Richard J. Krickus. The Kaliningrad Question. New International Relations of Europe. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. x, 221 pp. Maps. Photographs. Index. $69.00, cloth. $24.95, paper.This is perhaps the best one-volume study in English of the Kaliningrad Oblast (Russian region), formerly the northern third of East Prussia; the southern two thirds went to Poland after the Second World War. Renamed in 1946 after an ex-president of the USSR, Mikhail Kalinin, who never set foot in the area, it contains the earlier German city of Konigsberg, founded in 1255 as a fortress of the Teutonic Knights. In the first part of this book, Richard J. Krickus provides an historical survey of the region from the thirteenth century to the present. Konigsberg joined the Hanseatic League in 1340, and in 1457 it became the seat of the Teutonic Order's grand master, after the knights had lost Marienburg to Poland. From 1525 until the union of Brandenburg and Prussia in 1618, it was the residence of the dukes of Prussia, and in 1701 it became the coronation city of the Prussian kings. It was there that the philosophical giant, Immanuel Kant, lived and worked from 1724 to 1804.In the Second World War, the region was the scene of determined German defence against the Red Army driving westward. The furious warfare, described by Krickus, left the city devastated, and the Soviet Union made no effort to rebuild Konigsberg in its former style. It demolished the ruins of the old castle and began to construct on its site a municipal and Communist Party administration building, the "House of Soviets," that was never completed. Its towering empty shell, which adorns the book's cover, stands as a symbol of this region's failed past and uncertain future. The city and surrounding countryside are sad testimony to the aesthetic and environmental degradation that Soviet communism brought to the lands it conquered.Before the war, the city had been admired for its architecture, wealth and culture. East Prussia was a breadbasket for all of Germany. After the war, all 1.2 million German citizens were expelled, and the region became a Soviet garrison and deployment area for the Soviet naval, land, and missile forces. Some of its skilled labour force produced or serviced advanced weapons systems during the communist era. A fifth of its workforce is still paid by the military, although the number of soldiers has dramatically diminished to 24,000 (U.S. estimate) or 40,000 (Polish estimate), roughly a tenth of the 1991 strength.The book places this troublesome exclave in its regional setting. It needs outside help to prevent it from exporting its many problems to its neighbours and to deal with economic decline worse than in the rest of Russia. Krickus explains how the worst economic problems are home grown: the persistence of Soviet-era practices, corruption, and the Russian Duma's failure to pass laws to meet the concerns of foreign investors about the security of their ventures. All of these helped foil attempts to create a free economic zone (FEZ) in the oblast and put an end to any talk of its becoming a "gateway." Both the European Union (EU) and the surrounding states fear that it could become the "black hole" of the Baltic Sea region, a subject to which Krickus devotes an entire chapter.Located 500 kilometres from the border of the Russian Federation and 1,000 kilometres from Moscow, Kaliningrad must depend on its immediate neighbours, Lithuania and Poland, to provide many of the daily needs of its 950,000 residents. …


Gauge theories with scalar fields are generically plagued with different types of 'instabilities' at the quantum level. Some of these are also present in the current standard model of particle interactions, where the origin of mass is explained through the existence of a scalar field: The Higgs-field. Due to the issues with the Higgs-field the search for alternative descriptions of the origin of mass and the recently discovered Higgs-particle has received and still receives a lot of attention. It is the hope that a resolution will simultaneously explain, or provide clues about other puzzles of Nature, such as the occurrence of dark matter in the Universe. In this work the problems arising in quantized scalar field theory are carefully treated and discussed. The phase diagram of gauge theories is outlined and the concept of the scalar conformal window is introduced, as a counterpart to the conformal window known from the phase diagram of purely fermionic gauge theories. Theories within a conformal window share the property of exhibiting conformal invariance at long-distances. The phenomenological interest in such theories relies in the fact that a replacement of the Higgs-sector of the standard model with a near-conformal sector might be able to resolve the issues of the Higgs-field. Opposed to the familiar fermionic conformal window, the entire scalar conformal window is well-defined within perturbation theory. The machinery developed here to delineate the scalar phase diagram is in particular used to study conformal phase transitions and the associated near-conformal dynamics in certain models. An interesting aspect is that supersymmetry can with some fine-tuning be realized as an emergent phenomenon in several of the exhibited examples. Our ultimate goal of understanding new aspects of quantum field theory is to construct viable novel models of Nature. Based on our studies, a new idea is proposed as a resolution to the naturalness issue of the Higgsfield, dubbed perturbative natural conformality (PNC). In PNC extensions of the standard model the electroweak vacuum is generated by the ColemanWeinberg mechanism and at the same time the naturalness issue is delayed to higher scales by the Veltman condition. Through a search for viable PNC models, one candidate model is found that passes the quite strict PNC test, and at the same time predicts the observed Higgs-boson mass. This PNC model is surprisingly simple; it requires the existence of another scalar boson with a mass of around 541 GeV, also predicted by the PNC criteria, which must couple to the Higgs-field and an unspecified new fermionic sector.


Just what is Einstein's Theory of Relativity? The Big Bang Theory? Curvature of Spacetime? What do astronomers mean when they talk of a 'flat universe'? This approachable and authoritative guide to the cosmos answers these questions, and more. Taking advantage of the distinctive Companion format, readers can use the extensive, cross-referenced background chapters as a fascinating and accessible introduction to the current state of cosmological knowledge - or, they can use the convenient A-Z body of entries as a quick reference to a wide range of terms and concepts. Entries include topics such as: Black Hole; Doppler Effect; Fermi, Enrico; Heat Death of the Universe; Life in the Universe; Olber's Paradox; Quantum Field Theory; Supernova; and much more.


BACKGROUND
In the hospital setting, postoperative admission is a key vulnerable moment when patients are at increased risk of medication discrepancies. This study measures the reduction of medication discrepancies associated with a combined intervention of structured pharmacist medication history interviews with assessments in a surgical preadmission clinic and a postoperative medication order form.

METHODS
In the Surgical Pharmacist in Preadmission Clinic Evaluation (SPPACE) study, patients who had a preadmission clinic appointment before undergoing surgical procedures were eligible for inclusion. Patients were excluded if they were scheduled for discharge the same day as their surgery. Eligible patients were randomly assigned to the intervention arm (structured pharmacist medication history interview with assessment and generation of a postoperative medication order form) or to the standard care arm (nurse-conducted medication histories and surgeon-generated medication orders). The primary end point was the number of patients with at least 1 postoperative medication discrepancy related to home medications.

RESULTS
Between April 19, 2005, and June 3, 2005, a total of 464 patients were enrolled in the study, of which 227 and 237 patients were randomized to the intervention and standard care arms, respectively. In the intervention arm, 41 (20.3%) of 202 patients had at least 1 postoperative medication discrepancy related to home medications, compared with 86 (40.2%) of 214 patients in the standard care arm (P<.001). In the intervention arm, 26 (12.9%) of 202 patients had at least 1 postoperative medication discrepancy with the potential to cause possible or probable harm, compared with 64 (29.9%) of 214 patients in the standard care arm (P<.001). These were mostly omissions of reordering home medications.

CONCLUSION
A combined intervention of pharmacist medication assessments and a postoperative medication order form can reduce postoperative medication discrepancies related to home medications.


We study optimal contest design in situations where the designer can reward high performance agents with positive prizes and punish low performance agents with negative prizes. We link the optimal prize structure to the curvature of distribution of abilities in the population. In particular, we identify conditions under which, even if punishment is costly, punishing the bottom is more effective than rewarding the top in eliciting effort input. If punishment is costless, we study the optimal number of punishments in the contest.


In this thesis a method for Electrical lmpedance lmaging (EIT) during epileptic activity is developed. The first chapter provides an introduction to the impedance properties of the tissues of the head, to epilepsy and related conditions and how bioimpedance changes with these.

In the second chapter a method for simultaneous recording of EIT and EEG is developed, as the latter may be corrupted by the current injected by the former, to permit clinical reporting and correlation between the two methods.

The work in the third chapter analyzes fully a pilot clinical study with EIT during seizures, to see if any significant changes could be measured.

In the event, this analysis proved negative, so the fourth and fifth chapters re-examine the engineering aspects of the problem and specify an improved system. In particular their aim was to examine the feasibility of undertaking EIT during seizured with scalp electrodes: a detailed finite element model of the head was used in order to estimate the likely amplitude of scalp potentials, and these were considered in relation to the baseline noise of three available EIT systems. The purpose of this was to determine if EIT appeared feasible, suggest optimal recording conditions (such as optimal applied frequency) and choose the best available system for a clinical study. In the sixth and seventh chapter new measuring protocols were devised and a study was undertaken in saline filled tanks to determine if indeed the performance of the two best systems appeared sufficient for a clinical study. I then summarize the finding of the work in this thesis, discuss their overall significance and propose future work required for EIT in epilepsy.


A new technique for the cultivation of living tissues in the multipurpose culture chamber is described. This procedure employs strips of cellophane as the agent for anchoring tissue explants to the coverslip walls of the chamber and disposes of the time-honored plasma-clot technique. The primary advance embodied in this procedure lies in the fact that cells emigrating from so-cultured explants manifest themselves in a highly differentiated manner comparable to the cells of origin, whereas the outgrowth from the same types of tissue in plasma clots results in a more undifferentiated type of growth. Comparisons of outgrowths from embryonic thyroid, bone, and muscle (chicken) are photographically documented, and attention is called to certain cytochemical methods which further corroborate the differentiated quality obtained with the cellophane-strip technique.


