Fluorescence Imaging of Analyte Profiles in an Inductively Coupled Plasma with Laser Ablation as a Sample Introduction Source Lance Moses Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, BYU Doctor of Philosophy Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) has risen to among the top tier techniques for the direct analysis of solid samples. However, significant problems remain that must be solved to achieve the full analytical potential of LA-ICP-MS. Inefficient conversion of aerosol to ions within the ICP or transmission through the MS interface may decrease precision, sensitivity, and/or accuracy. Although fundamental mechanisms that govern ion production and transmission have been studied extensively in solution-nebulization (SN) ICP-MS instruments, significant gaps in our understanding remain. Furthermore, it is unclear to what extent differences between the aerosols generated during SN and LA influence either ion production or transmission. In this work, I initially investigated differences in the spatial distributions of Ca, Ba, and Sc ions generated by LA and SN using high-resolution LIF imaging. Ions formed from aerosol generated by LA at low fluence were distributed over much greater axial and narrower radial distances than SN aerosol. Additionally, I investigated the effects of solvent, laser fluence, and ablation atmosphere (He vs Ar) on ion distributions in the ICP. Unlike solvent, changing laser fluence and ablation atmosphere produced considerable changes in the ion signal intensity and spatial distribution during LA. At greater laser fluence, the radial distance over which ions were distributed dramatically increased. Surprisingly, when helium was mixed with argon as carrier gas, ion signals decreased. Many of these effects were assumed to be related to changes in the number and size of particles generated during LA. In a follow-up study, relative contributions to ion densities in the ICP from particles of different sizes were investigated. LIF images were recorded while filtering particles above a threshold size online. Micron-sized particles contributed the majority of ions formed in the ICP. For Ba, Ca, and Sc, differences in the axial position where nanometerand micron-sized particles vaporized were 2, 1, and less than 1 mm, respectively. I also performed experiments to identify changes in the ion signal related to changing ablation conditions vs. changing ICP conditions associated with helium additions to the carrier gas. LIF images were recorded during different combinations of He/Ar added upstream and/or downstream of the ablation cell. Changes in the ion signal during ablation in helium vs argon did not always match expectations based on changes in particle numbers and sizes measured with SEM. The results force re-examination of some of the fundamental assumptions about the effect of carrier gas composition on the performance of LAICP-MS. The research described in this dissertation provides valuable insight into fundamental aspects of key ICP processes related to LA generated aerosol.


Production from shale gas reservoirs depends greatly on the efficiency of hydraulic fracturing treatments. The cumulated experience in the industry has led to several best practices in treatment design, which have improved productivity of these reservoirs. However, further advancement of treatment design requires a deeper understanding of the complex physics involved in both hydraulic fracturing and production, such as stress shadow, proppant placement and treatment interaction with pre-existing natural fractures.
This paper sheds light on the non-linear physics involved in the production of shale gas reservoirs by improving the understanding of the complex relation between gas production, the reservoir properties, and several treatment design parameters. A fracturing-to-production simulation workflow integrating the Unconventional Fracture Model (Weng et al., 2011), with the Unconventional Production Model (Cohen et al., 2012) is presented. By applying this workflow to a realistic reservoir, we did an extensive parametric study to investigate the relation between production and treatment design parameters such as fracturing fluid viscosity, proppant size, proppant concentration, proppant injection order, treatment volume, pumping rate, pad size and hybrid treatment. The paper also evaluates the influence of unconventional reservoir properties - such as permeability, horizontal stress, horizontal stress anisotropy, horizontal stress orientation, Poisson's ratio and Young's modulus – on production. Since this paper focuses on fluid and proppant selection, our methodology was to run 28 simulations to cover the 2D parametric space of proppant size and fracturing fluid viscosity for all of these parameters.
More than fourteen hundred simulations were run in this parametric study and the results provide guidelines for optimized treatment design. This paper illustrates how this unique workflow can identifies the optimum fluid and proppant selection that gives the maximum production for a given reservoir and completion. In addition, the parametric study shows how these optimums evolve as a function of reservoir and treatment parameters. The results validate several best practices in treatment design for shale. For example, combination of different sizes of proppant optimizes production by maximizing initial production and slowing down production decline. Simulations also confirm the best practice of injecting the smallest proppant first. The study explains why slickwater treatments should be injected at maximum pumping rate and preferably with 40/70 mesh sand. It also illustrates why reservoirs with high Young's modulus (such as the Barnett shale) can be stimulated effectively with slickwater. Another key finding is that the optimum fluid viscosity increases with treatment volume.


Introduction: Malnutrition not only blights the lives of individuals and families, but also acts as a major barrier to social and economic progress In India, particularly in the EAG states. Under this backdrop, this study aims to assess degree of chronic energy deficiency and its determinants and to investigate the impact of low BMI of women on children's health status. Materials and Methods: Data drawn from the National Family Health Survey-III, conducted 2005-06, from Empowered Action Group (EGA) states. A multiple linear regression analysis was done to see the relation between CED status of women and different socioeconomic factors and to find out the influence of CED on children's health status. Results: The 20th century witnessed a significant proportion of overweight and obese individuals coexist with the undernourished in many developing countries however the EAG states experiencing high prevalence of under-nutrition (34percent) and low incidence of overweight (13percent). Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh reported significantly higher profession of chronic energy deficiency than the rest of the EAG states. The results of the multivariate logistic regression analyses show that age of women, place of residence, caste, women's education, and wealth index are significantly associated with underweight. The chronic energy deficiency women produce more number of anaemic children than the counterparts. Around forty percent of the low weight babies are born to the chronic energy deficit women. Conclusion: The burden of chronic energy deficiency indicates that there is a need for special public health programs that are able to address chronic energy deficiency.


This thesis examines the career experiences and opportunities of ethnic minority women through a critical review and analysis of the current literature and new empirical work. It seeks to give visibility to ethnic minority women's experiences by adopting a qualitative
methodology, which provides the participants with the time and space to convey, and reflect on, their views. The focus is placed on the participants' perceptions, attitudes or concerns with regard to their careers and how their career choices may impact on other aspects of their lives, such as family and community expectations and responsibilities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ethnic minority women as the main sample, with managers in two case study organisations and with a smaller sample of ethnic minority men, white women and men. The rationale for this was to provide an insight into the broader organisational context ethnic minority women work and strive to succeed.

It is argued that ethnic minority women's experiences at work has been an under-researched area, where research involving women in management has been generalised to include all women regardless of 'race', ethnicity or class. The theoretical framework adopted for this study acknowledges an interaction between the dimensions of structure, culture and agency in the analysis of career experiences and opportunities. The structural dimension includes organisational and family structure, and culture is divided into organisational and social group culture. Agency is the final dimension of the framework, where the effect of strategies and personal determination on career experiences and opportunities is examined. Ethnic minority women are seen as social actors within organisational and social group structures and cultures, which may affect their strategies and plans and may also be affected
by them.

The empirical work undertaken for this study has indicated that the majority of ethnic minority women participants occupy lower levels of the organisational hierarchy, they face racial and gender stereotypes which are often exacerbated by stereotypical perceptions concerning their culture and religion, they have problems identifying mentors and are often excluded from influential networks. If these women ascribe to their cultural or religious
expectations, they face tensions between balancing work and private life expectations. Ethnic minority women's agency, in the form of career strategies and determination, IS
deemed to be a crucial factor in their career experiences and opportunities.


The effects of grazing by Whooper Swans (Cygnus cygnus) on agricultural grasslands in winter were investigated in northwest Ireland. Exclosure cages were used to compare aboveground biomass in ungrazed plots with those grazed by swans. Grazing intensity was measured by recording cumulative dropping densities in fixed plots. Measurements of aboveground biomass were made on three occasions: midwinter (January), early spring (late March) and late spring (late May) at two different study sites in different years. There were significant yield losses between grazed and ungrazed plots for each sampling period. These were highest in spring when losses of up to 65% were recorded. Swan grazing intensity was positively correlated with yield losses and aboveground biomass and the correlation was especially strong in late. spring. Geese were also present in fields at one of the study sites and, while they also had a significant effect on biomass, swan grazing had a proportionately stronger effect. While the results illustrate the potential severity of grazing by swans, they should be interpreted with caution as previous studies have shown the interactive effects of a range of variables, including weather conditions, which make it difficult to predict the response of a sward to grazing.


