Introduction: A Tale of Two Student Volunteers What follows are excerpts from the journals of two young adults writing about their experiences in a service project. Note the differences between the content and attitudes reflected in their work. Aldous Huxley is quoted: Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what has happened to him. In which case has the student done something with what has happened to her? Excerpt from journal of student volunteer: Today I got to the nursing home at 2:00. Talked to some ladies. Passed out popcorn at the movie. Went home at 4:00. Excerpt from journal of student participating in service learning project: Child read "A Game for Kim " which she loved. I had her write some summary sentences. She tried to write as much as she could remember, not really sticking to my instructions. Is it part of third grade thinking that they try to do more than is asked, or do they have a hard time following instructions? Ask in class - what are third graders capable of? Commenting on the first student's journal, Conrad and Hedin (undated) posited that the student was surrounded by human drama and missed it all. She was enveloped in human emotions - loneliness, struggles, dignity, and injustice, to name a few. Any number of health-related careers were available for observation. The second student was reflecting on her experience as a tutor, generating questions about the thinking abilities and processes of eight-year olds and thus learning from her time in the schools. For this student, participation in community service had become "service learning" and her remarks demonstrated a key benefit of this powerful pedagogical strategy: Students, through their service-based learning experiences, become active participants in the construction of knowledge - about themselves, others, the content-based information learned and used to support their goals, and the world in which they live (Howe, 1989). In the 96th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, service learning is defined as "an educational activity, program, or curriculum that seeks to promote student learning through experiences associated with volunteerism or community service." However, as is evident from the first student volunteer's comments about her experiences at the nursing home, there is a significant difference between "giving service" and actually learning as a result of engaging in the service activity. Hayes and Comer (1997) state: Service to others, particularly those who are in need and less fortunate, and service to the larger community through unselfish acts of caring and kindness are defining characteristics of a great and compassionate nation." Therefore, for teachers, the task must be to help their students construct knowledge from their participation in community service, and to truly nourish their hearts, making them feel the personal rewards associated with "unselfish acts of caring" while also helping them gain new insights and skills related to curricular goals. The Situation in Maryland To promote the development of a "habit of altruism" and to provide opportunities for more active engagement in the learning process, all candidates for high school graduation in Maryland, as of 1997, must complete at least 75 hours of "service learning". Shortly after this requirement was initiated, the faculty of the Educational Studies Department of St. Mary's College of Maryland, the Public Honors College within the University of Maryland system, surveyed students about their own experiences completing the high school service learning requirement. Their responses generally indicated that most students put in the requisite number of hours but often learned little or felt little reward from the time spent clearing beaches of debris, organizing a dance for a senior citizen center, or painting and repairing a run-down playground. Occasionally, a student's description of what he or she did indicated that the teacher in charge was able to make the service component part of a larger whole. …


While the global economy has pulled back from the financial abyss, it is by no means out of the woods. The developing countries (including India) should be prepared for : (a) medium term stagnation in their exports to the developed countries, (b) severe reduction in inflow of longer term capital from the developed countries, (c) a high degree of instability in short term capital flows and (d) instability in exchange rates with a serious risk of a dollar crisis. The impact on the Indian economy of these external factors may be more serious than is currently recognized in official documents. The conventional approach of assessing the impact of exports on growth and of external capital inflows on investment may be flawed. A large part of the recent (2003-07) increase in saving and investment rate and in growth rate in the Indian economy may have been due to external factors. And as the external stimulus provided by rapidly growing exports and cheap external credit during these years fizzles out, so could the recent acceleration in Indias GDP. In order to prevent such reversal in growth rates, increased efforts are necessary to : (a) generate domestic demand, in particular in unorganized sector where there is considerable underemployment and where additional demand can create its own additional supply, (b) mobilize domestic savings for longterm investment, (c) explore opportunities for greater South-South co-operation for trade and finance, (d) provide for protection from volatile capital flows and unstable exchange rates including a possible dollar crisis and (e) make an intensive study of financial risks of the corporate sector. If India is to achieve a steady growth of 8-9 per cent per year over the medium and long-term, it must look for a new balance between market and state and between North and South. In business as usual scenario, India may return to pre-bubble trend growth rates of about 6 per cent per year. On the other hand with appropriate reforms (quite different from those popular under the now defunct Washington Consensus) we can turn the crisis into an opportunity for maintaining rapid growth of 8-9 per cent per year and make it more sustainable and more inclusive.


* Defending the American Presidency: Clinton and the Lewinsky Scandal. Robert Busby. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 264 pp. $65 hbk. In the aftermath of the Clinton-- Lewinsky scandal, a sorry mess in which none of the players came out looking particularly good, it was hoped that with time, something worthwhile could be learned from the experience. If a blueprint for avoiding a similar debacle was too much to ask for, at least perhaps someone could definitively explain how a president could survive politically after being caught in a sexual scandal while in office and misleading the public, his cabinet, and prosecutors in the matter. Robert Busby proposes to give us some of those answers in Defending the American Presidency: Clinton and the Lewinsky Scandal. Busby, a lecturer in American Studies at Liverpool Hope University College and author of a previous book about Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal, sets out to analyze the tactics Clinton used to minimize the impact of the Lewinsky matter on his presidency. Busby correctly recognizes that Clinton faced a much more difficult challenge in shaping the scandal agenda than did predecessors such as Richard Nixon. The cacophony of twenty-four-hour cable news services hungry to fill airtime and grab ratings put a relentless focus on the Lewinsky scandal that spilled over into print coverage. The Internet pushed rumor to the fore and also gave prosecutors an avenue to deliver seemingly damning evidence directly to the public, bypassing traditional media filters. An in-depth examination of how the Clinton public relations team adapted its message in such an environment would seem to be a worthwhile endeavor. Unfortunately, thebook too often simply rehashes facts with which we are already all too familiar. The first two chapters detail "The Clinton Scandal Epidemic" and recount Troopergate, Nannygate, the two-- hundred-dollar haircut on an airport runway, the original Whitewater probe, and the Vince Foster suicide, then recounts how the Paula Jones sexual harassment case led to the president's affair with an intern being revealed to the public. Such background would be necessary and helpful if more substantive analysis followed in the later chapters. The text, however, too often relies on restating what is already well known about the Lewinsky scandal, or including detail for detail's sake. As just one example, Busby includes a table from the Starr Report showing that Clinton and Lewinsky participated in ten sexual encounters, fifty telephone calls (some including phone sex), and that Lewinsky gave Clinton thirty gifts and received eighteen in return. Such facts do nothing to advance the author's goal of analyzing Clinton's scandal management and undermine Busby's contention that the scandal was not about sex but about perjury. Busby makes his strongest analyses in chapter three, "Protecting the President: Damage Limitation and the Lewinsky Scandal," where he examines over time the president's actions, the administration's responses, and attempts by the administration to manage the response of Congress. …


In connection with work previously reported from this Laboratory on the chemotherapy of schistosomiasis in experimentally infected mice, the suggestion was made by Dr. H. E. Meleney of this University that it might be well to do some screening work testing the effect of drugs administered to mice during a short period of time immediately following the exposure of these mice to infection. The aim of such experiments would be to find drugs to prevent the development of the disease by stopping the development of the larval worms to adults. Since the war was still in progress at the time these experiments were begun the possibility of immediate application of any findings to actual field conditions was sufficient warrant for such an investigation.
It takes about a week after the penetration of the cercariae into the body of their definitive host before they begin to collect in the liver in any considerable numbers.


Between 1989 and 1999 the total fertility rate in Russia declined from 2.01 to 1.16, one of the lowest fertility rates in the world and substantially below the level of population replacement of 2.1 children per woman. Was this decline in fertility caused by the economic collapse that accompanied Russia's transition from communism in this period? Is the decline only temporary, with women simply delaying births, or does it represent a shift to a permanently lower level of fertility? This paper explores these and related questions using data across Russia's regions for this period and using individual-level data that record births and abortions. The results indicate that the fertility decline in Russia is related to the large decrease in income experienced by much of the population in this period, as well as to declining marriage rates and (in some specifications) rising unemployment. Measures of macroeconomic instability and uncertainty about the future show surprisingly little correlation with fertility rates and the probability of having a birth, but women with positive expectations about the future were much less likely to have an abortion than were women with negative expectations about the future.


