This study investigates an approach of knowledge discovery and data mining in insufficient databases. An application of Computational Taxonomy analysis demonstrates that the approach is effective in such a data mining process. The approach is characterized by the use of both the second type of domain knowledge and visualization. This type of knowledge is newly defined in this study and deduced from supposition about background situations of the domain. The supposition is triggered by strong intuition about the extracted features in a recurrent process of data mining. This type of domain knowledge is useful not only for discovering interesting knowledge but also for guiding the subsequent search for more explicit and interesting knowledge. The visualization is very useful for triggering the supposition.


Two tetraspanins reduce β-catenin–dependent signaling by promoting the extracellular release of this signaling protein in exosomes. Tetraspanins are transmembrane proteins that show decreased abundance in various tumors. In contrast, increased abundance of β-catenin is associated with colon cancer. Basal phosphorylation by glycogen synthase 3β (GSK-3β) targets β-catenin for proteosomal degradation; signals that prevent GSK-3β phosphorylation enable the nuclear translocation of stabilized β-catenin and initiation of gene transcription. Previous microarray analysis suggested that the tetraspanin CD9 may inhibit Wnt signaling, leading Chairoungdua et al. to investigate a possible link. In cells expressing β-catenin, cotransfection of the tetraspanins CD9 or CD82, but not CD63, decreased the cytoplasmic and nuclear abundance of β-catenin and the activity of a β-catenin transcriptional reporter. The decrease in β-catenin abundance did not occur through degradation by proteasomal or lysosomal pathways and did not require GSK-3β. Instead, the localization of β-catenin changed from nuclear (when a control plasmid or CD63 was cotransfected) to punctate and membrane-associated (when CD9 or CD82 was cotransfected). Electron microscopy revealed that β-catenin was released in exosomes. Besides coexpression of CD9 and CD82, exosomal release of β-catenin required E-cadherin, and CD82 coimmunoprecipitated with β-catenin and E-cadherin in transfected cells. Bone marrow–derived dendritic cells from Cd9–/– knockout mice released fewer exosomes than those from wild-type mice, suggesting a functional role for CD9 in exosome formation. Thus, CD9 and CD82 antagonize β-catenin–dependent signaling by promoting the extracellular release of β-catenin in exosomes. A. Chairoungdua, D. L. Smith, P. Pochard, M. Hull, M. J. Caplan, Exosome release of β-catenin: A novel mechanism that antagonizes Wnt signaling. J. Cell Biol. 190, 1079–1091 (2010). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Abstract A common room-heating technique involves the use of a wall-mounted radiator without forced convection. The cold surrounding air passes adjacent to the warm surfaces of the radiator where it absorbs heat and gains momentum to rise along the wall surface and finally circulate in the entire room. Understanding the properties of heated airflows is important for several purposes. To understand the flow process it is important to identify where the transition from laminar to turbulent flow occurs and to quantify the turbulent fluctuations. With the objective to characterize the airflow in the vicinity of wall surfaces, the local climate over the radiator was visualized and measured using a two-dimensional particle image velocimetry technique. The PIV technique yields 2D vector fields of the flow. The resulting vector maps were properly validated and post-processed using in-house software to provide the average streamlines and other statistical information such as standard deviation, average velocity, and covariance of the entire vector field. The results show that, for a room with a typical heating power, the airflow over the radiator becomes agitated after an ordinate of N = 5 - 6.25 over the radiator upper level, in which N is the dimensionless length based on the thickness of the radiator. Practical problems encountered in near-wall PIV measurements include generating a homogeneous global seeding that makes it possible to study both plume and entraining region, as well as optical problems due to near-surface laser reflection that makes the measurement process more complicated.


Psychological evidence indicates that a person's well-being depends not only on his current consumption of goods, but on a reference level determined by his past consumption. According to Kahneman and Tversky's (1979) prospect theory, people care much more about losses relative to their reference points than about gains, are risk-averse over gains, and risk-loving over losses. We define these characteristics as loss aversion. We incorporate an extended form of loss aversion into a simple two-period savings model. Our main conclusion is that, when there is sufficient income uncertainty, a person resists lowering consumption in response to bad news about future income, and this resistance is greater than the resistance to increasing consumption in response to good news. We discuss some recent empirical research that confirms this predicted asymmetry in behavior, which seems inconsistent with other models of consumption.


We cannot "measure" the soundscape any more than we can "measure" the ocean, the city, or the wilderness. Being comprised of myriad complex elements, conditions and relationships between sound sources and sound perceivers, the soundscape—and any sufficient description of it—must account for several different, but significantly interrelated, dimensions: physical, spatial, temporal, perceptual, cultural, and historical. How, then, are we to meaningfully document the soundscape? If we are to begin to understand the soundscape's impact on us— and our impact upon it—we need new methods to capture and represent the multisensory extents of a soundscape without reverting to one-dimensional quantitative abstractions. This project proposes an interdisciplinary method to record a soundscape's multisensory attributes by combining aural and visual information in a structured way which links the directionality of view and sound arrival. This method integrates multi-directional Ambisonic audio recordings with high dynamic range (HDR) spherical panoramic photography in the form of interactive maps and virtual tours. Case studies using the cross-modal soundscape mapping method will be presented.


To clarify the relative role of hepatitis C virus (HCV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV) in hepatocarcinogenesis in hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg)‐negative hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in Taiwan, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to detect the HCV‐RNA and HBV‐DNA sequences in the serum and liver tissues from 31 HBsAg‐negative HCC patients. Twenty‐one were positive for antibody to HCV (group 1) and 10 were negative (group 2). Hepatitis C virus‐RNA was detected by PCR in the serum of 16 group 1 patients and in the liver tissue of 17; while HBV‐DNA was found in the liver tissue of only four, and no HBV‐DNA was found in the serum. Hepatitis C virus RNA was detected in the serum of one group 2 patient and in the liver tissue of another. In contrast, HBV viral DNA was found in the serum of four group 2 patients and in the liver tissues of five patients. This indicates that HCV plays an important role in hepatocarcinogenesis in HBsAg‐negative patients in Taiwan, especially in those with antibody to HCV. In those without antibody to HCV, HBV might still be associated with the development of HCC in a significant proportion of such patients. In order to study the role of the p53 mutation in hepatocarcinogenesis, we investigated the status of the p53 mutation in 61 HCC samples from Taiwan. The exon 5 to 8 of the p53 gene in the tumour tissue of 61 HCC were amplified and sequenced. A total of 20 cases (32.8%) were found to have mutations: 36.6% (15/41) from the HBsAg‐positive group and 25.0% (5/20) from the HBsAg‐negative group. The corresponding normal liver showed no mutation. The mutation is widely distributed throughout the exon 5 to 8. Only four cases (6.6%), all positive for HBsAg, had a specific hotspot mutation at codon 249 with G to T transversion. These results show that scattered point mutations in p53 are not uncommon in HCC samples from Taiwan and may be important in the development of this cancer. However, the aflatoxin‐related specific mutation seems much less related to the genesis of HCC in Taiwan. To study the role of telomerase activity in hepatocarcinogenesis, a total of 39 HCC tissues and the corresponding non‐tumour liver tissues were analysed. The results showed that telomerase activity was detected in all the 39 tumour tissues, while it could be detected in six of the 39 non‐tumour liver tissues. The high positive rate of telomerase activity in HCC samples suggests that telomerase activity is closely related to the development or progression of HCC. To determine whether exon 1 and exon 2 of the p16 gene are altered in HCC, thirty‐four tumours from 30 HCC patients were examined by DNA sequencing analysis of PCR‐amplified genomic DNA. Homozygous deletions of MTS1/p16/CDKN2 exon 1 were identified in 1/34 primary tumours (3%), no mutations or rearrangements were found in these specimens. These data suggest that alterations of MTS1/p16/CDKN2 gene are rarely found in HCC, and might play little role in the development of this cancer. To study the clonality of HCC, 18 patients with multiple HCC, most of them small in size, were analysed by DNA fingerprinting. In patients positive for hepatitis B surface antigen, the integration pattern of hepatitis B viral DNA in liver tissue was also analysed. The results by both methods showed that 8/9 hepatitis B surface antigen‐positive patients were different in clonality. In the remaining nine patients negative for hepatitis B surface antigen, four had different band patterns in their tumours by DNA fingerprinting. This study indicated that polyclonality of multiple HCC was rather frequent and it highlighted the importance of eliminating the underlying cause of liver injury to improve the survival of these patients. Microsatellite markers were used to study the genetic changes of HCC. Thirty cases of HCC, most of them small in size, were studied. A total of 242 microsatellite markers mapping to 1–22 and X chromosomes was used. The results showed that the range of loss of heterozygosity (LOH) was from 0 to 46.7%. The highest percentage of LOH was shown for loci on 16q (46.7%, 33.3%), 17p (36%), 13q (26.7%), 11q (26.7%). Of the 30 cases with HCC, 18 were found to have LOH at different chromosomes. Preliminary results show that HCC in Taiwan have frequent LOH in chromosomes 11, 13, 16, and 17. Furthermore, multiple HCC seems to arise from different foci in liver.


The Oxford Revision Guides series builds on the fact that pictures are easier to memorize than words. Each topic is summarized on a single page using annotated diagrams and concise notes with a full index for easy reference. Expert authors have taken the content of the AS and A Level specifications and presented them in a refreshingly clear and concise format. Simple illustrations are used to present information in a particularly clear and memorable way.