Created especially for experienced programmers with no previous knowledge of NAV development, this book is for people who want to learn as quickly as possible to create, modify or maintain NAV applications. Microsoft Dynamics(tm) NAV (formerly known as Navision) is a well established Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, part of the Microsoft Dynamics(tm) family. Renowned for its challenging learning curve, Dynamics NAV is a complex piece of software with a unique design structure and, for developers learning to modify or enhance it for vital business purposes, the task can sometimes be overwhelming. This book will ease you through the complexities of NAV application development. You will learn the skills and develop the confidence to tackle your own critical NAV applications. This book will act as your experienced NAV programming mentor, helping you to become productive as a NAV developer much more quickly. From basic NAV terminology and concept definitions, through the essential building blocks of NAV data structure and objects, you will gain an understanding of the fundamental underlying concepts of NAV. You will learn practical details about NAV object construction and the tools available, including the Table, Form, and Report Designers. You will learn how to use NAV's tools to effectively navigate through the various features of objects, including properties, triggers, and C/AL code and receive practical guidance on ways to develop and test in the unique NAV C/SIDE development environment. A section on software design for NAV is provided along with tips for efficient design of a new NAV application or enhancing an existing application. With its comprehensive collection of NAV information, this book is not only designed to help you learn, but can act as a reference as well. For experienced programmers with little or no previous knowledge of NAV developmentLearn as quickly as possible to create, modify, and maintain NAV applications Written for version 5.0 of NAV; applicable for all versions


Field experiment was conducted at Humbo Larena, wolaita zone during the 2012/2013 dry season, to study the effect of bulb treatment and spacing patterns on seed yield and quality of onion in the semi-arid zone of Ethiopia. Treatments consisted of a factorial combination of four levels of bulb types [whole bulbs, cut (topped) bulbs, ash-treated cut (topped) bulbs, and fungicide-treated cut (topped) bulbs] and four levels of spacing patterns (50 x 30 x 20 cm, 60 x 30 x 20 cm, 40 x 20 cm, and 50 x 20 cm) laid out in randomized complete block design replicated three times. The onion variety known as Bombay Red was used as a test crop.  Results revealed that the main effects of both bulb treatment and spacing significantly influenced, seed weight per umbel, standard germination, vigour Index I and vigour index II. However, bulb treatment and spacing interacted to significantly influence seed yield. The highest seed yield was obtained in response to planting fungicide-treated topped bulbs at the both double-row spacing. However, significantly higher values of all seed quality parameters were obtained from both single-row spacing. Keywords: Onion ( Allium cepa var. C epa ), bulb treatment, spacing patterns, Ethiopia


The establishment of a new journal titled Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft begs the question: what do these words mean? In what sense do they comprise a useful academic category or field of inquiry? The history of magic and the cultural functions it has played and continues to play in many societies have been a focus of scholarship for well over one hundred years. Grand anthropological and sociological theories developed mostly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries offer clear structures, and the classic definitions of Edward Burnett Taylor, James Frazer, Emile Durkheim, and others still reverberate through much scholarly work on this topic. While aspects of these theories remain useful, more recent studies have tended to take a much narrower approach, examining the specific forms that magic, magical rites, or witchcraft assume and the issues they create in particular periods and within particular societies. This has led to laudable focus and precision, yet it has also stifled communication between scholars working in different periods, regions, or disciplines. This journal is intended to promote such communication, and to provide a forum in which issues common to the study of magic in all contexts can be raised. Therefore, it will prove useful at the outset to present some thoughts about the significance of magic as a category, about the meanings it has carried and the approaches it has evoked, about some of the ways in which the study of magic might be advanced, and about some of the areas to which such further study might contribute. Scholars in many fields recognize magic as an important topic. In its rites, rituals, taboos, and attendant beliefs, magic might be said to comprise, or at least describe, a system for comprehending the entire world. It provides a means for navigating among the varied forces that comprise and shape material creation, and promises its practitioners methods of controlling or at least


In firms with multiple blockholders governance via exit is affected by how blockholders react to each others' exit. Institutional investors, who hold the majority of equity blocks, are heterogeneous in their incentives. How do these incentives affect the manner in which institutional blockholders respond to each others' exit? We present a model that shows that open-ended institutional investors, who are subject to investor redemption risk, will be sensitive to an informed blockholder's exit, giving rise to correlated exits and strengthening governance. Thus, exposure to redemption risk, universally a negative force in asset pricing, plays a positive role in corporate governance. Using data on engagement campaigns by activist hedge funds we present large-sample evidence consistent with our theoretical mechanism.


Volcanic ash preserved in marine sediment sequences is key for independent synchronization of palaeoclimate records within and across different climate archives. Here we present a continuous tephrostratigraphic record from the Labrador Sea, spanning the last 65–5 ka, an area and time period that has not been investigated in detail within the established North Atlantic tephra framework. We investigated marine sediment core GS16‐204‐22CC for increased tephra occurrences and geochemically analysed the major element composition of tephra shards to identify their source volcano(es). In total we observed eight tephra zones, of which five concentration peaks show isochronous features that can be used as independent tie‐points in future studies. The main transport mechanism of tephra shards to the site was near‐instantaneous deposition by drifting of sea ice along the East Greenland Current. Our results show that the Icelandic Veidivötn volcanic system was the dominant source of tephra material, especially between late Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4 and early MIS 3. The Veidivötn system generated volcanic eruptions in cycles of ca. 3–5 ka. We speculate that the quantity of tephra delivered to the Labrador Sea was a result of variable Icelandic ice volume and/or changes in the transportation pathway towards the Labrador Sea.


This thesis consists of four papers studying economic aspects of natural resource and environmental management in Namibia. Paper [I] analyses changes in Namibian energy use patterns between 1980 and 1998. The study finds that, unlike their counterparts in many other developing countries where energy use has been studied, Namibian energy users appear to have been quite flexible in changing to energy-saving technologies and to technologies using different energy sources altogether. One explanation for this difference may be that Namibia has had relatively high energy prices and has had high taxes on oil-based fuels, which may have made Namibian energy users more interested in potential energy savings. Paper [II] studies variables affecting property pricing in the township areas of Windhoek, Namibia's capital city. Plots close to a garbage dump sell at substantial discounts, while plots close to a recreation area sell at premium prices. These results suggest that environmental quality may be more important for households in township areas than has previously been believed. Neglecting issues of environmental quality in town planning for township areas may thus be a serious omission. Paper [III] uses Namibian farm price data to study the impact of groundwater access on farm profitability. Potentially, groundwater can function both as an extra source of water in areas with low rainfall and as a buffer source of water in areas where rainfall is higher but variable. If groundwater mainly functions as a buffer source of water in high-rainfall areas, it could be replaced by various means of water storage fairly easily. Providing extra water by other means in low-rainfall areas, on the other hand, is likely to be prohibitively expensive. The study does not provide clear-cut results, suggesting that on precautionary principles one should assume that groundwater will be difficult to replace with other water sources. Paper [IV] studies optimal allocation between commercial and recreational fishing for one of Namibia's fish species, the kob. The biological dynamics of the kob are modelled using an age-class model with age-specific mortalities, in order to capture the fact that the two fisheries target different age classes. The length of the planning horizon is crucial for the results: If a short planning horizon is used, the results indicate that a large share of the catches should be allocated to commercial fishing. With a longer planning horizon, however, the higher profitability of recreational angling leads to the conclusion that it would be preferable to limit commercial fishing in order to permit kob stocks to recover and improve angling success.


In Christian communities such as those found in South-Eastern Nigeria, conservative interpretations of the Bible frown upon any form of premarital sexual activity; unmarried young women are expected to remain virgins until they get married. In such religious communities, biblical injunctions and sociocultural norms affect how pregnancy and child bearing outside of marriage is understood. Sexual issues are scarcely discussed in the open, except to reiterate messages of abstinence. Despite these warnings and coded messages aimed at regulating sex and discouraging sex related discussions, religious societies are not exempt from the high and increasing rates of premarital sex and pregnancy amongst young people. This thesis deploys a poststructuralist feminist approach to examine the dominant discourses surrounding the management of unmarried motherhood in Nigeria. It looks at the range of attitudes from family and church members towards early unmarried pregnancy. Using semi-structured, in-depth one-to-one and focus group interviews, this thesis examines the experiences of young unmarried mothers themselves, as well as the actions and attitudes of the church clergy and laity. Drawing inferences from thematically analysed data, this thesis upholds that unmarried young mothers are a highly stigmatised group, with negativity emerging from the family, church and other key social institutions. It also posits that although families and other agents of socialisation fail to provide young women with adequate sex education and contraception, young women, and in some cases their mothers, are the ones primarily blamed and punished for premarital pregnancy, even in instances of rape.


The practical use of the contamination technique in stress testing for risk measures Value at Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) and for optimization problems with these risk criteria is discussed. Whereas for CVaR its application is straightforward, the presence of the simple chance constraint in the definition of VaR requires that various distributional and structural properties are fulfilled, namely for the unperturbed problem. These requirements rule out direct applications of the contamination technique in the case of discrete distributions, which includes the empirical VaR. On the other hand, in the case of a normal distribution and parametric VaR, one may exploit stability results valid for quadratic programs.


We identify and investigate known late M, L, and T dwarfs in the Gaia second data release. This sample is being used as a training set in the Gaia data processing chain of the ultracool dwarfs work package. We find 695 objects in the optical spectral range M8–T6 with accurate Gaia coordinates, proper motions, and parallaxes which we combine with published spectral types and photometry from large area optical and infrared sky surveys. We find that 100 objects are in 47 multiple systems, of which 27 systems are published and 20 are new. These will be useful benchmark systems and we discuss the requirements to produce a complete catalogue of multiple systems with an ultracool dwarf component. We examine the magnitudes in the Gaia passbands and find that the GBP magnitudes are unreliable and should not be used for these objects. We examine progressively redder colour–magnitude diagrams and see a notable increase in the main-sequence scatter and a bivariate main sequence for old and young objects. We provide an absolute magnitude – spectral subtype calibration for G and GRP passbands along with linear fits over the range M8–L8 for other passbands.


