Current practice in New Jersey for mitigating stormwater impacts caused by transportation infrastructure projects is established by New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) Stormwater Regulations (N.J.A.C. 7:8). These rules outline specific processes to offset impacts to water quality, groundwater recharge and peak rate of runoff/runoff volume resulting from the addition of impervious surfaces. The rules are written to address impacts of individual projects without specific provisions for addressing cumulative programmatic impacts of multiple projects through "mitigation banking". The requirement to design and build separate, "on site" mitigation features for each project results in delayed implementation schedules, inefficient and nominally effective results and excessive maintenance demand. Over two decades ago, with reference to wetland resources, the need to achieve greater efficiency and environmental and economic benefits of scale led to the creation of wetland banking, which serves as a useful model for establishing a Stormwater Banking Program in the State of New Jersey. This report describes outcomes of a comprehensive study on the feasibility of water quality banking in the State of New Jersey. Groundwater recharge can be included within the banking system; however peak flow control banking is less likely feasible due to the potential for increased flooding of private properties. A detailed survey of future New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) projects was carried out to assess mitigation needs and to identify a pilot watershed for water quality mitigation banking. The Hackensack River HUC-11 watershed was selected for this purpose. Due to its highly developed context, "on site" project mitigation will likely cause significant hardship and delay future projects. By identifying a feasible "off site" location for water quality treatment, it was shown that an initial bank can be established to meet future needs within the watershed. A framework for tracking mitigation credits using a web-based computer program was also developed for successfully implementing water quality mitigation banking. The approach will provide future opportunities for adding credits to the bank by removing unnecessary impervious surfaces on projects and "over-treatment" at available "on site" best management practices (BMPs).


This study investigated satisfaction with body image and its relationship to self-esteem of 43 6 midwestern women. The sample sought rural and urban women outside a university setting in an effort to include as wide a range of ages (18-81) and diversity in background as possible. The Index of Self-Esteem was used to measure self-esteem and the Body-Self Relations Questionnaire to measure satisfaction with body image. Age, education, occupation and membership in six subgroups (suburban church women, members of a feminist social service collective, rural women, an aerobics class, women in a low income scholarship program, and mothers of suburban elementary school students) were explored as possible factors in both satisfaction with body image and self-esteem. The findings revealed midwestern women appeared to be less satisfied with their body image than women nationally. However, they also seemed to be less concerned about their body image and reported dieting less than those in previous studies. The study confirmed the hypothesis that satisfaction with body image did positively predict self-esteem. While age did not predict satisfaction with body image or self-esteem, when placed in two categories, scores for those over age 50 indicated higher self-esteem than those 49 years old and under. Education did positively predict satisfaction with body image and self-esteem. Women in professional occupations had higher satisfaction with body image but did not differ significantly in self-esteem. Women in a feminist social service subgroup had significantly higher self-esteem and satisfaction with body image than women from several of the other'subgroups. A model developed by Belenky, et al. (1988), combined with the Internal Control Index and the Self-Consciousness Scale were used to discern the influence of external authority upon satisfaction with body image. The study found women did differ significantly on satisfaction with body image depending upon their epistemological position in the ways of knowing model.


Midwestern agriculture is moving toward large, specialized production units where harvested crops are shipped off the farm and livestock are raised on purchased feed. Many people are concerned that increased manure concentration from specialized livestock units poses an unacceptable environmental risk. The unequal distribution of livestock production across counties in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana suggests that a disaggregated analysis of crop nutrient use and manure nutrient supply is needed to estimate the risk of excess nutrient losses to the environment. The authors analyze nutrient use and supply at the county level.


The theme of the 2021 National Academy of Kinesiology meeting and this special issue, "Kinesiology's Social Justice Imperative," suggests we are moving toward social justice. In this paper, I look at kinesiology's social justice movement over the nearly 100 years of the Academy. More specifically, I consider the representation of women and racial minorities (specifically Black/African Americans) in kinesiology and the Academy throughout our history and social factors related to the changes (or lack thereof) in representation. To move toward social justice, we must learn from that history, highlight the social, and connect with our communities and professionals.


Tooth impaction results from a mechanical blocking that prevents the tooth from erupt. This situation is frequently associated to permanent tooth as wisdom teeth and canines. Impaction of a primary tooth can be associated to systemic or local etiologic factors. Treatment options could include dental extraction, removal of lesion associated without removing the primary tooth and others. The aim of this article is to present a rare case report of an impacted primary tooth in a 42 year-old man, with no complain of swelling. Extra oral examination revealed no alteration of normality. The panoramic radiograph showed a primary tooth impacted in the left body of the mandible.  Most of the time the cause for non-eruption of primary tooth is the presence of a mechanical obstacle, not anatomical, in its trajectory. The surgical intervention is a possibility, but it can stay unaltered with no problems related to the impacted tooth. Many times the professional experience and the activity together in various areas of knowledge are the most important and wise conduct to be taken in health care. Keywords Mandible; Impacted tooth; Oral surgery. Key-words: mandible; impacted tooth; oral surgery


Worldwide 275,000 diseased heart valves are replaced annually and approximately 50% are bioprosthetic heart valves (BHV). BHV are fabricated from biologically derived tissues chemically modified to reduce immunogenecity and improve durability. BHV are nonviable, non-renewing biomaterials that undergo progressive degenerative changes in-vivo resulting in durability issues, which can be due to both calcific and non-calcific mechanisms. In-vitro durability testing of intact valves up to 200x106 cycles is used to assess BHV durability. In-vitro durability testing confounds characterization and modeling of fatigue. Thus there is a need for elucidation of the underlying mechanisms in the BHV response to repeated cyclic loading (RCL), independent of BHV design. In this study, the effects of collagen orientation on the medium-term (up to 50x106 cycles) BHV RCL response was investigated. Glutaraldehyde treated bovine pericardium were subjected to cyclic tensile loading to stress levels of 500±50 kPa at a frequency of 22 Hz. Two specimen groups were examined, with the preferred collagen fiber direction parallel (PD) and perpendicular (XD) to the direction of loading. Small angle light scattering (SALS) was used to assess the degree of fiber reorientation of the BHV collagenous network after 0 and 50x106 cycles. After 0, 20x106 and 50x106 cycles, specimens were subjected to biaxial mechanical testing and Fourier transform IR spectroscopy (FT-IR) was performed to assess molecular level changes to collagen . In addition, and the collagen fiber crimp period was also measured. Substantial permanent set effects were observed in both groups. In the perpendicular group, the areal stretch, which is a measure of overall tissue compliance, increased significantly while in the parallel group the areal stretch decreased significantly after 50x106 cycles. After 50x106 cycles, SALS measurements revealed that in the perpendicular group, the collagenous fibers became less aligned and in the parallel group, the collagen fibers became more highly aligned. The only significant changes in collagen crimp were an increase in collage crimp period from 23.46±1.39 mm (at 0 cycles) to 28.14±0.84 mm after 20x106 cycles in the parallel group. FT-IR spectra indicated that RCL of both of the groups lead to collagen conformational changes and early denaturation after 20x106 cycles. The results of this study suggest that 1) collagen orientation plays a critical role in BHV fatigue response, and 2) chemical fixation technologies that allow greater fiber mobility under functional stresses yet without permanent set effects may yield more durable materials.


We derive joint probability density functions (JPDFs) for two adjacent data from direct-detection optical receivers in dense wavelength-division multiplexing systems. We show that the decision using two data per bit can increase the receiver sensitivity compared with the conventional decision. Our JPDFs can be used for software-defined optical receivers enhancing the receiver sensitivities for intensity-modulated channels.


Almaco jack (Seriola rivoliana) is an emergent marine finfish that presents high market value. In order to study the feasibility of the exploitation of this marine resource for human consumption the evaluation of the nutritional characteristics of this species has attracted the attention of the scientific community. The lipid characteristics and fatty acid composition were evaluated in muscle, liver and gonad tissues of wild Almaco jack from Atlantic Ocean at two different maturation stages. According to results, the lipid content was found higher at pre-spawning stage (21.78 36.17%) and highest proportion being exhibited in the liver. Palmitic acid was predominant among the saturated fatty acids (35.42 47.80%) and oleic acid was detected as the main monounsaturated acid (25.26 36.55%). Higher amounts of ω3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) were identified in gonads of resting females, of which more than 84% was accounted by docosahexaenoic acid (12.62%). Muscle and liver of resting females presented the highest ω3/ω6 ratios. The Hypocholesterolemic/Hypercholesterolemic index was higher in gonads of both maturation stages (0.97 and 1.05). The results showed that wild Almaco jack at resting stage were a better source of oleic acid and ω3 PUFAs and that liver and gonads present good nutritional by-products.


I present recent observations from two Hubble Space Telescope(HST)/ACS programs that target the most X–ray luminous and thus (presumably) most massive galaxy clusters at $z{=}0.5$ – the highest redshift at which complete, well–defined samples of such rare systems are available. The first program (GO:9836, PI: R.S. Ellis) exploits a huge mosaic of 41 ACS pointings spanning a 10 Mpc region centered on MS0451-03. This is the largest contiguous space–based image of a cluster to date. I describe a preliminary weak–lensing analysis and a new Keck/DEIMOS redshift catalog of 1000 galaxies in this field. The second program (GO:9722, PI: H. Ebeling) studies the core regions of the twelve most luminous clusters at $z{\ge}0.5$ from the MAssive Cluster Survey (MACS; Ebeling et al. 2001). Multi–color ACS observations in combination with recent Keck/LRIS spectroscopy of gravitational arcs constrain the distribution of mass in the cluster cores, thus laying the foundation for detailed multi–diagnostic (lensing, X–ray, near–infrared, SZE) investigation of this sample. For example, it is of particular interest to explore how the structure and state of relaxation of massive clusters evolved between this sample at $z{\ge}0.5$ that measured by Smith et al. (2004, astro–ph/0403588) at $z{=}0.2$.To search for other articles by the author(s) go to: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html


A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS.


