Purpose
The end-user has frequently been identified as the weakest link; however, motivated by the fact that different users react differently to the same stimuli, identifying the reasons behind variations in security behavior and why certain users could be "at risk" more than others is a step toward protecting and defending users against security attacks. This paper aims to explore the effect of personality trait variations (through the Big Five Inventory [BFI]) on users' risk level of their intended security behaviors. In addition, age, gender, service usage and information technology (IT) proficiency are analyzed to identify what role and impact they have on behavior.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors developed a quantitative-oriented survey that was implemented online. The bi-variate Pearson two-tailed correlation was used to analyze survey responses.

Findings
The results obtained by analyzing 538 survey responses suggest that personality traits do play a significant role in affecting users' security behavior risk levels. Furthermore, the results suggest that BFI score of a trait has a significant effect as users' online personality is linked to their offline personality, especially in the conscientiousness personality trait. Additionally, this effect was stronger when personality was correlated with the factors of IT proficiency, gender, age and online activity.

Originality/value
The contributions of this paper are two-fold. First, with the aid of a large population sample, end-users' security practice is assessed from multiple domains, and relationships were found between end-users' risk-taking behavior and nine user-centric factors. Second, based upon these findings, the predictive ability for these user-centric factors were evaluated to determine the level of risk a user is subject to from an individual behavior perspective. Of 28 behaviors, 11 were found to have a 60 per cent or greater predictive ability, with the highest classification of 92 per cent for several behaviors. This provides a basis for organizations to use behavioral intent alongside personality traits and demographics to understand and, therefore, manage the human aspects of risk.


It is well known that when inflation is stochastic, Fisher's theoretical equation, according to which the nominal interest rate is the sum of the real rate and the expected inflation rate, fails to hold. Under stochastic inflation, the Fisher equation must be amended to include a compensation for inflation risk: the inflation risk premium. Consequently, this article uses a simple consumption-based asset pricing model to investigate the significance of the inflation risk premium. Given the relationship between U.S. consumption growth and inflation, we find that historical estimates of the inflation risk premium are inconsequential. This result emerges because inflation surprises and unexpected movements in consumption growth exhibit little covariation in U.S. data. Moreover, using two different preference specifications, we also show that this result is quite unrelated to the notion that the equity risk premium is generally small in consumption-based asset pricing models.


The functional application of metallic glasses in the catalytic field has widely attracted research attention due to its unique atomic structure compared to crystalline materials. It has been reported that metallic glasses can effectively activate H2O2 and persulfate, yet the activation of peroxymonosulfate by metallic glasses is not studied well. In this work, the metallic glass with atomic composition of Fe78Si9B13 was applied for investigating the peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation on degradation of naphthol green B (NGB) dye. The change of surface morphology indicated the important role of oxide films during the dye degradation. The effects and first-order kinetics model of various reaction parameters were evaluated systematically, including PMS concentration, catalyst dosage, irradiation intensity, and dye concentration. The results showed that about 98% of the dye removal rate could be achieved only within 10 min under rational conditions. The reaction kinetics k of 0.1339 min−1 without ribbons was sharply improved to 0.3140 min−1 by adding 0.5 g/L ribbons, indicating the superior activation ability of Fe78Si9B13 metallic glass. The recycling experiment revealed that the Fe78Si9B13 ribbons exhibited the excellent surface stability and catalytic reusability for activating PMS even after reused for 10th run.


Abstract. Long term data series (1996 through 2009) for trace metals were analyzed from a large number of streams and rivers across Sweden varying in tributary watershed size from 0.05 to 48 193 km2. The final data set included 139 stream sites with data for arsenic (As), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), and vanadium (V). Between 7 % and 46 % of the sites analyzed showed significant trends according to the seasonal Kendall test. However, in contrast to previous studies and depositional patterns, a substantial portion of the trends were positive, especially for V (100 %), As (95 %), and Pb (68 %). Other metals (Zn and Cr) generally decreased, were mixed (Ni and Zn), or had very few trends (Co) over the study period. Trends by region were also analyzed and some showed significant variation between the north and south of Sweden. Regional trends for both Cu and Pb were positive (60 % and 93 %, respectively) in the southern region but strongly negative (93 % and 75 %, respectively) in the northern region. Kendall's τ coefficients were used to determine dependence between metals and potential in-stream drivers including total organic carbon (TOC), iron (Fe), pH, and sulphate (SO42−). TOC and Fe correlated positively and strongly with As, V, Pb, and Co while pH and SO42− generally correlated weakly, or not at all with the metals studied.


This paper presents a methodology based on a decision support system (DSS) that employs remote sensing and field survey data and geographic information system (GIS) to identify potential rainwater harvesting areas (RWH). This DSS was implemented to obtain suitability maps and to evaluate the existing RWH structures in the study area. The DSS inputs comprised maps of rainfall surplus, slope, potential runoff coefficient, land cover/use, and soil texture. On the basis of an analytical hierarchy process analysis taking into account five layers, the spatial extents of RWH suitability areas were identified by multi-factor evaluation. The spatial distribution of the classes in the suitability map showed that the excellent and good areas are mainly located in the southern and western parts of the study area. On average, 12.2% and 22.2% of the study area are classified as excellent and good for RWH, respectively, while 34.7% and 30.9% of the area are classified as moderately suitable and poorly suited and unsuitable, respectively. Most of the existing RWH structures that are categorized as successful were within the good (72% of the structures) areas followed by moderately suitable (24% of the structures) and excellent areas (4% of the structures).


Background: The need for an appropriate South African triage system led to the development of the Cape Triage Score (CTS), a system to prioritise emergency departments' workloads. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the CTS at the National District Hospital emergency department, Bloemfontein. Methods: In this retrospective, descriptive, observational study, files of adult patients triaged at the emergency department during February 2013 were randomly selected. Inclusion was subject to the availability of the files. Physiological parameter results were used to calculate the Triage Early Warning Score (TEWS). The side-room investigations and South African Triage Score (SATS) were recorded. Other information gathered included diagnosis, outcome, and times the patient was triaged and seen by the doctor. Results: A total of 396 files were included in the study. Patients, of whom 57.8% were women, were between the ages of 16–89 years. More than half (52%) of side-room investigations were omitted or inappropriate. The adjustment of the TEWS to the SATS was done incorrectly in 52% of cases. The majority of patients (69.9%) were discharged home after treatment, although 88% were SATS orange coded. Over-triage occurred in 8.1% of TEWS and 67.8% of SATS cases. The mean waiting time from triage until patient was seen by the doctor was 2 hours. Conclusions: The TEWS proved to predict outcome better than the SATS. Due to inaccurate triage, only 8% of patients were seen within the recommended waiting times. The CTS has not been effectively implemented at the National District Hospital emergency department.


The microbial contamination in the rhizomes of medicinal plants including Curcuma amada rhizomes is generally high. This due to the fact that rhizomes are the bottom parts that grow in the soil. Based on the Regulation of Head of the Indonesian National Agency of Drug and Food Control Number HK.00.06.1.52.4011, the limits of microbial contamination in herbal/medicinal plants are 106 cfu/g for the total microbial and 2×104 cfu/g for the total yeast and mold. Gamma irradiation is one of the methods to reduce microbial contamination in medicinal plants. In this research, the effectiveness of gamma irradiation in microbial reduction and its effects to curcuminoid contents was determined by irradiating Curcuma amada rhizomes at doses of 5 and 10 kGy. The initial contamination in this rhizome was 8.78×107 cfu/g and 5×101 cfu/g for the total microbial and for the total yeast and mould, respectively. The result indicates that at 5 kGy, the microbial contamination and the mould and yeast contamination were reduced from 8.78×107 cfu/g and 5×101 cfu/g to 1.39×104 cfu/g and under 1×101 cfu/g, respectively. Meanwhile the comparison of curcuminoids between the irradiated and non irradiated samples was performed by HPLC method and was found to actually increase from 0.26% to 0.36% after the 5-kGy irradiation. It can be concluded that an irradiation dose of 5 kGy is effective to reduce the content of microorganisms without lowering curcuminoids. Gamma radiation could be used as decontamination method in medicinal plants. Received:  03 July 2015 ; Revised:  29 December 2015 ; Accepted:  19 Februari 2016


Sleep mode lets users go for days or weeks without rebooting, supporting work on multiple tasks that they can return to later. However, users also struggle with window clutter, facing an increasing number of `left-over windows' that get in the way. Our goal is to understand how users create and cope with left-over windows. We conducted a two-week field study with ten notebook users. We found that they work in very short sessions, switching often between computer-based and external tasks. 34% of left-over windows remain untouched for a day or more, increasing in quantitity until they all disappear after a reboot. Some users reboot as a deliberate `clean-up' strategy, whereas others lose left-over windows after an unexpected system crash. Users intentionally keep left-over windows as to-do lists, as reminders of upcoming tasks, and for facilitating future access; the rest are simply forgotten. Tools for visualizing and managing left-over windows should help users reduce window clutter, while maintaing the benefits of interruptible work sessions.