So far, we discussed the inner workings of the creative process of ACASIA and the development of the Creative Sigmoid it produces. It was emphasized that many factors influence the course of this process, for example, the size of the available information universe, the range of permissible behaviors, or the criteria for selection. The present chapter examines the factors that influence ACASIA and the resulting Creative Sigmoid to conclude that, by and large, a negative outlook on the world harms creativity and that an appreciative attitude stimulates creativity. We also see that openness is the main facilitator of creativity. This is because open access to the information universe increases the likelihood that unrelated domains become connected. Some of the findings in this chapter lead to the recommendation of a leadership style that invigorates creativity in people and counters the stifling effects of managerial rule-making madness.


We study the online constrained ranking problem motivated by an application to web-traffic shaping: an online stream of sessions arrive in which, within each session, we are asked to rank items. The challenge involves optimizing the ranking in each session so that local vs. global objectives are controlled: within each session one wishes to maximize a reward (local) while satisfying certain constraints over the entire set of sessions (global). A typical application of this setup is that of page optimization in a web portal. We wish to rank items so that not only is user engagement maximized in each session, but also other business constraints (such as the number of views/clicks delivered to various publishing partners) are satisfied. We describe an online algorithm for performing this optimization. A novel element of our approach is the use of linear programming duality and connections to the celebrated Hungarian algorithm. This framework enables us to determine a set of shadow prices for each traffic-shaping constraint that can then be used directly in the final ranking function to assign near-optimal rankings. The (dual) linear program can be solved off-line periodically to determine the prices. At serving time these prices are used as weights to compute weighted rank-scores for the items, and the simplicity of the approach facilitates scalability to web applications. We provide rigorous theoretical guarantees for the performance of our online algorithm and validate our approach using numerical experiments on real web-traffic data from a prominent internet portal.


This paper examines the disciplinary role of corporate pension deficits in the market for corporate control. We find that companies with larger pension deficits are less likely to engage in diversifying mergers, experience higher merger announcement returns, pay lower premiums to targets, and use a higher percentage of cash in their payment. These results are more evident for acquirers with pension plans that are dominated by actively working employees or collectively bargained by employees. Our findings indicate that corporate pension deficits provide employees with strong incentives to monitor managerial performance and influence managers to make value-enhancing investment decisions.


The author is with the Office of Economics of the U.S. International Trade Commission. Office of Economics working papers are the result of the ongoing professional research of USITC Staff and are solely meant to represent the opinions and professional research of individual authors. These papers are not meant to represent in any way the views of the U.S. International Trade Commission or any of its individual Commissioners. Working papers are circulated to promote the active exchange of ideas between USITC Staff and recognized experts outside the USITC, and to promote professional development of Office staff by encouraging outside professional critique of staff research.


In this talk I present a new take on polyhedral symmetries. I begin by describing that many viruses have icosahedrally symmetric surface structures. I briefly review recent work (with Reidun Twarock and Celine Boehm) to try and extend this symmetry principle also to the interior of viruses and carbon onions via suitable notions of affine extensions of non-crystallographic Coxeter groups. I have argued that in such reflection group settings (a vector space with an inner product) Clifford algebras are very natural objects to consider and in fact provide a very simple reflection formula. Applying this framework to root systems has led to the construction of the exceptional root system E8 from the icosahedron and a proof that each 3D root system induces a corresponding 4D root system. In particular, the Trinity of irreducible 3D root systems (A3,B3,H3) gives rise to the Trinity of exceptional 4D root systems (D4,F4,H4). These exceptional root systems can thus be viewed as intrinsically three-dimensional phenomena. The countably infinite family A1×I2(n) gives rise to I2(n)×I2(n). Arnold had found a very cumbersome and indirect connection between (A3,B3,H3) and (D4,F4,H4) essentially via exponents in the Coxeter plane. This in fact extends to my full correspondence between 3D and 4D root systems, establishing an ADE correspondence related to the McKay correspondence. Furthermore, one can fully factorise the Coxeter element in the Clifford algebra with the exponents and complex structures of the eigenplanes arising purely from the geometry, without the need to complexify the real vector space.


A new frontier of basic human biology has opened up, which is changing our understanding of what constitutes the human body. This new knowledge is fuelling a paradigm shift from the dominant, 20th century view that viruses, bacteria and fungi operated independently to cause disease. Now, we are beginning to view a more complex and nuanced interpretation with increased recognition of the importance of commensalism, synergy and balance of microbiota in human health.1 In this commentary we hope to briefly summarise studies into the bacterial and viral microbiome and how this shifting paradigm affects epidemiology.

The distribution of human diseases is directly linked to how different people form groups and interact with each other and their environment box 1. This interaction defines a community structure. Community structure has been long recognised as a major determinant of the spread of traditional infectious diseases. Examples range from tuberculosis in crowded slums to the recent spread of Ebola in Africa, where the human behaviours that create community structure often dictate infectious disease spread. These diseases are very sensitive to the social network configuration of the population in which they occur.2 Moreover, social networks within these populations are also important determinants of chronic and traditionally non-infectious diseases. For example, obese individuals are more likely to have other obese individuals as contacts.3 However, even in these 'non-infectious' diseases, microorganisms may play a greater role than previously thought. Box 1
### Definitions:

METAGENOMIC EPIDEMIOLOGY- The study of the distribution and determinants of the microbiome structures and their relationship to disease. MICROBIOTA- A community of microorganisms (viruses, bacteria, fungi, archea) living in a defined niche

MICROBIOME- The community of commensal, symbiotic, and pathogenic microorganisms (microbiota) or their genomes sharing the human body.

METAGENOME- The totality of non-human nucleic acids belonging to all the microbiotas …


Article history: Received: February 1, 2017 Received in revised format: July 6, 2017 Accepted: July 31, 2017 Available online: July 31, 2017 This study aims to investigate the awareness level of Biomedical waste managements in healthcare facilities, and their perception among hospital waste management team, doctors, nurses, lab technicians and waste handlers in Northwest Delhi region in India. The study has been conducted through a questionnaire survey followed by the descriptive statistical analysis method. Questionnaire contains of 38 questions, where the first section deals with the hospital waste management team, the second section is for doctors, nurses and lab technicians, and the third section is for the waste handlers. Out of 311 respondents, there were 16 hospital waste management teams, 81 doctors, 92 nurses, 49 lab technicians and 73 waste handlers. It was surprising that only 40% (n=10) hospitals had any kind of waste treatment & disposal facility onsite, only 10% hospitals were using the latest technology and 60% hospitals shred the Biomedical waste before disposal. It was good to see that none of the hospital waste managements disposed the waste with general waste, and 40% of them were exhausting through government agencies and the remaining 60% were using private agencies to dispose the waste. Finally, all the hospitals maintained the record of waste generated. It is concluded that there was a lack of awareness about the biomedical waste generation, legislation and management among healthcare personnel, and they all needed regular audits and training programs at all levels, and a proper management starting from waste generation to its disposal at sites. © 2017 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.


Generally the power is transmitted through wires. We cannot imagine the world without electric power. Imagine a future in which wireless power transfer is feasible. As the demand increases day by day, the power generation increases and the power losses is also increased. In our present electricity generation system we waste more than half of our resources. Much of this power is wasted during transmission from power plant generators to the consumer. Now-a-days global scenario has been changed a lot and there is tremendous development in every field. If we don‗t keep pace with the development of new power technology we have to face a decreasing trend in the development of power sector. The transmission of power without wires may be one noble alternative for electricity transmission. This paper presents a comprehensive review and detailed analysis of various techniques used for wireless power transmission.


The aim of this paper was to construct and validate a questionnaire to measure parents' perceptions of an effective school, based on a representative sample of 2,245 parents whose children attend primary and secondary schools in the Republic of Croatia. The items of the questionnaire were created by analysing recent literature and existing research in the field. The final version of the questionnaire contained all the items from the initial analysis. Construct validity was tested using the component model of exploratory factor analysis, and internal validation was confirmed using the Cronbach's alpha. Four independent factors were identified: Encouragement of high achievement in school and student support; Discipline and safety; School equipment and interior; and Parental involvement in the school functioning. Differences in the parents' attitudes on the acquired subscales were also examined in relation to the sociodemographic variables (i.e. gender, age, working status, level of education, marital status, and their child(ren)'s grade level). The results confirmed the existence of the four identified independent constructs.


The development of digital detectors for X-ray imaging in medical diagnostics receives an increasing amount of attention. The detector under development at the Department of Radiation Sciences at Uppsala University is a hybrid pixel detector, which consists of a semiconductor sensor mounted onto a readout chip. The readout chip is capable of performing photon counting and has an externally adjustable threshold.A simulation tool for the detector and a model applying the linear-systems transfer theory to X-ray hybrid pixel detectors have been developed. Also a characterization of the readout chip has been done. In order to estimate the potential of the detector for diagnostic radiology, we investigate the image quality using the spatial frequency dependent detective quantum efficiency (DQE). By means of the detector simulations, the influence of threshold setting, noise sources, level of exposure and charge sharing on the DQE have been studied. By means of the linear-systems theory, a single analytical expression is provided to obtain the DQE of a hybrid pixel detector.The method developed in this thesis will make it possible to optimize a detector design according to a particular medical application. It will also permit modifications and new features to be included without having to construct a full detector system.


