Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of the internet as a channel for voluntary communication of financial information by companies listed on two stock exchanges in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It aims to focus on the extent and variety of internet financial reporting (IFR) by these companies. While IFR has become standard practice, rather than the exception, in most western countries, empirical evidence of the phenomenon in the Middle East region is only just emerging. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature by providing evidence of voluntary use of IFR for communication of financial information by UAE-listed companies. Design/methodology/approach - The 132 companies listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (67) and the Dubai Financial Market (65) in the UAE were investigated to ascertain whether they maintain websites; and if so, whether these sites are being used as a channel for voluntary communication of corporate financial information. Findings - While about 87 percent of UAE-listed companies were found to operate websites, only 88 of these companies (about 67 percent) use their websites to communicate financial information. However, IFR is not restricted to the publication of annual financial statements only as the companies also disclose financial highlights through their websites using a variety of formats including PDF, flash and html. Practical implications - The results of this study indicate that, similar to other Middle Eastern countries, IFR is still at an embryonic stage in the UAE and there are considerable opportunities and challenges for all stakeholder parties in corporate communication and reporting. Regulatory authorities may need, at this early stage of development of IFR practices, to develop and establish effective strategies to ensure standard and consistent use of this channel of financial information communication for the benefit of all stakeholders. Originality/value - The study highlights the challenges and opportunities for IFR in the Middle East Region, where it has been sparsely studied. In particular, it focused on the UAE, where literature on IFR practices is, to the best of the authors' knowledge, not yet available.


An approach to the recovery of 3-D volumetric primitives from a single 2-D image is presented. The approach first takes a set of 3-D volumetric modeling primitives and generates a hierarchical aspect representation based on the projected surfaces of the primitives; conditional probabilities capture the ambiguity of mappings between levels of the hierarchy. From a region segmentation of the input image, the authors present a formulation of the recovery problem based on the grouping of the regions into aspects. No domain-independent heuristics are used; only the probabilities inherent in the aspect hierarchy are exploited. Once the aspects are recovered, the aspect hierarchy is used to infer a set of volumetric primitives and their connectivity. As a front end to an object recognition system, the approach provides the indexing power of complex 3-D object-centered primitives while exploiting the convenience of 2-D viewer-centered aspect matching; aspects are used to represent a finite vocabulary of 3-D parts from which objects can be constructed. >


Code duplication, or code cloning, is a common phenomena in the development of large software systems. Developers have a love-hate relationship with cloning. On one hand, cloning speeds up the development process. On the other hand, clone management is a challenging task as software evolves. Cloning has commonly been considered as undesirable for software maintenance and several research efforts have been devoted to automatically detect clones and eliminate clones aggressively. However, there is little empirical work done to analyze the consequences of cloning with respect to the software quality. Recent studies show that cloning is not necessarily undesirable. Cloning can used to minimize risks and there are cases where cloning is used as a design technique. In this thesis, three visualization techniques are proposed to aid researchers in analyzing cloning in studying large software systems. All of the visualizations abstract and display cloning information at the subsystem level but with different emphases. At the subsystem level, clones can be classified as external clones and internal clones. External clones refer to code duplicates that reside in the same subsystem, whereas external clones are clones that are spread across different subsystems. Software architecture quality attributes such as cohesion and coupling are introduced to contribute to the study of cloning at the architecture level. The Clone Cohesion and Coupling (CCC) Graph and the Clone System Hierarchy (CSH) Graph display the cloning information for one single release. In particular, the CCC Graph highlights the amount of internal and external cloning for each subsystems; whereas the CSH Graph focuses more on the details of the spread of cloning. Finally, the Clone System Evolution (CSE) Graph shows the evolution of cloning over a period of time.


Considerable time and money are expended in the pursuit of catching fish with hooks (e.g., handlining, angling, longlining, trolling, drumlining) across the recreational, commercial and subsistence fishing sectors. The fish and other aquatic organisms (e.g., squid) that are captured are not a random sample of the population because external (e.g., turbidity) and underlying internal variables (e.g., morphology) contribute to variation in vulnerability to hooks. Vulnerability is the probability of capture for any given fish in a given location at a given time and mechanistically explains the population-level catchability coefficient, which is a fundamental and usually time-varying (i.e., dynamic) variable in fisheries science and stock assessment. The mechanistic drivers of individual vulnerability to capture are thus of interest to fishers by affecting catch rates, but are also of considerable importance to fisheries managers whenever hook-and-line-generated data contribute to stock assessments. In this paper, individual vulnerability to hooks is conceptualized as a dynamic state, in which individual fish switch between vulnerable and invulnerable states as a function of three interdependent key processes: an individual fish's internal state, its encounter with the gear, and the characteristics of the encountered gear. We develop a new conceptual framework of "vulnerability," summarize the major drivers of fish vulnerability, and conclude that fish vulnerability involves complex processes. To understand vulnerability, a shift to interdisciplinary research and the integration of ecophysiology, fish ecology, fisheries ecology and human movement ecology, facilitated by new technological developments, is required.


After minus-strand strong-stop DNA (-sssDNA) is synthesized, the RNA template is degraded by the RNase H activity of the reverse transcriptase (RT), generating a single-stranded DNA. The 3' end of -sssDNA from HIV-1 can form a hairpin; this hairpin will self-prime in vitro. We previously used a model substrate, -R ssDNA, which corresponds to the 3' end of the -sssDNA of HIV-1, to show that the self-priming of this model substrate could be prevented by annealing a 17-nt-long DNA oligonucleotide to the 3' end of -R ssDNA in the presence of HIV-1 nucleocapsid (NC) protein. Similar model substrates were prepared for HIV-2 and HTLV-1; the R regions of these two viruses are longer and form more complex structures than the R region of the HIV-1 genome. However, the size of the R region and the complexity of the secondary structures they can form do not affect self-priming or its prevention. The efficiency of the self-priming is related to the relative stabilities of the conformations of -R ssDNA that can and cannot induce self-priming. For the three viruses (HIV-1, HIV-2, and HTLV-1), the size of the DNA oligonucleotide needed to block self-priming in the presence of NC is similar to the expected size of the piece of RNA left after degradation of the RNA template during reverse transcription. We also found that when the 3' end of -R ssDNA is annealed to a complementary DNA oligonucleotide, it is a good substrate for efficient nonspecific strand transfer to other single-stranded DNA molecules.


Background and aims Current definitions for bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) lack objectivity. A physiological definition for BPD where the level of shunt and the reduction in ventilation-perfusion ratio serve as an objective grading of severity has been suggested. Shunt and reduced VA:Q can be measured non-invasively by determining the relationship of arterial oxygen saturations (SpO2) to the fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO2). Our aims were to: 1. quantify shunt and reduced VA:Q in infants with BPD and in preterm infants without BPD. 2.correlate shunt and VA:Q to clinical grading of severity where possible Methods The group study population consisted of 10 infants (two with 'No BPD', two with 'Mild BPD' and six with 'Severe BPD') based on the NIH grades of BPD severity. Stepwise alterations in FiO2 were made, whilst ensuring infants stayed within the Monash Newborn SpO2 alarm limits. A two compartmental model of gas exchange was used to derive the SpO2 vs. FiO2 curves and values for shunt and VA:Q. Results Five out of six infants with 'Severe BPD' and one infant with 'Mild BPD' had VA:Q well below normal, range 0.34 to 0.56. Two infants with 'No BPD' and two infants with BPD, had SpO2 vs. FiO2 curves suggesting no impairment in gas exchange. The level of shunt and reduction in VA:Q did not consistently reflect the clinical grading of BPD. Conclusions Our results reinforce the need for a more objective definition of BPD as the possibility of misclassification using the clinical definition occurred on three occasions.


BACKGROUND
The wide range of clinical presentation of orthostatic vasovagal syncope suggests different underlying changes in the cardiac autonomic modulation.

METHODS AND RESULTS
To evaluate the beat-by-beat modifications in the neural control of heart period preceding a syncopal event, we studied RR interval variability in 22 healthy subjects who experienced fainting for the first time during a 90 degrees head-up tilt and in 22 control subjects by means of time-variant power spectral analysis. Sympathetic and vagal modulations to the sinoatrial node were assessed by the normalized power of the low-frequency (LF, approximately 0.1-Hz) and high-frequency (HF, approximately 0.25-Hz) oscillatory components of RR variability. When the patients were supine, no differences were observed in the hemodynamic and spectral parameters of the 2 groups. During the tilt procedure, RR, LFNU, and HFNU (NU=normalized units) values were relatively stable in control subjects. During early tilt (T1), subjects with syncope had reduced RR intervals compared with control subjects. In 13 subjects with syncope, RR decreased while LFNU and LF/HF increased in the last minute of tilt before syncope (T2). Conversely, in the remaining 9 fainters, LFNU and LF/HF decreased from T1 to T2 and HFNU increased slightly.