Abstract The purpose of this study was to determine if improvements in knee function after arthroplasty could be practicably measured in the clinical setting using available, validated technology. The tools we assessed included a timed test of common activities, a platform posturography analysis, and a portable gait laboratory device to quantify body segment motion. We measured the function of 25 total knee arthroplasty patients before surgery and at 1, 4, 12, and 24 months after surgery. Assessment of sit-to-stand, walking, stair climbing, lunging, Knee Society Scores, and Oxford Survey Scores were collected at each interval. Patients showed significant improvement in step length, gait speed, symmetry of weight distribution, symmetry of lunging, and speed of stair climbing. Changes in function with long-term follow-up can be precisely measured, making this technology promising for clinical or research applications.


Humans are able to intuitively exploit the shape of an object and environmental constraints to achieve stable grasps and perform dexterous manipulations. In doing that, a vast range of kinematic strategies can be observed. However, in this work we formulate the hypothesis that such ability can be described in terms of a synergistic behavior in the generation of hand postures, i.e., using a reduced set of commonly used kinematic patterns. This is in analogy with previous studies showing the presence of such behavior in different tasks, such as grasping. We investigated this hypothesis in experiments performed by six subjects, who were asked to grasp objects from a flat surface. We quantitatively characterized hand posture behavior from a kinematic perspective, i.e., the hand joint angles, in both pre-shaping and during the interaction with the environment. To determine the role of tactile feedback, we repeated the same experiments but with subjects wearing a rigid shell on the fingertips to reduce cutaneous afferent inputs. Results show the persistence of at least two postural synergies in all the considered experimental conditions and phases. Tactile impairment does not alter significantly the first two synergies, and contact with the environment generates a change only for higher order Principal Components. A good match also arises between the first synergy found in our analysis and the first synergy of grasping as quantified by previous work. The present study is motivated by the interest of learning from the human example, extracting lessons that can be applied in robot design and control. Thus, we conclude with a discussion on implications for robotics of our findings.


BACKGROUND
Point of care tests (POCTs) are being promoted to better target antibiotic prescribing with the aim of improving outcomes and containing antibiotic resistance.

OBJECTIVE
We aimed to explore clinician and patient views about POCTs to assist with the diagnosis and management of lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI) in primary care.

METHODS
Multi-country European qualitative interview study with 80 primary care clinicians and 121 adult patients in nine primary care networks who had recently consulted with symptoms of acute cough/LRTI. Transcripts were subjected to a five-stage analytic framework approach (familiarization, developing a thematic framework from the interview questions and the themes emerging from the data, indexing, charting, and mapping to search for interpretations in the data), with local network facilitators commenting on preliminary reports.

RESULTS
Clinicians who did not routinely use POCTs for acute cough/LRTI felt that the tests' advantages included managing patient expectations for antibiotics. Perceived disadvantages included questionable test performance, problems interpreting results, a detraction from clinical reasoning, costs, time and patients not wanting, or demanding, the tests. Clinicians who routinely used POCTs echoed these disadvantages. Almost all patients would be happy to be managed with the addition of a POCT. Patients with experience of POCTs accepted it as part of routine care.

CONCLUSIONS
Acceptability of POCTs to clinicians is likely to be improved if tests perform well on accuracy, time to result, simplicity and cost. Including POCTs in the routine management of acute cough/LRTI is likely to be acceptable to most patients.


This paper analyzes the relationship between firms' use of big data analytics and their innovative performance in terms of product innovations. Since big data technologies provide new data information practices, they create novel decision-making possibilities, which are widely believed to support firms' innovation process. Applying German firm-level data within a knowledge production function framework we find suggestive evidence that big data analytics is a relevant determinant for the likelihood of a firm becoming a product innovator as well as for the market success of product innovations. These results hold for the manufacturing as well as for the service sector but are contingent on firms' investment in IT-specific skills. Subsequent analyses suggest that firms in the manufacturing and service sector rely
on different data sources and data-related firm practices in order to reap the benefits of big
data. Overall, the results support the view that big data analytics have the potential to enable innovation.


Often STEM schools and STEM enrichment programs attract primarily high achieving students or those with strong motivation or interest. However, to ensure that more students pursue interest in STEM, steps must be taken to provide access for all students. For a balanced and integrated career development focus, schools must provide learning opportunities that are appropriate for all students. This paper outlines two approaches to the creation of a comprehensive STEM College and Career development pathway in high schools.


The Portuguese social sciences literature has recently begun to make references to so-called "sensitive urban zones" (SUZs), described as vulnerable zones on the outskirts of big cities (e.g., Lisbon and Setubal) where the population suffers from poor socioeconomic conditions. The same literature has also described these zones as being areas where migrants, especially people from Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP), and the unemployed tend to congregate. Since the beginning of the century, these areas have seen the number of foreigners of certain ethnicities rising, especially after the last mass regularization of migrants. At the same time, police forces describe these zones as being primary intervention areas, leading to the targeting of SUZ residents. Moreover, certain new migrant groups to Portugal (and to these SUZs) are over-represented in Portuguese prisons, suggesting some bias on the part of the judicial system, who have historically described SUZs as areas of growing criminality and drug trafficking. As such, SUZ residents are thought to need greater social control, and more visible and selective policing. Within this framework, police have institutionalized a perception of SUZs as crime ghettos in need of targeting, these perceptions being reinforced by documentation concerning the "rise" of new forms of violent crime from abroad. Therefore, it is important to study these perceptions of crime as contributing to the characterization of SUZs as being areas of criminality, and how such perceptions are reinforced by the legislature's designation of SUZs as being areas requiring "special policing strategies". This article will focus on the balance between the selectivity of police and the justice system in Lisbon's SUZs, with an emphasis on issues pertaining to immigration and crime. Moreover, we consider wider societal perceptions of crime, where stereotypes are constructed around a vulnerable population as needing social policies.


The Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at Duke University, Durham, NC, is undergoing extensive curriculum revisions that incorporate novel content, organization, and teaching methods. The cornerstone of the new curriculum is a theme-based introductory course, fundamentals of ECE. To introduce students to the major areas of ECE in their first year of study, this course is organized around three concepts: 1) how to interface with the physical world; 2) how to transmit energy and information; and 3) how to extract, interpret, and analyze information. To provide insight and motivation, the course is designed to introduce multiple areas of ECE, emphasizing how they are interrelated and how they contribute to the design and functioning of real-world applications. Also, the course must engage its students, many of whom are evaluating ECE as a prospective major and career. To achieve these goals, the course adopts a unifying theme, tightly couples lecture and laboratory exercises, and includes a laboratory experience that emphasizes design, integration, and real applications. The interactive classroom content and laboratory exercises are developed iteratively so that each course component supports the other, rather than one being dominant and driving the other. As the context focus of the laboratory, a robotic platform enables the exploration of a broad range of ECE concepts, both independently and integrated into an entire system. For their final design project, students form small groups, which in turn combine into larger teams, to create robots that work together to overcome realistic challenges. This paper describes the curricular objectives and key course elements that guide course development, the resulting content and structure of the course, and the assessment data that indicate successful achievement of the curricular goals.


Abstract Forensic, dialectic, or scientific discourse cannot induce the desire to create novel beliefs, hut deliberative discourse—a procedure for determining rules for future actions for which the interlocutors as yet have no determined rules—may induce such desire when interlocutors accept what Donald Davidson has called "the rule of charity,"; the rule that interlocutors must assume that what their counterparts say is mostly true. The need, and therefore the desire, for new belief emerges only once the possibility of resolving the problem using currently held beliefs exhausts and the need to reconceive the original problem presents itself.


The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that vulnerability to climate change depends on three main factors: exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Each factor was evaluated in a hydrologic context, for instance exposure was interpreted as a change in surface runoff. Factors were combined using a Geographic Information System (GIS) and an overall methodology to map hydrologic vulnerability was proposed. The Conchos River Basin, which is the main tributary of the Rio Grande, was used as a case study. The long-term rate of change in surface runoff was estimated considering the variation in future precipitation from 23 Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCM) by using the Reliability Ensemble Averaging (REA) method. Two climate change scenarios (A1B and A2) and three time horizons (2030, 2050 and 2100) were chosen. Results showed a decrease in surface runoff up to 28% (A1B-2100) north of the Basin. Hence, it is likely to have more frequent droughts. However, it would be challenging to compensate the lack of surface runoff since groundwater resources are already depleted. Finally, overall hydrologic vulnerability maps were obtained to locate the most vulnerable regions, where precisely adaption efforts would be more necessary to sustain environmental conditions.