There is implicit trust involved when using computer software. Opensource software attempts to inspire more trust, by giving access to the source code. Nevertheless, malicious compilers or someone with malicious intent can create malicious compiled code, even from non-malicious source code. Further, comparing source code and compiled code for equivalence is an undecidable problem. This thesis explores how software can be manipulated so that source code and compiled code are no longer equivalent and what can be done to increase the trust that they are equivalent. One such way of manipulating the compiled code is through a malicious compiler. I demonstrate this by implementing a self-replicating compiler attack against the Go language compiler, a modern industrial-strength compiler. The attack is similar to the well-known trusting trust attack and can infect a new compiler when it is being compiled, even when the compiler is compiled from non-malicious source code. In the thesis, I also discuss other, real-world, compiler attacks such as XcodeGhost and W32/Induc. The attacks show that compiler attacks are viable and a real threat. I discuss how reproducible builds can be used to increase the trust in compiled code, when the source code is available. Also discussed, is how Diverse Double-Compiling (DDC) can be used to detect self-replicating compiler attacks. I introduce a variant of DDC using more than two compilers for bootstrapping, this variant has not previously been described. This new variant can, by utilising parallel trust combinations, increase the trust in the verified compiler beyond regular DDC and identify which compiler has inserted a self-replicating attack. The new variant is implemented, and used to detect the previously implemented self-replicating attack.


E-procurement — e-business mechanisms deployed on procurement — offers many recent and innovative methods that can improve procurement in different ways. The key challenge of e-procurement, however, is how to apply the various e-procurement applications in such a way that they improve the procurement practice and sourcing strategy of a company. There is a demand for an investigation that scrutinizes the e-procurement value propositions and explains how e-procurement applications can improve procurement performance, and that demand motivates this Ph. D. thesis. Five case studies were conducted with the purpose of finding out how the case companies had worked with e-procurement, what specific e-procurement applications they had investigated or implemented, and the expected or actual benefits of doing so. An e-procurement framework was developed in order to investigate how various e-procurement applications operate. The e-procurement framework is a matrix made up of two dimensions, a list of generic procurement tasks and a list of e-business value creation mechanisms. The generic procurement tasks could be grouped in four procurement areas, namely strategic procurement, purchasing process, internal tasks, and external tasks. E-business value creation mechanisms were grouped in three major themes: novelty, efficiency, and coordination. This framework was then used to position the case companies' usage of e-procurement applications. It was also used for positioning the literature on e-procurement. The thesis also includes three papers that go into detail regarding issues like differentiation, alignment and usage of marketplaces. Deploying e-procurement applications requires that the procurement groundwork has been laid down. Procurement strategies must be present, and preferably aligned with corporate strategy. Processes and procedures must be mapped and understood; supplier relationships must be set up so the full potential of suppliers' capabilities is acquired. When this foundation has been established, it is time to assess how different e-procurement applications can leverage the procurement work and pick the one(s) that offer the best prospect of improving the procurement performance even further. E-procurement is after all not a remedy for poor procurement work; it is a possibility to improve the performance of procurement work that is already working well even further. (Less)


S. cerevisiae ribosome biogenesis is a highly ordered and dynamic process that involves over 100 accessory proteins, including 18 DExD/H-box proteins that act at discrete steps in the pathway. Although often termed RNA helicases, the biochemical functions of individual DExD/H-box proteins appear to vary considerably. Four DExD/H-box proteins, Dbp3p, Dbp4p, Rok1p, and Rrp3p, involved in yeast ribosome assembly were expressed in E. coli, and all were found to be active RNA-dependent ATPases with k(cat) values ranging from 13 to 170 min(-1) and K(M)(ATP) values ranging from 0.24 to 2.3 mM. All four proteins are activated by single-stranded oligonucleotides, but they require different chain lengths for maximal ATPase activity, ranging from 10 to >40 residues. None of the four proteins shows significant specificity for yeast rRNA, compared to nonspecific control RNAs since these large RNAs contain multiple binding sites that appear to be catalytically similar. This systematic comparison of four members of the DExD/H-box family demonstrates a range of biochemical properties and lays the foundation for relating the activities of proteins to their biological functions.


Educators have claimed that listening to music in a second or foreign language (L2) can provide fun and motivating educational material and that singing can enhance the L2 learning process by improving listening and speaking skills, pronunciation, intonation, and vocabulary. Experiments have shown that under certain conditions, a sung presentation of linguistic material can facilitate verbal learning in the native language. To date, however, there is very little research evidence that singing can increase L2 skills. This thesis begins to methodically evaluate whether listening to songs and singing in a new language can facilitate L2 learning, compared to practising L2 material through more traditional, speech-based instructional methods. The research studies also explore the extent to which individual differences (IDs) between learners may mediate any observed benefits of using songs in L2 instruction. The first two studies examine under controlled experimental conditions whether singing can support adults' beginning-level modern language learning compared to speech over a short time period. Results indicate that when no significant group differences exist for the ID measures, an instructional method that incorporates L2 singing can facilitate short-term learning and memory. Results also showed that IDs between learners, in particular previous language learning experience, musical abilities, mood, and motivation, can mediate the benefits of L2 learning through a singing method. The third study describes a four-week, classroom-based arts intervention exploring the effects of incorporating songs and dramatic dialogues into the L2 curriculum, both in terms of learning outcomes and the adolescents' opinions. In addition to increases in French skills, many children reported that the dramatic and musical activities had increased their confidence to speak in French. There was also an overall preference for listening to songs and more children reported that the songs repeated in their heads after class. The thesis concludes by discussing practical implications for L2 instruction and proposes a framework to guide future research exploring how and why singing can support modern foreign language learning.


The lowlands have fostered enough of sons, and thehills, and the sea.Now a strange mother with nipples of iron gives suckto a nation.At her side the young towns take strength on theirlips.(Black)The above, taken from MacKnight Black's 1929 poem "New Mother," heralded the birth of a brave new world where organization and efficiency were the keys to the future. The people of these modern times worshipped the positive changes the machine brought to humanity, especially as it eliminated the daily drudgery of many industrial occupations. Shortly after its release, however the economy began to slide and then tumble ushering in an economic and social Depression which challenged America and its citizens. The modern engineers of the free economy, led by Herbert Hoover, had failed, it seemed, to fulfill the promises of a brighter, machine age future.In 1937 the Federal Music Project, part of the larger work relief program of the Works Progress Administration created in 1935, sponsored a short opera entitled The Romance of Robot, which in many ways is the antithesis of "New Mother." The production appeared during Franklin Roosevelt's New economic recovery plan which championed the positive attributes of organization and efficiency, if tempered with a human understanding of the social realities of the crisis. The opera satirized a society in which machines, and by extension the ideals of a now-suspect modernism, would replace individual initiative and feelings with logical decisions and stress organization over humanity. The new world order of the machine, Romance opined, was in fact a future that had no soul.In a soliloquy near the end of Romance, Robot rejects the coldness of his machine existence in favor of the human emotion love. His description of who he was defines, in part, the ideals of the machine age and the concept of modernism:Free from traditions of old,Called a new mechanist, forced to be hard,Made to be brutal and cold.Robot, they called me, the great man of steel.(The Romance of Robot)It Is relatively easy to understand what "Machine Age" means, but defining modernism has been a bit more problematic. David Hollinger compares the defining process to entering a room: "each wall is said to be 'modernist" yet each reflects light differently." In literature, modernists sought to break with the Victorian past, especially its middle-class pretensions, and re-create a new, more organic literature based on the experiences of the self. For political scientists, modernism held that science and its intellectuals would provide the cures for social ills. Religious modernism tied the methods of scientific inquiry to the Protestant work ethic in order to meet the needs of the modern world (Hollinger 37-55).Even more complicated is the relationship between modernism and the idea of modernization. Joseph Singal argues that modernism, especially as a literary avant garde movement, rose up in response to the forces of modernization. The modernists attempted to restore some sense of human order to "the rise of industry, technology, urbanization, and bureaucratic institutions." Using William James and John Dewey as guides, Singal describes two strains of modernism: one, which celebrates the individual consciousness, spontaneity and the new realms of personal experience manifesting itself mainly in art and literature (James), and two, which focuses on the elimination of social barriers and joins reason with emotion to eradicate the social problems of the day (Dewey). However, the problem is complicated by Singal's modernists ambivalence. On one hand, they admired the vitality and progress that modernization and technology brought (in fact they would utilize the new technology in their works) but, on the other, they feared the dehumanization they saw resulting from society's increasing dependence on machines. Daniel Bell argues that this ambivalence led to a modernist culture that was all form, but no content, and based upon the "machine aesthetic," where much of what was created was defined as "functional. …


This report, in its earlier part, reviews some important aspects of research and development in the design of reinforced concrete members against shear. This review includes a study of the background of design method for shear resistance given in the British Standard code of practice and a comparison of this method with the methods recommended by the Eurocode and the American code of practice for concrete structures. Based on this study, the contributions to shear resistance of a member afforded by concrete, the tension steel and the links are identified. The influence of these constituents on the modes of transfer of shear has been investigated, in order to examine the method for estimating the overall shear resistance of the member. A test programme is reported, concerning horizontal steel at the centre of the cross-section as an alternative form of shear reinforcement. Tests on some fifty beam specimens were carried out, allowing for variation in the main parameters; for example, the span of beams, the strength of concrete and the amount of tension steel. Also, some beams did not have any shear reinforcement and some were provided with central bars, some with links and some with the combination of central bar and links. A design method has been derived on the basis of these tests, for estimating the contribution of central steel to the shear resistance of beams. This method has been verified with the help of measurement of stresses in the web steel, using strain gauges fixed on the reinforcement of two of the test beams. A similar design method is proposed for using central steel to enhance the punching shear resistance of slabs, based on the results of tests on fifteen slab specimens, allowing for variations in thickness of slabs, the strength of concrete and the amount of central steel. The design methods for beams and slabs have been examined with the help of a finite element computer program capable of using the non-linear properties of structural materials. Finally, the normal temperature design rules for beams have been modified and a method is proposed for design of beams exposed to high temperatures. This method has been verified on the basis of fire exposure tests on ten beam specimens provided with differing amount and type of web steel and with gauges for measurement of temperatures inside, the beams.


