In the adult rat liver, the gap junction protein connexin 32 (Cx32) is evenly distributed in hepatocytes within the liver lobules, while connexin 26 (Cx26) is preferentially localized in hepatocytes in periportal zones. We report here that Cx26-positive gap junctions rapidly appear in the centrilobular hepatocytes of adult female rat livers during a 30 minute perfusion of the liver through the hepatic portal vein with a 1:1 mixture of Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM) and oxygen transport FC-43 fluid at a physiological flow rate without any changes in the distribution of Cx32. The change in the localization of Cx26 was closely related to that of E-cadherin, and there was no significant increase in the amounts of Cx26 protein and mRNA. The appearance of Cx26 in the centrilobular hepatocytes was inhibited by treatment with cytoskeleton disruptors such as colchicine and cytochalasin B, and intracytoplasmic transport inhibitors such as brefeldin A. The liver perfusion induced the appearance of Cx26 in the centrilobular hepatocytes only in female rats. Estrogen treatment of ovariectomized rats caused the appearance of both Cx26 and E-cadherin in centrilobular hepatocytes not only in the perfused liver but also in the non-perfused liver. Our results indicate that in the rat liver: (a) the localization of Cx26 can be modulated by a post-translational mechanism; (b) E-cadherin may play an important role in the formation of gap junctions composed of Cx26; and (c) the formation of gap junctions is regulated by female steroid hormones.


—With the main focus of research in routing protocols for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANET) geared towards routing efficiency, the resulting protocols tend to be vulnerable to various attacks. Over the years, emphasis has also been placed on improving the security of these networks. Different solutions have been proposed for different types of attacks, however, these solutions often compromise routing efficiency or network overload. One major DOS attack against the Optimized Link State Routing protocol (OLSR) known as the node isolation attack occurs when topological knowledge of the network is exploited by an attacker who is able to isolate the victim from the rest of the network and subsequently deny communication services to the victim. In this paper, we suggest a novel solution to defend the OLSR protocol from node isolation attack by employing the same tactics used by the attack itself. Through extensive experimentation, we demonstrate that 1) the proposed protection prevents more than 95 percent of attacks, and 2) the overhead required drastically decreases as the network size increases until it is non-discernable. Last, we suggest that this type of solution can be extended to other similar DOS attacks on OLSR.


We describe a free-space common-path polarization Sagnac interferometer. The polarization Sagnac interferometer is used in a symmetric fashion with detection on the dark fringe of the interference to avoid photodetector saturation when high-powered illumination is used. By modulating the carrier field that is reflected from the interferometer, we generate a local oscillator for heterodyne detection of the signal field. We calculate the effect of optical element misalignments and imperfect polarization on the shot-noise–limited sensitivity of the interferometer. The predictions are experimentally verified with a 2-m arm-length tabletop polarization Sagnac interferometer.


There can be no significant development in any country without functional and adequate human capital development. The reasonability of every government is determined to a larger extent on the ability of the government to better the lives of its citizens through the development of sound macroeconomic policies that will reduce poverty and inequality, controlled growth rate of population, attainment of high per capita income, programmed external borrowing and so on. The cumulative effect of these is to a greater extent the elimination of poverty and inequality in a nation. On the contrary, the major issues of critical concern in Nigeria in particular and developing nations in general are weak and poor policies resulting into high level of poverty and inequality. In view of the above, this paper seeks to examine the relationship between Government Policies, Human Capital Development, Poverty and Inequality Reduction thereby examining the policies of various regimes in Nigeria and how these policies have affected level of inequality and poverty in Nigeria. The following questions were raised to guide the writing of this paper. 1. What is meant by the following concepts: governance, poverty, inequality, human capital development? 2. What are the causes of poverty in Nigeria? 3. What are the possible solutions to human capital development problems, inequality and poverty? 4. Can Nigeria meet the targets as set by MDGs by 2015? The methodology adopted in this presentation is theoretical in approach. It is important to note that as laudable as some of these policies and programmes were, the sincerity of their establishment and poor implementation mechanism were the major causes of failure of these policies, resulting into high level of poverty and inequality in the society. In view of this, the paper therefore recommended that there should always be sincerity in the establishment of policies, faithful implementation of transformation agenda, NEEDs, MDGs, and other supportive programmes, full and proper implementation of Universal Basic Education and other structural levels of our educational policy to mention just a few.


Relaxor ferroelectric thin films exhibit a drastic reduction in the dielectric constant and associated properties in the thin film form, even for thicknesses in the micron range, which are essentially infinity for the size effects typically investigated in conventional ferroelectrics. In order to investigate this phenomenon, the material system Lead Scandium Tantalum (PST) was fabricated by a Sol-Gel technique using mixed acetate and alkoxide precursors. The positional order of the "B" site species was tailored through different annealing procedures to produce ordered (conventional ferroelectric) and disordered (relaxor ferroelectric) PST thin films. With regards to processing, it was found that the dehydration of scandium acetate by acetic acid anhydride, followed by precursor modification via the solvent 2-Methoxyethanol was necessary for a stable "B" site Sc/Ta complex and subsequent stoichiometric thin films. Excess lead was required in amounts greater than 20% to compensate for lead loss during annealing and avoid the formation of secondary phases. Disordered films with measurable properties were only achieved at low annealing temperatures near 700°C. Higher temperatures up to 1000°C resulted in "B" site ordering, and at annealing temperatures above 1000°C significant film degradation was observed. The ordering of PST thin films was limited to low degrees of order (S=0.22) on Pt/Si substrates after annealing at 800°C for 20 minutes. Higher degrees of order were achieved on single crystal substrates by extended time annealing in a controlled atmosphere. An ordering degree of S=0.91 observed for PST films on sapphire substrates annealed at 850°C for 35 hours. Highly ordered films showed the development of a ferroelectric state, and had dielectric properties comparable with ordered ceramic samples. Disordered films fabricated on numerous substrates and under many processing conditions consistently displayed dielectric constant values reduced by an order of magnitude as compared to ceramic or single crystals. A direct comparison of ordered and disordered PST on a common substrate showed that the dielectric constant increased with an increase in "B" site order in thin films, while in ceramics the opposite effect was observed (a decrease in the dielectric constant with an increase in order). In terms of lattice dynamics, ordered PST thin films unexpectedly showed that the transverse optic (TO1) mode softened to the Burns temperature, with the simultaneous appearance of a central mode (CM) attributed to the appearance of polar regions in the paraelectric phase. Higher processing temperatures were seen to increase the dielectric strength of the CM. Ordered and disordered samples displayed drastically different behavior at low frequencies (below 1MHz), while possessing essentially the same lattice dynamics. It was shown by comparing the "In-Plane" and "Out-of-Plane" dielectric response that the commonly observed low values of dielectric constant in relaxor thin films cannot be explained by a passive layer, at least in nominally thick films near 1 micron in thickness. The changes in the dielectric constant introduced as a result of thermal induced stress were small and relatively insignificant as compared to the order of magnitude reduction in the dielectric constant of thin films as compared to ceramics. A study on the effects of grain size from dielectric measurements showed no detectable change in the value of the dielectric constant by reducing the grain size from 325 to 140 nm. In addition, even epitaxial films fabricated on STO and MgO substrates displayed a reduced dielectric response. Self-polarization was observed in PST thin films and the quantitative impact on the dielectric response was estimated to be near a 10% reduction in the dielectric constant at temperatures close to the dielectric maximum. A hypothesis was proposed to explain the reduced dielectric response in relaxor thin films emphasizing that the quantitative contribution of polar regions may be different. Disordered relaxor PST thin films were annealed at 700°C resulting in a Low-Temperature disordered state, while ceramic samples were annealed at temperatures in excess of 1500°C leading to a High-Temperature disordered state. Both states of disorder evolved to the same long range ordered ferroelectric state after annealing at temperatures near 900°C.


Abstract Teaching in university education programmes, can, at times, involve the uncomfortable situation of discriminatory speech.A situation that has often occurred in our own teaching, and in those of our colleagues, is the citation of homophobic and heterosexist comments.These are comments that are more likely to occur in foundation subjects such as philosophy and sociology of education.The occurrence of such situations has prompted debate regarding 'silencing words that wound'. This has prompted the question, 'should we keep students from stating such discriminatory speech?' Our article takes up this issue, and considers it from the perspective of the importance of critique.Working with Foucault's What is Critique? together with his discussion of subjectivation in the 1981–82 lectures at the Collège de France, we set out to make the case for the significance of the relationship between truth and critique.This leads us to a position where we ask the question, if we silence, what do we risk doing to critique?


Follow this and additional works at: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/ua_docs This is a history of the Higher Education Graduate Program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale from 1956-1995, as well as a roster of graduates of the program from 1958-1995. It was written by Dr. Jack W. Graham, who worked at SIUC from 1951-1994 as both a faculty member and administrator, including Associate Dean of the Graduate School School and Chair of the Department of Higher Education (now the Department of Educational Administration and Higher Education).


Developing a deeper understanding of the travel domain is helpful for presenting users with consistent and reliable information, and few sources of data are able to achieve that. Further, such information can serve as background knowledge for evaluating machine learning algorithms. In this paper, we present part of our work towards developing such an understanding. We demonstrate a simple extraction technique and how the extracted data can be used to evaluate an unsupervised embedding model built on search queries with travel intent.