Shen Congwen [沈从文] (1902 – 1988), the famous Chinese writer most active from the late 1920s to the end of the 1940s, took particular interest in music throughout his literary career. From Shen's earliest works, folksongs feature in his regional stories about West Hunan, his home region. These songs not only provide the stories with a special local colour, but also indicate Shen's strong connection with Western anthropology and psychology. From the mid-1930s, Shen developed a passion for Western classical music. He stated on several occasions that he wished he could use the method of musical composition in his writing, even though he never attempted to learn to compose. This thesis will investigate Shen's insistence on the assumption that the method of musical composition – especially the use of 'harmony' – would make literary works more beautiful and infinite. Shen's discussion of Western classical music also points to the connection between music and abstraction. In Shen's later career, he seems to be consistently pursuing the beauty of abstraction. At the same time, he writes about 'soundless music', which goes beyond concrete music such as folksongs or Western classical music. In the analysis of Shen's ideas on music, one question remains: what are the possible sources of these ideas? Shen started writing after May Fourth Movement, a movement that massively involved learning from the West. His career thrived while socialising with a group of Chinese writers whose works bear evident marks of Western literature, and some of whom were also the translators of many Western works. Furthermore, Shen's ideas on music appear to reflect those of Western literature, especially modern literature. This thesis will consider possible influences on Shen, starting with an examination of what Shen might have read or known about Western literary ideas. Finally, according to the evidence uncovered in my research, this thesis will propose a comparative study between possible Western sources of influence and Shen's ideas on music, focusing on the influence of Western anthropology, psychology, Goethe (1749 – 1832), French Symbolism, Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), and Joyce (1882 – 1941).


The article analyzes the impact of private military companies (PMCs) on the duration of civil wars in Africa from 1990 to 2008. We develop an "opportunity structure" theory to argue that while PMCs are profit-oriented entities, the prevalent opportunities in conflicts will determine how they behave in war zones. Empirical findings for civil wars with at least 1,000 battle deaths show that as level of competition among government-hired PMCs increases, they are more likely to deliver optimal services and help bring an end to violence. In the absence of competition, the prevalent structure creates opportunities for PMCs to underperform in order to maximize profits by staying in conflicts longer. The authors also show that swift cessation of hostilities could benefit those profit-seeking PMCs that are compensated with contracts to extract natural resources because resource extraction generates more wealth in peace time. In such cases, the prevalent opportunities in conflict create an incentive for companies to deliver optimal service and terminate hostilities.


The concept of strategic planning has extensively been used to formulate institutional objectives of higher education institutions into time bound deliverables. Although there is a general agreement on the conceptual note on the strategic planning process, the differences are conspicuous in its internal process of transformation from strategic formulation to implementation. Consequently, models that apply to higher education institutions have been drawn up in the management sciences in the last quarter of the twentieth century. However, the format for institutional review of strategic planning is still in its infancy although its review constitutes a conspicuous phase of institutional planning. The foregoing discussion is intended to prescribe a general format for an institutional review of a strategic planning model. It runs on the hypothesis that the review has three phases, though not mutually exclusive, viz. review of the framework, review of the process, and review of the outcome. The paper under discussion is an attempt to develop a new logical framework for the review of the strategic plan of an educational institution. The model is labelled as the OMC model as it was developed for and subsequently used in Oman Medical College.


Today the number of individuals struggling with morbid obesity along with other related health illnesses is rising. Far more plus more obese individuals are looking for treatment for the goal of weight reduction. This has led to booming up of weight reduction clinics, faulty dieting and fitness centres practices in the society of ours. Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is a proposed new diagnostic category in DSM IV TR cited as an illustration of an eating disorder not otherwise specified (NOS). The phrase binge eating was launched more than seventy years back to summarize problematic behaviour present in a subgroup of obese people and as a subgroup of Bulimia Nervosa.


We demonstrate the possibility of using transparent conducting oxides [aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO), gallium-doped zinc oxide (GZO), indium tin oxide (ITO)] to form Tamm plasmon polaritons in the near-infrared spectral range where the permittivity of oxides is near zero. The spectral properties of the structures are investigated in the framework of the temporal coupled-mode theory and confirmed by the transfer matrix method. It is found that in the critical coupling conditions, the maximal $ Q $Q-factor of a Tamm plasmon polariton is achieved when a photonic crystal is conjugated with the AZO film, while at the conjugation with the ITO films, the broadest spectral line is obtained. The sensitivity of the wavelength and spectral width of the Tamm plasmon polariton to changes in the oxide film thickness, bulk concentration of a dopant, and angle of incidence is demonstrated.


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of immediate and delayed post space preparation time on the bond strength of self-etch and self-adhesive cements. Methods: The teeth were divided into two experimental groups (n=15) according to different post space preparation time either immediate or delayed. Each group was further divided into three subgroups of five teeth each (n=5), according to the type of cements. Results: Three-way ANOVA and TukeyÂ's Honestly significant difference test were used to evaluate the results (p=0. 05). With respect to the bond strength of the cements according to root region: push out scores of the coronal part were higher than the apical and middle parts (p<0.05). Conclusion: Delayed push out scores were higher than immediate group forMultilinkAutomix, according to time. In terms of the adhesive systems individually, the bond strengths of the two self-etch adhesive cement bond strengths (Multilink Automix and Panavia F) were higher than the selfadhesive cement (Maxcem Elite). Delayed or immediate post space preparation time may be important for some cementsÂ' bond strength on the other hand it may may not be important for others. Therefore, post space preparation time should be determined according to cement type.


Cattle are paramount to lives, livelihoods and landscapes in Botswana. Human-cattle relations emerge and evolve through historically-situated social relations of power based on gender, ethnicity, and class. Our paper explores intersectional human-cattle relations in Botswana within the contemporary period of enhanced commercialization. Specifically, with data from participant observation and semi-structured interviews with women cattle owners in Ghanzi District, Botswana, we investigate how women across a range of ethnicities become-with cattle and how cattle are becoming-with women cattle owners, directly or mediated through hired labour and/or technology. By operationalizing Haraway's multispecies 'becoming-with' through intersectionality theory we articulate the nuanced ways in which individuals or social groups of two distinct species (here humans and cattle) become who they are. We show that whereas gender and ethnicity dynamics place women as engaging directly with cattle, engaging indirectly with cattle or becoming-without cattle, class most visibly shape the way that cattle become-with women cattle owners and other humans. We offer a novel illustration of an intersectional becoming-with, highlighting human-animal relations in the context of agriculture and socio-economic change in the Global South.


In the spatial model of voting, voters choose the candidate closest to them in the ideological space. Recent work by (Degan and Merlo 2009) shows that it is falsifiable on the basis of individual voting data in multiple elections. We show how to tackle the fact that the model only partially identifies the distribution of voting profiles and we give a formal revealed preference test of the spatial voting model in 3 national elections in the US, and strongly reject the spatial model in all cases. We also construct confidence regions for partially identified voter characteristics in an augmented model with unobserved valence dimension, and identify the amount of voter heterogeneity necessary to reconcile the data with spatial preferences.


This article is intended as a provocation for Indigenous researchers to reflect on their cultures and life stories, and consider how sharing their intergenerational experiences can engender cultural empathy with Indigenous peoples that originate from a different community and are at the heart of their study. I explore how an Indigenous researcher's life story, from a childhood in the African continent to adulthood and parenthood in Aotearoa, influenced his research direction and design toward Indigenous entrepreneurship as an emancipatory and empowering endeavour. The article challenges the dominance of objectivity, balancing it with the subjectivity of researcher positionality in Indigenous entrepreneurship research. First, I narrate my life story to demonstrate how my experiences shape my research philosophy. Second, I discuss the research that I am involved in, exploring issues of my reflexive process and positionality as it relates to the research. I invite other Indigenous researchers to reflect on how their life stories influence their research.


SUMMARY. The initial surge of interest in precision agriculture technologies exhibited by innovators and early adopters involved in crop production appears to have crossed over an important threshold. As valuable field experience increases and learning by doing advances, successful applications of management practices are being identified even though few are adequately documented with economic benefits. Access to accurate information pertaining to applications of site-specific management would be expected to motivate more producers to incorporate technology uses with crop production. This next group of producers has been watching technology developments as they preferred to avoid risk and wait for identifiable benefits. Waiting for detailed case studies involving high value fruits and vegetables may be the wrong approach to take. Fierce competition and strict confidentiality are expected in the fresh market industry. Thus, personal experience with technology becomes more relevant to innova- tive producers than published literature. This is especially true in California where 350 different crops are produced. High resolution imagery from digital aerial and satellite sensors has been used in crop production in California to identify plant stress, direct plant tissue and soil sampling efforts, and provide information for analysis and interpretation of crop growth. Examples of remote sensing imagery that have provided valuable in-season progress reports will be identified. The focus will be on practice, not theory, as seen from an industry perspec- tive.


This study investigated the patterns of noun phrase cohesion in English discourse, with a specific interest in the role of the different clause types. Using corpus methodology, the study synthesized into a single framework for analysis the central features of previous research regarding cohesive devices, preferred argument structure, genre, information packaging and clause structure. A corpus of 1206 noun phrases was coded for factors drawn from previous research, starting with whether or not the NP contained old/cohesive information. Results of frequency cross-tabulations and a factor analysis indicated that preferred argument structure, noun phrase form, and discourse genre were more significant influences on patterns of noun phrase cohesion in English discourse than clause structure. However, patterns of cohesive noun phrases according to the distance to their antecedents revealed that the more grammatically integrated clauses, such embedded infinitival clauses, the fewer cohesive noun phrases with antecedents in the immediate context they tended to have. This indicated that at the local inter-clausal level noun phrase cohesion and the level of grammatical integration of a combined clause existed in somewhat complementary distribution. Conclusions drawn included that clause grammar codes cohesion locally, displacing the need for noun phrases to mark cohesion in the immediate discourse. The study therefore quantitatively supports previous theories that discourse cohesion and the different types of combined clauses in English exist along a continuum from grammar to discourse.