CONCLUSIONS
Two different patterns may be recognized in the cardiac autonomic changes preceding an occasional vasovagal event, namely, one characterized by a progressive increase of the marker of cardiac sympathetic modulation up to the onset of syncope, the other by a sympathetic inhibition with an impending vagal predominance. The recognition of different pathophysiological mechanisms in fainters may have important therapeutic implications.


The metabolic processes of jellyfish can produce dissolved organic matter (DOM) which will influence the functioning of the aquatic ecosystems, yet the optical properties of DOM released by jellyfish are unknown. Here we report the absorption and fluorescence properties of DOM released by a medusa species Black fordia virginica during a 24 h incubation experiment. Compared with the control group, an obvious increase in the concentrations of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), absorption coefficient (a280) and total dissolved nitrogen (TDN) was observed in incubation group. This clearly demonstrated the release of DOM, chromophoric DOM (CDOM) and dissolved nutrients by B. virginica which feed on enough of Artemia sp. before the experiment. The increase in spectral slope ratio (SR) and decrease in humification index (HIX) indicated that the released DOM was less-humified and had relatively lower molecular weight. Parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) decomposed the fluorescence matrices of DOM into three humic-like components (C1-C3) and one protein-like component (C4). The Fmax of two components (C2: < 250, 295/386 nm; C4: 275/334 nm) with the emission wavelength < 400 nm increased significantly during the metabolic process of B. virginica. However, the Fmax of the other two components with the emission wavelength > 400 nm showed little changes. Thus, we suggested a zooplankton index (ZIX) to trace and characterize the DOM excreted by metabolic activity of zooplankton, which is calculated as the ratio of the sum of Fmax of all fluorescence components with the emission wavelength < 400 nm to the sum of Fmax of the other components with the emission wavelength > 400 nm.


- A leading practitioner of Chinese medicine provides Western therapists with a comprehensive, illustrated handbook for the noninvasive treatment of childhood conditions.- Provides alternatives to Western medicine that are more tolerable to children and better for their long-term health.- With over 200 drawings and photographs to guide practitioners through the massage treatments in the text.- A valuable addition to the repertoire of any health practitioner.A noninvasive alternative to conventional Western medicine, Chinese pediatric massage provides practitioners with greater flexibility in choosing a successful course of treatment to improve the health and energy of children without overwhelming their systems. Chinese pediatric massage has fewer side effects than other forms of treatment, making it more tolerable for children, easier on their parents, and more effective in improving the patient's long-term health.This clearly illustrated guide is designed to give all health care providers--massage therapists, homeopathic and allopathic practitioners, and bodyworkers--who know the general concepts of traditional Chinese medicine the tools and knowledge they need to successfully use Chinese pediatric massage in treating their patients. Effective on children from birth through preadolescence, Chinese pediatric massage is a valuable therapeutic addition to the repertoire of any practitioner. It considers how a child's energetic framework differs from that of an adult, and accounts for these physiological and anatomical differences through assessment, point locations, and treatment.


As 21st-century companies realize they'll need to be green to compete, sustainable ideas are spreading like wildfire throughout all fields ofmodern business. In The Green Workplace, Leigh Stringer, an expert on sustainable workplace design and strategy,shows companies on the cusp of radically transforming theirpractices how to bring together diverse teams and establish new organizational governance for creative problem-solving in greening their workplace. Her hands-on green strategies are based on concrete and cost-effective changes such as:- working from home - ways to cut commuting costs- video conferencing to cut down on travel- increasing access to natural light to save energy- and more.Stringer explains howmanagers can implement these changes smoothly and efficiently. In solving key problems, she shows companies how a green business reduces costs, increases productivity, improves recruiting and retention, and increases shareholder value, in addition to benefiting the environment.


Mechanistic models with differential equations are a key component of scientific applications of machine learning. Inference in such models is usually computationally demanding, because it involves repeatedly solving the differential equation. The main problem here is that the numerical solver is hard to combine with standard inference techniques. Recent work in probabilistic numerics has developed a new class of solvers for ordinary differential equations (ODEs) that phrase the solution process directly in terms of Bayesian filtering. We here show that this allows such methods to be combined very directly, with conceptual and numerical ease, with latent force models in the ODE itself. It then becomes possible to perform approximate Bayesian inference on the latent force as well as the ODE solution in a single, linear complexity pass of an extended Kalman filter / smoother - that is, at the cost of computing a single ODE solution. We demonstrate the expressiveness and performance of the algorithm by training, among others, a non-parametric SIRD model on data from the COVID-19 outbreak.


A major shortcoming of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) is their highly non-linear optical-power-versus-current characteristic. This non-linearity largely restricts the dynamic range and the transmission power of common optical wireless transmitters. This restriction degrades the performance of optical wireless communication (OWC) systems. In this paper, a novel transmitter concept for OWC is proposed which employs discrete power level stepping. The transmitter consists of several on-off-switchable emitter groups. These groups are individually controlled and emit fixed specific optical intensities in parallel. As optical intensities constructively add up, the total emitted intensity is generated by the sum of the emitted intensities of all activated emitter groups. Therefore, the proposed transmitter solution can generate several discrete optical intensity levels which can be used for optical wireless signal transmission. The transmitter design allows the utilisation of the full dynamic range of LEDs or laser diodes by avoiding non-linearity issues. Moreover, costs and complexity of the optical front-end are significantly reduced as neither a (DAC) nor high-speed current controllers are required. This simple design also provides improved power efficiency. Transmission experiments prove the functionality of the implemented optical transmitter. It is shown that the practical performance of the transmitter closely matches the expected performance determined by computer simulations. Moreover, the implemented optical transmitter is compared to an electrical transmission which provides ideal linearity characteristics, and therefore corresponds to an ideal conventional optical transceiver.


Abstract To evaluate the net effects of classroom disciplinary practices, policy makers and educators must understand not only their effects on disciplined students but also their effects on non-disciplined peers. In this study, we estimate the link between peer suspensions and non-suspended students' learning trajectories in a California school district where middle and high school students took up to twelve basic skills tests in mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA) over the course of the 2009–10, 2010–11, and 2011–12 school years. We find that Hispanic students, students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, English language learners, students enrolled in special education, and low-achieving students are disproportionately exposed to classmate suspensions. Analyses with student and classroom fixed effects show that student achievement in mathematics increases when their classmates receive suspensions, particularly suspensions attributed to disruptive behavior. We find no association between classmate suspension and ELA achievement. Because these results come from schools in which suspensions are relatively rare events, they may not generalize to settings with draconian disciplinary cultures. Nonetheless, our findings imply that suspensions, when used appropriately, can improve the academic achievement of non-suspended students, particularly for students from vulnerable populations.


Naso lituratus (orangespine unicornfish) and Naso unicornis (bluespine unicornfish) are widespread species that are heavily targeted in many nearshore fisheries of Pacific Island countries. In addition to providing a critical food and income source, both species fulfil critical ecological functions in the top-down control of coral reef macroalgae; particularly fleshy brown algae (i.e. Sargassum spp.) which can out-compete and smother corals. Despite heavy long-term harvesting, there are currently very limited species-specific management measures. This review assesses the biology and ecology of both species, and combines this with the current status of the fisheries in the Pacific, and proposes realistic ecosystem-based species-specific fisheries policies. Although unicornfish populations have displayed continuing resilience to heavy fishing pressure, reports of declining stocks combined with a range of life-history traits (i.e. longevity, habitat-specificity, easily targeted aggregations), indicate that both species are vulnerable to overexploitation. Modern day common fishing practices such as scuba and night-time spearfishing are intensifying their exploitation. The most effective management measure would be fishing effort constraints, including banning modern and unsustainable methods. However, owing to enforcement limitations in Pacific Islands, the most practical approach to management would include a combination of management tools, including periodic sales bans around identified spawning times (i.e. Hawaii; May–June), and size/catch limits. Furthermore, home range data suggest that even with limited knowledge, small MPAs ( 10 km linear distance are recommended for N. lituratus. This comprehensive review confirms the pressing need for implementation of the aforementioned management practices to protect these species in regions where they are heavily targeted, and prevent the impairment of their critical ecological function and importance as a food and income source. Copyright


Objective: Individual differences in childhood cognitive ability have been neglected in the study of how early life psychosocial factors may buffer the long-term health consequences of social disadvantage. In this study, we drew on rich data from two large British cohorts to test whether high levels of cognitive ability may protect children from experiencing the physical and mental health consequences of early life socioeconomic disadvantage. Method: Participants from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS; N = 11,522) were followed from birth to age 42, and those from the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS; N = 13,213) were followed from birth to age 50. Childhood social disadvantage was indexed using 6 indicators gauging parental education, occupational prestige, and housing characteristics (i.e., housing tenure and home crowding). Standardized assessments of cognitive ability were completed at ages 10 (BCS) and 11 (NCDS) years. Psychological distress, self-rated health, and all-cause mortality were examined from early adulthood to midlife in both cohorts. Results: Early social disadvantage predicted elevated levels of psychological distress and lower levels of self-rated health in both cohorts and higher mortality risk in the NCDS. Childhood cognitive ability moderated each of these relationships such that the link between early life social disadvantage and poor health in adulthood was markedly stronger at low (−1 SD) compared to high (+1 SD) levels of childhood cognitive ability. Conclusions: This study provides evidence that high childhood cognitive ability is associated with a decrease in the strength of socioeconomic status–driven health inequalities.