Introduction:
In many low income countries the delivery of quality health services is hampered by health system-wide barriers which are often interlinked, however empirical evidence on how to assess the level and scope of these barriers is scarce. It has been recognised that taking a more comprehensive approach to assessing these barriers is more likely to provide lessons on what works and why. WHO has been advocating the use of systems wide approaches such as systems thinking to guide intervention design and evaluation. This thesis reports system-wide assessment of a complex health system intervention in Zambia known as Better Health Outcome through Mentorship and Assessment (BHOMA) that aimed to improve service quality at the health facility and influence service demand from the community.
Methodology:
This study is nested within a cluster randomised trial of the BHOMA intervention that aims to strengthen the health system in three rural districts covering 42 health facilities in Zambia. The main trial has a stepped wedge design where the intervention is being rolled-out to all the 42 health facilities over a period of 4 years. A baseline health facility survey was done in 2011. This was followed by a 12 months post-intervention evaluation survey. At the time of the follow up survey 24 health facilities had received the intervention while 18 had not. Data collection used both quantitative and qualitative methods. The study was guided by a systems thinking theoretical framework which was inspired by the WHO building blocks for health system strengthening.
Results:
The baseline survey validated tools and indicators for assessing health system building blocks. Research paper 2 applied an innovative measure of health worker motivation which was initially applied in Kenya. The results showed that this simple tool was reliable with cronbach's alpha of 0.73 for the 21 item measures of health workers' motivation. Baseline assessment of health worker motivation showed variation in motivation score based on gender and access to training. Research paper 3 tested and applied a new tool for measuring health systems governance at health facility level. The new tool for measuring governance was reliable with the 16 item one side cronbach's alpha ranging between 0.69-0.74.The tool was simple to use and found to be applicable in the Zambian health care setting.
A balanced scorecard approach was applied to measure the baseline health system characteristics for the target districts. Differences in performance were noted by district and residence in most domains with finance and service delivery domains performing poorly in all study districts. Regression modelling showed that children's clinical observation scores were negatively correlated with drug availability (coeff 20.40, p = 0.02) while Adult clinical observation scores were positively association with adult service satisfaction score (coeff 0.82, p = 0.04)
Baseline qualitative results are presented in paper 5. The results showed close linkages between health system building blocks. Challenges noted in service delivery were linked to human resources, medical supplies, information flow, governance and finance building blocks either directly or indirectly.
The 12 months post intervention survey applied both quantitative and qualitative methods. Research paper 6 presents 12 months post intervention quantitative results applying the balanced scorecard approach as at baseline. Comparison was made between the control and intervention health facilities. The results showed significant mean differences between intervention (I) and control (C) sites in the following domains: Training domain (Mean I:C;87.5.vs 61.1, mean difference 23.3,p=0.031),adult clinical observation domain (mean I:C;73.3 vs.58.0, mean difference 10.9,p=0.02 ).
The 12 months post intervention qualitative evaluation applied systems thinking approach and the conceptual framework developed before the intervention. The findings are presented in research paper 7. The overall results showed that the community had accepted the intervention with increasing demand for services reported in all sites where the BHOMA intervention was implemented. The indications were that in the short term there was increased demand for services but the health workers' capacity was not severely affected. However, from a systems thinking perspective, it was clear that several unintended consequences also occurred during the implementation of the BHOMA.
Conclusion:
In evaluation of complex interventions such as the BHOMA attention should be paid to context. Using system wide approaches and triangulating data collection methods seems to be important to successful evaluation of such complex intervention.


Although there has been a significant increase in research on the phenomenon of corruption over the last quarter-century, there is little evidence that this has resulted in effective policy interventions, nor in any significant reduction in its scope and extent. This article argues that three main reasons account for this failure to develop effective anti-corruption measures. First, the dominance of economistic analyses of the role of incentives in decision-making has given rise to proposed institutional fixes that are too abstracted from reality to gain purchase. That dominance was partly prompted by a misplaced assumption that market-based liberal democracies would become the modal regime type following the collapse of communism. Second, an emphasis on the nation state as the primary unit of analysis has not kept pace with significant changes in how some forms of corruption operate in practice, nor with the changing nature of states themselves. Third, different types of corruption are insufficiently disaggregated according not just to kind and form, but also to the locations in which they occur (sectoral, organisational, geographical), the actors involved, and the dependencies that enable them. This reflects an overuse of the term 'corruption' in both academic literature and policy recommendations; insufficient attention is paid to what exactly is being addressed and ultimately, the notion of corruption, without adjectives, is a poor guide both to analysis and to policy prescription.


We study the economic consequences of a recent Securities and Exchange Commission securities regulation change that grants foreign firms trading on the U.S. over-the-counter (OTC) market an automatic exemption from the reporting requirements of the 1934 Securities Act. We document that the number of voluntary (sponsored) OTC cross-listings did not increase following the regulation change, suggesting that it did not achieve its intended purpose of increasing voluntary OTC cross-listings through a reduction in compliance costs. We do find that the design of the regulation allowed financial intermediaries to create an unprecedented number of involuntary (unsponsored) OTC ADRs: 1,700 unsponsored ADR programs for 920 firms were created for companies that had previously chosen not to cross-list in the United States. Our difference-in-differences analysis based on a matched sample approach documents that foreign firms forced into the U.S. capital markets experience a significant decrease in firm value, and we further show that the decrease in firm value is related to an increase in U.S. litigation risk. We also find that depositary banks' propensity to involuntarily cross-list firms is positively related to banks' expected fee revenue, and that banks chose firms that incur high costs when involuntarily cross-listed. Our results provide evidence that securities regulation can be exploited for private gain and result in costly unintended consequences.


The work of Alexander A. Potebnja, a leading Ukrainian linguist of the nineteenth century, has significantly influenced modern literary criticism, particularly Russian formalism and structuralism. Potebnja's theory, known as potebnjanstvo (Potebnjanism), flourished in the Russian Empire and in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. It attracted scores of adherents and gave rise to an influential literary journal and a formal critical school at Kharkiv. Yet despite his remarkable achievements in linguistics and literary theory, Potebnja's work was officially renounced in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and in the West he remains virtually unknown. In his study, John Fizer carefully reconstructs Potebnja's theory of literature from the psycholinguistic formulations found in his works on language, mythology, and folklore. Elaborating Potebnja's concept of internal form, energeia, polysemy, and the semiosis of poetic discourse, Fizer develops the central tenets of Potebnja's theory with regard to their philosophical, psychological, and linguistic bases. Largely influenced by Kant and by Humboldt's philosophy of language, Potebnja conceived of language and the verbal arts as coterminous phenomena. He identified the internal form with the etymon of the word, which he considered the preeminent locus in the structure of poetic art. He insisted on the dynamic role of the Self in poetic creation and perception but, unlike many of his contemporaries, he believed that the diachronic depth of the signifiers was ethnic and had measureable limits. According to Potebnja, this depth (or internal form) reveals itself as a semantically multivalent image that induces self-knowledge and transforms the primary data of consciousness into syntagmatic wholes. A great deal of Potebnja's theory shares similarities with the work of Benedetto Croce, Leo Spitzer, and Charles S. Pierce. It anticipated modern literary criticism, and, as the author convincingly argues, retains existential and epistemological cogency even today. Fizer's volume offers the first thorough study of Potebnja's literary theory, and his insightful analysis restores Potebnja to his rightful place in the history of literary criticism.


J. E. M. White said that with reference to the eastern contact zone, a photograph was presented showing inclusions of hornfelsed gabbro that are apparently undisplaced, in a structural sense, in the ultramafic host; indeed, they literally seem to be suspended within the latter. Could this anomaly be conceivably resolved through recourse to a model involving either selective assimilation or fluidization? Regarding the fine grained late ultramafic dykes cutting both the intrusion and the eastern contact aureole, you observed that an amphibole is present and as these veins are widespread, despite their generally aphanitic texture, could it be possible that a rather high water content would have greatly enhanced the fluidity of this particular magma? Moreover, there may be some interrelation between the formation of the hornblendite facies in the comparable ultrabasic plutons of SE Alaska and the development of the amphibole in the late dykes of the Reinfjord complex. Finally, within this context of the dyke magmas, can you account for the increasing basicity of the main intrusion as a whole, a trend which ultimately culminated in the emplacement of the central core of dunite? Could a progressive melting of the upper mantle be involved here as has been envisaged for the se Alaskan analogues? Dr B. E. Leake supported the author's interpretation. The sequence of intrusions, commencing with gabbro and culminating in a dunite core was extremely difficult to explain by crystallization from one magma unless the ultramafic rocks were emplaced in their present position as already crystallized


Friction is an important aspect for control design of mechanical systems, including robotics, because it can lead to tracking errors, limit cycles, and undesired stick-slip motion. An adaptive friction compensator design is presented here as an option for control design of mechanisms with friction. Using the "simplest" friction model representation (the new perspective), consisting only of a constant value, which is assumed to be unknown, an adaptive friction compensator is developed. In numerical experiments, the system friction is modelled through a more representative function, previously used in performance evaluation of controlled systems with friction, and then using the well known LuGre friction model. Simulation results show an acceptable performance of our compensator compared with another adaptive friction compensator previously reported. The advantage of our controller is its simplicity.