Helps you choose the right computational tools and techniques to meet your drug design goals Computational Drug Design covers all of the major computational drug design techniques in use today, focusing on the process that pharmaceutical chemists employ to design a new drug molecule. The discussions of which computational tools to use and when and how to use them are all based on typical pharmaceutical industry drug design processes. Following an introduction, the book is divided into three parts: Part One, The Drug Design Process, sets forth a variety of design processes suitable for a number of different drug development scenarios and drug targets. The author demonstrates how computational techniques are typically used during the design process, helping readers choose the best computational tools to meet their goals. Part Two, Computational Tools and Techniques, offers a series of chapters, each one dedicated to a single computational technique. Readers discover the strengths and weaknesses of each technique. Moreover, the book tabulates comparative accuracy studies, giving readers an unbiased comparison of all the available techniques. Part Three, Related Topics, addresses new, emerging, and complementary technologies, including bioinformatics, simulations at the cellular and organ level, synthesis route prediction, proteomics, and prodrug approaches. The book's accompanying CD-ROM, a special feature, offers graphics of the molecular structures and dynamic reactions discussed in the book as well as demos from computational drug design software companies. Computational Drug Design is ideal for both students and professionals in drug design, helping them choose and take full advantage of the best computational tools available.


Histories of Palestine in the pre-1948 period usually assume the emergent Arab-Zionist conflict to be the central axis around which all change revolves. In Land of Progress Jacob Norris suggests an alternative historical vocabulary is needed to broaden our understanding of the region's recent past. In particular, for the architects of empire and their agents on the ground, Palestine was conceived primarily within a developmental discourse that pervaded colonial practice from the turn of the twentieth century onwards. A far cry from the post-World War II focus on raising living standards, colonial development in the early twentieth century was more interested in infrastructure and the exploitation of natural resources.

Land of Progress charts this process at work across both the Ottoman and British periods in Palestine, focusing on two of the most salient but understudied sites of development anywhere in the colonial world: the Dead Sea and Haifa. Weaving the experiences of local individuals into a wider narrative of imperial expansion and anti-colonial resistance, Norris demonstrates the widespread excitement Palestine generated among those who saw themselves at the vanguard of progress and modernisation, whether they were Ottoman or British, Arab or Jewish. Against this backdrop, Norris traces the gradual erosion during the mandate period of the mixed style of development that had prevailed under the Ottoman Empire, as the new British regime viewed Zionism as the sole motor of modernisation. As a result, the book's latter stages relate the extent to which colonial development became a central issue of contestation in the struggle for Palestine that unfolded in the 1930s and 40s.


Objectives: To determine the impact of reorganisation of an acute admissions process on numbers of people in the emergency department (ED) awaiting admission to a hospital bed in a major teaching hospital. Methods: We studied all emergency medical patients admitted to St James' Hospital, Dublin, between 1 January 2002 and 31 December 2004. In 2002, patients were admitted to a variety of wards from the ED when a hospital bed became available. In 2003, two centrally located wards were reconfigured to function as an acute medical admissions unit (AMAU) (bed capacity 59), and all emergency patients were admitted directly to this unit from the ED (average 15 admissions per day). The maximum permitted length of stay on the AMAU was 5 days. We recorded the number of patients in the ED, who were awaiting the availability of a hospital bed, at 0700 and 1700 on the days of recording during the 36 month study period. Results: The impact of the AMAU reduced overall hospital length of stay from 7 days in 2002 to 5 days in 2003 and 2004 (p<0.0001). The median number of patients waiting in the ED for a hospital bed reduced from 14 in 2002 to 9 in 2003 and 8 in 2004 (p<0.0001). While age and sex of patients did not differ over the years, the factors that independently contributed to the number of patients awaiting admission were the day of the week, the month of the year, and and the extent of the comorbidity index on the previous day's intake (p<0.0001). Conclusions: This study found that reorganisation of a system for acute medical admissions can significantly impact on the number of patients awaiting admission to a hospital bed, and allow an ED to operate efficiently and at a level of risk acceptable to patients.


Maps of canopy nitrogen obtained through analysis of high-resolution, hyperspectral, remotely sensed images now offer a powerful means to make landscape-scale to regional-scale estimates of forest N cycling and net primary production (NPP). Moreover, recent research has suggested that the spatial variability within maps of canopy N may be driven by environmental gradients in such features as historic forest disturbance, temperature, species composition, moisture, geology, and atmospheric N deposition. Using the wide variation in these six features found within the diverse forest ecosystems of the 2.5 million ha Adirondack Park, New York, USA, we examined linkages among environmental gradients and three measures of N cycling collected during the 2003 growing season: (1) field survey of canopy N, (2) field survey of soil C:N, and (3) canopy N measured through analysis of two 185 x 7.5 km Hyperion hyperspectral images. These three measures of N cycling strongly related to forest type but related poorly to all other environmental gradients. Further analysis revealed that the spatial pattern in N cycling appears to have distinct inter- and intraspecific components of variability. The interspecific component, or the proportional contribution of species functional traits to canopy biomass, explained 93% of spatial variability within the field canopy N survey and 37% of variability within the soil C:N survey. Residual analysis revealed that N deposition accounted for an additional 2% of variability in soil C:N, and N deposition and historical forest disturbance accounted for an additional 2.8% of variability in canopy N. Given our finding that 95.8% of the variability in the field canopy N survey could be attributed to variation in the physical environment, our research suggests that remotely sensed maps of canopy N may be useful not only to assess the spatial variability in N cycling and NPP, but also to unravel the relative importance of their multiple controlling factors.


The upgrade to the National Spherical Torus eXperiment (NSTX-U) included two main improvements: a larger center-stack, enabling higher toroidal field and longer pulse duration, and the addition of three new tangentially aimed neutral beam sources, which increase available heating and current drive, and allow for flexibility in shaping power, torque, current, and particle deposition profiles. To best use these new capabilities and meet the high-performance operational goals of NSTX-U, major upgrades to the NSTX-U control system (NCS) hardware and software have been made. Several control algorithms, including those used for real-time equilibrium reconstruction and shape control, have been upgraded to improve and extend plasma control capabilities. As part of the commissioning phase of first plasma operations, the shape control system was tuned to control the boundary in both inner-wall limited and diverted discharges. It has been used to accurately track the requested evolution of the boundary (including the size of the inner gap between the plasma and central solenoid, which is a challenge for the ST configuration), X-point locations, and strike point locations, enabling repeatable discharge evolutions for scenario development and diagnostic commissioning.


Electric vehicles rise new issues, among them high frequency noise, that are coming from electric powertrain. This noise is caused by interaction between magnetic radial forces and mechanical stator structure. Current harmonics may excite stator natural frequencies, thus leading to vibrations responsible for acoustic noise. In this paper, we propose a new method based on control to reduce current harmonics. They are modeled as the consequence of a sinusoidal disturbance at a given frequency. This is estimated by an observer and this estimation is used to cancel harmonic components contained in stator currents.


This research conducts one-to-one survey in respect of the users' state for the Suseong Pond, Sincheon and Palgeocheon, which have different characteristics of Daegu City, South Korea. From the research results, it is found that the Suseong Pond has many facilities to enjoy such as cafe, restaurant, amusement park, small boat etc. The facilities are highly used by young adult group (20 and 30s) with well-established trails, sports facilities, etc. The Sincheon is utilized for walking and exercising by the senior group (60s) with festival, educational experience and theme, amusement facilities, etc. The Palgeocheon, which is a waterside space of downtown area, is utilized for walking and exercising by the residents group (40 and 50s), who mostly live within 1 km from the stream, with amusement facilities, convenience facilities etc. Based on this research, we propose that the characteristics of waterside and its surrounding area should be investigated and considered for the development of waterfront space to reflect users' characteristics and requirements. The development of waterfront space reflecting the characteristics of users, stream, lake and facilities is expected to attract more users and enhance their satisfaction significantly.


Making the smart grid a reality will entail communication capabilities that do not exist in current power grids and their legacy control systems. New grid elements such as distributed energy generation and PHEVs will necessitate changes in these existing communication networks. These changes will be dictated by the need for new control operations that will allow efficient management of these new elements and that cannot be supported by the existing communication infra structure. Moreover, the smart grid will let households man age energy usage more efficiently through AMI and HEMSs. The realization of these systems will require pushing communication networks far out from the network core and deep into homes and buildings. We have presented the communication requirements of the smart grid, and we have identified the main technical challenges that need to be tackled. The only viable way to fulfill these requirements is to design a new communication architecture that can support smart grid services and control operations. This future communication architecture will need to take advantage of the recent progress made in communication technologies and protocols. It will require the introduction of communications technologies that were not considered in the past. In addition, this communication architecture will need to be reliable, scalable, and extendable to future smart grid services and applications.