A presentation of state-of-the-art approaches from an industrial applications perspective, Communication Architectures for Systems-on-Chip shows professionals, researchers, and students how to attack the problem of data communication in the manufacture of SoC architectures. With its lucid illustration of current trends and research improving the performance, quality, and reliability of transactions, this is an essential reference for anyone dealing with communication mechanisms for embedded systems, systems-on-chip, and multiprocessor architecturesor trying to overcome existing limitations. Exploring architectures currently implemented in manufactured SoCsand those being proposedthis book analyzes a wide range of applications, including: Well-established communication buses Less common networks-on-chip Modern technologies that include the use of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) Optical links used to speed up data transfer and boost both security and quality of service (QoS) The books contributors pay special attention to newer problems, including how to protect transactions of critical on-chip information (personal data, security keys, etc.) from an external attack. They examine mechanisms, revise communication protocols involved, and analyze overall impact on system performance.


Background: Between one and nine percent of all hip fractures are occult or suspect and further examinations with computed tomography (CT) and/or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are vital for further handling. Statistically robust conclusions have not been previously reported. Aims: To evaluate the extent to which the observer agreement (reliability) differs between different modalities and different observers; if high reliability for CT in the study cases reflects the actual fracture status (accuracy): if occult and suspect fractures are different entities and if experience influences the diagnostics; if exclusively pelvic fractures after low-energy trauma to the hip frequently occur and to what extent concomitant hip and pelvic fractures co-exist. Methods and Material: Patients with normal or suspect radiographs and with subsequent examination with CT and/or MRI were reviewed and scored by four observers with varying radiological experience. Statistical analyses were performed with linear weighted kappa (κ) statistics and chi-square tests. Results: Observer agreements for all interpreters were high for CT and MRI but the accuracy for CT was inferior to MRI – in the study cases. There was a higher rate of fractures among suspect than among occult cases, both at review of radiography and at MRI. At MRI there were frequent concomitant hip and pelvic fractures as well as exclusively pelvic fractures. Conclusions: Occult and suspect fractures are different entities. Experience improves the diagnostic performance for both radiography and CT but is of less importance for fracture diagnosis with MRI. The reliability of CT for an experienced reviewer is high but does not necessarily correlate with high accuracy in the study population. Exclusively pelvic fractures at MRI are common after hip trauma. Hip and pelvic fractures are not mutually exclusive.


This piece explores the relationship between legal and biological parenthood. It examines how neither history, nor evolutionary biology nor moral philosophy dictate a legal regime in which parenthood must be based on biological connection, but that attraction to a biological (or "bionormative") regime remains strong. In explaining why, it suggests that much of what attracts people to bionormativity is not biology itself, but the way in which a biological regime constructs parenthood as a private, exclusive and binary enterprise. It is these ancillary qualities of bionormativity that people may care the most about. Today, a variety of forces put pressure on these ancillary qualities of bionormativity. The extent of child poverty, the rejection of (even the appearance of) monogamy and the use of donated gametes all, in different ways, bring into question the extent to which we may want parenthood to stay private, exclusive, binary and biological. The analysis presented here suggests that what is most destabilizing to a bionormative regime is not direct manipulation of biological material, but the fluid living patterns of contemporary adults. Because contemporary adult relationships are less likely to be permanently binary and exclusive, so is parenthood. When parenthood becomes less binary and exclusive, it becomes less private and less biological as well. The analysis presented also reveals that a construction of parenthood that is more public, more inclusive, less binary and less biological is a construction of hierarchical parenthood, or a parental regime in which some parents have substantially more parental rights and responsibilities than others. Recognizing degrees of parenthood may be an inevitable byproduct of a system that rejects bionormativity.


This article argues that many of the states that retain the death penalty currently violate their own constitutions because their use of the death penalty is unusual. Specifically, the death penalty in some states, particularly when assessed in an intra-state manner examining its use across counties, suggests that the rareness of its use might mean that it has become an unusual punishment. As a result, this article explores the twenty-six capital states that proscribe unusual punishments and categorizes them based on the likelihood that their utilization of the death penalty violates their state constitution.

Part I of the article explains the concept of unusualness under the Eighth Amendment as developed by the United States Supreme Court in its capital cases. In Part II, the article explores the Eighth Amendment analogues in state constitutions that similarly prohibit unusual punishments and the conjunctive and disjunctive language of the state constitutions, before demonstrating how the Eighth Amendment approach could translate to the analysis of unusualness under state constitutional law. Part III then examines the states that have unusual proscriptions in their state constitutions, and categorizes the states based on the likelihood that their use of the death penalty violates their state constitution. Finally, in Part IV, the article argues for an expansive application of state constitutions to bar unusual state capital punishments, exploring the policy reasons supporting this analytical move.


Treating the analysis of racism as a key critical imperative of South African psychology, this article questions the adequacy of many of the social constructionist or discursive approaches to racism that have proved influential in critical South African social psychology of late (Dixon, 1996; 1997; Dixon Dixon, Foster, Durrheim, & Wilbraham, 1994; Duncan, 1993; 1996; Duncan, van Niekerk, de la Rey, & Seedat, 2001; Durrheim & Dixon, 2000; 2001; Foster, 1993; 1999; Terre Blanche & Seedat, 2001). While such approaches have much to recommend them as means of apprehending institutional, historical, representational and textual forms of racism, and while they offer a vital critique of de-politicising, individualising treatments of racism which reduce it to an internal psychology of sorts (a function of personality variables, perceptions, attributions, attitudes, cognitions, traits, authoritarianism, prejudice, etc.) (see for example Bhana, 1977; Bhana & Bhana, 1975; Duckitt, 1991; Heaven, 1977; MacCrone, 1930; 1932; 1949; Mynhardt, Plug, Tyson & Viljoen, 1979; Orpen, 1973; Simon & Barling, 1983), they nevertheless appear somewhat limited in their ability to grasp those less palpable and more insidious forms of racism, those structures of oppression, that, in Young's (1990a, p. 11) terms, 'lie beneath the level of discursive awareness'. By focusing on racism' overt structural or discursive forms we risk losing sight of the 'psychic density' of this phenomenon, that is, racism's extraordinarily affective and often eruptive quality, its visceral or embodied nature, its apparent stubbornness to social, historical, discursive change, the intensity, in other words of the individual racist's investment in their own racist subjectivity. Julia's Kristeva's notion of abjection has much to recommend it as the basis for a tentative analytics of racism to be able to understand racism's extremities of affect, its visceral, 'pre-discursive' and bodily forms, and its symptomatic aspects of avoidance and aversion. This model is useful in helping us to appreciate that racism is a phenomenon which is as psychical as it is political, affective as it is discursive, subjective as it is ideological.


Wireless Networked Control Systems is becoming an important topic in the context of factory automation. In this paper, a workcell is studied where the 802.11 standard is used as the communication protocol. The focus is on the effect of different types of motion on the packet end-to-end delay. OPNET simulations indicate that motion does not violate the delay requirements for the proposed model. Since noise in the ISM band can affect wireless communication in the cell, the maximum permissible WiFi noise is found.


At the present state of its development, psychological assessment does not satisfactorily serve all the functions (predictive, formative, summative) assigned to it. This results from the fact that its objective has been defined with such narrow-mindedness that the emphasis has been laid only on psychological entities abstracted from environmental contexts. An examination of some researches conducted in Africa and in other countries shows none the less that taking into account environmental factors by psychologists has meant starting an evolution akin to that which the study of behavioural variables themselves exhibit. The main concern is to restore wholeness to psychology (and hence also to psychological assessment). Thus, psychological assessment will consist of two axes: that of behaviour and that of functional context. In any given study, (at first), the two approaches could appear distinct but interdependent, before finding a relationship by means of a correlation approach. The search for other ways by which direct conclusions may be reached is to be encouraged. But we cannot expect remarkable achievements from that in the near future. In every case, the determining of procedures by means of which assessment may be carried out on each axis depends on the level of psychological theory which itself develops from the practice which it makes possible.