Abstract. To quantify mercury dry deposition, the Atmospheric Mercury Network (AMNet) of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP) was established recently to monitor the speciated atmospheric mercury (i.e. gaseous elemental mercury (GEM), gaseous oxidized mercury (GOM) and particulate-bound mercury (PBM)). However, the spatial coverage of AMNet is far less than the long-established Mercury Deposition Network (MDN) for wet deposition monitoring. The present study describes the first attempt linking ambient concentration of the oxidized mercury (GOM + PBM) with wet deposition aiming to estimate GOM + PBM roughly at locations and/or times where such measurement is not available but where wet deposition is monitored. The beta distribution function is used to describe the distribution of GOM + PBM and is used to predict GOM + PBM from monitored wet deposition. The mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and skewness of the fitted beta distribution parameters were generated using data collected in 2009 at multiple monitoring superstations. The established beta distribution function from the 2009 GOM + PBM data is used to construct a model that predicts GOM + PBM from wet deposition data. The model is validated using 2010 data at multiple stations, and the predicted monthly GOM + PBM concentrations agree reasonably well with measurements. The model has many potential applications after further improvements and validation using different data sets.


Importance of branding as a strategic thrust is well understood by services marketing practitioners. Yet, in developing brand architectures, some researchers have suggested that the company is the only meaningful brand for service products, whereas others have argued for the development of strong sub-brands at the product level. The main objective of this study is to assess whether services in general have the capacity to develop successful brand architectures. Using a sample of 14 representative service companies, brand associations were elicited through a free association technique. These associations were categorised under a taxonomy with five brand meaning components and were hypothesised to have a competing impact on the overall attitudes towards the service product. The results of this research support the idea of brand architecture strategies and that services have equity at the sub-brand level in cases where the sub-brand has been built up meaningfully.


Abstract: A large allochthonous sheet of Eocene rock salt is forming the Eyvanekey plateau west of Garmsar along the northern periphery of the Great Kavir basin. This salt extruded over the central plains of Iran, where the southward advancing front of the Alborz Mountains is offset by the NE–SW-trending Zirab–Garmsar strike-slip fault. Based on nine descending Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar images, produced by the European Space Agency's ENVISAT satellite from 2003 to 2006, we used interferograms to map the displacement over 22 increments ranging in time from 2 to 18 months. To study the surface deformation at high temporal and spatial resolution, a small subset of interferograms was used to map the mean velocity of surface deformation. The results suggest that the top of the salt is subsiding continuously at rates that depend on the season. The surface displacement rate throughout the region ranges from subsidence of −40 to −50 mm a−1 to uplift of 20 mm a−1. The agricultural lowlands, where groundwater extraction for irrigation exceeds recharge, are subsiding faster than the salt sheet. Correlation of surface displacements with active folds and seismic faults around the salt sheet also suggests that the study area is undergoing active deformation. Supplementary material: Interferogram for the period 19.08.2003–14.02.2006 is available at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18383.


In this study, the compatibility of exergy destruction minimization (EDM) as the main objective is checked by plotting coefficient of performance (COP), exergy coefficient of performance (ECOP), and overall exergy destruction rate by simultaneously varying input operating temperatures for a 28 TR cooling load absorption system. The component-wise variation in exergy destruction is also considered and it is found that the maxima of COP and ECOP, and the minima of overall exergy destruction lies on a common point, and when the variation of operating temperatures is further extended, the exergy destruction in one of the component becomes negative, which marks the upper bound of the present analysis. At highest valid generator temperature (155 °C), the minimum possible overall exergy destruction rate is 53.50 kW and maximum COP is 0.523. Through inverse optimization (IO) using dragonfly algorithm (DA), the same overall exergy destruction rate is achieved for a wide range of generator temperatures much below than 155 °C, and as low as 127.34 °C. The above variation is explained in terms of flow ratio, mass flowrate of steam, and mass flowrate of cooling water.


In this thesis, I aimed at searching for new ways of constraining paleo-geographic, -atmosphere and -sea level reconstructions, through an extensive investigation of mantle structure in seismic tomographic models. To this end, I explored evidence for paleo-subduction in these models and how this may allow for a new avenue towards reconstructing the plate tectonic history of our planet. The major findings can be summarized as follows: Initially 28 slabs were characterized in terms of ranges of depth and timing of subduction. This effort led to 1) a determination of the sinking rates of slabs as a novel implicit observation of the rate of lower mantle flow; 2) to constrain how far back in time 'mantle memory' of past subduction extends, being a maximum of 250-300 Myr; and 3) to test whether slab remnants of paleo-subduction can be used as a constraint on absolute plate position yielding a new approach to constrain absolute plate reconstructions by 'slab-fitting' reconstructions. This methodology is applied to the mantle underneath the Pacific Ocean. Geological evidence from east Asia suggested that accreted exotic terranes with Lower Mesozoic volcanic arcs should have originated from central Panthalassa Ocean locations, yet how these fitted in plate kinematic reconstructions remained poorly constrained. Remnants of paleo-subduction were identified in the mantle, revealing the location of Mesozoic intra-Panthalassa subduction zones and shedding light on the plate tectonic configuration of the Panthalassa Ocean. Subsequently we interpret paleo-subduction zone configurations at a series of depth slices of the mantle and calculate total slab, and hence subduction zone length versus depth. This provided a first-order estimate of global subduction zone length for the last 235 Myr. This was used to compute volcanic degassing of CO2 from subduction and ridge spreading and served as input into a carbon-cycle climate model. The new degassing estimate resulted in an improved fit between modelled atmospheric CO2 and proxy data. In addition, it provided a good first-order fit of 87Sr/86Sr ratios from marine carbonates, a record of paleo-seawater composition. This correlation between the 87Sr/86Sr record and plate tectonic activity was improved by correcting for weathering of continents and used to calculate global ocean floor production rates to compute a eustatic sea level curve. We compare this curve with previous sea level and flooded shelf area curves derived from sequence stratigraphy and from plate motion models. Aside from providing a novel method of estimating sea level variation as a function of global plate tectonic activity, it extended sea level curves back to ~840 Myr. The identification and geological interpretation of slabs is further expanded to 94 slabs. This compilation is named 'Atlas of the Underworld', which provides a complete overview of the present interpretation of slab remnants by the scientific community and ourselves. The slabs' subduction age-depth data provided new average and in situ sinking rates. Slab deceleration in the top of the lower mantle is modelled as well as the required associated slab thickening or buckling. Instead of stagnated slabs, we observe that all slabs sink further towards the core-mantle-boundary.


We study economies with Knightian uncertainty about state prices. We introduce an equilibrium concept with sublinear prices and prove that equilibria exist under weak conditions. In general, such equilibria lead to inefficient allocations; they coincide with Arrow–Debreu equilibria if and only if the values of net trades are ambiguity‐free in mean. In economies without aggregate uncertainty, inefficiencies are generic. Equilibrium allocations under price uncertainty are efficient in a constrained sense that we call uncertainty–neutral efficient. Arrow–Debreu equilibria turn out to be non‐robust with respect to the introduction of Knightian uncertainty.


Nanoparticles synthesis is the real division in the area of relevant Nanotechnology and Nanoscience. As of late, the merging amongst nanotechnology and science has made the new field of Nanobiotechnology that joins the utilization of natural elements, for example, algae, microscopic organisms, parasites, infections, yeasts and plants in various biophysical and biochemical procedures. The natural combination forms have a critical prospective to support nanoparticles generation without the utilization of brutal, harmful and costly chemicals usually utilized as a part of ordinary physical and substance forms. Combination of nanoparticles (NPs) utilizing microscopic organisms has risen as quickly creating research range in nanotechnology over the globe. The procedures of NPs combination result with required shapes and controlled sizes, quick and clean. These days, a variety of nanoparticles with very much characterized synthetic organization, size and morphology have been combined by utilizing distinctive microorganisms and their applications in numerous mechanical fields have been investigated. The uses of these biosynthesized nanoparticles in a wide range of potential zones are exhibited including focused on targeted drug passage, malignancy treatment and DNA investigation, biosensors and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The consumption of microorganisms for nanoparticles synthesis is a genuinely unique range of examination with extensive prospective for more improvement.


Iron and steel have played a leading role in the development of human civilization and their techniques. Together with its derivative, steel, iron has no real rival in its particular fields of application and has become a synonym of progress, being an essential element in mankind greatest technological achievements. It was at the origin of the industrial and scientific revolutions and at the heart of all the great discoveries which have marked the history of humanity from the manufacture of high quality swords in ancient times to today architectural wonders. Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten. Rolling is a metal forming process in which metal stock is passed through a pair of rolls. Rolling is classified according to the temperature of the metal rolled. Steelmaking is the second step in producing steel from iron ore. Processing of steel results in special steel product with required properties, for example; vacuum treated steel for forging ingots; pre strengthened stress relieved elongated steel, metallurgical addition product, forging powder alloy steels, etc. Fasteners are used to join and hold two or more pieces of metal either temporarily or more pieces of metal either temporarily or permanently. Some of the most common are bolts, screws, nuts, rivets and pins. Packaging steels differ from other sheet products particularly in terms of their thickness, mechanical properties and coatings, together with their aptitude to satisfy specific industrial and marketing requirements related to high production rates, design factors etc. Small gage welded tubes have an extremely wide range of applications, including metallic roof frames, mechanical construction in public work and industrial engineering sector, agricultural machinery, fluid distribution circuits, piston, etc. India is among the top producers of all forms of steel in the world. Easy availability of low cost manpower and presence of abundant reserves make India competitive in the global setup. The steel industry in India has witnessed an increase in demand due to expanding oil and gas sector, huge spending on infrastructural facilities coupled with growth in housing, consumer durables and auto sectors. This book basically deals with structural changes in steel during hot rolling, structural changes during reheating, kinds of grain restoration process, dynamic restoration process, static restoration process, effect of initial grain, size of static re crystallization, effects of temperature and micro alloying, fundamental principles of the metal rolling process, preparing and heating the initial materials, preparations for rolling heating before rolling operations, bolt and nut manufacturing technology, casting of steel for flat products etc. The present book covers different important aspects of steel processing with the casting method of steel for flat products, rolling of rails, wheels and rings, rolling of different steel products, production of fasteners, welded pipes, steel products for the building trade and many more. The book is very useful for everybody who wants the thorough study on steel and steel products or wants to