In the 1980s and 1990s, publications like A Nation at Risk and Prisoners of Time were highly critical of the American public school system. In response, school administrators reviewed their master schedules to evaluate how time was scheduled and the majority of them chose block scheduling to secure longer, uninterrupted periods of instructional time. Upon implementing block scheduling, schools noted a need for a change in pedagogy. Constructivist teaching, shown to be effective with multiple ages, has become a preferred pedagogy for elementary and middle school teachers during a block period. The review of literature includes a description of the forces behind block scheduling and provides a background of constructivist theory and teaching practices based on the writings of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Combining constructivist teaching with block scheduling creates an environment conducive to young adolescent learning; however, properly preparing teachers through professional development is key to effective implementation. The purpose of this action research study was to facilitate the professional growth of new teachers by providing job embedded professional development opportunities that were grounded in constructivist practices and demonstrated to be effective with young adolescent learners while teaching in a block period. Kew Words: Block Scheduling, Constructivism, and Professional Development


The Impact of Incomplete Contracts on Economics collects papers and opinion pieces on the impact that this property right approach to the firm has had on the economics profession. It shows that the impact has been felt sometimes in significant ways in a variety of fields, ranging from the theory of the firm and their internal organization to industrial organization, international trade, finance, management, public economy, and political economy and political science. Beyond acknowledging how the property rights approach has permeated economics as a whole, the contributions in the book also highlight the road ahead—how the paradigm may change the way research is performed in some of the fields, and what type of research is still missing. The book concludes with a discussion of the foundations of the property rights, and more generally the incomplete contracting, approaches and with a series of contributions showing how behavioral considerations may provide a new way forward.


The performances of thin film silicon solar cells are reported for the use of increasingly rough zinc-oxide (ZnO) front electrodes. Experimental results show that textured substrates favor increased light trapping but also the local creation of undesired current drains, degrading the electrical performance of the cells. While an appropriate plasma treatment of the ZnO surface and a high silicon material quality are required to decrease the density of such current drains, doped nano-crystalline silicon oxide layers are proposed to limit the impact of these local non-uniformities onto the performance of both hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) and microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si:H) junctions. The possible physical roles of such low-conductivity doped layers are discussed. Conversion efficiency relative increase of 7 % for a-Si:H single junction and of 4 % to 20 % for respectively low (0.3 nm/s) and high deposition rate (1 nm/s) i-layer in μc-Si:H junctions deposited on highly textured substrates are shown. Micromorph solar cells integrating such doped silicon oxide layers could be developed on rough ZnO front electrodes with a high light trapping potential with up to 13.7 % and 11.5 % initial and stabilized efficiency, respectively.


Objectives
Family childcare homes (FCCH) are a commonly used form of childcare in the US, yet little is known about this setting, particularly the practices that Hispanic providers use when feeding children. Therefore, the goal was to examine the validity of the Environmental Policy Assessment Observation Tool (EPAO) to assess provider feeding practices.

Methods
Data from an ongoing cluster-randomized trial were used. FCCH provider feeding practices were assessed over 2 days using a modified version of the EPAO (adapted for use in FCCH with expanded assessment of feeding practices). The EPAO captures nutrition and physical activity environments in child-care (e.g., provisions, practices, policies); however, only the 44 feeding practices items recorded during meals were used in this study. For each meal and snack occasion, a weighted factor, which accounted for frequency and time spent in each meal for each feeding practice was created and then averaged across the two observation days to obtain a weighted average score. Exploratory factor analysis investigated the underlying factor structure of the feeding practices.

Results
All FCCH providers were female (n = 119) and the majority (72%) were Hispanic. A final 3-factor solution, which captured 34% of the variance, was examined. Factor 1 appeared to capture autonomy support practices with 14 items (e.g., Enthusiastic role modeling, eating the same foods, talking about foods being served, reasoning with children) with loadings ranging from 0.455-0.875 (eigenvalue = 7.3). Factor 2 appeared to capture coercive control and indulgent feeding practices and emerged with 5 items (e.g., Insisting child eat foods on plate, pressuring child to eat, rushing child to eat) with loadings ranging from 0.410-0.817 (eigenvalue = 3.7). Factor 3 appeared to capture a mix of overt control and negative structure behaviors with 5 items (e.g., Enforcing table manners, encouraging children to sit at the table, removing the plate before child was done) with loadings ranging from 0.37-0.66 (eigenvalue = 3.2).

Conclusions
The emerging autonomy supportive and coercive controlling factors are consistent with recent research conducted with FCCH providers in North Carolina. Future research should continue to refine this model and explore associations with child diet.

Funding Sources
National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, Grant # R01 HL123016.


We have conducted a preliminary analysis of the history of size change of coccoliths through the Jurassic and Cretaceous. This is essentially based on a compilation of literature data. The results demonstrate that the average size of coccoliths has increased from early Jurassic through the Santonian, stabilized until the Campanian and decreased during the Maastrichtian. Remarkably, this size history parallels the diversity (species richness) history of the Mesozoic Coccolithophorids, and constitutes an illustration of Cope's rule . The amplitude of change of the average size through time appears to have remained small, which may result from competition by other, larger, contemporaneous calcareous nannoplanktonic groups.


A possible explanation for the rise of the incumbency advantage in U.S. elections asserts that party and incumbency are close informational substitutes. A common claim in the literature is that, as the salience of partisan cues decreased, voters attached themselves to the next available piece of information – incumbency. Minnesota state legislative elections provide a unique setting for testing this idea. These elections switched from using non-partisan to partisan ballots and primaries in 1973. We find that, after the switch to partisan elections, party voting increased substantially. However, contrary to expectations, the incumbency advantage also increased. These patterns suggest that party and incumbency are not close substitutes for large numbers of voters, and that cue-substitution cannot explain the rise of the incumbency advantage.


Laparostomy is the process by which the abdomen is left open. There are multiple indications which include gross sepsis and abdominal compartment syndrome. In these cases, closure of the abdomen would be detrimental. This is due to the cascade of events secondary to sepsis or critical pressure. The creation of laparostomy has obvious impact on hospital resources secondary to prolonged intensive therapy. At present there are different methods available of abdominal closure in laparostomy. These can be broadly classified into definitive or temporary. Laparostomy is certainly here to stay: this article tries to grapple with the problems of exactly when it is indicated and how to manage the open abdomen.


The Bayesian parameter estimation problem using a single-bit dithered quantizer is considered. This problem arises, e.g., for channel estimation under low-precision analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) at the receiver. Based on the Bayesian Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB), bounds on the mean squared error are derived that hold for all dither strategies with strictly causal adaptive processing of the quantizer output sequence. In particular, any estimator using the binary quantizer output sequence is asymptotically (in the sequence length) at least 10 log10 (π/2) ≈ 1.96 dB worse than the minimum mean squared error estimator using continuous observations, for any dither strategy. Moreover, dither strategies are designed that are shown by simulation to closely approach the derived lower bounds.


Cold and ultracold collisions occupy a strategic position at the intersection of several powerful themes of current research in chemical physics, in atomic, molecular and optical physics, and even in condensed matter. The nature of these collisions has important consequences for optical manipulation of inelastic and reactive processes, precision measurement of molecular and atomic properties, matter-wave coherences and quantum-statistical condensates of dilute, weakly interacting atoms. This crucial position explains the wide interest and explosive growth of the field since its inception in 1987. The author reviews elements of the quantum theory of scattering theory, collisions taking place in the presence of one or more light fields, and collisions in the dark, below the photon recoil limit imposed by the presence of any light field. Finally, it reviews the essential properties of these mesoscopic quantum systems, and describes the key importance of the scattering length to condensate stability.


'In the past decade, Guanlan International Print Biennial has been successfully organized for 5 times, which won great support and appreciation from artists across the globe. As a cultural brand with international reputation, the Biennial has created a favorable environment for the international communication of Guanlan Printmaking Base and China Printmaking Museum. It also facilitates the academic exchanges of printmaking around the world, and promotes the development of Chinese print art and of the cultural industries in Shenzhen. As a permanent exhibition venue, China Printmaking Museum provides a first-class space for the selection and display of the Biennial. At the beginning of the second decade, the new Biennial will demonstrate its grand scale, fine quality and a splendid visual effect.'
http://www.guanlanprints.com/b/home.html
Name of Biennial: The 6th Guanlan International Print Biennial China 2017
Curator: Jiang Lu, Sheng Wei
Guanalan Print Biennial Committee received 4054 pieces of work from 2175 artists in 83 countries and regions. After two rounds of strict and fair selections, the jury selected 304 works. My large screenprint entitle 'Curtain I' was selected for inclusion.

About the work:
The print explore the phenomenon of the boundary. Through the experience of the drifter/follower and the person
being followed, the project examines the notion of borders as boundaries: between private and public, as separations and
as the outer layers of ourselves.
Curtain I depicting a curtain in a window of a hotel room is a border between the semiprivate place and the unknown city;
a border between the outsider and the life in the unknown location.


This paper proposes shot genre classification from MPEG compressed movies, as one of the high-level indexing methods for audio-visual contents. Through statistical analysis of low-level and mid-level audio-visual features on compressed domain, the proposed method can achieve subjectively accurate shot classification within the movies into predefined genre set, which can be applied to various content handling applications, such as summarization, navigation, editing, filtering, and so on. By feeding subjectively evaluated feature set for each shot genre into the linear machine decision tree classifier, each shot is classified at very low cost. The experimental results show that most of the shots in the movies can be classified into subjectively accurate genres, and also the dominant shot genre can correctly resolve each movie genre.


In order to determine the sociodemographic characteristics of human papillomavirus (HPV) in patients referred to the National Institute of Neoplastic Diseases (INEN) between 2012-2014, the detection of HPV in cervical cells was performed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). In 465 cervical samples, 151 (32.5%) cases were HPV positive. The most common genotypes were HPV-16 (23.8%) and HPV-6 (11.9%). The presence of HPV was higher in women aged 17-29 years (OR = 2.64, 95% CI 1.14 to 6.13) and single women (OR = 2.31, 95% CI 1.37 to 3.91). The presence of genotypes of high-risk HPV was higher in single women (OR = 2.19, 95% CI 1.04 to 4.62). In conclusion, young and single women had a higher frequency of HPV-positive cases. Therefore participation by these groups should be emphasized in screening programs with combined molecular and cytological methods in order to detect the risk of developing cervical cancer in a timely manner.


