Abstract. We show in the present study that the unsaturated aldehydes 2-E-pentenal, 2-E-hexenal, and 3-Z-hexenal are biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) precursors for polar organosulfates with molecular weights (MWs) 230 and 214, which are also present in ambient fine aerosol from a forested site, i.e., K-puszta, Hungary. These results complement those obtained in a previous study showing that the green leaf aldehyde 3-Z-hexenal serves as a precursor for MW 226 organosulfates. Thus, in addition to isoprene, the green leaf volatiles (GLVs) 2-E-hexenal and 3-Z-hexenal, emitted due to plant stress (mechanical wounding or insect attack), and 2-E-pentenal, a photolysis product of 3-Z-hexenal, should be taken into account for secondary organic aerosol and organosulfate formation. Polar organosulfates are of climatic relevance because of their hydrophilic properties and cloud effects. Extensive use was made of organic mass spectrometry (MS) and detailed interpretation of MS data (i.e., ion trap MS and accurate mass measurements) to elucidate the chemical structures of the MW 230, 214 and 170 organosulfates formed from 2-E-pentenal and indirectly from 2-E-hexenal and 3-Z-hexenal. In addition, quantum chemical calculations were performed to explain the different mass spectral behavior of 2,3-dihydroxypentanoic acid sulfate derivatives, where only the isomer with the sulfate group at C-3 results in the loss of SO3. The MW 214 organosulfates formed from 2-E-pentenal are explained by epoxidation of the double bond in the gas phase and sulfation of the epoxy group with sulfuric acid in the particle phase through the same pathway as that proposed for 3-sulfooxy-2-hydroxy-2-methylpropanoic acid from the isoprene-related α,β-unsaturated aldehyde methacrolein in previous work (Lin et al., 2013). The MW 230 organosulfates formed from 2-E-pentenal are tentatively explained by a novel pathway, which bears features of the latter pathway but introduces an additional hydroxyl group at the C-4 position. Evidence is also presented that the MW 214 positional isomer, 2-sulfooxy-3-hydroxypentanoic acid, is unstable and decarboxylates, giving rise to 1-sulfooxy-2-hydroxybutane, a MW 170 organosulfate. Furthermore, evidence is obtained that lactic acid sulfate is generated from 2-E-pentenal. This chemistry could be important on a regional and local scale where GLV emissions such as from grasses and cereal crops are substantial.


With the growing abundance of unlabeled data in real-world tasks, researchers have to rely on the predictions given by black-boxed computational models. However, it is an often neglected fact that these models may be scoring high on accuracy for the wrong reasons. In this paper, we present a practical impact analysis of enabling model transparency by various presentation forms. For this purpose, we developed an environment that empowers non-computer scientists to become practicing data scientists in their own research field. We demonstrate the gradually increasing understanding of journalism historians through a real-world use case study on automatic genre classification of newspaper articles. This study is a first step towards trusted usage of machine learning pipelines in a responsible way.


Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) is characterized by a metabolic and hormonal disarray that may be more evident during exercise. However, the metabolic response to exercise of different intensities has not been evaluated in IDDM. We therefore used stable isotope techniques and indirect calorimetry to quantify substrate kinetics and oxidation during 30 min of exercise at 45 and 75% of maximal oxygen uptake (Vo2max) in seven men with IDDM (D group) infused with insulin at a constant basal rate. Normal control subjects (C group) matched for age, weight, and Vo2max were also studied. During moderate exercise, glucose uptake (Rd) was lower in the D than in the C group (15.3 ± 1.0 vs. 20.8 ± 1.6 μmol · min−1 · kg−1; P < 0.05). Carbohydrate oxidation also tended to be lower in the D group (71.0 ± 7.2 vs. 87.5 ± 10.6 μmol · min−1 · kg−1; P = 0.08). The D group relied on fat oxidation to a greater extent than did the C group (16.9 ± 1.1 vs. 10.4 ± 1.6 μmol · min−1 · kg−1; P < 0.05). The enhanced fat oxidation was not due to increased lipolysis because no differences occurred in glycerol release (Ra) or in plasma free fatty acid Ra or concentration, and the source of the extra lipid appeared to be intramuscular fat stores. These differences in substrate metabolism were not evident during exercise at 75% of Vo2max. The lower glucose uptake and oxidation in the diabetic subjects during moderate, but not intense, exercise suggest that glucose metabolism is regulated differently depending on exercise intensity. During moderate exercise, glucose uptake into muscle seems to be limiting, and the higher intramuscular triglyceride oxidation observed in IDDM might be a compensatory adaptation needed to maintain energy supply.


The impact of service-related trauma on those returning from deployment remains a considerable issue among United States service members. While some veterans experience few to no setbacks upon homecoming, many service members struggle to reintegrate into their stateside lives, families, and communities following deployment. Little is yet understood about how veterans utilize social support to process trauma, the impact of trauma on service members' abilities to access the support available to them, and whether social support may help soldiers with trauma to reintegrate into civilian communities with greater success. The purpose of this study is to add to the body of literature concerning service members' experiences of trauma, social support, and postdeployment reintegration. Over the past five years, the Veterans Administration has observed a 35% increase in the number of service members receiving mental health care. Moreover, completed suicides among service members are at an all-time high, with more service member lives lost to suicide than to combat in recent years (Blumenthal, Maliha, & Mathews, 2012; Donnelly, 2011; Pilkington, 2013). Much is now known about the risk and resiliency factors that contribute to a service member's ability to metabolize service-related trauma and reintegrate stateside. Yet, despite the resources devoted to studying these influences and the increased utilization of mental health services, outcomes for many returning veterans continue to be bleak. As the drawdown of OIF/OEF/OND troops continues and the potential deployment of ground troops to combat ISIS/ISIL looms, the demand for a comprehensive understanding of the unique needs of those service members experiencing reintegration difficulties can be expected to increase. Since stigma surrounding mental health treatment remains high among military service members (Johnson & Faller, 2011; Zoroya, 2010), many veterans will remain untreated for months, or even years, before life becomes uncomfortable or unmanageable enough to press them into treatment (Hoge et al., 2004). Civilian and military counselors, social workers, clergymen, public health educators, psychologists, psychiatrists, and service members themselves need to be better informed about the manifestations of combat-related trauma, the influence of social support on trauma symptomology, and the potential role of social support in ameliorating trauma response and facilitating service member reintegration. Mental health workers with a deeper knowledge of how trauma and social support interact to inform postdeployment experiences will be better suited to facilitate stateside transitions in service members. Accordingly, a Web-based assessment was deployed to examine the relationships among the variables of service-related trauma, postdeployment social support, and reintegration in a sample of veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The purpose of this study was to add to the body of literature concerning the homecoming experiences of present day warriors and increase practitioners' understanding of the role of social support in stateside reintegration for service members with trauma.


One of the important tasks of children's audiology is the early identification of hearing impairment in children and the timely commencement of rehabilitation activities, such as a hearing aid, and in the presence of deep hearing loss difficult to treat with traditional methods of hearing rehabilitation, cochlear implantation should be used. Currently, due to the introduction of objective methods of hearing evaluation in clinical practice,there is a real opportunity to detect hearing disorders in children from the βirst days of life including premature newborns. In this study, we analyzed data of hearing acuity audiological screening among children at the age of 0–17 years for the period from 2015 to 2016. During this period, 4,588,365 children were examined in 2015, and 4,562,489 children were examined in 2016, within the Republic of Kazakhstan.


A framework model to predict equipment failure has been keenly sought by asset intensive organizations. Timely prediction of equipment failure reduces direct and indirect costs, unexpected equipment shut-downs, accidents, and unwarranted emission risk. In this paper, the author has proposed an equipment reliability model, for equipment type pumps, designed by applying data extraction algorithm on equipment maintenance records residing in SAP application. Author has initially applied unsupervised learning technique of clustering and performed classes to cluster evaluation to ensure generalisation of the model. Thereafter as part of supervised learning, data from the finalized data model was fed into various Machine Learning (ML) algorithms where the classifier was trained, with an objective to predict equipment breakdown. The classifier was tested on test data sets where it was observed that support vector machine (SVM) and Decision Tree (DT) algorithms were able to classify and predict equipment breakdown with high accuracy and true positive rate (TPR) of more than 95 percent.


Objective Cancer screening policies and programmes should take account of public values and concerns. This study sought to determine the priorities, values and concerns of men who were 'fully informed' about the benefits and harms of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening; and empirically examine the value of a community jury in eliciting public values on PSA screening. Setting Community jury was convened on the Gold Coast, Queensland (Australia) to consider PSA screening benefits and harms, and whether government campaigns on PSA screening should be conducted. Participants 27 men (volunteers) aged 50–70 with no personal history of prostate cancer and willing to attend jury 6–7 April 2013: 12 were randomly allocated to jury (11 attended). Outcome measures A qualitative analysis was conducted of the jury deliberations (audio-recorded and transcribed) to elicit the jury's views and recommendations. A survey determined the impact of the jury process on participants' individual testing decisions compared with control group. Results The jury concluded governments should not invest in programmes focused on PSA screening directed at the public because the PSA test did not offer sufficient reassurance or benefit and could raise unnecessary alarm. It recommended an alternative programme to support general practitioners to provide patients with better quality and more consistent information about PSA screening. After the jury, participants were less likely to be tested in the future compared with the controls, but around half said they would still consider doing so. Conclusions The jury's unanimous verdict about government programmes was notable in the light of their divergent views on whether or not they would be screened themselves in the future. Community juries provide valuable insights into the priorities and concerns of men weighing up the benefits and harms of PSA screening. It will be important to assess the degree to which the findings are generalisable to other settings.