We establish generalization error bounds for stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (SGLD) with constant learning rate under the assumptions of dissipativity and smoothness, a setting that has received increased attention in the sampling/optimization literature. Unlike existing bounds for SGLD in non-convex settings, ours are time-independent and decay to zero as the sample size increases. Using the framework of uniform stability, we establish time-independent bounds by exploiting the Wasserstein contraction property of the Langevin diffusion, which also allows us to circumvent the need to bound gradients using Lipschitz-like assumptions. Our analysis also supports variants of SGLD that use different discretization methods, incorporate Euclidean projections, or use non-isotropic noise.


Negative attitudes and explicit racism against Muslims are increasingly visible in public discourse throughout Europe. Right-wing populist parties have strengthened their positions by focusing on the 'Islamic threat' to the West. Concurrently, the Internet has facilitated a space where racist attitudes towards Muslims are easily disseminated into the public debate, fuelling animosity against European Muslims. This paper explores part of the online Islamophobic network and scrutinizes the discursive strategies deployed by three 'prominent' online actors. By combining social network analysis and critical discourse analysis, the study shows that Islamophobic web pages constitute a dynamic network with ties to different political and geographical milieus. They create a seemingly mainstream political position by framing racist standpoints as a defence of Western values and freedom of speech. The study also shows that Islamophobic discourse is strengthened by xenophobic currents within mass media, and by the legitimization of intellectuals and political actors.


Objective To develop comprehensive guidance that captures international impacts, causes and solutions related to emergency department (ED) crowding and access block. Methods Emergency physicians representing 15 countries from all International Federation of Emergency Medicine (IFEM) regions composed the Task Force. Monthly meetings were held via video-conferencing software to achieve consensus for report content. The report was submitted and approved by the IFEM Board on June 1, 2020. Results A total of 14 topic dossiers, each relating to an aspect of ED crowding, were researched and completed collaboratively by members of the Task Force. Conclusions The IFEM report is a comprehensive document intended to be used in whole or by section to inform and address aspects of ED crowding and access block. Overall, ED crowding is a multifactorial issue requiring systems-wide solutions applied at local, regional, and national levels. Access block is the predominant contributor of ED crowding in most parts of the world.


Group purchasing sites have recently gained tremendous popularity on the Internet. Besides the collective buying model, the leading website, Groupon.com, also introduces a tipping point mechanism to the U.S. e-market. The current study creates a theoretical model that integrates the theory of mind with models from e-commerce research to further study the buyer's decision making influenced by a shopping group. We find that the buyer's satisfaction with price discounts, their expectation of quality, and group inference have significant positive effects on the buyer's purchase intention. The findings provide several constructive implications to practitioners as well.


Contemporary world recognizes the predominance of visual forms of media communication. In our contemporary Visual Culture, visual images are everywhere in all imaginable forms. So we need to be able to read and analyze these images and understand how they relate to each other and communicate meanings to different viewers. By introducing ideas from theories of Visual Culture this study aims to provide a deeper understanding of images in contemporary culture. In visual culture studies, there is a relation between images and consumers that are evaluated for their cultural significance, not just the image in and of it and, as a focus on cultural meaning of a work of art, rather than on its aesthetic value. World War1 was a balanced confrontation, not only in terms of armed forces, but also regarding ideologies and cultures. The protection of specific cultural contexts, including Aboriginal and regional cultures is observed In world war 1 posters design, so it is comparable to the Iran and Iraq war posters. The question is: what is the role of visual culture in the Iran posters design in the Iran and Iraq war and British World War I posters? This paper presents a selection of examples from posters of Britain and Iran to interpret the hidden meanings behind these images by using the analytic and descriptive method. In addition, the posters of the two countries are compared to each other in order to identify and develop a deeper understanding of visual culture. The result of this study reveals that reflections of British and Iranian cultures in poster design, along with the use of cultural codes that are generally used consciously depending on the designer's knowledge of the cultural values of the society in which they live influences both the society's esthetics preferences and its visual culture. Data collection and sampling of documents is optional.


The International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU), since its inception in 1925, has had as its principal objective the development of internationally acceptable recommendations regarding: (1) quantities and units of radiation and radioactivity, (2) procedures suitable for the measurement and application of these quantities in clinical radiology and radiobiology, and (3) physical data needed in the application of these procedures, the use of which tends to assure uniformity in reporting. The Commission also considers and makes similar types of recommendations for the radiation protection field. In this connection, its work is carried out in close cooperation with the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP).


Is urbanization a danger or a solution to global sustainability? What institutions need to change to make urban areas more sustainable? In examining urbanization rates in countries over time, we see that they are often more correlated to carbon dioxide emissions than per capital income [1]. This tells us that urbanization patterns of the last 100 years have contributed to the increase in carbon emissions. We therefore need to develop a new kind of urbanization in order to tackle global challenges. However, reports about global changes often portray urbanization as "a problem". Cities are polluted and increasingly crowded; urban inhabitants consume proportionately more resources and are responsible for a large portion of carbon emissions ([2], p. 927). As a urban planner, when I read those reports it seems I am looking at the books of urban planning in the last century, particularly those on urbanization in the colonies, where urbanization was presented as an unwanted process that caused a lot of harms to the "civilization" [3,4]. We must therefore change the discourse on how we describe urbanization if we want to transform it, as it will not be stopped. We must stress the many benefits that urbanization has brought to society, which are the main reasons people want to come to the cities in the first place. A question to be considered is therefore how to make urban life compatible with global challenges? i.e., how can we continue implementing/developing urbanization and the benefits that come with it without disproportionally increasing carbon emissions, the destruction of ecosystems and unsustainable consumption. There are many opportunities for win-win strategies between global sustainability challenges and development in urban areas, or synergies, such as climate co-benefits, i.e., tackling climate change and promoting development, particularly in some developing countries where cities are still being built and the path of urbanization can be changed [5,6]. Nevertheless, despite all we have learned about urbanization and the possible co-benefits opportunities since the last century, we lack understanding of the contextual and institutional conditions that make those solutions emerge.


The organic matter supply can promote the dispersal and activity of applied plant growth–promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), but the complementary effect of organic fertilization and PGPR application on the turnover of P is scarcely known. The effects of the application of two PGPR strains (Pseudomonas fluorescens strain DR54 and Enterobacter radicincitans sp. nov. strain DSM 16656) alone and in combination with organic fertilization (cattle manure and biowaste compost) on growth and P uptake of maize (Zea mays L.) and oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.) were investigated under semi–field conditions. Furthermore, P pools and phosphatase activities in soil and the arbuscular mycorrhizal–fungi colonization of maize roots were examined. The organic-fertilizer amendments increased the growth and P uptake of both plant species and the soil P pools. The application of the E. radicincitans strain increased P uptake of oilseed rape when no organic fertilizer was added. Furthermore, the application of both bacterial strains increased the activities of phosphatases under both plant species. Here, the effect of the PGPR application even exceeded the effect of organic fertilization. The magnitude of this effect varied between the different fertilizing treatments and between the two bacterial strains. Phosphatase activities were increased to the greatest extent after application of P. fluorescens in the unfertilized soil. Under rape increases of 52% for acid phosphatase activities (ACP), 103% for alkaline phosphatase activities (ALP), and 133% for phosphodiesterase (PDE) were observed therewith. In the unfertilized soil, the application of P. fluorescens also resulted in a strong increase of the arbuscular mycorrhizal colonization of maize. We conclude that application of PGPR can promote the P mobilization and supply of crops in P-deficient soils, however, in combination with organic fertilization these effects might be masked by a general improved P supply of the crops. Interactive effects of applied bacterial strains and organic fertilization depend on the sort of organic fertilizer and crop species used.


Photography's role in the historical framing of how we see can hardly be overestimated: heralded as the most extraordinary invention in vision, it was meant to deliver the promise of technology's ability to enrich and improve human sight. Simultaneously, the medium's capacity to offer photographic evidence placed it at the crossroads of the techniques of representation and regulation. Even as the machine is ever so rapidly substituting the eye in the forging of endless stream of visual data that we are now subjected to, digital vision still relies on the photographic image. Against such a background, this article departs from a proposition that if we were to envision different ways of seeing we can start from a reformulated understanding of photography. In order to do so, the article critically examines recent photographic works by Taisuke Koyama and Nihal Yesil and argues that abstract photography in particular enables the recognition of material entanglements between the medium and what it aspires to represent. 'Following' such materials as cellophane, aluminium, PVC as well as light, the article also mobilises Karen Barad's project of agential realism in its view of abstract photography as a tool for looking with, a vehicle that enables the rethinking of the medium and, by implication, the ethical parameters of vision that hinges on it.


