritage. My literature was that of the American experience. Thus, I began to research Hungarian immigrants in central New Jersey. This research resulted in The Other Sister, published in November 2008. This paper details the research process, and more importantly, the process of discovery that led me to better understand the stories of Hungarian immigrants, and how the forces that shaped the lives of these travelers in their new country shaped my own heritage—culinary and literary.


It is shown that all the structure present in the interferogram of an "ideal" rotational spectrum consisting of many equally-spaced, identical lines is contained in a sequence of "signatures" at path differences of 0, 1/(2B), 2/(2B),…, where B is the reciprocal of inertia. For a symmetric line shape the signatures are all symmetric and homologous, the central one being upright and all successive ones inverted; but asymmetry in the line shape introduces increasing asymmetry in the successive signatures. This agrees with experience. Further, by measuring two vertical distances on each signature one may determine as many harmonics of the line shape as there are signatures. As an example, a typical run of the large interferometric modulator at The Johns Hopkins University is so analyzed.


Quantization is a technique used in deep neural networks (DNNs) to increase execution performance and hardware efficiency. Uniform post-training quantization (PTQ) methods are common, since they can be implemented efficiently in hardware and do not require extensive hardware resources or a training set. Mapping FP32 models to INT8 using uniform PTQ yields models with negligible accuracy degradation; however, reducing precision below 8 bits with PTQ is challenging, as accuracy degradation becomes noticeable, due to the increase in quantization noise. In this paper, we propose a sparsity-aware quantization (SPARQ) method, in which the unstructured and dynamic activation sparsity is leveraged in different representation granularities. 4-bit quantization, for example, is employed by dynamically examining the bits of 8-bit values and choosing a window of 4 bits, while first skipping zero-value bits. Moreover, instead of quantizing activation-by-activation to 4 bits, we focus on pairs of 8-bit activations and examine whether one of the two is equal to zero. If one is equal to zero, the second can opportunistically use the other's 4-bit budget; if both do not equal zero, then each is dynamically quantized to 4 bits, as described. SPARQ achieves minor accuracy degradation, 2x speedup over widely used hardware architectures, and a practical hardware implementation. The code is available at this https URL.


This paper examines the forecast accuracy of an unrestricted vector autoregressive (VAR) model for GDP, relative to a comparable vector error correction model (VECM) that recognizes that the data are characterized by co-integration. In addition, an alternative forecast method, intercept correction, is considered for further comparison. Recursive out-of-sample forecasts are generated for both models and forecast techniques. The generated forecasts for each model are objectively evaluated by a selection of evaluation measures and equal accuracy tests. The result shows that the VECM consistently outperforms the VAR models. Further, intercept correction enhances the forecast accuracy when applied to the VECM, whereas there is no such indication when applied to the VAR model. For certain forecast horizons there is a significant difference in forecast ability between the intercept corrected VECM compared to the VAR model. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Proper mango nutrition at bud initiation, flowering and fruiting stages is critical for the health of mango trees and may affect the quality and yield of fruit. This study evaluates the nutrient composition in leaf tissue of 'Sindhri' mango orchards in Shaheed Benazirabad district, Sindh, Pakistan, at two growth stages. Two orchards, 25-30 years old, were selected for the experiment. Leaf-tissue samples were collected from 12 mango trees from each orchard twice a year, once at bud initiation during December and then after harvest of mango during July in the following year. About 2030 recently matured leaves (third leaf from the top) were collected from each tree to represent the canopy and combined into a single sample. Soil samples were also collected from around each tree and underneath the canopy at 0-30 cm soil depth and combined for each tree. The soil samples were analysed for texture, electrical conductivity (EC), pH, organic matter, Kjeldahl's N and ABDTPA-P and K contents. The leaf samples were analysed for Kjeldahl's N, and P and K by wet digestion with a nitric acid/perchloric acid (5:1) mixture. This study on NPK nutrition status of 'Sindhri' mango indicated that the N fertilization regime conducted by the mango growers at both sites was adequate for mango nutrition, while P and K nutrition required adjustments to meet mango nutrition requirements. Inherent fertility status also had a bearing on the mango nutrition status, particularly in the after-harvest samples. It is proposed to design further studies focusing not only on NPK but also on micronutrients, particularly B and Zn, which are reported to be deficient in many soils of Sindh province.


The Discussion Paper examines the regulation of the air transport sector from the perspective of competition law, focusing specifically on EU-US air transport relations. Emphasis is placed on the ongoing negotiations between Europe and the United States for the creation of a transatlantic open aviation area, where American and European airlines will operate freely without restrictions on traffic rights, subject solely to common rules agreed between the parties. In 2007, the first-ever EU-US Air Transport Agreement was reached, followed, in 2010, by a second-stage agreement. All efforts are now concentrated on the conclusion of the final agreement. Given that the transatlantic air transport market accounts for almost 60% of world traffic, the conclusion of the final agreement will signal the creation of the biggest liberalized airspace in the world. The prospects and challenges thereof are expected to be major and are examined from the perspective of the consumers, the airline industry and the law itself. The first part of the paper is a flight into the past, tracing the regulation of air transport from the birth of civil aviation up until today. The second part is a flight into the future, aspiring to foresee how smooth or turbulent the transition to the new regime is going to be. Given that the successful application of the final agreement is dependent upon effective regulatory cooperation aimed ultimately at regulatory convergence, the analysis looks into the prospects and challenges associated with regulatory convergence at both sector-specific and general competition law level.


This paper presents a synthesis of the ENEA-Bologna Nuclear Data Group programme dedicated to generate and validate group-wise cross section libraries for shielding and radiation damage deterministic calculations in nuclear fission reactors, following the data processing methodology recommended in the ANSI/ANS-6.1.2-1999 (R2009) American Standard. The VITJEFF311.BOLIB and VITENDF70.BOLIB finegroup coupled n-γ (199 n + 42 γ – VITAMIN-B6 structure) multi-purpose cross section libraries, based on the Bondarenko method for neutron resonance self-shielding and respectively on JEFF-3.1.1 and ENDF/B-VII.0 evaluated nuclear data, were produced in AMPX format using the NJOY-99.259 and the ENEA-Bologna 2007 Revision of the SCAMPI nuclear data processing systems. Two derived broad-group coupled n-γ (47 n + 20 γ – BUGLE-96 structure) working cross section libraries in FIDO-ANISN format for LWR shielding and pressure vessel dosimetry calculations, named BUGJEFF311.BOLIB and BUGENDF70.BOLIB, were generated by the revised version of SCAMPI, through problem-dependent cross section collapsing and self-shielding from the cited fine-group libraries. The validation results on the criticality safety benchmark experiments for the fine-group libraries and the preliminary validation results for the broad-group working libraries on the PCA-Replica and VENUS-3 engineering neutron shielding benchmark experiments are reported in synthesis.


The Three‐Georges Dam holds many records in the history of engineering. While the dam has produced benefits in terms of flood control, hydropower generation and increased navigation capacity of the Yangtze River, serious questions have been raised concerning its impact on both upstream and downstream ecosystems. It has been suggested that the dam operation intensifies the extremes of wet and dry conditions in the downstream Poyang Lake, and affects adversely important local wetlands. A floodgate has been proposed to maintain the lake water level by controlling the flow between the Poyang Lake and Yangtze River. Using extensive hydrological data and generalized linear statistical models, we demonstrated that the dam operation induces major changes in the downstream river discharge near the dam, including an average "water loss". The analysis also revealed considerable effects on the Poyang Lake water level, particularly a reduced level over the dry period from late summer to autumn. However, the dam impact needs to be further assessed based on long‐term monitoring of the lake ecosystem, covering a wide range of parameters related to hydrological and hydraulic characteristics of the lake, water quality, geomorphological characteristics, aquatic biota and their habitat, wetland vegetation and associated fauna.


Comparative research suggests that male courtship displays signal condition‐dependent traits tofemales; these displays might also provide cues to potential male competitors. Although some associations betweenhuman movements and physical/behavioral qualities have been found, such research has typically only been conducted from a perspective of female mate choice. Here, using advanced motion capture and biomechanical analyses, we examine the extent to which male dancing provides cues about the dancer's physical qualities to both males and females.