Indices of business and consumer sentiment receive widespread media coverage and are closely watched by market economists despite their limited success as leading indicators. In this paper we ask what explains 'sentiment' and find that lagged economic indicators (such as changes in GDP, job vacancies and the cash rate) can explain a substantial proportion of the variation in a number of backward and forward-looking sentiment indices. This does not rule out the possibility that they may be useful for forecasting. We find, however, that when currently available economic information is appropriately 'filtered' from the sentiment indices, in most cases they fail even rudimentary Granger-causality tests of predictive ability. On a more positive note, we find that the Roy Morgan consumer confidence rating, NAB actual business conditions, NAB expected employment outlook over the next three months and the second question in the Roy Morgan and Westpac/MI consumer surveys all provide some, albeit small, contribution to forecasting employment growth. The second question of both consumer confidence surveys (which asks about anticipated personal financial conditions over the coming year) also appears to have some ability to predict recessions. Outside of these results there is little evidence that the surveys tell us anything we didn't already know. Thus, there is reason to suspect that surveyed respondents' forecasts offer little more information about the future path of the economy than a weighted average of lagged economic variables.


Due to the inconsistency in GXT protocols in cycling research, it is necessary to examine the affect of GXT selection on the determination of Pmax and subsequent affects on the time needed to achieve VO2max. Subjects consisted of 8 trained male cyclists (age: 26 ± 7 yrs, height: 179.1 ± 8.2 cm, weight: 74.4 ± 5.0 kg, VO2max: 63.3 ± 6.5 ml/kg/min) who completed two GXTs. Both tests started at 70 Watts with one increasing 35 Watts/min until volitional fatigue, and the other increasing 50 Watts/3min until volitional fatigue. Pmax was recorded as the lowest power output that coincided with the initial plateau in VO2max, defined as a change of no more than ±2 ml/kg/min from a previous recording. Peak aerobic power (Paerobic) was also determined. Subjects then completed two endurance tests at different Pmax values. During the endurance test, time to achieve VO2max (Tmax), total duration, and the total amount of work were recorded. Pmax as well as Paerobic were significantly lower during the 3 min stage duration GXT (387 ± 27 vs. 342 ± 25 Watts), (424 ± 29 vs. 368 ± 28 Watts)(p<0.05). The percent of Tmax needed to elicit VO2max was not significantly different between endurance tests (61.80 ± 7.00 vs. 62.10 ± 10.50 %). Total work performed was significantly lower when using Pmax values from the 1 min stage duration GXT (5614.95 ± 1509.48 vs. 9625.57 ± 2244.05 kg/m/min)(p<0.05). GXT protocol had a significant influence over the determination of Pmax and Paerobic. Increases in Pmax lead to substantially lower total interval times. Either GXT produced Pmax values that elicit VO2max in 60 % of Tmax.


ABSTRACT Designing urban landscapes for climate change adaptation and mitigation has been highly promoted in contemporary urban development. However, the lack of climate-based design knowledge and techniques in existing urban landscape practice has challenged the implementation. This paper, therefore, introduced a climate-led urban landscape design method to overcome such a dilemma. This approach was results-oriented, and it adopted an integrated use of microclimate, thermal comfort, and GIS modelling and simulation tools. Through the scenarios comparison, this paper has assessed and figured out efficient landscape designs for microclimate and thermal comfort improvement in Ipoh, Malaysia. It showed that shading most determined outdoor thermal comfort, making effective street tree planting an essential measure in the tropical climate-led plan. Besides, this study found that wind did not positively influence thermal comfort due to site characteristic at a particular time, in contrast with other hot regions. In conclusion, developing climate-led landscape and greenery in urban design is a functional initiative for urban cooling and sustainable urban development. Furthermore, the application of modelling and simulation methods in urban landscape design can reduce the possibility of failure in practice, thereby promising urban efficiency in response to climate change.


Scaling relations among dark matter (DM) and stellar quantities are a valuable tool to constrain formation scenarios and the evolution of galactic structures. However, most of the DM properties are actually not directly measured, but derived through model-dependent mass-mapping procedures. It is therefore crucial to adopt theoretically and observationally well founded models. We use here an updated version of the secondary infall model (SIM) to predict the halo density profile, taking into account the effects of angular momentum, dissipative friction and baryons collapse. The resulting family of halo profiles depends only on one parameter, the virial mass, and nicely fits the projected mass and aperture velocity dispersion of a sample of intermediate redshift lens galaxies. We derive DM-related quantities (namely the column density and the Newtonian acceleration) and investigate their correlations with stellar mass, luminosity, effective radius and virial mass.


During the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, emerging market economies (EMEs) loosened monetary policy considerably to cushion the shock. In previous crises episodes, by contrast, EMEs generally had to tighten monetary policy to defend the value of their currencies, to contain capital flight, and to bolster policy credibility. Our study aims to understand the factors that enabled this remarkable shift in monetary policy, and also to assess whether this marks a new era in which EMEs can now conduct countercyclical policy, more in line with advanced economies. The results indicate statistically significant linkages between some characteristics of the economies and their ability to conduct countercyclical monetary policy. We find that macroeconomic fundamentals and lower vulnerabilities, openness to trade, and international capital flows, financial reforms, and the adoption of inflation targeting all facilitated the conduct of countercyclical policy. Of these factors, the most important have been the financial reforms achieved over the past decades and the adoption of inflation targeting. As long as EMEs maintain these strong economic fundamentals, continue to reform their financial sector, and adopt credible and transparent monetary policy frameworks such as inflation targeting, the conduct of countercyclical monetary policy will likely be sustainable.


In this paper, an efficient hierarchical clustering algorithm, suitable for large data sets is proposed for effective clustering and prototype selection for pattern classification. It is another simple and efficient technique which uses incremental clustering principles to generate a hierarchical structure for finding the subgroups/subclusters within each cluster. As an example, a two level clustering algorithm--Leaders- Subleaders, an extension of the leader algorithm is presented. Classification accuracy (CA) obtained using the representatives generated by the Leaders-Subleaders method is found to be better than that of using leaders as representatives. Even if more number of prototypes are generated, classification time is less as only a part of the hierarchical structure is searched. Keyword: Data Warehouse ,Data mining, Algorithms( BIRCH,DBSCAN,CURE).


In order to analyse surface electromyography (EMG) signals, it is necessary to extract the features based on a time or frequency domain. These approaches are based on the mathematical assumption of signal stationarity. Stationarity of EMG signals is thoroughly examined, especially in isotonic contractions. According to research, conflicting results have been identified depending on varying window sizes. Therefore, in this study, the authors endeavoured to determine the suitable window size to analyse EMG signals during isotonic contractions utilising stationary tests, reverse arrangement (RA), and modified reverse arrangement (MRA). There were slight differences in the average percentages of signal stationarity for RA and MRA tests in 100 ms, 500 ms, and 1000 ms window sizes. However, there was none for the 200 ms window size. On average, a window size of 200 ms provided stationary information with 88.57% of EMG signals compared to other window sizes. This study also recommended the MRA test to determine EMG signals stationarity for future studies, as the performances were better in comparison to RA tests. However, the following recommendation is only valid for window sizes greater than 200 ms. For a real-time application, the size of the analysis window together with the processing time should be less than 300 ms and a window size of 200 ms is applicable for isotonic contractions.


ABSTRACTThe adsorption of the 17 toxic 2,3,7,8-substituted dioxin congeners onto graphite was investigated using a laboratory-scale fixed-bed adsorption system. First, the morphology and microstructure of graphite were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy and Brunauer-Emmer-Teller surface estimation. Removal efficiency of the 17 toxic PCDD/Fs varies from 89.31% to 99.96% and the amount adsorbed on graphite is a linear function of the inlet concentration of PCDD/Fs, as it was varied from 2.3–20.7 ng I-TEQ Nm–3. Operating over 3 hours, it is observed that the saturation time of fixed-bed adsorbers is less when the inlet concentration is higher. The removal efficiency of dioxin depends on vapour pressure and rises strongly with increasing chlorine substitution number. Removal efficiencies strongly correlate with vapour pressure, with R2 0.96 for PCDDs and 0.99 for PCDFs, respectively. The removal efficiency of dioxin decreases linearly as the temperature increased (R2 = 0.99). Possibly, π-π interactions between PCDD/Fs and graphite sheets lead to a high adsorption capacity of dioxin. The high mesopores volume and pore structure of graphite are critical factors when adsorbing dioxin.