This study focuses on elaboration of scenario parameters to support strategies for an integrated renovation process of culturally valuable pre-boom housing stock from the People's Home(Folkhemmet) period i.e. 1945-1960 in Sweden. This stock, now in focus for renovations, combines
older craftsmanship with thorough planning on a neighborhood level. Their qualities refer to aesthetics, material use, living qualities and efficient use of space. Present renovation strategies often reduce the complexity of the problem to technological and energy saving measures in a short-term perspective. Integrated and differentiated strategies are needed in order to improve energy efficiency and environmental performance, whilst respecting and safeguarding potential loss of invaluable cultural, architectural and social values (immaterial values). This paper presents a model to identify and describe both material and immaterial parameters which need to be known,
valued and balanced in integrated sustainable renovation of the People's Home housing stock. The model covers ten areas: (a) general description, (b) architectural quality, (c) social quality, (d)cultural quality, (e) technical description, (f) technical performance, (g) functional performance, (h)environmental performance, (i) economic performance, and (j) renovation process quality. A special
attention is given to our exploration to define and describe immaterial values such as architectural, cultural and social qualities.


Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are powerful learners that have led to state-of-the-art results in various computer vision problems. SVMs suffer from various drawbacks in terms of selecting the right kernel, which depends on the image descriptors, as well as computational and memory efficiency. This paper introduces a novel kernel, which serves such issues well. The kernel is learned by exploiting a large amount of low-complex, randomized binary mappings of the input feature. This leads to an efficient SVM, while also alleviating the task of kernel selection. We demonstrate the capabilities of our kernel on 6 standard vision benchmarks, in which we combine several common image descriptors, namely histograms (Flowers17 and Daimler), attribute-like descriptors (UCI, OSR, and a-VOC08), and Sparse Quantization (ImageNet). Results show that our kernel learning adapts well to the different descriptors types, achieving the performance of the kernels specifically tuned for each image descriptor, and with similar evaluation cost as efficient SVM methods.


The rapid growth of Internet-of-things (IoT) software applications has driven both practitioners and researchers' attention to methodological approaches for secure IoT development. Security issues for IoT is special in the way that they include not only software, but also hardware and network concerns. With the aim at proposing a methodological approach for secure IoT application development, we investigated what are security challenges in the context of IoT development. We reviewed literature and investigated two industry cases. The preliminary finding results in a list of 17 security challenges with regards to technical, organizational and methodological perspectives. Cross-case comparison provides initial explanation about the less emphasis on methodological and organizational security concerns in our cases.


Nurse-led intervention research is a core component of the global initiative to improve quality of care. Though research in this area has already contributed much to the advancement of patient care, future strides depend on the dissemination of practical, how-to instruction on this important area of research. Design, Evaluation, and Translation of Nursing Interventions aids in this endeavour by presenting both general approaches and specific methods for developing nursing interventions. Logically organized to facilitate ease of use, the book is divided into four sections. The introduction provides a firm grounding in intervention science by situating it within the broader topics of evidence-based practice, client-centred care, and quality of care. Section Two describes each step of intervention design, including correct identification of the health issue or problem, clarification of the elements comprising an intervention, and application of theory. Section Three is centred on implementation, highlighting such topics as development of the intervention manual, training interventionists, and intervention fidelity. The book concludes with methods to evaluate interventions enacted and suggestions for their translation into practice.


The 2010 midterm elections are consequential not only in terms of the candidates who were elected to office, but also in terms of the government policies that they will enact. High on the list of important policies is the decennial practice of drawing new redistricting plans for legislative offices. A new census reveals population shifts that will result in a reallocation of congressional seats among the states through apportionment and—following U.S. Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s—a re-balancing of congressional and state legislative district populations within states that aims to give fast-growing areas more representation and slow-growing areas less. Of course, much more than an innocuous administrative adjustment occurs during the process of redistricting. The individuals who draw districts are keenly aware that district lines may affect the fortunes of incumbents, political parties, and minority voters' candidates of choice.


Objectives: To quantify life expectancy (LE), quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and total lifetime societal costs for a hypothetical cohort of Australians with multiple sclerosis (MS). Methods: A 4-state Markov model simulated progression from no/mild to moderate and severe disability and death for a cohort of 35-year-old women over a lifetime horizon. Death risks were calculated from Australian life tables, adjusted by disability severity. State-dependent relapse probabilities and associated disutilities were considered. Probabilities of MS progression and relapse were estimated from AusLong and TasMSL MS epidemiological databases. Annual societal (direct and indirect) costs (2017 Australian dollars) and health-state utilities for each state were derived from the Australian MS Longitudinal Study. Costs were discounted at 5% annually. Results: Mean (95% confidence interval (CI)) LE from age 35 years was 42.7 (41.6–43.8) years. This was 7.5 years less than the general Australian population. Undiscounted QALYs were 28.2 (26.3–30.0), a loss of 13.1 QALYs versus the Australian population. Discounted lifetime costs were $942,754 ($347,856–$2,820,219). Conclusion: We have developed a health economics model of the progression of MS, calculating the impact of MS on LE, QALYs and lifetime costs in Australia. It will form the basis for future cost-effectiveness analyses of interventions for MS.


Contemporary marriage involves complex notions of both connection and freedom. On the one hand, spouses are members of a shared community, while on the other they are discrete individuals with their own distinct interests. Alone Together explores the ways in which law seeks to accommodate tensions between commitment and freedom in marriage. Author Milton Regan suggests that only close attention to context can guide us in deciding what weight to assign to each dimension of spousal identity in a given setting. This interdisciplinary work has relevance to family law, family studies, feminist legal theory, and the debate between liberal and communitarian social theorists.


This research addresses the problem of allocating closely spaced targets to multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) in the presence of constant ocean currents. The main difficulty of this problem is that the non-holonomic vehicles are constrained to move along forward paths with bounded curvatures. The Dubins model is a simple but effective way to handle the kinematic characteristics of AUVs. It gives complete characterization of the optimal paths between two configurations for a vehicle with limited turning radius moving in a plane at constant speed. In the proposed algorithm, Dubins paths are modified to include ocean currents, resulting in paths defined by curves whose radius of curvature is not constant. To determine the time required to follow such paths, an approximate dynamic model of the AUV is queried due to the computational complexity of the full model. The lower order model is built from data obtained from sampling the full model. The full model is used in evaluating the final tour times of the sequences generated by the proposed algorithm to validate the results. The proposed algorithm solves the task allocation problem with market-based auctions that minimize the total travel time to complete the mission. The novelty of the research is the path cost calculation that combines a Dubins model, an AUV dynamic model, and a model of the ocean current. Simulations were conducted in Matlab to illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithm using various number of task points and AUVs. The task points were generated randomly and uniformly close together to highlight the necessity for considering the curvature constraints. For a sufficiently dense set of points, it becomes clear that the ordering of the Euclidean tours are not optimal in the case of the Dubins multiple travelling salesmen problem. This is due to the fact that there is little relationship between the Euclidean and Dubins metrics, especially when the Euclidean distances are small with respect to the turning radius. An algorithm for the Euclidean problem will tend to schedule very close points in a successive order, which can imply long maneuvers for the AUV. This is clearly demonstrated by the numerous loops that become problematic with dense sets of points. The algorithm proposed in this thesis does not rely on the Euclidean solution and therefore, even in the presence of ocean currents, can create paths that are feasible for curvature bound vehicles. Field tests were also conducted on an Iver2 AUV at the Avila Pier in California to validate the performance of the proposed algorithm in real world environments. Missions created based on the sequences generated by the proposed algorithm were conducted to observe the ability of an AUV to follow paths of bounded curvature in the presence of ocean currents. Results show that the proposed algorithm generated paths that were feasible for an AUV to track closely, even in the presence of ocean current.


This paper is a preliminary step to assess the feasibility of telework for any given organisation. We posit two qualitative frames of telework to define the additional, digital referential platforms that exist with regard to work today: abstraction and conceptualisation. To communicate research within this field we utilise a language taxonomy derived out of a review of the relevant literature. Furthermore, we propose a transformer model to serve as a means to i) interpret quantitative aspects of telework such
as metrics and KPIs and ii) inform stakeholder decisions with regard to appropriate telework
configurations for their respective company.


Crime has been previously explained by social characteristics of the residential population and, as stipulated by crime pattern theory, might also be linked to human movements of non-residential visitors. Yet a full empirical validation of the latter is lacking. The prime reason is that prior studies are limited to aggregated statistics of human visitors rather than mobility flows and, because of that, neglect the temporal dynamics of individual human movements. As a remedy, we provide the first work which studies the ability of granular human mobility in describing and predicting crime concentrations at an hourly scale. For this purpose, we propose the use of data from location technology platforms. This type of data allows us to trace individual transitions and, therefore, we succeed in distinguishing different mobility flows that (i) are incoming or outgoing from a neighborhood, (ii) remain within it, or (iii) refer to transitions where people only pass through the neighborhood. Our evaluation infers mobility flows by leveraging an anonymized dataset from Foursquare that includes almost 14.8 million consecutive check-ins in three major U.S. cities. According to our empirical results, mobility flows are significantly and positively linked to crime. These findings advance our theoretical understanding, as they provide confirmatory evidence for crime pattern theory. Furthermore, our novel use of digital location services data proves to be an effective tool for crime forecasting. It also offers unprecedented granularity when studying the connection between human mobility and crime.