This brief provides an update to the Human Capital Index (HCI). First launched in 2018, the HCI measures the amount of human capital that a child born today can expect to attain by age 18. It conveys the productivity of the next generation of workers compared to a benchmark of complete education and full health. Worldwide a child born in 2020 can expect, on average, to be 56 percent as productive as she could be when she grows up. All data represent the status of countries pre-COVID-19.


In the first study of opinions handed down in education adequacy litigation between January 2005 and January 2008, this paper shows a marked shift away from outcomes favorable to adequacy plaintiffs. Following two decades in which courts spurred significant reforms in our nation's neediest schools by interpreting the education clauses of their state constitutions to guarantee an "adequate" education for all students, the years 2005 to 2008 have seen a dramatic change in the judicial response to adequacy litigation. Through an analysis of the latest body of cases, this paper shows that separation of powers concerns have begun to drive state courts out of this important avenue of education reform. These separation of powers concerns have become more salient as litigators pressure courts to mandate concrete remedies that would trump legislative discretion. The most problematic such remedy is one that would require courts to order the legislature to make specific budgetary allocations. This trend spans courts seeing adequacy claims for the first time and those presiding over a second round of adequacy litigation. This paper argues that despite this shift recent courts have not wholly disavowed their role in substantiating the state constitutional right to education. Courts remain willing to act as a constitutional check on the legislature's actions within the field of education if only plaintiffs can find a way to respond to concerns over remedies. This paper examines the nature of and reasons for courts' increasing separation of powers concerns and then briefly explores what lessons adequacy plaintiffs might take away for use in future litigation.


Relativistic jets in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are among the most extreme sources of radiation in the universe. They are launched and accelerated by accreting supermassive black holes found in the center of a fraction of galaxies. These jets emit strongly across the whole electromagnetic spectrum, and are especially bright in the radio and gamma-ray bands, where they are among the most studied astrophysical sources. In the simplest models, the production of gamma-rays in radio-loud AGN involves the same relativistic particles that give rise to the radio emission. Therefore, we expect to observe a close connection between the two bands. This has been well-established in studies of large AGN samples. However, such samples are dominated by AGN with well-aligned jets, a sub-class called blazars, where the observed emission is strongly beamed and amplified due to relativistic Doppler effects. While this makes blazars easier to detect, it also poses the challenge of disentangling orientation-dependent effects from the intrinsic physical properties. To this date, there has been no systematic study on the relation between parsec-scale radio emission and gamma-ray properties of the misaligned parent population of blazars, i.e., radio galaxies. In this thesis, I present the first systematic VLBI and gamma-ray monitoring study of a representative sample of radio galaxies with strong compact radio emission, with the aim of exploring the intrinsic relationship between high-energy emission and pc-scale jet properties in AGN. I base the study on the decade(s)-long Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) monitoring provided by the TANAMI program, the largest multi-epoch observational campaign on radio-loud AGN in the Southern sky. First, I introduce the basic properties of AGN (Chapter 1), and discuss the current understanding of the relation between radio and gamma-ray emission in AGN (Chapter 2). I then introduce the instruments and the corresponding data reduction techniques relevant to this thesis work, i.e., gamma-ray telescopes (Chapter 3) and VLBI arrays (Chapter 4). Chapter 5 presents the results on the evolution of the parsec-scale jet in TANAMI radio galaxies, including milliarcsecond resolution images at 8.4 GHz for several observing epochs, and a jet kinematic analysis to estimate the intrinsic jet speed, viewing angle, and overall evolution, at the highest resolution available for this sample. The information from parsec-scale jet kinematics is combined with gamma-ray flux variability results from the Fermi -LAT space telescope (presented in Chapter 6), and the observed properties in these two bands and their interplay are discussed in Chapter 7. I summarize the main results in Chapter 8.I first discuss individual results on noteworthy TANAMI radio galaxies, such as the FR II radio galaxy Pictor A, the peculiar AGN PKS 0521−36, the TeV source PKS 0625−35, and the first gamma-ray detected young radio galaxy, PKS 1718−649 (Section 7.1). I then combine the TANAMI radio galaxy sample with publicly available results from the MOJAVE survey, the largest VLBI monitoring program of AGN in the northern sky, to study the largest sample to date of radio galaxies with parsec-scale kinematics and gamma-ray information (Section 7.2). Testing for possible correlations between the average radio and gamma-ray properties of radio galaxies, I show that the high-energy emission from the compact jets of radio galaxies is not strongly driven by orientation-dependent Doppler boosting effects, much unlike the situation in their blazar counterparts. However, a significant correlation between gamma-ray flux and radio flux still holds, suggesting a direct physical link between the intrinsic emission properties of AGN jets in the two wavebands.


In this paper, we propose a joint carrier frequency synchronization and channel estimation algorithm for multipleinput and multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems. A major challenge to MIMO-OFDM systems is how to obtain the channel state information accurately and promptly for coherent detection of information symbols and channel synchronization. MIMOOFDM systems are very sensitive to synchronization errors, especially the carrier frequency offset (CFO). The carrier frequency synchronization and channel estimation are carried out repetitively through the Expectation–Maximization (EM) algorithm using an OFDM preamble symbol. It is revealed by the simulation results that the proposed scheme achieves ideal performance.


At human scale, 25 years seems time enough to relate academic and scientific experiences. The particular experiences presented in this book are based, first of all, on the earliest works and research at Las Hoyas led by Prof. Jose Luis Sanz. This book honors him as a tribute to those early years of Las Hoyas, where, while admiring the beauty of its fossils, we all learned the huge diversity of Nature and, at the same time, how to handle a number of enthusiastic students, manage the collection, and ask for funds year after year. The best of what we have all learnt from Prof. Sanz is the importance of a work that is properly done, and this sort of obsession will hound us forever. Much or little was made in these 25 years, depending on how one looks at it. Either way, this synthesis volume aims to convey the story of our experience in the study of Las Hoyas. The present book is aimed to both specialists and informed aficionados. It incorporates many international researchers who have largely contributed to the understanding of the palaeobiology and taphonomy of this locality. The volume is organized into four major parts. Part I is devoted to the Las Hoyas environment by providing the geological framework to understand how the interpretation of this fossil Lagerstatte has changed from a deep lake at first to the current hypothesis of a shallow aquatic environment made of a mosaic of pools, filled by microbial mats, in a wetland-like landscape. Part II unfolds the palaeobiology of the different groups of plants and animals recorded at Las Hoyas by providing an updated revision of their taxonomic diversity. The information provided for each group is presented in a homogeneous manner by developing a summarized description of the specimens, their life styles and ecomorphology, phylogenetic context, preservation, and relevance of the Las Hoyas record within a worldwide or European frame. The processes involved in the fossil preservation are explored in Part III. This part includes not only the study of the preservation of the fossils themselves, but also some chapters devoted to experimental taphonomy and the role of microbial mats in preservation. Part IV incorporates our experience in the fieldwork in establishing how palaeoecological restorations need of a previous taphonomic study. The final chapter presents restorations by some brilliant young artists of the landscape and organisms living in the Las Hoyas Wetland during the Early Cretaceous in the framework of their trophic network. An Addendum incorporates taxa discovered or described during the elaboration of the present volume, and a final Appendix presents an updated taxonomic classification of the biota from Las Hoyas. We wish to emphasize the idea that Las Hoyas is a laboratory of Natural History where new questions are continuously emerging: How was the site generated? What conditions were present, resulting on such abundance and exceptional preservation? What were the modes of life of those extinct organisms? What relevance has it all from an evolutionary point of view? Knowledge of the past does not always involve explaining the future, but sets the way in which it originated and shaped the present. Fossils will always be the key to unveil the History of Life on Earth.


Epitaxial films of piezoelectric α-quartz could enable the fabrication of sensors with unprecedented sensitivity for prospective applications in electronics, biology and medicine. However, the prerequisites are harnessing the crystallization of epitaxial α-quartz and tailoring suitable film microstructures for nanostructuration. Here, we bring new insights into the crystallization of epitaxial α-quartz films on silicon (100) from the devitrification of porous silica and the control of the film microstructures: we show that by increasing the quantity of devitrifying agent (Sr) it is possible to switch from an α-quartz microstructure consisting of a porous flat film to one dominated by larger, fully dense α-quartz crystals. We also found that the film thickness, relative humidity and the nature of the surfactant play an important role in the control of the microstructure and homogeneity of the films. Via a multi-layer deposition method, we have extended the maximum thickness of the α-quartz films from a few hundreds of nm to the μm range. Moreover, we found a convenient method to combine this multilayer approach with soft lithography to pattern silica films while preserving epitaxial crystallization. This improved control over crystallization and the possibility of preparing patterned films of epitaxial α-quartz on Si substrates pave the path to future developments in applications based on electromechanics, optics and optomechanics.


The Research Handbook on the Economics of Family Law gives us a series of original essays by distinguished scholars in economics, law or both. The essays represent a variety of approaches to the field. Many contain extensive surveys of the literature with respect to the particular question they address. Some employ empirical economics, others are more narrowly legal. They have in common one thing: each scholar employs a core economic tool or insight to shed light on some aspect of family law and social institutions broadly understood. Topics covered include: divorce, child support, infant feeding, abortion access, prostitution, the decline in marriage, birth control and incentives for partnering.