It was the purpose of this study to (1) explore the potentialities of the "cire perdue" or "lost wax" process in the breaking of volume and mass and to explore the possibilities of space in regard to free and open "organic" forms, and (2) to explore the versatility and flexibility of bronze as a material for such sculpture. This creative thesis is an outgrowth of "3 a.m.", the artist's first experience with bronze as a medium. Because of the dilemmas and rewards encountered in completing this perplex piece of sculpture the artist wished to continue his investigation. A motivating factor which helped determine the decision for further investigation was the act of departing from the traditional use of bronze. Throughout the past most cast bronze emphasized solid mass using volume as an expression of space. The sculpture making up this thesis achieves an immense amount of volume though its forms are broken and open creating space that is nothing but one continuous depth. Most constructivists are not castors and in working with complex forms choose materials they can manage such as steel, wood and plastics. However, because of the writer's acute interest in the field of casting he was determined to succeed in casting such intricate and complicated forms. Because of the involved "gating system" necessary for such casting most commercial foundries would refuse service. Thus, it seems necessary that the constructivist sculptor, whose interest lies in the "lost wax" process, administer his own setting. The technical knowledge required in the casting of such sculpture is vast and involved, hence, each piece took considerable study and effort in striving for perfection. However, such study did not take place until the sculpture had been completed in the wax form. The facilities for "burn out" and the size of the foundry were the primary limitations in this search. The forms included in this creative thesis originated through preliminary thinking and sketching which resulted in a basic idea on paper or a mental image. Then shapes of wax were pre-cut, joined together and built up one piece at a time. Because of the artist's individuality and his response to such a sketch or mental image, the piece itself, became the building blocks which determined the form and brought about the expected deviation from the original idea. As stated previously, there were no restriction, with the exception of largeness, allowing absolute concentration on the search for unique form. Only two pieces deviate from the process described above. The relief "Mother and Child" was first modeled in clay and "Bronze Head", although created directly in wax, was built up through the use of the "pinch method". Throughout the whole of the thesis there is an obvious personal preference for powerful and intense rectangular and square forms. This became a conscious preference in the artist's search for personal expression. Through the use of several chemicals the investigator has experimented with the patination of different bronzed throughout this thesis. Realizing that bronze does possess a tonality of its own, the artist, because of his consciousness of color, felt that such patinas were an asset in the enhancement of the sculpture. Such experimentation also served to explore certain curiosities concerning patinas in conjunction with bronze. Upon the completion of this study it is felt that the build-up or constructive method, through the use of the "cire perdue" process, is more appropriate to this artist's creative personality than any other approach or medium in sculpture as it imposes less limitation upon his personal expression. Regarding bronze, it is sensitive; it has an immense amount of versatility, flexibility and fluidity. The versatility of bronze appears in the surfaces that can be achieved. These may be smooth and flowing, with sharp clear edges, or they may accurately record the traces of the sculptor's fingers on the pliable wax. Any surface treatment that is possible in clay or wax may be preserved in bronze. Above all bronze is a metal and has a high tensile strength making it possible to open it up, extend members or forms freely in any direction and preserve in relatively permanent form any shape and texture. These deductions, along with the education and the excitement of the casting process are among the reasons why the artist chose bronze for his constructions rather than steel, wood or plastic. Through this process the artist feels that he has "found himself" for the first time and that the forms in this thesis are truly unique expressions of himself.


In this paper we analyse the implications of the euro for the international reserves in the Eurosystem. Two conceptually different effects of the changeover have to be distinguished: a technical effect that largely arises as a matter of accounting, and a behavioural effect that stems from the fact that the optimal demand of the aggregate Eurosystem is not equal to the sum of the optimal country levels. The technical effect arises from two main sources: the abolishment of the ECU-creating mechanism, and the redefinition of international reserves which precludes (former) reserves that were denominated in euro-currencies. As a result the average reserves of the Eurosystem in 1999 amounted to $287 billion, considerably less than in 1998 ($345 billion). We then derive a reserve demand function for the aggregate Eurosystem using panel data estimation techniques and simulate reserve demand for the situation after the regime shift. The optimal aggregate level of reserves turns out to be some $188 billion, which implies excess reserves in the Eurosystem amounting to approximately $100 billion in the year 1999. We go on by proposing a key by which this excess could be allocated to the individual countries taking the asymmetric distribution of reserves in the Eurosystem into account. Finally we classify and enumerate the proposals for making use of the estimated reserve overhang. (author's abstract)


Understanding the demographic history and genetic make‐up of colonizing species is critical for inferring population sources and colonization routes. This is of main interest for designing accurate control measures in areas newly colonized by vector species of economically important pathogens. The biting midge Culicoides imicola is a major vector of orbiviruses to livestock. Historically, the distribution of this species was limited to the Afrotropical region. Entomological surveys first revealed the presence of C. imicola in the south of the Mediterranean basin by the 1970s. Following recurrent reports of massive bluetongue outbreaks since the 1990s, the presence of the species was confirmed in northern areas. In this study, we addressed the chronology and processes of C. imicola colonization in the Mediterranean basin. We characterized the genetic structure of its populations across Mediterranean and African regions using both mitochondrial and nuclear markers, and combined phylogeographical analyses with population genetics and approximate Bayesian computation. We found a west/east genetic differentiation between populations, occurring both within Africa and within the Mediterranean basin. We demonstrated that three of these groups had experienced demographic expansions in the Pleistocene, probably because of climate changes during this period. Finally, we showed that C. imicola could have colonized the Mediterranean basin in the Late Pleistocene or Early Holocene through a single event of introduction; however, we cannot exclude the hypothesis involving two routes of colonization. Thus, the recent bluetongue outbreaks are not linked to C. imicola colonization event, but rather to biological changes in the vector or the virus.


Question: In Dutch fens, species that colonize open water and induce the formation of floating peat mats have become rare. Many such riparian pioneer species occur predominantly on shorelines sheltered from the wind, whereas the majority of seeds tend to be deposited on exposed shorelines, as seeds are dispersed via wind-driven waves and currents. Do differences in germination and seedling survival between sheltered and exposed shorelines explain this difference? Location: The fen reserve 'De Westbroekse zodden' (52 °10′ N; 5 °07′ E) Methods: With a sowing experiment, the germination, seedling survival and overall recruitment of Berula erecta, Calla palustris, Comarum palustre, Glyceria maxima and Mentha aquatica were studied on sheltered and wind-exposed banks in eight fen ponds. Temperature, light availability, water level, wave impact, litter and seed deposition and vegetation height were recorded over 16 wk. The probability of washing away was quantified with small seed mimics. With a greenhouse experiment, we separately examined the effects of environmental differences between sheltered and exposed banks. Results: In the field, compared to sheltered shorelines, exposed shorelines had a higherwave impact, higher light availability in spring andmore litter and seeds deposited on them. In the greenhouse experiment, only litter addition decreased germination. This effect was overridden in the field, where the higher light availability on exposed banks increased germination. In the field, the number of seedlings decreased strongly over time, and eventual recruitment was determined by the degree to which seeds and seedlings were washed away by wave action. The probability of being washed away was highest on exposed shorelines (where waves were larger), which resulted in higher recruitment on sheltered shorelines. Conclusions: The recruitment of colonizing species to fen pond shorelines is limited by the probability that seeds and seedlings may be washed into the open water. This process can eventually cause more successful recruitment on upwind or lee-side shorelines despite lower seed inputs there.


This article attempts to clarify the concept of taqiyya (or dissimulation for religious purposes). It will examine if the concept is coherent, and whether practices of taqiyya follow its concept. The article first discusses the concept of taqiyya. Second, it reviews historical examples of its practice. Third, it examines the implications of the Ninth Commandment in the Bible. Fourth, it discusses the notion of 'speaking justly' in the Qur'an. And fifth, it examines the manner in which the practice of taqiyya, often deviates from its concept.


Through an empirical examination, this research reports on the results of cultural influences on whistleblowing decisions and the perception of people from individualistic cultures and those from collectivist cultures. We utilise cultural differences and characteristics between different nations to formulate hypotheses that individuals from collectivist cultures are less likely to be whistle-blowers, and less accepting of whistleblowing behaviour, than individuals from individualistic cultures. Data were collected through a survey given to subjects of British and Chinese students from the University of Glasgow. The results support hypotheses about diversity in decisions made by individuals from individualistic cultures compared to those from collectivist cultures. The research findings have implications for the administration of domestic and multinational corporations. In order to enhance the effectiveness of internal control systems in various nations, such systems should take cultural differences into consideration. The results suggest that, compared to collectivist cultures, whistleblowing as an organisational strategy of internal control systems is more likely to be effective in individualistic cultures.


Concerns have been expressed with respect to students' ability to search for information using electronic search engines and databases. This research adopted a structured method comprising a combination of questionnaire surveys, an observational study and a 'sense making' interview to assess the information searching skills of a group of 14 students undertaking their final year dissertation studies on undergraduate programmes within the Department of Civil and Building Engineering at Loughborough University. The findings reveal that the participants encountered problems with each type of search engine used (Google, Metalib, the Library OPAC system, and individual databases) and lacked knowledge of how to use advanced search strategies. All the participants formulated queries using simple words or free text and there was no evidence of consideration of structured word searching using systematically selected keywords. The results indicate priority areas for additional tuition in information literacy.