The female hormone estrogen may hold important clues for scientists working on new therapies for colon cancer, a study by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers suggests. Using data from a long-running study of women's health, the investigators found that postmenopausal women with colon cancer lived longer and had less likelihood of dying of the disease if they had been taking estrogen supplements within five years of their diagnosis. In this new study, published in the Dec. 20, 2006 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, investigators examined the effect of estrogen use on the survival of older women already diagnosed with the disease. While estrogen use has dropped sharply among postmenopausal women in recent years, due to concerns about its role in heart disease and breast cancer, numerous studies have shown it significantly lowers the chances of developing colorectal cancer. The researchers stressthat these findings do not mean estrogen should be viewed as a treatment or preventive therapy for colon cancer, considering the other health risks associated with its use. However, the research mayguide the development of other, safer colon cancer drugs. "This study provides a rationale to further study the basic mechanism by which estrogen influences the development and progression of colon cancer," states lead author Jennifer Chan, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber. "By understanding how estrogen offers potentially beneficial effects in some types of cells yet deleterious effects in others, it may be possible to design therapies that are effective against colon cancer without posing a significant risk of other problems." Estrogen supplements have been taken by millions of older women as a way of staving off some of the problems associated with menopause, such as hot flashes and bone loss, but the number has declined considerably since 2002. That year, investigators reported that, for many women, the supplements carried more health risks than benefits. The research by Chan and her colleagues drew on data from 834 postmenopausal women enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study - which has tracked the health of more than 100,000 female nurses since 1976 - who had been diagnosed with colon cancer between 1976 and 2000. The researchers found that, compared to women who had never used estrogen, those using the hormone at the time of diagnosis had a 36 percent lower chance of dying of colon cancer and a 26 percent lower chance of dying of any cause. The benefit was most pronounced in women who used estrogen for less than five years. Using it for longer, however, did not seem to provide a similar advantage. The authors do not know why using estrogen for more than five years did not improve women's chances of survival. They theorize that colon tumors that developed in women who had used estrogen for many years may have been less susceptible to estrogen's growth-slowing effects.The precise way by which estrogen foils the growth of colon cancer cells is unclear, as well. The study authors offer three possibilities: the hormone directly suppresses the cells' growth; itdecreases the production of bile acids which are known to spur cancer; or it blocks certain genetic changes within colon cells that lead to cancer. "Further efforts are needed to bring these mechanisms to light," comments Chan, who is also an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Our study provides an important rationale forundertaking those studies." The study's senior author is Charles Fuchs, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber. Co-authors are Jeffrey Meyerhardt, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber, Andrew Chan, MD, MPH, of Massachusetts General Hospital, Edward Giovannucci, MD, ScD, and Graham Colditz, MD, Dr.PH, of the Channing Laboratory atBrigham and Women's Hospital, home of the Nurses' Health Study. Funding for the study was provided by a grant from the National Institutes of Health. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (www.dana-farber.org) is a principal teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School and is among the leading cancer research and care centers in the United States. It isa founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC), designated a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute. For more information, contact: Bill Schaller; Robert Levy; 617.632.4090


African forest-based beekeeping has a long tradition, has been practiced in Cameroon for centuries, and contributes on average to 52% of household incomes of beekeepers in the Adamaoua savannah and Northwest montane forests. Livelihoods, regulatory and policy framework, business environment, and forest management are intricately linked in the chain from beekeeper to consumer. However, it has not been a route out of poverty; despite support, the majority of beekeepers subsist on $2 a day. An energetic, innovative, and entrepreneurial group named Guiding Hope is leading a new wave of indigenous social entrepreneurs revitalizing the apiculture sector with the aim of improving this situation. The story of how they developed, the challenges faced, and how they have translated multidisciplinary scientific findings into action is recounted. The combination of participatory action research, a value chain approach, monitoring, and learning from traditional knowledge has lead to positive societal and ecological benefits that extend from Cameroon to an international level.


Abstract: This paper presents a novel passive approach for islanding detection of wind turbines. Islanding is such a condition which the DG get disconnected from the utility because of disturbances in the network. Islanding can create many problems in power systems and existing standards thus do not permit the DGs to be utilized in island mode. Some of the major problems that can happen in island mode are: disruption in the protection network, over load conditions of DG, out of phase connection of DG to the network, decrement of the customer's power quality, safety hazards for personnel, DG over loads and etc. The proposed method in this paper is based on the voltage signal that is measured in point of common coupling (PCC) and processing this voltage with mathematical morphology (MM). In comparison with other methods, this method is so fast. The simulations of this paper is based on Matlab/Simulink and the feasibility of the proposed technique is evaluated with that simulations. The results of the evaluation and comparison with other methods approves the feasible performance and higher speed of the proposed method.


In a knowledge-based economy, universities are vital institutions. This volume explores the roles that universities can play in peripheral regions, contributing to processes of regional economic development and innovative growth. Including a series of case studies drawn from Portugal, Norway, Finland, the Czech Republic, Estonia and the Dutch-German border region, this will be the first book to offer a comprehensive comparative overview of universities in European economically peripheral regions. These studies seek to explore the tensions that arise in peripheral regions where there may not be obvious matches between university activities and regional strengths. Aimed at academics, policy-makers and practitioners working on regional innovation strategies, this volume brings a much-needed sense of realism and ambition for all those concerned with building successful regional societies at the periphery of the knowledge economy.


News interviews are contexts in which political responsibilities are articulated and negotiated. Although the accountability interview is recognized as a commonsense practice in journalism, and the research on political interviews is substantial, it partly remains to explore how responsibilities are negotiated in different forms of questioning in journalism. This study investigates three generic forms of questioning: accountability questioning, the clarifying of promises, and the principal assessments. Key features of the different forms are specified. The empirical study investigates how the questionings are performed in news on industrial crises in Sweden, in the different political regimes in the 1970s and the 2000s. The data consist of 27 news interviews with the formally responsible Ministers. The method is based on Conversation Analysis and includes detailed analyses of questions and answers. The study shows (1) how the forms of questioning differ when it comes to the action agenda and in how responsibilities are invoked and negotiated; (2) how the questionings tend to reproduce particular expectations of Governmental interventions; (3) how increased assertiveness and adversarialness in interviewing coincide with reduced expectations of political responsibilities.


Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are ubiquitous in today's computer vision land-scape, despite involving considerable computational costs. The mainstream approaches for runtime acceleration consist in pruning connections (unstructured pruning) or, better, filters (structured pruning), both often requiring data to re-train the model. In this paper, we present RED, a data-free structured, unified approach to tackle structured pruning. First, we propose a novel adaptive hashing of the scalar DNN weight distribution densities to increase the number of identical neurons represented by their weight vectors. Second, we prune the network by merging redundant neurons based on their relative similarities, as defined by their distance. Third, we propose a novel uneven depthwise separation technique to further prune convolutional layers. We demonstrate through a large variety of benchmarks that RED largely outperforms other data-free pruning methods, often reaching performance similar to unconstrained, data-driven methods.


Using a panel of 48 provinces for four years we empirically analyze a series of temporary policies aimed at curbing fuel consumption implemented in Spain between March and June 2011. The first policy was a reduction in the speed limit in highways. The second policy was an increase in the biofuel content of fuels used in the transport sector. The third measure was a reduction of 5% in commuting and regional train fares that resulted in two major metropolitan areas reducing their overall fare for public transit. The results indicate that the speed limit reduction in highways reduced gasoline consumption by between 2% and 3%, while an increase in the biofuel content of gasoline increased this consumption. This last result is consistent with experimental evidence that indicates that mileage per liter falls with an increase in the biofuel content in gasolines. As for the reduction in transit fares, we do not find a significant effect for this policy. However, in specifications including the urban transit fare for the major cities in each province the estimated cross-price elasticity of the demand for gasoline -used as a proxy for car use- with respect to the price of transit is within the range reported in the literature. This is important since one of the main efficiency justification for subsidizing public transit rests on the positive value of this parameter and most of the estimates reported in the literature are quite dated.


Do students perform better on statewide assessments in years in which they have more school days to prepare? We explore this question using data on math and reading assessments taken by students in the third, fifth, and eighth grades since 1994 in Maryland. Our identification strategy is rooted in the fact that tests are administered on the same day(s) statewide in late winter or early spring, so any unscheduled closings due to snow reduce instruction time and are not made up until after the exams are over. We estimate that in academic years with an average number of unscheduled closures (five), the number of third graders performing satisfactorily on state reading and math assessments within a school is nearly 3 percent lower than in years with no school closings. The impacts of closure are smaller for students in fifth and eighth grades. Combining our estimates with actual patterns of unscheduled closings in the last three years, we find that more than half of schools failing to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in third-grade math or reading, required under No Child Left Behind, would have met AYP if schools had been open on all scheduled days.