Noise level monitoring was carried out at nine important traffic intersections of the Chandrapur city to ascertain noise levels and daily noise exposure. A pre-calibrated mini sound level meter was used for noise measurement. Observations were recorded for 24 hours and noise level during the day, night and for 24-hours was computed. Maximum noise level during daytime was 84.27 dB(A) at Bangali camp square; whereas, minimum 79.23 dB(A) at Priyadarshani square. In case of nighttime maximum 85.90 dB(A) was at Warora naka square and minimum 70.06 dB(A) at the Jatpura gate. Minimum noise level during 24-hours was at Bagla square 84.34 dB(A) and maximum 91.14 dB(A) at Warora naka square. Noise level during day and night were above the Indian noise standard for the commercial area. The Bangali camp square was identified as the most ear-splitting square during daytime and Warora naka square at nighttime and for 24-hours also. Peak noise was recorded from 10.00 am to 11.00 am and 3.00 pm to 7.00 pm. Vehicular noise, horns, and improper road design contributed significantly to noise levels at traffic intersections. Daily noise exposure analysis by Health and Safety Executive, UK software revealed Bangali camp square and Ramnagar police station square's daily noise exposure for 0.25 hour was maximum 70 LEP,d and minimum at Gandhi square and Bagla square 65 LEP,d. Noise levels indicated no immediate effect for hearing loss. Control measures for reduction of noise levels at traffic intersections have also been proposed.


Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) provides confidentiality, message authentication, and replay protection for the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) traffic. There are common encryption algorithms that have been developed to protect data such as advanced encryption algorithm (AES). Chaotic encryption is new trend in cryptography based on chaos theory. Chaos is a class of complex behaviors that can emerge from nonlinear dynamical systems. A distinctive and readily observable property of chaotic systems is sensitive dependence on initial conditions. The main purpose of this paper is to propose an alternative scheme to provide confidentiality in SRTP using chaotic systems. The proposed scheme is implemented using Microsoft open source project for conference. The Chaos Based SRTP (CSRTP) is tested using StsGui NIST Statistical suite and Cryptool software [3] for security while Wireshark [4] is used for quality of service (QoS) analysis. The results related to CSRTP shows its superiority in terms of confidentiality and quality of service (QoS) compared with conventional SRTP protocol.


Comparison of Routine and Concentration Techniques on Microscopic Examination of Stool for Parasitic Ova & Cysts Muhammad Wajahat*, Maryum Sharif** and Hajra Farooq** *Department of Pathology, Rawalpindi Medical College, Rawalpindi **Department of Pathology, Azad Jammu & Kashmir Medical College, Muzaffarabad, Azad Kashmir Abstract: Objective: To compare the routine and concentration techniques on microscopic examination of stool for parasitic ova and cysts to emphasize importance of concentration technique Methods: A descriptive study of 100 symptomatic and asymptomatic patients who attended the Microbiology Lab, Pathology Department, Family Hospital, Rawalpindi a teaching hospital affiliated with Rawalpindi Medical College were studied for six months for stool examination. Three samples from each case at three different days were selected not necessarily consecutive. Three techniques were applied on all samples which included direct microscopic examination by using saline and iodine preparations and the microscopic examination after using two concentration techniques which included simple salt flotation technique and Formal-ether concentration technique. Results: In routine technique 4% of patients were positive for ova/cysts. In saturated saline floatation technique 8% of patients were positive for ova/cysts of parasites. In formal ether sedimentation technique also 8%of patients were positive.


Characteristics of reproductive products, such as egg volume, egg number and alevin size, and their relationships to female size were studied in six fish species in order to detect similar or different life-history strategies. Interspecific variations in fecundity and egg volume were also considered. The positive relationship between alevin dry weight and egg dry weight in all species examined indicates that heavier fry emerge from larger eggs. In Salvelinus fontinalis and Salvelinus alpinus, both absolute fecundity and egg volume increase with body size. Significant relationships between number of eggs and female length were shown for Salmo trutta and Oncorhynchus mykiss and egg volume correlated significantly with parental length in Hucho hucho and Thymallus thymallus, while inverse correlations between egg volume and egg number were found in Salmo trutta, Oncorhynchus mykiss and Thymallus thymallus.


The aim of this article is to determine the impact that employee diversity attributes have on labour productivity in the South African workplace. Given the perceived general low levels of labour productivity in the South African economy, this particular research aims to serve as a further contribution to our understanding of the labour productivity debate when a broad range of employee attributes at firm and individual levels are considered. A firm-based model is used for the estimation of the link between the employee group demographic characteristics and labour productivity, and an employee remuneration model is used to estimate the link between individual employee diversity demographics and labour productivity. The main conclusions of the estimation results are that a less age-diverse workforce, higher education/training levels, greater levels of gender diversity and a more racially diverse workforce are pre-requisites for higher real remuneration and labour productivity benefits.


Training large-scale question answering systems is complicated because training sources usually cover a small portion of the range of possible questions. This paper studies the impact of multitask and transfer learning for simple question answering; a setting for which the reasoning required to answer is quite easy, as long as one can retrieve the correct evidence given a question, which can be difficult in large-scale conditions. To this end, we introduce a new dataset of 100k questions that we use in conjunction with existing benchmarks. We conduct our study within the framework of Memory Networks (Weston et al., 2015) because this perspective allows us to eventually scale up to more complex reasoning, and show that Memory Networks can be successfully trained to achieve excellent performance.


Abstract. Future deep-sea mining for polymetallic nodules in abyssal plains will
negatively impact the benthic ecosystem, but it is largely unclear whether
this ecosystem will be able to recover from mining disturbance and if so, to
what extent and at what timescale. During the "DISturbance and
reCOLonization" (DISCOL) experiment, a total of 22 % of the seafloor
within a 10.8 km2 circular area of the nodule-rich seafloor in the Peru
Basin (SE Pacific) was ploughed in 1989 to bury nodules and mix the surface
sediment. This area was revisited 0.1, 0.5, 3, 7, and 26 years after the
disturbance to assess macrofauna, invertebrate megafauna and fish density and
diversity. We used this unique abyssal faunal time series to develop
carbon-based food web models for each point in the time series using the
linear inverse modeling approach for sediments subjected to two disturbance
levels: (1) outside the plough tracks; not directly disturbed by plough, but
probably suffered from additional sedimentation; and (2) inside the plough
tracks. Total faunal carbon stock was always higher outside plough tracks
compared with inside plough tracks. After 26 years, the carbon stock inside
the plough tracks was 54 % of the carbon stock outside plough tracks.
Deposit feeders were least affected by the disturbance, with modeled
respiration, external predation, and excretion rates being reduced by only
2.6 % inside plough tracks compared with outside plough tracks after
26 years. In contrast, the respiration rate of filter and suspension feeders
was 79.5 % lower in the plough tracks after 26 years. The "total system
throughput" (T..), i.e., the total sum of modeled carbon flows in the food web,
was higher throughout the time series outside plough tracks compared with
the corresponding inside plough tracks area and was lowest inside plough tracks
directly after the disturbance (8.63 × 10−3 ± 1.58 × 10−5 mmol C m−2 d−1). Even 26 years after the DISCOL
disturbance, the discrepancy of T.. between outside and inside plough
tracks was still 56 %. Hence, C cycling within the faunal compartments of
an abyssal plain ecosystem remains reduced 26 years after physical
disturbance, and a longer period is required for the system to recover from
such a small-scale sediment disturbance experiment.


PURPOSE
Accurate delineation of tumor volume based on PET is affected by partial volume effect (PVE) that has been shown to Result in underestimations of the standardized uptake value (SUV), leading to decreased metabolically-active tumor volume (MATV). Here we assess the impact of a PVE correction on the SUV and the PET defined MATV in patients with pancreatic cancer.

METHODS
A voxel-by-voxel PVE correction method utilizing a recovery coefficient (RC) approach is implemented for correction in the region of interest (ROI). A profile-analysis study was used to define the ideal-cutoff-values (IDCVs) to threshold PET. The RC and the IDCVs were calculated using NEMA phantom. The pancreas tumor volumes were delineated on the T1 with contrast and diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI), and on the PET using four different cutoff values: 2.5-SUV, tumor-to-background (T/B) ratio, 42% of SUVmax, and IDCVs. The PVE-corrected PET and MATV were compared with the original PET, and the resulted tumor sizes were compared with those from contrast-enhanced CT and MRI.

RESULTS
For all patients studied, the mean RC was 0.72 (ranging 0.58 - 0.81) based on tumor diameter on the CT (ranging 1.9 - 5.8) cm, and tumor-to-background ratio (ranging 2.4 - 8.7). The mean SUVmax values in the ROI were 8.2 (ranging 3.9 - 13.1) and 10.6 (ranging 5.57 - 16.37) g/ml, respectively, before and after PVE correction. Generally, all of the 2.5-SUV, T/B ratio, and 42% SUVmax showed an increase of up to 34% in the MATV after PVE correction except for the IDCVs MATV was reduced by 21%. The differences between tumor sizes from CT, T1, and DWI and those from PET with PVE-correction were reduced compared to those without correction.

CONCLUSION
The partial volume effect correction considerably impacts PET SUV and improves the PET-defined metabolic - ally-active tumor volume, particularly for small pancreatic tumors.