Women-owned businesses have an economic impact of nearly $3 trillion in the U.S. Despite the tremendous opportunity for economic growth they present, women entrepreneurs lag behind their male counterparts in terms of number of start-ups and scaling of businesses. To understand how and why this may be taking shape, we focus on the role of entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) or those organizations that act as intermediaries between the resources of a local ecosystem and entrepreneurs. All organizations that have as their proverbial mission to serve, support or partner with entrepreneurs can be categorized as ESOs. Given their role as decision makers, gatekeepers and resource providers, such organizations have the power and capacity to determine who is granted the opportunity to access and benefit from the very networks, mentors, programs and funding that increase entrepreneurs' odds for success.
Through extensive interviews and observations over the course of 2013 to 2016, we compare and contrast the entrepreneurship ecosystems in St. Louis, MO and Boston, MA to understand differences in gender inclusion efforts at ESOs. We focus specifically on cultural cognitive frames, social normative 'rules', and regulatory forces as exerting institutional pressures on ESOs in the specific communities in which they are embedded. Our qualitative approach yields in-depth insights as to the mechanisms and dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the St. Louis and Boston ecosystems by way of ESOs and their practices. Findings indicate that ESOs in the emerging St. Louis ecosystem engage in inclusion efforts through institutional pressures exerted at the grassroots level by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. These efforts seem to have yielded positive results in that women's business ownership has increased by 16% in a span of five years between 2007 and 2012, going from 28% to 44%. In comparison, women's business ownership has stayed around 30%, in Boston between 2007 and 2012, which is a much more established ecosystem. Our findings indicate that inclusion efforts driven mainly by top-down regulatory forces may not be as effective in changing the gender gap in entrepreneurship ecosystems. We expand on these differences and outline steps for ESOs and policy makers to build inclusive ecosystems in their cities.


This research project aims to explore the implementation process of the low cost housing policy, over the period from 1994 to 2001 in the, Msunduzi Municipality area. There are problems with the implementation of the housing policy by local government and this is causing delays in the delivery of the low cost housing for the poor. The findings of this research project will show that these problems have many sources. These include: firstly, the funding and the budget allocated for the housing projects. Secondly, the interference of the provincial government and the power play to control the housing policy. Thirdly, the uniformity of the houses in the projects; these houses can be related to the social and township houses of the late apartheid era. The housing policy in Msunduzi is facing many problems in the implementation stages. In order to identify the problems one must first find out what makes a problem free and an efficient policy. The information provided in the background study was gathered from a collection of sources, namely, journal articles, newspaper articles and government papers including the housing White Paper. A major part of the information gathered was through interviews conducted with a handful of members of the housing sector in the Msunduzi area. My interviews were conducted with a member of the Msunduzi Housing Association, a member of the National Home Builders Registration Council, and three members of the local Department of Housing. These interviews have allowed me to analysis the situation in Msunduzi area and come up with certain conclusions, as seen in the final report.


In recent years, the accelerated competition in the global marketplace rendered the corporate environment more volatile than ever. The businesses are heavily relying on technological advancements to deliver a vast array of initiatives across a variety of industries. The firms' main partner in this increasingly complex and unpredictable journey is considered to be their information systems. Although the relevant industry offers an unprecedented rate of technological innovations, nevertheless there are cases where the information systems carry significant baggage from the past (Kelly, Gibson, Holland, & Light, 1999). There are aged systems that often form the central hub of the information flow within the organisation and are responsible for consolidating information about the business (Bisbal, Lawless, Wu, & Grimson, 1999; Sommerville, 2001) and thus they are called mission-critical legacy information systems. The term "Legacy", according to the Oxford Dictionary, refers to any long-lasting effect of an event or process. The Legacy System describes an old system that remains in operation within an organisation. These systems often represent a massive, long-term business investment. Ulrich (1994) defined them as "stand-alone applications built during a prior era's technology, but they are perhaps more widely understood as software systems whose plans and documentation are either poor or non-existent" (Connall & Burns, 1993). Bennett (1995) referred to the legacy systems as, "large software systems that we do not know how to cope with but that are vital to the organisation", while Brodie and Stonebraker (1995) as "any information system that significantly resists modification and evolution to meet new and constantly changing business requirements". Finally, O'Callaghan (1999), drawing on the characteristics of legacy systems, described them as "a large system delivering significant business value today from a substantial pre-investment in hardware and software that may be many years old. Characteristically, it will have a long maintenance tail. It is, therefore, by definition a successful system and is likely to be one that is, in its own terms, well engineered. It is a business critical system which has an architecture which makes it insufficiently flexible to meet the challenges of anticipated future change requirements." Legacy systems as a subject area is often overlooked in favour of areas such as new technology developments and strategic planning of information technology. In this context, the following sections present an overview of the legacy information systems problems in terms of their scale and definition. The legacy system issues include the required man-effort and costs of maintaining and evolving existing systems and the current methods of migrating complex legacy systems to new technology. It is shown that legacy systems present a critical area of study in both software engineering and business information systems. Taking into account that the role of technology is not merely supportive but affects the way enterprises conduct their business, it is shown that it is outdated to consider the migration process as the simple replacement of aged or problematic hardware and software. Thus, the migration should be approached as a planned change process that first and foremost requires an understanding and a methodology that covers the range of issues and organisational entities involved.


Recently, copeptin was found associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients treated in primary care. This study aimed to evaluate whether plasma copeptin correlated to CVD in asymptomatic T2DM patients intensively investigated for sub-clinical CVD. A total of 302 T2DM patients referred to the Diabetes Clinic at Odense University Hospital, Denmark, entered the study. None of the patients had known or suspected CVD. As a control group, 30 healthy adults were recruited from the DanRisk study – a random sample of middle-aged Danes. A variety of clinical investigations were performed, including blood pressure measurements, carotid intima media thickness evaluation and myocardial perfusion scintigraphy. Blood sample analyses included copeptin measurements. Median plasma copeptin concentrations were similar in the T2DM group and the control group. However, men had significantly higher copeptin concentrations than women in the T2DM group (p < 0.001), and also, T2DM men had significantly higher copeptin concentrations than men without T2DM (p = 0.038). Copeptin correlated significantly with a number of variables, but the strongest correlation was with creatinine (R = 0.432, p < 0.001), and in multiple regression analysis, only this correlation remained significant. When association with clinical scores were investigated, plasma copeptin remained significantly associated with peripheral arterial disease (PAD) (p = 0.01). We found correlations between creatinine, copeptin levels and PAD in T2DM patients, and if confirmed, plasma copeptin combined with plasma creatinine could be a candidate for PAD screening in T2DM patients.


This paper introduces a geoethical dilemma in the coastal zone of the Tordera Delta as a case study with the objective of showing the contribution of geoethics to the governance of coastal social-ecological systems. The Tordera Delta, located in Costa Brava, Catalonia, constitutes a socialecological system that suffers from intense anthropization mainly due to tourist pressures causing a cascade of different environmental problems impacting the Delta functions. The massive sun and beach tourism brought human well-being and economic development to the region, but has caused an intense urbanization of the coastline that altered the coastal dynamics, eroded its beaches, and degraded many ecosystem services, a process that is being worsened today by the climate change events such as the rising sea level or the magnitude of the storms ("llevantades"), typical of the Western Mediterranean coast. Posing the problem of governance in terms of a geoethical dilemma enables discerning among the values connected to the intrinsic meaning of coastal landscapes and the instrumental values that see beaches as goods (commodities) for tourism uses. Finally, the paper reflects on options to overcome this dichotomy of values by considering meaning values as elements that forge cultural identities, contributing to highlighting this societal challenge in the Tordera Delta area, as a case study that can be useful for similar ecosystems.


Renshaw cells (V1R) are excitable as soon as they reach their final location next to the spinal motoneurons and are functionally heterogeneous. Using multiple experimental approaches, in combination with biophysical modeling and dynamical systems theory, we analyzed, for the first time, the mechanisms underlying the electrophysiological properties of V1R during early embryonic development of the mouse spinal cord locomotor networks (E11.5–E16.5). We found that these interneurons are subdivided into several functional clusters from E11.5 and then display an unexpected transitory involution process during which they lose their ability to sustain tonic firing. We demonstrated that the essential factor controlling the diversity of the discharge pattern of embryonic V1R is the ratio of a persistent sodium conductance to a delayed rectifier potassium conductance. Taken together, our results reveal how a simple mechanism, based on the synergy of two voltage-dependent conductances that are ubiquitous in neurons, can produce functional diversity in embryonic V1R and control their early developmental trajectory.


Low collisionality stellarator plasmas usually display a large negative radial electric field that has been expected to cause accumulation of impurities due to their high charge number. In this paper, two combined effects that can potentially modify this scenario are discussed. First, it is shown that, in low collisionality plasmas, the kinetic contribution of the electrons to the radial electric field can make it negative but small, bringing the plasma close to impurity temperature screening (i.e., to a situation in which the ion temperature gradient is the main drive of impurity transport and causes outward flux); in plasmas of very low collisionality, such as those of the large helical device displaying impurity hole (Ida et al (The LHD Experimental Group) 2009 Phys. Plasmas 16 056111; Yoshinuma et al (The LHD Experimental Group) 2009 Nucl. Fusion 49 062002), screening may actually occur. Second, the component of the electric field that is tangent to the flux surface (in other words, the variation of the electrostatic potential on the flux surface), although smaller than the radial component, has recently been suggested to be an additional relevant drive for radial impurity transport. Here, it is explained that, especially when the radial electric field is small, the tangential magnetic drift has to be kept in order to correctly compute the tangential electric field, that can be larger than previously expected. This can have a strong impact on impurity transport, as we illustrate by means of simulations using the newly developed code kinetic orbit-averaging-solver for stellarators, although it is not enough to explain by itself the behavior of the fluxes in situations like the impurity hole.