Cranial allodynia associated with spontaneous migraine is reported as either responsive to triptan treatment or to be predictive of lack of triptan efficacy. These conflicting results suggest that a single mechanism mediating the underlying neurophysiology of migraine symptoms is unlikely. The lack of a translational approach to study cranial allodynia reported in migraine patients is a limitation in dissecting potential mechanisms. Our objective was to study triptan-responsive cranial allodynia in migraine patients, and to develop an approach to studying its neural basis in the laboratory. Using nitroglycerine to trigger migraine attacks, we investigated whether cranial allodynia could be triggered experimentally, observing its response to treatment. Preclinically, we examined the cephalic response properties of central trigeminocervical neurons using extracellular recording techniques, determining changes to ongoing firing and somatosensory cranial-evoked sensitivity, in response to nitroglycerine followed by triptan treatment. Cranial allodynia was triggered alongside migraine-like headache in nearly half of subjects. Those who reported cranial allodynia accompanying their spontaneous migraine attacks were significantly more likely to have symptoms triggered than those that did not. Patients responded to treatment with aspirin or sumatriptan. Preclinically, nitroglycerine caused an increase in ongoing firing and hypersensitivity to intracranial-dural and extracranial-cutaneous (noxious and innocuous) somatosensory stimulation, reflecting signatures of central sensitization potentially mediating throbbing headache and cranial allodynia. These responses were aborted by a triptan. These data suggest that nitroglycerine can be used as an effective and reliable method to trigger cranial allodynia in subjects during evoked migraine, and the symptom is responsive to abortive triptan treatments. Preclinically, nitroglycerine activates the underlying neural mechanism of cephalic migraine symptoms, central sensitization, also predicting the clinical outcome to triptans. This supports a biological rationale that several mechanisms can mediate the underlying neurophysiology of migraine symptoms, with nitrergic-induced changes reflecting one that is relevant to spontaneous migraine in many migraineurs, whose symptoms of cranial allodynia are responsive to triptan treatment. This approach translates directly to responses in animals and is therefore a relevant platform to study migraine pathophysiology, and for use in migraine drug discovery.


E-mail reference connects patrons with reference service providers who can find answers for them. How accurate are the responses to e-mail questions? How firm are libraries' guidelines for time of response, type of questions addressed, and category of user whose questions will be answered through e-mail reference? This article examines e-mail reference services provided by academic libraries in the Association of Research Libraries (111 sites). Sets of three pretested e-mail reference queries were sent to each of these libraries during February 2001. Twenty-one assessment questions were used to record characteristics of the e-mail reference service pages and characteristics of responses to the reference queries; comparisons were made between service policies as stated and as practiced. Assessment questions covered the topics of e-mail reference polities, services to non-affiliates, elements of reference interviews, features of reference service enabled by the e-mail medium, and accuracy of query answers. ********** Thank you for using the [name] University Library's Ask-a-Librarian service. Your question has been forwarded to the liaison librarian for Not Sure. This message appeared on the computer screen as a result of filling out an online form for an e-mail reference service and selecting "Not Sure" from a dropdown menu to indicate the subject of the submitted query. Providing "Not Sure" as a choice allowed for the amusing response above--perhaps suggesting an alternate job title for reference librarians. More important, the presence of this option was an acknowledgment that some patrons are unclear on how to categorize their information needs. One aim of reference service is to alleviate our patrons' uncertainty, and e-mail reference service can be a means for achieving that aim. E-mail reference service is now a common component of large academic libraries' services, and has been an established service for long enough that simply providing it no longer suffices. It is time to look at the quality of the service provided in this area. Quality can be affected by a library's choices in setting policies for email reference service, planning it, staffing it, and advertising for it. But none of these things is the actual service. To measure the quality of the output of e-mail reference, it is necessary to examine the e-mailed query responses. Patron satisfaction with e-mail reference service has been measured for individual libraries, but this does not allow for comparisons among libraries or give a picture of the overall quality of electronic reference service provided by these academic libraries as a group. (1) A means for making comparisons and broader statements about quality was needed. After a 1999 study of e-marl reference pages on Association of Research Libraries (ARL) academic library Web sites, the author conducted an unobtrusive study of e-mail reference practice as performed by these libraries in early 2001. (2) The objectives of the 2001 study were to examine common characteristics of responses to e-mail reference queries, and to collect data on these characteristics as expressed in responses received from the reference service providers. Expectations for the state of e-marl reference service were: * Libraries would give all Web patrons a clear statement of their policies concerning e-mail reference service, and then meet or exceed the goals for service mentioned in those policies. * Libraries would provide more service to their affiliated patrons than to non-affiliates. * Reference service providers would extend accepted good practices for reference interviews into the e-mail environment. * Libraries would take advantage of technology to provide features not applicable to face-to-face or telephone reference situations. * Reference service providers would respond to clearly worded queries with direct answers, or with URLs of Web pages containing direct answers, and would answer with high levels of accuracy. …


Formation of buried InGaAsP/InP quantum well waveguides by means of phosphorus ion implantation and thermal annealing during regrowth is demonstrated. Absorption spectra of implanted and unimplanted regions are used to estimate the induced index difference, which is of the order of 1% at 1.55 μm. Calculated mode intensities are in good agreement with the observed near field intensity patterns. With this etchless implant technique, we achieve a significant reduction in propagation loss for singlemode pin waveguides relative to etched semi-insulating planar buried heterostructure waveguides fabricated from the same quantum well structure. In addition to reduced scattering loss, buried quantum well waveguides produced by ion implantation are more manufacturable because fewer and less-critical processing steps are involved.


Space debris are objects in Earth's orbit consisting of fragments of spent rocket stages, non-functional satellites, and parts like fasteners, paint chips and other waste materials in the lower earth orbits (LEO) (200 – 2000 km/s) traveling at hypervelocity with maximum speeds of 16 km/s. These objects can cause considerable damage to spacecraft structure, the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station which are orbiting around the earth at altitudes of 300 to 500 km/s in the LEO. Damage occurs when the debris traveling at hypervelocity impact (HVI) the spacecraft structure. Hence there is necessity to not only develop spacecraft with good shielding, but also develop a means of spacecraft pressure wall repair. A NASA EPSCoR grant for designing a portable friction stir welder to repair the hypervelocity impact damage caused was the driving force for this thesis topic. A detailed understanding of the extent of damage to the spacecraft shielding system was necessary to understand repair requirements expected for the design of a space-bound Friction Stir Welder. A spacecraft shielding system can consist of a double bumper shielding system placed ahead of the pressure wall. The current goal of this study was to determine the damage area of the pressure wall, using the new gridless Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) meshing techniques and the regular Lagrangian meshing technique. The approach was to model and validate the damage area due to the HVI against existing test data, and to conduct a parametric study for various impactor shapes, velocities and impact scenarios. The software tools used for modeling were PATRAN for the Lagrangian models and LS-Prepost for SPH modeling. The simulation was analyzed in LSDYNA, a non-linear finite element dynamic analyzer. Simulations were initially conducted using a spherical projectile; later parametric studies were conducted with varied impactor shapes. The materials for the plate and impactor were alloys of Al (6061-T6, l100-O, 2024-T4). It was


Child root infinitives are considered to be underspecified structures with frequent null subjects. This paper deals with the study of the overt and non-overt subjects of the structures of root infinitives found in early speech production in Basque language, in order to determine whether there is a direct relationship between the different properties of the subjects and the presence of overt inflection in child speech. No underspecification has been observed during the root infinitive stage in this language where root infinitives are frequent also in the adult language. Finally, child Basque root infinitives have been interpreted as null auxiliary (auxiliary or modal) finite verbs and the target-deviant infinitivals have been explained as consequence of the less restrictive nature of the mechanisms that license root infinitives in the target language.


Aspect-orientation provides a new way of modularization by clearly separating crosscutting concerns from noncrosscutting ones. While aspect-orientation originally has emerged at the programming level, it now stretches also over other development phases. There are, for example, already several proposals for Aspect-Oriented Modeling (AOM), most of them pursuing distinguished goals, providing different concepts as well as notations, and showing various levels of maturity. Consequently, there is an urgent need to provide an in-depth survey, clearly identifying commonalities and differences between current AOM approaches. Existing surveys in this area focus more on comprehensibility with respect to development phases or evaluated approaches rather than on comparability on bases of a detailed evaluation framework.
 This article tries to fill this gap focusing on aspect-oriented design modeling. As a prerequisite for an in-depth evaluation, a conceptual reference model is presented as the article's first contribution, centrally capturing the basic design concepts of AOM and their interrelationships in terms of a UML class diagram. Based on this conceptual reference model, an evaluation framework has been designed, resembling the second contribution, by deriving a detailed and well-defined catalogue of evaluation criteria, thereby operationalizing the conceptual reference model. This criteria catalogue is employed together with a running example in order to evaluate a carefully selected set of eight design-level AOM approaches representing the third contribution of the article. This per approach evaluation is complemented with an extensive report on lessons learned, summarizing the approaches' strengths and shortcomings.