The arrival of criminology as an academic discipline was a post-war development in Australia as much as in Britain or the United States. Classical criminology had developed as a question about punishment-neo-classical criminology as a question about the criminal. Academic criminology pursued both questions and added others. Less systematic than pragmatic, less theoretical than eclectic, the criminology of post-war universities was both intellectually broader and politically more critical than once thought. This paper outlines the formation of the discipline in Australia during the war and post-war years, from the conditions of production of its first text, The ABC of Criminology (Melbourne University Press 1941), to its moment of governmental embrace around 1960. Who were the major players in this enterprise, what commitments, intellectual and political, did they bring to their work, and what did this local formation owe to its international affiliations?


We study the non-linear behavior of the baryon acoustic oscillation in the power spectrum and the correlation function by decomposing the dark matter perturbations into the short- and long-wavelength modes. The evolution of the dark matter fluctuations can be described as a global coordinate transformation caused by the long-wavelength displacement vector acting on short-wavelength matter perturbation undergoing non-linear growth. Using this feature, we investigate the well known cancellation of the high-k solutions in the standard perturbation theory. While the standard perturbation theory naturally satisfies the cancellation of the high-k solutions, some of the recently proposed improved perturbation theories do not guarantee the cancellation. We show that this cancellation clarifies the success of the standard perturbation theory at the 2-loop order in describing the amplitude of the non-linear power spectrum even at high-k regions. We propose an extension of the standard 2-loop level perturbation theory model of the non-linear power spectrum that more accurately models the non-linear evolution of the baryon acoustic oscillation than the standard perturbation theory. The model consists of simple and intuitive parts: the non-linear evolution of the smoothed power spectrum without the baryon acoustic oscillations and the non-linear evolution of the baryon acoustic oscillations due to the large-scale velocity of dark matter and due to the gravitational attraction between dark matter particles. Our extended model predicts the smoothing parameter of the baryon acoustic oscillation peak at z = 0.35 as ∼ 7.7Mpc/h and describes the small non-linear shift in the peak position due to the galaxy random motions.


How important are neighbourhood endowments of physical and human capital in explaining diverging fortunes over time for otherwise identical households in a developing rural economy? To answer this question we develop an estimable micro model of consumption growth allowing for constraints on factor mobility and externalities, whereby geographic capital can influence the productivity of a household's own capital. Our statistical test has considerable power in detecting geographic effects given that we control for latent heterogeneity in measured consumption growth rates at the micro level. We find robust evidence of geographic poverty traps in farm-household panel data from post-reform rural China. Our results strengthen the equity and efficiency case for public investment in lagging poor areas in this setting. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Small biserial foraminifera were abundant in the early Miocene (ca. 18.9–17.2 Ma) in the eastern Atlantic and western Indian Oceans, but absent in the western equatorial Atlantic Ocean, Weddell Sea, eastern Indian Ocean, and equatorial Pacific Ocean. They have been assigned to the benthic genus Bolivina, but their high abundances in sediments without evidence for dysoxia could not be explained. Apertural morphology, accumulation rates, and isotopic composition show that they were planktic (genus Streptochilus). Living Streptochilus are common in productive waters with intermittent upwelling. The widespread early Miocene high Streptochilus abundances may reflect vigorous but intermittent upwelling, inducing high phytoplankton growth rates. However, export production (estimated from benthic foraminiferal accumulation rates) was low, possibly due to high regeneration rates in a deep thermocline. The upwelled waters may have been an analog to Subantarctic Mode Waters, carrying nutrients into the eastern Atlantic and western Indian Oceans as the result of the initiation of a deep-reaching Antarctic Circumpolar Current, active Agulhas Leakage, and vigorous vertical mixing in the Southern Oceans.


U.S. workers are increasingly finding it difficult to escape from work. Through their smartphones, email, and social media, work tethers them to their workstations well after the work day has ended. Whether at home or in transit, employers are asking or requiring employees to complete assignments, tasks, and projects outside of working hours. This practice has a profound detrimental impact on employee privacy and autonomy, safety and health, productivity and compensation, and rest and leisure. France and Germany have responded to this emerging workplace issue by taking different legal approaches to providing their employees a right to disconnect from the workplace. Although both the French legislative and German corporate self-regulation models have their advantages, this paper puts forth a hybrid approach using existing U.S. safety and health law under OSHA to respond to this employee disconnection problem. Initially under the general duty of clause of OSHA, and then under OSHA permanent standards and variances, this article provides a uniquely American approach to establishing an employee right to disconnect from work.


Global biodiversity hotspots contain exceptional concentrations of endemic species in areas of escalating habitat loss. However, most hotspots are geographically constrained and consequently vulnerable to climate change as there is limited ability for the movement of species to less hostile conditions. Predicted changes to rainfall and temperature will undoubtedly further impact on freshwater ecosystems in these hotspots. Southwestern Australia is a biodiversity hotspot and, as one of the first to experience significant climate change, is an example and potentially a global bellwether for issues associated with river restoration. In this hotspot, current and predicted water temperatures may exceed thermal tolerances of aquatic fauna. Gondwanic aquatic fauna, characteristic of southwestern Australia, are typically cold stenotherms and consequently intolerant of elevated temperatures. The hotspot in southwestern Australia is geographically restricted being surrounded by ocean and desert, and many important national parks are located on the extreme south coast, where the landscape is relatively flat. Consequently, fauna cannot change their distribution southwards or with altitude as a response to increasing temperatures. Therefore, any mitigation responses need to be in situ to produce a suitable biophysical envelope to enhance species' resilience. This could be through "over restoration" by increased riparian replanting at a catchment scale. A rule‐of‐thumb of a 10% increase in riparian cover would be required to reduce water temperatures by 1°C. These restoration techniques are considered applicable to other global biodiversity hotspots where geography constrains species' movement and the present condition is the desired restoration endpoint.


Aggregation (e.g., through cross-linkage) of cell surface molecules is in various biologic systems a necessary event in cellular activation. Examining the Ia molecule on B cells we found that aggregation is a function of the surface Ag mobility; the higher the fraction of immobile molecules on the plane of the membrane, the better Ia forms aggregates and patches. We identify two factors that control Ia mobility and aggregability. One factor is the M1s-1a gene product; the other factor is an Ia-reactive immunogenic peptide. Both factors increase Ia aggregability and reduce the MHC Ag mobility.


We argue that collective engagement can serve as a unique value‐creation capacity at the business level by linking shared vision and service performance. We also propose that competitive intensity will be a market indicator by which management can enhance the effect of shared vision on collective engagement, and indirectly strengthen service performance (through collective engagement). Furthermore, we argue that this distinctive value‐creation capability, embedded in collective engagement, generates competitive advantage; specifically, one that competing organizations will struggle to replicate. We examine our moderated‐mediation model by using a three‐time‐point method derived from five different sources in 198 retail‐service branches. Our findings indicate that collective engagement, fueled by shared organizational vision, improves service performance. Furthermore, as this conditional indirect effect of shared vision on service quality and customer satisfaction was solely generated through collective engagement rather than other mechanisms (i.e., commitment and involvement), it creates a competitive advantage for engagement‐oriented organizations.


This report brings together in a single volume the excellent contributions presented at the high-level conference on "The Future of Retail Banking in Europe: Competition and Regulatory Challenges" held at CEPS on the 10th of June 2009. The conference was jointly organized by the European Credit Research Institute (ECRI) and the Deutsche Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW Berlin) and coincided with the 10th anniversary of the founding of ECRI. While most of the debate about the crisis dealt with the banking industry as a whole and the stabilisation policies introduced by governments, especially central banks, this volume drew attention to the microeconomic specifics of banking. By starting with the basics underlying financial markets, we acquire a better understanding of the many facets of business practices, which in turn allows us to identify possible market failures. The identified market failures serve as a starting point for the design of optimal policies in the arenas of competition policy and consumer protection.


Many people with MS (pwMS) use unregulated cannabis or cannabis products to treat the symptoms associated with the disease. In line with this, Sativex, a synthetic combination of cannabidiol (CBD) and Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC) has been approved to treat symptoms of spasticity. In animals, CBD is effective in reducing the amounts of T-cell infiltrates in the spinal cord, suggesting CBD has anti-inflammatory properties. By doing this, CBD has shown to delay symptom onset in animal models of multiple sclerosis and slow disease progression. Importantly, combinations of CBD and Δ9-THC appear more effective in treating animal models of multiple sclerosis. While CBD reduces the amounts of cell infiltrates in the spinal cord, Δ9-THC reduces scores of spasticity. In human studies, the results are less encouraging and conflict with the findings in animals. Drugs which deliver a combination of Δ9-THC and CBD in a 1:1 ratio appear to be only moderately effective in reducing spasticity scores, but appear to be almost as effective as current front-line treatments and cause less severe side effects than other treatments, such as baclofen (a GABA-B receptor agonist) and tizanidine (an α2 adrenergic receptor agonist). The findings of the studies reviewed suggest that cannabinoids may help treat neuropathic pain in pwMS as an add-on therapy to already established pain treatments. It is important to note that treatment with cannabinoid compounds may cause significant cognitive dysfunction. Long term double-blind placebo studies are greatly needed to further our understanding of the role of cannabinoids in multiple sclerosis treatment.