ABSTRACT The IME2 gene is one of the key regulators of the initiation of meiosis in budding yeast. This gene is repressed during mitosis through the repressive chromatin structure at the promoter, which is maintained by the Rpd3-Sin3 histone deacetylase (HDAC) complex. IME2 expression in meiosis requires Gcn5/histone acetyltransferase, the transcriptional activator Ime1, and the chromatin remodeler RSC; however, the molecular basis of IME2 activation had not been previously defined. We found that, during mitotic growth, a nucleosome masked the TATA element of IME2, and this positioning depended on HDAC. This chromatin structure was remodeled at meiosis by RSC that was recruited to TATA by Ime1. Stable tethering of Ime1 to the promoter required the presence of Gcn5. Interestingly, Ime1 binding to the promoter was kept at low levels during the very early stages in meiosis, even when the levels of Ime1 and histone H3 acetylation at the promoter were at their highest, making a 4- to 6-h delay of the IME2 expression from that of IME1. HDAC was continuously present at the promoter regardless of the transcriptional condition of IME2, and deletion of RPD3 allowed the IME2 expression shortly after the expression of IME1, suggesting that HDAC plays a role in regulating the timing of IME2 expression.


The main purpose of this project is to authenticate the data transmitted between two P2P (Point to Point) modules. This connection pertains to wireless data communication for IP networks using radio frequencies. Session initiation protocol (SIP) is the application layer control protocol used in TCP/IP. Hardware P2P module facilitates transmission of real time asynchronous data using SIP protocol over IP networks. The serial device communicates with the P2P module using Attention Telephone (AT) command set. The P2P module selected is ARM9 micro controller ported with Linux. The serial device selected is XR 16C850 UART which supports Intel and pc data mode data bus interface with a high speed of 2 Mbps.


Porous catalysts have garnered substantial interest as potential platforms for
group-transfer catalysis due to the ability to site-isolate catalysts and to non-covalently co-
localize substrates in proximity to reactive intermediates. In contrast to soluble molecular
catalysts, the limited synthetic toolbox available to prepare porous catalysts presents a
formidable challenge to controlling the primary coordination sphere of lattice-confined
catalysts and thus modulating the electronic structures of reactive catalyst intermediates.
Here, we utilize Sonogashira cross-coupling chemistry to prepare a family of porous
metallopolymers, in which the primary coordination sphere of Ru2 sites is systematically
varied. The newly synthesized materials are characterized by IR, elemental analysis, gas
sorption, powder X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray absorption
spectroscopy, and diffuse-reflectance UV-vis-NIR spectroscopy. The resulting porous
materials are catalysts for nitrene-transfer chemistry and the chemoselectivty for allylic
amination of olefin aziridination can be tuned by modulating the primary coordination
sphere of the catalyst sites. The demonstration of metallopolymerization as a rational
synthetic strategy allows to translate ligand-modulated chemoselectivity to porous
catalysts, which represents a new opportunity to tailor the functionality of heterogeneous
analogues of molecular complexes.


Air quality in New Zealand is perceived by many to be very good. This is facilitated by low population density, geographical isolation and a maritime climate. The climate and weather of New Zealand is also affected by large scale wind systems which promote westerly winds and aid dispersion. Despite favourable conditions, air pollution is a problem in many urban centres in New Zealand. Although industrial emissions contribute to pollution, emissions from domestic and traffic sources are significant. Outdoor burning and domestic fires are common, and are a major source of air pollutants and complaints. National Environmental Standards for Ambient Air Quality were introduced in 2004 but these are unlikely to be achieved in a number of locations including Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, where traffic emissions are the major source of air pollution. Auckland's population is 1.3 million people (almost one third of the national total). The city covers an area approximately equal in size to London. Poorly developed public transport services and urban sprawl have resulted in reliance on private vehicles, and ownership rates in New Zealand are among the highest in the world. In conjunction with an aged vehicle fleet and severe traffic congestion, the resulting air pollution has become a significant issue in Auckland. This paper considers the process of air quality management in New Zealand, illustrated by the particular problems systemic to Auckland. Policy responses include a Regional Land Transport Strategy with health protection as a key objective. However, it is far from certain whether these will successfully deliver cleaner air, and further national guidance and additional transport focussed regulations may be needed to achieve the air quality improvements in Auckland necessary to meet the national Standards.


Since 9/11 ideas of security have focused in part on the development of ungovernable spaces. Important debates are now being had over the nature, impacts, and outcomes of the numerous policy statements made by northern governments, NGOs, and international institutions that view the merging of security with development as both unproblematic and progressive. This volume addresses this new security–development nexus and investigates internal institutional logics, as well as the operation of policy, its dangers, resistances and complicity with other local and national social processes. Drawing on detailed ethnography, the contributors offer new vantage points to understand the workings of multiple, intersecting, and conflicting power structures, which whilst local, are tied to non-local systems and operate across time. This volume is a necessary critique and extension of key themes integral to the security– development nexus debate, highlighting the importance of a situated and substantive understanding of human security.


In this paper, we consider the fuzzy fixed-charge transportation problem (FFCTP). Both of fixed and transportation cost are fuzzy numbers. Contrary to previous works, Electromagnetism-like Algorithms (EM) is firstly proposed in this research area to solve the problem. Three types of EM; original EM, revised EM, and hybrid EM are firstly employed for the given problem. The latter is being firstly developed and proposed in this paper. Another contribution is to present a novel, simple and cost-efficient representation method, named string representation. It is employed for the problem and can be used in any extended transportation problems. It is also adaptable for both discrete and continues combinatorial optimization problems. The employed operators and parameters are calibrated, according to the full factorial and Taguchi experimental design. Besides, different problem sizes are considered at random to study the impacts of the rise in the problem size on the performance of the algorithms.


With reference to Jane Bennett's notion of "vital materialism," this photo essay documents and reflects on Guddling About: a series of experiments or actions carried out by artists Nick Millar and Minty Donald with the Bow River and its watershed in Calgary and Southern Alberta in August-September 2013. Each experiment is described as a set of instructions — a script or score for an event — which can be enacted in any location where human settlement has evolved around a river. The experiments will be repeated, and new ones developed, with the River Clyde in Glasgow and Southern Scotland in June-September 2014. The photo essay comments on four of the actions undertaken in Canada, reflecting on questions they raised regarding human relationships with water and rivers in the context of Calgary and Alberta, and speculating on what other issues might arise from carrying out the actions in Glasgow and Southern Scotland.


In this paper, we present an analysis of semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA)-based differential Mach-Zehnder wavelength converters with a specific focus on optimizing performance through intentional asymmetries in optical power splitting, SOA bias, and interferometer phase bias. By introducing a simple conceptual framework for understanding the amplifier pulse dynamics, two simple yet effective design rules are derived. These design rules are validated using pseudorandom code in a comprehensive computer model, demonstrating the performance penalties that result when attempting optimization using only unequal SOA biasing or phase biasing. This work illustrates that dramatic improvements in extinction and eye margin can be achieved with optimized splitter asymmetries, and have significant implications for improved network performance and converter cascadability.


Title of Dissertation: THE LENDING CHANNEL IN EMERGING ECONOMIES: A LOOK AT THE INTERNATIONAL EVIDENCE Francisco Vazquez, Doctor of Philosophy, 2005 Dissertation Directed By: Professor Carmen Reinhart, Department of Economics This thesis studies the role of banks in the transmission of nominal shocks into credit markets in emerging countries. It builds on the lending channel hypothesis, which states that, due to imperfections in capital markets, banks may not be able to completely offset a negative shock to deposits with other sources of finance. As a result, they may choose to cut credit, affecting the financing possibilities of bankdependent firms and amplifying the effects of monetary shocks on economic activity. Empirical work on the lending channel in emerging countries is scarce. This thesis argues that, since the mechanism relies on the presence of imperfections in capital markets, it should be expected to be stronger in emerging countries. Therefore, looking at the cross-country evidence provides a source of variation that has not been previously exploited in the literature. The thesis is divided in three chapters. The first develops a model of the lending channel in a small open economy to study how differences in the severity capital market imperfections affect the power of the mechanism. The second takes of the model to the data, using a bank-level panel dataset of 832 banks in 27 countries during 1986-1998. The chapter tests for systematic cross-sectional differences in the response of loan growth to monetary conditions across banks of various characteristics and across developed and emerging countries. The third chapter further looks at the evidence from emerging markets, using differences in bank ownership to proxy for unobserved financial constraints facing banks. In particular, it builds on the presumption that foreign banks operating in emerging markets are less financially constrained than domestic. The test exploits a novel bank-level dataset comprising 1565 banks in 20 emerging countries during 1989-2001, to look for systematic differences across domestic and foreign banks. The results obtained are supportive of the existence of a lending channel mechanism that is stronger in emerging countries. On the other hand, the behavior of domestic and foreign banks is not found to be markedly different, which may imply that foreign banks in emerging countries are prevented from freely resorting to upstream financing from their mother institutions. THE LENDING CHANNEL IN EMERGING ECONOMIES: A LOOK AT THE INTERNATIONAL EVIDENCE


A review of the measures of the stock of human capital used in empirical growth research reveals that human capital is mostly poorly proxied. The simple use of the most common proxy, average years of schooling of the working-age population, misspecifies the relationship between education and the stock of human capital. Based on human capital theory, the specification of human capital should be extended to allow for decreasing returns to education and for differences in the quality of a year of education. Cross-country differences in quality-adjusted human capital can account for about half the world-wide dispersion of levels of economic development and for virtually all the development differences across OECD countries.


Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) is among the most community infections worldwide. Host factors such as patients age and gender may influence the prevalence of the infection. In this study a total of 186 urine samples from patients) 1–79 years( whom attended Azady Teaching Hospital at Kirkuk province, for UTIs disorders, were examined microscopically and  cultured on suitable medias .The age group which were significantly more infected was 20 – 40 years with rate 21.1-34.9 %. The most common bacteria was Escherichia coli with rate of 60.3, 42.3% for each of females and males respectively. Followed by Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Among 13 antibiotics used for sensitivity test S. aureus and K. pneumonia were more resistance comparing with other bacteria, they were resistant to 6 antibiotics, followed by Streptococcus sp. which was resistant for five antibiotics. Proteus mirabilis was resistant for four antibiotics, each of E. coli, P. aeruginosa and Serratia sp. were resistant for only three antibiotics. The majority of isolates were sensitive to tobramycin ceftizoxime and ntrofurantion, followed by chloramphenicol and ampcillin.whereas, high level resistance was seen to augmentin amoxicillin and nalidixic acid.
Pus, epithelia and R.B.C cells were more seen in samples infected with E. coli with rate of 80.3, 83.6, 45.9 % for each type of cells respectively, followed by S. aureus and P. aeruginosa. The most urine crystals was appeared in urine samples of patients infected with E. coli followed by P. aeruginosa K. pneumonia S. aureus. In urine samples with specific gravity 1.020 – 1.025 the most crystals seen was calcium oxalate followed by amorphus urate, calcium phosphate , while in urine samples with specific gravity 1.030 the only crystal seen was calcium carbonate . The PH of most urine samples were acidic (5.0 – 5.5, 6.0 – 6.5) with rate of 56.5, 43.5 % for each PH  respectively. The PH of 70.5 % of the samples were acidic and 29.5% of them were 8.0 – 8.5. Calcium oxalate, amorphus urate and uric acid were seen in acidic urine samples, while in alkaline one calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, triple phosphate and amorphus phosphate were seen.


In this work, we propose different strategies for efficiently integrating an automated speech recognition module in the framework of a dialogue-based vocal system. The aim is the study of different ways leading to the improvement of the quality and robustness of the recognition. We first concentrate on the choice of the type of acoustic models that should be used for the speech recognition. Our goal is to evaluate the hypothesis that hybrid acoustic models, in which estimation of frame-based phoneme probabilities is made through artificial neural networks, provide performance results similar to the "classical" Hidden-Markov models using Multi-Gaussian estimations, while being more robust in generalization across tasks. We experimentally show that, due to the size of the parameter space to be explored, it is not always practically possible to achieve a performance comparable to the one of Multi-Gaussian models, and that in fact hybrid models often lead to worse recognition performance. In a second part, we focus on one of the main limitations of state-of-the-art speech recognition: the inadequacy of the one-best approach to yield a hypothesis corresponding to the right transcription. For that, we explore the solution consisting in producing, during acoustic decoding, a word lattice containing a very large number of hypotheses, that is then filtered by a syntactic analyzer using more sophisticated syntactic models, such as stochastic context-free grammars. The goal of this approach is to yield syntactically correct hypotheses for further processing. More precisely, we study the approach proach consisting in dynamically tuning the relative importance of the acoustic and language models, resulting in the increase of the lexical and syntacticonsisting variability in the word lattice. We identify and experimentally quantify two important drawbacks for this approach: its high computational cost and the impossibility to guarantee that, in practice, the correct solution is indeed present in the lattice. Finally, we study the problem of the inadequacy of the use of generic linguistic resources (language models and phonetic lexica) to yield robust and efficient recognition results. In this context, we explore the solution consisting in the integration of dynamic phonetic and language models controlled by an associated dialogue model. In this approach, restricted lexicon and language models dependent on the context of the dialogue are used in place of the complete ones. We first experimentally verify that this approach indeed yields a significant increase in speech recognition performance, and we then focus on the problem of producing, for a given application, the adequate dialogue model that can efficiently integrate the speech recognition module. In this perspective, we propose an enhancement of the used dialogue model prototyping methodology by integrating speech recognition error simulation within the Wizard-of-Oz dialogue simulation. We show that such an approach enables a more complete prototyping of the dialogue model that guarantees a better adequacy of the resulting dialogue model to the targeted vocal application.


The pest Plodia interpunctella (Hübner) is reared in many research laboratories. In a culture established in 1996, attraction of males to the female‐produced sex pheromone in flight tunnel assays gradually decreased after ≈15 years of rearing. A new culture was established to enable comparison with the old culture regarding traits associated with mate finding. Female calling activity, pheromone titre and male antennal response to pheromone components did not differ between cultures. In contrast, very few males from the old culture reached the pheromone source in flight tunnel assays compared with 61%–81% of males from the other culture. Our results highlight the importance of maintaining viable insect cultures for research purposes and suggest frequent evaluation of traits involved in chemical communication in such cultures to ensure reliable results in experiments.


Capital-to-asset ratios and growth rates of capital are often used as quantifiable measures of the health of the banking industry and of individual bank soundness. The question of what constitutes adequate levels of these measures has been of concern to bank regulators for some time. The problem of bank capital assumes greater importance during periods when bank profits are depressed, both because capital is more likely to be called upon to cushion losses on assets during such periods and because additions to capital in the form of retained earnings do not keep pace with asset growth. The result is an erosion of capital-to-asset ratios, which can be exacerbated if bank assets continue to grow rapidly.


A spectrograph concept designed for both high wavelength and high spatial resolution (in one dimension) is briefly described. This design is referred to as a single-element imaging spectrograph (SEIS). It is a one-bounce diffractive system that combines the spectral properties of a Rowland mount spectrograph with the imaging (spatial resolution) properties of a Wadsworth mount spectrograph through the use of a toroidal diffraction grating. No primary optics are necessary, making the system especially attractive for use in the extreme and far ultraviolet, where low reflectivity of common optical coatings can severely limit instrument sensitivity.


By bridging approaches and methodologies from geosciences, archaeology and history, geoarchaeology is transforming our understanding of the history and cultures that have shaped the Mediterranean basin over millennia. The sheer diversity of current research offers an excellent opportunity for moving beyond geographical frontiers and to begin addressing the needs of a multifaceted and evolving Mediterranean world. This workshop calls upon environmental scientists, archaeologists and historians to discuss and share research advances in the geoarchaeology of Mediterranean islands and coastlines. The workshop will address issues, challenges and prospects of current research on Mediterranean island and coastal environments.


Solidification is an important aspect of welding, brazing, soldering, LENS fabrication, and casting. The current trend toward utilizing large-scale process simulations and materials response models for simulation-based engineering is driving the development of new modeling techniques. However, the effective utilization of these models is, in many cases, limited by a lack of fundamental understanding of the physical processes and interactions involved. In addition, experimental validation of model predictions is required. We have developed new and expanded experimental techniques, particularly those needed for in-situ measurement of the morphological and kinetic features of the solidification process. The new high-speed, high-resolution video techniques and data extraction methods developed in this work have been used to identify several unexpected features of the solidification process, including the observation that the solidification front is often far more dynamic than previously thought. In order to demonstrate the utility of the video techniques, correlations have been made between the in-situ observations and the final solidification microstructure. Experimental methods for determination of the solidification velocity in highly dynamic pulsed laser welds have been developed, implemented, and used to validate and refine laser welding models. Using post solidification metallographic techniques, we have discovered a previously unreported orientation relationship between ferrite and austenite in the Fe-Cr-Ni alloy system, and have characterized the conditions under which this new relationship develops. Taken together, the work has expanded both our understanding of, and our ability to characterize, solidification phenomena in complex alloy systems and processes.


Observational data on the feeding and behavior of a semi free-ranging troop of mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata mexicana) were collected and analyzed to determine whether differences exist in the nutritional composition of the diet of females at different reproductive states. The reproductive states selected for study were non-gestation (control), gestation, and lactation. Mean ingestion was calculated in grams/day and in kilocalories for fats, proteins, and moisture, all considered key nutrients in these reproductive conditions. Results showed greater ingestion of fats and proteins by gestating and lactating females than by non-gestating females; however, no significant differences were found between gestating and lactating females. The mean ingestion figure in kilocalories for fats and proteins was similar to the figure reported in other studies. Finally, it is interesting to note that no differences were found in the moisture content of diet according to reproductive state. Zoo Biol 18:507–513, 1999. © 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.