The way in which the judgements of the landmark 1860 case Rylands v. Fletcher employed the English language to attempt some kind of clear notion of liability is representative of a much wider cultural anxiety over the status of water as a live, conscious and capriciously dangerous agent. I will suggest that the Victorians' emergent fear of wild and live water represents a kind of cultural imaginary that predetermines Dickens's use of prosopopoeic figurative language. The novels that I will draw upon, principally David Copperfield and Our Mutual Friend, both take the trope of drowning as their focal rhetoric. Because the idea of water being embodied as a feral animal emerged around the 1850s, I will deploy some of Dickens's earlier work that uses the same trope of drowning, but in a more simplified way which envisioned water as the passive recipient of the drownee. As a result of the cultural idea of a live and conscious water, Dickens's later novels and journalism can be seen to be exploring an inherently queer notion of intersubjectivity; as the drownee meets their fate, their body's boundaries become permeable, they and the water which 'takes' them become intermingled. The water takes their life and it dissolves their identity. Dickens's later work and Rylands v. Fletcher both play their part in articulating this wider cultural anxiety and phenomenological presence of water as live monstrosity. Moreover, Dickens's use of water as embodied, raging and stampeding agent, raises some fascinating questions surrounding the taboo nature of gender, sexuality and subjectivity in Victorian culture.


This month, the Supreme Court will decide what some believe will be among the most important cases in the history of the institution. In the 'Obamacare' cases, the Court considers whether the Affordable Care Act ('ACA') exceeds the boundaries of federal authority under the various provisions of the Constitution that establish the relationship between local and national governance. Its response will determine the fate of Congress's efforts to grapple with the nation's health care crisis, and perhaps other legislative responses to wicked regulatory problems like climate governance or education policy. Whichever way the gavel falls, the decisions will likely impact the upcoming presidential and congressional elections, and some argue that they may significantly alter public faith in the Court itself. But from the constitutional perspective, they are important because they will speak directly to the interpretive problems of federalism that have ensnared the architects, practitioners, and scholars of American governance since the nation's first days.This very short essay explains the battle over Obamacare in terms of the classic American federalism debates, and proposes a better way of analyzing this and all federalism issues, drawing from a new book. (Different versions of this essay were cross-posted to RegBlog, the American Constitution Society Blog, and the Environmental Law Profs Blog on June 21, 2012.)


Object segmentation is a crucial problem that is usually solved by using supervised learning approaches over very large datasets composed of both images and corresponding object masks. Since the masks have to be provided at pixel level, building such a dataset for any new domain can be very time-consuming. We present ReDO, a new model able to extract objects from images without any annotation in an unsupervised way. It relies on the idea that it should be possible to change the textures or colors of the objects without changing the overall distribution of the dataset. Following this assumption, our approach is based on an adversarial architecture where the generator is guided by an input sample: given an image, it extracts the object mask, then redraws a new object at the same location. The generator is controlled by a discriminator that ensures that the distribution of generated images is aligned to the original one. We experiment with this method on different datasets and demonstrate the good quality of extracted masks.


Using SAMOD, a tax-benefit microsimulation model for South Africa, this paper examines the joint distributional impact of the increase in the value-added tax (VAT) rate and increases in benefit amounts in 2018. Although poverty and inequality did not increase overall, the poorest still saw a reduction in their purchasing power, as many of those in the lowest decile do not receive any social benefits.The paper then explores the consequences of eliminating zero-rating in VAT and using the generated revenues to finance new social benefits. The results suggest that a policy package of a uniform VAT and an expanded set of social benefits would lead to reduced poverty and inequality in comparison to the current practice of zero rating of some consumption goods in the VAT.The findings demonstrate the superiority of using direct taxes and benefits as opposed to provisions in indirect taxes in achieving redistribution.


An experiment was carried out at Akure in the rainforest zone of Nigeria to determine the effectiveness of liquid
plant and animal tea solutions as fertilizers on the growth of two cr&/JS of locust bean (Parkia clappertonia) tree
seedlings in the nursery. Eight manurial tea solutions were used namely; coffee, cocoa, Cajanus-eajan (Pigeon pea), Cashew, plantain leaf tea fertilizers, goat dung, turkey and duckmanure tea fertilizers, applied at 100 mL/ 10 kg soil filled polybag with NPK 15-15-15 at 1 g NPK/10 kg soil and control (no manure, no fertilizer). They were replicated three times and arranged in a completely randomized design. The soil and manurial tea fertilizers
were chemically analysed before planting locust bean seeds. The results showed that the manurial tea solutions
increased the plant height, stem girth, number of leaves and number of branches, shoot weight and root length
at harvest, leaf chemical composition of locust bean seedlings and the soil nutrient status significantly (P < 0.05). For soil chemical composition, coffee leaf solution increased the soil pH, a.M, N,P,K, Ca and Mg by 4.2%, 10%,
13.6%,58.3%,22%, 91.3% and 84% respectively when compared with cajanus leafsolution while the cashew leaf solution increased the soil pH, a.M, N, P,K, Ca and Mg by 2.8%, 11 %, 48%, 57%, 8.3%, 38.5% and 33% when compared with cocoa leaf solution respectively. Coffee leaf tea solution increased the soil pH, a.M, N, P, K, Ca and Mg by 24%, 74%, 82%, 89%, 96%, 98% and 97% compared with the control treatment respectively. Coffee tea solution increased the soil pH, a.M, K, Ca and Mg by 25%, 69%, 39%, 98.7% and
99% compared to NPK fertilizer treatment respectively. Turkey manure tea solution also increased the soil pH,
a.M, N, P and Mg by 2%, 19%, 37%, 42% and 82% respectively compared to the duck manure tea. Concerning the growth parameters of locust bean seedlings, Cashew leaf tea solution increased the plant height, number of leaves, number of branches, stem girth, root length and shoot weight by 33%, 41 %, 33.3%, 12.2%, 36.4% and 16% compared to the NPK fertilizer treatment respectively. It also increased the same growth parameters by 61 %, 71 %, 78%, 62%, 77% and 71 % respectively when compared to the control treatment. In the locust bean leaf chemical composition, the cashew leaf tea solution increased the leaf N, P, K, Ca and Mg by 42%, 45%, 4.16%, 85% and 83% when compared with NPKfertilizer respectively. Cashew leaf solution and turkey manure tea solutions increased the growth, leaf and soils of locust bean seedlings most.


Incorporating symmetry as an inductive bias into neural network architecture has led to improvements in generalization, data efficiency, and physical consistency in dynamics modeling. Methods such as CNNs or equivariant neural networks use weight tying to enforce symmetries such as shift invariance or rotational equivariance. However, despite the fact that physical laws obey many symmetries, real-world dynamical data rarely conforms to strict mathematical symmetry either due to noisy or incomplete data or to symmetry breaking features in the underlying dynamical system. We explore approximately equivariant networks which are biased towards preserving symmetry but are not strictly constrained to do so. By relaxing equivariance constraints, we find that our models can outperform both baselines with no symmetry bias and baselines with overly strict symmetry in both simulated turbulence domains and real-world multi-stream jet flow.