Despite recent federal investments and important developments in Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP), the Australian higher education sector lags behind other countries in these endeavours. The US, UK and some other European countries have already developed regulatory frameworks and established institutional and national support, including funding, that are widely available to institutions and academics interested in working with OER and OEP. Considering the evolving pace and demonstrable impact of OER and OEP on higher education globally, the need for further professional development and capacity-building to facilitate the adoption of OER and OEP in Australia is critical. In fact, previous research has identified a lack of appropriate academic staff professional development programs available for academics as one of the main reasons for the limited adoption of OER and OEP in Australian universities (Bossu, Brown & Bull, 2014).

This presentation features a project funded by the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) that attempts to bridge this gap and make a significant contribution to the adoption of OER and OEP in higher education in Australia. The project team aims to design, develop and pilot a free, open and online professional development course focussed on supporting curriculum design in higher education. Our specific aim is to develop the capacity of academics in Australia to adopt and incorporate OER and OEP to underpin innovative, engaging and agile curricula across the Australian higher education sector. This course is a micro Open Online Course (mOOC) where 'micro' refers to a sub-component of a full course or subject. The micro course developed in this project will lead to micro credentials, which recognise learning on a smaller scale than traditional university courses. The advantage, in this case, is that the micro course targets curriculum design in the context of technology enhanced learning (TEL) and is therefore able to provide just in time development for academic staff involved in contemporary curriculum design and renewal. The demonstration of learning outcomes by participants can also be assessed and validated for articulation into larger courses for credit. Such recognition of 'small batch learning' is well-suited to a model of course design which brings together learning across multiple partners, and can be readily adapted and incorporated into the professional development programs of different universities.

The project comprises two stages: (i) the Design and Development Stage, and (ii) the Pilot and Evaluation Stage. The first stage consists of the design and development of the micro course, including the identification of related open practices and existing OER for reuse in the micro course, and the development of new resources for future reuse. The course has an OEP-based learning design and has been developed in an open platform (WikiEducator). This stage also includes the planning of the course pilot and evaluation strategy. The second stage involves conducting the pilot, and collecting and analysing participants' feedback on their experience participating in the micro course through an evaluation activity, which is further discussed below. Outcomes of the evaluation will guide modifications to the micro course and will form the basis for the research component in this project. As an attempt to capture important and current curriculum design concepts and connect them with OEP principles, the following learning design approaches have been developed:

Learning Design Focus 1 Five open educational practice (OEP) concepts are explored through five key curriculum design topics. Learning pathways for each topic enable learners to approach the course sequentially, or sample specific topics based on need and interest. This also supports formal and informal learning, and for-credit and not-for-credit reuse options.

Learning Design Focus 2 The learning activities and major tasks utilise existing OER, applied to learners' own contexts and practice. Individual learning activities contribute directly and indirectly to the major tasks. In the first major task, for example, learners locate and evaluate relevant OER and curate these for an authentic learning and teaching scenario. Learners' expertise is shared via peer feedback on the process of OER evaluation and the resultant curated artefact.

Learning Design Focus 3 The project team's experience of designing and developing the course, and the decisions taken, are woven into the course as a meta-commentary. We highlight emergent issues in open educational practice, and the challenges for course design in particular. These include designing for culturally diverse learners, multiple institutional settings, open platforms, and the complexity of personal learning environments (PLEs) in action.

Evaluation Strategy The evaluation is embedded within the second major task - the Open Micro Course Reflection - in which learners may give consent for their responses to also serve as anonymous research data. The reflective writing task (max. 1000 words) is structured to prompt reflection on:

• Course experience
• Applicability of the course to learner's learning and teaching context
• Scope and relevance to learning and teaching in higher education
• Learning design
• Curation of resources and tools
• Opportunities to connect and share with course colleagues
• Specific improvements for future course iterations.

Following a thematic analysis of learners' responses, the micro course will be revised, and all learners will be informed how their collective feedback has shaped the next iteration of the course.

The presentation will discuss key issues faced by the project team while designing and developing the micro course. We will also explore the course design, development and evaluation strategy in detail. The intended audience for this paper and presentation spans academic staff, educational developers and educators in general.


Turbulent combustion is an important phenomenon in industrial applications, such as gas turbines, diesel engines, low NOx burners, spark-ignition engines and furnaces. Improvements are often necessary, since the applications have to be effective, economical and clean. Therefore, a better understanding of the turbulent combustion is needed. Numerical simulations, so-called Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), help to optimize and improve the applications in reacting flows. In comparison with experimental studies, CFD is relatively cheap. Although a complete simulation of a turbulent reacting flow, which involves all physical phenomena is not possible at present, the solutions of CFD is able to facilitate the device-scale analysis and the design of many new industrial combustion applications. The study of turbulent combustion is important from a scientific point of view as from a practical point of view. The use of the numerical models for industrial applications are first handled with a continuous cycle of 'the understanding of fundamentals of combustion', 'model developments', 'implementation of models in numerical simulations', and 'validation of the numerical results with experimental measurements'. When validating the numerical models, simple flame configurations are required. This fact brings the importance of studying the turbulent jet flows numerically and experimentally. Turbulent combustion research can be classified into two categories: non-premixed combustion and premixed combustion. In general, different modeling approaches are required to deal with each combustion category. New generation low emission/low fuel consumption combustion systems are characterized by a combined concept of two combustion categories, which is called partially premixed turbulent combustion. For example, lean premixed combustion systems for reducing NOx emissions in gas turbine combustors and gasoline direct injection spark-ignition engines for reducing the fuel consumption operate in partially premixed conditions. This work deals with the modeling of nonpremixed and partially premixed turbulent combustion. The two common models of nonpremixed combustion are the probability density function (PDF) transport equation models and laminar flamelet models. These models have their own advantages and disadvantages. The PDF transport equation models have the important advantage that the chemical source term appears in closed form. Additionally, the statistical distributions of scalar variables are obtained by calculated probability distributions. The laminar flamelet models have the advantage of strong coupling between chemical reaction and molecular transport. The nonpremixed combustion is classified into different regimes, depending on the flame structure. In evaluating the regime of applicability, the PDF transport equation models and the laminar flamelet models are disjoint. Since the molecular transport term requires modeling in the PDF transport equation, the tight statistical correlation between chemical activity and molecular transport is not considered in the PDF transport equation models. This is a constraint for the model. Therefore, PDF transport equation models are valid only when the turbulent mixing will still be sufficiently intense to restrain the formation of coherent structures with correlated chemical kinetics. On the other hand, when the turbulence intensities decrease, the interaction between chemical reaction and molecular transport gains importance. This regime is called flamelet regime and the laminar flamelet models are valid for this regime. The most promising approach in this direction appears to be extending the PDF methods that would properly account for the coupling between reaction and molecular transport in the flamelet regime. Therefore, the present work was focused on a new concept, combining two common types of non-premixed combustion models: the Eulerian composition PDF transport equation models and transient laminar flamelet models. The new model -the coupled TLFM/PDF modelaims to combine the advantages of the both models, while avoiding their disadvantages. The compromise here is to solve the conserved scalar –the mixture fractionwith the PDF transport equation and avoid using presumed PDF shapes as in the laminar flamelet models. The scalar dissipation rate, reaction progress variable and the turbulent time scale are the other decisive parameters, which are calculated. Then, the thermochemical variables; such as temperature and mass fractions of species are read from the transient flamelet libraries. The flamelet libraries consider for the correlation of chemistry and molecular transport. The scalar dissipation rate determines the extinction and the reaction progress variable determines the partially premixed conditions. The first stage of the study was to improve the transient laminar flamelet model of Ferreira (ETH,Zürich) and validate the PDF transport equation model with a 4-step reduced mechanism. The studies are applied to piloted jet flames, which are the target flames of an international workshop. The velocity, mixture fraction, temperature and mass fraction of species are evaluated. The second stage was to validate the new model, -the coupled TLFM/PDF modelfor the same test case and compare with the existing models, which are mentioned above. The capabilities of each model, their advantages and disadvantages are summarized. An additional study was the numerical study of an opposed jet flame with the PDF transport equation model.


Genes expressed during development regulate the emergent structure and function of the growing brain. Genetic mechanisms interact with environmental influences to predispose individuals to structural and functional brain disorders. The embryological sequence of nervous system development is relatively well understood. Longitudinal neuroimaging studies have highlighted that prolonged postnatal brain change is associated with acquisition of higher level cognitive skills such as language, memory and executive function. However, understanding of developmental neurobiology has not yet been extensively integrated with systems neuroscience, to identify key molecular and cellular mechanisms relevant to human cognition. Furthermore, little is known about genetic variants that constrain embryological and later brain development to influence neurological and cognitive outcomes in developmental disabilities and psychiatric disorders. Following the completion of the Human Genome Project, new technologies have enabled an extraordinary expansion in knowledge of genetic sequence variation, gene expression and epigenetics. Establishing convergence between developmental biology, systems neuroscience and genomics to understand the neurobiological bases for neurodevelopmental disorders remains an exciting challenge for the next decades.