European transition economies are still suffering from negative implications of economic crisis. Significant decrease in the key interest rates was followed by reduced maneuverability of central banks in providing incentives into real economies. Responsiveness of short-term interest rates to the structural shocks provides unique platform to investigate sources of their unexpected volatility and associated effects on monetary policy decision making. Moreover, sources of interest rates volatility may help to reveal side effects of the exchange rate regime choice. In the paper we analyze sources of the short-term nominal interest rates volatility in ten European transition economies by employing SVAR methodology. We observed unique patterns of the short-term interest rates responsiveness in countries with different exchange rate arrangements that contributes to the fixed versus flexible exchange rate dilemma.


Using high-resolution collisionless N-body simulations, we study the properties of tidal tails formed in the immediate vicinity of a two-component dwarf galaxy evolving in a static potential of the Milky Way (MW). The stellar component of the dwarf is initially in the form of a disc and the galaxy is placed on an eccentric orbit motivated by cold dark matter based cosmological simulations. We measure the orientation, density and velocity distribution of the stars in the tails. Due to the geometry of the orbit, in the vicinity of the dwarf, where the tails are densest and therefore most likely to be detectable, they are typically oriented towards the MW and not along the orbit. We report on an interesting phenomenon of 'tidal tail flipping': on the way from the pericentre to the apocentre, the old tails following the orbit are dissolved and new ones pointing towards the MW are formed over a short time-scale. We also find a tight linear relation between the velocity of stars in the tidal tails and their distance from the dwarf. Using mock data sets, we demonstrate that if dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies in the vicinity of the MW are tidally affected their kinematic samples are very likely contaminated by tidally stripped stars which tend to artificially inflate the measured velocity dispersion. The effect is stronger for dwarfs on their way from the pericentre to the apocentre due to the formation of new tidal tails after pericentre. Realistic mass estimates of dSph galaxies thus require removal of these stars from kinematic samples.


Every chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts must advocate for arts education. The arts need a voice in power, say people in the field, someone in the corridors of influence to argue the benefits of teaching the nation's students about classical and jazz music, ballet, and sculpture. With No Child Left Behind (NCLB) emphasizing math and reading, business and manufacturing leaders calling for workplace readiness in our graduates, and politicians citing lagging international competitiveness in science and math, the Arts Endowment chairman must utilize the bully pulpit more than ever before. Dance, music, theater, and visual arts show up ever further down the priority ladder, and arts educators feel that they must fight to maintain even a toehold in the curriculum. The Arts Endowment chairman, they insist, must help. It is no surprise, then, that in a November 2009 profile in the Wall Street Journal, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts Rocco Landesman offers pointed remarks when arts education comes up. Examine closely what he singles out about the field: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When [Landesman] starts talking about his ideas for integrating the arts in education, his rhetoric becomes less bipartisan: "We're going to try to move forward all the kids who were left behind by 'No Child Left Behind'--the kids who have talent or a passion or an idiosyncratic perspective. Those kids are important too and they should have a place in society. It's very often the arts that catches them." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The emphasis falls on the unusual student, the difficult kid, not on the arts as a subject for study. Landesman doesn't defend arts education as a rigorous discipline that builds concentration and requires practice, practice, practice. Nor does he say, We need arts education to keep alive the legacy of American art--Thomas Cole, Martha Graham, Duke Ellington ... He doesn't highlight the provocative stuff with something like, We need arts education to train young people to comprehend innovative, boundary-breaking art. Instead, the purpose is salvation. Some students don't fit the NCLB regime and other subjects don't inspire them. Talented but offbeat, they sulk through algebra, act up in the cafeteria, and drop out of school. The arts "catch" them and pull them back, turning a sinking ego on the margins into a creative citizen with "a place in society." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Saving Kids with Art To educators outside the arts field, it sounds like an odd approach to a school subject. If you want to advocate a field, you have to justify it as a discipline. It has to form a body of knowledge and skills that students study at least partly for its own sake. In the case of the arts, a graduated curriculum would incorporate technical skills and art history and theory, just as English language arts integrate literacy skills and the lineages of English, American, and world literatures. Yes, arts learning may have social and moral and professional benefits, but if people don't value the materials of the fields themselves--if they can't say that if High School X doesn't acquaint students with Renaissance painting, classical music, and modern dance, its graduates will be undereducated--then arts educators lose in the competition for funds and hours in the day. Arts education remains an extracurricular, and school administrators focused on math and reading can push it aside: The arts are fine, so let kids who are interested in them study in an afterschool program like band practice. The arts-saves-kids rationale crops up frequently near the centers of political power. I heard it repeated time and again while working on arts education policy at the Arts Endowment from 2003 to 2005. In gatherings such as the thrice-yearly meetings hosted by the Arts Education Partnership (AEP), a venture funded by the Arts Endowment and the U. …


This paper applies algorithmic analysis to large amounts of financial market text-based data to assess how narratives and sentiment play a role in driving developments in the financial system. We find that changes in the emotional content in market narratives are highly correlated across data sources. They show clearly the formation (and subsequent collapse) of very high levels of sentiment — high excitement relative to anxiety — prior to the global financial crisis. Our metrics also have predictive power for other commonly used measures of sentiment and volatility and appear to influence economic and financial variables. And we develop a new methodology that attempts to capture the emergence of narrative topic consensus which gives an intuitive representation of increasing homogeneity of beliefs prior to the crisis. With increasing consensus around narratives high in excitement and lacking anxiety likely to be an important warning sign of impending financial system distress, the quantitative metrics we develop may complement other indicators and analysis in helping to gauge systemic risk.


Recent anthropological studies consider the corporal experience as an indispensable attribute of a person's life world. They declare to go beyond the dichotomy of body and mind and present a modern person as a complex integrity of all systems and characteristics of a living organism. Body and mind are a union of vitality with different forms of their manifestation. The corporal is not regarded as an essential complement to the mental, the corporal is the mental, just in a different form of its manifestation. The implementation of a methodological turn from a rationalcognitive approach to a holistic understanding of human nature and the peculiarities of cognitive processes outlines the problem of education transformation in both theoretical and practical terms. Taking into account the complexity and multiplicity of tasks in solving this problem, the guideline in defining conceptual ideas is the understanding of a person as a multi-temporal being who lives simultaneously in multiple hierarchical levels, ontological time and the scale of processes. It is a question of necessity to construct educational activity in semantic planes: mindbody- culture, mind-body-activity, body-consciousness-reaction and others.


The adaptation process for new technology is not yet well understood. This study analyzes how an inter-organizational virtual team, tasked with creating a highly innovative product over a 10

month period, adapted the use of a collaborative technology and successfully achieved its challenging objectives. The study of such a virtual team is especially useful for extending our understanding of the adaptation process as virtual teams have more malleable structures than typical organizational units and controlled group experiments. Data were obtained from observations of weekly virtual meetings, electronic log files, interviews, and weekly questionnaires administered to team members. We found that the team initially experienced significant misalignments among the pre-existing organizational environment, group, and technology structures. To resolve these misalignments, the team modified the organizational

environment and group structures, leaving the technology structure intact. However, as the team proceeded, a series of events unfolded that caused the team to reevaluate and further modify its structures. This final set of modifications involved reverting back to the pre-existing organizational environment, while new technology and group structures emerged as different from both the pre-existing and the initial ones. A new model of the adaptation process-one that integrates these findings and those of several previous models-is proposed.


To address data protection concerns, authorities and standards bodies worldwide have released a plethora of regulations, guidelines, and software controls to be applied to Cloud data. As a result, service providers maintaining their end-user's private attributes have seen a surge in compliance requirements. Since most of these regulations are not available in a machine-processable format, it requires significant manual effort to adhere to them. Often many of the laws have overlapping rules, but as they are not referencing each other, providers must duplicate efforts to comply with each regulation. We have done a detailed study of all the data protection regulations that apply to Cloud data. We have developed an integrated, semantically rich knowledge graph that captures these various data compliance regulations. It includes the data threats and security controls that are needed to mitigate the risks. In this paper, we present this knowledge graph in detail, along with the system that we have developed to evaluate it. We have validated our knowledge graph against the privacy policies of various Cloud service providers like Amazon, Google, IBM, and Rackspace. This knowledge graph is available in the public domain and can be used by organizations to automate their compliance processes and set their enterprise Cloud security policies.


Abstract. Long-term time series of the atmospheric composition are essential for environmental research and thus require compatible, multi-decadal monitoring activities. The current data quality objectives of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) for carbon monoxide (CO) in the atmosphere are very challenging to meet with the measurement techniques that have been used until recently. During the past few years, new spectroscopic techniques came to market with promising properties for trace gas analytics. The current study compares three instruments that have recently become commercially available (since 2011) with the best currently available technique (Vacuum UV Fluorescence) and provides a link to previous comparison studies. The instruments were investigated for their performance regarding repeatability, reproducibility, drift, temperature dependence, water vapour interference and linearity. Finally, all instruments were examined during a short measurement campaign to assess their applicability for long-term field measurements. It could be shown that the new techniques perform considerably better compared to previous techniques, although some issues, such as temperature influence and cross sensitivities, need further attention.