The non-heme iron(II) dioxygenase family of enzymes contain a common 2-His–1-carboxylate iron-binding motif. These enzymes catalyze a wide variety of oxidative reactions, such as the hydroxylation of aliphatic C–H bonds. Prolyl 4-hydroxylase (P4H) is an α-ketoglutarate-dependent iron(II) dioxygenase that catalyzes the post-translational hydroxylation of proline residues in protocollagen strands, stabilizing the ensuing triple helix. Human P4H residues His412, Asp414, and His483 have been identified as an iron-coordinating 2-His–1-carboxylate motif. Enzymes that catalyze oxidative halogenation do so by a mechanism similar to that of P4H. These halogenases retain the active-site histidine residues, but the carboxylate ligand is replaced with a halide ion. We replaced Asp414 of P4H with alanine (to mimic the active site of a halogenase) and with glycine. These substitutions do not, however, convert P4H into a halogenase. Moreover, the hydroxylase activity of D414A P4H cannot be rescued with small molecules. In addition, rearranging the two His and one Asp residues in the active site eliminates hydroxylase activity. Our results demonstrate a high stringency for the iron-binding residues in the P4H active site. We conclude that P4H, which catalyzes an especially demanding chemical transformation, is recalcitrant to change.


The installation artwork Red by Simon Gush (with his collaborators James Cairns and Mokotjo Mohulo) evokes two senses of representation. One is of symbolism, meaning, visual strategies, juxtapositions, silences and so on. The other appears as the authority to speak on behalf of the views of an individual or an assemblage such as 'the workers', 'the community' or 'the people'. In this article I employ this double sense of the term to consider how the voice of the worker has been deployed in the production of South African labour histories. I do this through examining what was arguably the major labour history publication in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, the South African Labour Bulletin. It devoted a large part of its November 1990 issue to the strike and sleep-in at the Mercedes-Benz plant in East London in that year, the same set of events that Gush drew upon over twenty years later. I then turn to the installation Red itself, originally exhibited in 2014 at the Goethe Institute in Johannesburg and the following year at the Ann Bryant Gallery in East London. In Red, events were made into history through voices and images on film and the fabrication of artefacts for display: 'strike uniforms', a 'Mandela car' and 'sleep-in strike beds'. The latter were presented in the installation's publicity as speculative reconstructions and counterposed with interviews in the film component that were depicted as 'the voices of the people involved' from management and labour. Instead I argue for seeing these both a speculative reconstructions. Linking this to the spatialising technologies of museums I examine how the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum in Cape Town and the Workers Museum in Johannesburg, evoke voice and words in their depictions of migrant labour. Locating the Labour Bulletin and these museums alongside Red provides an opportunity to think of alternative ways that labour histories may be produced in both the academy and the public domain.


Abstract Juvenile survival is one of the least known elements of the life history of many species, in particular snakes. We conducted a mark–recapture study of Crotalus horridus from 1978–2002 in northeastern New York near the northern limits of the species' range. We marked 588 neonates and estimated annual age-, sex-, and morph-specific recapture and survival rates using the Cormack-Jolly-Seber (CJS) model. Wild-caught neonates (field-born, n  =  407) and neonates produced by captive-held gravid females (lab-born, n  =  181) allowed comparison of the birthplace, or lab treatment effect, in estimated survival. Recapture rates declined from about 10–20% over time while increasing from young to older age classes. Estimated survival rates (S ± 1 SE) in the first year were significantly higher among field-born (black morph: S  =  0.773 ± 0.203; yellow morph: S  =  0.531 ± 0.104) than among lab-born snakes (black morph: S  =  0.411 ± 0.131; yellow morph: S  =  0.301 ± 0.081). Lower birth weights combined with a lack of field exposure until release apparently contributed to the lower survival rate of lab-born snakes. Subsequent survival estimates for 2–4-yr-old snakes were S  =  0.845 ± 0.084 for the black morph and S  =  0.999 (SE not available) for the yellow morph, and for ≥5-yr-old snakes S  =  0.958 ± 0.039 (black morph) and S  =  0.822 ± 0.034 (yellow morph). The most parsimonious model overall contained an independent time trend for survival of each age, morph, and lab-treatment group. For snakes of the first two age groups (ages 1 yr and 2–4 yr), survival tended to decline over the years for both morphs, while for adult snakes (5 yr and older), survival was constant or even slightly increased. Our data on survival and recapture are among the first rigorous estimates of these parameters in a rattlesnake and among the few yet available for any viperid snake. These data are useful for analyses of the life-history strategy, population dynamics, and conservation of this long-lived snake.


Objective: The concepts important to children and young adults who undergo treatments for facial differences are not well-defined. Measurement of treatment outcomes from the patient's perspective is necessary to ensure goals of treatment are met. We aimed to identify concepts important to children and young adults with facial differences through a qualitative study. Design: An interpretive description qualitative approach was followed. Semistructured interviews were conducted, transcribed verbatim, and coded using a line-by-line approach. Qualitative analysis led to the development of a conceptual framework of outcomes important to patients. Setting: Interviews were conducted in Canada and the United Kingdom at home, by telephone, or in the hospital. Participants: Participants (N = 72) were recruited between May and June 2014 from craniofacial clinics at the Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto) and Great Ormond Street Hospital (London). Participants included anyone with a visible and/or functional facial difference aged 8 to 29 years and fluent in English, excluding patients with a cleft. The sample included 38 females and 34 males, with a mean age of 13.9 years, and included 28 facial conditions (11 facial paralysis, 18 ear anomalies, 26 skeletal conditions, and 17 soft tissue conditions). Results: Analysis led to identification of important concepts within 4 overarching domains: facial appearance, facial function, adverse effects of treatment, and health-related quality of life (psychological, social, and school function). Conclusions: Our study provides an understanding of concepts important to children and young adults with facial differences.


In The Life and Undeath of Autonomy in American Literature, Geoff Hamilton charts the evolution of the fundamental concept of autonomy in the American imaginary across the span of the nation's literary history. Whereas America's ideological roots are typically examined in relation to Enlightenment Europe, this book traces the American literary representation of autonomy back to its pastoral, political, and ultimately religious origins in ancient Greek thought. Tracking autonomy's evolution in America from the Declaration of Independence to contemporary works, Hamilton considers affinities between American and Greek literary characters--Natty Bumppo and Odysseus, Emerson's "poet" and Socrates, Cormac McCarthy's Judge Holden and Callicles--and reveals both what American literary history has in common with that of ancient Greece and what is distinctively its own. The author argues for the link with antiquity not only to understand better the boundaries between self and society but also to show profound transitions in the understanding of autonomy from a nourishing liberty of fulfilment, through an aggressive agency destructive to both human and natural worlds, to a sterile isolation and detachment. The result is an insightful analysis of the history of individualism, the evolution of frontier mythology and American Romanticism, and the contemporary representation of social alienation and violent criminality.


In this paper, we examine the problem of incrementally evaluating algebraic functions. In particular, iff(x1,x2,?,xn)=(y1,y2,?,ym) is an algebraic problem, we consider answering on-line requests of the form "change inputxito valuev" or "what is the value of outputyj?" We first present lower bounds for some simply stated algebraic problems such as multipoint polynomial evaluation, polynomial reciprocal, and extended polynomial GCD, proving an ?(n) lower bound for the incremental evaluation of these functions. In addition, we prove two time-space trade-off theorems that apply to incremental algorithms for almost all algebraic functions. We then derive several general-purpose algorithm design techniques and apply them to several fundamental algebraic problems. For example, we give anO(n)time per request algorithm for incremental DFT. We also present a design technique for serving incremental requests using a parallel machine, giving a choice of either optimal work with respect to the sequential incremental algorithm or superfast algorithms withO(loglogn) time per request with a sublinear number of processors.


Multiple Myeloma (MM) is a Plasma Cell (PC) malignancy characterized by proliferation of differentiated B cells mainly in the bone marrow. Genetic abnormalities are powerful prognostic factors in MM for risk stratification and therapeutic strategies. The standard diagnostic tests to detect genetic abnormalities in MM include Conventional Cytogenetic Analysis (CCA) and Interphase Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH). Due to the low proliferative activity of the abnormal clone, only 30-50% of newly diagnosed MM demonstrate an abnormal karyotype by CCA. CCA is a biological test which requires dividing cells for analysis. The t(4;14) translocation which carries a poor prognosis is cryptic and cannot be detected by CCA. These limitations were overcome partly by the incorporation of interphase FISH as a routine diagnostic test in MM. There is an international consensus that FISH should be performed in all newly diagnosed MM to detect high-risk genetic abnormalities. FISH testing must be done on purified PCs or by simultaneous labeling of cytoplasmic immunoglobulin light chain to allow identification of PCs. The minimum essential abnormalities to test for are t(4;14), t(14;16) and del(17)(p13). However, there is no consensus on the optimal protocol for CCA and interphase FISH. We review here the types of chromosomal aberrations found in MM, the prognostic significance of these abnormalities,  methodologies in CCA to improve on the low yield of  abnormal karyotypes,  and protocols in interphase FISH.