Key Concepts:

Brain development involves differentiation of highly specialised cell types, in predictable temporal sequences, and their organisation into precise spatial systems.

Genetic variation interacts with environmental influences to predispose individuals to structural and functional brain disorders, by influencing developmental mechanisms.

Major events in early nervous system development include induction of the neural plate, neurogenesis, differentiation of neuronal and glial cell types, and migration of cells into their correct position.

Postnatal brain development, including maturation of white matter tracts and synaptic pruning in response to stimulation and behaviour, is also important, but the neurobiology is much less well understood.

Both early and later developmental processes may be disrupted by genetic mutations or influenced by sequence variation, but links from gene to brain to cognitive functions are complex and require investigation by convergent methods.

New methods of investigating genomic organisation and the structure and function of the living human brain are increasingly being integrated to elucidate molecular and cellular mechanisms of relevance to neurodevelopmental disorders.

Keywords:

development;
brain;
neurodevelopmental;
neurobiology;
disorders


We propose to demonstrate DRS, a novel dynamic resource scheduler module for distributed stream processing engines (SPEs). The main idea is to model the system response time as a function of input characteristics, including the volume, velocity, and distribution statistics of the streaming data. Based on this model, DRS decides on the amount of resource to allocate to each streaming operator to the system, so that (i) the system satisfies real-time response constraints at all times and (ii) total resource consumption is minimized. DRS is a key component to enable elasticity in a distributed SPE. DRS is a major outcome of QNRF/NPRP project titled «Real-Time Analytics over Sports Video Streams». As the title suggests, the goal of this project is to analyze sports (especially soccer) videos in real time, using distributed computing techniques. DRS fits the big picture of the project, as it enables dynamic provisioning of computational resources in response to changing data distribution in the input sports video streams. For instance, consider player detection based on region proposals, e.g., using Faster R-CNN. Even though the frame rate of the soccer video stays constant, the number of region proposals can vary drastically and unpredictably (e.g., in one frame there is only one player, and in the next frame there can be all 22 players). Consequently, the workload of the convolutional neural network that performs the detection for each region proposal varies over time. DRS ensures that there are also sufficient resources (e.g., GPUs) for processing the video in real time at any given time point; meanwhile, it avoids over-provisioning by accurately predicting the amount of resource needed. The demo will include both a poster, a video, and a live, on-site demo using a laptop computer connected to a cluster of remote machines. We will demonstrate to the audience how DRS works, when does it change resource allocation plan, how it executes the new allocation, and the underlying model of DRS. Acknowledgement: This publication was made possible by NPRP grant NPRP9-466-1-103 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The findings achieved herein are solely the responsibility of the author[s].


Background: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are common and important causes of morbidity and death in the elderly. Though the world elderly population is on a rise, data on the profile of adverse drug reactions (ADR) in Sub-Saharan Africa is still sparse. This study was aimed at determining the frequency of occurrence and patterns of ADR among admitted older Nigerians. Methods: This was a prospective study of patients aged 65 years and above admitted in a Nigerian tertiary health institute. ADR was defined using the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of ADR, while intensive event recording was used to detect ADR. Patients were grouped into those admitted with an adverse drug reaction (ADRad) and those that developed an adverse drug reaction during hospitalization (ADRin). Results: A total of 345 patients were surveyed. There were 23 cases (males: 14[60.9%], females: 9 [39.1%]) of ADRs giving an overall frequency of 6.7% (n=23/345) (95% CI: 4.0-9.3) [ADRin: 2.6% (n=9/345) (95% CI: 0.9-4.3), ADRad: 4.1% (n=14/345) (95% CI: 2.0-6.1)]. The ADRs were severe in 60.9% (n=14/23), moderate in 30.4% (n=7/23) and mild in 8.7% (n=2/23) of the cases. Gastrointestinal bleeding accounted for 39.1% (n=11/23) of ADRs while the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) and steroids were implicated in 56.5% (n=13/23) and 17.4% (n=4/23) of the ADR respectively. ADR accounted for 1.7% (n=6/345) of death among the medical elderly in-patients. Conclusions: Adverse drug reactions were common among the elderly inpatients and in most cases severe. NSAID induced gastrointestinal bleeding was the most frequent adverse drug reaction. .


Horizon detection in still images or video sequences contributes to applications like image understanding, automatic correction of image tilt and image quality enhancement. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for detecting the horizon line in digital images, which employs an edge-based and a new color-based horizon detection technique. The color-based detector calculates an estimate of the horizon line by analyzing the color transition in the clear sky areas of the image. The edge-based detector computes the horizon line by finding the most prominent line or edge in the image, based on Canny edge detection and Hough transformation. The proposed algorithm combines the two detectors into a hybrid detection system, thereby taking advantage of their complimentary strengths. We have applied the algorithm on a manually annotated set of images and evaluated the accuracy of the position and angle of the detected horizon line. The experiments indicate the usefulness of the proposed color-based detector (40% lower error vs. the edge-based detector) and the benefit of the adopted approach for combining the two individual detectors (57% and 17% lower error vs. the edge-based and the color-based detectors, respectively).


In recent years, the interest in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Learning Analytics research have highly increased in the areas of educational technologies. The emergence of new learning technologies requires new perspectives on Educational Design. When the areas of MOOCs, Learning Analytics and Instructional Design developed, the interest and connection between these three concepts became important for research. Learning Analytics provides progress information and other individualized support in MOOC settings where teachers are not able to provide learners with individual attention, which would be possible in a traditional face-to-face setting. Through collective views over the learning process, the overall progress and performance are indicated. Moreover, results can lead to Educational Design improvements. Every time a learner interacts with the system, data is created and collected. Many Educational Designers do not take advantage of this data and thereby, losing the possibility to impact the course design in a powerful way. This research work strongly focuses on the implication of Learning Analytics for Educational Design in MOOCs. Many methods and algorithms are used in the analytical learning process in MOOCs. Currently, a great variety of learning data exists. First, well-known Instructional Design patterns from different models were collected and listed. In a second step, through the collected data is used to point out which of these patterns can be answered by using Learning Analytics methods. The findings of the study show that it is possible to better understand which environments and experiences are best suited for learning by analyzing students' behaviors online. These results have great potential for a rapidly and easier understanding and optimization of the learning process for educators.


Penaeid trawls are poorly selective fishing gears; contributing towards approximately 27% of global marine fisheries discards. Various options are available for mitigating penaeid-trawl bycatch, including gear modifications such as 'bycatch reduction devices' (BRDs) or codend mesh-size regulations. A precursor to developing modifications is information about the key target and bycatch species in terms of their sizes and morphology. Here we describe the relationships between these characteristics for the southern Brazilian industrial penaeid-trawl fishery within a broader objective of proposing more selective trawl configurations. Catches were sampled during 37 tows. Fifty-two species were caught, including two loggerhead turtles, Caretta caretta , one green turtle, Chelonia mydas , as well as 61 individuals of seven ray species classified as Endangered or Critically Endangered. One penaeid ( Pleoticus muelleri ) and 11 teleosts were assessed for various morphological relationships. The data demonstrated that both the existing conventionally used 26 mm (stretched mesh opening; SMO) mesh and a legislated size of 30 mm SMO are too small. Using morphological relationships, we propose testing a minimum diamond-shaped mesh size of at least 35 mm and a square-mesh window in the top of the codend comprising at least 48 mm mesh. Such a configuration would probably retain penaeids and larger teleosts, but allow many small teleosts to escape. Anteriorly located grids are also required to reduce the bycatch of charismatic species like turtles and rays. Wide-scale use of such BRDs should considerably reduce bycatches and the ancillary impacts of regional penaeid-trawl fisheries.


This thesis presents three empirical essays on the interaction of housing and labour markets, which generates academically meaningful social outcomes. The first essay looks at whether one's tenure choice affects unemployment as this question has potential implications for homeownership subsidy schemes adopted in many advanced countries. The contribution of this essay is mainly methodological in that it rigorously deals with the endogeneity of homeownership
by taking an IV approach with instruments not adopted previously for studies in the UK in conjunction with panel data models. Using the local homeownership rate and parental homeownership status as an instrument, it shows that
homeownership does not increase the probability of being unemployed. The second essay highlights the role of local housing market information as a determinant of housing tenure. As the distance a mover wants to move increases,
the costs of collecting information on the destination housing market rise and the quality and amount of the information collected fall. Therefore, it is hypothesised
that the longer the distance moved, the more likely movers are to choose private renting over owner-occupation since homeownership decisions require a large amount of information on the target properties and their neighbourhoods. Empirical tests that control for relevant characteristics correlated with distance moved and tenure decisions provide supporting evidence for this hypothesis.
The last essay is the first UK study to confirm that commuting time has a negative influence on worker effort. The topic has important implications for transportation policy, employer's commuting welfare strategy and hiring decisions and individual worker's location decisions. As commuting is physically and mentally tiring, it could influence worker effort negatively. The hypothesis turns out to be true when the absenteeism rate and unpaid overtime hours are used as proxy variables for work effort.