This paperstudy the issue of institutional enforcement of regulations by focusing on labor-market policies and their potential link to economic performance. It test the different impacts of enforceable and non-enforceable labor regulations by proxying non-enforceable labor rigidity measures using data on conventions from the International Labor Organization (ILO). It has been argued that non-enforceable conventions -that is, those that exist on paper and are simply de jure regulations -appear to be more distortionary and tend to be the least enforced in practice (Squire and Suthiwart-Narueput, 1997). According to Freeman (1993), these conventions reflect the ideal regulatory framework from an institutionalist perspective and cover a variety of labor market issues, from child labor to placement agencies. Whereas in theory, a country`s ratification of ILO conventions gives the country legal status and thus supersedes domestic regulations relating to those issues, in practice the degree of labor-market rigidity depends on how the conventions are enforced. It is the outcome of the regulations that matters, rather than their number.


Optical frequency combs consist in a set of equally spaced mutually coherent laser frequency lines with a wealth of applications in the most diverse fields of photonics technology including metrology, astrophysics and molecular spectroscopy. Mode-locked lasers and passive driven resonators are the most relevant platforms for their generation. In Kerr resonators, in general frequency combs are generated through four wave mixing triggered by modulation instability (MI) in the anomalous dispersion regime [1]. In this case however the comb repetition rate is not tuneable but it is simply determined by the cavity free spectral range. We present here experimental results about a new method for frequency combs, with tuneable repetition rate, generation in normal dispersion externally driven passive optical resonators with Kerr (cubic) nonlinearity. We exploit the gain-through-losses (GTL) process to excite a modulation instability (MI) which initiates the comb formation. GTL enables energy transfer from a powerful pump field to sidebands frequencies thanks to frequency asymmetric spectral losses for signal and idler waves. The lossy modes themselves are counterintuitively amplified in virtue of the losses presence [2]. We performed an experiment considering a ring fibre resonator of 104 m length, made with a normal dispersion fiber with group velocity dispersion coefficient β2=0.5 ps2/km. The resonator was pumped at 1545 nm by a continuous wave laser. A fiber Bragg grating (FBG) with reflection peak located at 400 GHz frequency shift from the pump was used in reflection as a filter with spectral asymmetry with respect to the pump, inducing losses only to the signal (the filter causes no losses to the idler). The GTL MI causes first amplification of frequencies located close to the maximum losses (signal) and to their symmetric with respect to the pump wavelength (idler), which in turn generate higher order harmonics through a cascaded four-wave mixing process hence generating the comb (See Fig. 1(a)). The presence of the unavoidable filter phase contribution is responsible for the shift of the first sideband from the frequency corresponding to the maximum attenuation of the filter. The number of comb lines is limited by the low finesse of our resonator, but could be potentially improved in the future. In the time domain, the waveform corresponds to a train of pulses on the finite background (See Fig. 1(b)). The pulses have a repetition rate related to the inverse of the frequency shift between the first GTL sideband and the pump. Due to the fact that the GTL MI induces amplification of sidebands located close to the filter maximum losses frequency, by changing the detuning between pump and filter it is possible to tune the comb repetition rate. We have indeed verified a tuneability of the comb repetition rate by approximately 100 GHz.


The empirical literature on contagion has mainly measured the propagation of shocks across countries using daily stock markets, interest rates, and exchange rates. Several methodologies have been used for this purpose, however, the properties of the data introduces important limitations on the implementation of these procedures, as well as on the interpretation of the results. This paper, has three objectives: First, it evaluates some of the techniques that have been used frequently to measure contagion. The paper argues that if the data suffers from heteroskedasticity (conditional or not), omitted variables and simultaneous equation problems, the conclusions drawn from most of the procedures could be biased. Second, the paper summarizes two new procedures that have been developed to cope with these problems. One methodology is aimed to test for the stability of parameters, while the other one estimates consistently the contemporaneous relationship across countries. Finally, the paper estimates (consistently) the contemporaneous transmission mechanism between emerging stock markets, and bond markets. Furthermore, it is found that regional variables, as well as trade linkages, constitute a sizeable explanation of the strength of the propagation of shocks across bond markets, but not as important in stock markets. JEL Classification Numbers: C30, F30, F32, F40, G15


Creative Push Press

Creative Push is a multimedia visual art and oral history project that focuses on the most formative of human experiences: birth. Creative Push is a means to collect, transform, display, and circulate birth stories and artworks.


Deployment of Dynamic Differential Logics (DDL) appears to be a promising choice for providing resistance against leakage of side channel information. However, the resistance provided by these logics is too costly for widespread area-constrained applications. Implementation of a secure DDL-based countermeasure also requires a complex layout methodology for balancing the load at the differential outputs.
This thesis, unlike previous logic level approaches, presents a novel exploitation of static and single-ended logic for designing the side channel countermeasure. The proposed technique is used in the implementation of a protected crypto core consisting of the AES "AddRoundKey" and "SubByte" transformation. The test chip including the protected and unprotected crypto cores is fabricated in 180nm CMOS technology. A correlation analysis on the unprotected core results in revealing the key at the output of the combinational networks and the registers. The quality of the measurements is further improved by introducing an enhanced data capturing method that inserts a minimum power consuming input as a reference vector. In comparison, no key-related information is leaked from the protected core even with an order of magnitude increase in the number of averaged traces. For the first time, fabricated chip results are used to validate a new logic level side channel countermeasure that offers lower area and reduced circuit design complexity compared to the DDL-based countermeasures.
This thesis also provides insight into the side channel vulnerability of cryptosystems in sub-90nm CMOS technology nodes. In particular, data dependency of leakage power is analyzed. The number of traces to disclose the key is seen to decrease by 35% from 90nm to 45nm CMOS technology nodes. Analysis shows that the temperature dependency of the subthreshold leakage has an important role in increasing the ability to attack future nanoscale crypto cores. For the first time, the effectiveness of a circuit-based leakage reduction technique is examined for side channel security. This investigation demonstrates that high threshold voltage transistor assignment improves resistance against information leakage. The analysis initiated in this thesis is crucial for rolling out the guidelines of side channel security for the next generation of Cryptosystem.


The "glass ceiling" is a metaphor for examining gender disparities between men and women within the workplace. Such disparities are particularly visible in athletic administration. This literature review evaluates specific leadership characteristics and their relationship to gender stereotyping in Sport Management. Because athletic administration is a male dominated domain, there appears to be discrimination against women, creating a gender gap that prevents the advancement of women into top-level managerial positions.


Salinity changes in the Baltic Sea have been attributed to a lack of balance between irregular pulses of North Sea water penetrating the Danish Straits and the freshwater runoff to the Baltic Sea. Both pulses and runoff are controlled by climatic factors in the Atlantic. The occurrence of major pulses of oceanic water has proved unpredictable, being non‐existent during the 1980s. We used dynamic regression models to relate the response of the Baltic Sea salinity to hypothetical controlling factors: westerly winds, freshwater runoff, and, ultimately, the Northern Atlantic oscillation (NAO). Our results provided evidence for general chain‐of‐events relationship between the NAO and a subsequent weather effect over the North Sea, which was finally extended to the Baltic Sea salinity. Westerly winds followed changes in the NAO with a lag of <1 month. Total freshwater runoff to the Baltic Sea followed changes in the NAO with a lag of <2 months. Furthermore, the salinity responded to freshwater runoff with a time lag of <1 yr, and a significant decreasing trend was found in the salinity series. On the basis of the existing lags, we foresee a possibility to predict not only oceanographic, but also biological interactions in the Baltic Sea.