Graeme Donald Snooks, Economics without Time.- A Science Blind to the Forces of Historical Change (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993, 327 pp., $39.50). Reviewed by Christopher J. Napier London School of Economics This book contains both a critique and a demonstration. The critique is aimed at what Snooks identifies as the absence of realism in modern deductive economics, manifested particularly by a downgrading of any historical perspective. To Snooks, modern economic theory ignores the dimension of time, so that even attempts to represent an economy dynamically often manifest themselves as a series of static equilibria with little attempt to explain how the economy moves from one equilibrium to the next. The demonstration of the relevance of a historical perspective draws on past research by Snooks into the medieval English economy, particularly as revealed by Domesday Book. Snooks argues that European economies during the last millennium have been subject to great waves of economic change lasting between 150 and 300 years. By demonstrating these waves, Snooks attempts to persuade us not only that economic theory, lacking a historical dimension, is unable to deal with important long run forces in the economy, but also that the waves continue and imply a danger of economic stagnation and instability in the very near future similar to that identified by Snooks as characterising the end of the Middle Ages. Bashing theoretical economics has become rather fashionable in recent years, and accusations of the irrelevance of much economic theory (particularly the more abstruse mathematical approaches) to real-world problems can be found not just in the literature of economic methodology but also spill over into accounting (as exemplified by the attacks on positive accounting theory). Critics such as Donald McCloskey have questioned the foundations of modern economic theory, ironically in the opinion of Snooks, who regards the cliometric school of economic history for which McCloskey is "the main apologist" p. 137 as being more about deduction from theory than the analysis of historical data. Snooks develops his critique of deductive economics in the first part of the book by discussing the struggles between the deductivists and the historicists in nineteenth century Britain, leading to the triumph of Alfred Marshall's "scientific economics" over the historical approaches of such as Cunningham and Ashley. …


The predicted reward of different behavioral options plays an important role in guiding decisions. Previous research has identified reward predictions in prefrontal and striatal brain regions. Moreover, it has been shown that the neural representation of a predicted reward is similar to the neural representation of the actual reward outcome. However, it has remained unknown how these representations emerge over the course of learning and how they relate to decision making. Here, we sought to investigate learning of predicted reward representations using functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate pattern classification. Using a pavlovian conditioning procedure, human subjects learned multiple novel cue–outcome associations in each scanning run. We demonstrate that across learning activity patterns in the orbitofrontal cortex, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and the dorsal striatum, coding the value of predicted rewards become similar to the patterns coding the value of actual reward outcomes. Furthermore, we provide evidence that predicted reward representations in the striatum precede those in prefrontal regions and that representations in the DLPFC are linked to subsequent value-based choices. Our results show that different brain regions represent outcome predictions by eliciting the neural representation of the actual outcome. Furthermore, they suggest that reward predictions in the DLPFC are directly related to value-based choices.


When The Handbook of Experimental Economics first came out in 1995, the notion of economists conducting lab experiments to generate data was relatively new. Since then, the field has exploded. This second volume of the Handbook covers some of the most exciting new growth areas in experimental economics, presents the latest results and experimental methods, and identifies promising new directions for future research. Featuring contributions by leading practitioners, the Handbook describes experiments in macroeconomics, charitable giving, neuroeconomics, other-regarding preferences, market design, political economy, subject population effects, gender effects, auctions, and learning and the economics of small decisions. Contributors focus on key developments and report on experiments, highlighting the dialogue between experimenters and theorists. While most of the experiments consist of laboratory studies, the book also includes several chapters that report extensively on field experiments related to the subject area studied.


A latin square of order-n is an n × n array over a set of n symbols such that every symbol appears exactly once in each row and exactly once in each column. Latin squares encode features of algebraic structures. When an algebraic structure passes certain "latin square tests", it is a candidate for use in the construction of cryptographic systems. A transversal of a latin square is a list of n distinct symbols, one from each row and each column. The question regarding the existence of transversals in latin squares that encode the Cayley tables of finite groups is far from being resolved and is an area of active investigation. It is known that counting the pairs of permutations over a Galois field Fpd whose point-wise sum is also a permutation is equivalent to counting the transversals of a latin square that encodes the addition group of Fpd . We survey some recent results and conjectures pertaining to latin squares and transversals. We create software tools that generate latin squares and count their transversals. We confirm previous results that cyclic latin squares of prime order-p possess the maximum transversal counts for 3 ≤ p ≤ 9. Furthermore, we create a new algorithm that uses these prime order-p cyclic latin squares as "building blocks" to construct super-symmetric latin squares of prime power order-p with d > 0; using this algorithm we accurately predict that super-symmetric latin squares of order-p possess the confirmed maximum transversal counts for 3 ≤ p ≤ 9 and the estimated lower bound on the maximum transversal counts for 9 < p ≤ 17. Also, we give some conjectures regarding the number of transversals in a super-symmetric latin square. Lastly, we use the super-symmetric latin square for the additive group of the Galois field (F32 ,+) to create a simplified version of Grøstl, an iterated hash function, where the compression function is built from two fixed, large, distinct permutations.


Blood, Land, and Sex: Legal and Political Pluralism in Eritrea. By Lyda Favali and Roy Pateman. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003. Pp. xvi, 352. $54.95 cloth, $24.95 paper. This is the best book I have read this year. Not only is it a well organized presentation of Eritrea's plural legal system, it also opens doors for intriguing comparative studies in the Horn of Africa, which has had a plural legal system throughout its recent history. The experiences of the countries of the Horn have been studied within the individual countries as is the case of this book, but legal studies are rare and if found they are mostly done by anthropologists. Comparing similar legal systems in the region will make possible the needed interaction and use of other experiences such as that of the Sudan. The book is written and organized in such a way that it is accessible to both scholars and students. Favali and Pateman provide valuable material on Eritrea, which is perhaps the least studied country in the Horn of Africa. In addition to the history and copious empirical facts about the country, the authors combine their scholarly abilities to navigate the annals of the plural legal system. Indigenous law, colonial legacy, and legislated "modern" laws are the components of that system. The actors producing these laws are identified as "state, ethnic groups (producing traditional law), religious groups and the international/ transnational community." The book's preface gives an overview of the rare primary sources that the authors researched and translated from Italian, English, and local languages. Comparative law techniques and theories such as "legal formant" and "transplant" are used to analyze the interaction and overlapping of the various actors and norms in the Eritrean system. Indigenous norms or customs have survived legal transplants of colonial laws and Shari'a; and continue to be an important part of the legal system of Eritrea. The legal formant approach, which comprises all aspects of a state's legal system, allowed a clear contextualization of the history and the culture of the law and the interaction (or lack thereof) of the various systems and actors. The authors are also able to articulate the serious challenges to a "modern" legal system in that country. Chief among the obstacles is the weak judiciary that comprises a good number of individuals who have had minimum legal training or no legal training at all. While colonial legal systems were transplanted to serve the colonizer's needs, another system of law, namely the Shari'a, replaced other customary systems through the conversion of certain groups to Islam. Therefore as an "imported' system the Shari'a did not just affect the local legal systems, as it affected trust law in England, for example; it uprooted a previous system. I realize that a discussion of how religious norms can revolutionize law within a short time is outside the scope of this book. The authors choose certain areas where the components of the plural system act at the same time and sometimes collide with, and often paralyze, the state. The main areas they have chosen are: land, murder and bodily injury, female circumcision, and gender relations. Land disputes are where the hierarchy of legal actors appears. Local arbitration and mediation is the norm for individual disputes; however, state courts will take over when arbitration or mediation fails. The book covers all types of land disputes, including Eritrean disputes with its neighbors regarding borders and offshore islands. …


Our recent research in remote laboratory management systems (REMLABNET - www.remlabnet.eu) deals with questions such as how to make the user experience stronger and how to help users understand complex phenomena behind remote experiments and the laws of physics governing the experiment. At our current stage of technological development, we have both sufficiently powerful hardware and software to create an impressive virtual user interface which could be a help to this mission. An extended mixed reality taxonomy for remote physical experiments was proposed to identify goals of the future REMLABNET research and development. The first part of this paper describes classes of taxonomy and reasons why they were set up in this way. The second part mentions the chosen method of our research and our current progress.


The river discharge changes in three Baltic States and its relation to changes in the main climatic variables such as precipitation and air temperature were analyzed using observed data and methods of empirical statistical analysis. The study is important for the development of efficient water resource management systems and validation of climate change impact models. The application of the Mann-Kendall test reveals that a significant increasing trend in winter air temperature and precipitation was determined for all 3 investigated periods (1923–2003, 1941–2003 and 1961–2003). The same trend was found for the winter and annual discharge time series. No trend was observed for the spring, summer and autumn seasonal streamflow and summer low flow series for most of the Baltic region. In general the relation between the main meteorological and hydrological parameters and the tendency in river discharge trends is common for all of the Baltic States, and might be associated with the regional impacts of global climate change.