There has been the use of the term manager together with a leader - an individual with cha- risma. Nowadays, they are found even more within the various subjects of management and also in scientific literature. If activities of manager are called managing, activities of leader are named leadership. Publications titled "Managers and leaders" are issued in order to underline the differences between the activities of managers and humans endowed with charisma on the other side. The demands for the inclusion of the subject of leadership in the curriculum of faculties of management tend to appear in the academic field. The leadership subject is already lectured at many business schools abroad. Even though it is hard to express any restrictions on the introduced approaches in management, it is necessary to realize that features credited to leaders, which are claimed impossible to be possessed by managers (charisma - often given by higher power or mysticism, ability to rouse or to lead corps for achieving inhumane aims etc) lead to the need for introspection as to whether the manager with a developed competence is not disposed with all the attributes of the charismatic leader. However, it is often argued that managers tend to be focused on the filling of appointed tasks by humansleading, whereas leaders concentrate on the formation of good relations. Both of these roles are useful. The usage of concrete activities for the sake of establishing and achieving real targets depends on the degree of competence of the members of a team or group, who participate in activities for achieving specific targets as well as on the degree of competence of the manager and/or leader of the organization or team. This indicates that, managers with advanced holistic degree of competence are capable of leading people in the same way as a leader. Some questions that are raised in this paper are: Is it possible to understand the competitiveness of countries and com- panies as well? How is a charismatic human a subject of management perceived in scientific literature?


This paper considers the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to enable students to access the curriculum in inclusive classrooms. The research considers the latest trends regarding promotion of the use of ICT in education in Australia and then considers the outcome from the perspective of one state, that of Western Australia. In particular, the focus is on the use of ICT in remote and rural school communities for supporting inclusive practices. While it seems clear that considerable financial support has been allocated to the enhancement of access to ICT across Australia by various education departments, there are several issues that are impacting on the implementation for more isolated schools. Concerns regarding staffing, cultural sensitivity, software selection and hardware maintenance are all discussed from the perspective of increasing the engagement of students with diverse needs in regular classes in remote and rural schools in Australia.


Reactive traffic management strategies such as incident detection are becoming less relevant with the advancement of mobile phone usage. Freeway management in the 21st century needs to shift focus toward proactive strategies that include anticipating incidents such as the crashes. Predicting crash occurrences would also be the key to traffic safety. A two-step approach to identify freeway locations with high probability of crashes through real-time traffic surveillance data is presented here. For this study historical crash and corresponding traffic data from loop detectors were gathered from a 58-km (36-mile) corridor of Interstate-4. Following an exploratory analysis two types of logistic regression models, i.e., simple and multivariate, were developed. The simple models were used to deduce time-space patterns of variation in crash risk while the multivariate model was chosen for final classification of traffic patterns. As a suggested application for the simple models, their output may be used for preliminary assessment of the crash risk. If there is an indication of high crash risk then the multivariate model may be employed to explicitly classify the data patterns as leading or not-leading to crash occurrence. A demonstration of this two-stage real-time application strategy is also provided in the paper.


We propose and analyze a differential control scheme for cavity-enhanced optical signal processing devices based on carrier nonlinearities. The scheme relies on two optical cavities to increase the bandwidth beyond the limit given by the slowest carrier relaxation rate of the medium. Practical implementations are envisioned using photonic crystal cavities, and the controls may be electrical or optical in nature.


Children in rich countries are using the Internet for social networking and gaming at very high rates, particularly in Australia. This study addresses whether these activities affect educational achievement in mathematics, reading, and science using the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's 2012 Program for International Student Assessment data set. The results suggest that using online social networks reduces academic achievement. Conversely, playing online games increases scores. It is argued that although both activities are associated with a high opportunity cost of study, video games potentially allow students to apply and sharpen skills learned in school. Skipping school, failing an academic year in the past, and being indigenous are also important predictors of underachievement. It is suggested that monitoring, counseling, and tutoring students who are at risk of failure may useful.


Although business methods previously had been patented, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit first gave them formal recognition as patentable subject matter in 1998. Internet business method patents have been roundly criticized by most observers as being singularly inferior to most other patents. Many have even argued that business methods should not be patentable subject matter. As a result, Congress and the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) singled them out for special treatment. All of these criticisms were voiced without empirical support. We gathered data on most Internet business method patents issued through the end of 1999 and compared them with a large contemporaneous data set of patents in general. We also compared them with patents in fourteen individual technology areas within the general patent data set. Our comparison focused on several metrics that we believe serve as good proxies for patent quality and value. We found that Internet business method patents appear to have been no worse than the average patent, and possibly even better than most. They also appear to have been no worse, and possibly even better than patents in most individual technology areas. These findings lead us to question the conventional wisdom that these patents were uniquely deficient. We briefly explore some possible explanations for the chasm between the accepted view and what we believe to have been the reality, including the possibility that negative opinions about these patents may have been characterized by an information cascade. More important, we believe that efforts to single out these patents for special treatment not only lacked sound justification in the particular case but also reveal more fundamental problems associated with ex ante definitions to carve out any particular technology area for different treatment.


Background: The aims of this research were to identify key non-technical skills and teambehaviours observed in a two-star Michelin restaurant kitchen (Sat Bains, Nottingham) and to evaluate the feasibility of transferring these skills and behaviours to the operating theatre context.
Methods: Key team skills and behaviours used by a team of professional kitchen staff were identified from a series of observations in the work setting and evaluated for potential application in the operating theatre environment. Sixty-one multi-professional operating theatre staff members were invited to complete a questionnaire specifically designed to gauge the relevance and feasibility of these skills and behaviours if implemented in the clinical setting in order to improve team performance and patient safety.
Results: Five team practices for potential use in the operating theatre were identified. These were use of a "stop moment"; implementing closed-loop communication; undertaking weekly prospective briefings about planned activity; displaying visual poster guides for each procedure; and using cameras to track the progress of operations. Fifty-five of the 61 theatre staff members approached completed the questionnaire. The "stop moment" was perceived to be the most feasible for implementation (76%, 42/55) and to offer the greatest potential for improvement in patient safety (85%, 47/55).
Conclusion: Certain team skills and behaviours observed in a professional kitchen may have value if adapted for the operating theatre. These team practices could improve teamwork and patient safety in the operating theatre, and would be welcomed by the majority of theatre staff Implications Some team skills learnt from a Michelin starred kitchen are transferable to the operating theatre.


Continuous-time delta sigma (CT-ΔΣ ) ADCs are gaining wider adoption in data conversion systems primarily aided by their robustness to mismatch in nano-scale CMOS technologies and inherent anti-alias filtering. In past, several techniques have been employed to achieve wider conversion bandwidths by either scaling the designs to a lower technology node or by adopting architectures with lower oversampling ratios (OSR). Cascaded, or MASH, CT-ΔΣ ADCs have been explored to achieve conversion bandwidths by cascading lower order ΔΣ loops followed by a digital coarse quantization noise canceling filter (NCF). Another technique which has recently been explored is to increase the quantizer sampling rate, in a given technology node, by absorbing excess loop-delay (ELD) greater than one clock cycle (Ts) in the loop. However, these techniques individually cannot sufficiently meet the ever increasing bandwidth demand for the broadband wireless applications. Further, the ELD > Ts designs require an extra modulator order to achieve the same noise-shaping performance as the low-speed ELD <; 0.5 Ts prototype, necessitating high-order CT-ΔΣ loops. As a step towards combing the two techniques, we propose a systematic design method to synthesize 3-2 MASH CT-ΔΣ modulators to achieve higher conversion bandwidths, BW ≥ 40MHz in a 130-nm CMOS technology.


Abstract. Exchanges between sediment pore waters and the overlying water column play a significant role in the chemical budgets of many important chemical constituents. Direct quantification of such benthic fluxes requires explicit knowledge of the sediment properties and biogeochemistry. Alternatively, changes in water-column properties near the sediment-water interface can be exploited to gain insight into the sediment biogeochemistry and benthic fluxes. Here, we apply a 1-D diffusive mixing model to near-bottom water-column profiles of 224Ra activity in order to yield vertical eddy diffusivities (KZ), based upon which we assess the diffusive exchange of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), nutrients and oxygen (O2), across the sediment-water interface in a coastal inlet, Bedford Basin, Nova Scotia, Canada. Numerical model results are consistent with the assumptions regarding a constant, single benthic source of 224Ra, the lack of mixing by advective processes, and a predominantly benthic source and sink of DIC and O2, respectively, with minimal water-column respiration in the deep waters of Bedford Basin. Near-bottom observations of DIC, O2 and nutrients provide flux ratios similar to Redfield values, suggesting that benthic respiration of primarily marine organic matter is the dominant driver. Furthermore, a relative deficit of nitrate in the observed flux ratios indicates that denitrification also plays a role in the oxidation of organic matter, although its occurrence was not strong enough to allow us to detect the corresponding AT fluxes out of the sediment. Finally, comparison with other carbon sources reveal the observed benthic DIC release as a significant contributor to the Bedford Basin carbon system.