Objectives: The paper illustrates how the characteristics of industry clusters are revived in a new era for SME networks. It explores how a succession of industry shocks - increased global competition, recession and reduced policy support - have stimulated an innovative response in creative SMEs. The paper goes on to investigate the clustering experience of a small group of creative entrepreneurs in pursuing networked activities, with a view to identifying lessons that can be learnt to support other business-led, emergent clusters. Prior Work: Geographical industry clustering provides district advantages of pooled resources, proximity to suppliers and markets, knowledge sharing and cultural exchange (Saxenian, 1994; Piore and Sabel, 1984; Reid et al, 2008). Within a cluster, the SME's capacity to innovate is linked to co-opetition, supportive infrastructure, vertical and horizontal interdependencies (Porter, 1998; Doeringer and Terkla, 1995) and Rosenfeld's 'associative economy' (2005:5). Saxenian and Hsu (2001) illustrate how district externalities spillover across borders, while Aage and Belussi (2008) find that innovative clusters obtain competitive advantage from external-to-thedistrict influences. Approach: The research is based on a single case study of 3 micro-enterprises from Nottingham, UK, and their international collaborators. Compiled from observations, interviews and documentary analysis, the case tracks the progress of the group over eighteen months. The SMEs are embedded in a cluster of designer-maker entrepreneurs, emergent from Nottingham's traditional textiles manufacturing sector. Results: The results build on Saxenian and Hsu (2001) and Aage and Belussi (2008) findings in which SMEs benefit from internal district externalities while also looking outside of the cluster in a process of mutual knowledge sharing. Successive industry shocks appear to have fostered collaboration and innovation (after Deoringer et al, 2009) stimulating a cycle of knowledge spill-overs that further cluster advantages. Competitive advantage is observed in the initiating firms, other SMEs within their cluster networks, associated institutions and an extended, international network of SMEs. Implications: The results reveal the opportunity for SMEs to embrace more innovative approaches to collaboration, although not without risk. Further research advocates a broader field of enquiry, and longitudinal analysis of the success and potential advantages of such cases. Value: The paper revives the debate on clustering by SMEs, providing a rich source of data to enhance the provision of business support and knowledge transfer activities in what Enright (2001) terms 'wannabe clusters'. After Saxenian and Hsu (2001) collaborative networks have the potential to create competitive advantage for SMEs and rejuvenate traditional industry clusters.


The assumption of classical technology selection models is based on complete homogeneity of technologies. In spite of this assumption in many applications some technologies do not comprehensively consume common inputs to comprehensively supply common outputs. The objective of this paper is to propose a model for selecting slightly non-homogeneous technologies. A numerical example demonstrates the application of the proposed method.


This paper describes the implementation of a sigma-delta (/spl Sigma//spl Delta/) A/D converter within an FPGA, with minimal use of external analog components. The approach takes advantage of existing low-voltage differential signalling (LVDS) I/O pads; this allows the implementation of low-cost ADCs into existent FPGAs, even though such digital devices do not possess analog interfacing capabilities at first. The converter was implemented in an actual FPGA and had its performance evaluated.


AIM To quantify the variability of financial disclosures by authors presenting orthopaedic trauma research. METHODS Self-reported authorship disclosure information published for the 2012 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) and Orthopaedic Trauma Association (OTA) meetings was compiled from meeting programs. Both the AAOS and OTA required global disclosures for participants. Data collected included: (1) total number of presenters; (2) number of presenters with financial disclosures; (3) number of disclosures per author; (4) total number of companies supporting each author; and (5) specific type of disclosure. Disclosures made by authors presenting at more than one meeting were then compared for discrepancies. RESULTS Of the 5002 and 1168 authors presenting at the AAOS and OTA annual meetings, respectively, 1649 (33%) and 246 (21.9%) reported a financial disclosure (P < 0.0001). At the AAOS conference, the mean number of disclosures among presenters with disclosures was 4.01 with a range from 1 to 44. The majority of authors with disclosures reported three or more disclosures (n = 876, 53.1%). The most common cited disclosure was as a paid consultant (51.5%) followed by research support (43.0%) and paid speaker (34.8%). Among the 256 physicians with financial disclosures presenting at the OTA conference, the mean number of disclosures was 4.03 with a range from 1 to 22. Similar to the AAOS conference, the majority of authors with any disclosures at the OTA conference reported three or more disclosures (n = 140, 54.7%). Most authors with a disclosure had three or more disclosures and the most common type of disclosure was paid consulting. At the OTA conference, the most commonly cited form of disclosure was paid consultant (54.3%) followed by research support (46.1%) and paid speaker (42.6%). Of the 346 researchers who presented at both meetings, 112 (32.4%) authors were found to have at least one disclosure discrepancy. Among authors with a discrepancy, 36 (32.1%) had three or more discrepancies. CONCLUSION There were variability and inconsistencies in financial disclosures by researchers presenting orthopaedic trauma research. Improved transparency of conflict of interest disclosures is warranted among trauma researchers presenting at national meetings.


Iron disulfide (FeS2) has attracted a lot of interest for photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical applications due to its favorable electronic and optical properties. The theoretical description of FeS2 has been confronted with the problem of common density functional approximations failing to correctly account for the relative stability of pyrite and marcasite polymorphs of FeS2. We address this issue by using the adiabatic-connection fluctuation-dissipation theorem (ACFDT) in the random phase approximation (RPA). The relative stability of the two polymorphs is correctly predicted, and a significantly improved agreement with experiment compared to that from local, semi-local and hybrid functionals is obtained in terms of the enthalpy of transformation, regardless of the density functional approximations used in producing the input wave functions for RPA calculations. We attribute the stability of the pyrite phase to the electron correlation related to the low energy excitation from Fe d states to the S–S state. Equilibrium volumes very close to the experimental values are predicted for both phases as well. The contributions of zero-point energy corrections and finite temperature effects are considered and found to be insignificant compared to dynamical correlation included in the ACFDT-RPA approach. This study highlights the importance of considering the difference in high-order dynamical correlation as described by ACFDT-RPA due to the distinction in the Kohn–Sham band structure for a correct description of the relative stability of competing phases that are energetically very close to each other.


The aims and objectives of OCRIS were to:

• Survey the extent to which repository content is in scope for institutional library OPACs, and the extent to which it is already recorded there;

• Examine the interoperability of OPAC and repository software for the exchange of metadata and other information;

• List the various services to institutional managers, researchers, teachers and learners offered respectively by OPACs and repositories;

• Identify the potential for improvements in the links (e.g. using link resolver technology) from repositories and/or OPACs to other institutional services, such as finance or research administration;

• Make recommendations for the development of possible further links between library OPACs and institutional repositories, identifying the benefits to relevant stakeholder groups.

Key Findings

Interoperability and services

1. Interoperability between IRs and LMSs in UK HEIs is currently rare - only 2 percent of questionnaire respondents state that their systems definitely interoperate, with a further 14 percent stating that interoperability is pending.

2. Interoperability of either of these system types with some type of other institutional system is moderately high, and is slightly higher for LMSs than IRs.

3. Interoperability between LMSs or IRs and a range of other institutional systems is limited. It cannot be said that interoperability is substantial or that a wide variety of administrative systems interoperate with any individual library system.

4. The REF has clearly been a factor in the establishment or consideration of interoperability between Institutional Repositories and other administrative systems.

5. Services stemming from library systems are limited and narrow, excepting the generation of usage statistics and metadata enhancement services.

6. The generation of reports for specific administrative departments is not a common service offered by either IRs or LMSs.

7. The most popular service offered by IRs remains "advice on Open Access" suggesting perhaps that they are still in their infancy, still require explanation thus have yet to spread their wings in terms of widening their range of services.

8. The use of metasearch/linking tools as well as web services and APIs is moderately popular within LMSs and IRs; the data gathered is not sufficient to discern why or what these tools and services are being used for.


Abstract Capture–recapture experiments are conducted to estimate population parameters such as population size, survival rates, and capture rates. Typically, individuals are captured and given unique tags, then recaptured over several time periods with the assumption that these tags are not lost. However, for some populations, tag loss cannot be assumed negligible. The Jolly‐Seber tag loss model is used when the no‐tag‐loss assumption is invalid. Further, the model has been extended to incorporate group heterogeneity, which allows parameters to vary by group membership. Many mark–recapture models become overparameterized resulting in the inability to independently estimate parameters. This is known as parameter redundancy. We investigate parameter redundancy using symbolic methods. Because of the complex structure of some tag loss models, the methods cannot always be applied directly. Instead, we develop a simple combination of parameters that can be used to investigate parameter redundancy in tag loss models. The incorporation of tag loss and group heterogeneity into Jolly‐Seber models does not result in further parameter redundancies. Furthermore, using hybrid methods we studied the parameter redundancy caused by data through case studies and generated tag histories with different parameter values. Smaller capture and survival rates are found to cause parameter redundancy in these models. These problems resolve when applied to large populations.