The age and growth of the striped seabream Lithognathus mormyrus caught off the Canary Islands (central-east Atlantic) from January to December 1999 were studied. A total of 496 individuals, ranging in size between 113 and 350 mm total length, were examined. Otoliths clearly showed the ring pattern common to teleost fishes. One year´s growth was made up of one opaque and one translucent ring. The opaque ring was deposited during the summer months and the translucent one during the winter months. Fish aged 0-8 years old were found. The von Bertalanffy growth parameters for all fish were: L ? =427 mm, k=0.19 year -1 , and t 0 =1.46 year. The otolith readings for estimating age and growth were confirmed by using the backcalculation method.


Background: Exposure to organochlorine compounds (OCs) has been a subject of interest in recent years, given their potential neurotoxicity. Meconium is easily available and accumulates neurotoxicants and/or metabolites from the 12th week of gestation. Aims: To determine whether neurotoxicants, specifically OCs, could be detected in serially collected meconium, and to compare the results with those obtained in cord blood samples. Methods: A sample of cord blood and three serial stool samples were analysed in 10 newborns. Pentachlorobenzene (PeCB), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (p,p′-DDT) and its metabolite dichlorodiphenyl dichloroethylene (p,p′-DDE), and hexachlorocyclohexane isomers (α-, β-, γ-, and δ-HCH) were analysed by gas chromatography. Results: From serial stool collection and analysis in newborns, there was an increase in the concentrations of HCB, p,p′-DDE, PCBs, and β-HCH between the first and last stools of the newborn. Levels of DDT diminished as pregnancy progressed. Concentrations in cord blood were positively associated with concentrations in meconium for p,p′-DDE and β-HCH. Conclusions: Meconium is a very useful instrument for the investigation of fetal exposure to neurotoxicants; serial collection and analysis of meconium should estimate the timing and degree of in utero exposure of the fetus to neurotoxicants. Analysis and interpretation of neurotoxicants in meconium results is a complex process. Measurement in meconium of a wide range of neurotoxic substances should facilitate early identification of harmful exposures, and enable rehabilitation and instigation of preventive measures.


This article extends recent scholarship on new religious movements that has stressed newness, tension, and social alignment. New Catholic communities that have grown around contemporary Marian apparitions allow the application of theoretical models and add nuance to understandings of new movements in the Catholic context. Drawing from fieldwork since 2010 at two apparition sites, rural Emmitsburg, Maryland and suburban Gaithersburg, Maryland, I find that apparitional movements—often marginalized within their parishes—lead to internal tension for individuals involved. The ways that these individuals resolve this tension problematize notions of conflict and alignment, tradition, and innovation. I propose that philosopher Rosi Braidotti's metaphor of transpositions offers an apt approach to apparitional movements.


Objective: The aim of the study was to evaluate overall survival and recurrence-free survival rate in patients with squamous cell vulvar cancer after applying an individualized therapeutic approach.
Methods: The concept of individualized therapeutic approach in the treatment of squamous cell vulvar cancer was defined and 113 patients with the diagnosis were studied. All these patients were diagnosed, operated on and followed up at the Clinic of Gynecologic Oncology of the University Hospital Pleven, Bulgaria. Treatment was individualized and more conservative surgical techniques were applied when possible. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to estimate overall survival and disease-free survival rates.
Results: Application of individualized approach resulting in: The 5-year survival rate was 73%, and the 10-year survival rate was about 67%. The five-year disease-free survival rate was about 57%, and ten-year disease-free survival rate was about 43%.
Conclusion: High rates can be achieved through applying more conservative surgical techniques and individualized therapeutic approach in patients with vulvar cancer.


Malaysian Modern Painting Art is an art field which reflects Malaysian identity and its look. The beauty and fine aesthetic value shown through local artist masterpieces
symbolizes the greatest of tradition arts. Furthermore, this creative touch also reflects the uniqueness of Malaysian culture. Generally, the history of Malaysian Modern Art which began in the early 1930s gave prestige in painting art as a knowledge discipline in domain aspect. Starting from the earliest art movement with nature theme aesthetical focuses on Victorian Romanticism style, it moved to the art of Impressionism painting, then into the
manifestation art of 'avanr-garde modernism' and 'post-modernism'. It is a development of modern painting art in Malaysia. This positive development on the other hand establishes the Malaysian Modern Art. Therefore, this research is produced to analyze and document the history and
development of Modern Painting in Malaysia and also its relation to the development of visual art education subject. These phenomena are chosen because both fields
relate and hard to be divided even though in this Modernist Art era. This historical research is outcome through methodologies such as visual observation, respondent interview and referring to literature documentation. This research topic is classified into two main parts which is history and development of Visual Art Education subject. The factors contributed to the revolution and development in both art fields become the main focus. The relationship between Malaysian Modern Painting Art and Visual Art Education subject can be seen clearly. Hopefully, this
documented research outcome will be beneficial especially in education system. The outcome of this research obviously has several factors that influencing the developments of modern painting in Malaysia such as pre historical painting, west painting in 20th century, cultural influences, literal thinking of modernist art era, nationalism spiritual and great involving contribution of local artist. Otherwise, Visual Art Education is also contributing the development. The main factors that influencing through the developments of education system such as development in world of painting and also the implement of several changes in Visual Art Education in
Malaysia. The final result of research was clearly stated that the development of Malaysian Modern Painting and Visual Art Education subject was related each other. The outcomes hopefully can give impact in education system literally. Next research is suggested to do more explore about development of a Malaysian Modern Painting in 20th century and also about the effectiveness of implementation Visual Art Education curriculum in Malaysia. The aim is for observing the juxtaposition of 21st century Malaysian Modern Painting with development of Malaysian Visual Art
Education.


We present a method to train self-binarizing neural networks, that is, networks that evolve their weights and activations during training to become binary. To obtain similar binary networks, existing methods rely on the sign activation function. This function, however, has no gradients for non-zero values, which makes standard backpropagation impossible. To circumvent the difficulty of training a network relying on the sign activation function, these methods alternate between floating-point and binary representations of the network during training, which is sub-optimal and inefficient. We approach the binarization task by training on a unique representation involving a smooth activation function, which is iteratively sharpened during training until it becomes a binary representation equivalent to the sign activation function. Additionally, we introduce a new technique to perform binary batch normalization that simplifies the conventional batch normalization by transforming it into a simple comparison operation. This is unlike existing methods, which are forced to the retain the conventional floating-point-based batch normalization. Our binary networks, apart from displaying advantages of lower memory and computation as compared to conventional floating-point and binary networks, also show higher classification accuracy than existing state-of-the-art methods on multiple benchmark datasets.


The problem of estimating the transfer function of a linear system, together with the spectral density of an additive disturbance, is considered. The set of models used consists of linear rational transfer functions and the spectral densities are estimated from a finite-order autoregressive disturbance description. The true system and disturbance spectrum are, however, not necessarily of finite order. We investigate the properties of the estimates obtained as the number of observations tends to ∞ at the same time as the model order employed tends to ∞. It is shown that the estimates are strongly consistent and asymptotically normal, and an expression for the asymptotic variances is also given. The variance of the transfer function estimate at a certain frequency is related to the signal/noise ratio at that frequency and the model orders used, as well as the number of observations. The variance of the noise spectral estimate relates in a similar way to the squared value of the true spectrum.


Facial aging is a consequence of multiple intrinsic and extrinsic interactive factors, leading to loss of volume and repositioning of facial fat and bone remodeling. Breakthroughs have been seen in recent decades in the ability to reduce the signs of aging. Filling techniques and numerous products available on the market have generated new interest in the study of facial anatomy. Fillers are able to restore volume in limited areas and are suitable for treating facial wrinkles and loss of subcutaneous volume. The gold standard remains hyaluronic acid because it is more biocompatible and has greater permanence in the skin, without being definitive. The objective of this report is to review the anatomy of the middle third of the face and the main indications for filling and the techniques used for rejuvenation. ■ ABSTRACT


The problem of path following for autonomous vehicles under adversarial behaviour is considered. The objective is to keep the cross-track error to the reference path inside a given tolerance interval. The adversarial behaviour models system uncertainty and unknown or poorly estimated bounded disturbances to ensure that the concept of weakly invariant set is used, i.e., the set of states that the vehicle may enter while ensuring that the cross-track error will never exceed the tolerance interval. Two modes of operation are then considered: when the vehicle is inside the invariant set, the objective is to stay inside it while minimizing a combination of the actuation effort and cross-track error; otherwise, the objective becomes to reach the invariant set in minimum time. Each mode corresponds to a different optimal control problem which is dealt independently; thus, there is one different control law for each mode. The control laws are synthesized using a dynamic programming approach. Simulation results with a full nonlinear dynamical model illustrate the performance and robustness of the control strategy.