In this paper we present a qualitative study of social media marketing by small business owners in Ireland. We present data from interviews with six owner/managers, six employees, and six experts. Exploring the three perspectives simultaneously facilitates a three-way narrative. We apply narrative structuring as proposed by Kvale (2006) in order to provide insight into the understanding, practices, motivations, behavior, and activities of small businesses as they relate to marketing; specifically, social media-based marketing. The delivery of skills to small businesses create challenges for higher education in terms of the design of curriculum, pedagogy and accreditation. A significant finding of this study is the influence that the attitudes, knowledge and capacity of the owners have on their propensity to engage with social media marketing. There is a role for higher education in bridging this gap. However, this is not just in the delivering of traditional skills, but working as facilitators and developing student, graduate and employee advocates through a comprehensive provision of experiential and work-based learning initiatives. This paper presents novel insights and improves our understanding of the role of higher education in supporting the training needs of small businesses. In our conclusion we present a series of recommendations on the design of customized training programs for small businesses.


*Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, University of Mosul, Mosul, Iraq. ** Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, Hawler Medical University, Erbil, Iraq. World Health Organization (WHO) 2000 into 3 different grades: most are benign (grade I), between 5% 15% of meningiomas are atypical (grade II), while only 1-2% are anaplastic (grade III) (2) .They have a wide range of histopathological appearances. These subtypes share immunohistochemical and ultra-structural characteristics . ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: In meningioma the tumor grade, subtype, and extent of surgical resection are strong prognostic factors, the growth of this tumor is still unpredictable, and additional prognostic markers are needed. Many studies have shown that the detection of the proliferative potential of meningioma by Ki-67 (MIB-1) and the detection of the progesterone receptor might predict the natural history of tumor and patient survival. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the proliferative fraction Ki-67 (MIB-1) and progesterone receptor in meningioma, To correlate the expression of these two markers with various clinicopathological parameters, To compare these results with other studies . PATIENTS AND METHODS: This is a prospective study, in which 50 cases of meningioma were collected in Nineveh province. These cases were examined immunohistochemically. The results of these two markers were correlated with various clinicopathological parameters. RESULTS: The mean age of all cases was 46 years. There were 16 male and 34 female patients. According to the W.H.O 2000 classification, there were 84% grade I, 10% were grade II and 6 % were grade III. Only 14% of the patients had a history of recurrence. Progesterone receptor was positive in 72% of all cases. Significant relation was observed between the progesterone receptor and the patients age .It was significantly higher in female than male. A significant relationship was found between progesterone receptor with grade and histological types. Thirty three out of 43 cases without recurrence had positive progesterone receptor. The mean±Standard deviation (SD) of Ki67 Labeling Index (Ki-67 LI) was 2.7±4.2%. No significant relation was found between the Ki-67 LI and patients age. The male patients had a higher Ki-67 LI than that of the female. Significant relation was found between Ki-67 LI and the grade of meningioma . The mean of Ki-67 LI in the recurrent cases was higher than in non recurrent cases. An inverse relationship was found between Ki-67 LI and progesterone receptor . CONCLUSION: Progesterone receptor showed a significant relation with the age and histological types. Ki-67 LI had a direct significant association with the grade and the recurrent cases., while inverse relation was observed between the progesterone receptor with the grade and the recurrent cases. An inverse relationship was observed between the progesterone receptor and Ki-67 LI.


Ballomma gen. nov. is described in the zodariid subfamily Cryptothelinae. It is characterized by the pairs of adjacent anterior median eyes and anterior lateral eyes and triangular palpal tarsus in the female, the concave tegulum with thin embolus in the male. Apart from the type species B. erasmus gen. et sp. nov. (♂♀), the genus contains B. haddadi gen. et sp. nov. (♂♀), B. neethlingi gen. et sp. nov. (♂♀), and B. legala gen. et sp. nov. (♀). A key to the species is provided. The restricted distribution of the genus is discussed.


We propose and demonstrate an active contour technique to track fast-rolling leukocytes observed in vivo from video microscopy. A rolling leukocyte is an activated white blood cell that interacts with the vessel wall (the endothelium) in the inflammatory process. Tracking is enhanced here to accommodate fast-moving cells. To tackle the task of tracking wherein only low temporal resolution is possible, we have introduced an energy-minimizing framework and obtained a partial differential equation (PDE) based active contour evolution technique. The proposed PDEs are shown to be an initialization-insensitive version of the gradient vector flow (GVF) proposed by Xu and Prince (1998). We modify the GVF-PDEs by adding a Dirichlet type boundary condition (BC) based on the initial position of the active contour and the direction of cell movement. Using actual intravital experiments, we compare the performance of the proposed active contour tracker with the Dirichlet BC, the active contour tracker without the BC, the correlation tracker and the centroid tracker. The comparative results provide evidence of the advantages of the proposed method in terms of increased number of frames successfully tracked and reduced localization error.


Performance analysis often considers numerous factors contributing to performance, and the relative importance of these factors is evolving based on dynamic conditions and requirements. Investigating large numbers of factors and understanding individual factors' predictability within the ultimate performance are challenging tasks. A visual analytics approach that integrates interactive analysis, novel visual representations, and predictive machine learning models can provide new capabilities to examine performance effectively and thoroughly. Currently, only limited research has been done on the possible applications of visual analytics for performance evaluation. In this dissertation, two specific types of performance analysis are presented: (1) organizational employee performance evaluation and (2) performance improvement of machine learning models with interactive feature selection. Both application scenarios leverage the human-in-the-loop approach to assist the identification of influential factors. For organizational employee performance evaluation, a novel visual analytics system, MetricsVis, is developed to support exploratory organizational performance analysis. MetricsVis incorporates hybrid evaluation metrics that integrate quantitative measurements of observed employee achievements and subjective feedback on the relative importance of these achievements to demonstrate employee performance at and between multiple levels regarding the organizational hierarchy. MetricsVis II extends the original system by including actual supervisor ratings and user-guided rankings to capture preferences from users through derived weights. Comparing user preferences with objective employee workload data enables users to relate user evaluation to historical observations and even discover potential bias. For interactive feature selection and model evaluation, a visual analytics system, FeatureExplorer, allows users to refine and diagnose a model iteratively by selecting features based on their domain knowledge, interchangeable features, feature importance, and the resulting model performance. FeatureExplorer enables users to identify stable, trustable, and credible predictive features that contribute significantly to a prediction model.


This paper reviews the importance of traditional natural resources management practices in Ghana. It highlights the roles of traditional beliefs, taboos and rituals in the management and conservation of key natural resources in the country. The paper is based on desk studies undertaken as part of anthropological studies conducted in the forest-savanna transitional agroecological zone of Ghana to study the spirituality of forests and conservation. Among the major conclusions of the paper is that although the potential of traditional natural resources management for biodiversity conservation in Ghana is enormous, the sustainability of these practices is seriously threatened. This stems from the rapid changes in the belief systems. Both biophysical and socio-economic factors were found to underlie these changes. The breakdown of traditional beliefs and associated taboos which underpin traditional natural resources management practices were found to be the greatest threat to the sustainability of these practices. The paper recommends that more anthropological research should investigate local perceptions of forest space and landscape, biodiversity conservation and traditional beliefs, and their significance for natural resources management. Such studies would provide valuable insights into the changing values of local people in relation to protected areas such as sacred groves and forest reserves and the management of other natural resources.


The small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is adopting digital media in culturally specific ways. For this traditionally oral culture with little interest in newspapers, digital media such as Facebook and Twitter sit comfortably alongside more traditional forms of media such as mani stones and lama dancing. In this article I use Benedict Anderson's theory of media for creating nationhood and an imagined political community as a prism to consider the media landscape that is developing in Bhutan. The unique media matrix that is emerging from all the modern media platforms available provides a fresh perspective from which to consider the baggage of print capitalism and to rethink notions of print literacy versus digital literacy.


Dinur's celebrated proof of the PCP theorem alternates two main steps in several iterations: gap amplification to increase the soundness gap by a large constant factor (at the expense of much larger alphabet size), and a composition step that brings back the alphabet size to an absolute constant (at the expense of a fixed constant factor loss in the soundness gap). We note that the gap amplification can produce a Label Cover CSP. This allows us to reduce the alphabet size via a direct long-code based reduction from Label Cover to a Boolean CSP. Our composition step thus bypasses the concept of Assignment Testers from Dinur's proof, and we believe it is more intuitive - it is just a gadget reduction. The analysis also uses only elementary facts (Parseval's identity) about Fourier Transforms over the hypercube.


We use the term networked optimization to emphasize a sustained but changing set of techniques, technologies, and calculations to decide the best life -- the optimal -- through infrastructures, design, mathematics and engineering. Optimization is a vital concept at a time of critical interest in infrastructural power. Usually defined as doing actions to make the best or most effective use of something, our panel highlights the different uses of the term across the internet. Used as a selling point by many technology companies, optimization means different things to different actors. Perhaps the most important question on this is optimized for who? From Facebook to 5G, our panelists work across technical and theoretical literatures as well as computer science and humanities to identify the social implications of networked optimization. Author #1 examines how Facebook's personalization ideology is engineered into its infrastructure to influence people's behaviors to maximize its advertising value. Author #2 looks to the discourses and infrastructure of Google's cloud computing that promise a form of global social engineering. Author #3 takes these questions out of the cloud and into the next-generation of the Internet, 5G. The promised new wireless infrastructure makes a major shift in the meta-governance of communications and re-consolidates power in network operators. Finally, Author #4 looks for forms of resistance through the development of Protective Optimization Technologies that help people counter efforts to nudge and shape their behaviours.