Extracted from text ... The reception was so good for me because they had no hope that I
was alive. They welcomed me but it seemed they had some fears I
had done atrocities so they kept asking all these questions. I was not
forced to kill anybody so I told them everything that had happened...I
didn't like it because they wanted to know in detail all that had happened
and I was not free about it. It made me sad.4
According to United Nations' estimates, a quarter of a million children under
the age of 18 years serve as soldiers in national ..


This article discusses the outcome of a research on tourism promotion through events where the survey was conducted at Borneo Street Dance (BSD) 2011 in Sabah, one of the states in Malaysia, which was organized by the Ministry of Tourism Malaysia. The event was held to promote domestic tourism and to attract youth participation in performing arts where they can showcase their talents and creativity. The findings of this research suggested that an event such as BSD is able to attract interest and participation among youth from all over the state and this contributed to the promotion of domestic tourism. The event is able to attract the youth's interest to fill up their free time with beneficial and favourable activities while exposing them to ethnic diversity in highly diverse Malaysian Borneo states namely Sabah, Sarawak and the Federal Territory of Labuan. This is where the event also fosters tolerance and understanding about the diversity ethnic among the youth in the said states and thought to be the beneficial to domestic tourism. The research concluded that events such as BSD should be made as an annual event to enhance the promotion of domestic tourism industry in Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan among young travellers and VFR that tied up with the event, thus enhancing the sustainability of the tourism industry in Malaysian Borneo.


The communicative process implies objects, sounds, images and words which can convey ideas and cultural ways of interpreting and representing a society; therefore, many linguistic anthropologists—especially Searle, but also Bauman and Briggs–underline how speech and textual acts are regulated by defined cultural schemes, and how their study cannot exclude analysis of the original context as well as of the specific conventions ruling it. This paper is intended to provide an interpretation of some particular graphic solutions concerning the human determinative occurring in the Pyramid Texts of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, and to analyze the possible reasons and underlying anthropological apparatus that led to these choices.


This concise yet comprehensive handbook, compiled with the expertise of Reforesting Scotland's editors, covers trees commonly found in Scotland. From seed provenance and propagation to the history and lore of each species, this single source contains all the information you need to select the right trees for your site and grow them successfully. Whether you are an owner of (or volunteer at) a small woodland, a gardener looking to incorporate the most appropriate trees into your space, or simply a lover of woodland walks and trees, this invaluable reference will be your one essential guide.


Skp1 is an adaptor-like protein in E3SCF-ubiquitin ligases and other multiprotein complexes of the cytoplasm and nucleus. In Dictyostelium, Skp1 is modified by an unusual pentasaccharide containing a Galα1-Fuc linkage, whose formation is examined here. A cytosolic extract from Dictyostelium was found to yield, after 2400-fold purification, an activity that could transfer Gal from UDP-Gal to both a Fuc-terminated glycoform of Skp1 and synthetic Fuc conjugates in the presence of Mn2+ and dithiothreitol. The microsomal fraction was devoid of activity. The linkage formed was Galα1,3Fuc based on co-chromatography with only this synthetic isomer conjugate, and sensitivity to α1,3/6-galactosidase. Skp1 exhibited an almost 1000-fold lower Km and 35-fold higher Vmax compared with a simple α-fucoside, but this advantage was abolished by denaturation or alkylation of Cys residues. A comparison of a complete series of synthetic glycosides representing the non-reducing terminal mono-, di-, and trisaccharides of Skp1 revealed, surprisingly, that the disaccharide is most active owing primarily to a Vmax advantage, but still much less active than Skp1 itself because of a Km difference. These findings indicate that α-GalT1 is a cytoplasmic enzyme whose modification of Skp1 requires proper presentation of the terminal acceptor disaccharide by a folded Skp1 polypeptide, which correlates with previous evidence that the Galα1,3Fuc linkage is deficient in expressed mutant Skp1 proteins.


The increasing growth of rapid industrial developments causes the formation of huge amount of wastewater loaded with numerous organic compounds unacceptable for the environment and human health as well. Many processes for treating industrial wastewater involve varieties technologies for reduction of toxicity in order to meet environmental-based treatment standards. This article reviews the recent developments and technical applicability of various treatments for the removal of different contaminants from industrial wastewater. A particular focus is given to the factors affecting the selection of appropriate technologies for controlling and managing of a specified industry effluent. Subsequent to the selection of appropriate treatment technology, more pilot-plant scale experiments with real industrial wastewater must be performed on a larger scale. However, there are a very wide variety of technologies for choosing a suitable individual to treat specified wastes; intergradations of more than one technology could be more economic for removal of high strength and toxic industrial. The new integrated technology requires assessing the complete wastewater treatment in order to be reused in the industry itself.


The first course in software engineering is the most critical. Education must start from an understanding of the heart of software development, from familiar ground that is common to all software development endeavors. This book is an in-depth introduction to software engineering that uses a systematic, universal kernel to teach the essential elements of all software engineering methods.

This kernel, Essence, is a vocabulary for defining methods and practices. Essence was envisioned and originally created by Ivar Jacobson and his colleagues, developed by Software Engineering Method and Theory (SEMAT) and approved by The Object Management Group (OMG) as a standard in 2014. Essence is a practiceindependent framework for thinking and reasoning about the practices we have and the practices we need. Essence establishes a shared and standard understanding of what is at the heart of software development. Essence is agnostic to any particular method, lifecycle independent, programming language independent, concise, scalable, extensible, and formally specified. Essence frees the practices from their method prisons.

The first part of the book describes Essence, the essential elements to work with, the essential things to do and the essential competencies you need when developing software. The other three parts describe more and more advanced use cases of Essence. Using real but manageable examples, it covers the fundamentals of Essence and the innovative use of serious games to support software engineering. It also explains how current practices such as user stories, use cases, Scrum, and microservices can be described using Essence, and illustrates how their activities can be represented using the Essence notions of cards and checklists. The fourth part of the book offers a vision how Essence can be scaled to support large, complex systems engineering.

Essence is supported by an ecosystem developed and maintained by a community of experienced people worldwide. From this ecosystem, professors and students can select what they need and create their own way of working, thus learning how to create ONE way of working that matches the particular situation and needs.


Project Blowed is a legendary hiphop workshop based in Los Angeles. It began in 1994 when a group of youths moved their already renowned open-mic nights from the Good Life, a Crenshaw district health food store, to the KAOS Network, an arts center in Leimert Park. The local freestyle of articulate, rapid-fire, extemporaneous delivery, the juxtaposition of meaningful words and sounds, and the way that MCs followed one another without missing a beat, quickly became known throughout the LA underground. Leimert Park has long been a center of African American culture and arts in Los Angeles, and Project Blowed inspired youth throughout the city to consider the neighborhood the epicenter of their own cultural movement. The Real Hiphop is an in-depth account of the language and culture of Project Blowed, based on the seven years Marcyliena Morgan spent observing the workshop and the KAOS Network. Morgan is a leading scholar of hiphop, and throughout the volume her ethnographic analysis of the LA underground opens up into a broader examination of the artistic and cultural value of hiphop.

Morgan intersperses her observations with excerpts from interviews and transcripts of freestyle lyrics. Providing a thorough linguistic interpretation of the music, she teases out the cultural antecedents and ideologies embedded in the language, emphases, and wordplay. She discusses the artistic skills and cultural knowledge MCs must acquire to rock the mic, the socialization of hiphop culture's core and long-term members, and the persistent focus on skills, competition, and evaluation. She brings attention to adults who provided material and moral support to sustain underground hiphop, identifies the ways that women choose to participate in Project Blowed, and vividly renders the dynamics of the workshop's famous lyrical battles.


The MIL-STD-188-110A Single Tone high frequency modem is used by the United States military everyday as a beyond line-of-sight radio. Typically, beyond line-of-sight military radios use satellites for reflection. Satellite time is in high demand, and since there are a finite number of satellites in orbit, it makes over-the-air time expensive. The Single Tone high frequency modem offers a reliable alternative by using the ionosphere, rather than a satellite, for reflection. The ionosphere adds unique channel effects, causing the signal processing software to be more complex and harder to debug than radios which use satellites. Before being placed into production, the MIL-STD-188-110A Single Tone high frequency modem is placed under comprehensive performance tests. These tests are meant to fully verify all aspects of the software and to impose all possible channel effects such as additive white Gaussian noise, doppler shift, terminal clock differences, frequency and time dispersion. When a test fails, debugging the software can be tedious and time consuming. The two major steps to quick and successful debugging are understanding and isolation. The engineer must understand the channel model and receive path in order to correlate a test failure with a specific section of software. After the channel model and receive path are understood, timing patterns of bit errors and test failures caused by individual channel effects help the engineer isolate the software defect. This thesis compiles the necessary information to understand a generalized receive path and provides a framework for isolating a software defect.


In the last five years, legislators in all fifty states have made changes to their pretrial justice systems. Reform efforts aim to shrink jails by incarcerating fewer people— particularly poor, low-risk defendants and racial minorities. Many jurisdictions are embracing pretrial risk assessment instruments—statistical tools that use historical data to forecast which defendants can safely be released—as a centerpiece of reform. Now, many are questioning the extent to which pretrial risk assessment instruments actually serve reform goals. Existing scholarship and debate centers on how the instruments themselves may reinforce racial disparities and on how their opaque algorithms may frustrate due process interests.