Background: OCRL is a 5-phosphatase that dephosphorylates PI(4,5)P2 and PI(3,4,5)P3. Results: OCRL knockdown by siRNA increases cell invasion by Listeria monocytogenes. Conclusion: PI(4,5)P2 and PI(3,4,5)P3 pools controlled by OCRL regulate actin dynamics during L. monocytogenes invasion. Significance: OCRL is the first eukaryotic lipid phosphatase implicated in a bacterial invasion process. Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterial pathogen that induces its own entry into a broad range of mammalian cells through interaction of the bacterial surface protein InlB with the cellular receptor Met, promoting an actin polymerization/depolymerization process that leads to pathogen engulfment. Phosphatidylinositol bisphosphate (PI[4,5]P2) and trisphosphate (PI[3,4,5]P3) are two major phosphoinositide species that function as molecular scaffolds, recruiting cellular effectors that regulate actin dynamics during L. monocytogenes infection. Because the phosphatidylinositol 5′-phosphatase OCRL dephosphorylates PI(4,5)P2 and to a lesser extent PI(3,4,5)P3, we investigated whether this phosphatase modulates cell invasion by L. monocytogenes. Inactivation of OCRL by small interfering RNA (siRNA) leads to an increase in the internalization levels of L. monocytogenes in HeLa cells. Interestingly, OCRL depletion does not increase but rather decreases the surface expression of the receptor Met, suggesting that OCRL controls bacterial internalization by modulating signaling cascades downstream of Met. Immuno-fluorescence microscopy reveals that endogenous and overexpressed OCRL are present at L. monocytogenes invasion foci; live-cell imaging additionally shows that actin depolymerization coincides with EGFP-OCRL-a accumulation around invading bacteria. Together, these observations suggest that OCRL promotes actin depolymerization during L. monocytogenes infection; in agreement with this hypothesis, OCRL depletion leads to an increase in actin, PI(4,5)P2, and PI(3,4,5)P3 levels at bacterial internalization foci. Furthermore, in cells knocked down for OCRL, transfection of enzymatically active EGFP-OCRL-a (but not of a phosphatase-dead enzyme) decreases the levels of intracellular L. monocytogenes and of actin associated with invading bacteria. These results demonstrate that through its phosphatase activity, OCRL restricts L. monocytogenes invasion by modulating actin dynamics at bacterial internalization sites.


The importance of children's nutritional status for subsequent human capital formation, the limited evidence of the effectiveness of social protection interventions on child nutrition, and the absence of knowledge on the intra-household impacts of cash and food transfers or how they are shaped by complementary programming motivate this paper. We implemented two, linked randomized control trials in rural Bangladesh, with treatment arms including cash transfers, a food ration, or a mixed food and cash transfer, as well as treatments where cash and nutrition behavior change communication (BCC) or where food and nutrition BCC were provided. Only cash plus nutrition BCC had a significant impact on nutritional status, but its effect on height-for-age z scores (HAZ) was large, 0.25SD. We explore the mechanisms underlying this impact. Improved diets – including increased intake of animal source foods – along with reductions in illness in the cash plus BCC treatment arm are consistent with the improvement we observe in children's HAZ.


Earth's biomes can be either terrestrial or aquatic. Terrestrial biomes are based on land, while aquatic biomes include both ocean and freshwater biomes. The eight major terrestrial biomes on Earth are each distinguished by characteristic temperatures and amount of precipitation. Annual totals and fluctuations of precipitation affect the kinds of vegetation and animal life that can exist in broad geographical regions. Temperature variation on a daily and seasonal basis is also important for predicting the geographic distribution of a biome. Since a biome is defined by climate, the same biome can occur in geographically distinct areas with similar climates (Figure 20.3.1). There are also large areas on Antarctica, Greenland, and in mountain ranges that are covered by permanent glaciers and support very little life. Strictly speaking, these are not considered biomes and in addition to extremes of cold, they are also often deserts with very low precipitation.


Domed skylights are important architectural design elements to deliver daylight and solar heat into buildings and connect buildings' occupants to outdoors. To increase the energy efficiency of skylighted buildings, domed skylights employ a number of glazing layers forming enclosed spaces. The latter are subject to complex buoyancy-induced convection heat transfer. Currently, existing fenestration design computer tools and building energy simulation programs do not, however, cover such skylights to quantify their energy performance when installed in buildings.

his work presents a numerical study on natural laminar convection within concentric and vertically eccentric domed cavities. The edges of domed cavities are assumed adiabatic and the temperature of the interior and exterior surfaces are uniform and constant. The concentric and vertically eccentric domed cavities were studied when heated from inside and heated from outside, respectively. A commercial CFD package employing the control volume approach is used to solve the laminar convective heat transfer within the cavity.

The obtained results showed steady flow for small Grashof numbers. For moderate and large Grashof numbers, depending on the gap ratio and the cases of heating from inside or outside, the flow may be steady or transient periodic with a single vortex-cell or multi vortex-cells. The Nusselt number for the case of heated from inside is greater than the case of heated from outside. The numerical results show that the changes in the gap ratio have smaller effect on Nusselt number in high profile domed skylights than lower profile domed skylights.


Abstract—New technologies for the capture of point clouds have experienced a great advance in recent years. In this way, its use has been extended in geomatics, providing measurement solutions that have been popularized without there being, many times, a detailed study of its accuracy. This research focuses on the study of the viability of topographic works with drones incorporating different sensors sensitive to the visible spectrum. The fundamentals have been applied to a road, located in Cantabria (Spain), where a platform extension and the reform of a riprap were being constructed. A total of six flights were made during two months, all of them with GPS as part of the photogrammetric process, and the results were contrasted with those measured with total station. The obtained results show that the choice of the camera and the planning of the flight have an important impact on the accuracy. In fact, the representations with a level of detail corresponding to 1/1000 scale are admissible, depending on the existing vegetation, and obtaining better results in the area of the riprap. This set of techniques is, therefore, suitable for the control of earthworks in road works but with certain limitations which are exposed in this paper.


Limiting flux (JL) determination is a critical issue for membrane processing. This work presents a modified exponential model for JL calculation, based on a previously published version. Our research focused on skim milk microfiltrations. The processing variables studied were the crossflow velocity (CFV), membrane hydraulic diameter (dh), temperature, and concentration factor, totaling 62 experimental runs. Results showed that, by adding a new parameter called minimum transmembrane pressure, the modified model not only improved the fit of the experimental data compared to the former version (R2 > 97.00%), but also revealed the existence of a minimum transmembrane pressure required to obtain flux (J). This result is observed as a small shift to the right on J versus transmembrane pressure curves, and this shift increases with the flow velocity. This fact was reported in other investigations, but so far has gone uninvestigated. The JL predicted values were correlated with the Reynolds number (Re) for each dh tested. Results showed that for a same Re; JL increased as dh decreased; in a wide range of Re within the turbulent regime. Finally, from dimensionless correlations; a unique expression JL = f (Re, dh) was obtained; predicting satisfactorily JL (R2 = 84.11%) for the whole set of experiments


Physicalism can be thought of as the view that the mental is "nothing over and above" the physical. I defend a formulation of this view based on supervenience. Physicalism may be supported in two ways: either by providing an explanatory account of the mind in physical terms, or by philosophical argument. Since we have only a rudimentary scientific understanding of the mind, physicalism needs argument. The most promising such argument is the causal argument, which may be summarised thus: (i) mental properties have physical effects; (ii) physics is causally complete (all physical effects have physical causes); (iii) effects are not generally overdetermined; so (iv) mental properties are physical. Of these premises, (i) relies on common-sense, (ii) relies on empirical support, and (iii) is a priori. I consider the merits of this argument by articulating two kinds of mental property emergence, 'weak' and 'strong', both of which are incompatible with physicalism. I show that the premises of the causal argument are compatible with weak emergence, and that the argument is therefore not deductively valid. The causal argument establishes that one of physicalism or weak emergence is true. However, weak emergence is problematic in ways that physicalism is not. If these problems are serious, then physicalism is to be preferred on other grounds, such as theoretical elegance and simplicity. However, I proceed to show that the soundness of the argument is questionable, as premise (ii) is unsupported by the available evidence. Strong emergence is inconsistent with (ii), so evidence for (ii) must (on reasonable assumption) be evidence against strong emergence. But all currently available evidence is consistent with strong emergence, and so this evidence does not support (ii). Future evidence might, but I argue that such evidence would need to involve the kind of scientific account of mind the lack of which motivates the causal argument in the first place. A well-supported causal argument, by the nature of the justification necessary for (ii), is otiose.