The conventional history of obscenity and pornography in America begins about one hundred thirty years ago with the passage of the Comstock Act in 1873, which banned obscene literature from the mail. (1) A resulting climate of sexual repression prevailed until the middle of the twentieth century, when the United States Supreme Court's decision in Roth v. United States, (2) and later in Miller v. California, (3) loosened restrictions on the sale of sexually explicit material to adults. The standard narrative picks up again in the late twentieth century with the efforts of feminist theorists and activists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin to suppress pornography as a violation of women's civil rights. (4) It ends with present-day controversies over the flood of sexually explicit images on the Internet and panic over child pornography. (5) However, a significant untold history of both sexual representation and obscenity prosecution precedes the usual starting point of this narrative. (6) This early history helps to explain how pornography emerged as a cultural and economic phenomenon in American life. (7) It also offers valuable perspectives on the meaning and function of obscenity law, fundamental issues that continue to bedevil American law and policy. In particular, the legal history offered here illuminates the ways in which obscenity prohibitions often encouraged, rather than suppressed, the growth of an American pornography trade. (8) It also demonstrates the significant role that obscenity law played in shaping commercial and cultural constructions of sexual desire. Part I of this Article provides a brief summary of the doctrine of obscenity as it arose in English common law and developed in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. In essence, nineteenth-century American jurists, following the lead of English treatise writers, routinely asserted that government officials had the authority to suppress any speech or conduct that had a tendency to corrupt public morality, including the authority to punish the sale of "obscene" publications. Relying solely on these elite expressions of law and on the language of state statutes that purported to regulate morality, one might well conclude that state and local governments seamlessly exercised the power to police morality and suppress indecency in nineteenth-century America. (9) But fully understanding the operation of obscenity law in American culture and society requires looking beyond formal law. (10) Part II therefore examines the ways in which obscenity doctrine was applied "on the ground" in the context of specific criminal prosecutions involving the sale of obscene books in New York City between the early 1840s, when significant numbers of obscenity cases first arose, and the start of the Civil War in 1861. This discussion relies heavily on data compiled from the unpublished District Attorney Indictment Papers for the principal criminal court in New York County at that time, the Court of General Sessions. (11) New York City provides a natural focal point for this inquiry for several reasons. By the middle of the nineteenth century, it was not only the largest city in the United States; it was also the site of the country's principal financial, manufacturing, and cultural institutions. (12) In addition, in the decades leading up to the Civil War, New York established itself as a communications capital, pushing aside its chief rivals, Boston and Philadelphia, to lead the nation's burgeoning publishing industries. (13) Most importantly for this Article, by the start of the Civil War, New York had emerged as the headquarters for an ambitious, entrepreneurial network of publishers who pioneered the production and marketing of sexual writing in the United States. The city's preeminence in the field of sexually stimulating publications was widely recognized by the early 1860s, when its publishers and dealers earned national notoriety for exploiting the escalating demand for mail-order erotica among Civil War soldiers. …


Amyloidosis is a term used to describe a group of disorders consisting of abnormalities in and the accumulation of amyloid protein. This protein cannot be degraded and so collects in the tissues, interrupting both their structure and function. The disorder is progressive as amyloid increases and symptoms vary depending on the affected organs, which can be localised or systemic. We discuss diagnosis and management of amyloidosis with cardiac involvement and describe a case presenting in late life with rapid progression.


A graphene/silicon (Si) multilayer sandwich structures are fabricated using electron beam (EB) deposition without air exposure. The graphene and Si thin films are formed on Cu current correctors through a continuous process in high-vacuum EB chamber. Synthesized graphene should be suggested to the stacked multiple layer from Raman analysis. The fabricated multilayer films are used as anodes. In the beginning, the half-cell, which used a seven-layer of each thickness 50-nm graphene and Si film, exhibits good specific capacity retention over 1000 mA h g 1 after 30 charge/discharge cycles. The capacity value changed with the number of graphene and Si layers. In this study, the number of layers that exhibited optimal properties is seven. Morphological investigation showed a fine layer-by-layer structure. The relationship between different thicknesses of graphene and Si is investigated at 7 L. A 100-nm thickness exhibited optimal properties. Finally, the optimal 7 L and 100-nm thick graphene/Si exhibited high discharge capacitance >1600 mA h g 1 at a current density of 100 mA g 1 after 30 cycles. Initial coulombic and reversible efficiencies exceed 84%. The capacity retention (30th/1st discharge value) at 100 nm and 7 L exceeds 90%. Finally, the soft package battery is assembled by combining the fabricated graphene and Si electrode as anode, LiCoO2 as cathode, separator and liquid electrolyte. It can be used for commercial light-emitting diode (LED) lighting even under bending status. ã 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


ABSTRACT Occupational exposure to nanomaterial aerosols poses potential health risks to workers at nanotechnology workplaces. Understanding the mechanical stability of airborne nanoparticle agglomerates under varied mechanical forces and environmental conditions is important for estimating their emission potential and the released particle size distributions, which in consequence alters their transport and human uptake probability. In this study, two aerosolization and deagglomeration systems were used to investigate the potential for deagglomeration of nanopowder aerosols with different surface hydrophilicity under a range of shear forces and relative humidity conditions. Critical orifices were employed to subject airborne agglomerates to the shear forces induced by a pressure drop. Increasing applied pressure drop was found to be associated with decreased mean particle size and increased particle number concentrations. Rising humidity decreased the deagglomeration tendency as expressed by larger modal particle sizes and lower number concentrations compared to dry conditions. Hydrophilic aerosols exhibited higher sensitivities to changes in humidity than hydrophobic particles. However, the test systems themselves also differed in generated particle number concentrations and size distributions, which in turn altered the responses of created aerosols to humidity changes. The results of the present study clearly demonstrate that (a) humidity control is essential for dustiness and deagglomeration testing, (b) that (industrial) deagglomeration, for example, for preparation of aerosol suspensions, can be manipulated by subjecting airborne particles to external energies, and (c) that the humidity of workplace air may be relevant when assessing occupational exposure to nanomaterial aerosols. Copyright © 2016 American Association for Aerosol Research


SummaryIn this paper, we present a unified hypothesis about «focusing» conjunctional adverbs and subordinating conjunctions in French. A similar hypothesis is to be taken to hold at all romance languages as we argue after Piot (2003) mentioned above. At first, differences are to be observed between this case (with "focus") and another case in which the same conjunctional items are purely conjunctions (coordinating or subordinating, but without "focus"). Then, we point out which are the common semantic and syntactic properties of the global "focus" operation related to all these items (parallelism between sentences and nominal phrases correlated by these conjunctional items, inclusion or union semantic relations between nominal phrases in some respects ensembles theory relations alike: the addition of syntactic-semantic specific items shares this inclusion or union relation). In particular, this study highlights, as a result, the role of the subject nature of the conjoined first sentence and the syntactic-semantic nature of the verb-phrase in the second sentence. Another study (to appear) will present the results about distinctions in this operation according to the particular significance of each different item.


Abstract Stamps, like any other non-book material such as banknotes, coins, posters, and maps, serve as recording media and source for information that illustrates the social, commercial, political, cultural, historical, and artistic aspects of a society in their own unique style. Using short and abstract text, color graphics and symbols on a limited surface area to communicate its contents is the key attribute that differentiates stamp from other non-book material. For this unique attribute, the stamp can be deemed both as a communication tool and a work of art. Conversely, stamp and other philatelic material in Turkey are largely regarded as collection materials rather than being a source for information. This study aims at performing a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the stamp collection at the National Library of Turkey as well as providing information on cataloging and maintaining of stamps and offering them to the attention of the public to stress the importance of stamps as a source for information rather than just a collection material.


The use of the conjunction 'and' rather than the preposition 'in' in the title of this essay is intended to convey both the descriptive limitations of the subject matter as well as the breadth of its potentialities. International law and its practitioners have devoted little attention to issues of affirmative action and currently dominant epistemic trends do not suggest any significant shift in focus occurring soon. By contrast, municipal proponents of affirmative action in countries such as the United States, embattled as they are in defending an increasingly controversial policy, have tried to bolster their arguments by reference to international law (Park, 1987; Anaya, 1994; Stark, 1996). In some ways, this unequal form of exchange prefigures what is most problematic about the evolution of norms in international law and of theories of affirmative action. This essay is a preliminary effort at excavating the implicated dilemmas and at offering some tentative guideposts for future discussions.


Counterfeit components have been defined as a growing concern in recent years as demand increases for reducing costs. In fact the Department of Commerce has identified a 141% increase in the last three years alone. A counterfeit is any item that is not as it is represented with the intention to deceive its buyer or user. The misrepresentation is often driven by the known presence of defects or other inadequacies in regards to performance. Whether it is used for a commercial, medical or military application, a counterfeit component could cause catastrophic failure at a critical moment. The market for long life electronics, based on commercial off the shelf (COTS) parts, such as those used in medical, military, commercial depot repair, or long term use applications (e.g. street and traffic lights, photovoltaic systems), seems to create a perfect scenario for counterfeiters. With these products, components wear out and need to be replaced long before the overall product fails. The availability of these devic...