Karl-Feliks Sauks has left a deep imprint on the history of economics and on the Faculty of Economics as researcher, teaching staff, head. He received a candidate's degree, became a professor and worked as a head of Chair for 17 years. F. Sauks spent his childhood and school-years in Tallinn and continued his studies at the University of Tartu. As a student, he worked as an assistant at the Chair of Economic History. Sauks graduated from the University of Tartu in 1940 with cum laude in public economics. Professional career in Tallinn after university was cut short (until July 1941) as an oppressive period followed: at first as a labourer at home front, later as lecturer in an Yegor'yevsk educational combine and supervisor for planned economy courses. After reevacuation, Sauks was appointed as lecturer in commercial economics at Tallinn Polytechnic Institute (Sept 1944). During this period (1949, 1950) a two-part commercial economics textbook was published, representing an important research area of Sauks. During 1951-1954 he worked as head of Chair of Commercial Economics. In 1952, he defended his thesis in Plekhanov Moscow Institute of the National Economy. A compre-hendsive work (301 p.) on Estonian commercial network had to be written in Russian. This became a second important research area for Sauks. In 1954, the Chair of Commercial Economy was transferred to Tartu State University. Sauks organised the launching of studies in Tartu, led the department of economics until 1962 and chair until 1968.
His research period (1960-1972) was abundant in terms of published work and preceded his election as professor. He began to extensively research into Estonian commerce development, his topic for doctoral dissertation. Sauks also participated in a research group studying the history of Tartu and Tallinn. This was included in anthologies much later: he as author of the parts concerning commerce history in Tallinn (1969, 1976) and Tartu (1980). It is also important to note that he supervised the laboratory of Commerce and research students. In 1972, he was appointed professor of Chair of Economics. The election was initiated by the faculty. Sauks had finished with his thesis, but the final touches would have taken time and effort. This, however, was forbidden by doctors because of the author's poor health. Docent Sauks was worthy of the position of professor because of his research work, including translation of chapters 13-18 of Capital volume III, as an author and as founder of the Faculty of Economics. He did not receive an invitation for a professor position until 1976. As of 1979, he worked as consultant professor because of his poor health. He died on 3 November 1983.


This paper aims to take stock of the concept of New Public Management (NPM) to see what has happened with the concept, and to consider recent concepts and ideas that challenge NPM. The reason is that there is still much talk about NPM, although many now seem to think that we have gone "beyond" NPM or are in a "post-NPM" public management situation. The second part of the paper will deal with self-styled conceptual alternatives to NPM. These began to appear in the last decade. With "self-styled" I mean that they explicitly present themselves as alternatives to NPM and address the shortcomings in NPM to promote other conceptualizations. Combined, these alternatives approach a coherent research agenda. To be able to discuss these matters, the argument is presented through a theoretical approach that views public management reform as institutional change. This approach is now common in public management reform studies (Pollitt & Bouckaert 2004; Christensen & Lægreid, 2001, 2007, 2011), Knill (1999) and Barzelay (2001) and colleagues (Barzelay & Gallego 2010). The analytical framework comes from theories of public policymaking and theories of historical institutionalism in political science.


Paddle feeders are devices commonly used in rotary tablet presses to facilitate constant and efficient die filling. Adversely, the shear stress applied by the rotating paddles is known to affect the bulk properties of the processed powder dependent on the residence time. This study focuses on the residence time distribution (RTD) of two commonly applied excipients (microcrystalline cellulose, MCC; dicalcium phosphate, DCP), which exhibit different flow properties inside rotary tablet presses. To realistically depict the powder flow inside rotary tablet presses, custom-made tracer powder was developed. The applied method was proven to be appropriate as the tracer and bulk powder showed comparable properties. The RTDs of both materials were examined in two differently scaled rotary tablet presses and the influence of process parameters was determined. To analyze RTDs independent of the mass flow, the normalized variance was used to quantify intermixing. Substantial differences between both materials and tablet presses were found. Broader RTDs were measured for the poorer flowing MCC as well as for the production scale press. The obtained results can be used to improve the general understanding of powder flow inside rotary tablet presses and amplify scale-up and continuous production process development.


Cancer incidence is increasing, and cancer is a leading cause of death in the Scandinavian countries, and at the same time more efficient but very expensive new treatment options are available. Based on the increasing demand, high expectations and limited resources, crises in public legitimacy of cancer care evolved in the three Scandinavian countries. Similar cancer care reforms were introduced in the period 2007-2015 to address the crisis. In this article we explore processes triggering these reforms in countries with similar and well-developed health care systems. The common objective was the need to reduce time from referral to start treatment, and the tool introduced to accomplish this was integrated care pathways for cancer diagnosis, that is Cancer Patient Pathways. This study investigates the process by drawing on interviews with key actors and public documents. We identified three main logics in play; the economic-administrative, the medical and the patient-related logic and explored how institutional entrepreneurs skillfully aligned these logics. The article contributes by describing the triggering processes on politically initiated similar reforms in the three countries studied and also contributes to a better understanding on the orchestrating of politically initiated health care reforms with the intention to change medical practice in hospitals.


STAIKOVA, G. and N. STANCHEVA, 2009. Effect of some factors on the live weight in sheep at different ages from the Northeast Bulgarian fine fleece breed – Shumen type. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 15: 365-372 A study was carried out in order to establish the influence of some sources of specific variance on the live weight in 1981 sheep at different ages, from the Northeast Bulgarian fine fleece breed – Shumen type, born during the period 1990 – 2005. All estimations and the variance analysis were done on the basis of multifactor linear statistical models (Harvey, 1990). The year of birth significantly influenced the live weight at all ages studied. Differentiation between the breeding lines by the live weight was established. The type of mating did not significantly influence the live weight.


In Berlin, self-built huts and sheds were a part of the urban fabric for much of the twentieth century. They started to proliferate after World War I and were particularly common after the Second World War, when many Berliners had lost their homes in the bombings. These unplanned buildings were, ironically, connected to one of the icons of German orderliness: the allotment. Often depicted as gnomeadorned strongholds of petty bourgeois virtues, garden plots were also the site of mostly unauthorized architecture and gave rise to debates about public health and civic order. In The Hut on the Garden Plot: Informal Architecture in
Twentieth-Century Berlin, Florian Urban argues that the evolution and subsequent eradication of informal architecture was an inherent factor in the formation of the modern, functionally separated city. Modern Berlin evolved from a struggle between formal and informal, regulation and unruliness, modernization and lifestyles that appeared to be premodern. In this context, the ambivalent figure of the allotment dweller, who was simultaneously construed as a dutiful holder of rooted-to-the-soil values and as a potential threat to the well-ordered urban environment, evidences the ambiguity of many conceptual foundations on which the modern city was built.


Novel biomarkers, such as circulating (auto)antibody signatures, may improve early detection and treatment of ruptured atherosclerotic lesions and accompanying cardiovascular events, such as myocardial infarction. Using a phage-display library derived from cDNAs preferentially expressed in ruptured peripheral human atherosclerotic plaques, we performed serological antigen selection to isolate displayed cDNA products specifically interacting with antibodies in sera from patients with proven ruptured peripheral atherosclerotic lesions. Two cDNA products were subsequently evaluated on a validation series of patients with peripheral atherosclerotic lesions, healthy controls, and patients with coronary artery disease at different stages. Our biomarker set was able to discriminate between patients with peripheral ruptured lesions and patients with peripheral stable plaques with 100% specificity and 76% sensitivity. Furthermore, 93% of patients with an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) tested positive for our biomarkers, whereas all patients with stable angina pectoris tested negative. Moreover, 90% of AMI patients who initially tested negative for troponin T, for which a positive result is known to indicate myocardial infarction, tested positive for our biomarkers upon hospital admission. In conclusion, antibody profiling constitutes a promising approach for noninvasive diagnosis of atherosclerotic lesions, because a positive serum response against a set of 2 cDNA products showed a strong association with the presence of ruptured peripheral atherosclerotic lesions and myocardial infarction.


Economists are puzzled by the behavior of U.S. inflation since the Great Recession of 2008-2009, and many suggest that the Phillips curve relating inflation to unemployment has broken down. This paper argues that inflation behavior is easier to understand if we divide headline inflation into core and transitory components, and if core inflation is measured by the weighted median of industry inflation rates. This weighted median is less volatile than the traditional measure of core inflation, the inflation rate excluding food and energy prices, because it filters out large price changes in all industries. We illustrate the usefulness of the weighted median with a case study of inflation in 2017 and early 2018. We also show that a Phillips curve relating the weighted median to unemployment appears clearly in the data for 1985-2017, with no sign of a breakdown in 2008.


Objective To evaluate the inter-rater reliability of semiautomated segmentation of spectral domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) macular volume scans. Methods Macular OCT volume scans of left eyes from 17 subjects (8 patients with MS and 9 healthy controls) were automatically segmented by Heidelberg Eye Explorer (v220.127.116.11) beta-software (Spectralis Viewing Module v126.96.36.199), followed by manual correction by 5 experienced operators from 5 different academic centers. The mean thicknesses within a 6-mm area around the fovea were computed for the retinal nerve fiber layer, ganglion cell layer (GCL), inner plexiform layer (IPL), inner nuclear layer, outer plexiform layer (OPL), and outer nuclear layer (ONL). Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated for mean layer thickness values. Spatial distribution of ICC values for the segmented volume scans was investigated using heat maps. Results Agreement between raters was good (ICC > 0.84) for all retinal layers, particularly inner retinal layers showed excellent agreement across raters (ICC > 0.96). Spatial distribution of ICC showed highest values in the perimacular area, whereas the ICCs were poorer for the foveola and the more peripheral macular area. The automated segmentation of the OPL and ONL required the most correction and showed the least agreement, whereas differences were less prominent for the remaining layers. Conclusions Automated segmentation with manual correction of macular OCT scans is highly reliable when performed by experienced raters and can thus be applied in multicenter settings. Reliability can be improved by restricting analysis to the perimacular area and compound segmentation of GCL and IPL.