This paper looks at the Honduran economy, including longer-term trends, the pre-crisis years, and recent developments since the June 28th coup. It finds that poverty and inequality decreased significantly during the Zelaya administration, with rapid growth of more than 6 percent during the first two years. The government also increased school enrollment significantly by abolishing school fees, expanded school lunch programs, and raised the minimum wage by 60 percent. Some expansionary monetary policy was used to counter-act the global downturn in 2008. The paper finds that more recently, the Honduran economy has become especially vulnerable to the combined impacts of the world recession and the political crisis that has followed the military coup of June 28, 2009.


In this paper we present work towards the benchmarking of mobile manipulation algorithms. We review the current state-of-the art in mobile manipulation and analyze the most prominent algorithms concerning common structures and sub-components. We propose and implement harmonized interfaces for those components, building upon existing software frameworks and libraries. The foundation on the same subcomponents makes it possible to evaluate mobile manipulation planning algorithms in a systematic way. In particular it enables us to investigate on the influence of different combinations of sub-components for the overall planning task, for which we present experiments in simulation.


Painful diabetic neuropathy (PDN) is a common complication of diabetes mellitus and adversely affects the patients' quality of life. Evidence has accumulated that PDN is associated with hyperexcitability of peripheral nociceptive primary sensory neurons. However, the precise cellular mechanism underlying PDN remains elusive. This may result in the lacking of effective therapies for the treatment of PDN. The phenolic glucoside, gastrodin, which is a main constituent of the Chinese herbal medicine Gastrodia elata Blume, has been widely used as an anticonvulsant, sedative, and analgesic since ancient times. However, the cellular mechanisms underlying its analgesic actions are not well understood. By utilizing a combination of behavioral surveys and electrophysiological recordings, the present study investigated the role of gastrodin in an experimental rat model of STZ-induced PDN and to further explore the underlying cellular mechanisms. Intraperitoneal administration of gastrodin effectively attenuated both the mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia induced by STZ injection. Whole-cell patch clamp recordings were obtained from nociceptive, capsaicin-sensitive small diameter neurons of the intact dorsal root ganglion (DRG). Recordings from diabetic rats revealed that the abnormal hyperexcitability of neurons was greatly abolished by application of GAS. To determine which currents were involved in the antinociceptive action of gastrodin, we examined the effects of gastrodin on transient sodium currents (I NaT) and potassium currents in diabetic small DRG neurons. Diabetes caused a prominent enhancement of I NaT and a decrease of potassium currents, especially slowly inactivating potassium currents (I AS); these effects were completely reversed by GAS in a dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, changes in activation and inactivation kinetics of I NaT and total potassium current as well as I AS currents induced by STZ were normalized by GAS. This study provides a clear cellular basis for the peripheral analgesic action of gastrodin for the treatment of chronic pain, including PDN.


Reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) of mechanical systems is computationally intensive due to the presence of two types of iterative procedures – design optimization and reliability estimation. Single-loop RBDO algorithms offer tremendous savings in computational effort, but they have so far only been able to consider individual component reliability constraints. This paper presents a single-loop RBDO formulation and an equivalent formulation that can also include system-level reliability constraints. The formulations allow the allocation of optimal reliability levels to individual component limit states in order to satisfy both system-level and component-level reliability requirements. Four solution algorithms to implement the second, more efficient formulation are developed. A key feature of these algorithms is to remove the most probable points from the decision space, thus avoiding the need to calculate Hessians or gradients of limit state gradients. It is shown that with the proposed methods, systems-level RBDO can be accomplished with computational expense equivalent to several cycles of computationally inexpensive singleloop RBDO based on second-moment methods. Examples of this new approach applied to series, parallel, and combined systems are provided. Nomenclature


In this paper we design and implement a benchmarking framework for fair and exhaustive comparison of entity-annotation systems. The framework is based upon the definition of a set of problems related to the entity-annotation task, a set of measures to evaluate systems performance, and a systematic comparative evaluation involving all publicly available datasets, containing texts of various types such as news, tweets and Web pages. Our framework is easily-extensible with novel entity annotators, datasets and evaluation measures for comparing systems, and it has been released to the public as open source. We use this framework to perform the first extensive comparison among all available entity annotators over all available datasets, and draw many interesting conclusions upon their efficiency and effectiveness. We also draw conclusions between academic versus commercial annotators.


In this paper, the design process integration and automation using the VisualDOC software is presented and demonstrated using example case studies. This paper primarily focuses on the process integration capabilities of VisualDOC and the benefits it offers for design automation. It is shown how the presented software enables a designer or an engineer to perform various design studies efficiently without having to write a computer program. This paper presents a conceptual description of the design of VisualDOC that facilitates complex process integration. Two case studies are presented. In the first case study, the design of a curved shell is described. Simultaneous shape and topology optimization is performed to obtain the final optimal design. This case study shows how VisualDOC can accomplish optimization tasks which are normally very cumbersome to perform and automate. VisualDOC also allows for integrating different design modules together at algorithm-level. This capability not only facilitates complex process integration but also exploits the synergy between different design modules to achieve higher performance. To demonstrate the effectiveness of algorithm-level process integration and the improvement in performance, a case study on reliability-based design optimization of vehicle-side-impact problem is presented. In this case study, it is demonstrated that tight integration between the Optimization and Probabilistic Analysis modules helps in reducing the number of exact analysis that need to be performed to find the optimum solution with desired reliability. The novel integration techniques discussed in this paper and the presented case studies showcase the effectiveness and ease of design process integration with VisualDOC.


In this paper an attempt is made to present the energy scenario of India in terms of energy consumption, energy security and energy efficiency. Growth trends and the changes in growth trends of these variables have been estimated for the period 1981 to 2010. In addition, the study makes an attempt to study the causal relationship between energy consumption and GDP both at aggregate and disaggregate levels using cointegration and Vector Error Correction (VECM) methods. The empirical results reveal that India is energy insecure, in spite of an increase in energy efficiency. It seems energy consumption and GDP are bidirectionally related at the aggregate level. In view of these findings some policy suggestions have been provided.


An intuitive approach to utilizing unlabeled data in kernel-based classification algorithms is to simply treat unknown labels as additional optimization variables. For margin-based loss functions, one can view this approach as attempting to learn low-density separators. However, this is a hard optimization problem to solve in typical semi-supervised settings where unlabeled data is abundant. The popular Transductive SVM algorithm is a label-switching-retraining procedure that is known to be susceptible to local minima. In this paper, we present a global optimization framework for semi-supervised Kernel machines where an easier problem is parametrically deformed to the original hard problem and minimizers are smoothly tracked. Our approach is motivated from deterministic annealing techniques and involves a sequence of convex optimization problems that are exactly and efficiently solved. We present empirical results on several synthetic and real world datasets that demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.


Starting from recent formulas of EU bureaucracy for subordinating scientific
 and educational apparatuses to the needs of the capital and to the requests
 of its political representatives, the article analyses the interconnection
 between the historical transformation of the ideological state apparatuses
 (universities, higher education institutions, research institutes etc.) and
 the epistemological discontinuity provoked by the triumph of technosciences.
 The hypothesis to be tested is the following: While the crisis of West
 European-North American capitalism requires an ever tighter submission of
 ideological state apparatuses, and especially of scientific and academic
 apparatuses to the needs of the capital, theoretical practices in the
 humanities and social sciences have come to the point where they entered into
 an open conflict with the domination of the capital and have, as a
 consequence, started to subvert their own institutional supports in the
 ideological apparatuses of the capitalist state. For this purpose, the
 article reconsiders social sciences as a compromise formation and,
 eventually, reassesses the historical materialism as a non-Cartesian modern
 science.