The search for planets orbiting stars other than the Sun has led to the discovery of over one thousand new worlds. The majority of these planets have been very large, Jupiter sized planets located very close to their host star. Transit surveys such as Kepler and SuperWASP monitor thousands of stars looking for periodic dips in light caused by a planet passing between our view point on Earth and their host star, blocking a fraction of the emitted star light. One of the primary limitations in detecting a small, Earth sized planet comes from stellar activity induced signals within the data collected by exoplanet missions. These signals can, however, be used to our advantage. In this thesis, asymmetries in transit light curves are exploited to reveal properties of both the planet and the host stars themselves. An asymmetry in the near-ultraviolet transit light curve of WASP-12b, one of the largest and hottest planets found to date is thought to be caused by the stellar wind interacting with the magnetic field surrounding the planet. In this thesis, a model for such an interaction is developed and is shown to be consistent with the observations, providing the first potential evidence for the presence of a magnetic field around an exoplanet. The model is then extended to predict the shape of near-ultraviolet light curves around HD 189733b, another hot Jupiter that orbits a very bright star. By looking at the variability in these transit light curves over time, the evolution and structure of the stellar wind is investigated. By tracking the position of bumps in the transit light curve, it is shown here that the data collected by missions such as Kepler has the potential to reveal stellar butterfly patterns. Such patterns are intrinsically linked with the stellar dynamo which governs the properties of the stellar magnetic field. Finally, the support of large-scale magnetic loops on young stars is investigated. These loops trap large amounts of hot, dense material and so a rapid destabilisation could lead to a flaring event, which could have devastating consequences for a nearby exoplanet.


Context-awareness is a prominently desired feature in computing systems. Smartphones, smart cards or tags, wearables, sensor nodes, and many other devices enable a system to compute context for different users and environment. With ever increasing advances in hardware for such devices, the interactions with users are increasing every day. This enables the collection of a large amount of data about users, systems, and physical environment. With such data available to be leveraged, context-awareness will soon become a necessity. Such type of data collection happens most frequently in sensing applications enabled by wireless sensor network (WSN) devices. This paper discusses the concept of context for sensing applications, specifically related to Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). The paper highlights key aspects of context and its definition. This paper proposes, to the best of the author's knowledge, the first programming approach to build context-aware applications for WSN-based CPS. This paper provides a proof of concept for a framework to detect, manage and deploy context-aware applications.


A fundamental question in evolutionary biology is understanding why some groups of organisms are highly diverse. Species diversity is the result of the balance between speciation and extinction whereas morphological disparity is primarily a consequence of adaptation. Radioresitance, among other adaptive features found in organisms, can be genetically determined and inherited. This study explores the possible consequences that naturally-occurring radiation might impose on the variance and composition of population genetics. To evaluate these possibilities, a simple statistical experiment is conducted involving 49 cytochrome gene sequences belonging to two distinct populations of eukaryotic organisms that reside on opposite ends of the radioresistance spectrum. The results show a distinct correlation between higher and lower degrees of genetic variance among these two groups, where the order, group or population that has shown increased hypersensitivity to radiation also has an increased rate of molecular evolution due to a higher mutation rate.


This paper presents part of a scientific study focused on the social aspects of research and its impact on the process of constructing knowledge. For this, we use a corpus of hitherto unexploited texts, the inaugural lectures from the Paris Museum of Natural History. This central French teaching institution demanded that each newly appointed professor gave a formal opening lecture, resulting in the source texts. Given to an audience composed by institutional representatives, colleagues and friends, this lecture was a symbolic way to usher the professor into his new function. One might dismiss such a formal and codified exercise as being uninteresting for the epistemologist. Instead, reading these inaugural lectures (1869 - 1979) brings to light "science as it was done". Indeed, these texts serve to reveal unknown aspects of scientific activity in contrast to the naive image of science one might expect them to present. Certain assertions in these lectures particularly caught our attention. Many words or expressions like "truth", "coincidence", "luck", or the phrase the "first beings made by the hands of the Creator" reveal the personal position of the orator. These elements of the speech generally introduce more epistemologically interesting aspects. In these elements of the lecture, the orator referred to components of a more or less conscious system of thought, which constituted his "representation of the world". The difficulty was to understand the object - i.e. the "representation of the world" – in all of its dimensions. Moreover, it was necessary to take into account the systemic relationship established between the different components of the study's object. Thus, we began to research a conceptual construction that would enable us to do this. Either we could have tried to develop a new conceptual tool, or we could have borrowed one from a related science. The concept of "representation" is already used in many disciplines including science studies, sociology, cognitive psychology, history, and social psychology. The concept has been developed according to many different perspectives, which can differ to the point of being opposed. What we propose is neither to add a new definition to the concept, nor to build a rigid model. The aim of this research is firstly to find a suitable model drawn from the approaches developed by some related disciplines, which can be adapted to the present case study. In the first part of the paper, we will present our methodology, explaining which definition was chosen for the concept of "representation" in this study case and why. The second part will be devoted to the presentation of the results obtained by the application of this methodology, i.e. what systems of representation have been revealed. We will present their characteristics and discuss whether or not the conceptualization is valid.


Objective- to assess the normal ultrasonographic findings of kidney in the Raiini goat. Design- Experimental study. Animals- 10 female Raiini goats. Procedures- .Necropsy was carried out and Kidneys were measured in length, width, and diameter after fixation in formalin. Ultrasonography was carried out by longitudinal and transversal planes to evaluate all renal structures. Echogenicity and size of cortex, medulla, and renal sinuses were evaluated. Results- In longitudinal and transverse scans, cortex, medulla and renal sinuses were seen. Renal pyramids could not be counted in ultrasonography. Conclusion and Clinical Relevance- Evaluation of shape, size and condition of renal tissue is possible by ultrasonography and this study


Well-resourced and well-connected individuals, or "policy entrepreneurs," often play an important role in advocating and securing the adoption of policies. There is a striking lack of inquiry into the ways that social networks shape the ability of these actors to achieve their aims, including the ways in which network ties may channel policy conflict. To address these gaps, we analyze data from an original survey and an original database of policies to assess the success of policy entrepreneurs (PEs) active in a highly contentious arena: municipal policymaking concerning high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) in New York. We use text-mining to collect social network data from local newspaper archives, then use those data to construct municipal HVHF policy networks. Municipal anti-HVHF PEs appear more successful when they operate in less cohesive networks, act as bridges to relative newcomers to the governance network, and have a larger number of network connections. Pro-HVHF PEs appear more successful when they can forge high-value connections to key decision makers. Policy entrepreneurs on both sides of the issue are more successful when they have a greater number of sympathetic coalition partners.


The aim of this article is to investigate how owners of family businesses combine their traditional heritage with changes in a new competitive arena. This is done by allowing the owners and managers of six vineyards to give voice to their concerns about the past, present, and future. The findings suggest that family businesses in the South African wine industry are subject to a process of institutionalisation in which entrepreneurial activities, which are part of this process, may not be as entrepreneurial as they appear at first. It is found that the two forms of logic behind the institutionalisation of the family firm and entrepreneurial activities in the context of the post-apartheid era can be successfully merged. Theoretical and practical implications bring the article to a close.


The Texas ECE Senior Design Projects provide a unique and supportive environment for industry to work with faculty on senior classroom projects. This mutually beneficial partnership supports academic excellence by ensuring the presence of a top ten ranked department, supporting Texas ECE?s educational mission, and by creating an environment where students can learn from a practical application of learning to real world problems; supports industry needs to present their problems as well as develop strong relationships with students and faculty; and supports the department in providing a robust and practical curriculum with industry expertise, equipment, and funding.


Abstract Thermal travertines are an archive of CO2 sources and sinks in hydrothermal systems. Two major regional factors control travertine precipitation: water availability and CO2 supply. Thus, travertines form a valuable archive of hydrodynamic variability and sources of main contributions to dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC). It is relevant to determine the main DIC sources of thermal waters (i.e., organic-matter degradation, recycled from older carbonates, emission of deep-seated magmatic CO2), as they are key inputs to calculate the lithosphere–atmosphere CO2 budget. The Antuco travertine from the Central Andes represents one of such archives, with a 500 ky record of accretionary periods (dated as 425–320, 260, and 155 ky BP) related to high hydrothermal activity of hot springs. It consists of two travertine units: (1) a lower massive unit displaying large calcite pseudomorphs after aragonite that precipitated in proximal ponds with abundant water, and (2) an upper stratified unit showing more distal facies bearing siliciclastics and manganese and iron oxides. The replacement of aragonite by calcite in the lower unit was related to the decrease of water salinity in the thermal system through time. In the Antuco travertine, DIC δ13C values of travertine parental waters of around −9‰ suggest that CO2 was related to igneous processes and volcanic activity, and released along deep-seated faults. Relative water/rock ratios derived from δ18O values and fluid-inclusion microthermometric data from travertine carbonates are consistent with an interpretation of greater water availability in the hydrothermal system during the late Pleistocene than at present. The different petrographic features and isotopic signatures are interpreted to reflect increased water availability during more humid periods in the Altiplano, which triggered precipitation of travertine bodies. Travertine growth took place during interglacial-humid climate periods between Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 3 and 9, which correspond to highstand events in large lakes of the Andean Altiplano. Results of this study illustrate that volcanic activity, furnishing rather constant CO2 and heat fluxes, were the key controls of thermalism in the Altiplane region during the Quaternary, whilst climatic changes (humid vs. arid periods in the late Pleistocene) controlled mineralogy, facies, and architecture of the travertines. The combined use of δ13C and 87Sr/86Sr signatures in carbonate precipitates has been proven to be of major relevance to evaluate the CO2 sources along fault zones in this study.