This article considers whether laws prohibiting same-sex marriage should be found to violate the Establishment Clause. After explaining the nonendorsement principle that the Supreme Court has recognized as central to the clause, the article discusses the limited case law and commentary that explicitly address the constitutionality of same-sex marriage prohibitions under the Establishment Clause. It then examines the various reasons that opponents of same-sex marriage have offered in support of a ban and concludes that those reasons provide strikingly little justification for laws banning same-sex marriage. After discussing three substantial reasons for allowing same-sex couples to wed, the article attempts to make sense of a legislative decision to prohibit same-sex marriage -- a decision that, in effect, gives priority to the tenuous reasons for prohibition over the weighty reasons for legalization. A covert purpose to endorse religion is not the only possible explanation for the legislature's decision. The article suggests, however, that it is the most plausible explanation largely because, perhaps paradoxically, it is the one most in keeping with the deference that lawmakers are generally owed. The article then turns to three possible objections to a conclusion that prohibitions on same-sex marriage violate the Establishment Clause. Two objections relate to ambiguities in the endorsement test. The third arises out of the possibility that, in the near future, the Supreme Court may replace the endorsement test with a less demanding test predicated on coercion. Lastly, the article considers the implications of its analysis for the federal government's contribution to the same-sex marriage debate: the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996.


Climate warming poses considerable challenges for alpine plant species, especially for competitively inferior ones with resource-conservative adaptations to cold climates. The Himalayas are warming at rates considerably faster than the global average, so it is particularly important to assess how and through which mechanisms alpine plant species are affected there. We employed a demographic approach in a climate change experiment, where vegetation turfs were transplanted reciprocally between the central parts of the study species' (Viola biflora L. var. rockiana) range and the warmer range margin, with a temperature difference of ca. 1°C. In addition, turfs were also transplanted outside the range to warmer habitats, simulating two different scenarios of climate warming, +1 and +4°C. Transplanting to warmer sites negatively impacted population growth rates (λ), survival and clonality, but did not affect growth and fecundity, while the productivity of the plant community increased. The reciprocal transplants to the colder habitat showed the opposite effects, for both V. biflora and the plant community, indicating plastic responses of the study species, driven by changes in plant–plant competition. However, the leaf traits underlying the modeled population growth rates were origin-site specific and not affected by the climate-change treatments over the study period, suggesting local adaptation of growth form to competition in the warmer range margin, and to climate adversity in the colder range center. The transplants outside the present species' range showed consistently stronger reductions in population growth rate and survival, with mortality of 90–100% in the +4°C treatment. This illustrates that climatic changes beyond species' present climatic ranges pose a serious risk for range contraction and extinction for Himalayan alpine species in the near future. As V. biflora seems mostly limited by competition under warming, its persistence in a future climate may become increasingly dependent on keeping competitive effects from the surrounding community low, for instance by management interventions like grazing and mowing.


The evolution of drug resistant Plasmodium parasites is a major challenge to effective malaria control. In theory, competitive interactions between sensitive parasites and resistant parasites within infections are a major determinant of the rate at which parasite evolution undermines drug efficacy. Competitive suppression of resistant parasites in untreated hosts slows the spread of resistance; competitive release following treatment enhances it. Here we report that for the murine model Plasmodium chabaudi, co-infection with drug-sensitive parasites can prevent the transmission of initially rare resistant parasites to mosquitoes. Removal of drug-sensitive parasites following chemotherapy enabled resistant parasites to transmit to mosquitoes as successfully as sensitive parasites in the absence of treatment. We also show that the genetic composition of gametocyte populations in host venous blood accurately reflects the genetic composition of gametocytes taken up by mosquitoes. Our data demonstrate that, at least for this mouse model, aggressive chemotherapy leads to very effective transmission of highly resistant parasites that are present in an infection, the very parasites which undermine the long term efficacy of front-line drugs.


The study of sugar cane fiber geotextiles represents a holistic approach to interdisciplinary research that includes product development, product testing, industry and target market identification, and strategic and financial planning for manufacturing and distribution. Based upon satisfactory results of prior research, a field test of soil erosion control in a natural environment was designed to determine performance of the sugar cane product and commercially available natural fiber geotextiles of wood, straw, and coconut fiber. Field test results indicated that the sugar cane mats allowed grass from planted seed to germinate and the mats maintained integrity during heavy rains. Due to the limited amount of geotextile industry data available, a niche market was identified to ascertain market size, usage applications, and product and price information. A questioimaire was sent to the 50 state Departments of Transportation and responses included: the combined annual usage rate of natural fiber erosion control blankets is a minimum of 2.6 million yd^ (2.2 million m^) which is a $2.6 million contribution to the industry, erosion control products are applied heavily during new construction and for channel liners, and concern for the environment has popularized the use of organic products. A business plan was developed to determine viability for a company to manufacture and distribute sugar cane fiber geotextiles and related products. It was determined that a company could be profitable due to the low raw material cost of converting agricultural waste to a value-added product.


How are cultural changes put forward by so-called 'Utopias' accepted by political elites and then implemented through political decisions or international treaties ? This historical process has often been dealt with via two separate disciplines : sociology and political science. In this article, the author has chosen to use the new paradigm of global politics, i.e., the "issue paradigm", as his general framework of analysis. This article comprises two parts. First a theory of political change - culturally induced. Four concepts of change and progress are examined (Saint-Pierre, Kant, Condorcet and Bentham). This leads the author to the formulation of a new concept: " counter-decision", which can be defined as "a minor concession pulled through socially organized utopian movements from still reluctant political elites, at the very time when History is shaken by some kind of crisis such as war". The total process consists of four successive stages which are: intellectual maturation, socialisation, counter-decision, and new policy which is the final stage of political change culturally induced. The second part of the article gives a historical illustration of this four stages process, examples of which are the European unification, arbitration, collective security, disarmament, arms control, law of war and humanitarian law. These empirical illustrations reveal that Saint-Pierre, Kant, Condorcet and Bentham were all correct in their respective interpretation of progress. It also means that, in politics, cultural progress is at one and the same time rationally thought, reached through a dialectical process, cumulative or determinist in some aspects, if equally debated, and thus voluntarist.


Most powerful and effective method of weed control is by chemical substances called herbicides. In recent years, they were published quite data on different side effects of herbicides on humans, animals, crops and the environment as a whole. Therefore, the increased interest for biological weed control lately is reasonable, since its improvement and expansion will contribute to limiting excessive use of herbicides, respectively their harmful effects and will support the successful implementation of complex weed control. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of selected plant species, containing allelopathic active substances, on germination, growth and biomass of some widespread weeds in wheat. Experiments were carried out at laboratory conditions using seeds of wheat (Triticum aestivum L., sort Sadovo 1) and most common weeds therein: Johnson grass (Sorghum halepense (L) Pers), white pigweed (Chenopodium album L.), twitch (Cynodon dactylon L.) and curly dock (Rumex crispus L.). Allelopathic substances were extracted with distilled water from flowers of lavender (Lavandula angustifolia Mill.), leaves of basil (Ocimum basilicum L.), leaves of spearmint (Mentha longifolia (L) Huds.), and leaves of peppermint (Mentha piperita L.). Of the tested active allelopathic plants, the most negative impact on germination of all weeds seeds (including wheat), as well as on the development of plants exhibited the water extract of lavender. Lavender and basil had a stronger negative effect on white pigweed and twitch compared with both mint species. A significant inhibitory effect of spearmint even at low concentrations was recorded on the germination of all weed species tested while the wheat was slightly affected, which manifests this plant as a potential effective species in strategies for weed control management.


Background and aim Individuals with developmental language disorder have been found to exhibit increased emotional difficulties compared to their typically developed peers. However, the underlying pathways involved in this relationship are unclear. It may be that poor language leads to social exclusion, resulting in feelings of frustration and isolation. Additionally, previous research has focused on clinical samples or early childhood in population cohorts. Therefore, the current paper examines the mediating effect of childhood peer problems on poor emotional outcomes in adolescence using a population cohort. Methods Data from the Millennium Cohort Study were analysed at ages 5, 7 and 14. The risk of developmental language disorder group (children considered at risk of developing developmental language disorder based on parental report of difficulties or a score −1.5 standard deviation on Naming Vocabulary subtest at age 5) was compared to a general population group. A Sobel–Goodman test was used to examine the mediating effect of teacher-reported peer problems at age 7 on the association between language difficulties at age 5 and parent-reported emotional problems at age 7 and 14. Results Peer problems at age 7 accounted for approximately 14% of the effect of language difficulties at age 5 on emotional problems at age 7, and approximately 17% of the effect of language difficulties at age 5 on emotional problems at age 14. Conclusions This paper supports previous findings that children and adolescents with language difficulties are at increased risk for social and emotional problems as reported by their parents and teachers. Furthermore, the findings show that peer problems partially mediate the relationship between language difficulties and emotional problems, suggesting that better relationships with peers may offer some protection against poor mental health outcomes in adolescents at risk of developmental language disorder. Implications This paper adds to the literature that investigates the mechanisms involved in the relationship between developmental language disorder and increased emotional problems. Practitioners wishing to reduce risk of emotional difficulties in children with developmental language disorder may wish to reflect on what they can do to support a child to develop positive peer relationships.


Lightweight floors over wood and metal joists are notoriously noisy. Both impact and airborne noise are intrusive. A unique technique has been developed that allows the use of hard surface materials such as vinyl, hardwood, or tile without compromising sound isolation attributes or economics. Recent subjective and objective testing of floor and wall systems that utilize constrained layer damping technology demonstrate significant promise. Lightweight wood wall and floor/ceiling assemblies utilizing these principles exhibit a perception of quiet solidarity typically found in expensive concrete systems. This paper presents a series of tests comparing conventional plywood and gypsumboard systems with similar assemblies containing constrained layer damped subfloor and wall materials.