The crystal structure of the gillespite-structured phase Ba0.5Sr0.5Cu4SiO10 has been refined from powder neutron time-of-flight data at eight temperatures between 5K and 300K. No structural phase transitions were observed on cooling to the lowest temperature. The temperature dependence of the crystal structure in the a - b plane has been found to be dominated by low energy lattice modes involving cooperative anti-phase rotations of the square-planar CuO4 group with the Si4O10 polyhedral unit which results in non-Groneisen behaviour for the a lattice parameter and negative volume thermal expansion to 100K. Concomitant with these rotations is an associated tilting of SiO4 tetrahedra about the bridging anions resulting in an increasing aplanarity of the Cu site with temperature. The behaviour of the c-axis with temperature is conventional and appears to be related to the tilting of SiO4 tetrahedra and an increase in the Ba/Sr bond distances resulting in a decrease of the overbonded bond valence sum at the Ba/Sr site.


We perform hybrid molecular dynamics simulations to study the flow behavior of rigid colloids dispersed in a dilute polymer solution. The underlying Newtonian solvent and the ensuing hydrodynamic interactions are incorporated through multiparticle collision dynamics, while the constituent polymers are modeled as bead-spring chains, maintaining a description consistent with the colloidal nature of our system. We study the cross-stream migration of the solute particles in slit-like channels for various polymer lengths and colloid sizes and find a distinct focusing onto the channel center under specific solvent and flow conditions. To better understand this phenomenon, we systematically measure the effective forces exerted on the colloids. We find that the migration originates from a competition between viscoelastic forces from the polymer solution and hydrodynamically induced inertial forces. Our simulations reveal a significantly stronger fluctuation of the lateral colloid position than expected from thermal motion alone, which originates from the complex interplay between the colloid and polymer chains.


ABSTRACT Molecular types of the Cryptococcus neoformans/Cryptococcus gattii species complex that infect dogs and cats differ regionally and with host species. Antifungal drug susceptibility can vary with molecular type, but the susceptibility of Cryptococcus isolates from dogs and cats is largely unknown. Cryptococcus isolates from 15 dogs and 27 cats were typed using URA5 restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis (RFLP), PCR fingerprinting, and multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Susceptibility was determined using a microdilution assay (Sensititre YeastOne; Trek Diagnostic Systems). MICs were compared among groups. The 42 isolates studied comprised molecular types VGI (7%), VGIIa (7%), VGIIb (5%), VGIIc (5%), VGIII (38%), VGIV (2%), VNI (33%), and VNII (2%), as determined by URA5 RFLP. The VGIV isolate was more closely related to VGIII according to MLST. All VGIII isolates were from cats. All sequence types identified from veterinary isolates clustered with isolates from humans. VGIII isolates showed considerable genetic diversity compared with other Cryptococcus molecular types and could be divided into two major subgroups. Compared with C. neoformans MICs, C. gattii MICs were lower for flucytosine, and VGIII MICs were lower for flucytosine and itraconazole. For all drugs except itraconazole, C. gattii isolates exhibited a wider range of MICs than C. neoformans. MICs varied with Cryptococcus species and molecular type in dogs and cats, and MICs of VGIII isolates were most variable and may reflect phylogenetic diversity in this group. Because sequence types of dogs and cats reflect those infecting humans, these observations may also have implications for treatment of human cryptococcosis.


The internationalisation of accounting education has grown significantly over the last decade, with Australia now being the third largest provider of international degrees. This internationalisation has brought benefits to both students and academics by widening their understandings and perspectives of other countries and cultures. The diversity has also provided a basis for researching the impact of culture on student's approaches to teaching and learning. However, no study to date has measured and analysed the tensions that exist between the cultural values of students and educators. This paper reports an exploratory study of postgraduate students enrolled in a foundation accounting subject at an Australian university to discover the extent of the difference in values orientations. Application of the Model of Basic Values (Lingenfelter and Mayers, 2003) revealed core differences which were analysed and discussed. Practical applications for culture-bridging strategies were identified in terms of implications for teaching and for personal interaction.


Hourly winter weather conditions of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) are simulated using the Community Climate Model version 3 (CCM3) on a globally resolved T170 (~75 km) grid. This simulation has been run in-tandem with a lower temporally resolved six-year climatological run. The purpose of the study is to determine: (1) whether examination of higher-resolution simulations, on both spatial and temporal scales, can enhance paleometeorological inferences based previously on monthly statistics of model output and (2) whether certain synoptic-scale events, which may have only a modest impact on seasonal statistics, might exert a disproportionate impact on geological climate records. Analysis is focused on changes in wind flow, no analogue climate "states", synoptic scale events including Northern Hemisphere cyclogenesis, and gust events over glacial dust source regions. Results show a decrease in North Atlantic and increase in North Pacific cyclogenesis during the LGM. Storm trajectories react to the mechanical forcing of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, with Pacific storms tracking over middle Alaska and northern Canada and terminate in the Labrador Sea. The latter result supports observations and other model runs showing a significant reduction in Greenland winter precipitation. The modified Pacific track results in increased precipitation and the delivery of warmer air along the west coast of North America. This could explain "early" glacial warming inferred in this region from proxy climate records, potentially representing instead a natural regional response to ice age boundary conditions. Results also indicate a low variability, "no analogue" region just south of the Laurentide Ice Sheet margin which has appropriate conditions to harbour temperature-sensitive trees west of the Appalachian Mountains. Combined with pollen data, this lends valuable insight into the known disagreement between modern seed dispersal experiments and calculated migration rates. Finally, hourly-scale gust events over dust source regions during the LGM are two to five times greater than the modern, providing a mechanism to help explain the increased glacial dust load seen in the ice cores. Backwards air-parcel trajectories from Antarctic ice core locations show air sources over Patagonia and the Altiplano with some inputs from South Africa agreeing with recent isotopic tracer analyses. Results demonstrate that high temporal and spatial resolution simulations can provide valuable insight to add to the cornucopia of information already available from lower-resolution runs. They can also enhance our interpretation of geological records, which have been previously assumed to record longer time-scale climatological mean-states and thus ignoring any extreme synoptic events which may actually have had a disproportionate impact on their preservation.


John Gibson is one of the Fox News Channel's most outspoken personalities. Now, as the aftershocks of the war in Iraq reverberate around the world, Gibson exposes the outrageous tenor of anti-American sentiment filling newsprint and airwaves beyond our borders and how disagreements over policy have mushroomed into poisonous hatred."I loathe America . . . and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world."--Margaret Drabble, British novelistFrom the "Arab street" to the halls of even the most historically friendly foreign governments, extreme anti-Americanism has grown disturbingly pervasive throughout the world since the shell-shocking moment of 9/11. Over the year that followed, Gibson writes, "I began to watch the overseas press with a morbid fascination punctuated by bursts of outrage. The things that were being said about America and Americans were marked by an off-the-charts level of venom, a scandalous parade of mistaken assumptions, an endless font of suspicion, mistrust, and the promulgation of outright, willful lies. The viciousness of commentary on America was breathtaking." "Damn Americans. Hate those bastards." --Carolyn Parrish, Canadian parliament memberAnd, as Gibson traces, the hate speech has gone well beyond the usual suspects in the Middle East, infecting our erstwhile allies in Europe, Asia, and even Canada. British Prime Minister Tony Blair complained that "some of the rhetoric I hear used about America is more savage than some of the rhetoric I hear about Saddam and the Iraqi regime." Presumptuous Belgian officials attempted to bring American officials up on war-crimes charges. And special hatred was reserved for President George W. Bush, whom one Australian newspaper dismissed as "the village idiot." As America defends its security in the ongoing war on terror, Gibson argues, we must be prepared to face this growing tide of resentment abroad, which will only result in serious consequences for the haters themselves. For the anti-Americans, he argues, would "like us to forget that those who hate us may eventually try to kill us -- because they now know that we will never allow that to happen without exacting a price on those who would attempt it."