Information retrieval is much more challenging than traditional small document collection retrieval. The main difference is the importance of correlations between related concepts in complex data structures. These structures have been studied by several information retrieval systems. This research began by performing a comprehensive review and comparison of several techniques of matrix dimensionality estimation and their respective effects on enhancing retrieval performance using singular value decomposition and latent semantic analysis. Two novel techniques have been introduced in this research to enhance intrinsic dimensionality estimation, the Multi-criteria Decision Weighted model to estimate matrix intrinsic dimensionality for large document collections and the Average Standard Estimator (ASE) for estimating data intrinsic dimensionality based on the singular value decomposition (SVD). ASE estimates the level of significance for singular values resulting from the singular value decomposition. ASE assumes that those variables with deep relations have sufficient correlation and that only those relationships with high singular values are significant and should be maintained. Experimental results over all possible dimensions indicated that ASE improved matrix intrinsic dimensionality estimation by including the effect of both singular values magnitude of decrease and random noise distracters. Analysis based on selected performance measures indicates that for each document collection there is a region of lower dimensionalities associated with improved retrieval performance. However, there was clear disagreement between the various performance measures on the model associated with best performance. The introduction of the multi-weighted model and Analytical Hierarchy Processing (AHP) analysis helped in ranking dimensionality estimation techniques and facilitates satisfying overall model goals by leveraging contradicting constrains and satisfying information retrieval priorities. ASE provided the best estimate for MEDLINE intrinsic dimensionality among all other dimensionality estimation techniques, and further, ASE improved precision and relative relevance by 10.2% and 7.4% respectively. AHP analysis indicates that ASE and the weighted model ranked the best among other methods with 30.3% and 20.3% in satisfying overall model goals in MEDLINE and 22.6% and 25.1% for CRANFIELD. The weighted model improved MEDLINE relative relevance by 4.4%, while the scree plot, weighted model, and ASE provided better estimation of data intrinsic dimensionality for CRANFIELD collection than Kaiser-Guttman and Percentage of variance. ASE dimensionality estimation technique provided a better estimation of CISI intrinsic dimensionality than all other tested methods since all methods except ASE tend to underestimate CISI document collection intrinsic dimensionality. ASE improved CISI average relative relevance and average search length by 28.4% and 22.0% respectively. This research provided evidence supporting a system using a weighted multi-criteria performance evaluation technique resulting in better overall performance than a single criteria ranking model. Thus, the weighted multi-criteria model with dimensionality reduction provides a more efficient implementation for information retrieval than using a full rank model.


Background : Thousands of masters athletes participate quadrennially in the World Masters Games (WMG). However, this unique cohort remains under-investigated. With a need for multifaceted solutions to the global obesity epidemic, investigating special populations such as those competing in sport at older ages may further understanding of the nexus between aging, physical activity and obesity.
Research question : To investigate body mass index (BMI) within the WMG competitors in context with national populations and health guidelines. To test the hypotheses prevalence of obesity in the WMG cohort would be less than comparative national populations and males would demonstrate a higher level of obesity than females.
Type of study : Cross-sectional comparative study.
Methods : 592 (44.3% male, 55.7% female) WMG soccer players aged 29-66yrs (mean 47.6, SD ± 6.9) were investigated via an online survey and compared to national populations, primarily a representative sample (n=9,501) of the Australian population (aged 30-65yrs).
Results : Analysis demonstrated a significantly (p<0.001) reduced classification of obesity compared to Australian and other national populations. The investigation revealed, amongst other findings, that male soccer players had higher BMI than females (p<0.001).
Conclusions : This study indicated that one key index of health, namely obesity, was on average far lower in WMG soccer players compared to a representative sample of population controls. This finding may indicate a lower risk for many diseases, such as type 2 diabetes or heart diseases, in masters soccer players.


In English, an overt secondary complementizer has been described as a grammatical violation, a claim that cannot be corroborated for Spanish. The present study fills this gap in the literature by asking whether the overt variety is associated with a decrement in acceptability judgment when compared to the null variety. Results from a speeded aural acceptability judgment task suggest that there is indeed a significant decrement in acceptability rating. This finding is robust across both statement and question constructions. A processing-based account is offered in order to unify results from both Spanish and English. Importantly, given that the native Spanish speakers do not fully reject the overt variety, the proposed account is meant to complement rather than to replace existing grammar-based accounts.


Ideation literature enjoys a rich and varied past. This past is also filled with a great deal of controversy and ambiguity. Until the advent of the microcomputer, the vast majority of studies focused on the use of verbally interactive groups and examined the performance differences between nominal groups and interactive groups. A very robust and consistent finding in the literature is that nominal groups are more productive (generate a larger quantity of unique ideas) than are interactive groups in a verbal environment. Since the advent of the microcomputer and electronic brainstorming, the comparison of nominal and interactive groups has shed a great deal of light on why the findings from the verbally interactive groups occur. Dennis and Valacich have even proposed that new brainstorming rules are needed in order to maximize the potential benefits of using electronic brainstorming (EBS). Despite the advances in this field over the past decade, a debate rages on concerning the performance of idea generating groups. This paper examines previous research through the lens of ThinkLets and shows how each of the results obtained in previous research can easily be accounted for, bringing clarity and order to these apparent conflicts.


The intestinal tract is exposed to a large variety of antigens such as food proteins, commensal bacteria and pathogens and contains one of the largest arms of the immune system. The intestinal immune system has to discriminate between harmless and harmful antigens, inducing tolerance to harmless antigens and active immunity towards pathogens and other harmful materials. Dendritic cells (DC) in the mucosal lamina propria (LP) are central to this process, as they sample bacteria from the local environment and constitutively migrate to the draining mesenteric lymph nodes (MLN), where they present antigen to naive T cells in order to direct an appropriate immune response. Despite their crucial role, understanding the function and phenotype of LP DC has been hampered by the fact that they share phenotypic markers with macrophages (mφ), which are the dominant population of mononuclear phagocyte (MP) in the LP. Recent work in our own and other laboratories has established gating strategies and phenotyping panels that allow precise discrimination between intestinal DC and mφ using the mφ specific markers CD64 and F4/80. In this way four bona fide DC subsets with distinct functions have been identified in adult LP based on their expression of CD11b and CD103 and a major aim of my project was to understand how these subsets might develop in the neonatal intestine.
At the beginning of my PhD, the laboratory had used these new methods to show that signal regulatory protein α (SIRPα), an inhibitory receptor expressed by myeloid cells, was expressed by mφ and most DC in the intestine, except for those expressing CD103 alone. In addition, mice carrying a non-signalling mutation in SIRPα (SIRPα mt) had a selective reduction in CD103+CD11b+ DC, a subset which is unique to the intestinal LP. This was the basis for the initial experiments of my project, described in Chapter 3, where I investigated if the phenotype in SIRPα mt mice was intrinsic to haematopoietic cells or not. To explore this, I generated bone marrow (BM) chimeric mice by reconstituting irradiated WT mice with SIRPα mt BM, or SIRPα mt animals with WT BM. These experiments suggested that the defect in CD103+CD11b+ DC was not replicated in DC derived from BM of SIRPα origin.
However as this seemed inconsistent with other data, I considered the possibility that
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the phenotype may have been lost with age, as the BM chimeric mice were considerably older than those used in the original studies of SIRPα function. However a comparison of DC subsets in the intestine of WT and SIRPα mt mice as they aged provided no conclusive evidence to support this idea.
As these experiments did show age-dependent effects on DC subsets, in Chapter 4, I went on to investigate how the DC populations appeared in the intestine and other tissues in the neonatal period. These experiments showed there were few CD103+CD11b+ DC present in the LP and migratory DC compartment of the MLN in the neonate and that as this population gradually increased in proportion with age, there was a reciprocal decrease in the relative proportion of CD103-CD11b+ DC. Interestingly, most of the changes in DC numbers in the intestine were found during the second or third week of life when the weaning process began. To validate my findings that there were few CD103+CD11b+ DC in the neonate and that this was not merely an absence of CD103 upregulation, I examined the expression of CD101 and Trem-1, markers that other work in the laboratory had suggested were specific to the CD103+CD11b+ DC lineage. My work showed that CD101 and Trem-1 were co- expressed by most CD103+CD11b+ DC in small intestine (SI) LP, as well as a small subset of CD103-CD11b+ DC in this tissue. Interestingly, Trem-1 was highly specific to the SI LP and migratory DC in the MLN, but absent from the colon and other tissues. CD101 expression was also only found on CD11b+ DC, but showed a less restricted pattern of distribution, being found in several tissues as well as the SI LP.
The relative timing of their development suggested there might be a relationship between CD103+CD11b+ and CD103-CD11b+ DC and this was supported by microarray analysis. I hypothesised that the CD103-CD11b+ DC that co-expressed CD101 and Trem-1 may be the cells that developed into CD103+CD11b+ DC. To investigate this I analysed how CD101 and Trem-1 expression changed with age amongst the DC subsets in SI LP, colonic LP (CLP) and MLN. The proportion of CD101+Trem-1+ cells increased amongst CD103+CD11b+ DC in the SI LP and MLN with age, while amongst CD103+CD11b+ DC in the CLP this decreased. This was not the same in CD103-CD11b+ DC, where CD101 and Trem-1 expression was more varied with age in all tissues. CD101 and Trem-1 were not expressed to any great
extent on CD103+CD11b- or CD103-CD11b- DC. The phenotypic development of the
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intestinal DC subsets was paralleled by the gradual upregulation of CD103 expression, while the production of retinoic acid (RA), as assessed by the AldefluorTM assay, was low early in life and did not attain adult levels until after weaning. Thus DC in the neonatal intestine take some time to acquire the adult pattern of phenotypic subsets and are functionally immature compared with their adult counterparts.
In Chapter 5, I used CD101 and Trem-1 to explore the ontogeny of intestinal DC subsets in CCR2-/- and SIRPα mt mice, both of which have selective defects in one particular group of DC. The selective defect seen amongst CD103+CD11b+ DC in adult SIRPα mt mice was more profound in mice at D7 and D14 of age, indicating that it may be intrinsic to this population and not highly dependent on environmental factors that change after birth. The expression of CD101 and Trem-1 by both CD103+CD11b+ and CD103-CD11b+ DC was reduced in SIRPα mt mice, again indicating that this entire lineage was affected by the lack of SIRPα signalling. However there was also a generalised defect in the numbers of all DC subsets in many tissues from early in life, suggesting there was compromised development, recruitment or survival of DC in the absence of SIRPα signalling. In contrast to the findings in SIRPα mt mice, more CD103+CD11b+ DC co-expressed CD101 and Trem-1 in CCR2-/- mice, while there were no differences in the expression of these molecules amongst CD103-CD11b+ DC. This may suggest that CCR2+ CD103-CD11b+ DC are not the cells that express CD101 and Trem-1 that are predicted to be the direct precursors of CD103+CD11b+ DC. I also examined the expression of DC growth factor receptors on DC subsets from mice of different ages, but no clear age or subset- related patterns of the expression of mRNA for Csf2ra, Irf4, Tgfbr1 and Rara could be observed. Next, I investigated whether Trem-1 played any role in DC development. Preliminary experiments in Trem-1-/- mice show no differences between any of the DC subsets, nor were there any selective effects on individual subsets when DC development from Trem-1-/- KO and WT BM was compared in competitive chimeras. However these experiments were difficult to interpret due to viability problems and because I found an unexpected defect in the ability of Trem-1-/- BM to generate all DC, irrespective of whether they expressed Trem-1 or not.
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The final experiments I carried out were to examine the role of the microbiota in driving the differentiation of intestinal DC subsets, based on the hypothesis that this could be one of the environmental factors that might influence events in the developing intestine. To this end I performed experiments in both antibiotic treated and germ free adult mice, both of which showed no significant phenotypic differences amongst any of the DC subsets. However the study of germ free mice was compromised by recent contamination of the colony and may not be the conclusive answer.
Together the data in this thesis have shown that the population of CD103+CD11b+ DC, which is unique to the intestine, is not present at birth. These cells gradually increase in frequency over time and as this occurs there is a reciprocal decrease in the frequency of CD103-CD11b+ DC. Along with other results, this leads to the idea that there may be a linear developmental pathway from CD103-CD11b+ DC to CD103+CD11b+ DC that is driven by non-microbial factors that are located preferentially in the small intestine. My project indicates that markers such as CD101 and Trem-1 may assist the dissection of this process and highlights the importance of the neonatal period for these events.