This paper describes an efficient method to teach analysis and simulation of power electronic converters to undergraduate students, using system level nonlinear state-space models. System-level modeling of power electronic converters reproduces only the ideal switching behavior of the semiconductors and is a useful concept for the numerical simulation of power converters, since simulations present no convergence problems and require little computational time. Switched state-space models, programmed in the MATLAB/SIMULINK software package, can be advantageously used to simulate power converters at the system level and also to design and study their controllers. Switched state-space nonlinear models should be obtained using a theoretical framework suitable for the enhanced control of variable structure power systems. Since the method is inherently nonlinear, no approximated linear models are needed; and since state-space models are used, modern control techniques (sliding mode, neural networks, fuzzy logic) for power converters can easily be used. This paper summarizes the proposed methodology and gives some examples.


This study is to develop a seismic microzonation map using Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), one of the Multicriteria Decision Analysis methods based on Geographical Information Systems. The study area, Erbaa, is located along the eastern segment of the North Anatolian Fault Zone and is one of the largest towns and one of 12 districts within Tokat Province (population, ∼176,000) in the Middle Black Sea Region of Turkey. Erbaa is located on the southwest bank of the Kelkit River. After the disastrous 1942 (M s  =  7.2) and 1943 (M s  =  7.6) earthquakes, the settlement was shifted southward. Erbaa is one of the most rapidly growing metropolitan areas of this province, with a population of ∼96,000 people. Therefore, a microzonation study is needed for new settlement places. The data are classified as fundamental input data and derived input data, which are both considered in the AHP method. Fundamental input data include topographical, slope, aspect, lithology, and depth to groundwater table maps. The derived input data involve distance to fault, site classification based on shear wave velocity for the upper 30-m depth, amplification, and liquefaction-induced ground deformation maps, representing the seismic-based layers, produced from various analyses. Weight and rank values are assigned to different layers and to the corresponding classes of each layer. The resulting microzonation map reveals that the northern part requires detailed geotechnical investigation and that the southern part of the area is much more suitable for settlement.


This article introduces volume 100 of the Minnesota Law Review. Like much of legal scholarship today, Issue 1 was deeply and unapologetically embedded in the concerns of its day, which was on the cusp between the Progressive Era and the outbreak of World War I. It is not uncommon to contrast modern legal scholarship with some past era in which scholarship was more doctrinal, less policy oriented, and more focused on issues relevant to practicing lawyers. Yet, of the four articles in Issue 1 of the law review (published in 1917), two are international or comparative, and three (including the comparative article) rely on policy arguments rather than limiting themselves to doctrinal analysis. The subjects include children's rights and the juvenile justice system along with American neutrality in World War I. Indeed, even by the late nineteenth Century, there were complaints that law professors and law school education had departed too far from the realities of legal practice. The golden age in which practicing lawyers and law professors walked hand in hand into the sunset may be little more than myth, like so many other golden ages.


We examine the evolution of the optical phase in a nanosecond-pumped dye amplifier and show that the time-dependent gain introduces optical phase distortions. For the case of uniform pumping and weak input-beam intensity an analytic expression for the evolution of the optical phase is derived. Even for a temporally symmetric pump pulse the amplified pulse has an asymmetric frequency spectrum caused by the contribution of the fluorescence rate to the dynamics of the amplification process. When the injected beam is pulsed, the evolution of the optical phase varies with the relative timing between the input and the pump pulses. The model is tested against experimental results for an amplifier that uses DCM dye dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide. The rms deviation between the measured and the calculated behavior of the instantaneous frequency is less than 6 MHz.


Barry Morris Goldwater was a Republican Arizona Senator and US presidential candidate in the twentieth-century whose policies supported the women's reproductive rights [3] movement. Goldwater, a businessman and Air Force reservist, transitioned into politics in the 1950s. He helped align popular support for a conservative Republican Party in the 1960s. Throughout his life, he worked to maintain personal liberty and to limit governmental intrusion into citizens' private lives. Goldwater, influenced by his wife Margaret (Peggy) Goldwater, supported women's rights to abortions. Goldwater's advocacy and support for reproductive rights [3] assisted in the foundation of the Planned Parenthood chapter in Phoenix, Arizona, and for national policies promoting birth control [4] and abortion [5] rights.


Survival of the animal welfare paradigm (as contrasted with a rights-based paradigm creating legal standing for at least some animals) depends on keeping pace with appropriate societal evolution favoring stronger protections for animals. Although evolution of animal welfare protection will take many forms, this Article specifically addresses models for evolving conceptualizations of animals' property status within the context of animal welfare. For example, in 2015 France amended its Civil Code to change its description of companion animals and some other animals from movable property to "living beings gifted with sensitivity," while maintaining their status as property. This Article will evaluate various possible approaches courts and legislatures might adopt to highlight the distinctiveness of animals' property status as compared to inanimate property. Although risks are inherent, finding thoughtful ways to improve or elaborate on some of our courts' and legislatures' animals-as-property characterizations may encourage more appropriate protections where needed under the welfare paradigm, and may help blunt arguments that animals are "mere things" under the welfare paradigm. Animals capable of pain or distress are significantly different than ordinary personal property, and more vigorously emphasizing their distinctiveness as a subset of personal property would further both animal welfare and human interests.


Alexander Swoboda is one of the originators of the bipolar view that capital mobility creates pressure for countries to abandon intermediate exchange rate arrangements in favor of greater flexibility and harder pegs. This paper takes another look at the evidence for this hypothesis using two popular de facto classifications of exchange rate regimes. That evidence supports the bipolar view for the advanced countries, the sample for which it was originally developed, but not obviously for emerging markets and other developing countries. One interpretation of the contrast is that there is a tendency to move away from intermediate regimes in the course of economic and financial development, implying that emerging markets and other developing countries will eventually abandon intermediate regimes as well. Another interpretation is that the advanced countries have been faster to abandon soft pegs because they have been faster to develop attractive alternatives, notably Europe's monetary union. In this view, other countries are unlikely to abandon soft pegs because of the absence of the distinctive political conditions that have made the European alternative feasible. A final interpretation is that the advanced countries have been able to abandon soft peg because of their success in substituting inflation targeting for exchange rate targeting as the anchor for monetary policy. The paper presents some evidence for this view, which suggests the feasibility of further movement by emerging markets and developing countries in the direct of greater exchange rate flexibility.


Readings on Equal Education, Volume 13: Forty Years After the Brown Decision-Implications of School Desegregation for LI.S. Education, edited by Kofi Lomotey and Charles Teddlie. New York: AMS Press, 1996. 226 pp. $62.50, cloth. The readings in this volume provide an overview of the progress made toward desegregation since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. They are significant in that they include implications of desegregation for U.S. education generally as well as its impact on historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The themes running throughout are the problems of desegregation and the relationship between race, poverty, educational outcomes, and housing patterns. The editors' intent was to present reviews of interest to persons familiar with the progress made since Brown, but the readings' strong historical focus also makes them useful as a knowledge base for those unfamiliar with this aspect of U.S. educational history. The volume is divided into two sections, each of which begins with an informative overview bv co-editors Teddlie and Lomotey, both of whom are professors of education at Louisiana State University with extensive editorial experience. Section I, "The General Implications of Desegregation for U.S. Education," begins with an introductory chapter by the co-editors that provides an overview of historical perspectives on school desegregation. In chapter 2, Teddlie and co-author John Freeman divide the content into five periods as they explore the relationship between the Brown decision and higher education. They focus on the NAACP's struggle to end school segregation, White resistance to desegregation, and legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Higher Education Act of 1965. Teddlie and Freeman also examine the concept of "reverse discrimination," the growth in African American enrollment in colleges and universities during the 1980s and 1990s, and ongoing higher education desegregation cases in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The remainder of Section I deals primarily with desegregation cases at the elementary and secondary levels. In chapter 3, author Jacqulin Sensley Jacobs examines the position taken by the courts over the four decades since Brown, stating that courts initially issued strong desegregation mandates which subsequently were not enforced. She discusses methods of achieving desegregation such as attendance zones and busing, and notes that, by the 1980s and 1990s, freedom-of-choice programs rejected by earlier courts had become acceptable through the advent of magnet schools. Jacobs also asserts that, beginning in the 1990s, courts have acted more as referee, and local school districts have had more authority to establish desegregation plans. Chapter 4 author Janet Ward Schofield reviews research on the impact of desegregation on elementary and secondary students, focusing primarily on academic achievement and the relations between students from different ethnic and racial groups. She states that there is some evidence to suggest that desegregation may help break the cycle of generational and racial isolation, but that evidence regarding its impact on intergroup relations is inconclusive and inconsistent. Schofield argues that desegregation efforts should focus on improving educational opportunities rather than changing the racial composition of schools. In chapter 5, "Continuing the Struggle for Desegregated Schools", authors Susan E. Eaton and Gary A. Orfield state that, even as the Brown decision is reaffirmed as a great moral victory, racial segregation remains a fact of everyday educational life. They examine in detail the Sheff v. O'Neill (1996) case, in which the plaintiffs charged that the concentrated poverty and segregation in Hartford, Connecticut schools deprived students of the equal education guaranteed by the state constitution. The court denied their request for a metropolitan desegregation plan; and plaintiffs subsequently appealed to the state Supreme Court. …