Leadership, organizational, and institutional theories provide competing explanations on the nature of leadership and role of leaders. Part of the problem is that each theory is often studied in isolation, leading to incomplete perspectives on the essence of leadership in valuedriven contexts. A holistic paradigm that blends the three dominant models for understanding the work of the collective is warranted and necessary to optimize organizational outcomes. This article briefly highlights the contributions and limitations of each frame and provides an overview of complexity theory as a model for reconciling major differences. The paper provides specific perspectives, practices, and metaphors for navigating the collective to bring about desired outcomes. Managers are imprisoned only to the degree that their palette of ideas is impoverished. Bolman and Deal (1991, p. 4) There is nothing so practical as a good theory. (Lewin, 1951)


The editors and contributors reflect on ethics and reflexivity in critical management research, and explore the identity of the critical researcher both as an individual and working within collaborative projects. Using contemporary accounts from those engaged in real world fieldwork they outline what critical management is, and explore its relationship to management research. The book discusses the implications of critical management when: -Developing research questions -Managing research relationships -Using various methods of data collection -Writing accounts of your research, findings and analysis. Grounded in practical problems and processes this title sets out and then answers the challenges faced by critical researchers doing research in organization and management studies. (Less)


A zone-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (ZPS) has enabled us to gain the local and quantitative information and hence confirm our theoretical expectations on the bonding and electronic dynamics at graphite skin with and without atomic vacancy defects. The ZPS study has revealed: i) the 1s energy level of an isolated carbon atom is located at 282.57 eV, which shifts by 1.32 eV deeper upon diamond bulk formation; ii) the graphite surface bonds contract by 18% with 165% gain in energy compared with the C-C bond in the bulk diamond; the surface C 1s energy shifts 2.08 eV deeper from the 1s level of an isolated carbon atom; and iii) the defect bonds are ~26% shorter and 215% stronger with the binding energy shift of ~2.85 eV. An additional polarization peak centered at 1.28 eV below the C 1s level presents when the vacancy is formed. Associated with the scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy observations and density functional theory calculations, the ZPS measurements clarify, for the first time, that the graphitic Dirac-Fermi polarons at atomic vacancy or graphene zigzag edge arise from the polarization of the unpaired dangling-bond electrons by the undercoordination-induced local densification and quantum entrapment of the bonding electrons.


Roughly 30 percent of the 200 million acres of forest land in the South supports stands dominated by southern pines. These are among the most productive forests in the nation. Adapted to disturbance, southern pines are relatively easy to manage with even-aged methods such as clearcutting and planting, or the seed tree and shelterwood methods with natural regeneration. In addition, most species of the southern pines can be managed using the uneven-aged selection method, which maintains continuous canopy cover on the site. Because southern pines grow so rapidly across a wide variety of conditions, stands can quickly become overstocked to the point where competition results in reduced growth, decline in vigor, and mortality—including mortality from infestations of southern pine beetle (SPB). Thinning is an effective silvicultural practice designed to avoid the problems associated with overstocked stands, and can be used in immature sapling stands through mature stands of large trees. When a stand is properly thinned, the crowns obtain more sunlight, root systems get a larger share of soil moisture and nutrients, and trees maintain acceptable rates of growth and individual vigor. The best silvicultural defense against SPB is to manage forest stands so that individual trees are vigorous and stands are not overstocked. Active forest management is important, based on timely thinning treatments and other silvicultural practices appropriate for the local species and site conditions that optimize current stand developmental dynamics, manage species composition, and promote tree vigor and forest health. Silvicultural Considerations in Managing Southern Pine Stands in the Context of Southern Pine Beetle


Title of Document: SEPARATING THE EFFECTS OF GROUP SIZE, DENSITY, AND ENCLOSURE SIZE ON MOVEMENT AND USE OF SPACE IN DOMESTIC FOWL (Gallus gallus domesticus) Erin Hoerl Leone, Ph.D., 2008 Directed By: Professor Inmaculada Estevez, Department of Animal and Avian Science This project was designed to separate the confounded effects of group size, density, and enclosure size, and to examine the role of enclosure design and its related parameters in shaping movement patterns and use of space in the domestic fowl. While previous research has suggested that group size, density, and enclosure size are highly relevant to broiler (meat-type chicken) welfare, confounding between variables makes their individual contribution difficult to distinguish. My novel treatment structure with 10, 20, and 30 birds in small (1.5 m 2 ), medium (3.0 m 2 ), and large (4.5 m 2 ) enclosures enabled me to determine the impact of enclosure size while systematically controlling for group size and density. Three enclosure designs: rectangular, square, and square with partitions to maintain a constant perimeter to area ratio, were employed in order to determine the impact of enclosure parameters such as length to width and perimeter to area ratio. Enclosure size and design were the most relevant factors for space use, which was immune to the influence of group size and density. Birds consistently had larger home ranges in larger enclosures. The design of the enclosure had a strong effect of movement, altering the response of birds to the treatment combinations. Movement appeared to be greatest in rectangular enclosures, where the largest straight-line distance is available and the perimeter to area ratio declines at a relatively slow rate with increasing enclosure size. While enclosure size played a significant role in determining nearest neighbor distances and net displacement, these parameters appeared to be limited by density. The presence of partitions designed to increase interior perimeter space appeared to reduce movement and increase inactivity. Movement patterns did not appear to be restricted by social interactions for any group size. Rather, the physical presence of group mates at even a relatively low density of 6.7 birds/ m 2 appeared to act as a barrier to group dispersal and movement. Group size had little effect on young domestic fowl. Overall, this project has shown that for young domestic fowl the most relevant factors to overall space use are the amount of space available and enclosure design. SEPARATING THE EFFECTS OF GROUP SIZE, DENSITY, AND ENCLOSURE SIZE ON MOVEMENT AND USE OF SPACE IN DOMESTIC FOWL (Gallus gallus domesticus)


There has been much excitement recently about big data and the dire need for data scientists who possess the ability to extract meaning from it. Geoscientists, meanwhile, have been doing science with voluminous data for years, without needing to brag about how big it is. But now that large, complex data sets are widely available, there has been a proliferation of tools and techniques for analyzing them. Many free and open-source packages now exist that provide powerful additions to the geoscientist9s toolbox, much of which used to be only available in proprietary (and expensive) software platforms.


The reasons for dramatic rises in prison populations are the focus of much debate. This paper examines just one of these: the sentencing practices of the judiciary who play a pivotal role both in determining the use of imprisonment itself and in the severity of prison sentences. Drawing on research with Scottish sentencers, it explores how they made decisions to imprison, how they viewed prison, how they justified sending people there and how 'borderline' offenders were dealt with. We found that although sentencers viewed imprisonment as a severe punishment, they normalized their routine incarceration of individuals by, in effect, denying final responsibility for their actions. Sentencers' accounts of borderline decisions, in which individuals committing the same offence could be accorded either a custodial or a community disposal, illustrated these denials most starkly and revealed an overarching retributivism in their custodial decisions. This retributivism was without proportionality in so far as it was directed at the offender rather than proportionate to the offence. In conclusion, we argue for future sentencing policies and legislation to take heed of sentencers' logic in use.


Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine. By Sherhii Plokhy and Frank E. Sysyn. (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press. 2003. Pp. xvi, 216.) This is a collection of eleven papers on religious-national trends in twentiethcentury Ukraine, where thirteen thousand Orthodox parishes outnumber those in Russia and where political independence in 1991 brought the question of ecclesiastical independence from Moscow to the fore. In a seminal study, Sysyn identifies seven constitutive elements of early modern (sixteenth-seventeenth-century) Christian culture in Ukraine: western influence, lay activism, a national ecclesiology, adaptation to political powers, religious influence on culture, Catholic and Orthodox churches sharing one religious and national culture, and the elevation of religious culture to international significance. Five articles treat the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). Sysyn reviews the central tenets of the UAOC's ideology: church-state separation (state neutrality and religious toleration), autocephaly (self-rule, independent of Moscow), conciliar governance (as opposed to state and episcopal paternalism), Ukrainianization (the shift from Church Slavonic to Ukrainian in liturgy, and from Russian to Ukrainian in sermons), and the Christianization of life (a dedication to spiritual renewal as a response to social needs). The article is rich in historical illustrations, from the sixteenth century through to the twentieth. Sysyn's 1983 study of the Ukrainian Orthodox question in the USSR provides a chronological link between ecclesiastical processes in the wake of World War I, and those that followed the demise of the Soviet Union. Four articles treat the UAOC in its most recent emergence, on the eve of Ukraine's independence. Sysyn has two contributions on the UAOC in the pivotal years 1989-1992: he studies its third incarnation in 1989 (after 1917 and 1942) and its tensions with the Moscow Patriarchate's jurisdictions in Ukraine; then he examines the Russian Orthodox Sobor's (April, 1992) rejection of Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephaly. Plokhy picks up from Sysyn at 1992: he first studies Metropolitan Filaret Denysenko-a Ukrainophobe, who after the proclamation of Ukrainian independence (August, 1991) changed his colors and pressed Moscow for autocephaly in I Jkraine. After Moscow removed him from office, he pursued his goals outside of its orbit. Plokhy then examines the developments toward Ukrainian Orthodox autocephaly in the following three years, situating it within the context of deeprooted ecclesiastical competition between Kyiv and Moscow. …


—The resource allocation problem focuses on finding an optimal allocation of a specific number of resources to maintain Quality of Service (QoS). That is where Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) come in as a radio antenna technology. In order to optimize data speed, minimize errors and improve the radio transmission capacity, MIMO utilizes multiple antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver. This technology uses a variety of antennas and paths that carry the data. Each antenna uses different paths. Multi-user MIMO (mu-MIMO) stands for a technology that allows routers to communicate simultaneously with multiple endpoint devices and it is the next evolutionary step of single user MIMO. Over the past decade, significant advances have been made to improve the performance of mu- MIMO. Although non-negligible progress has been achieved so far, optimal algorithms for Resource Allocation (RA) will help better the performance of mu-MIMO by increasing the system's performance in terms of throughput, fairness, and QoS. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comparison of different beamforming techniques used for resource allocation and list them in ascending order depending on their efficiency.