Title of dissertation: EVOLUTIONARY GAME THEORETIC MODELING OF DECISION MAKING AND CULTURE Patrick Roos, Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Dissertation directed by: Dana Nau Department of Computer Science Evolutionary Game Theory (EGT) has become an attractive framework for modeling human behavior because it provides tools to explicitly model the dynamics of behaviors in populations over time and does not require the strong rationality assumptions of classical game theory. Since the application of EGT to human behavior is still relatively new, many questions about human behavior and culture of interest to social scientists have yet to be examined through an EGT perspective to determine whether explanatory and predictive rather than merely descriptive insights can be gained. In this thesis, informed by social science data and under close collaboration with social scientists, I use EGT-based approaches to model and gain a qualitative understanding of various aspects of the evolution of human decision-making and culture. The specific phenomena I explore are i) risk preferences and their implications on the evolution of cooperation and ii) the relationship between societal threat and the propensity with which agents of societies punish norm-violating behavior. First, inspired by much empirical research that shows human risk-preferences to be state-dependent rather than expected-value-maximizing, I propose a simple sequential lottery game framework to study the evolution of human risk preferences. Using this game model in conjunction with known population dynamics provides the novel insight that for a large range of population dynamics, the interplay between risk-taking and sequentiality of choices allows state-dependent risk behavior to have an evolutionary advantage over expected-value maximization. I then demonstrate how this principle can facilitate the evolution of cooperation in classic game-theoretic games where cooperation entails risk. Next, inspired by striking differences across cultural groups in their willingness to punish norm violators, I develop evolutionary game models based on the Public Goods Game to study punishment behavior. Operationalizing various forms of societal threat and determining the relationship between these threats and evolved punishment propensities, these models show how cross-cultural differences in punishment behavior are at least partially determined by cultures' exposure to societal threats, providing support for social science theories hypothesizing that higher threat is a causal factor for higher punishment propensities. This work advances the state of the art of EGT and its applications to the social sciences by i) creating novel EGT models to study different phenomena of interest in human decision-making and culture, and ii) using these models to provide insights about the relationships between variables in these models and their impact on evolutionary outcomes. By developing and analyzing these models under close consideration of relevant social science data, this work not only advances our understanding of how to use evolutionary game and multi-agent system models to study social phenomena, but also lays the foundation for more complex explanatory and predictive tools applicable to behaviors in human populations.


This paper attempts to explore the relationship between openness and a Chinese firm's productivity using 1999–2002 panel data on 26 industries covering 2400 enterprises. The current literature has focused mainly on the relationship between productivity and exports, using country-level data, leaving a gap in the relationship between imports and productivity unfilled, in particular at the firm specific level. However, our study complements the existing literature by using the latest set of data, and more importantly, by examining the effects of exports and importing machinery on the firm's performance. Using the dynamic panel data econometrics technique, we find evidence that firms can improve productivity by importing more capital good and utilizing foreign technologies from technologically advanced economies. Finally the effects of importing capital goods on productivities and that of exporting activities are compared.


Student attitudes and approaches to problem solving in physics and astronomy may influence their development of expertise, as well as their engagement and perception of physics and astronomy as an academic endeavor. Introductory physics and astronomy undergraduate classes, which are gateways to a major in physics and astronomy, are foundational experiences in physical science education and development of problem solving skills. Understanding undergraduate students' attitudes and approaches may shed light on these formative experiences and what may be done to improve such experiences. On the other end of the spectrum, physics graduate students are expected to have developed significant problem solving expertise, and are potential future faculty. In their role of teaching assistants (TAs) and/or in a future capacity as instructors, graduate students may be responsible for making decisions on the types of problems used to shape their introductory students' experiences. These decisions by TAs may be crucial in the development of introductory student problem-solving expertise. Therefore, graduate students' attitudes about the instructional merits of different physics problems are worthy of examining in order to inform professional development programs for graduate teaching assistants. Investigating both undergraduate and graduate student perceptions about problem solving, we analyzed data related to gender, course and method of instruction, and type of problems preferred. Our data suggest that female introductory students and introductory students instructed in an evidence-based active engagement manner have more favorable attitudes and approaches to problem solving compared with male students and traditionally-instructed students. Similarly, introductory astronomy students were found to have more favorable attitudes than introductory physics students. Moreover, it was found that graduate students' preferences regarding the types of problems they prefer to use with their introductory students does not always reflect the potential instructional benefits afforded by those problems. These findings illuminate pathways toward improving both teaching and learning of problem solving in college physics and astronomy courses.


We demonstrate a natural bijection between a subclass of alternating sign matrices (ASMs) defined by a condition on the corresponding monotone triangle which we call the gapless condition and a subclass of totally symmetric self-complementary plane partitions defined by a similar condition on the corresponding fundamental domains or Magog triangles. We prove that, when restricted to permutations, this class of ASMs reduces to 312-avoiding permutations. This leads us to generalize pattern avoidance on permutations to a family of words associated to ASMs, which we call Gog words. We translate the gapless condition on monotone trangles into a pattern avoidance-like condition on Gog words associated. We estimate the number of gapless monotone triangles using a bijection with p-branchings.


George Sher's book 1 provides an elegant, concise, and subtle elaboration and defense of the epistemic component of that conception of responsibility that would appear to underlie our everyday ascriptions of responsibility. It is by far the most thorough treatment of this topic of which I am aware. In the first section of this review, I will give an exposition of the highlights of Sher's discussion. In the second section, I will undertake a critical evaluation of this discussion.


This article presents the findings of a qualitative study on the social inclusion of children with disabilities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and how this affects their achievement of valued life goals. The study is based on focus group discussions with children with disabilities and primary caregivers of such children. The thematic analysis is based on family quality of life and the capability approach, which are used to explain the effects of social inclusion (and exclusion) on children with disabilities and their families in three areas of quality of life: being, belonging, and becoming. The study also looked at how the social inclusion of children with disabilities can be actualised. The results of the study confirm the existence of considerable challenges to the social inclusion of children with disabilities in Addis Ababa, which is reflected in their capabilities. The results suggest that children with disabilities need assistance and support to achieve a good quality of life. They also indicate the need for the involvement of the wider community to support children with disabilities and their families to enhance the capability of such children, and so improve their family quality of life.