This Article highlights three underlying challenges that have yet to receive the attention they require. First, today's risk assessment tools lead to what we term "zombie predictions." That is, predictive models trained on data from older bail regimes are blind to the risk- reducing benefits of recent bail reforms. This may cause predictions that systematically overestimate risk. Second, "decision-making frameworks" that mediate the court system's use of risk estimates embody crucial moral judgments, yet currently escape appropriate public scrutiny. Third, in the long-term, these tools risk giving an imprimatur of scientific objectivity to ill-defined concepts of "dangerousness," may entrench the Supreme Court's historically recent blessing of preventive detention for dangerousness, and could pave the way for an increase in preventive detention.

Pretrial risk assessment instruments, as they are currently built and used, cannot safely be assumed to support reformist goals of reducing incarceration and addressing racial and poverty-based inequities. This Article contends that system stakeholders who share those goals are best off focusing their reformist energies on other steps that can more directly promote decarceral changes and greater equity in pretrial justice. Where pretrial risk assessments remain in use, this Article proposes two vital steps that should be seen as minimally necessary to address the challenges surfaced. First, where they choose to embrace risk assessment, jurisdictions must carefully define what they wish to predict, gather and use local, recent data, and continuously update and calibrate any model on which they choose to rely, investing in a robust data infrastructure where necessary to meet these goals. Second, instruments and frameworks must be subject to strong, inclusive governance.


We report the first high spectral resolution laboratory measurements of simulated oxygen A-band night glow. Our static discharge system approximates the conditions of the mesospheric oxygen night glow--suggesting O((1)D) + O2 (X(3)Σg(-)) → O((3)P) + O2 (b(1)Σg(+)) → O2 (X(3)Σg(-)) + hν as the primary source of the emission. Additionally, use of the static cell has enabled us to collect spectra for all six molecular oxygen isotopologues using isotopically enriched samples. The (0,0), (0,1), and (1,1) b - X vibrational bands were observed for all six isotopologues. The (1,2) and (2,2) bands were also observed for (16)O2. The frequencies of the observed (0,1) transitions resolved discrepancies in Raman data for (16)O(17)O, (17)O2, and (17)O(18)O, enabling us to improve the vibrational parameterization of the ground electronic state global fit. Rotationally resolved intensities were determined for the (0,0), (0,1), and (1,1) bands. The experimental band intensity ratios I(0,0)/I(0,1) = 13.53(24); I(1,1)/I(1,0) = 11.9(65); I(0,0)/I(0,2) = 503(197); and I(1,1)/I(1,2) = 5.6(19) are in excellent agreement with the recent mesospheric remote sensing data and calculated Franck-Condon factors.


Biomechanical Applictions and Modeling of Quantum Nano-Composite Strain Gauges Taylor D. Remington Department of Mechanical Engineering, BYU Master of Science Biological tissues routinely experience large strains and undergo large deformations during normal physiologic activity. Biological tissue deformation is well beyond the range of standard strain gauges, and hence must often be captured using expensive and non-portable options such as optical marker tracking methods that may rely upon significant post-processing. This study develops portable gauges that operate in real time and are compatible with the large strains seen by biological materials. The new gauges are based on a relatively new technique for quantifying large strain in realtime (up to 40 %) by use of a piezoresistive nano-composite strain gauge. The nano-composite strain gauges (NCSGs) are manufactured by suspending nickel nanostrands within a biocompatible silicone matrix. The conductive nickel filaments come into progressively stronger electrical contact with each other as the NCSG is strained, thus reducing the electrical resistance that is then measured using a four-probe method. This thesis summarizes progress in the understanding, design and application of NCSGs for biomechanical applications. The advanced understanding arises from a nano-junction-level finite element analysis of gap evolution that models how the geometry varies with strain in the critical regions between nickel particles. Future work will incorporate this new analysis into global models of the overall piezoresistive phenomenon. The improvements in design focused on the manufacturing route to obtain a reliable thin and flexible gauge, along with a modified connection and data extraction system to reduce drift issues that were present in all previous tests. Furthermore, a pottable data logging system was developed for mobile applications. Finally, a method of analyzing the resultant data was formulated, based upon cross-correlation techniques, in order to distinguish between characteristic wave-forms for distinct physical activities. All of these improvements were successfully demonstrated via a gait-tracking system applied to the insole of standard running shoes.


How is the Internet transforming the relationships between citizens and states? What happens to politics when international migration is coupled with digital media, making it easy for people to be politically active in a nation from outside its borders? In Nation as Network, Victoria Bernal creatively combines media studies, ethnography, and African studies to explore this new political paradigm through a striking analysis of how Eritreans in diaspora have used the Internet to shape the course of Eritrean history. Bernal argues that Benedict Anderson's famous concept of nations as "imagined communities" must now be rethought because diasporas and information technologies have transformed the ways nations are sustained and challenged. She traces the development of Eritrean diaspora websites over two turbulent decades that saw the Eritrean state grow ever more tyrannical. Through Eritreans' own words in posts and debates, she reveals how new subjectivities are formed and political action is galvanized online. She suggests that "infopolitics"-struggles over the management of information-make politics in the twenty-first century distinct, and she analyzes the innovative ways Eritreans deploy the Internet to support and subvert state power. Nation as Network is a unique and compelling work that advances our understanding of the political significance of digital media.


We evaluate the impacts of adopting algorithmic predictions of future offending (risk assessments) as an aid to judicial discretion in felony sentencing. We find that judges' decisions are influenced by the risk score, leading to longer sentences for defendants with higher scores and shorter sentences for those with lower scores. However, we find no robust evidence that this reshuffling led to a decline in recidivism, and, over time, judges appeared to use the risk scores less. Risk assessment's failure to reduce recidivism is at least partially explained by judicial discretion in its use. Judges systematically grant leniency to young defendants, despite their high risk of reoffending. This is in line with a long standing practice of treating youth as a mitigator in sentencing, due to lower perceived culpability. Such a conflict in goals may have led prior studies to overestimate the extent to which judges make prediction errors. Since one of the most important inputs to the risk score is effectively off-limits, risk assessment's expected benefits are curtailed. We find no evidence that risk assessment affected racial disparities statewide, although there was a relative increase in sentences for black defendants in courts that appeared to use risk assessment most. We conduct simulations to evaluate how race and age disparities would have changed if judges had fully complied with the sentencing recommendations associated with the algorithm. Racial disparities might have increased slightly, but the largest change would have been higher relative incarceration rates for defendants under the age of 23. In the context of contentious public discussions about algorithms, our results highlight the importance of thinking about how man and machine interact.


We present high resolution (7 arcsec), high sensitivity HI images of the shell galaxy NGC 1210. The neutral hydrogen forms a continous loop which appears in projection as an off-centered ring. Some remarkable aspects are the large HI mass, ( 8 x 10(9) Msun), the sharpness of some of its features (<3 kpc) and its unsettled appearance. Optically NGC 1210 shows a variety of shell morphologies, all-around shells in the center and aligned shells in the outer parts in addition to something that looks like a tidal tail. The present-day peculiarities of NGC 1210 may be the result of a major merger or multiple merger/accretion events. Using the HI kinematics and the gas and shell morphology we try to disentangle the recent past of NGC 1210.


The politicization of the Holocaust has been reflected in Israeli culture from the late 1940s in cinema, literature, theater, and poetry; in the last several decades, it has also been depicted on Israeli television. Most of the representations of the Holocaust in the first decades of Israel's existence were dramatic. But from the 1990s onward, Israelis also began to address the subject through satire. The case studies in this article focus on the satirical skits performed on episodes of The Chamber Quintet (Hahamishia Hakamerit; Matar Productions, Channel 2-Tela'ad, Channel 1, 1993–1997) and Wonderful Country (Eretz Nehederet; Keshet Productions, Channel 2-Keshet, 2003–2014). Diverging from arguments that these humorous skits addressing the Holocaust disrespect the Holocaust and its survivors, this article maintains that they instead articulate the powerful position the Holocaust holds as a constituting event in the consciousness and identity of younger generations in Israel.


What is the utility from obtaining more precise values of natural resource objects (rainforests), through surveys or other similar information gathering? In the value of information problems studied here, a principal who wishes to preserve a resource sets a price to offer to a seller without knowing precisely the protection value or opportunity value, to the seller. The value of information related to more precise information about the protection value for the principal is a key issue in environmental and natural resource valuation, but it is in most cases implicit and not analyzed. More precise resource values reduce the frequency of two types of mistakes (saving the resource when it should not be saved, and not saving the resource when it should be saved), and increases the principal's ex ante expected utility value. This paper applies the model to Amazon rainforest protection and considers the hypothetical value of perfect information. The analysis finds that the value of perfect information can easily exceed realistic information costs, thus perhaps justifying significant expenditures for valuation studies, given that all available information is used efficiently for conservation decision purposes. The value of perfect information also depends on the nature of buyer-seller interactions, and is higher in the altruistic case, where the principal has full concern for the outcome for the seller.