Author(s): Lee, Pei Rong Evelyn | Advisor(s): van 't Veer, Laura | Abstract: HER2-targeted therapies have been the mainstay of treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer. To date, the selection of patients most likely to respond to HER2-targeted agents is based primarily on HER2 amplification and/or overexpression. However, the correlations among current clinical methods of detecting HER2 amplification and/or overexpression are imperfect with regards to both prognostication and the prediction of drug response to many of the HER2-targeted therapies, and therefore, there is a critical need for the discovery and translation of additional biomarkers that predict patient response to a specific HER2-targeted therapy. Here, we evaluated BluePrint molecular subtypes – a gene expression-based molecular subtype classification – as a predictor of response to HER2-targeted therapies using patient data from the I-SPY 2 TRIAL. We demonstrated the potential clinical utility of BluePrint molecular subtyping in identifying a subset of HER2-positive, estrogen receptor-positive (HER2+/HR+) patients who are less likely to benefit from HER2-targeted therapies. In addition, gene expression analysis of this subset of patients reveal lower immune signaling and higher estrogen receptor expression, and thus may potentially benefit from alternative strategies, such as endocrine therapy or immunotherapy. In a second study, we evaluated the baseline activation state of 104 key signaling phosphoproteins/ proteins from prosurvival, mitogenic, apoptotic, and growth regulatory pathways as predictors of response to neratinib – an irreversible pan-HER tyrosine kinase inhibitor of EGFR/HER2 – in HER2-positive breast cancer cell line models with differential neratinib sensitivity. We identified 13 phosphoproteins/ proteins, representing a multitude of pathways, in particular the HER family signaling pathway, that are associated with neratinib sensitivity. We also demonstrated in HER2-positive breast cancer cell line models that acquired resistance to neratinib could potentially be mediated through adaptive kinome reprogramming, and that the combination of neratinib and BET bromodomain inhibitor appears to be a promising therapeutic strategy to overcome such resistance. In conclusion, the work presented here provide insight into mechanisms underlying differential drug responses and resistance to HER2-targeted therapies, and highlight novel genomic and proteomic biomarker candidates that could potentially complement HER2 overexpression and/or amplification in predicting patient response to HER2-targeted therapies.


GPU Computing Gems, Jade Edition describes successful application experiences in GPU computing and the techniques that contributed to that success. Divided into five sections, the book explains how GPU execution is achieved with algorithm implementation techniques and approaches to data structure layout. More specifically, it considers three general requirements: high level of parallelism, coherent memory access by threads within warps, and coherent control flow within warps. This book begins with an overview of parallel algorithms and data structures. The first few chapters focus on accelerating database searches, how to leverage the Fermi GPU architecture to further accelerate prefix operations, and GPU implementation of hash tables. The reader is then systematically walked through the fundamental optimization steps when implementing a bandwidth-limited algorithm, GPU-based libraries of numerical algorithms and software products for numerical analysis with dedicated GPU support, and the adoption of GPU computing techniques in production engineering simulation codes. The next chapters discuss the state of GPU computing in interactive physics and artificial intelligence, programming tools and techniques for GPU computing, and the edge and node parallelism approach for computing graph centrality metrics. The book also proposes an alternative approach that balances computation regardless of node degree variance. This book will be useful to application developers in a wide range of application areas. * This second volume of GPU Computing Gems offers 100% new material of interest across industry, including finance, medicine, imaging, engineering, gaming, environmental science, green computing, and more * Covers new tools and frameworks for productive GPU computing application development and offers immediate benefit to researchers developing improved programming environments for GPUs* Even more hands-on, proven techniques demonstrating how general purpose GPU computing is changing scientific research * Distills the best practices of the community of CUDA programmers; each chapter provides insights and ideas as well as 'hands on' skills applicable to a variety of fields


On the basis of two examples, the article describes practical problems that occur with the newly revised corporate legislation. The objective of this revision was to adapt and simplify the legal situation, especially for small companies. However, in some special fields – the authors particularly examine the new rules about terms of office and the audit scope of auditors of small stock companies – the new corporation law provides some rather complicated stipulations. The legislators have chosen a very radical way of dealing with changes from the old to the new system of corporate legislation. Because the audit scope of auditors of small companies was widened by the Corporation Law, the legislators had to deal with the question of how the situation of the actual auditors should be ruled. For small closed companies, the law provides a legal fiction that automatically restricts the audit scope – which is, according to the Corporation Law, wider than before – in the articles of incorporation to the former size under the old provisions. However, this solution is not possible for small open companies because open companies in general are not allowed to restrict the audit scope in their articles of incorporation. Therefore, a statement of the Ministry of Justice provides that – by analogy – the term of office of all auditors of small open stock companies ended on the day of enforcement of the Corporation Law (i.e., May 1, 2006). The authors criticize this legislative path as an unnecessary and exceptionally severe interference in the corporate autonomy of small stock companies, and point out alternative ways of dealing with corporate legislation change in this context.


For years, the central tenet in consumer research has assumed a highly rational model of consumer behaviour. Under this perspective, consumers are seen to intentionally choose brands or purchase products solely on the basis of reasons (Holbrook et al. 1990). However, a number of scholars challenge this assumption and since the early 1980s, research has shifted to reactive view, focussing on the experiential aspects of consumption. A number of studies have investigated the role of emotion in aspects of consumption such as satisfaction and behavioural intentions. Similarly, emotions play an important role in tourism given its pleasure-seeking activities and the hedonic nature of the experience (Otto and Ritchie, 1996). Emotional reactions to the tourism experience influence satisfaction, behavioural intention, attitude judgements and destination choice. Yet, research on the affective dimensions of tourists' experience remains sparse with empirical evidence appearing only recently (Ekinci and Hosany, 2006). More specifically, no studies exist to understand tourist emotional responses towards destinations visited. Accordingly, this research attempts to contribute to the literature by addressing two key questions; what is the structure of tourists' emotional responses towards tourist destinations?; and what are the determinants and consequences of these emotional responses? The research question were tested by means of two empirical studies (Study 1: N=200; Study 2: N=520). In order to examine the first research question. Study 1 adopts a rigorous and methodologically sound approach to scale development. For the second objective, to investigate the determinants of tourists' emotional responses. Study 2 builds on cognitive the appraisal theories of emotions. In turn, how these emotions influence post-consumption behaviours such as satisfaction and intention to recommend are also examined. This research makes several theoretical contributions to the literature and offers important implications for destination marketers. In particular, a reliable and valid destination emotion scale (DES) was developed, consisting of three salient dimensions: joy, love and positive surprise. At the same time, consistent with theory, there was a significant effect of cognitive appraisals on emotional responses. Based on the study findings, a destination emotion model is proposed, linking appraisals, emotional responses and post-consumption evaluations. Finally, a number of future research agendas are highlighted.


In this paper, we introduce a lightweight dynamic epistemic logical framework for automated planning under initial uncertainty. We reduce plan verification and conformant planning to model checking problems of our logic. We show that the model checking problem of the iteration-free fragment is PSPACE-complete. By using two non-standard (but equivalent) semantics, we give novel model checking algorithms to the full language and the iteration-free language.


The aim of this research is to study selected health care workstations to establish the current practices with reference to the use of anthropometry. Also to re-design the work station, if necessary, in order to improve productivity, health safety and comfort of the patients and staffs using the work stations. Anthropometric dimensions of the patients in the examined health care system were used to design intensive care unit bed (ICU) and medical/surgical bed which can accommodate 5% 95% of patients male and female. The work stations were examined and analyzed under the combination of different anthropometric parameters. The analysis of the results indicates some deficiencies in the design of the workstations based on the design parameters and standard values from the literatures. Based on the analysis of these results the patients and their care givers may likely be exposed to back pain, fatigue, poor blood circulation and other related diseases. For demonstration of the application of the extreme design approach, a hospital bed work station (health care system) has been re-designed as a real case. It is hope that the new design will contribute to improvement in productivity, health safety and comfort of the patients and staffs using the workstations. In the proposed extreme design approach, I suggest to every health care organization operating, before any decision on making or buying equipment, industrial engineers are to be consulted depending on the design factor, for proper guidance. Anthropometric dimensions of the workers should also be considered for any category of hospital bed design.