ABSTRACTA histogram of 778 isotopic ages of magmatic rocks younger than Eocene in centralMexico shows a multimodal distribution with peaks at about 30 Ma, 23 Ma, 10 Ma, and 5 Ma.The sample suite displays systematic spatial variations with age that likely reflect the pro-tracted transition from the north-northwest–trending arc of the Sierra Madre Occidental tothe east-west–trending Mexican Volcanic Belt. The reorientation of the arc is accompanied bya change in the dominant composition of the products from silicic ignimbrites and rhyolites toandesitic and basaltic lavas. The observed transition is related to the Miocene reorganization ofthe subduction system following the cessation of subduction off Baja California and the east-ward motion of the Caribbean–Farallon–North America triple junction along the southeast-ern margin of Mexico. Our data support an early–middle Miocene age for the initiation of sub-horizontal subduction in southern Mexico and confirm that the locus of arc volcanism wasprimarily controlled by the geometry of plate boundaries and the thermal structure of the sub-ducting slab.


Although some have criticized the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution for leaving gaps in America's provisions for addressing presidential succession and inability, such complaints are misguided. The Amendment represented a major step forward by providing sensible and workable procedures to remedy some of the most glaring problems the nation faced. Its architects recognized the remaining gaps but realized that advancing a more comprehensive measure would preclude any progress. Nonetheless, remaining gaps present an unacceptable risk that the United States will find itself without a functioning President whose exercise of presidential powers and duties is seen as legitimate. What is unconscionable is the failure of Congress to address those gaps since the ratification of the Twenty-fifth amendment in 1967, particularly since the intervening years have drawn attention to the remaining problems. This article argues that the Amendment, in addition to its specific procedures, offers two other virtues which may usefully guide further reform efforts. The Amendment represents important constitutional values which should influence the search for solutions to remaining problems. Moreover, the Amendment was the product of successful legislative strategies in an area that generally proves resistant to such measures. This article identifies the constitutional values and legislative lessons implicit in the Amendment and suggests how they might inform future reform efforts to better ensure presidential continuity.


Background The ALS Online Genetics Database (ALSoD) website holds mutation, geographical, and phenotype data on genes implicated in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and links to bioinformatics resources, publications, and tools for analysis. On average, there are 300 unique visits per day, suggesting a high demand from the research community. To enable wider access, we developed a mobile-friendly version of the website and a smartphone app. Objective We sought to compare data traffic before and after implementation of a mobile version of the website to assess utility. Methods We identified the most frequently viewed pages using Google Analytics and our in-house analytic monitoring. For these, we optimized the content layout of the screen, reduced image sizes, and summarized available information. We used the Microsoft .NET framework mobile detection property (HttpRequest.IsMobileDevice in the Request.Browser object in conjunction with HttpRequest.UserAgent), which returns a true value if the browser is a recognized mobile device. For app development, we used the Eclipse integrated development environment with Android plug-ins. We wrapped the mobile website version with the WebView object in Android. Simulators were downloaded to test and debug the applications. Results The website automatically detects access from a mobile phone and redirects pages to fit the smaller screen. Because the amount of data stored on ALSoD is very large, the available information for display using smartphone access is deliberately restricted to improve usability. Visits to the website increased from 2231 to 2820, yielding a 26% increase from the pre-mobile to post-mobile period and an increase from 103 to 340 visits (230%) using mobile devices (including tablets). The smartphone app is currently available on BlackBerry and Android devices and will be available shortly on iOS as well. Conclusions Further development of the ALSoD website has allowed access through smartphones and tablets, either through the website or directly through a mobile app, making genetic data stored on the database readily accessible to researchers and patients across multiple devices.


Purpose: Hyperactivation of AKT is common and associated with endocrine resistance in estrogen receptor–positive (ER+) breast cancer. The allosteric pan-AKT inhibitor MK-2206 induced apoptosis in PIK3CA-mutant ER+ breast cancer under estrogen-deprived condition in preclinical studies. This neoadjuvant phase II trial was therefore conducted to test the hypothesis that adding MK-2206 to anastrozole induces pathologic complete response (pCR) in PIK3CA mutant ER+ breast cancer. Experimental Design: Potential eligible patients with clinical stage II/III ER+/HER2− breast cancer were preregistered and received anastrozole (goserelin if premenopausal) for 28 days in cycle 0 pending tumor PIK3CA sequencing. Patients positive for PIK3CA mutation in the tumor were eligible to start MK-2206 (150 mg orally weekly, with prophylactic prednisone) on cycle 1 day 2 (C1D2) and to receive a maximum of four 28-day cycles of combination therapy before surgery. Serial biopsies were collected at preregistration, C1D1 and C1D17. Results: Fifty-one patients preregistered and 16 of 22 with PIK3CA-mutant tumors received study drug. Three patients went off study due to C1D17 Ki67 >10% (n = 2) and toxicity (n = 1). Thirteen patients completed neoadjuvant therapy followed by surgery. No pCRs were observed. Rash was common. MK-2206 did not further suppress cell proliferation and did not induce apoptosis on C1D17 biopsies. Although AKT phosphorylation was reduced, PRAS40 phosphorylation at C1D17 after MK-2206 persisted. One patient acquired an ESR1 mutation at surgery. Conclusions: MK-2206 is unlikely to add to the efficacy of anastrozole alone in PIK3CA-mutant ER+ breast cancer and should not be studied further in the target patient population. Clin Cancer Res; 23(22); 6823–32. ©2017 AACR.


The term "knowledge economy" is now widely used to signify the growth of a new industrial era, encompassing the capture and exploitation of global knowledge, to create new, or improved, processes or products which, in turn, give rise to wealth creation. But how does knowledge arise and how is it part of the enabling process that leads to new processes or products? How are raw data turned into wealth creation? And what is the role of engineering in this process? This paper describes a Capability Framework, which shows how the collective operational competence of any organisation is driven by the procedures regulating its activity, the information availability and the human skills applied. It further shows how the learning and experience that support the decision making are fundamental in determining the quality and effectiveness of the process through which the activity is directed. The Capability Framework also shows the linkages with creativity and innovation which, applied through the transformation mechanism provided by engineering, can harness collective capability and with the Business Strategy establish wealth creation through technology introduction and new product development. This approach identifies the basis for the controlled management of business performance improvement by channelling effort through the three fundamental segments (staff development, information systems and operating processes) to provide a platform for the implementation of continuous improvement initiatives in a self-sustaining environment. Additionally, it highlights the importance of knowledge capture as a means of improving the decision making process, particularly in recognition of the increasing proliferation of basic technology that is the unavoidable by-product of specialisation. The importance of culture change, as the essential catalyst for sustainable improvement, is presented in the context of repositioning the field of engineering to reignite creativity and innovation as the drivers of wealth creation.


In this thesis, ultra-thin dielectric layers on metal substrates are studied mainly by scanning tunneling microscopy and scanning tunneling spectroscopy. In chapter 2, field emission resonances, i.e. bound states in the potential well between sample and tip with an applied voltage, are used to determine the local work function on a sample with patches of different structural composition. To do so, a simple theoretical model is developed and used to simulate the peak positions of the measured dI/dV spectra. In the present case the sample is a Ag(100) surface covered by up to three monolayers of NaCl. The presented method is also applicable to other systems suitable for STM measurements. Additionally, the surface potential is locally probed in the dipole layer region between domains of different work function. In chapter 3, new molecular structures on silver surfaces are presented, that are formed by a mixture of gases. This mixture contains the small molecules H2, H2O, CO, CO2, and N2. No final conclusion can be drawn on the chemical nature of these structures due to the impossibility of the scanning tunneling microscope to determine chemical species. But already the presence of these structures indicates that there is a multitude of unknown interactions, that are possible between a transition metal surface and even smallest molecules. In chapter 4, the moire pattern is described that a BC3 film creates on a NbB2(0001) surface. As the growth of the BC3 sheet is incommensurate, a moire pattern is formed that modulates the apparent height of the atoms on the STM images, i.e. the local density of states. The BC3 layer exhibits a completely different behavior than the closely related graphite layer, because it is transparent for the tunnel current. In the present case, the BC3 layer is visible on the STM images only by its moire effect.