In addition to the extensive coral reef habitats described in Chapter 5, the shallow
subtidal and intertidal zones around the coasts of Pacific Island countries and
territories (PICTs) often support large areas of mangroves and seagrasses. Intertidal
sand and mud flatsii with their associated microalgae and infauna are also common
features of most PICTs.
Due to their varying responses to light, temperature and hydrology, and the capacity
of mangroves and seagrasses for dispersal1–4, these three ecosystems usually form
a mosaic. Typically, mangroves are located along the shore, whereas seagrasses and
intertidal flats can extend long distances away from the shoreline in lagoons and
sheltered bays, and often adjoin coral reefs. In many places, coral reefs buffer waves
coming ashore to create suitably sheltered environments for the establishment of
mangroves and seagrasses5.
Mangroves and seagrasses are of special interest to coastal fisheries worldwide
because of the role they play in providing nursery areas for commonly harvested fish
and invertebrates6–9. Although the ecology of fish and invertebrates associated with
mangroves and seagrasses in the tropical Pacific is not well understood compared
with other parts of the world, the connectivity among mangroves, seagrasses,
intertidal flats and coral reefs indicates that mangroves and seagrasses throughout
the region provide a similar function to such habitats elsewhere.
In addition to their roles as nursery areas, mangroves, seagrasses and intertidal flats
provide feeding habitats for many species of adult demersal fish, some of which
reside on reefs during the day and forage over seagrasses and intertidal flats at
night10. Seagrasses and intertidal flats are also permanent habitats for several species
of sea cucumbers, the main group of invertebrates targeted as an export commodity
in the region11, and for a wide range of molluscs gleaned for subsistence. Overall,
the range of coastal fisheries resources that depend on mangroves, seagrasses and
intertidal flats is extensive, with many of these species important to the food security
and livelihoods of coastal communities in PICTs (Chapters 1 and 9).
The separate values of each ecosystem are surpassed by the productivity that results
when they are inter-connected7,8,12. In particular, movement of nutrients, detritus,
prey and consumers between habitats can have major effects on the structure and
productivity of food webs, with nutrient and detrital subsidies increasing primary
and secondary productivity both directly and indirectly13. In addition to supporting
fisheries, mangroves provide protection against wind and wave energy, and stabilise
shorelines; and both mangroves and seagrasses improve water quality by trapping
sediments, nutrients and other pollutants.
Ecosystems dominated by mangroves and seagrasses are being eroded in some PICTs
due to their proximity to developments in the coastal zone19,20. For example, increases
in the turbidity of coastal waters and higher rates of sedimentation, resulting from
poor land management in the catchments of high islands, are reducing the area and
health of seagrass habitats21,22. The problem is not unique to the region – the range
and intensity of anthropogenic effects on coastal habitats have been increasing
worldwide, reducing the extent and quality of mangroves23,24 and seagrasses20,25.
Climate change is expected to exacerbate anthropogenic impacts on mangroves,
seagrasses and intertidal flats3,26,27. Further losses are expected to occur as a result
of greater heat stress, increased sedimentation and turbidity due to higher rates of
runoff, changes in suitable sites for growth of mangroves and seagrasses due to rising
sea levels, and possibly more physical damage from the combination of sea-level rise
and more severe cyclones and storms.
In this chapter, we assess the vulnerability of the mangrove, seagrass and intertidal
flat habitats in the tropical Pacific that support coastal fisheries. We do this by
examining the effects that changes to surface climate and the tropical Pacific Ocean
(Chapters 2 and 3) are expected to have on the plants that define these habitats. This
exposure to change is used in the framework described in Chapter 1 to assess the
vulnerability of the habitats under representative low (B1) and high (A2) emissions
scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for 2035 and
210028.
We commence by describing the diversity and distribution of mangrove, seagrass and
intertidal flat habitats in the tropical Pacific (25°N–25°S and 130°E–130°W), outlining
the role they play in supporting coastal fisheries in the region, and summarising
the critical requirements for establishing and maintaining these habitats. Next, we
summarise the limited information on the observed effects of climate change on
mangroves, seagrasses and intertidal flats, and assess the expected vulnerability of
these habitats to the projected changes in solar radiation, air and sea temperatures,
rainfall, nutrients, cyclones and storms, ocean acidity and sea-level rise. For
mangroves and seagrasses, we integrate these assessments to estimate changes in
area under the various scenarios.
We conclude by identifying the uncertainty associated with these assessments, the
important gaps in knowledge, the research required to fill these gaps, and the key
management measures needed to maintain the important roles that the mangroves,
seagrasses and intertidal flats of the region play in supporting coastal fisheries.


Harmonic resonance occurs when the network equivalent shunt harmonic capacitive reactance is associated with the network series harmonic inductive reactance. When such resonance occurs, it amplifies harmonic components with frequency close to the resonance point. Solutions used to solve harmonic resonance problems can be divided into two main categories. One is to reduce the content of harmonic components in the network (e.g. by using active or passive harmonic filters, etc.) and the other is to remove the resonance stimulating factor by shifting away the resonance frequency to a non-critical frequency range (e.g. detuning PFC capacitors, redesigning feeder transformers, etc.). Studies show that these techniques are not adequate to solve harmonic resonance problems in power distribution networks which are dynamic by their nature and with complex interconnections. Due to this, solutions in the category one are designed for localised harmonic distortion compensation, while solutions in the category two lack real-time operation feature. Therefore, it was identified that there is a need for real-time harmonic resonance attenuation that is suitable for power distribution networks. In this thesis, a new real-time Harmonic Resonance Attenuation (HRA) technique is proposed. This technique may be used with ordinary shunt harmonic filters to make them behave like a virtual shunt capacitor or inductor. Thus, looking from the harmonic current source side, the filter alters the network harmonic impedance and hence results in harmonic resonance attenuation. In order to implement the HRA technique, fast measurement of system harmonics in real-time is required. Therefore, in this work, a fast individual harmonic extraction (FIHE) technique is developed to enhance the desired real-time operation of the HRA. The proposed FIHE needs only one sixth of the fundamental cycle to extract any individual harmonic component which is faster than other methods currently available. In addition to the speed, the proposed FIHE provides overshoot free, oscillation free and ripple free extraction characteristics. The proposed HRA and FIHE techniques are described in this thesis with detailed analysis to illustrate their operating principles. A series of simulations and experiments are conducted to evaluate their functionality and performance. Results of the evaluation are presented and discussed in this thesis together with details of the experimental HRA model developed to verify the theoretical and simulation results.


During spring 2016, a survey was carried out in Bosnian-Herzegovinian (BiH) and Montenegrin (MNE) fig orchards, germplasm collection plots and outdoor gardens, to investigate the presence of unreported fig viruses possibly present in both countries, i.e. Fig leaf mottle-associated virus 2 (FLMaV-2), Fig latent virus 1 (FLV-1), Fig cryptic virus 1 (FCV-1), Fig fleck-associated virus (FFkaV) and Fig badnavirus 1 (FBV-1); as well as those previously reported, i.e. Fig leaf mottle-associated virus 1 (FLMaV-1), Fig mild mottle-associated virus (FMMaV) and Fig mosaic emaravirus (FMV). A total of 84 fig samples (49 from BIH and 35 from MNE) were collected and tested by PCR/RT-PCR using sets of virus-specific primers. Results showed that FBV-1 was the prevailing virus with all samples (100%) infected, followed by FLMaV-1 (54% ) , FMV (35%), FMMaV (7%), FFkaV (6%) and FLMaV-2 (1%); whereas FLV-1 and FCV-1 were not detected. Excluding the FBV-1 detection, 35% of tested trees were infected with at least one other virus. Sequence analyses of PCR/RT-PCR fragments obtained from different viruses showed that FBV-1 was the least variable (0.9% of nucleotides divergent) compared with FLMaV-1 (15.7% sequence variation), FLMaV-2 (17.4%), FMMaV (14.9%), FMV (16.9%) and FFkaV (14.3%). Phylogenetic trees constructed with obtained sequences, together with their homologues retrieved from the Genbank database, showed distinct separation of the BiH and MNE isolates from those of different origins, in particular for FFkaV and FMV; whereas for closteroviruses (FLMaV-1, FLMaV-2 and FMMaV), there was no distinction between the isolates. This is the first report on sequence analyses of fig viruses in this geographical region, and of the presence of FBV-1 in BiH and MNE, and of FLMaV-2 and FFkaV.


The Development Works Report (2004:28) described the role played by live music performers in the sub-Saharan region as a military force, a 'musician corps' of foot soldiers out in the field of the music industry. Musicians have a vital role to play in defining the industry in which they work. The phrase 'musician corps' (2004:28) implies a well-trained, well-informed body of musicians, prepared for the terrain of the music industry. Locally this corps was unfortunately a fragmented body of soldiers, often ill equipped for its task. As a means to better understand how the South African musician corps was performing this vital role of growing the local music industry, research was conducted via interviews and surveys among local musicians in order to collaborate the experience of local performers. Other sources consulted in this research process included local music business conferences and reports and literature sources relevant to live music studies. This research aimed to uncover the state of the local musician corps, to assess the level of industry-relevant skills and knowledge that are required for effective troops and to reveal the attitudes and activities of local musicians. Through this process of data gathering, the question that this research aimed to uncover was whether or not local live performers were sufficiently skilled to develop the live music sector. The majority of the research findings were based on interviews and surveys conducted in the city of Johannesburg.