Predicting how communities respond to multiple, potentially interacting chemical stressors is inherently difficult because community structure and dynamics, the chemical properties of contaminants, and biological-chemical interactions vary with environmental conditions. Using a field experiment conducted in Antarctica, we tested whether 3 phyla of benthic soft-sediment marine invertebrates—annelids, arthropods, and echinoderms —respond differently to 2 common forms of contamination, organic enrichment and toxic contamination. Based on life history strategies and physiological tolerances to contaminants, we hypothesized that the principal responses of the 3 phyla would be: (1) enhanced abundance of annelids in organically enrichment sediments and (2) decreased abundance of arthropods and echinoderms in toxic metal contamination. Sediment treatments were established in the field experiment with an orthogonal combination of 3 levels of total organic carbon (TOC; 0, 1, and 2% by weight) and copper (Cu; 0, 100, and 500 µg Cu g -1 sedi- ment), and colonization patterns were observed after 1 yr. Densities of annelids (mainly polychaetes) increased with TOC across all levels of Cu. Arthropods and echinoderms decreased with Cu, but responded variably to TOC, based largely on differences in habitat preferences exhibited by epifau- nal and infaunal species. Small subsurface arthropod species (amphipods, isopods, cumaceans, and ostracods) decreased in high organic loading, due to induction of and exposure to hypoxia and hydro- gen sulfide, but large surface deposit-feeding echinoderms (asteroids and echinoids) responded positively to increased carbon food supply. We present a predictive model based on assessment of benthic community structure conducted at the taxonomic level of phyla that could be used to link cause and effect for multiple chemical stressors in marine ecosystems.


Temporal Spacing and Learning Hal Pashler, Doug Rohrer, and Nicholas J. Cepeda March 2006 Volume 19, 30, 38 Studies going back a century and more have found that spacing learning episodes across time sometimes enhances memory. The so- called spacing effect is the topic of hundreds of articles, and one might assume that we know all we need to know about it. However, the subtitle of an article on spacing effects that Frank Dempster published in American Psychologist in 1988 — A case study in the failure to apply the results of psychological research — remains appropriate now. Whether one looks at classrooms, instructional design texts, or language learning software, there is little sign that people are paying attention to temporal spacing of learning. Before pointing fingers, it is reasonable to ask: exactly what advice can we offer with confidence? Reviewing the literature, our research team (which includes John Wixted and Shana Carpenter from University of California, San Diego, along with the three of us), supported by Institute of Education Sciences concluded: not very much (Cepeda, et al., in press). Despite numerous papers, very few researchers have examined memory after retention intervals of even one week. In some pioneering studies, Harry Bahrick showed that long inter-study spacing can enhance learning over years, but he trained subjects to a criterion of mastery on each session, thus allowing study time to grow with spacing. All in all, we concluded that psychology could not yet offer specific advice about how to make the most efficient use of study time. Moreover, research has focused heavily on recall of word lists, and some have suggested that more complex or less rote forms of learning might not show spacing benefits at all. Our team has set about seeking to close some of these various gaps in knowledge to allow a translation of basic spacing research into practical contexts. Optimal Spacing Intervals In one recent study, we gave 161 subjects two learning sessions (separated by an inter-study interval, or ISI, from minutes to 3 months). Each session involved learning a set of obscure facts. Six months after the second session, subjects were brought back for a final test. Performance was best when the ISI was 10 to 20 percent of the retention interval (Cepeda et al., 2006). Similar results were found when the same subjects learned names of unusual objects depicted in photographs. In a study currently under way using the Web, more than 2,000 subjects are being trained at inter-study intervals from minutes out to one year, with a final test taking place after an additional year. While data are still accruing, the results seem to provide clear support for the approximate ratio rule described above. Furthermore, the benefits of spacing seem to grow ever larger as retention intervals are lengthened; thus, for one-year retention, a one-month spacing produces a three-fold or greater increase in memory as compared to a day or even a week of spacing. While increasing spacing too much always produces some decline, as earlier short- duration studies had implied, the decline is invariably quite modest. Therefore, to facilitate retention over years, it seems critical to space training over several months at least, but avoiding overly long spacing seems like a relatively minor concern. Mathematics Learning To move beyond these somewhat rote learning tasks, the University of South Florida wing of our team under the direction of Rohrer has been teaching students abstract mathematics skills (e.g., Rohrer & Taylor, 2006). In a study run with Kelli Taylor, students learned to solve a type of permutation problem, and then worked two sets of practice problems. One-week spacing separating the practice sets drastically improved final test performance (which involved problems not previously encountered). In fact, when the two practice sets were back-to-back, final performance was scarcely better than if the second study session was deleted altogether. This fits with other research from our team showing that benefits of over-learning decline sharply with time (Rohrer, et al., 2005). Interestingly, most mathematics textbooks follow precisely the approach that our studies find so ineffective: a brief lesson on a topic is followed by a practice set containing virtually every problem in the book relating to this topic. Far more useful, we suspect, is to intersperse problems related to older topics covered over past weeks and months. We have also been looking at spacing effects in acquisition of visuospatial skills, such as artificial categorization tasks and classification of skin lesions as arising from melanoma versus other conditions. Interestingly, we have thus far found little spacing benefit in this domain. Obviously, we have much more to learn about spacing, but from our results so far we are confident that the potential of spaced practice to reduce forgetting is enormous — and we are optimistic that an adequate empirical basis for choosing optimal timing of study sessions for practical purposes may finally be starting to emerge. References Cepeda, N. J., Mozer, M. C., Coburn, N., Rohrer, D., Wixted, J. T., & Pashler, H. (2006). Optimizing distributed practice: Theoretical analysis and practical implications. Manuscript submitted for publication. Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (in press). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin. Rohrer, D., & Taylor, K. (2006). The effects of overlearning and distributed practice on the retention of mathematics knowledge. Manuscript submitted for publication. Rohrer, D., Taylor, K., Pashler, H., Cepeda, N. J., & Wixted, J. T. (2005). The effect of overlearning on long-term retention. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19, 361-374. HAL PASHLER is a psychology professor at the University of California, San Diego. DOUG ROHRER is a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida. NICHOLAS J. CEPADA is a research associate at the University of Colorado at Boulder.


Modes of Uncertainty offers groundbreaking ways of thinking about danger, risk, and uncertainty from an analytical and anthropological perspective. Our world, the contributors show, is increasingly populated by forms, practices, and events whose uncertainty cannot be reduced to risk - and thus it is vital to distinguish between the two. Drawing the lines between them, they argue that the study of uncertainty should not focus solely on the appearance of new risks and dangers - which no doubt abound-but also on how uncertainty itself should be defined, and what the implications might be for policy and government. Organizing contributions from various anthropological subfields-including economics, business, security, humanitarianism, health, and environment - Limor Samimian-Darash and Paul Rabinow offer new tools with which to consider uncertainty, its management, and the differing modes of subjectivity appropriate to it. Taking up policies and experiences as objects of research and analysis, the essays here seek a rigorous inquiry into a sound conceptualization of uncertainty in order to better confront contemporary problems. Ultimately, they open the way for a participatory anthropology that asks crucial questions about our contemporary state.


1QS 2 recounts a ritual in which the community convenes and shares in the annual recitation of blessings and curses for the purpose of reaffirming its communal, ritual boundaries as it is beset on all sides by darkness and transgressive ways. This group needs purifying through the ejection of the morally impure, those whose actions are judged to be 'out of place.' Conversely, in 4QBerakhot, the entirety of divinely ordered creation is cited in the blessing of God by the performative community in the heavenly throne room. This latter tradition understands those capable of this heavenly benediction as being sufficiently pure to stand in God's presence, while Belial and those of his lot are already consigned to their fate in the pit. Thus, given the entirely different ideals and resultant construction of figural space in these two traditions, we are forced to question the equation of their performative contexts.


Wetlands are well known to be efficient at sequestering pollutants from contaminated water. We investigated metal accumulation in the peats of the Klip River, a natural wetland that has received contaminated water from gold mining operations in Johannesburg for over 130 years. Previous work conducted in the downstream portion identified the wetland as an important system for sequestering metals. We focused on the upstream section of the wetland, more proximal to the source of acid mine drainage, to provide a better understanding of the pollutant sources and the role of the wetland in pollutant attenuation. Geochemical and mineralogical analyses of peat cores revealed considerable metal enrichments in the peat ash, particularly in Co, Ni, Zn, Pb, Cu and U. Metal concentrations are typically between 4 to 8 times higher than those previously reported for the downstream, more distal portion of the wetland. The distribution of metal accumulation within the peat profiles suggests that contamination arises from a combination of sources and processes. Elevated concentrations in the shallow peat are attributed to the input of contaminated surface water via tributaries that drain the Central Rand Goldfield, whereas enrichments in the deeper peat suggest significant sub-surface inflow of contaminated water through the underlying dolomitic rocks. Metal immobilisation occurs through a combination of mechanisms, which include the precipitation of gypsum, metal sulfides, Fe-Mn oxyhydroxides and phosphates. Our study highlights the environmental and economic importance of natural wetland systems which have the ability to accumulate large quantities of metals and thus remediate polluted waters. Significance:Considerable levels of metal accumulation are observed within the Klip River wetland peats.The wetland is effective in remediating highly polluted water emanating from the Witwatersrand Basin.The Klip River system is important for the region's future water supply.