Exit (owners selling their shares) and voice (owners active in corporate activities) are important ingredients in the process by which mass privatization changes managerial behaviour in transition countries. We examine the structure of ownership and the extent of exit and voice in one such country, Mongolia. We document the size of ownership changes since privatization (through mergers, spin‐offs, and stock sales) and examine which owners are changing in importance. We scrutinize enterprise governance, examining patterns of violations of companylaw and deviations from reasonable criteria for effective governance. We show that ownership changes and the quality of governance are correlated. JEL classification: P11, P21, O53, H70, H20.


The European Commission unveiled a new proposal for an EU regulatory framework on artificial intelligence (AI) in April 2021. The draft AI act is the first ever attempt to enact a horizontal regulation of AI. The proposed legal framework focuses on the specific utilisation of AI systems and associated risks. The Commission proposes to establish a technology-neutral definition of AI systems in EU law and to lay down a classification for AI systems with different requirements and obligations tailored on a 'risk-based approach'. Some AI systems presenting 'unacceptable' risks would be prohibited. A wide range of 'high-risk' AI systems would be authorised, but subject to a set of requirements and obligations to gain access to the EU market. Those AI systems presenting only 'low or minimal risk' would be subject to very light transparency obligations. While generally supporting the Commission's proposal, stakeholders and experts call for a number of amendments, including revising the definition of AI systems, broadening the list of prohibited AI systems, strengthening enforcement and redress mechanisms and ensuring proper democratic oversight of the design and implementation of EU AI regulation.


Many production activities generate undesirable outputs in conjunction with the desirable outputs. In this paper we present the first estimates of a multiple-input, multiple-output directional distance function that relates good and bad inputs from home, school, and environment to good and bad outputs, measured as children's cognitive and behavioral development. This household directional distance function is estimated using a balanced panel of 369 families from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Sample for 1996 to 2000 using the generalized method of moments within estimator and instrumental variables. We recover consistent partial effects for the time-invariant variables in a second-stage regression and estimate their corrected asymptotic standard errors. We then compute and examine productivity differences among households defined as the increase (decrease) in good (bad) outputs that families could attain with constant inputs if they were operating on the technological frontier. Our estimates suggest the presence of significant inefficiency among sample families that diminishes over time.


BACKGROUND
  To reduce risk of neural tube defects, current guidance recommends that all women who could become pregnant should take a daily 400 μg folic acid supplement before conception and until the 12th week of pregnancy. It is recognised that compliance with this guidance is sub-optimal, although little is known about the reasons why. The present study aims to explore the rationale behind women's decision-making on folic acid supplement use to inform health communications.

METHODS
  Women attending routine health visitor led baby clinics completed a questionnaire to establish their folic acid use in their most recent pregnancy. Participants were then invited to join focus group discussions to explore motivators and barriers to folic acid supplement use before and during pregnancy.

RESULTS
  Of 292 women approached, 211 (70%) provided information on supplement use. Of these, 67 (31%) reported having taken folic acid supplements as recommended; 118 (56%) only during pregnancy [22 (18%) only intermittently]; and 26 (12%) had not taken folic acid at all. Eight focus group discussions were held comprising 24 participants. Discussions indicated the rationale behind current recommendations was known. Participants often linked folic acid use with morning sickness, and invoked busy lives, competing priorities for concern, and poor memory in accounting for intermittent use. Building a 'lay evidence base' from their own experiences, many cited healthy pregnancy outcomes without supplement use and expressed scepticism about its preventive action.

CONCLUSIONS
  The findings of the present study highlight the importance of guidance on the importance of daily folic acid supplement use, the severity of neural tube defects and the provision of evidence on risk reduction.


Despite the enormous potential of globalization in accelerating economic growth through greater integration into the world economy the impact of globalization on poverty reduction has been uneven. Asia has been the major beneficiary of globalization where high growth rates and its labor-intensive pattern contributed to a spectacular reduction in poverty. In contrast, the integration process in Latin America did not contribute to accelerating growth and employment and even led, in some instances, to an informalization of the labor force. In spite of opening up, the failure of sub-Saharan Africa to diversify and undergo structural transformation has led to the persistence of low growth and debilitating poverty. While the impact of globalization on poverty is context-specific, we argue that countries intent on benefitting from globalization need to adopt a pro-active stand in formulating regional and national strategies to enhance the potentially positive effects of globalization and moderate the negative effects.


This casebook offers law professors and students a doctrinally comprehensive, theoretically ambitious, and up-to-date exploration of the treatment of sexuality and gender in American public law. Much shortened as well as updated, the Third Edition starts with a doctrinal overview before focusing tightly on Lawrence v. Texas (the leading sodomy case) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (the leading abortion case) and the post- Lawrence and post- Casey treatment of sexuality and gender in the law. Especially exciting are the casebook's novel materials on the new liberty arguments in favor of discrimination against gay people and women, increasing documentation of discrimination against transgendered people and the law's evolving response, the campaign materials supporting California Proposition 8 and the exciting litigation seeking to overturn California's new ban against same-sex marriage, the """"T-shirt wars"""" in American high schools and the tough First Amendment issues raised therein, the clashes between religion and gay-friendly rules, and the road toward the end of the military's exclusion of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, as well as the military's continued discrimination against intersex and transgender persons. There is no area of legal inquiry more interesting and more relevant to people's lives than Sexuality, Gender, and the Law. And the Eskridge and Hunter casebook offers up these treasures in a volume that has fewer pages but more insights than ever before.


This article is concerned with assessing the effectiveness of markets for complex professional services in social care. The issue is explored through an account of developments in the children's residential care sector. Over the past five years there has been a steady expansion in the role of external markets in this area. However, this was not required by the Children Act 1989 and has become the subject of considerable debate between policy makers and practitioners. While some favour an extension of choice, others argue that a further decline in local authority run provision will be both costly and detrimental in terms of meeting key policy goals. In order to assess these claims, reference is made to the findings of a study of purchasing practices for children's residential care in twelve local authorities in England and Wales. The impact of the emerging market is analysed along two dimensions. Firstly, we assess how far it is operating efficiently, concentrating on market structure, information and transaction costs. Secondly, attention is given to the impact of market changes on the policy objectives of: localized placements; ensuring adequate safeguards; and matching needs and services. The results reveal that there have been significant costs associated with markets in children's services. In a context of government efforts to promote modes of service delivery on the basis of 'what works', these difficulties have certain implications. Not only do they draw attention to the need for greater collaboration between purchasers and providers, they also point to the continued relevance and usefulness of local authority managed provision.


This paper examines the implications of the liberalization of capital outflows in China, India, Brazil, and South Africa (CIBS) for other developing countries. It focuses on their prospects of attracting not only foreign direct investment (FDI), but also portfolio capital flows from CIBS. To inform the discussion, two steps are taken: first, in order to identify the type of capital flows that might come from CIBS, the paper briefly describes capital account liberalization measures undertaken by CIBS to date and future intended liberalization. Second, it maps geographic distribution of outward FDI and foreign portfolio investment in the recent past, which are taken as possible predictors of future flows. The paper shows that portfolio investment goes mainly to OECD countries and offshore financial centres, and only a small share to developing countries. But, within developing countries, CIBS' neighbouring countries have shown a greater ability to attract this type of investment, compared with other developing countries.


Arboretum is a collection or chard trees with a particular area contains various types of trees planted wherever possible to follow their natural habitat and are intended as a biodiversity conservation area and at least be able to improve or maintain the climatic conditions around the city of Pekanbaru. Arboretum of University of Riau region has an area of ±10 ha. Arboretum is located in Pekanbaru City with a height of 5-50 m above sea level. The average temperature is 28-29 0C Arboretum with average humidity is 74-75%. This study aims to determine the visitor understanding of the meaning and function of Arboretum of University of Riau. This study will be conducted at the Arboretum of University of Riau. This research was conducted in December 2014 and January 2015. This is a descriptive study that attempted to describe exactly what data is being investigated. Based on the results of the research shows that the overall level of understanding of the visitors to the arboretum has been relatively high. Based on the classification of educational level of understanding of visitors to the arboretum is dominated by the high school level (high) due to the Arboretum located in the campus environment. While based on the classification level of understanding of visitors to the arboretum age 10-20 years of age (High), 21-30 years (Medium).


'eGovernment for You' (EGOV4U) was a European Commission (EC) funded project developed to pilot models of multi-channel, public and community e-services designed to tackle social exclusion and disadvantage through a range of initiatives delivered by five project partners from a variety of European countries. Project evaluation employed a theory driven approach and the use of mixed methods for data capture and analysis. This paper employs the realist CMO (context+mechanism = outcome) approach to evaluate EGOV4U and produce an analysis of some of the key generative mechanisms, causal powers and contiguous contexts relevant to participants in a large-scale, trans-national development project.