Building Information Modelling (BIM) is recognized as the next generation of techniques that will bring about digitalization revolution to global AEC industry. Developing countries, such as China, still use CAD in building project. It is valuable to transform architecture drawings to BIM models in a cost-efficient way. Current researches on 3D reconstruction of architecture drawings work on floor plan detection. The problem is elevation and height information in floor plan is not always accessible. This research studies how to use layer property in CAD to detect elevation drawing and combine with floor plan recognition to deliver a comprehensive 3D reconstruction. The layer property and conventions are studied, and an automatic layer classification method (ALCM) is proposed to identify the semantic meaning of layer. Based on ALCM, a method to detect elevation drawing is proposed. Bounding box is created from the floor plan detection and visibility analysis. It can achieve elevation member measuring by searching the inside primitives. ALCM is tested with 70 plan drawings. The average accuracy is 95%, which implies reliable performance. Taking advantage of ALCM, the layer of demanding structural members or symbols are known. The results are inputted in the implementation of elevation detection testing. 50 pieces of elevation drawings are used to evaluate the orientation recognition method; two sets of complete architecture drawings, containing 8 elevation drawings and 36 floor plans, are adopted to test the rest of algorithms. It is found that the precision and recall rate of visibility analysis is 70.6% and 98.4%, which suggests an optimistic capability to catch visible objects, but some invisible objects are also mistaken. It leads to creation of invalid bounding box. Through the elevation detection algorithm, 87% of visible members in elevation drawing successfully acquire their height and offset value. The algorithm is applied in a practical use in University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China. A teaching building is automatically modeled in Revit with correct family dimension and position.


After the end of the Cold War, the world has experienced a more mono-polar power structure. In contrast to promises of a peaceful 'one' world, this seems not to have provided more international justice and security, nor reduced international conflict. Defense-related issues, long given minor attention in economics, have surfaced rather as a central mechanism in the current stage of globalization. Increase in military expenditures, the multiplication of wars, new generations of sophisticated weapons, and increased interest for defense stocks at the financial markets, indicate that a new type of relation between defense and economy has set in. The papers presented here investigate on what economics has to say on conflict, war, and terrorism today, a selection of sophisticated economic analyses of the theoretical and applied industrial, macroeconomic, fiscal-policy, financial market, regional, and alternative policies dimensions. Here, modern economics has a considerable and critical contribution to make.


The main goal of this dissertation is to present extensions to the robust estimation of multivariate location and scatter. These extensions include the estimation of structured scatter matrices embedded in a multivariate fixed effects model. Two different kinds of robust estimators are investigated. The first is based on Maronna's M -estimators of multivariate location and scatter (Maronna 1976). The second is a multivariate extension of the S-estimators introduced by Rousseeuw and Yohai (1984). In addition, asymptotic distributions of the estimators are derived from an estimating function approach. The sandwich estimator of the asymptotic variance is given, coupled with second order corrections to the bias of the estimators. Two different data sets are used to illustrate the techniques of the dissertation. A comparison of the new algorithms to Ruppert's SURREAL algorithm is made for each example. Models are fit to illustrate the flexibility of the new estimators. In addition, the sandwich estimate of the asymptotic variance is given for the examples. Simulations are performed evaluating the effectiveness of the estimators.


This paper proposes a new unsupervised satellite change detection method, which is robust to illumination changes. To achieve this, firstly, a preprocessing strategy is used to remove illumination artifacts and results in less false detection than traditional threshold-based algorithms. Then, we use the corrected input data to define a new fitness function based on the difference image. The purpose of using Self-Adaptive Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization-Genetic Algorithm (SAPSOGA) is to combine two meta-heuristic optimization algorithms to search and find the feasible solution in the NP-hard change detection problem rapidly and efficiently. The hybrid algorithm is employed by letting the GA and PSO run simultaneously and similarities of GA and PSO have been considered to implement the algorithm, i.e. the population. In the SAPSOGA employed, in each iteration/generation the two population based algorithms share different amount of information or individual(s) between themselves. Thus, each algorithm informs each other about their best optimum results (fitness values and solution representations) which are obtained in their own population. The fitness function is minimized by using binary based SAPSOGA approach to produce binary change detection masks in each iteration to obtain the optimal change detection mask between two multi temporal multi spectral landsat images. The proposed approach effectively optimizes the change detection problem and finds the final change detection mask.


Feature Issue on High Availability in Optical NetworksThe availability requirements for today's networks are very high. Higher availability often comes with a higher cost. We describe several steps required for estimating the costs of realistic network scenarios. Capital expenditures (CapEx) and operational expenditures (OpEx) are classified. An activity-based approach is used to quantify the cost of the event-driven operational processes such as repair and service provisioning. We discuss activity duration and availability parameters as required input data, which are necessary for calculating the processes' costs for realistic network scenarios. The relevant availability measures for an IP-over-Optical network are described using a triplet representation with optimistic, nominal, and conservative values. The model is applied to a reference German network scenario.


Malicious JavaScript has become an important attack vector for software exploitation attacks and imposes a severe threat to computer security. In particular, three major class of problems, malware detection, exploit diagnosis, and exploits mitigation, bring considerable challenges to security researchers. Although a lot of research efforts have been made to address these threats, they have fundamental limitations and thus cannot solve the problems. Existing analysis techniques fall into two general categories: static analysis and dynamic analysis. Static analysis tends to produce inaccurate results (both false positive and false negative) and is vulnerable to a wide series of obfuscation techniques. Thus, dynamic analysis is constantly gaining popularity for exposing the typical features of malicious JavaScript. However, existing dynamic analysis techniques possess limitations such as limited code coverage and incomplete environment setup, leaving a broad attack surface for evading the detection. Once a zero-day exploit is captured, it is critical to quickly pinpoint the JavaScript statements that uniquely characterize the exploit and the payload location in the exploit. However, the current diagnosis techniques are inadequate because they approach the problem either from a JavaScript perspective and fail to account for "implicit" data flow invisible at JavaScript level, or from a binary execution perspective and fail to present the JavaScript level view of exploit. Although software vendors have deployed techniques like ASLR, sandbox, etc. to mitigate JavaScript exploits, hacking contests (e.g.,PWN2OWN, GeekPWN) have demonstrated that the latest software (e.g., Chrome, IE, Edge, Safari) can still be exploited. An ideal JavaScript exploit mitigation solution should be flexible and allow for deployment without requiring code changes. To combat malicious JavaScript, this dissertation addresses these problems through enriched executions, which explore arbitrary paths for detection, preserve JS-binary semantics for diagnosis, and perturbs memory with chaff code for mitigation. Firstly, JSForce, a forced execution engine for JavaScript, is proposed and developed to improve the detection results of current malicious JavaScript detection techniques. It drives an arbitrary JavaScript snippet to execute along different paths without any input or environment setup. While increasing code coverage, JSForce can tolerate invalid object accesses while introducing no runtime errors during execution. Secondly, JScalpel, a system that utilizes the JavaScript context information from the JavaScript level to perform context-aware binary analysis, is presented for JavaScript exploit diagnosis. In essence, it performs JS-Binary analysis to (1) generate a minimized exploit script, which in turn helps to generate a signature for the exploit, and (2) precisely locate the payload within the exploit. It replaces the malicious payload with a friendly payload and generates a PoV for the exploit. Thirdly, ChaffyScript, a vulnerability-agnostic mitigation system, is introduced to block JavaScript exploits via undermining the memory preparation stage. Specifically, given suspicious JavaScript, ChaffyScript rewrites the code to insert memory perturbation code, and then generates semantically-equivalent code. JavaScript exploits will fail as a result of unexpected memory states introduced by memory perturbation code, while the benign JavaScript still behaves as expected since the memory perturbation code does not change the JavaScript's original semantics. DETECTION, DIAGNOSIS AND MITIGATION OF MALICIOUS JAVASCRIPT WITH ENRICHED JAVASCRIPT EXECUTIONS by Xunchao Hu B.S. Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, 2009 M.S. Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, 2012 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical & Computer Engineering Syracuse University December 2017 Copyright © Xunchao Hu 2017 All Rights Reserved


Brain tumor segmentation in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is helpful for diagnostics, growth rate prediction, tumor volume measurements and treatment planning of brain tumor. The difficulties for brain tumor segmentation are mainly due to high variation of brain tumors in size, shape, regularity, location, and their heterogeneous appearance (e.g., contrast, intensity and texture variation for different tumors). Due to recent advances in deep convolutional neural networks for semantic image segmentation, automatic brain tumor segmentation is a promising research direction. This thesis investigates automatic brain tumor segmentation by combining deep convolutional neural network with regularization by a graph cut. We investigate several deep convolutional network structures that have been successful in semantic and medical image segmentation. Since the tumor pixels account for a very small portion in the whole brain slice, segmenting the tumor from the background is a highly imbalanced dense prediction task. We use a loss function that takes the imbalance of the training data into consideration. In the second part of the thesis, we improve the segmentation results of a deep neural network by using optimization framework with graph cuts. The graph cut framework can improve segmentation boundaries by making them more smooth and regular. The main issue when using the segmentation results of convolutional neural networks for the graph cut optimization framework is to convert tumor probabilities learned by a convolutional network into data terms. We investigate several possible ways that take into consideration the segmentation artifacts by convolutional neural networks. In experiments, we present the segmentation results by different deep convolutional neural network structures, e.g., fully convolutional neural network, dilated residual network and UNet. Also, we compare the combination of U-Net with different data terms for graph cut regularization to improve the neural network segmentation results. Experimental results show that the U-Net performs best with the intersection over union (IoU) for tumors of 0.7286. The IoU for tumors is improved to 0.7530 by training on three slices. Also, the IoU for tumors is improved to 0.7713 by U-Net with balanced loss function. The IoU for tumors is further improved to 0.8078 by graph cut regularization.