The incidence of cancer is rising in almost all parts of the world because of changes in the environment, changes in life style and food habits as well as due to growing industrialization and modernization. UV exposures from the sun in the exposed areas of the body are the prime locations of developing skin cancer. The rate of skin cancer is rising in an alarming rate and more than 10 million cases of skin cancer patients register each year for treatments. Epidemiological evidences demonstrate that naturally occurring phytochemicals are highly capable of inhibiting or delay the progression of several human carcinogenesis. Garlic and its major organosulfur components have acquired a special position in the medicinal history due to its anti-viral, anti-bacterial and fungicidal properties. Cancer chemoprevention using garlic as a dietary phytochemical is an active area of research and here we discuss the potential role of garlic and its components to inhibit, delay or reverse skin carcinogenesis. Both oral and topical application of various forms of garlic showed protection against chemical carcinogen induced skin papillomagenesis in mice. The protection occurs best when garlic was used in the diet prior to induction of skin papillomas by the carcinogens. Garlic inhibits the deleterious action of the carcinogens by downregulating lipid peroxides and at the same time upregulates several antioxidants, antioxidation enzymes and phase II detoxification enzymes. Garlic also downregulates COX-2, which is a marker of carcinogenesis progression. Garlic exerts its chemopreventive activities by modulating p53 and PI3K/Akt signaling pathways as well as promotes ROS generation and apoptosis in the skin papilloma cells. Inclusion of garlic in regular diet will eliminate several physical abnormalities and will promote healthy lifestyle.


Studies were conducted on the sustainable management of whitefly (Bemisia tabaci Genn.) on available genotypes of Bt cotton at Faisalabad during 2005-06.The data obtained was correlated with ambient weather factors to determine the role of abiotic factors in population fluctuation.Various physico-morphic and chemical plant characters were correlated with the population of the whitefly with the aim to find their role in the life activities of the pest on Bt-cotton and sustainable management of whitefly by integrating the safest insecticide to Chrysoperla carnea.The results, during 2005 and 2006 on an average basis, revealed significant difference among genotypes
regarding population of whitefly per leaf. On an average basis boththe study years FH-114 appeared comparatively resistant showing minimum population of whitefly per leaf i.e. 2.59 while FH-113 showed susceptible trend with maximum population of whitefly i.e. 2.84 per leaf. Significant difference was observed among dates of
observation regarding population fluctuation of the whitefly. During 2005, the third week of July showed maximum peak i.e. 4.81 whitefly per leaf.During 2006, the population of whitefly reached to maximum peak i.e. 6.65 per leaf during 3rd week of September. The study on
the population dynamic of the whitefly showed that rainfall during 2006 had negative and significant correlation with the population of whitefly per leaf on BT cotton. Multiple linear regression analysis
of variance indicated that minimum temperature was the most important factor. Physico-morphic characters showed significant and positive correlation with the population of whitefly having r-values of 0.613**, 0.428*, 0.660**, 0.716**, 0.486* and 0.725**, respectively.Hair length and thickness of leaf lamina exerted negative and significant effect on the pest population with r-values of -0.654** and - 0.446*, respectively.Hair density on lamina and hair length on midrib and vein showed non-significant effect on the pest population. Multivariate linear regression model for hair
density on midrib was found to be the most important plant character which contributed maximum i.e. 42.72% role in population fluctuation of whitefly on BT cotton.The 100R2 value was calculated to be 85.47 when the effect of all physical plant characters was computed
together. Nitrogen percentage in the leaves of BT cotton showed maximum impact i.e. 32.92 percent in population fluctuation of the pest and appeared to be the most important.Study regarding integrating the safest insecticide to Chrysoperla carnea showed that buprofezin has minimum mortality of the pest and proved to be the safest for all three larval instar and pupal and adult stage of C. carnea and Endosulfan proved to be the most toxic to all life stages of the predator. Whitefly population was decreased by increasing the number of cards and 988 cards/ha integrated with the application of buprofezin showed the best results with minimum population of whitefly and maximum increase in seed cotton yield.


Over the last 10-15 years pharmaceuticals have been identified as a widespread pollutant in freshwater systems having entered the environment predominantly via the domestic sewage system where removal by treatment systems is often poor. This thesis provides detailed reviews and meta-analyses of existing data regarding pharmaceutical pollutants, examines the occurrence of five pharmaceuticals in semi-rural and urban catchments of West Yorkshire and their effects on freshwater ecosystems using both laboratory and field experiments.
A critical review and meta-analysis of 155 published pharmaceutical papers found 204 pharmaceuticals were present in rivers across large parts of Europe, North America and Asia. However, spatial and methodological gaps were identified in the research body with almost no research evident in Africa, South America, the Middle East and large parts of Asia. Furthermore, research effort was focused around a small number of commonly studied compounds often employing poorly representative grab sampling techniques.
Treated and untreated effluent of sewage treatment plants, combined sewer overflows and their receiving freshwaters were monitored for five pharmaceuticals (diclofenac, erythromycin, ibuprofen, mefenamic acid and propranolol). All compounds were detected at very high frequencies across all samples confirming them as a ubiquitous and widespread pollutant in freshwaters. Data showed pronounced seasonal (winter maxima) and diurnal (late morning and late evening) peaks in concentrations. Periods of high flow were characterised by reduced concentrations, possibly due to dilution within receiving waters. No appreciable attenuation of pharmaceuticals was observed across an intensively sampled 5 km study reach of the River Aire in Leeds suggesting the pollution burden placed on rivers by pharmaceuticals extends well downstream of individual waste water point sources.
Laboratory experiments revealed significant increases in mortality of the freshwater shrimp Gammarus pulex were observed during extended exposures to environmental levels of erythromycin and when combined in mixture with propranolol. A first application of 1H NMR environmental metabolomics to the study of pharmaceutical effects on freshwater biota was coupled with this experiment highlighting its potential use in ecotoxicological research. Sublethal, metabolic changes associated with energy storage and metabolism were observed with potential future applications for biomarker development centred on the osmolyte TMAO.
The pharmaceuticals studied here were found to pose no detectable risk to leaf litter decomposition in streams although a further experiment demonstrated a reduction in organic matter processing of freshwater sediments, coupled with some complex stimulatory and inhibitory effects on respiration and nutrient cycling at environmentally
relevant concentrations. Taken as a whole this work has added substantial knowledge to this growing research area and has allowed the construction of a conceptual framework that links measured environmental concentrations with effects at the sublethal and individual organism level mediated to the ecosystem and functional level via complex interactions between macroinvertebrates and microbial communities.
Overall, this body of research has demonstrated that pharmaceuticals should be treated as a widespread pollutant of on-going major concern capable of eliciting significant effects on freshwater ecosystems. Therefore, they require substantial further research and scrutiny from regulators and policy makers if the negative consequences of their presence in rivers are to be avoided or mitigated.


Tiger Sharks, Galeocerdo cuvier, are large top-level predators usually solitary as adults. Observation of their scavenging activity on the carcass of a dead whale offered a rare opportunity for better understanding the pattern of intra-specific behaviour within the aggregations of these large predators. In January 2002, the stranding, subsequent death and consumption of a 17.4 m total length (TL) blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus, was observed and filmed in Prony Bay, southern New Caledonia. After three weeks of confinement in the bay, the cetacean was killed by adult bullsharks Carcharhinus leucas. The first adult Tiger Shark was subsequently observed around the carcass after 36 h. The fat slicks from the carcass attracted further Tiger Sharks which arrived after an additional 24 h. The use of photo-identification on video footage collected during four observation sessions over an eight-day period identified 46 individual Tiger Sharks (primarily adult females between 3.3 and 4 m TL) participating in the feeding aggregation. Only four animals were identified in two seperate observation sessions (over two consecutive days), suggesting a short-term residency pattern of several hours (<36 h) around the carcass. As the arrival time of Tiger Sharks to the carcass differed, most arrivals of a new participant were followed by a frenzied period of intense intra-specific interaction. Different biting and agonistic behaviours were demonstrated by the Tiger Sharks on the carcass, including three new behaviours previously undescribed for this species. Size and level of aggressiveness appeared to be the determining factors of dominance amongst Tiger Sharks. These observations and analysis demonstrate that systematic study of feeding aggregations supported by photo-identification could contribute to knowledge of large shark ecology when coupled with capture-recapture, genetic fingerprinting and tagging techniques.


In Japan, there exist popular works in a number of media that use fictional narratives of the nation's wartime history as the foundation for science fiction or 'what-if' entertainment. These titles are commonly described as 'war fantasy' and have been condemned as revisionist or even immoral by critics both inside and outside Japan. These criticisms, however, overlook important counter-narratives present in 'war fantasy' titles. Some works look critically at Japan's wars of the 1930s and 1940s as a campaign of aggression and even contain representations of Japanese war crimes and important discussions of past atrocities. This article will examine key examples of Japanese 'war fantasy' to assess how critical views of Japan's wartime past are articulated in popular works. Popular narratives of war often run counter to both government perspectives and the expectations of 'military fans' who consume images of war as a form of entertainment. While many commentators have highlighted a recent shift to the right in Japanese discourse, the trends discussed in this essay suggest that genre works often branded as rightist can manifest important anti-war, anti-militarist themes, demonstrating the pluralistic character of Japanese war representation.


Abstract A robust assessment is made of the distribution and (spatially resolved) geologic context for the newly identified rock type on the Moon, a Mg-spinel-bearing anorthosite (pink-spinel anorthosite, PSA). Essential criteria for confirmed detection of Mg-spinel using spectroscopic techniques are presented and these criteria are applied to recent data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper. Altogether, 23 regions containing confirmed exposures of the new Mg-spinel rock type are identified. All exposures are in highly feldspathic terrain and are small-a few hundred meters-but distinct and verifiable, most resulting from multiple measurements. Each confirmed detection is classified according to geologic context along with other lithologies identified in the same locale. Confirmed locations include areas along the inner rings of four mascon basins, knobs within central peaks of a few craters, and dispersed exposures within the terraced walls of several large craters. Unexpected detections of Mg-spinel are also found at a few areas of hypothesized non-mare volcanism. The small Mg-spinel exposures are shown to be global in distribution, but generally associated with areas of thin crust. Confirmation of Mg-spinel exposures as part of the inner ring of four mascon basins indicates this PSA rock type is principally of lower crust origin and predates the basin-forming era.