In heterogeneous flex-grid networks, optical connections for different line rates, spectral widths, and modulations can coexist in the same infrastructure. Optical connections are transparently routed by reconfigurable add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs). Flex-grid ROADMs are enabled by state-of-the-art evolution from original wavelength-selective switches (WSSs), designed for fixed-grid applications, to WSSs that operate in flexible grids. Broadcast-and-select (B&S) flex-grid ROADMs are subject to the same internal blocking as their fixed-grid counterparts, and this internal blocking can also be reduced by augmenting the number of add/drop transponder banks. In this paper, we dimension the number of transponder banks C required in flex-grid ROADMs to make the internal blocking negligible. To this end, we present a graph transformation that takes a network topology based on B&S ROADMs and converts it into an equivalent network composed of contentionless ROADMs. Then, any conventional (non-contention-aware) algorithm can be applied to the transformed topology to make lightpath allocations. Our results show that often C = 2, and in some cases C = 1, transponder banks are enough to eliminate internal contention in practice. Interestingly, these results are similar to the ones obtained in the fixed-grid case. This is not an obvious conclusion, since spectrum fragmentation in flex-grid networks may amplify internal blocking. Results have been obtained using the Net2Plan 0.2.3 open-source tool. Algorithms' source code and data are available in the Net2Plan public repository for reuse and validation.


In 1997, China's general universities carried on the "the axle" policy on tuition charging, and then the tuition of general higher education increases rapidly. Students' education charges keep increasing and occupy a large proportion of people's household income. The excessive burden undertook by private families, especially impoverished countryside families has beyond their capacity. The soaring tuition of higher education will directly lead to the poverty of rights and opportunities of education in poor families and will result in disparity in education.  This paper delves into researching the current situation of poor families' investment of higher education, analyzing the problem of overweighed higher education cost and its fundamental causes. Then try my best to put forward some suggestions.


This paper reports the fabrication and characterization of an ultrafast laser written Er-doped chalcogenide glass buried waveguide amplifier; Er-doped GeGaS glass has been synthesized by the vacuum sealed melt quenching technique. Waveguides have been fabricated inside the 4 mm long sample by direct ultrafast laser writing. The total passive fiber-to-fiber insertion loss is 2.58 ± 0.02 dB at 1600 nm, including a propagation loss of 1.6 ± 0.3 dB. Active characterization shows a relative gain of 2.524 ± 0.002 dB/cm and 1.359 ± 0.005 dB/cm at 1541 nm and 1550 nm respectively, for a pump power of 500 mW at a wavelength of 980 nm.


The issues of promotion and preservation of urban landscapes are increasingly gaining prominence in international cultural and political debates. These issues can lead to tensions, especially for historical cities, partly because the concept of urban landscape as an element of cultural heritage is still to be acknowledged, particularly on a legislative level. Nevertheless, as the paper highlights, this concept was theorized in Europe for the reconstruction of historical cities in the second post-war period. This paper focuses on the French and Italian debates of the post-World War II decades, because they both elaborated concepts of urban landscape which were particularly advanced for the time. This article attempts to demonstrate their possible influence on the contemporary international debate developed by UNESCO between 2005 and 2011. Furthermore, this paper inspects the origins of the concept of the historic centre, developed particularly in Italy during the 1960s, and examines its relationship with the urban landscape. The reasons for the success of the historic centre are highlighted together with the simultaneous failure of the urban landscape at the legislative level, by inspecting the similarities, the divergences, and the historical connection between the two notions.


Hydrodynamic models are important for the design
and control of wave energy converters. Traditionally they have
been obtained using velocity potential/boundary element type
methods, however associated assumptions of inviscid fluid, ir-
rotational flow, small waves and small body motions are a major
limitation of this modelling approach, since WECs are designed
to operate over wide wave amplitude ranges experiencing large
motions, viscous drag and breaking waves. With consideration of
the full range of effects, the physics can be described using the
Navier-Stokes equations and implemented using computational
fluid dynamics (CFD). However, CFD is too computationally
expensive for many purposes, for example in initial design
optimisation and in the development of control algorithms, where
long-time simulations are required. This paper therefore seeks
to combine the strengths of both modelling approaches by
developing linear parametric models using system identification
techniques on CFD generated data. This new approach is
demonstrated by identifying the radiation parameters of a linear
hydrodynamic model using information from the object's free
decay oscillation simulated in a numerical wave tank (NWT). It
is shown to have the ability to produce different representative
models for different operational amplitudes; an advantage over
the traditional approach which is only representative over small
amplitude conditions.


Musical counterpoint, a musical technique in which two or more independent melodies are played simultaneously with the goal of creating harmony, has been around since the baroque era. However, to our knowledge computational generation of aesthetically pleasing linear counterpoint based on subjective fitness assessment has not been explored by the evolutionary computation community (although generation using objective fitness has been attempted in quite a few cases). The independence of contrapuntal melodies and the subjective nature of musical aesthetics provide an excellent platform for the application of genetic algorithms. In this paper, a genetic algorithm approach to generating contrapuntal melodies is explained, with a description of the various musical heuristics used and of how variable-length chromosome strings are used to avoid generating "jerky" rhythms and melodic phrases, as well as how subjectivity is incorporated into the algorithm's fitness measures. Next, results from empirical testing of the algorithm are presented, with a focus on how a user's musical sophistication influences their experience. Lastly, further musical and compositional applications of the algorithm are discussed along with planned future work on the algorithm.


The linguistic expressions of the majority of bilinguals exhibit deviations from the corresponding expressions of monolinguals in phonology, grammar, and semantics, and in both languages. In addition, bilinguals may process spoken and written language differently from monolinguals. Two possible causes of such "accents" in bilinguals' language use are considered: the first, that becoming bilingual results in memory representations for specific linguistic units qualitatively different from the corresponding representations in monolinguals, and the second, parallel activation of linguistic elements in the two language subsystems of bilinguals when they use language. I exemplify the occurrence of phonological, syntactic, and semantic accents in bilinguals' language use and explain them in terms of both qualitatively different memory representations and parallel activation.


Background: In the past 15 years, important innovations have been made in biomedical and (molecular-) biology research domains by combining cell biology techniques for the guided generation of tissue. The term `Tissue En-gineering´ (TE) was created for these applications, which beside of basic re-search interest are of clinical relevance. Concerning the high costs, critics demand valid proof for the many promises made.
International legislation on clinical TE usage varies, harmonisations are in force just for certain aspects or are discussed at the moment. Method: Chosen method for the generation of this report is the systematic literature review with special regard to `Grey Literature´, which in this con-text stands for publications not available by regular book and journal distri-bution. Examples for Grey Literature are conference proceedings, scripts, preprints, catalogues, web presence and papers out of the university settings not published yet. Results: The investigations uncovered beside a large amount of TE experi-ments in varying states of research just a surprisingly small number of clini-cal TE studies or case studies documenting actual clinical usage of TE methods in human medicine. Austria-specific TE topics, research groups, bio banks and the generation of TE clusters could be documented. Discussion: Tissue Engineering (TE) is defined as the biomedical application of cells, in the majority of cases in combination with a growth and differen-tiation stimulating matrix for tissue regeneration purposes in patients with varying diseases or injuries. Definitions overlap with `Regenerative Medi-cine´ (RM), `Future Medicine´ and `Advanced Therapies´. Examples for clinical application include chondrocyte implantation, skin substitutes, repair of bone defects and cell seeding of cardiovascular stents.
Objective is a summary of the state of the art of TE research with attention to clinical relevance, the documentation of Austrian research clusters and bio banks. Furthermore an evaluation of selected fields of application regarding costs and benefits for patients is made.


Evaluation of existing and potential feed resources was conducted in Orodora district in the Southern region of Burkina Faso using Feed Assessment Tool (FEAST). The assessment was carried out through focus group discussions and individual interviews in Mahon and Sayaga communities in Orodara district. The study sites were characterized by mixed crop-livestock production systems. Seventy-percent of cropping activities were focused on fruit tree cultivation while food crop production accounted for the rest. Livestock species (predominantly local breeds) in the area included cattle sheep, goat, pig, poultry and donkey which are kept for different purposes. The main source of household income is crop production while livestock production contributed 35 and 45% to the household income in Mahon and Sayaga, respectively. In both study sites, natural grazing contributes highest (49 and 64% respectively) to the dry matter (DM) content of the total diet. Cultivated fodder contributed 1% of dry matter (DM), metabolizable energy and crude protein to the total diet of the existing feed resource in Mahon, while farmers in Sayaga depended more on purchased feed than in Mahon. Constraints to livestock production in the study sites included shortage of water in the dry season, insufficient quantity and quality of feed in the late dry season of the year and high cost of veterinary drugs and services. To mitigate these constraints farmers suggested an integrated approach to improve livestock production through: construction of small reservoir to provide water for human and animal consumption; training on the integration of forage legume into both tree and arable cropping, and efficient utilization of available feed resources; establishment of a veterinary service and drug centre in the village; better management of the existing water resources.

 Key words: Animal nutrition, livestock productivity, feed resources, feed scarcity.