Applying Kent and Taylor's (2002) dialogic communication framework, this study aims to explore in what ways organizations implement dialogic principles in the subreddit IAmA, a specific section of Reddit. This study also focuses on the less-researched publics' side of computer-mediated PR. Twenty-three threads were purposively selected within the year-long timeframe of 1 February 2014 until 1 February 2015, including 40,903 comments of which 1,482 are responses from organizations. A qualitative content analysis was applied. The findings suggest that there is room for improvement in organizations' use of dialogic principles and highlight the complexity of audience responses. While each dialogic principle can be argued to theoretically have a positive effect on these responses, audiences on Reddit especially hold transparency, open communication, and honesty in high regard and expect organizations' threads to have extrinsic and/or intrinsic value for the publics besides having value for the organization in marketing and PR context.


Next-to-leading-order QCD analyses of the ZEUS data on deep inelastic scattering together with fixed-target data have been performed, from which the gluon and quark densities of the proton and the value of the strong coupling constant alpha(s)(M-Z) were extracted. The study includes a full treatment of the experimental systematic uncertainties including point-to-point correlations. The resulting uncertainties in the parton density functions are presented. A combined fit for alpha(s)(M-Z) and the gluon and quark densities yields a value for alpha(s)(M-Z) in agreement with the world average. The parton density functions derived from ZEUS data alone indicate the importance of HERA data in determining the sea quark and gluon distributions at low x. The limits of applicability of the theoretical formalism have been explored by comparing the fit predictions to ZEUS data at very low Q(2).


Macroeconomics issues involves interrelated elements: goods and services, input costs, profit or loss, international trade (import and export) industrial productivity, output quantities, pricing level, employment rate, capital expenditure and financial market, wealth, expectation, consumption pattern, among others. Macroeconomics examines the economy as a whole. In this system, both, corporate and public sectors are linked by financial markets to make fund flow from public to business. Financial markets are complex systems which have been analyzed under a hard system thinking; from a holistic view, it can be said that there have been many critical issues unsolved in today´s world; thus, it is necessary to develop and apply models where the whole system is considered by including all kinds of relationships among all the participants. As a starting point of a new dimension of holistic thinking, to understand the dynamics of global financial market as well as its role in the economic system and to find new ways for analyzing them, it is proposed a system view to set the basis to identify and examine the dynamics of global financial and economical markets system and their relationships under a holistic, complex and soft view by introducing a new proposed model based on Soft Systems Thinking.


Wider scientific community now accept that the threat of climate change as real and thus acknowledge the importance of implementing adaptation measures in a global context. In the UK, the physical effects of climate change are likely to be directly felt in the form of extreme weather events, which are predicted to escalate in number and severity in future under the changing climatic conditions. Construction industry; which consists of supply chains running across various other industries, economies and regions, will also be affected due to these events. Thus, it is important that the construction organisations are well prepared to withstand the effects of extreme weather events not only directly affecting their organisations but also affecting their supply chains which in turn might affect the organisation concerned. Given the fact that more than 99% of construction sector businesses are SMEs, the area can benefit significantly from policy making to improve SME resilience and coping capacity. This paper presents the literature review and synthesis of a doctoral research study undertaken to address the issue of extreme weather resilience of construction sector SMEs and their supply chains. The main contribution of the paper to both academia and practitioners is a synthesis model that conceptualises the factors that enhances resilience of SMEs and their supply chains against extreme weather events. This synthesis model forms the basis of a decision making framework that will enable SMEs to both reduce their vulnerability and enhance their coping capacity against extreme weather. The value of this paper is further extended by the overall research design that is set forth as the way forward.


Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is a meta-heuristic algorithm that has been used to solve a variety of complex optimization problems. In spite of the acceptance of the algorithm in various fields, PSO still suffers from common issues such as premature convergence and local minima. This provides a platform for generating a variety of PSO variants. Although these variants are successful in addressing issues specific to a directed domain, they are still unable to resolve the issues effectively. The Interior-Point Methods (IPMs) are efficient tools for solving nonlinear optimization problems. On the one hand, the method is depicted as the most robust algorithm for solving large scale nonlinear optimization problems. On the other, similar to PSO, the methods are still plagued with several issues. We propose Primal-Dual Interior Point Particle Swarm Optimization (pdPSO) to resolve the shortcomings of a standard PSO without the limitations of the IPM methods. We applied the Primal Dual procedure to each particle in a finite number of iterations, and fed the PSO with the its output. We compared the performance of our new algorithm (pdPSO) with IPM and PSO using nine different dynamic benchmark functions. Our results revealed that pdPSO performed better than both the independent PSO algorithm and the IPM method. The proposed algorithm is not susceptible to premature convergence, and can better avoid local minima than conventional PSO, hence hypothetically it has the potential to perform better than many variants of PSO.


Problem Statement : Many schools use induction programmes with the aim of contributing to novice teachers' well-being and professional development. However, the content of induction programmes varies across schools and countries. Given that existing studies do not conclusively establish the programme components with the greatest potential to affect the quality and retention of novice teachers, more research is needed to explore the aspects of induction programmes that are most productive. Purpose of the Study : This exploratory qualitative multi-case study aimed to gain more insight into how novice teachers in Namibia perceive and experience their induction support. The specific research question that guided this study was: What is the current state of practice in Namibia to support novice teachers with induction programmes ? Method : In order to answer the guiding research question, the inquiry followed a qualitative approach. The small sample of eight novice teachers who had finished the induction period and had taught for one to two years was purposefully selected from two primary schools to participate in the study. The schools were selected on the basis of the following criteria: (1) proximity to the researcher, since the researcher is a resident of Namibia; (2) the number of sites manageable in terms of time, distance and cost; (3) availability of more than one novice teacher who graduated recently, making the sites relevant to the study; and (4) location of schools in different circuits to aim for different insights and experiences. Data collected through the focus group sessions were transcribed verbatim. An analysis followed an on-going and iterative non-linear process that identified common themes. Findings : After analysis and interpretation of the literature and empirical findings, it was discovered that many schools in Namibia seem to use a form of induction programmes for novice teachers. However, based on the current study, it became apparent that some schools in Namibia use induction programmes with low-intensity activities, while others use induction programmes with high-intensity activities. Based on the interviews with the participants, the following themes in which induction programme activities differed were identified: the intensity/duration of the induction programme; resources offered in relation to induction programmes; the format/structure of support being used in the induction programme; the content of the induction programme; and lastly, the mentoring. Consequently, practical implications and recommendations to improve on these variations were offered. Conclusions and Recommendations : In order to achieve its intended objectives, induction programmes have to be well organized and facilitated in schools. The study provides the following recommendations to establish this organization: there must be sufficient resources and mentors for all new teachers; mentors should be afforded opportunities to be capacitated so that they can offer professional guidance to novices; mentors and novice teachers should be afforded considerable time to spend on induction programme activities; timetables of mentors and novice teachers have to match with those of induction programmes; a physical space/office should be made available for meetings between mentors and novice teachers; and novice teachers should be allocated a reasonable teaching workload as compared to veteran teachers. Schools should use induction programmes with high-intensity activities in order to increase teacher effectiveness and retention .


Title of Document: THE EXPLORATION OF IDENTITY, RELATIONSHIPS, AND HEALTH IN ADULT MEN Kevin James McGann, Master of Arts, 2008 Directed By: Professor Mary Ann Hoffman, Ph.D. Counseling and Personnel Services The current study is an investigation of health, sexuality, and relationship attachment in adult men. Drawing on the sexual identity literature and the body of work on men who have sex with men (MSM), predictions were made about level of congruence between self-defined sexual orientation and self-reported sexual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. One thousand male graduate students from a large, Mid-Atlantic university were emailed a web survey containing questionnaires asking about their experiences in close relationships, aspects of their sexuality, and their levels of depression. The return rate was only 10%, and the final sample consisted of 99 male graduate students. The hypotheses predicting that congruence would predict better health outcomes were carried out using one-way ANOVAS, and were not supported. Potential reasons for this are given, along with suggestions for clinical practice with adult men and areas for future research. THE EXPLORATION OF IDENTITY, RELATIONSHIPS, AND HEALTH IN ADULT MEN


This article explores the extent to which the European Union (EU) has responded effectively to the rising powers of Asia, Latin America and Africa, and whether the Union has been able to construct an effective diplomacy for dealing with them. It starts from the observation that the EU has significantly developed its diplomatic apparatus since the Lisbon Treaty, and that this apparatus is largely directed towards the establishment of negotiated order at the regional and global levels. The article identifies a number of tensions and contradictions that arise from the EU's status and role in the global arena and that feed into its quest for negotiated order. It goes on to assess the challenges to EU positions and strategies that arise not only from the emergence of new powers in the world arena, but also from the changes in global structures and processes that accompany this development. The article then investigates how these challenges have interacted with the search for negotiated order in a series of issue areas: security, commercial policy, development, environment and energy. It argues that in recent years the EU has, in a variety of ways, been taken outside its comfort zone and that while the European Union can and must seek to re-establish negotiated order in its external relations, the challenge of doing so is severe.


PURPOSE
To assess thiopurine S-methyltransferase (TPMT) phenotype and genotype in patients who were intolerant to treatment with mercaptopurine (MP) or azathioprine (AZA), and to evaluate their clinical management.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
TPMT phenotype and thiopurine metabolism were assessed in all patients referred between 1994 and 1999 for evaluation of excessive toxicity while receiving MP or AZA. TPMT activity was measured by radiochemical analysis, TPMT genotype was determined by mutation-specific polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphism analyses for the TPMT*2, *3A, *3B, and *3C alleles, and thiopurine metabolites were measured by high-performance liquid chromatography.