The Obama Administration has prosecuted a record number of government employees for leaking classified information. Yet despite this prosecutorial surge — nine cases in less than seven years — a steady stream of high-profile leaks continues and shows no sign of abating. This essay considers why the threat of criminal punishment sometimes fails to deter leakers. It argues that the expected penalty for leaking is quite low; very few leakers ever face criminal charges and those who are convicted receive relatively modest sentences. The essay therefore proposes that authorities seeking to prevent catastrophic leaks should make greater use of technological controls. Examples include access controls that restrict which users may view what information for which purposes (including biometric identity verification), immutable audit logs that record users' system activity, and automated processes to verify that users are entitled to access the information they seek and to monitor for suspicious patterns of behavior.


The Portuguese National Action Plan for Employment (NAP) is the main instrument for the labour market policy. It was adopted in 1998. The NAP transposes to the Portuguese reality the contents of such guidelines, with the adequate adjustments required by the national specificities, establishing objectives, quantified targets and action deadlines, as well as defining new programmes and measures. Therefore, the objectives of the labour market policy were focusing on the promotion of an adequate transition of the youngsters in active life, on the promotion of social and professional insertion and fight against long term unemployment and exclusion, on the improvement of basic and professional qualification of the working population in a perspective of lifelong training, namely as a way to prevent unemployment phenomena, and on the preventive management and follow-up of sectoral restructuring processes.


Deep learning systems frequently fail at out-of-context (OOC) prediction, the problem of making reliable predictions on uncommon or unusual inputs or subgroups of the training distribution. To this end, a number of benchmarks for measuring OOC performance have recently been introduced. In this work, we introduce a framework unifying the literature on OOC performance measurement, and demonstrate how rich auxiliary information can be leveraged to identify candidate sets of OOC examples in existing datasets. We present NOOCh: a suite of naturally-occurring"challenge sets", and show how varying notions of context can be used to probe specific OOC failure modes. Experimentally, we explore the tradeoffs between various learning approaches on these challenge sets and demonstrate how the choices made in designing OOC benchmarks can yield varying conclusions.


The rules governing the availability and content of court orders are well-known, but orders themselves are little studied. Focusing on final orders made in private litigation (eg, to pay a sum of money, to give up possession of land), I argue that orders are fundamentally commands. Unlike rules (which purport to provide moral guidance) and sanctions (which provide material incentives), orders simply tell their subjects to do or not to do an action. Orders are meant to be practically, not morally, authoritative. Thus understood, orders are appropriately used for two main purposes: (i) to motivate defendants to perform actions required by rule-based duties (replicative orders); (ii) to motivate defendants to perform actions that are not, and in principle should not be, required by rule-based duties (creative orders). The first category is limited to actions that, in the courts' view, defendants have moral duties to perform; the latter to all other actions. In the second half of the essay, I apply these ideas to damages orders, and make three main arguments. First, damages orders are creative orders. Secondly, many contemporary theories of damages must be rejected because they assume that a duty to pay damages arises on injury and, further, that it is a moral duty. Scholars seeking to explain damages have two basic options: they can adopt an instrumentalist theory or they can argue that damages orders are intended, in broad outline, to do what retributivist theorists think punishment does. In practice, the latter option entails arguing, broadly, that damages are meant either to restore a normative equilibrium or to communicate the wrongness of the defendant's act. Finally, I tentatively suggest that theories in the latter group are appropriately described as corrective justice theories.


To appreciate the opportunities and make wise choices about the use of technology, information professionals need to understand the architectures of modern information systems. In alternative system architectures, storage, communication, and processing substitute for and complement each other in different ways. This course introduces students, at several different levels of abstraction, to sets of functional components and alternative ways of combining those components to form systems. It also introduces a set of desirable system properties and a core set of techniques that are useful in building systems that have those properties.


Ireland has significant obligations under the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). In this paper, I analyse the degree to which Ireland complies with its freely accepted international human rights obligations as it pertains to persons seeking refugee status or subsidiary protection in Ireland. Ireland must provide significantly more information on the operation of the International Protection Act 2015, and the delays in determining whether a person is entitled to refugee or subsidiary protection. The system of direct provision needs to be examined more fully in the State's draft report, and this paper argues that the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of asylum seekers must be fully protected in Ireland. The rights of separated children, and aged-out separated children, must be given particular attention in Ireland's Draft CERD Report. Finally, the issue of asylum seeking women who wish to access abortion abroad must be effectively protected in order for Ireland to comply with its obligations under CERD.


We present a weak lensing mass map covering similar to 124 deg(2) of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Stripe 82 Survey (CS82). We study the statistics of rare peaks in the map, including peak abundance, the peak-peak correlation functions and the tangential-shear profiles around peaks. We find that the abundance of peaks detected in CS82 is consistent with predictions from a I > cold dark matter cosmological model, once noise effects are properly included. The correlation functions of peaks with different signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are well described by power laws, and there is a clear cross-correlation between the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III/Constant Mass galaxies and high SNR peaks. The tangential-shear profiles around peaks increase with peak SNR. We fit analytical models to the tangential-shear profiles, including a projected singular isothermal sphere (SIS) model and a projected Navarro, Frenk & White (NFW) model, plus a two-halo term. For the high SNR peaks, the SIS model is rejected at similar to 3 sigma. The NFW model plus a two-halo term gives more acceptable fits to the data. Some peaks match the positions of optically detected clusters, while others are relatively dark. Comparing dark and matched peaks, we find a difference in lensing signal of a factor of 2, suggesting that about half of the dark peaks are false detections.


Background: This research is an on-going PhD research with primary aim of developing a decision support system for key stakeholders in sustainable retrofitted building projects. Delivering sustainable retrofitted building project in the construction industry has been characterised with a lot challenges especially with the inability of the key stakeholders to make an informed decision. Lack of informed decision is prevalent because the industry has neglected the need to manage project knowledge in sustainable retrofit activities. Construction industry is known to be knowledge intensive hence the need for knowledge management to be adopted and harnessed.
Method: To achieve the aim, a mixed-method approach was adopted. This approach combines elements of qualitative and qualitative research approaches for the broad purposes of breadth and depth of understanding sustainable retrofit issues and capturing relevant knowledge. It also enabled the researchers to eliminate the respective weaknesses of both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The choice of case study as the research strategy was necessary in order to understand the dynamics and contemporary phenomenon present in the industry as regards to the research area. The case study involves the use of semi-structured interviews which targeted forty interviewees and documentary evidence (for qualitative approach) and, open-ended questionnaire (for quantitative approach) which targeted three hundred participants.
Result, discussions and conclusions: The result of these was demonstrated in the positive feedback from the pilot study that has been conducted in furtherance to data collection. The participants of the pilot study are the key stakeholders in the industry and the academia. The analysis of the data when collected will be through computer-assisted (NVivo 10) for qualitative and SPSS for quantitative.
Implication: The major limitation of the mixed-method approach in this research is the several months it will take to be achieved because multiple case organisations are involved, but it remains the best as established earlier in the literature.


Large 100 m long polymer solar cell modules were installed in a solar park using fast installation (>100 m min−1) and operated for 5 months ensuring a meaningful energy return factor (ERF > 1) followed by fast de-installation (>200 m min−1) and end-of-life management. Focus was on recovery of silver that is an essential component of the two electrodes. We employed life cycle analysis as a tool to evaluate the most efficient silver extraction method as well as the impact on the overall life cycle of the solar cells. Silver from the electrodes could be recovered as silver chloride in 95% yield, which diminishes the overall energy payback time by 13%. The efficient recovery of silver justifies the use of silver electrodes in OPV even in a scenario where it is scaled to production volumes of 1 GWp per day.


Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with index modulation (OFDM-IM) has been recently proposed to increase the spectral efficiency and improve the error performance of multicarrier communication systems. However, all the OFDM-IM systems assume that the perfect channel state information is available at the receiver. Nevertheless, channel estimation is a challenging problem in practical wireless communication systems for coherent detection at the receiver. In this paper, a novel method based on the pilot symbol-aided channel estimation technique is proposed and evaluated for OFDM-IM systems. Pilot symbols, which are placed equidistantly, allow the regeneration of the response of the channel so that pilot symbol spacing can fulfill the sampling theorem criterion. Our results shows that the low-pass interpolation and SPLINE techniques perform the best among all the channel estimation algorithms in terms of bit error rate and mean square error performance.