In November 2009, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Consumer and Community Affairs division convened "Foreclosures in Wisconsin: Responses and Resources for Living Beyond the Bubble." This conference was one in a series that have been held over the past several years to help address Wisconsin's escalating residential mortgage foreclosures. The conference featured experts from the lending industry, nonprofits, government, policy institutions, and the judicial system to discuss how Wisconsin might best deploy resources to respond to the aftermath of the housing bubble and stem foreclosures. ; The objectives of the conference were to learn the progress of the Making Home Affordable (MHA) Program; document lessons from the first round of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP); assess mediation efforts in Wisconsin's (court-based) foreclosure process; hear recommendations of the Speaker's Taskforce On Preventing (S.T.O.P.) Home Foreclosures and their progress on legislative steps; consider the social impacts of foreclosure and the need for related research; and discuss the future of housing policy, alternatives to current practice, and the "new normal." The conference also provided an opportunity to hear from elected and appointed Wisconsin officials on solutions to the foreclosure crisis. This article condenses the essential ideas raised at the conference and updates on developing issues.


This paper describes an experiment to investigate if the addition of non-speech sounds to the drag and drop operation would increase usability. There are several problems with drag and drop that can result in the user not dropping a source icon over the target correctly. These occur because the source can visually obscure the target making it hard to see if the target is highlighted. Structured non-speech sounds called earcons were added to indicate when the source was over the target, when it had been dropped on the target and when it had not. Results from the experiment showed that subjective workload was significantly reduced, and overall preference significantly increased, without sonically-enhanced drag and drop being more annoying to use. Results also showed that time taken to do drag and drop was significantly reduced. Therefore, sonic-enhancement can significantly improve the usability of drag and drop.


Volga-Volga (1938), the third musical comedy made by the Soviet director-composer team of Grigory Aleksandrov and Isaak Dunayevsky, is one of the most emblematic films of the Soviet 1930s. Indeed, it won its makers a Stalin Prize in 1941 and was supposedly Stalin's favorite film. But Volga-Volga was also a success with Soviet viewers: they flocked by the millions to see the film, which was still playing in theaters at the outbreak of war in June 1941. As a combination of slapstick comedy and memorable musical numbers that addressed an appropriately Soviet theme, the film clearly spoke to both the masses and officials. But what does Volga-Volga have to say? The film tells the story of a musical "civil war" between a folk ensemble and a classical orchestra, both of which head to Moscow to participate in the national musical Olympiad. Due to "accidental" circumstances, the two ensembles eventually join forces and win the competition with a performance of the "Song about the Volga." Though this merger of musical forces and styles seems to serve predominantly comedic purposes, the "story of a song" can also be read as a commentary on the development of music in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. In a period marked by debates and uncertainties in all realms of musical production about what exactly Socialist Realist music was to be, Aleksandrov and Dunayevsky offer as their solution a musical practice that advocates inclusivity by seeking to combine features from many types of music into a distinctly Soviet blend. This thematization of music is enhanced by the nature of the film musical, whose stylistic reliance on music as a bridge between real and ideal worlds embodies the aesthetic demands of Socialist Realism. Furthermore, the film can be understood as an instance of what film scholar Miriam Hansen calls "vernacular modernism," namely, the adaptation of an American cinematic model into a foreign context as a tool for reflecting and refracting experiences of modernity.


Conducting copolymers were synthesized via the electrochemical oxidation of pyrrole (Py) in the presence of the monomer 1,12-bis(2-thienyl)-2,5,8,11-tetraoxadodecane (I). The presence of monomer I in the electrolytic solution greatly changed the CV behavior of Py during its potensiodynamic polymerization. The electroactivity of poly(I-co-Py) increased with the increasing amount of I in the comonomer mixture. Copolymer films were prepared via constant potential electrolysis in an electrolytic solution containing 0.1 M tetrabutylammonium hexafluorophosphate (TBAPF6) dissolved in acetonitrile. The spectroelectrochemical properties of the films were investigated using UV-VIS spectroscopy.


The aim of the study was to construct a framework to determine interconnectivity among public transport routes using the information provided by Google Transit and to apply this framework to appraise and compare the network connectivity of Auckland, London, and Paris. Google Transit provides both spatial and network data that are sourced directly from transport agencies, thus making it an efficient tool for retrieving the data required to measure connectivity. This study contributes to previously-developed methodologies for determining connectivity by (a) including the qualitative measures, which are smoothness of transfer and information availability, along with the quantitative measures, and (b) using Google Transit as an alternative data source. The results showed that the overall public transport connectivity of the network in Paris is better than that in London and Auckland. Auckland's network had the most poor connectivity values. Findings suggest that Auckland's network would benefit from more integrated services.


An 125I-labelled calmodulin gel overlay procedure was used to direct calmodulin-binding proteins in bovine spermatozoa and seminal plasma. Several calmodulin-binding proteins with molecular masses ranging from 12 to > 200 kDa were detected in epididymal and ejaculated spermatozoa. Certain of these proteins exhibited preferential calmodulin-binding in the presence of Ca2+, while others exhibited binding only in its absence. In seminal plasma, only two major proteins with molecular masses of 15 and 16 kDa showed a higher calmodulin-binding activity in the presence of Ca2+, whereas several polypeptides in the range of 6-17 kDa bound higher amounts of radiolabelled calmodulin in the absence of Ca2+. Our previous study has shown that a group of closely related major proteins, designated as BSP-A1, BSP-A2, BSP-A3 and BSP-30 kDa, isolated from bovine seminal plasma (BSP) have molecular masses in the range of 15-30 kDa. This prompted us to investigate whether these polypeptides from bovine seminal fluid interact with calmodulin. The results indicated that calmodulin binds to purified BSP-A1, -A2, -A3 and BSP-30 kDa proteins in the presence and absence of Ca2+. Furthermore, many polypeptides of low molecular mass (6-14 kDa) in bovine seminal plasma that crossreact with these BSP proteins also show high calmodulin-binding activity, particularly in the absence of calcium. This was further demonstrated following the limited proteolysis of the BSP proteins. Several tryptic-peptides of BSP-A1/-A2 and BSP-30 kDa exhibited higher calmodulin-binding activity than the intact BSP proteins. In view of the key role of Ca2+ in triggering the acrosome reaction and the role of calmodulin in intracellular transport of calcium, it is suggested that BSP proteins are involved in sperm capacitation and the acrosome reaction.


This paper quantitatively analyzes how policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic should differ in developing countries. To do so we build an incomplete-markets macroeconomic model with heterogeneous agents and epidemiological dynamics that features several of the key distinctions between advanced and developing economies germane to the pandemic. We focus in particular on differences in: age structure, fiscal capacity, healthcare capacity, informality, and the frequency of contacts between individuals at home, work, school and other locations. The model predicts that blanket lockdowns are less effective in developing countries, saving fewer lives per unit of lost GDP. In contrast, age-specific policies are even more effective, since they focus scarce public funds on shielding the smaller population of older individuals. School closures are also more effective at saving lives in developing countries, providing a greater reduction in secondary transmissions between children and older adults at home.


Under the slogan "Our heritage: where the past meets the future", European Union has declared 2018 as the European Year of Cultural Heritage in an unprecedented attempt to enable people to become more interested in and involved with the cultural heritage, and to recognize its universal value and importance in the future development of the individuals, communities and societies. In spite of an increased acknowledgement and extending capitalization, the employment of the cultural heritage, in its tangible and intangible forms, as an asset the local communities may benefit from is still limited. The contribution of the cultural heritage to the sustainable development remains less relevant and illustrates the extent toward which individuals and the local communities, consequently societies, are able to preserve, promote and make the most of this forgotten resource. Paper explores the connections between the cultural heritage, marketing and the sustainable development of the local communities based on the secondary data regarding the involvement, perceived importance, access and participation related to the cultural heritage in order to assess if local communities grasp and consider the potential of this heritage to support their sustainable development through of an appropriate marketing effort. Keywords: Cultural heritage, sustainable development, local communities, marketing


Duke Alfonso d'Este commissioned subjects from ancient texts to decorate his private suite, but a single episode from a literary source has yet to be satisfactorily argued of his first commission, Giovanni Bellini's Feast of the Gods. A broader consideration of the sources, however, reveals that the guests in attendance at this painted fete are not a random collection of deities. Rather, their affiliations and proximity to each other appear well grounded in Macrobius's Saturnalia and in Ovid's Fasti, and uncover new pictorial meaning for this much-researched canvas. Moreover, this subject meaningfully connects this painting with the duke's later commissions from Titian, particularly with his Bacchanal of the Andrians. Further study into the Este family history and the patron's aims and inclinations explains problematic iconographical details within the painting, and clarifies Bellini's allegory for Duke Alfonso, of wealth through horticultural abundance for Ferrara.