This dissertation can be broken into two parts comprising different strategies to synthesise novel poly-amino acid based polymers. The use of recently developed nickel(0) and cobalt(0) metal catalysts for the living polymerization of α-amino acid-N-carboxyanhydrides (NCAs) to synthesise novel poly-amino acid polymers, comprising a polar, hydrophilic block and a neutral hydrophobic block, were investigated in the first part of this study. The hydrophilic block was made up of a random sequence of arginine (Arg, R), glycine (Gly, G) and aspartic acid (Asp, D) poly-RGD. This was followed by a polyleucine (Leu, L) hydrophobic block. Success was limited with this system due to polymer precipitation during the polymerization reaction. Because of this precipitation, the amino acid composition of the hydrophilic block was changed to a random sequence of glutamic acid (Glu, E), cystein (Cys, C) and aspartic acid – poly-ECD. Here also, the success was limited because of polymer precipitation. A novel approach to the synthesis of hybrid poly-amino acid – synthetic polymer materials constitutes the second part of this study. The final polymeric structure can be described as a carboxylic acid functionalized polyethylene glycol (PEG) sheathed polylysine polymer. The technology involves the synthesis of a lysine NCA functionalized at the e-amino group with an α,ω-bis(carboxymethyl) ether PEG. The distal carboxylic acid group was protected as a benzyl ester during synthesis and subsequent polymerization of the PEG-lysine-NCA macro-monomer. The polymerization was successfully initiated using n-butyl amine to form short homopolymer strands. Copolymerization with lysine-NCA was also achieved as well as the successful initiation using a generation 1.0 dendritic amine initiator, N,N,N',N'tetrakis(3-aminopropyl)-1,4-butanediamine (DAB-Am-4). These polymers were characterized by H NMR. Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za


Carcasses of red foxes (n=256) and raccoon dogs (n=253) were collected throughout Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania (north-east Germany) between August 2004 and January 2007. Frequency of occurrence (FO) and biomass share (BS) were estimated for fifteen and seven food categories, respectively. Diet analyses indicate that both canids are omnivorous and pursue opportunistic feeding strategies. Small mammals (BS=31.2, FO=38.7) and vegetable matter (BS=51.3, FO=63.1) were the most important food resources for red foxes and raccoon dogs, respectively. Interspecies differences were recorded for vegetable matter, small mammals and insects. While red foxes mostly feed on voles, raccoon dogs consumed mice and shrews as often as voles. However, unlike red foxes, raccoon dogs did not use small mammals intensively all year round. Only raccoon dogs preyed on amphibians. There were no differences in carrion consumption between red foxes (BS=21.2) and raccoon dogs (BS=18.2). Both red foxes (FO=8.4) and raccoon dogs (FO=8.0) scavenged on wild boar. Moreover, there was evidence that two red foxes foraged on raccoon dogs and vice versa . Mean annual interspecies diet overlap indices were high. We found clear competition for carrion year-round. The diets determined for raccoon dogs and red foxes were quite similar and a similar food niche breadth was recorded. However, only minor competition is assumed to take place since differences in feeding habits do exist. Download the complete issue.


The organic matter content of many soils in West Africa has been depleted due to overgrazing, agricultural mismanagement, deforestation and overexploitation of the natural resources. Degraded agro(eco)systems can be managed to increase carbon sinks in vegetation and soil, and to reduce carbon emissions to the atmosphere. The capacity for sequestering carbon will increase as annual precipitation increases, and generally as mean temperature decreases, provided the soil and terrain conditions are not limiting for crop (biomass) growth. The agroecological suitability of three pilot sites, proposed for soil carbon sequestration projects in Senegal, is assessed and the feasibility of various management options to increase organic carbon levels in the soil is discussed. For the future, a Land Resources Information System should be developed to consider detailed data on climate, soil and terrain conditions, status of soil degradation, and land‐use systems for West Africa. Upon its linkage to a dynamic soil carbon model and a socio‐economic module, such an integrated system can be used to assess the ecotechnological and socio‐economic potential for carbon sequestration projects in the context of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) proposed under article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. If adopted, this mechanism could confer funds to West African countries for the sustainable use and conservation of their natural resources, thereby providing economic, environmental and societal benefits for local populations, while simultaneously contributing to climate change mitigation. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


In Lawlor v. North American Corporation of Illinois, 2012, IL 112530, the Illinois Supreme Court first recognized the intentional tort of intrusion upon seclusion. It then applied the tort in favor of a former employee against a former employer whose agents deceitfully investigated the employee in contemplation of future civil litigation. In Lawlor, the employer's lawyer was also involved in the investigation. Under certain circumstances, under the Lawlor rationale, that lawyer could also be liable in tort to the former employee. Lawyer liability after Lawlor could be founded on either the intentional or unintentional acts of either the lawyer or the lawyer's agent. Liability might fail, however, if there was a privacy waiver. The circumstances permitting lawyer liability for intrusion upon seclusion during prelitigation civil claim investigations often include violations of the lawyer ethics rules employed for lawyer discipline. Because those harmed by lawyer intrusions seem far more likely to complain in their own civil suits than in lawyer disciplinary proceedings, in the future lawyer presuit civil claim investigations will increasingly be scrutinized under lawyer ethics rules in tort rather than disciplinary settings. The Lawlor rationale raises many questions about lawyer liability for private privacy intrusions during civil claim investigations, including questions about agency, deceit and waiver. After Lawlor, Illinois lawyers will investigate civil claims even more cautiously than in the past.


In boreal forest soils, mycelium of mycorrhizal fungi is pivotal for regulating soil carbon (C) cycling and storage. The carbon use efficiency (CUE), a key parameter in C cycling models, can inform on the partitioning of C between microbial biomass, and potential soil storage, and respiration. Here, we test the dependency of mycorrhizal mycelial CUE on stand age and seasonality in managed boreal forest stands. Based on mycelial production and respiration estimates, derived from sequentially incubated ingrowth mesh bags, we estimated CUE on an ecosystem scale during a seasonal cycle and across a chronosequence of eight, 12‐ to 158‐year‐old, managed Pinus sylvestris forest stands characterized by decreasing pH and nitrogen (N) availability with increasing age. Mycelial respiration was related to total soil respiration, and by using eddy covariance flux measurements, primary production (GPP) was estimated in the 12‐ and 100‐year‐old forests, and related to mycelial respiration and CUE. As hypothesized, mycelial CUE decreased significantly with increasing forest age by c. 65%, supposedly related to a shift in mycorrhizal community composition and a metabolic adjustment reducing their own biomass N demand with declining soil N availability. Furthermore, mycelial CUE increased by a factor of five over the growing season; from 0.03 in May to 0.15 in November, and we propose that the seasonal change in CUE is regulated by a decrease in photosynthate production and temperature. The respiratory contribution of mycorrhizal mycelium ranged from 14% to 26% of total soil respiration, and was on average 17% across all sites and occasions. Synthesis. Carbon is retained more efficiently in mycorrhizal mycelium late in the growing season, when fungi have access to a more balanced C and nutrient supplies. Earlier in the growing season, at maximum host plant photosynthesis, when below‐ground C availability is high in relation to N, the fungi respire excess C resulting in lower mycelial carbon use efficiency (CUE). Additionally, C is retained less efficiently in mycorrhizal fungal biomass in older forest stands characterized by more nutrient depleted soils than younger forest stands.


Expert knowledge, heuristics, Michael Polanyi, social epistemology, democracy, consilience There is a large literature on social epistemology, some of which is concerned with expert knowledge. Formal representations of the aggregation of decisions, estimates, and the like play a larger role in these discussions. Yet these discussions are neither sufficiently social nor epistemic. The assumptions minimize the role of knowledge, and often assume independence between observers. This paper presents a more naturalistic approach, which appeals to a model of epistemic gain from others, as mutual consilience—a genuinely social notion of epistemology. Using the example of Michael Polanyi's account of science as an illustration, it introduces the notion of double heuristics: that individuals, each with their own heuristics, each with cognitive biases and limitations, are aggregated by a decision procedure, like voting, and this second order procedure produces its own heuristic, with its own cognitive biases and limitations. An example might be the limited ability of democracies to assimilate expert knowledge.


Get up to date with the finer points of Ubuntu Server using this comprehensive guideAbout This BookGet well-versed with newly-added features in Ubuntu 16.04Master the art of installing, managing, and troubleshooting Ubuntu Server A practical easy-to-understand book that will help you enhance your existing skills. Who This Book Is For This book is intended for readers with intermediate or advanced-beginner skills with Linux, who would like to learn all about setting up servers with Ubuntu Server. This book assumes that the reader knows the basics of Linux, such as editing configuration files and running basic commands. What You Will LearnLearn how to manage users, groups, and permissionsEncrypt and decrypt disks with Linux Unified Key Setup /LuksSetup SSH for remote access, and connect it to other nodesUnderstand how to add, remove, and search for packagesUse NFS and Samba to share directories with other usersGet to know techniques for managing Apache and MariaDBExplore best practices and troubleshooting techniquesIn DetailUbuntu is a Debian-based Linux operating system, and has various versions targeted at servers, desktops, phones, tablets and televisions. The Ubuntu Server Edition, also called Ubuntu Server, offers support for several common configurations, and also simplifies common Linux server deployment processes. With this book as their guide, readers will be able to configure and deploy Ubuntu Servers using Ubuntu Server 16.04, with all the skills necessary to manage real servers. The book begins with the concept of user management, group management, as well as file-system permissions. To manage your storage on Ubuntu Server systems, you will learn how to add and format storage and view disk usage. Later, you will also learn how to configure network interfaces, manage IP addresses, deploy Network Manager in order to connect to networks, and manage network interfaces. Furthermore, you will understand how to start and stop services so that you can manage running processes on Linux servers. The book will then demonstrate how to access and share files to or from Ubuntu Servers. You will learn how to create and manage databases using MariaDB and share web content with Apache. To virtualize hosts and applications, you will be shown how to set up KVM/Qemu and Docker and manage virtual machines with virt-manager. Lastly, you will explore best practices and troubleshooting techniques when working with Ubuntu Servers. By the end of the book, you will be an expert Ubuntu Server user well-versed in its advanced concepts. Style and Approach This book is an advanced guide that will show readers how to administer, manage, and deploy Ubuntu server and will also provide expert-level knowledge on advanced security and backup techniques.