Atmospheric rivers (ARs), narrow intense moisture transport, account for much of the poleward moisture transport in midlatitudes. While studies have characterized AR features and the associated hydrological impacts in a warming climate in observations and comprehensive climate models, the fundamental dynamics for changes in AR statistics (e.g., frequency, length, width) are not well understood. Here we investigate AR response to global warming with a combination of idealized and comprehensive climate models. To that end, we developed an idealized atmospheric GCM with Earth-like global circulation and hydrological cycle, in which water vapor and clouds are modeled as passive tracers with simple cloud microphysics and precipitation processes. Despite the simplicity of model physics, it reasonably reproduces observed dynamical structures for individual ARs, statistical characteristics of ARs, and spatial distributions of AR climatology. Under climate warming, the idealized model produces robust AR changes similar to CESM large ensemble simulations under RCP8.5, including AR size expansion, intensified landfall moisture transport, and an increased AR frequency, corroborating previously reported AR changes under global warming by climate models. In addition, the latitude of AR frequency maximum shifts poleward with climate warming. Further analysis suggests the thermodynamic effect (i.e., an increase in water vapor) dominates the AR statistics and frequency changes while both the dynamic and thermodynamic effects contribute to the AR poleward shift. These results demonstrate that AR changes in a warming climate can be understood as passive water vapor and cloud tracers regulated by large-scale atmospheric circulation, whereas convection and latent heat feedback are of secondary importance.


The sensitivity of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) measurements in Fennoscandia to nearby viscosity variations in the upper mantle is investigated using a 3D finite element model of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). Based on the lateral viscosity structure inferred from seismic tomography and the location of the ice margin at the last glacial maximum (LGM), the GIA earth model is subdivided into four layers, where each of them contains an amalgamation of about 20 blocks of different shapes in the central area. The sensitivity kernels of the three velocity components at 10 selected GNSS stations are then computed for all the blocks. We find that GNSS stations within the formerly glaciated area are most sensitive to mantle viscosities below and in its near proximity, i.e., within about 250 km in general. However, this can be as large as 1000 km if the stations lie near the center of uplift. The sensitivity of all stations to regions outside the ice margin during the LGM is generally negligible. In addition, it is shown that prominent structures in the second (250–450 km depth) and third layers (450–550 km depth) of the upper mantle may be readily detected by GNSS measurements, while the viscosity in the first mantle layer below the lithosphere (70–250 km depth) along the Norwegian coast, which is related to lateral lithospheric thickness variation there, can also be detected but with limited sensitivity. For future investigations on the lateral viscosity structure, preference should be on GNSS stations within the LGM ice margin. But these stations can be grouped into clusters to improve the inference of viscosity in a specific area. However, the GNSS measurements used in such inversion should be weighted according to their sensitivity. Such weighting should also be applied when they are used in combination with other GIA data (e.g., relative sea-level and gravity data) for the inference of mantle viscosity.


I know we're not supposed to say such things, but I have lost faith in national politics. Yes, I'll vote in the coming elections and do my part to get the less sold-out, less anticommunitarian candidate in office. But I no longer look to the top tier of centralized government to solve our problems or help us grope toward conclusions together. For me, big government has become as abstract as the corporations that made it possible. The more I study the emergence of corporate capitalism, the more I see central government as the other side of the same coin: a booming peer-to-peer society was intentionally dismantled during the Renaissance in order to reassert the authority of the aristocracy. This was achieved by giving "chartered monopolies" the exclusive authority to do business in their industries (cronyism) and by giving central banks the exclusive authority to issue currency. All work, trade, lending, and borrowing now had to go through the central authorities. This abstracted what we think of as commerce. We don't buy from our neighbors anymore. We buy from the firms our neighbors may work for. We don't create value; we serve as employees. We have no relationships with our producers. We engage instead with the brands concocted to shield us from the labor embedded in what we buy. We live in a society where laborers are disconnected from their competencies; consumers are disconnected from producers; and consumers are alienated from one another. We are taught to look up, rather than toward one another, for solutions. Our best presidents, true believers in the corporate-government partnership, try to kick-start our economy by giving banks money in the hope that they will lend money to corporations, which will in turn open factories in depressed regions so that people can get jobs. This only creates more dependence on institutions whose true purpose is to extract value. What a national leader might do instead, of course, is simply encourage the people on the local level to develop their own economies, beginning with "favor banks" (online networks through which people can "bank" services they do for one member of a community in order to receive services from another), local currencies, and community agriculture. Just like what is going on in Greece, where people's limited access to the euro and the greater economy has forced them to look to one another as resources for goods and services. The focus on national politics gives people the false impression that a new national leader is going to somehow get us the things we need, when the tools and rules he has at his disposal are intrinsically biased against that ever happening. National politics — from corporate-sponsored candidacies and bank bailouts to spectator democracy and the branding of issues — doesn't simply occur on an abstract scale that has nothing to do with us; this activity itself reinforces the conditions and beliefs that perpetuate its dominance. So I have taken my eyes off the prize, and my focus off the national political stage. I am looking instead at very local politics, and the trickle-up effect of people engaging on the ground with the issues that matter to them on a daily basis. I want a state legislator who will help my Community Supported Agriculture group get its land approved for something other than corn, or who will change the regulations on biodiesel alternatives to oil. But most of all, I want to help develop conversations about what we can actually do for one another, instead of who is supposed to represent us in the abstracted, stalled, and dehumanizing landscape of national politics. ■ america be yond the 2012 election


The growing popularity of mobile devices, together with the constant technological improvement of mobile websites and applications informed about the quality of the user interface design. However, the particularities of mobile devices require special attention in terms of their usability aspects, such as culture. Therefore, this study evaluated the use of culturally appropriate design guidelines for a mobile learning web site. The research methodology used comprised a survey from heuristic evaluation questionnaires with undergraduate students. This research captured the students' experiences in using the MLearn website of Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, Malaysia.  From the study, the lowest ranking is realistic error management at 3.5, and the highest is suitable content for local culture at 4.6.  This study affirmed that general usability and cultural principles in design are important for a usable mobile learning website system in a local university context.


The Metropolitan Transit Authority regulates busking—playing music or performing for tips in a public place—differently depending on the subway station. Some stations are reserved for members of a program called Music Under New York (MUNY), while at the others, anyone willing to pay the standard fare to enter the station is allowed to busk. As it happens, the distribution of MUNY and nonMUNY stations within the subway system follows an economic pattern. MUNY covers the stations where we should expect busking to impose the highest externality costs. This economic pattern of coverage provides the substantive basis for this Note: Because MUNY's distribution is consistent with Harold Demsetz's foundational theory about the economic development of private property rights, MUNY provides a window into a question left open by Demsetz and contested in subsequent literature—the question of how private property develops. This Note analyzes MUNY to make two contributions to the growing body of literature describing how property rights develop. First, observing the role that changing First Amendment doctrine played in MUNY's formation, this Note argues that exogenous legal norms act as constraints on the mechanisms through which new property rights develop. Second, it argues that Demsetz's theory should take account of the inertia built into property systems and the external shocks that help overcome this stasis.


This authoritative edition was first published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Pope's poetry and prose - the major poems in their entirety, together with translations, criticism, letters and other prose - to give the essence of his work and thinking. Pope has often been termed the first truly professional poet in English, whose dealings with the book trade helped to produce the literary market-place of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this representative selection of Pope's most important work, the texts are presented in chronological sequence so that the Moral Essays and Imitations of Horace are restored to their original position in his career. The Dunciad, The Rape of the Lock, and Peri Bathous are presented in full, together with a characteristic sample of Pope's prose, including satires, pamphlets, and periodical writing. The influential preface to his edition of Shakespeare is here, as well as passages from his conversations with Joseph Spence and examples of his wide-ranging correspondence. This fine edition features a comprehensive biographical index, as well as an introduction and invaluable notes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.


Tachyon is a distributed file system enabling reliable data sharing at memory speed across cluster computing frameworks. While caching today improves read workloads, writes are either network or disk bound, as replication is used for fault-tolerance. Tachyon eliminates this bottleneck by pushing lineage, a well-known technique, into the storage layer. The key challenge in making a long-running lineage-based storage system is timely data recovery in case of failures. Tachyon addresses this issue by introducing a checkpointing algorithm that guarantees bounded recovery cost and resource allocation strategies for recomputation under commonly used resource schedulers. Our evaluation shows that Tachyon outperforms in-memory HDFS by 110x for writes. It also improves the end-to-end latency of a realistic workflow by 4x. Tachyon is open source and is deployed at multiple companies.


We propose a new learning method which exploits temporal consistency to successfully learn a complex appearance model from a sparsely labeled training video. Our approach consists in iteratively improving an appearance-based model built with a Boosting procedure, and the reconstruction of trajectories corresponding to the motion of multiple targets. We demonstrate the efficiency of our procedure on pedestrian detection in videos and cell detection in microscopy image sequences. In both cases, our method is demonstrated to reduce the labeling requirement by one to two orders of magnitude. We show that in some instances, our method trained with sparse labels on a video sequence is able to outperform a standard learning procedure trained with the fully labeled sequence.


The tribological behavior of moving components and tooling in the automotive industry is a critical issue for improving tool life and increasing efficiency. This work discusses the effects of Zn and ZnO nanoparticle additives homogeneously dispersed within a metal-forming synthetic fluid at various filler fractions: 0.01, 0.05 and 0.10wt.%. Nanolubricants were evaluated under scuffing conditions at extreme pressures (EP) conditions using a four-ball tribotester in order to obtain the load-carrying capacity (poz) behavior, and overall tribological characteristics. This method has shown, with great precision, the influence of the nanofillers on the EP behavior of conventional lubricants. Worn surfaces were characterized through Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) to determine the tribological mechanisms of nanoparticles. An Alicona 3D surface measuring system was used for measuring the surface roughness of the wear scars. Both nanoparticles exhibited better friction-reducing and anti-wear properties compared to the base synthetic fluid. For Zn-based nanolubricants, an enhancement of ~180% in poz was obtained with 0.10wt.%, showing the effect of the spherical nanostructures that were tribosintered onto the surface due to the EPs of the test. Furthermore, the highest enhancement in poz (up to 250%) was achieved with incorporation of 0.10wt.% of ZnO demonstrating the potential of nanolubricants for improving the efficiency of mechanical components.