At present, the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (KLCH) is facing problems in the disposal
of their solid wastes due to the rapid increase in the amount generated as a result of
rapid urbanisation. Existing landfill site at Taman Beringin is already exhausted
and should be closed at any time. Due to this problem, there is a move to treat the
solid wastes by thermal treatment technologies. Data on the characteristics of the
solid waste is lacking and not reliable for the evaluation of these technologies. In
addition, models for estimating the heating value based on the characteristics of
Kuala Lumpur wastes are not available. This study was carried out to determine
the characteristics and consequently develop the models for estimating the heating
value of the Kuala Lumpur solid wastes.
The study analyses and evaluates the physical and chemical characteristics of
Kuala Lumpur solid wastes. The study was conducted at Taman Beringin Landfill from Mac 2000 to Jun 2000. A total of 26 samples were obtained from various
sources including residential, commercial, institutional, cleansing and light
industrial wastes. The truckload method was used for the sampling and
characterising the physical components of wastes. The proximate and ultimate
analysis of the wastes were also carried out.


Although constitutional scholars frequently analyze the relationships between courts and legislatures, they rarely examine the relationship between courts and statutes. This Article is the first to systematically examine how the presence or absence of a statute can influence constitutional doctrine. It analyzes pairs of cases that raise similar constitutional questions, but differ with respect to whether the court is reviewing the constitutionality of legislation. These case pairs suggest that statutes place significant constraints on constitutional decisionmaking. Specifically, in cases that involve a challenge to a statute, courts are less inclined to use doctrine to regulate the behavior of nonjudicial officials. By contrast, in cases where no statute or regulation is at issue, courts are more likely to construct regulatory doctrinal rules. The Article supports this hypothesis by identifying three structural reasons why statutes are likely to have this influence on constitutional decisionmaking. By drawing upon work in legal philosophy and the social sciences, this Article shows that statutes can shape constitutional law in ways that judges fail to reflect upon, and usually take for granted.


Looking at women's power in the home, in the workplace, and in politics from a political economy perspective, Torben Iversen and Frances Rosenbluth demonstrate that equality is tied to demand for women's labour outside the home, which is a function of structural, political, and institutional conditions. They go on to explain several anomalies of modern gender politics: why women vote differently from men; why women are better represented in the workforce in the United States than in other countries but less well represented in politics; why men share more of the household work in some countries than in others; and, why some countries have such low fertility rates. The first book to integrate the micro-level of families with the macro-level of national institutions, "Women, Work, and Politics" presents an original and groundbreaking approach to gender inequality.


In modern medicine Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has been widely used for the detection of diseases, like brain tumor, breast cancer or heart disease, to name a few. In order to improve the image quality, the concept of high-field and ultra-high-field imaging has been intensively investigated over the last three decades. However, associated with the increased magnetic field strength various problems and challenges occur. The inhomogeneous B1-field distribution and decreased penetration depth into the subject to be imaged are two critical issues.

The concept of High Impedance Surface (HIS) has been successfully applied in a number of antenna applications. The most relevant achievements are an improved radiation efficiency especially for low profile antennas and a decreased mutual coupling between adjacent antennas or antenna ports. In this thesis, an approach to improve the B1 distribution of radiofrequency (RF) coils in terms of homogeneity and penetration depth by utilizing a HIS shield is presented.

First, fundamental investigations are carried out to verify the concept of using a shield with large surface impedance, which is modeled here by a Surface Impedance Boundary Condition (SIBC), to enhance the B1 distribution of RF coils. Different SIBCs are considered and their effects on the electromagnetic (EM) field of RF coils are studied. Next, the shield with a large surface impedance is realized by a periodic HIS structure, where two approaches (multi-layer uni-planar and mushroom-like topologies) are introduced in the lattice design of the HIS structure. The proposed HIS structures are evaluated via their reflection phase and dispersion diagram, which are based on unit cell simulation; as well as the bandgap property based on transmission line (TL) models. Then, the realized HIS shield based on the uni-planar topology is applied to the RF coils, and the concept of using HIS shield to improve the B1 distribution is confirmed through full-wave simulations and experimental results. Additionally, we consider another important parameter for a multi-channel dipole coil array consisting of several array elements—the coupling characteristic of the coil array, especially between the neighboring elements (the worst case scenario). The last chapter provides a brief summary and discussion, as well as an outlook of the future work.


This paper examines the workings of the English royal courts in the thirteenth century through one of their practices — pardoning — and argues that the king and his officials could see courts not just as venues for justice, but also as institutions through which the king could see to the health of his own soul. The royal courts and royal administration of the thirteenth century used the power to pardon to relieve people of many legal penalties, from amercements (what we would today call fines) to the death penalty in felony cases. Scholars who have studied these pardons have tended to use the medieval sources to try to find the rules of pardoning. They have assumed that pardoning followed some kind of legal logic, and that pardons were given to the worthy. Amercement pardons were given to those who could not afford to pay and felony pardons were given to those who were not culpable. This paper looks at pardons that cannot be explained according to this legal logic. It looks at the many pardons explicitly made "for the sake of the king's soul," many of which have nothing to do with the killer's culpability or the amerced party's ability to pay, and argues that they operated according to a different logic: the logic of alms. Pardons were granted or denied based on their ability to salve the king's soul, leading to results that appear to be anomalous to us today — such as a blanket pardon for most felons that excluded Jews — but which would have appeared to be logical to people who were accustomed to view the courts not solely as agents of justice, but as extensions of the king's person.


For the most recent CMOS feature sizes (e.g., 90nm and 65nm), leakage power dissipation has become an overriding concern for VLSI circuit designers. ITRS reports that leakage power dissipation may come to dominate total power consumption as presented in ITRS by Semiconductor Industry Association, 2005. We propose a novel approach, named "sleepy keeper," which reduces leakage current while saving exact logic state. Sleepy keeper uses traditional sleep transistors plus two additional transistors - driven by a gate's already calculated output - to save state during sleep mode. Dual Vth values can be applied to sleepy keeper in order to dramatically reduce subthreshold leakage current. In short, like the sleepy stack approach, sleepy keeper achieves leakage power reduction equivalent to the sleep and zigzag approaches but with the advantage of maintaining exact logic state (instead of destroying the logic state when sleep mode is entered). Based on experiments with a 4-bit adder circuit, sleepy keeper approach achieves up to 49% less delay and 49% less area than the sleepy stack approach. Unfortunately, sleepy keeper causes additional dynamic power consumption, approximately 15% more than the base case (no sleep transistors used at all). However, for applications spending the vast majority of time in sleep or standby mode while also requiring low area, high performance and maintenance of exact logic state, the sleepy keeper approach provides a new weapon in a VLSI designer's arsenal


This study takes a repertoire-oriented approach to examining how social and traditional media usage affect political engagement in China. Building on previous studies and giving them a new direction, we examine how various social media platforms and traditional media outlets are combined in cross-media repertoires of young Chinese adults. We do this with the help of survey data collected in mainland China. Using the Step-3 approach of latent class analysis, we then consider how these repertoires can be explained by various individual and contextual factors and what impact the repertoires themselves have on various forms of political involvement. The study identifies 6 distinctive media repertoires: digitally focused, communication oriented, minimal users, moderate omnivores, voracious omnivores, and print interested. Repertoires are mainly correlated with age, education, and perceived media credibility. In China, young adults with the most omnivorous and print-oriented media repertoires display the highest levels of political trust, political interest, and online political engagement. The study also discusses the implications of these results.


In a 1999 interview in Boutures, Yanick Lahens noted the Haitian writers' 'reluctance' toward the short-story. Indeed, the short story genre would have remained the best kept secret of Haitian literary history hadn't it been for Pierre-Raymond Dumas. He painstakingly compiled two anthologies of stories scattered in numerous Haitian journals/newspapers published from the end of the nineteenth century to 1991 (1) and played a key role in re-publishing several short-story collections which were out of print for many decades. In a seminal article published in a special issue of Notre Librairie dedicated to Haitian literature (2) he tried to establish the main features of the Haitian short-story. This was not an easy task since the genre, whose origin is found in the oral tradition of folk-tales, has no fixed canon and leaves itself open for experimentation. According to him, the main difficulty in presenting the Haitian short-story laid in the diversity and the mixing of narrative techniques and strategies, hence an ambiguous genre (Dumas 101). In this paper, we will first give an overview of the genre based on the stories assembled in the two-volume anthology edited by Dumas and in a second section, we will introduce two contemporary novelists whom I consider the masters of the genre. One is Gary Victor, the very popular author of more than a hundred stories; the other is Yanick Lahens, an established literary critic who turned to creative fiction in the nineties, during the troubled political period of 1991-1994. The Short Story in Haitian Literature: An Overview. The Haitian short story proceeds from a double tradition: on the one hand, the French literary tradition which goes far back into the sixteenth century and beyond to the Greek and Latin tradition; on the other hand, the African oral tradition of story-telling. One cannot subscribe to Dumas's statement that ambiguity is 'unique' to the Haitian short-story (101). Indeed, from its inception in the Western literary tradition, the short-story never had a fixed canon. Because of its short length, it never had a need for the thematic and chronological consistency required in a novel. In addition, it did not need to bring a sense of closure and sometimes excelled at surprising the reader with an unexpected and inconclusive ending. As a result, the short-story offers greater flexibility than the novel to experiment with narrative techniques; hence, the polymorphous nature of the genre. In Haiti, the genre emerged at the turn of the 19th century and the influence of the French masters of the short-story on the Haitian writers can easily be identified. (3) Haitian short-stories cover a broad range of themes, from social criticism to personal and sentimental testimony. All subgenres of the novel are also explored in the short-story: history, crime fiction, supernatural, speculative fiction, existential mal-etre. Vodou mythology offers a wealth of material for stories and from the early days of Haitian literature till today, writers have been mining the Vodou imagination for their fiction. Gary Victor is a contemporary example of this use and we will look more closely at his work in the second part of this paper. In line with the political commitment of Haitian literature, short-stories are often used for political criticism and quite surprisingly managed to find their way into journals which would not have taken the risk of publishing a non-fiction piece on the same topic for fear of reprisal. Gary Victor is again an excellent case in point. He published in Le Nouvelliste a speculative fiction piece entitled "Faim derniere" (a literal translation in English would be "Last Hunger," though it misses the pun on 'Hunger' and 'Ending', present in the French title). The story, re-printed in 1981 in a collection entitled Symphoniepour demain [A Symphony for Tomorrow], was published during the days of Jean-Claude Duvalier's dictatorship and was anticipating a time when the city would be overpopulated and where food and water would be so scarce that access to these basic supplies would be controlled by the state and only the lucky few would have access to daily rations. …