The thesis comprises three independent essays on capital market integration; focussing on developed financial markets in Europe and GIO industrialised nations. These essays are motivated by a comprehensive theoretical review of the current literature on capital market integration which suggests that further investigation of a number of key issues would be extremely useful. The first essay examines the dynamics of the evolving financial and economic interdependencies between three core European nations (France, Germany and UK) and thirteen other European nations. We employ measures of linear dependence and feedback developed by John Geweke (1982) - JASA, 77, 304-324 - to define periodic integration measures that capture the time varying nature of capital market integration in Europe. Evidence from the tests of capital market integration are analysed in terms of fundamental macroeconomic variables to see whether stock market integration is driven by or dependent on economic convergence. The results suggest that European capital markets are becoming integrated especially since the 1990's. Evidence is found in support of a sfa-ong relationship between our time varying integration measures and some macroeconomic variables indicating an increase in economic convergence. The second essay analyses common asset price behaviour in GIO equity and bond market using an innovative dynamic factor modelling framework. Our methodology combines an observable and a latent variable factor structure and decomposes the total variation in the system into a number of differential effects. Generalised methods of moments (GMM) estimation technique and the Kalman filter are used to derive the decompositions and extract the unobservable factors. The results suggest that GIG equity and bond markets are broadly partitioned on regional lines. However, regional segmentation is more emphatic for the bond markets than for the equity markets. The third essay considers the issue of conditional or time-varying correlations and conditional volatility spillovers across international stock markets. It focuses specifically on conditional sectoral volatility spillovers into the UK stock market and assesses the effects of non-market-wide volatility on UK stock market volatility. The dynamics of volatility emanating from international sectoral portfolios is assessed and their effects on overall UK stock market volatility are discussed. Inter-sectoral volatility transmission between the UK, US and the European markets are also investigated. To extract the time-varying (conditional) correlations between the UK stock markets and the selected US and European sectors and, between the UK sectors and US and European sectors, we rely on both the model by Engle and Kroner (1995) and the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) model suggested by Engle (2002). The transmission of volatility from the US and European sectors to the UK stock market is assessed in the multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (MVGARCH) model the model of Engle and Kroner (1995). We find substantial evidence of international sectoral volatility spillover into the UK stock market.


The paper is devoted to problems of ensuring balanced and sustainable development of a very specific and important metropolitan region of the Russian Federation - the region of St Petersburg and surrounding it Leningrad Oblast. St.Petersburg (City) and Leningrad Oblast (Region) are both constituent entities of the Russian Federation and part of North-West Federal District. The City and the Region are connected with each other by thousands of various relationships: historical, cultural, socio-demographic, economic, labor, transport and administrative. For a long period of time, the City and the Region were part of a single administrative-territorial entity and had common governance bodies that applied a common approach to their development. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991 the system that ensured consistent management of the development of the City and Region was destroyed. However, no system was created that could be used to coordinate the development of the City and the Region. In the last two decades, problems between the City and the Region arise increasingly often, many of which cannot be solved on the basis of agreed positions of both parties. The paper is considering main problems which needs a coordinated approach: 1) competition for investment, human resources, federal infrustructure projects, taxes and other budget revenues etc. 2) coordination of spatial development plans and land use regulations, transportation networks development, environmental, educational, recreational and migration policies, housing construction. On the basis of the analysis of statistics and international best practices recommendations are formulated to improve the efficiency of the governance of the region, paying special attention to St Petersburg Metropolitan Area, which includes a number of municipalities, located in Leningrad Oblast. The paper includes discussion of common interests and background for increased cooperation and integration between St.Petersburg and Leningrad Region and main areas of improving efficiency of interaction between the two entities at the present stage.


The acoustics and vibration of coupled structures can be efficiently modeled by means of energy flow theory, usually known as statistical energy analysis (SEA). SEA is based upon relations derived from the interaction of pairs of coupled modes and is applied empirically to coupled structures possessing multiple interacting modes. This talk investigates the accuracy of SEA models by deriving exact energy flow relations based upon modal models. Using white noise disturbances but otherwise deterministic structural models, we present energy flow relations for multiple coupled structures. These relations are formulated in terms of thermodynamic energy, which is a measure of subsystem energy dissipation relative to subsystem disturbance intensity. The resulting energy flow models are compared to SEA models based upon coupled, uncoupled, and blocked subsystem energy. The results are applied to systems of coupled oscillators as well as coupled beams to demonstrate predicted energy flow under both strong and weak ...


Aquaporins are highly selective water channel proteins integrated into plasma membranes of single cell organisms; plant roots and stromae; eye lenses, renal and red blood cells in vertebrates. To date, only a few microbial aquaporins have been characterized and their physiological importance is not well understood. Here we report on the cloning, expression and characterization of a novel aquaporin, RsAqpZ, from a purple photosynthetic bacterium, Rhodobacter sphaeroides ATCC 17023. The protein was expressed homologously at a high yield (∼20 mg/L culture) under anaerobic photoheterotrophic growth conditions. Stopped-flow light scattering experiments demonstrated its high water permeability (0.17±0.05 cm/s) and low energy of activation for water transport (2.93±0.60 kcal/mol) in reconstituted proteoliposomes at a protein to lipid ratio (w/w) of 0.04. We developed a fluorescence correlation spectroscopy based technique and utilized a fluorescent protein fusion of RsAqpZ, to estimate the single channel water permeability of RsAqpZ as 1.24 (±0.41) x 10−12 cm3/s or 4.17 (±1.38)×1010 H2O molecules/s, which is among the highest single channel permeability reported for aquaporins. Towards application to water purification technologies, we also demonstrated functional incorporation of RsAqpZ in amphiphilic block copolymer membranes.


Freshwater pearl mussel (Margaritifera margaritifera L.) is an endangered species. Rearing in captivity for eventual release is one possible method of increasing the likelihood of persistence in different rivers. As rearing is a time-consuming procedure, knowledge about conditions that increase survival and growth rates and decrease the period of the parasitic stage would be advantageous.
Experiments with two excystment periods (one preterm in January, induced by artificially raising the water temperature, and a natural one in May) were performed, and the growth and survival rates of juvenile mussels were determined. Furthermore, meristic parameters of the host fish (brown trout, Salmo trutta) infested with glochidia in August the year before were investigated before and after both juvenile collection periods.
In January the mean intensity was 151.5 glochidia per fish (±260.6) and 80% of host fish were infested. In May, the mean intensity was 142.7 glochidia per fish (±177.0) with 30% of fish infested with glochidia. Although the condition factors of the fish decreased during the experiments to 0.8 ± 0.1 (January) and 0.7 ± 0.2 (May), no apparent influence on the growth or survival rate of the juvenile mussels was obvious.
The output of juvenile mussels was higher in the January excystment period (2854 compared with 2310).
During both excystment periods, the length of the freshly excysted juveniles increased slightly from the first to the last day of collection. Mussels excysted with a mean length of 0.32–0.33 mm (at the beginning of the excystment period) and 0.38 mm (at the end).
Individuals collected after the first few days of the January excystment period were the most suitable for culture. Growth up to a minimum of 1 mm in 110 days and a survival rate of 62–98% were observed. Juvenile survival from the May excystment period was lower (7–38%) presumably owing to poor water quality in the river.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Rat-kangaroos have not coped well with the impact of European settlement in Australia. Of the 11 species present in 1788, two are extinct, two are either mostly or totally restricted to offshore islands and the range of all other species has been much reduced. Habitat alienation, altered fire regimes, grazing, predation by introduced carnivores, competition from rabbits and timber harvesting have variously taken their toll on these little-seen animals.

The rat-kangaroo was one of the first Australian marsupials to be seen alive in Europe. Collected close to the settlement at Sydney Cove, a pair of them were exhibited in London in 1789. These animals were called by the local Aboriginal people 'Pot-o-roo', and by the European settlers, 'Kangooroo rat'. They were the Long-nosed Potoroo, Potorous tridactylus, the first of what we now call 'Rat-kangaroos' to be discovered.

Bettongs, Potoroos and the Musky Rat-kangaroo provides an extraordinary glimpse into the secretive lives of these unusual marsupials. It also reveals little-known facts about the critical functional role these creatures play in maintaining the forest and woodland habitats in which they live.


ABSTRACT The judicial protection system in the European Union (EU) is premised on the fact that national judges are supposed to act as decentralized EU judges. This role is exercised through tools enshrined in, inter alia, primacy, direct and indirect effect of EU law, and the preliminary ruling procedure. However, a number of studies show that national judges experience difficulties in exercising EU competences due to their lack of knowledge in the field of EU law. In this contribution we study the differences in the level of self-evaluation of EU law knowledge among judges, which consequently influence the way judges approach EU law. For that purpose we question the relevance of several institutional and socio-legal factors, such as organization of the judiciary, generation, the system of legal education and judicial training and practical experience with EU law. Our analysis is based on data collected from German, Dutch, Polish and Spanish judges.