The new institutional literature widely acknowledges the benefits of growth‐enhancing institutions but rarely discusses the path of institutional reform. While good institutions stabilize the structure of exchange and decrease uncertainty in market transactions, institutional reform may involve institutional volatility. If institutional volatility increases uncertainty, it can mitigate the benefits of reform. Using a sample of 89 countries from 2000‐2015, this paper empirically examines the effects of institutional volatility on economic growth. We find that institutional volatility decreases economic growth, particularly during liberalization for countries with low quality institutions and low income. In fact, a one standard deviation increase in volatility decreases growth by about 0.50 percentage points. This finding is robust to multiple estimation techniques and omitted variable bias. Evidence is provided suggesting that this effect is partially mediated through volatility's impact on private investment. These results support prior works that policy makers should pursue economic freedom, but our work indicates they should do so along a stable reform path to maximize economic growth.


We present the current status of the research activities of the Ghent group on neutrino-nucleus interactions. These consist in the modeling of some of the relevant neutrino-nucleus reaction channels at intermediate energies: low-energy nuclear excitations, quasielastic scattering, two-nucleon knockout processes and single-pion production.
The low-energy nuclear excitations and the quasielastic peak are described using a Hartree-Fock-CRPA (continuum random phase approximation) model that takes into account nuclear long-range correlations as well as the distortion of the outgoing nucleon wave function. We include two-body current mechanisms through short-range correlations and meson-exchange currents. Their influence on one- and two-nucleon knockout responses is computed. Bound and outgoing nucleons are treated within the same mean-field framework. Finally, for modeling of the neutrino-induced single-pion production, we use a low-energy model that contains resonances and the background contributions required by chiral symmetry. This low-energy model is combined with a Regge approach into a Hybrid model, which allows us to make predictions beyond the resonance region.


Location-aware mobile media allow users to see their locations on a map on their mobile phone screens. These applications either disclose the physical positions of known friends, or represent the locations of groups of unknown people. We call these interfaces eponymous and anonymous, respectively. This article presents our classification of eponymous and anonymous location-aware interfaces by investigating how these applications may require us to rethink our understanding of urban sociability, particularly how we coordinate and communicate in public spaces. We argue that common assumptions made about location-aware mobile media, namely their ability to increase one's spatial awareness and to encourage one to meet more people in public spaces, might be fallacious due to pre-existing practices of sociability in the city. We explore these issues in the light of three bodies of theory: Goffman's presentation of self in everyday life, Simmel's ideas on sociability, and Lehtonen and Mäenpää's concept of street sociability.


The use of mussels as indicators of pollution in fresh- and seawater was reviewed and the ability of the freshwater mussel 'Anodonta anatina' to absorb Cadmium-115m and zinc-65 from its environment was studied. The uptake was studied when the metals were available in solution only and in the algal food supply. A higher accumulation occurred in the tissues when the metals were available in the food and they were concentrated up to 2x10[sup]3 times for zinc-65 and 1x10[sup]3 times for cadmium-115m above the levels found in the water. Those tissues with large surface areas in contact with the water (i.e. the gills and the mantle) and those involved with processing food (i.e. the digestive gland and kidney) were found to take up the tracers most rapidly. The muscular tissues took up the least amount of tracers. The uptake into the tissues from each source was compared and the metabolic consequences discussed.

Depuration of the metals from the tissues was studied when the mussels were placed in uncontaminated water. Although the total body burdens of the tracers declined, a loss was not recorded for all the tissues. For some tissues, notably the digestive gland and the adductor muscles with cadmium-155m and the gonad and kidney with zinc-65, a continued uptake was recorded. It was concluded that permanent binding sites for the metals might exist in some tissues.

The fate of cadmium in the tissues was studied. Cadmium was found to be located in the cytosol and associated with low molecular weight proteins. These proteins were found to have low aromatic amino acid and high cysteine content as indicated by their absorption characteristics at 280 and 250 nm respectively. These properties together with the demonstrated heat stability indicated that the cadmium-binding proteins in 'Andonta' are similar to metallothioneins indentified in other species.


Piety and Politics: The Dynamics of Royal Authority in Homeric Greece, Biblical Israel, and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia, by Dale Launderville. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Pp. xvii + 407. $75.00 (hardcover). ISBN 0802839940. Launderville's thesis is that the religious warrants for royal authority in early Greece and the ancient Near East, Israel included, were fundamentally similar. Kings were believed to rule at the behest of the gods and were regarded as accountable to the gods for sustaining justice, peace, and prosperity within their kingdoms. Launderville demonstrates this "traditional pattern" for legitimating royalty by focusing on the Greek Archaic age (articulated in the Iliad and the Odyssey), the united monarchy of Israel (expressed chiefly in Samuel, Kings, and the Psalms), and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia (as voiced in the Code of Hammurabi and royal inscriptions). He recognizes that beyond a shared pattern of religious validation for monarchy, credited variously to Zeus, Yahweh, or Enlil, each of the three political cultures had its own distinctive version of the traditional pattern. Launderville characterizes the religious legitimation of monarchy as a "traditional pattern" that is articulated in metaphor, symbol, and narrative rather than in logical discourse. Nonetheless, the rhetoric for legitimating kingship is a rudimentary form of political theory, even as it assumes the shape of "political theology." For instance, a controlling metaphor that Launderville finds in all three political cultures is that of the king as "shepherd" of his people, with its associations of feeding, guiding, and protecting those in his charge. Since all three of these ancient states were based far more on agriculture than on herding, one wonders about the preference for the sheep metaphor over an agricultural metaphor such as "gardener" or "vintner." Actually, in the Hebrew Bible Yahweh is pictured metaphorically as a vineyard planter and caretaker, but it is unclear if such a figure of speech is applied to the relation of king and people. Since Launderville does not catalogue the full range and incidence of political metaphors in the texts he examines, we are obliged to take his word that the shepherd metaphor stands at the top of the list. Launderville undertakes political exegeses of the narratives in the Iliad and the Odyssey, the histories of Saul and David, the Gilgamesh Epic, and the autobiographical assertions of Hammurabi in the prologue and epilogue to his "code" of laws. Assuming that Launderville's critical understanding of the Greek and Mesopotamian texts is as sound as his perspective on the biblical narratives, he makes good on his claim that we can see something of how these ancients thought about politics by attending closely to their narratives as well as to their more symbolic texts such as the biblical Psalms and the Mesopotamian royal inscriptions. Much as I enjoyed this guided journey through the royal rhetoric of three ancient political cultures, I had difficulties with the book on a number of points. Launderville defends his choice of the three cultures for his cross-cultural study not only because they have ample literary evidence, but also because each displays a circumscribed form of monarchy that is not assertively imperialistic. This may be the case with the Israelite example, but the Greek example appears to be a relatively weak instance of monarchy, and the Old Babylonian example typified by Hammurabi was, according to most historians of the period, a serious attempt at imperial control of Sumeria and the upper TigrisEuphrates region, following in the path of Sargon of the Akkadian Empire. To be more specific, if the Greek kings of the Archaic period could not raise taxes and did not have full authority to coerce their subjects, to what extent are they monarchs comparable to David and Hammurabi? And if Hammurabi was able to undertake imperial campaigns and projects, even though they fell short of the developed imperial administration of the Neo-Assyrians and Persians, should he be compared to Archaic Greek kings or even to David, whose wars on neighboring states were either defensive or aimed at booty and tribute rather than the establishment of a full-fledged empire? …


We have investigated the formation and early growth of atmospheric secondary aerosol particles building on atmospheric measurements. The measurements were part of the QUEST 2 campaign which took place in spring 2003 in Hyytiala (Finland). During the campaign numerous aerosol particle formation events occurred of which 15 were accompanied by gaseous sulphuric acid measurements. Our detailed analysis of these 15 events is focussed on nucleation and early growth (to a diameter of 3 nm) of fresh particles. It revealed that new particle formation seems to be a function of the gaseous sulphuric acid concentration to the power from one to two when the time delay between the sulphuric acid and particle number concentration is taken into account. From the time delay the growth rates of freshly nucleated particles from 1 nm to 3 nm were determined. The mean growth rate was 1.2 nm/h and it was clearly correlated with the gaseous sulphuric acid concentration. We tested two nucleation mechanisms – recently proposed cluster activation and kinetic type nucleation – as possible candidates to explain the observed dependences, and determined experimental nucleation coefficients. We found that some events are dominated by the activation mechanism and some by the kinetic mechanism. Inferred coefficients for the two nucleation mechanisms are the same order of magnitude as chemical reaction coefficients in the gas phase and they correlate with the product of gaseous sulphuric acid and ammonia concentrations. This indicates that besides gaseous sulphuric acid also ammonia has a role in nucleation.