Without being included in accepted vocabulary standards, the results of completed patient assessment instruments cannot be easily shared in health information exchanges. To address this important barrier, we have developed a robust model to represent assessments in LOINC through iterative refinement and collaborative development. To capture the essential aspects of the assessment, the LOINC model represents the hierarchical panel structure, global item attributes, panel-specific item attributes, and structured answer lists. All assessments are available in a uniform format within the freely available LOINC distribution. We have successfully added many assessments to LOINC in this model, including several federally required assessments that contain functioning and disability content. We continue adding to this "master question file" to further enable interoperable exchange, storage, and processing of assessment data.


This special issue of FormAkademisk comprises a selection of articles developed from presentations at the seventh Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD7) symposium, held at Politecnico di Torino, Turin, 23th-26th October 2018 (Barbero, 2018). A second collection from RSD7 is also planned to be published in FormAkademisk during 2020, continuing the close relationship between the journal and the RSD conference series (Forlizzi, Sevaldson, & Ryan, 2017; Hensel, Hensel, & Sevaldson, 2019; Jones, 2014; Sevaldson, 2018; Sevaldson & Ryan, 2014). The occasion of the RSD7 conference was especially important in the development of systemic design, being the occasion of the launch and founding meeting of the Systemic Design Association (SDA). The SDA will act as a membership organisation for the expanding community of practitioners and researchers that has developed through the RSD conferences.


Human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) is a new biomarker for the detection of ovarian cancer. We evaluated the analytical performance of a novel automated HE4 assay and established reference ranges of HE4 and CA125. We also compared the diagnostic performance of both biomarkers for ovarian cancer. Precision performances and linearity of the HE4 assay were assessed. Serum samples from 2,182 healthy and 72 pregnant women were also assayed for HE4 and CA125, and the 95%, 97.5% and 99% reference limits for both markers were calculated. Additionally, sera from 66 ovarian cancer and 257 benign gynecologic disease patients were tested to validate reference ranges and diagnostic performances. The total precision of the HE4 assay was <5% coefficient of variation for most of the levels evaluated. The linearity range of this assay was from 15.0 to 1100.0 pmol/L. The 97.5% upper reference limits for HE4 and CA125 were 33.2 pmol/L (95% confidence interval [CI], 32.2–34.0) and 38.3 U/mL (95% CI, 35.1–41.5), respectively. Using these values as cutoff points, the sensitivity and specificity of HE4 for differentiating ovarian cancer from benign gynecologic diseases and healthy individuals were 90.9% and 94.1%, and those of CA125 were 72.7% and 94.4%. The receiver operating characteristic‐area under the curve values of HE4 and CA125 for discriminating ovarian cancer from age‐matched control were 0.94 and 0.86, respectively, and they were statistically different (p = 0.0095). The new automated HE4 assay showed good analytical and diagnostic performances. The reference limits established in our study could be used as cutoff levels to facilitate more accurate diagnosis of ovarian cancer in Asian population.


Abstract Management of threatened and endangered species would seem to be a perfect context for adaptive management. Many of the decisions are recurrent and plagued by uncertainty, exactly the conditions that warrant an adaptive approach. But although the potential of adaptive management in these settings has been extolled, there are limited applications in practice. The impediments to practical implementation are manifold and include semantic confusion, institutional inertia, misperceptions about the suitability and utility, and a lack of guiding examples. In this special section of the Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management, we hope to reinvigorate the appropriate application of adaptive management for threatened and endangered species by framing such management in a decision-analytical context, clarifying misperceptions, classifying the types of decisions that might be amenable to an adaptive approach, and providing three fully developed case studies. In this overview paper, I define terms, review the...


A qualitative, collective case study explores bereavement rituals in the Muscogee Creek tribe. Data from interviews with 27 participants, all adult members of the tribe, revealed consensus on participation in certain bereavement rituals. Common rituals included (a) conducting a wake service the night before burial; (b) never leaving the body alone before burial; (c) enclosing personal items and food in the casket; (d) digging graves by hand; (e) each individual throwing a handful of dirt into the grave before covering, called giving a "farewell handshake"; (f) covering the grave completely by hand; (g) building a house over the grave; (h) waiting 4 days before burial; (i) using medicine/purification; and (j) adhering to socialized mourning period. Cultural values of family, community, religion, importance of the number 4, Indian medicine, and the meaning of death contributed to the development of these rituals.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Little is known of the long-term, including school, outcomes of children diagnosed with Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) (International Statistical Classification of Disease and Related Problems [10th Edition], Australian Modification, P96.1). METHODS: Linked analysis of health and curriculum-based test data for all children born in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia, between 2000 and 2006. Children with NAS (n = 2234) were compared with a control group matched for gestation, socioeconomic status, and gender (n = 4330, control) and with other NSW children (n = 598 265, population) for results on the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy, in grades 3, 5, and 7. RESULTS: Mean test scores (range 0–1000) for children with NAS were significantly lower in grade 3 (359 vs control: 410 vs population: 421). The deficit was progressive. By grade 7, children with NAS scored lower than other children in grade 5. The risk of not meeting minimum standards was independently associated with NAS (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 2.5; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.2–2.7), indigenous status (aOR, 2.2; 95% CI, 2.2–2.3), male gender (aOR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.3–1.4), and low parental education (aOR, 1.5; 95% CI, 1.1–1.6), with all Ps < .001. CONCLUSIONS: A neonatal diagnostic code of NAS is strongly associated with poor and deteriorating school performance. Parental education may decrease the risk of failure. Children with NAS and their families must be identified early and provided with support to minimize the consequences of poor educational outcomes.


Current distributed information system consider only typical fault-tolerance techniques for reliability issues. Selfish peers, which deviate from the collaborative protocol to increase personal benefit, may also harmfully affect the goals of networked architectures. Securing the collaborative protocol would be an option, however, this may not be always possible or wanted. Then, a post-hoc assessment, deployed by the system designer, could monitor the correct behaviour of the participants without affecting the actual system's functioning. Due to limited resources, a complete monitoring is not possible: typically monitoring is done by sampling by sampling so that misbehaviour in some case can go undetected. At the same time, a selfish peer's decision to violate also depends also on the monitoring rate of the inspecting parties. This forms an interdependent interaction landscape, which corresponds to a class of games known as Inspection Games. In this paper, we discuss the practicability of Inspection Games for networked architectures for system analysis and design. To this end, develop generalized Inspection Game versions up to m inspectors and n inspectees, starting from a simple two-player game; we further provide solutions (i.e. Nash equilibria) for all games. Afterwards, these games and solutions are adapted towards an application to networked architectures. This is done by extending them to the possibility of false negatives (the performed inspection on a player's behaviour does not detect a deviation from the protocol which has actually occurred, due to the intrinsic failability of the inspection technique).


We present a novel video retrieval system that accepts annotated freehand sketches as queries. Existing sketch based video retrieval (SBVR) systems enable the appearance and movements of objects to be searched naturally through pictorial representations. Whilst visually expressive, such systems present an imprecise vehicle for conveying the semantics (e.g. object types) within a scene. Our contribution is to fuse the semantic richness of text with the expressivity of sketch, to create a hybrid 'semantic sketch' based video retrieval system. Trajectory extraction and clustering are applied to pre-process each clip into a video object representation that we augment with object classification and colour information. The result is a system capable of searching videos based on the desired colour, motion path, and semantic labels of the objects present. We evaluate the performance of our system over the TSF dataset of broadcast sports footage.