RESULTS
Of 23 patients evaluated, six had TPMT deficiency (activity < 5 U/mL of packed RBCs [pRBCs]; homozygous mutant), nine had intermediate TPMT activity (5 to 13 U/mL of pRBCs; heterozygotes), and eight had high TPMT activity (> 13.5 U/mL of pRBCs; homozygous wildtype). The 65.2% frequency of TPMT-deficient and heterozygous individuals among these toxic patients is significantly greater than the expected 10% frequency in the general population (P <.001, chi(2)). TPMT phenotype and genotype were concordant in all TPMT-deficient and all homozygous-wildtype patients, whereas five patients with heterozygous phenotypes did not have a TPMT mutation detected. Before thiopurine dosage adjustments, TPMT-deficient patients experienced more frequent hospitalization, more platelet transfusions, and more missed doses of chemotherapy. Hematologic toxicity occurred in more than 90% of patients, whereas hepatotoxicity occurred in six patients (26%). Both patients who presented with only hepatic toxicity had a homozygous-wildtype TPMT phenotype. After adjustment of thiopurine dosages, the TPMT-deficient and heterozygous patients tolerated therapy without acute toxicity.

CONCLUSION
There is a significant (> six-fold) overrepresentation of TPMT deficiency or heterozygosity among patients developing dose-limiting hematopoietic toxicity from therapy containing thiopurines. However, with appropriate dosage adjustments, TPMT-deficient and heterozygous patients can be treated with thiopurines, without acute dose-limiting toxicity.


Colorectal cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Approximately 70% of patients with colorectal cancer will develop liver metastasis (LM). Hepatic resections are considered the gold standard treatment and can cure the disease. The preservation of a suitable future liver remnant is the most relevant factor to prevent postoperative liver failure and mortality. However, in certain situations parenchymal sparing surgery may be challenging in view of the location of metastasis, such as, for example, near the confluence of the hepatic veins. The goal of this technical note is to describe a new approach for segmental or subsegmental resection of the VIII, used in surgery to remove LM in segment VIII involving the middle hepatic vein. During resection of the node in segment VIII, the surgeon places the left index finger in the space created between the right hepatic vein and the trunk formed by the middle and left hepatic vein near the vena cava, and between the liver and the IVC thus creating a safe zone for parenchymal division. This technique allows a safer sparing liver resection of segment VIII.


The proximate analysis studies on pomelo juice provide useful data for its juice
processing industry. The studies on the physico-chemical properties such as water
activity, pH and density make better prediction of its behavior at the relevant
processing concentration and temperature. The Pomelo juice is found to have high
moisture content which contributes to high water activity and specific heat of
capacity. Also, the PH of pomelo juice obtained indicates that pomelo juice is acidic
fluid. The predictions of density yielded high regression coefficient. In general, the
density increases with increasing concentration but decreases with temperature
increase. The density of pomelo juice also presented a stronger dependence on
concentration than the temperature.
Rheology is the science of deformation and flow behavior of fluid. Knowledge of
rheological properties of fluid and their variation with temperature and concentration
have been globally important for industrialization of food technology for quality,
understanding the texture, process engineering application, correlation with sensory evaluation, designing of transport system , equipment design (heat
exchanger and evaporator), deciding pump capacity and power requirement for
mixing.
The aim of this study was to determine the rheological behavior of pomelo juice at
different concentrations (20-60.4 Brix) and temperatures (23-60°C) by using a
rotational Haake Rheostress 600 rheometer and a cone and plate geometry sensor
(35mm diameter, 2° cone angle), with a gap distance of 0.105 mm. Shear rates
employed ranged from 0-1000 s-1.
o
Pomelo juice was found to exhibit both Newtonian and Non-Newtonian behavior.
For lower concentration the Newtonian behavior is observed while at higher
concentration Non-Newtonian behavior was observed. Standard error (SE) method
was selected on the basis to carry out the error analysis due to the best fit model. For
the four models the values of SE show that the Herschel-Bulkley and Power Law
models perform better than the Bingham and Casson models but Herschel-Bulkley
model is true at higher concentration.
The experimental data of apparent viscosity versus shear rate were successfully
described by the Power-law model. The model parameters; flow behavior index, n
varied in the range of 0.65-0.89, whereas the values for the consistency coefficient,
K, were in the range of 0.004-0.3 (Pa. ). Apparent viscosity and consistency
coefficient of pomelo juice increased with increasing concentration and decreasing
temperature. The effect of temperature on n was found to be significant but did not follow any descriptive trend.
The effect of temperature on pomelo juice is best described by the applicability of
the Arrhenius model related to apparent viscosity, η at a constant shear rate of
100s −1 or the consistency index of the power law model. Activation energies (
a E ) of
the pomelo juice appeared in the range of 9103.83-23391.43 J/mol as the pomelo
juice concentration was increased from 20 to 60.4 o Brix.
The relationship between η or K of pomelo juice concentration was explained by
exponential and power functions while pomelo juice observed that at higher
concentration will have higher viscosity.
The master-curve was investigated for comparing data from different products at a
reference temperature of 40 . Multiple regression analysis indicated Master-Curve
presents good agreement for pomelo juice at all concentrations studied with R 2 >0.8.
oC
Response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to investigate the effects of the
three main independent parameters; rotation, temperature and time on the pomelo
juice concentration and optimizing the operating conditions of the treatment process.
Values of parameters required to obtain efficiency of concentration pomelo juice are
suggested based on rotation speed (60-120 rpm), temperature (40-60 ) and time
(5-60 min).
oC
It is clear from the result that the concentration increased when the temperature, rotation speed and time increased. It can be inferred that any parameters,
individually, had positive effect on increase of concentration. The main effects of
parameters are in following order: Main effect of time> temperature> rotation speed.


Bacterial symbionts of fungus-growing ants occupy a highly specialized ecological niche and face the constant existential threat of displacement by another strain of ant-adapted bacteria. As part of a systematic study of the small molecules underlying this fraternal competition, we discovered an analog of the antitumor agent rebeccamycin, a member of the increasingly important indolocarbazole family. While several gene clusters consistent with this molecule's newly reported modification had previously been identified in metagenomic studies, the metabolite itself has been cryptic. The biosynthetic gene cluster for 9-methoxyrebeccamycin is encoded on a plasmid in a manner reminiscent of plasmid-derived peptide antimicrobials that commonly mediate antagonism among closely related Gram-negative bacteria.


In recent years, oscillators are considered as inevitable blocks in many electronic systems. They are commonly used in digital circuits to provide clocking and in analog/RF circuits of communication transceivers to support frequency conversion. Nowadays, CMOS technology is the most applicable solution for VLSI and especially for modern integrated circuits used in wireless communications. The main purpose of this project is to design a high performance voltage-controlled oscillator (LC VCO) using 65nm CMOS technology. To meet the state-of-the-art requirements, several circuit solutions have been explored and the design work ended-up with a Quadrature VCO. The circuit operates at center frequency of 2.4 GHz. The phase noise of QVCO obtained by simulation is -140 dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset frequency which is 6 dB less compared to conventional LC VCOs. The power consumption is 3.6mW and the tuning voltage can be swept from 0.2 V to 1.2 V resulting in 2.25 GHz - 2.55 GHz frequency range.


We present Subaru/IRCS J-band data for Fomalhaut and a (re)reduction of archival 2004–2006 HST/ACS data first presented by Kalas et al. We confirm the existence of a candidate exoplanet, Fomalhaut b, in both the 2004 and 2006 F606W data sets at a high signal-to-noise ratio. Additionally, we confirm the detection at F814W and present a new detection in F435W. Fomalhaut b's space motion may be consistent with it being in an apsidally aligned, non-debris ring-crossing orbit, although new astrometry is required for firmer conclusions. We cannot confirm that Fomalhaut b exhibits 0.7–0.8 mag variability cited as evidence for planet accretion or a semi-transient dust cloud. The new, combined optical spectral energy distribution and IR upper limits confirm that emission identifying Fomalhaut b originates from starlight scattered by small dust, but this dust is most likely associated with a massive body. The Subaru and IRAC/4.5 μm upper limits imply M < 2 MJ, still consistent with the range of Fomalhaut b masses needed to sculpt the disk. Fomalhaut b is very plausibly "a planet identified from direct imaging" even if current images of it do not, strictly speaking, show thermal emission from a directly imaged planet.


Abstract A supply network consists of a focal organization and the network of firms that transact with it via goods, services, and information. Advances in information technology give a focal organization an unprecedented capability to communicate with, coordinate with, and even control its suppliers. However, it is unclear how information sharing and control will produce desirable performance and common welfare in the network, and how these factors should be adjusted under different conditions. In this study, we build a simple model of a supply network and run simulation experiments to investigate the effects of information sharing, control, homogeneity, and market conditions. The simulation results show that the best network performance is achieved under a high level of control. In the absence of such control, a supply network can achieve the same performance if the firms in the supply network behave in a homogeneous fashion and information is shared at the global level. In the case where agents behave in a heterogeneous fashion, the best performance is obtained when the agents are allowed to self organize based solely on information local to the agent.