In broad terms patients who have a propensity to thrombosis do so because they have a disorder of the blood (e.g. a coagulation defect or a cellular abnormality such as polycythaemia) or a defect of the vessel wall. Where enhanced coagulation is the primary cause the disorder is referred to as thrombophilia.1 In this article we review the causes, diagnosis and management of thrombophilia.


Deep Neural Networks use thousands of mostly incomprehensible features to identify a single class, a decision no human can follow. We propose an interpretable sparse and low dimensional final decision layer in a deep neural network with measurable aspects of interpretability and demonstrate it on fine-grained image classification. We argue that a human can only understand the decision of a machine learning model, if the features are interpretable and only very few of them are used for a single decision. For that matter, the final layer has to be sparse and, to make interpreting the features feasible, low dimensional. We call a model with a Sparse Low-Dimensional Decision SLDD-Model. We show that a SLDD-Model is easier to interpret locally and globally than a dense high-dimensional decision layer while being able to maintain competitive accuracy. Additionally, we propose a loss function that improves a model's feature diversity and accuracy. Our more interpretable SLDD-Model only uses 5 out of just 50 features per class, while maintaining 97% to 100% of the accuracy on four common benchmark datasets compared to the baseline model with 2048 features.


Abstract. We evaluate the rates of secondary production and primary emission of formaldehyde (CH2O) from petrochemical industrial facilities and on-road vehicles in the Houston Texas region. This evaluation is based upon ambient measurements collected during field studies in 2000, 2006 and 2009. The predominant CH2O source (92 ± 4% of total) is secondary production formed during the atmospheric oxidation of highly reactive volatile organic compounds (HRVOCs) emitted from the petrochemical facilities. Smaller contributions are primary emissions from these facilities (4 ± 2%), and secondary production (~3%) and primary emissions (~1%) from vehicles. The primary emissions from both sectors are well quantified by current emission inventories. Since secondary production dominates, control efforts directed at primary CH2O emissions cannot address the large majority of CH2O sources in the Houston area, although there may still be a role for such efforts. Ongoing efforts to control alkene emissions from the petrochemical facilities, as well as volatile organic compound emissions from the motor vehicle fleet, will effectively reduce the CH2O concentrations in the Houston region. We do not address other emission sectors, such as off-road mobile sources or secondary formation from biogenic hydrocarbons. Previous analyses based on correlations between ambient concentrations of CH2O and various marker species have suggested much larger primary emissions of CH2O, but those results neglect confounding effects of dilution and loss processes, and do not demonstrate the causes of the observed correlations. Similar problems must be suspected in any source apportionment analysis of secondary species based upon correlations of ambient concentrations of pollutants.


The speed and extent of modern school accountability have obscured the history of testing and accountability. This brief introduction identifies central themes of historical research into educational accountability and recurring traits associated with accountability practices. We hope our colleagues and this special issue will also help to identify future research paths in this field. Some of the central themes found in the historical research on educational accountability contained in this special issue are the connections between accountability and the purposes of schooling in a specific time and place, the relationships between school accountability structures and the state, as well as accountability as a cultural phenomenon. One of the recurring traits found in accountability practices is the role of accountability as a phenomenon that cannot be treated in isolation from society at large along with the attendant questions of power, education access, education management, and social selection. Another key trait is that accountability practices always seem to encompass a certain historically given configuration of stakeholder positions. The research paths pointing beyond the themes treated here are identified as a post-colonial perspective, differences and similarities between public and private sector accountability measures, the "engines" promoting the rise, proliferation and implementation of accountability measures, and finally the exploration of the travelling and movement of accountability ideas, knowledge and practices and how they actually impact and connect with national, regional and local practices.


American fly honeysuckle (Lonicera canadensis), hobblebush (Viburnum lantanoides), and sweetbells (Eubotrys racemosa) are eastern U.S. native shrubs with ornamental value, which might become successful nursery crops if they propagate readily from stem cuttings and grow uniformly in containers. We evaluated rooting success for hobblebush and sweetbells using stem cuttings treated with indole-3butyric acid (IBA) in talc at concentrations of 0, 1000, 3000, or 8000 ppm. For hobblebush, IBA at 1000, 3000, or 8000 ppm will yield 70% rooting success. For sweetbells, IBA treatment did not enhance rooting, and 88% rooting success can be achieved with untreated cuttings. Stem cuttings of american fly honeysuckle root at 49% (previously published). We also evaluated all three native shrubs grown in nursery trade #1 containers under shade levels of 0%, 40%, or 70%. American fly honeysuckle grown under 40% or 70% shade were larger, had a greener hue angle, and higher chlorophyll fluorescence (Fv/Fm) than plants grown in full sun. Throughout the study period, Fv/Fm values for full-sun american fly honeysuckle were 0.6 or below, indicating plants were stressed. Hobblebush in 40% and 70% shade were wider, had more leaves, and enhanced foliage color compared with fullsun plants. Hobblebush in 70% had the highest Fv/Fm values at 0.78 or higher across the study period. For sweetbells, plant width increased as shade level increased. Even though sweetbells in 70% shade were wider and larger, they lacked density and had a less appealing habit than 40% shade and full-sun plants. Of the three study species, sweetbells might be the easiest plant for growers to incorporate into production because it propagates readily from stem cuttings and can be grown in full sun to 40% shade. Hobblebush and american fly honeysuckle may present more challenges for growers because hobblebush requires considerable shade to grow and american fly honeysuckle is more difficult to propagate.


In this letter, we propose a novel approach for agent motion prediction in cluttered environments. One of the main challenges in predicting agent motion is accounting for location and context-specific information. Our main contribution is the concept of learning context maps to improve the prediction task. Context maps are a set of location-specific latent maps that are trained alongside the predictor. Thus, the proposed maps are capable of capturing location context beyond visual context cues (e.g. usual average speeds and typical trajectories) or predefined map primitives (such as lanes and stop lines). We pose context map learning as a multi-task training problem and describe our map model and its incorporation into a state-of-the-art trajectory predictor. In extensive experiments, it is shown that use of learned maps can significantly improve predictor accuracy. Furthermore, the performance can be additionally boosted by providing partial knowledge of map semantics.


At the height of its production, Dutch architecture has come to the point where the main criteria for a project's success is its compelling concept, which in turn manifests itself through the architectural story. The project questions the capacity of architectural storytelling, which is exactly the topic that should be discussed in this story-based environment. . "A Flat Tale" is an exploration of the Dutch visual culture, through architecture as a primary lens of discovery. The project consists of 3 component parts. They represent three levels of complexity of architectural representation as well as three steps in the development and maturation of narratives and architectural projects. They are based on the investigation of the Netherlands, Dutch architectural projects and narratives. "A Good Life ABC", establishes the grammar of Dutch architecture. It represents the simplest way of giving and receiving knowledge. Letters of the alphabet are paired with images that form examples of objects and elements of the Dutch built environment. Drawn in a reductive manner, and with the use of only primary colours, these objects form emblematic images, striped of any specificity, that represent only themselves and their Dutchness. They become symbols of Dutch identity. After establishing the grammar, "A Flat Tale", forms the syntax. It is an architectural picturebook which uses images to convey spatial narratives, and text to convey temporal ones. Some aspects of the story are made explicit through images and some through text creating a complementary relationship with the two forms of storytelling. This, in the words of Perry Nodelman, results in a relationship between pictures and texts in picturebooks that tends to be ironic where each element speaks about matters on which the other is silent. The story is based on the development of Almere and it is used to establish ideas that form generative theoretical elements of Dutch architecture and culture, such as concept, export, identity, welfare, subsidies, etc. The third part represents the most mature phase of developing an architectural idea. It uses architectural polemic through the format of an architectural journal, titled "Pitch". Dutch architectural stories are clear and relatable. Architects do not try to mystify the process through complex semantic constructs, but rather use metaphoric descriptions that allude to known spaces, places and experiences. "Pitch" examines Dutch architectural projects through the use of narrative, argumentation and criticism. "Pitch" ends with a fictional project. It is set in an undefined future. It is a utopian, infrastructural, urban and architectural project of a mountain in the Netherlands. Using only text, diagrams and allusions to the project (in the form of "infiltrators" placed in the first two parts), the project questions and tests the capacity of architectural storytelling. As a conclusion, operations performed in all three parts of the project are compiled and collated in a final appendix. It explains the intentions and interrelations of the drawings and stories, positioning them in their context and the architectural discourse. Approaching the topic of architectural representation through both its lexical and visual qualities allows for the elucidation of three main categories: the diagram and the emblematic object, the architectural design project and its narrative and the architectural essay. Together, the parts represent the symbols, a depiction, a reflection and a story of the construct of the good life in the Netherlands.