Previous work has proposed that computational modelling of social systems is composed of two primary streams of research: systems sociology, which is focused on the generation of social theory; and social simulation, which focuses on the study of real-world social systems. Here we argue that the social simulation stream stands to benefit from recent methodological and theoretical advances in demography. Demography has long been an empirically focused discipline focused primarily on mathematical modelling; however, agent-based simulation have proven influential of late as demographers seek to link individual-level behaviours to macro-level patterns. Here we characterise this shift as a move toward system-based modelling, a paradigm in which the scientific object of interest is neither the individual nor the population, but rather the interactions between them. We first describe the four successive paradigms of demography: the period, cohort, event-history and multilevel perspectives. Then we examine how system-based modelling can assist demographers with several major challenges: overcoming complexity in social research; reducing uncertainty; and enhancing theoretical foundations. We propose that this new paradigm can enhance the broader study of populations via social simulation.


The principal aim of this work was to examine the effects of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) on vision. Vigabatrin acts by increasing GABA at brain inhibitory synapses by irreversibly binding to GABA-transaminase. Remacemide is a novel non-competitive NMDA receptor antagonist and fast sodium channel inhibitor that results in the inhibition of the NMDA receptors located in the neuronal membrane calcium channels increasing glutamate in the brain. Vigabatrin has been shown to cause a specific pattern of visual field loss, as one in three adults taking vigabatrin have shown a bilateral concentric constriction. Remacemide has unknown effects on vision. The majority of studies of the effects of AEDs on vision have not included the paediatric population due to difficulties assessing visual field function using standard perimetry testing. Evidently an alternative test is required to establish and monitor visual field problems associated with AEDs both in children and in adults who cannot comply with perimetry. In order to test paediatric patients exposed to vigabatrin, a field-specific visual evoked potential was developed. Other tests performed on patients taking either vigabatrin or remacemide were electroretinograms, electro-oculograms, multifocal VEPs and perimetry. Comparing these tests to perimetry results from vigabatrin patients the field specific VEP was found to have a high sensitivity and specificity, as did the 30Hz flicker amplitude. The modified VEP was also found to provide useful results in vigabatrin patients. Remacemide did not produce a similar visual field loss to vigabatrin although macular vision was affected. The field specific VEP is a useful method for detecting vigabatrin associated visual field loss that is well tolerated by young children. This technique combined with the ERG under light adapted (30Hz flicker) condition is presently the superior method for detecting vigabatrin-attributed peripheral field defects present in children below the developmental age of 9. The effects of AEDs on vision should be monitored carefully and the use of multifocal stimulation allows for specific areas of the retina and visual pathway to be monitored.


Good evening! It is an honor for me to participate in the LIBER conference. LIBER is a very important organization, and OCLC PICA was pleased to become one of the first patron sponsors of LIBER in 2002. We are very interested in strengthening the relationship between our two organizations. OCLC PICA participants are also members of LIBER. Some of you may know that OCLC PICA has paid subscriptions to LIBER for 18 libraries in Eastern Europe since 2000. We are doing so because we want to help these libraries participate in the European library community. This evening I will discuss the challenges of expanding library service worldwide. This is a topic at OCLC that we are very familiar with, because OCLC is a global library cooperative, helping libraries serve people by providing economical access to knowledge through innovation and collaboration. The cooperative is a truly international community. There are some 34,500 libraries in the U.S. that are participating in the OCLC cooperative. There are now approximately 8,000 libraries in 85 countries outside the U.S. that are participating. There are about 3,000 libraries, primarily institutions of higher education, participating in OCLC in Asia Pacific. There are approximately 800 participating institutions in Canada. There are approximately 678 participating institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, there are approximately 4,100 institutions participating in OCLC. Our cooperative is global indeed. We will be working the coming year to increase not only the numbers on the map, but also the level of participation by libraries and other cultural heritage organizations in our programs and services. What are some the challenges that librarianship faces?


A water quality evaluation of regional wastewater system centralization was undertaken to test the hypothesis that water quality improvement may result from the spatial and temporal variations in wasteloads attributed to decentralized regional systems. The evaluation employed water quality models developed for both deterministic and stochastic analyses. Each analysis considered a set of experiments which involved a determination of the water quality resulting from alternative degrees of regional wastewater centralization. Water quality was measured in terms of the minimum dissolved oxygen concentrations experienced by alternative systems. It was concluded that decentralized regional wasterwater systems may result in significantly higher stream water qualities than that achieved by highly centralized systems.


Currently, ''quiet'' is being advertised as an attribute of certain products. For example, one can purchase ''quiet'' dishwashers. Other products have had their own labels for years. For example, some home bathroom fans have carried a rating in sones. But no standard, uniform method exists to label such products. This paper discusses the need for such standards and some of the attributes such standards might possess.


Attractive as they seem, free trade and capital flows have also brought about major negative impacts. Achieving socially sustainable globalization and maintaining a global economic order that respects human dignity remains a matter of concern. Human-by-human exploitation in the form of modern slavery is deeply entrenched in many businesses, large and small. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of efforts towards building a supply chain that would be free from questionable practices and abuses of the human rights of workers. Efforts have been made to advocate for a human rights-based code of conduct for businesses, for a meaningful corporate social responsibility, and for ethical consumerism. Existing law, policy, and social activism have made some strides toward committing businesses to trace their supply and to cutting ties with contractors accused of using forced labor. Still, the law is unsettled as it regards corporate liability. Globalization, the complexities of outsourcing, extended supply chains and their mostly unregulated nature have exacerbated trafficking in humans. This extraordinary problem, as it persists, calls for extraordinary measures. A business as usual approach has not solved the problem. It is time for nation states to step up their regulatory approach regarding businesses. Individually and as a community, nation states need to create a rule-based system for corporations forcing compliance, a system that would be workable and effective.


In the standard setting of broadcast encryption, information about the receivers is transmitted as part of the ciphertext. In several broadcast scenarios, however, the identities of the users authorized to access the content are often as sensitive as the content itself. In this paper, we propose the first broadcast encryption scheme to attain meaningful guarantees of receiver anonymity with ciphertexts that are sublinear in the number of authorized users. We formalize the notion of outsider-anonymous broadcast encryption(oABE), and describe generic constructions in the standard model that achieve outsideranonymity under adaptive corruptions in the chosen-plaintext and chosen-ciphertext settings. We also describe two constructions with enhanced decryption, one under the gap Diffie-Hellman assumption, in the random oracle model, and the other under the decisional Diffie-Hellman assumption, in the standard model.


A technique for examining foraminifera in rock slices has the advantage that it provides the third dimension which is lacking in thin sections. Orientated sections of individual foraminifera are produced by paring down the specimen with a surgical scalpel to its axial or sagittal plane of section, which, for convenient working, should lie with 45 degrees of the surface of the slice. The position of each cut can be checked by irrigating the specimen with clove oil, and it is possible to adjust the angle of the cut as the specimen becomes increasingly exposed. The successive series of sections observed in this way provides a clear impression of the test9s internal organisation, and provides an excellent opportunity to relate random two-dimensional sections to the complete structure. Thin sections are prepared by coring the selected specimen from the limestone by means of a small diamond-impregnated hollow bit.


The Newport Bay radiolaria occur within the Valmonte Diatomite Member of the Miocene Monterey Formation. Radical assemblage changes through the Newport Bay sections make it possible to distinguish 3 radiolarian faunules. The basal faunule occurs through 450 feet of strata exposed on the eastern side of the bay. It consists of a radiolarian assemblage limited to a few species of smaller, unornamented representatives of the suborders Spumellina and Nassellina. Nassellina are dominant. The second faunule, recognized through 550 feet of strata, contains a diverse and abundant assemblage of dominantly large, well-ornamented species of Spumellina. Progressively poorer radiolarian assemblages, comparable to those of the lowest faunule, occupy the upper 175 feet of strata of the ewport Bay sections. The uniform lithology throughout this section shows that the terrigenous contribution to the area of deposition remained constant. Parts of the section representing thinly laminated sediments indicate a condition of low ambient oxygen concentration near the bottom at the time of deposition. Deposition of this section began within a restricted, shallow, ocean basin. Streams flowing into this basin were small and few in number. The basin gradually deepened and free access to the open sea was attained. The top of the section indicates a return to the shallow, restricted conditions of the lower section. End_of_Article - Last_Page 1090------------


The best mode of communication for a team of mobile robots deployed to cooperatively perform a particular task is through exchange of messages. To facilitate such exchange, a communication network is required. When successful execution of the task hinges on communication, the network needs to be robust-sufficiently reliable and secure. The absence of a fixed network infrastructure defeats the use of traditional wire-based communication strategies or an 802.11-based wireless network that would require an access point. In such a case, only an ad hoc wireless network is practical. This thesis presents a robust wireless communication solution for mobile robots using motes. Motes, sometimes referred to as smart dust, are small, low-cost, low-power computing devices equipped with wireless communication capability that uses Radio Frequency (RF). Motes have been applied widely in wireless sensing networks and are typically connected to sensors and used to gather information about their environment. Communication in a mote network is inherently unreliable due to message loss, exposed to attacks, and supports very low bandwidth. Additional mechanisms are therefore required in order to achieve robust communication. Multi-hop routing must be used to overcome short signal transmission range. The ability of a mobile robot to determine its present location can be exploited in building an appropriate routing protocol. When present, information about a mobile robot's future location can aid further the routing process. To guarantee message delivery, a transport protocol is necessary. Optimal packet sizes should be chosen for best network throughput. To protect the wireless network from attacks, an efficient security protocol can be used. This thesis describes the hardware setup, software configuration, and a network protocol for a team of mobile robots that use motes for robust wireless communication. The thesis also presents results of experiments performed.