For one who is so intent on factual accuracy and precision in others, Anderson is surprisingly lenient on himself, and misrepresents our arguments. Some points of clarification are required before we proceed to address the more substantive issues regarding Pleistocene fishing and fishing technology. In the introduction to his critique, Anderson (above) states that "in regard to Wallacea, O'Connell et al. (2010: 60) cite" the evidence for fishing at Buang Merabak and Kilu Cave (Papua New Guinea), and Jerimalai (Timor-Leste) and that they conclude that "these data are best read to indicate angling from boats well offshore". Firstly, as outlined in O'Connor et al. (2011) Wallacea is a strictly defined biogeographic region which comprises the Indonesian Islands lying to the east of Sundaland and to the west of Sahul and Near Oceania. Kilu Cave and Buang Merabak are in Near Oceania, not in Wallacea, and while the two island regions share depauperate terrestrial faunas the biota of the two are very different.


A dynamic rational expectation storage models was developed to represent the Brazilian corn market in the late 90's. In theses years the Brazilian agricultural price policy changed from a buffer stock scheme to a producer price subsidy (Premio para Escoamento de Produto – PEP) and the Brazilian market was open to international trade. The model was estimated through stochastic dynamic programming. The results show that with open markets, exports and imports play the role of shocks absorbers, played by storage in closed economies. Results suggest that the producer price subsidy policy may lead the country to be an exporter, depending on the relative values between minimum price and export price at the cost of ever increasing government expenditures.


An artificial neural network (ANN) was implemented for modeling phenol mineralization in aqueous solution using the photo-Fenton process. The experiments were conducted in a photochemical multi-lamp reactor equipped with twelve fluorescent black light lamps (40 W each) irradiating UV light. A three-layer neural network was optimized in order to model the behavior of the process. The concentrations of ferrous ions and hydrogen peroxide, and the reaction time were introduced as inputs of the network and the efficiency of phenol mineralization was expressed in terms of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) as an output. Both concentrations of Fe(2+) and H2O2 were shown to be significant parameters on the phenol mineralization process. The ANN model provided the best result through the application of six neurons in the hidden layer, resulting in a high determination coefficient. The ANN model was shown to be efficient in the simulation of phenol mineralization through the photo-Fenton process using a multi-lamp reactor.


List of Tables, Figures, and Appendices Table of Contents Foreword, Ben L. Kedia Acknowledgments Introduction Part I. Indian Subcontinent 1. Quality in Business Education: A Study of the Indian Context, Vipin Gupta, Kamala Gollakota, and Ancheri Sreekuma 2. Governance of Publicly Funded Business Schools: The Current Debate in India, Vipin Gupta and Kamala Gollakota 3. Engineer as Entrepreneur: A Necessity for Successful Product Innovation in the Small-scale Industry Sector in India, V.P. Wani, T.K. Garg, and S.K. Sharma 4. Undergraduate Curriculum in India: The Corporate Context, Raj Agrawal 5. Management Education in Nepal: A View from the High Country, Alfred Rosenbloom and Bijay K.C. Part II. Russian Federation 6. Entrepreneurship Training in Postcommunist Europe, Leo Paul Dana 7. Recent Developments in Accounting Education in Russia, Galina G. Preobragenskaya and Robert W. McGee 8. Developing Key Skills in Russian Business Education: A Comparison Between U.K. and American Business Programs, Scott G. Dacko Part III. Transitioning Europe and Central Asia 9. Business Education in the Former Soviet Union Republic of Kazakhstan: A Former Dean's Perspective, Dai Rao and Liza Rybina 10. Entrepreneurial Behavior in the Academic Environment: The Case of the Lviv Institute of Management, Sharon V. Thach, Serhiy Gvozdiov, and Galen Hull 11. The Internationalization of Business Education in Lithuania: The Vilnius University Master Program in International Business, Vytautas Pranulis and Audra I. Mockaitis 12. Reforming Accounting Education in Armenia, Robert W. McGee 13. Educating Professors in a Transition Economy: A Case Study of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Robert W. McGee 14. Is Albania Ready for a Business School Model? Diagnosis and Prospects, Vera Ivanaj, Silvester Ivanaj, and Palok Kolnikaj Part IV. Latin America 15. Toward the Internationalization of Business Education in Latin America, Jaime Ortiz 16. University Entrepreneurship Education in Argentina: A Decade of Analysis, Sergio Postigo and Fernanda Tamborini 17. Undergraduate Students as a Source of Potential Entrepreneurs: A Comparative Study Between Italy and Argentina, Sergio Postigo, Donato Iacobucci, and Maria Fernanda Tamborini 18. Business Education in Chile: A Case Study for Successful Transition to Market Economy in Developing Countries, Maria-Teresa Lepeley Part V. Africa and Near East 19. Management Education in Developing Countries: What Can Business Schools Contribute? Guy Pfefferman 20. Education, Management, and the World's Work: Leadership Traits of Educators in Undeveloped and Developing Countries Focusing on Uganda in Sub-Saharan Africa, Romie F. Littrell and Peter Baguma 21. Research Capacity Building: A North-South Knowledge Transfer Project, Jan-Erik Jaensson and Lettice Rutashobya 22. Reengineering Business Education: A Case Study of the "Modular Curriculum" of Sakarya University, Rana Ozen Kutanis and Serkan Bayraktaroglu 23. Open vs. Closed Minds: Lessons in Management Education from the International Leadership Development Academy in Ghana, Earl N. Caldwell II and Vanessa Gail Perry Part VI. China 24. Distance Learning Education in China, Jonatan Jelen and Ilan Alon 25. Educating Future Marketing Professionals in China, Ilan Alon and Le Lu Conclusion: The Nexus Between Business Education and Economic Development About the Editors and Contributors Index.


Loggerhead sea turtles Caretta caretta are an endangered species exposed to anthro- pogenic hazards such as pelagic longline fisheries. Many loggerheads caught in these fisheries are alive when released from the gear, but many probably die soon after because of hook injuries or line entanglement. Robust estimates of post-release mortality are essential for stock assessment and evaluating the benefit of releasing turtles caught alive in the gear, yet none are available for any sea turtle species. Here, the post-release mortality of 40 loggerheads caught in the Hawaii-based pelagic longline fishery was investigated using satellite telemetry deployed by a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) observer program. We modelled time-to-failure of all transmitters using nonpara- metric statistical modelling (Kaplan-Meier-Turnbull, local regression) to derive survival and hazard functions for light and deep hooked loggerheads. There was a significant difference between the survival functions for light and deep hooked loggerheads within 90 d of release, but no difference between survival functions after this time. But satellite transmitters fail for many reasons (defects, battery failure, transmitter detachment, turtle death), which results in a hazard function that con- founds these competing risks. Hence we propose that it might not be possible to infer true post- release mortality based on satellite telemetry unless the cause of each transmitter failure is known, which is rarely the case. We discuss other survey design and statistical modelling challenges involved in the evaluation of post-release mortality based on satellite telemetry.


This project aims at leveraging the challenge of using 3D poses for Sign Language translation or animation by transforming 2D pose datasets into 3D ones. The goal is, using a 3D dataset of American Sign Language, to train a deep neural network that will predict the depth coordinates of the skeleton keypoints from 2D coordinates. Specifically, it will be explored a Long Short-Term Memory network, an architecture broadly used for sequence to sequence tasks. The conclusions extracted on this report are that despite some of the results being good enough to be used for actual 3D SL annotation, the majority of them lack the precision to do so, and they are too variant with respect to the dataset split. It is also concluded that the solutions approached here could be improved by adding some regularization methods, more powerful hardware to run better experiments, and new input features such as keypoint visibility.


In this paper, we consider optimizing submodular functions that are drawn from some unknown distribution. This setting arises, e.g., in recommender systems, where the utility of a subset of items may depend on a user-specific submodular utility function. In modern applications, the ground set of items is often so large that even the widely used (lazy) greedy algorithm is not efficient enough. As a remedy, we introduce the problem of sublinear time probabilistic submodular maximization: Given training examples of functions (e.g., via user feature vectors), we seek to reduce the ground set so that optimizing new functions drawn from the same distribution will provide almost as much value when restricted to the reduced ground set as when using the full set. We cast this problem as a two-stage submodular maximization and develop a novel efficient algorithm for this problem which offers a 1 2 (1− 1 e2 ) approximation ratio for general monotone submodular functions and general matroid constraints. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on several real-world applications where running the maximization problem on the reduced ground set leads to two orders of magnitude speed-up while incurring almost no loss.


We are now living in an era of multimedia data. The past decades have witnessed an unprecedented upsurge in "big data" in China. Mobile multimedia devices are becoming mainstream, promoting the conversion of big data technologies into practices. The deployment of big data provides people with great opportunities to deal with what were formerly great challenges.
 Against this background, research is ongoing to explore further possibilities in mobile multimedia developing. Mobile Multimedia Big Data Embedded Systems are transforming science, engineering, healthcare, medicine, finance, business, and ultimately our society itself. This special issue focuses on the state-of-the-art initiatives and the great promise in this field.
 We thank all of the authors who submitted papers for this special section. We are also highly appreciative of the reviewers who provided valuable review feedback on the submissions. The editor hopes that this special issue will attract researchers' interest and contribute to further developments in this field.