Although dozens of scholars have documented the appalling underfunding of indigent defense in the United States, virtually no attention has been paid to the overburdening of prosecutors. In many large jurisdictions, prosecutors handle caseloads that are as large as those handled by public defenders. Counter-intuitively, when prosecutors shoulder excessive caseloads, it is criminal defendants who are harmed. Because overburdened prosecutors do not have sufficient time and resources for their cases, they fail to identify less culpable defendants who are deserving of more lenient plea bargains. Prosecutors also lack the time to determine which defendants should be transferred to specialty drug courts where they have a better chance at rehabilitation. Overwhelmed prosecutors commit inadvertent (though still unconstitutional) misconduct by failing to identify and disclose favorable evidence that defendants are legally entitled to receive. And excessive prosecutorial caseloads lead to the conviction of innocent defendants because enormous trial delays encourage defendants to plead guilty in exchange for sentences of time-served and an immediate release from jail. This article documents the excessive caseloads of prosecutors' offices around the country, and it demonstrates how the overburdening of prosecutors harms criminal defendants, victims, and the public at large.


Stock-market short-termism—stemming from rapid trading and activists looking for quick cash—is, a widespread view has it, hurting the American economy. Because stock markets will not support corporate long-term planning, the thinking goes, companies fail to invest enough, do not do enough research and development, and buy back so much of their stock that their coffers are depleted of cash for their future.

This widespread view has induced proposals for remedy. One major proposal is for corporate "loyalty shares," whereby stockholders who own their stock for longer periods would get more voting power than those who trade their stock quickly. That voting boost would, it's hoped, support stability and sound long-term planning. Venture capitalists have already obtained the go-ahead from the Securities and Exchange Commission to found the "Long-Term Stock-Exchange," as it is called—whose centerpiece has been loyalty shares and their concomitant voting boost for companies on the new exchange.

In this article, we show why loyalty shares promoters' thinking is overly optimistic. Facilitating insider control will be loyalty shares' dominant motive and effect. Long-term thinking, planning, and investing will be weaker motivations and effects. Indeed, loyalty shares will at times undermine long-term planning at companies that use them.

Loyalty share voting boosts would shift voting power in those U.S. public companies that adopt them, but they will not shift voting power toward shareholders most likely to promote the long-term. Instead, we should expect loyalty shares to empower conflicted corporate players who seek not more corporate focus on the long-term but to better protect themselves and their corporate positions. Controller-insider self-interest will dominate their motivation, not fighting short-termism, because insiders have self-interested reasons to lock in control and shut down outsiders, even if doing so fails to improve corporate time horizons. Policymakers with a bona fide long-term vision will find themselves frustrated by the outcome.

Existing data from Europe, where loyalty shares are more extensively used thus far than in the United States, supports this structural analysis. Control motivations dominate; long-term motivations are pale or absent from the on-the-ground practice.

Other reasons—as yet undiscussed as far as we can tell—may well justify opening corporate law to loyalty share programs. We introduce to the loyalty share analysis the ex ante value to the entrepreneur of retaining control—i.e., loyalty shares can help to motivate founders and thereby induce new entry, new start-ups, and new, original entrepreneurial activity. Weighing the value of continued control in fostering start-ups and original entrepreneurial activity against its later costs is not easy and it is not obvious which weighs more but, if there is economy-wide value to loyalty shares, that motivational value is where it is likely to reside. For short-termism, policymakers should be skeptical that promoting sound corporate long-termism will be a major result of facilitating loyalty shares in the American corporation.


In this paper, a simultaneous solution algorithm for one dimensional unsteady flow routing through channel networks is introduced. This direct solution algorithm is based on the double sweep method. It utilizes separate recursion equations for continuity, momentum and energy equations for each of the individual components of channel networks. By doing so it converts the channel network problem into a single channel problem. The new algorithm is utilized in a linearized unsteady flow model using full dynamic flow equations. The required computer storage for the coefficient matrix of the whole system is reduced significantly from the 2N × 2N matrix to a 2N × 4 matrix. Here, N is the number of sections required for computing flow variables in the channel network. The algorithm presented in this paper provides an efficient and accurate modeling of unsteady flow events through channel networks.


The phytocannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD) has a complex pharmacology which is thought to include, but is not limited to, an ability to act as an inverse agonist at the CB1 and CB2 receptors and an antagonist of GPR55. Moreover, is has been shown to reduce infarct size and ameliorate reductions in left ventricular function in vivo. These improvements in the pathogenesis of experimental MI are accompanied by a reduction in inflammatory cell migration to the area at risk. More recently it has been shown that CBD is anti-arrhythmic in acute experimental MI. Thus, it was suggested that the cardioprotective effects of CBD might be due to an anti-inflammatory action. In addition, GPR55 receptor activation is acknowledged to mediate mobilisation of intracellular Ca2+ (Ca2+i) which could potentially be pro-arrhythmic and so CBD, as an antagonist may confer cardioprotection via GPR55. However, the receptors and/or mechanisms responsible for mediating the cardioprotective effects of CBD are get to be determined. The present studies were therefore performed to; (1) better understand the pharmacology of CBD by assessing haemodynamic responses to CBD and other cannabinoids ligands in anaesthetised rats, (2) investigate the receptors involved in the anti-arrhythmic effect of CBD in a rat model of coronary artery occlusion (CAO), and (3) investigate if CBD can alter [Ca2+]i in isolated rat cardiomyocytes. The characterisation of the pharmacology of CBD in vivo showed that; firstly, CB1 receptor activation causes a hypotensive response which can be dose-dependently inhibited by AM251; secondly, both CBD and AM251 alone (a CB1 receptor antagonist and GPR55 agonist) can induce vasodepressor responses and finally, CBD can potentiate the AM251-mediated hypotension when co-administered, suggesting possible cross-talk between the CB1 and GPR55. Results from CAO studies showed that CBD and AM251 each have the capacity to reduce arrhythmias. Moreover, when CBD and AM251 were co-administered the anti-arrhythmic capacity of either alone was potentiated. However, the degree of potentiation was dependent on the order of administration, suggesting that more than one receptor is involved in the summative anti-arrhythmic effects. The investigation of cardiomyocyte [Ca2+]i suggested that AM251 can modulate [Ca2+]i at the level of the cardiomyocyte, while CBD cannot. These data give novel insight into the anti-arrhythmic effects of CBD and, moreover, for the first time demonstrate that AM251 is anti-arrhythmic. In addition, these data suggest a role for GPR55 in increasing [Ca2+]i via AM251.


Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection causes profound impairment of CD4+ T cell immunity. Anti-retroviral therapy (ART) restores CD4+ T cell responses to common antigens, but HIV-specific responses remain deficient. The immunization of chronically HIV infected, ART treated subjects also leads to poor HIV-specific CD4+ T cell responses. The mechanisms are not fully understood. In this thesis, I demonstrate that HIV envelope glycoprotein (Env), when delivered in the form of a vaccine or when present on free viral particles, suppresses antigen-stimulated CD4+ T cell proliferation. I investigate the potential involvement of human T regulatory cells (Treg) using an in vitro model system. I show that Env exposure neither changes the frequency nor the suppressive activity of Treg cells in human PBMC, and that Envinduced suppression of CD4+ T cell proliferation is independent of Tregs. The studies of HIV-induced inhibition of CD4+ T cell immunity were then moved to an in vivo model to determine physiological significance. A macaque model of HIV-infected individuals treated with ART during chronic infection was used to study the effect of SIV antigen stimulation in lymph nodes early after immunization. CMV seropositive rhesus macaques were infected with pathogenic SIVmac251 and after 4 months, treated with D4T and PMPA for viral control and immune reconstitution. I studied the immune and viral responses to SIV and CMV antigen immunization in draining lymph nodes. Animals were immunized with both SIV gag and CMV pp65 encoding plasmids in both arms and legs, which allowed draining lymph nodes for each antigen to be obtained at the same time, thus allowing direct comparisons of the effect of each antigen stimulation in the same animal. I observed that both SIV and CMV antigen immunizations stimulated antigen-specific T cell responses in draining lymph nodes. The CMV-specific responses were found in the periphery for 50 days postimmunization, while the SIV-specific responses transiently appeared. The SIV antigen stimulation also induced transient SIV viral replication in the draining lymph nodes, suggesting a mechanism for the early loss and poor HIV-specific CD4+ T cell response observed in HIV-infected progressors. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Cell & Molecular Biology First Advisor Drew Weissman


Ethernet is the most popular LAN technology. Its low price and robustness, resulting from its wide acceptance and deployment, has created an eagerness to expand its responsibilities to the factory-floor, where real-time requirements are to be fulfilled. However, it is difficult to build a real-time control network using Ethernet, because its MAC protocol, the 1-persistent CSMA/CD protocol with the BEB collision resolution algorithm, has unpredictable delay characteristics. Many anticipate that the recent technological advances in Ethernet such as the emerging Fast/Gigabit Ethernet, micro-segmentation and full-duplex operation using switches will also enable it to support time-critical applications. This technical report provides a comprehensive look at the unpredictability inherent to Ethernet and at recent technological advances towards real-time operation.


We present a strategy to make productive use of semantically-related social data, from a user-centered semantic network, in order to help users (tourists and citizens in general) to discover cultural heritage, points of interest and available services in a smart city. This data can be used to personalize recommendations in a smart tourism application. Our approach is based on flow centrality metrics typically used in social network analysis: flow betweenness, flow closeness and eccentricity. These metrics are useful to discover relevant nodes within the network yielding nodes that can be interpreted as suggestions (venues or services) to users. We describe the semantic network built on graph model, as well as social metrics algorithms used to produce recommendations. We also present challenges and results from a prototypical implementation applied to the case study of the City of Puebla, Mexico.