Abstract. Seasonal and interannual variability in the biogenic particle sinking flux was recorded using multi-year bottom-tethered sediment trap mooring systems in the Northwind Abyssal Plain (Station NAP: 75° N, 162° W, 1975 m water depth) of the western Arctic Chukchi Borderland. Trapped particle flux at a median depth of 184 m had an obvious peak and dominance of sea ice-related diatom assemblages in August 2011. The observed particle flux was considerably suppressed throughout summer 2012. In the present study, the response of ice algal production and biomass to wind-driven changes in the physical environment was addressed using a pan-Arctic sea ice–ocean modeling approach. A sea ice ecosystem with ice algae was newly incorporated into the lower-trophic marine ecosystem model, which was previously coupled with a high-resolution (i.e., 5 km horizontal grid size) sea ice–ocean general circulation model. Seasonal model experiments covering 2-year mooring periods indicated that primary productivity of ice algae around the Chukchi Borderland depended on basin-scale wind patterns via various processes. Easterly winds in the southern part of a distinct Beaufort High supplied nutrient-rich water for euphotic zones of the NAP region via both surface Ekman transport of Chukchi shelf water and vertical turbulent mixing with underlying nutricline water in 2011. In contrast, northwesterly winds flowing in the northern part of an extended Siberian High transported oligotrophic water within the Beaufort Gyre circulation toward the NAP region in 2012. The modeled ice algal biomass during summer reflected the differences in nutrient distribution. The modeled sinking flux of particulate organic nitrogen (PON) was comparable with the time series obtained from sediment trap data in summer 2011. In contrast, lateral advection of ice algal patches of shelf origin during a great cyclone event may have caused a modeled PON flux bias in 2012. Sensitivity experiments revealed several uncertainties of model configurations of ice algal productivity, particle sinking speed, and grazing activities. Extending the year-long measurements is expected to help illustrate the more general features of ice-related biological processes in the Arctic Ocean.


Toxoplasma gondii is an important human pathogen infecting an estimated one in three people worldwide. The cytokine interferon gamma (IFNγ) is induced during infection and is critical for restricting T. gondii growth in human cells. Growth restriction is presumed to be due to the induction of interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs) that are upregulated to protect the host from infection. Although there are hundreds of ISGs induced by IFNγ, their individual roles in restricting parasite growth in human cells remain somewhat elusive. To address this deficiency, we screened a library of 414 IFNγ induced ISGs to identify factors that impact T. gondii infection in human cells. In addition to IRF1, which likely acts through the induction of numerous downstream genes, we identified RARRES3 as a single factor that restricts T. gondii infection by inducing premature egress of the parasite in multiple human cell lines. Overall, while we successfully identified a novel IFNγ induced factor restricting T. gondii infection, the limited number of ISGs capable of restricting T. gondii infection when individually expressed suggests that IFNγ-mediated immunity to T. gondii infection is a complex, multifactorial process.


You have an owner's manual for your car, your stereo and even your blender, so why not your body? "The Fighter's Body" is exactly that, an owner's manual for your body, the most complex piece of equipment you will ever own. As a martial artist, you have special needs. Have you ever wondered how that latest fad diet might affect your performance on the mat? Ever wanted to take off a few extra pounds? How about putting on muscle without slowing down? Make weight for a tournament? Lose 5 pounds fast? Eat better? Change weight classes? Confused about supplements, vitamins and protein shakes? Can't make sense of the food pyramid? Don't know where to start? Start here. Author Loren Christensen and personal trainer Wim Demeere combine their knowledge of martial arts, weight training, nutrition, diet and exercise to answer your questions and put you on the road to becoming the best martial arts athlete you can be. This book will answer your questions about important topics including: why some diets are harmful for martial artists; how to calculate your protein needs for training; when and how to use supplements; how to eat at fast food places and not ruin your diet; why it's okay to splurge on 'Dirt Day'; how to safely make weight for a tournament; why HIIT training is essential to weight loss; what to eat on competition days; and, how to create a plan that works and stick to it.


In this thesis we address the subject of strong electron-phonon coupling in pyramidal quantum dots and pursue detailed physical, analytical and numerical investigations. The strong coupling polaron states in a pyramidal GaAs/AlGaAs quantum dot are computed numerically with an enhanced matrix diagonalization method that accounts for the particular structure of the Hamiltonian and uses an irregular reciprocal space discretization. Electron-electron interactions and multiple phonon interactions are neglected. We study quantum dots with either three or four confined electron states associated with two or three electron levels, respectively. Further, we develop a set of analytical tools to predict and interpret the polaron states of a more general model of quantum dots. Applying these tools to the particular case allows a complete classification of the polaron states and reveals new physical insight.


To the Editor: Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever, a tick-borne illness caused by Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV), is endemic to Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. The hard ticks (Ixodidae), especially those of the genus Hyalomma, serve as reservoirs and vectors for CCHFV, and a variety of animals, such as cattle, sheep, and camels, are considered amplifying hosts for the virus. Although CCHFV may cause little or no disease in zoonotic hosts, the virus can cause severe disease in humans who may be exposed by tick bites or by contact with blood or tissues from infected patients or animals (1). Surveillance for CCHFV in animal and vector populations provides an opportunity to monitor a disease of potentially severe impact.

In North Africa and the Middle East, trade in live animals, meat, and meat products poses noticeable risk to human and animal health (2,3) and can serve as a mobile pool of diseases with potentially large economic and health effects. Animals often originate in distant areas of a country or its neighbors, where they may be exposed to zoonotic pathogens not endemic to their final location, and may collect vectors that carry additional pathogens.

As part of a broader study examining occupational risk of exposure to vector-borne and zoonotic pathogens in a high-risk abattoir worker population, we collected ectoparasites from freshly-slaughtered livestock and examined them for CCHFV. This study and was conducted in compliance with the Animal Welfare Act and in accordance with the principles set forth in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (4).

Sample collection took place over a 2-week period in July 2009 at the Muneeb abattoir in the Giza Governorate of Egypt. Ectoparasites were removed from 43 freshly slaughtered animals by using blunt forceps and were placed in glass vials. In total, 342 ectoparasites were collected: 70 (20.5%) from 14 cattle, 52 (15.2%) from 17 buffalo, 6 (1.8%) from 2 sheep, and 214 (62.6%) from 10 camels. Cattle, buffalo, and sheep originated in Egypt; camels were imported from Sudan and Somalia.

Ectoparasites were transported to US Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3 in Cairo, Egypt, for taxonomic identification and pathogen detection. Ninety-seven percent (334) of the ectoparasites were ticks from the family Ixodidae. The genus Hyalomma accounted for 254 (76.0%) of these ticks, including nearly all of those collected from sheep (100%) and camels (99.5%) but only 60.4% and 9.1% of those collected from buffalo and cattle, respectively. The remaining ticks of the family Ixodidae belonged to genus Boophilus.

After identification, ticks were grouped into pools by species, sex, and animal source. RNA was then extracted by using the QIAamp Viral RNA Kit (QIAGEN, Valencia, CA, USA). CCHFV small fragment RNA was detected with SuperScript III Platinum SYBR Green One-Step qRT-PCR (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA) and published primers as described (5).

Of 138 pools tested (258 ticks of the genera Hyalomma and Boophilus), 6 pools were positive for CCHFV. These 6 pools contained ticks collected from 1 camel imported from Somalia and 4 from Sudan. One positive pool comprised female H. excavatum (Koch, 1844), and 5 comprised female H. dromedarii (Koch, 1844), both proven vectors of CCHFV.

Sequence analysis showed that each CCHFV-positive pool contained an identical yet previously unrecorded 229-bp RNA fragment (GenBank accession no. {"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"JF706233","term_id":"371444381"}}JF706233; Figure). This fragment had 92% identity with many published CCHFV isolates (BLAST analysis [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST], GenBank nonredundant database); however, most base changes were synonymous substitutions. Translated protein queries (tblastx) identified an amino acid (serine at codon 26) in this new variant that differed from all but 1 ({"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"AJ010648.1","term_id":"10638944"}}AJ010648.1) of the 100 most similar published sequences. The functional consequence of a S26N substitution is unknown but may be minimal because of the similar physicochemical properties of asparagine and serine.

Figure

Phylogenetic relationship of 110 Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus sequences obtained from this study (6 tick pools), the positive control, and 99 published isolates from GenBank. Sequences were aligned by using ClustalX (www.clustal.org), and a phylogenetic ...

Despite the low number of camels sampled in this study, 5 of the 10 camels were found to harbor ticks carrying RNA from an undocumented variant of CCHF. Although none of the domestic animals harbored infected ticks, it is not possible to conclude if these data reflect importation of CCHFV or infection acquired within Egypt because details about conditions under which animals were kept before slaughter are unavailable. Previous serologic studies in Egypt have shown antibodies to CCHFV were prevalent among imported camels at a quarantine station in Aswan governorate (6) and among domestic cattle, buffalo, sheep, and goats in Sharkia Governorate (7). We plan to further investigate the presence of CCHFV within camel and ectoparasite populations in Egypt by expanding protocol activities to a camel market in the same area as the abattoir.


Given an n-sample of random vectors (Xi,Yi)1=i=n whose joint law is unknown, the long-standing problem of supervised classification aims to optimally predict the label Y of a given new observation X. In this context, the k-nearest neighbor rule is a popular flexible and intuitive method in nonparametric situations. Even if this algorithm is commonly used in the machine learning and statistics communities, less is known about its prediction ability in general finite dimensional spaces, especially when the support of the density of the observations is Rd . This paper is devoted to the study of the statistical properties of the k-nearest neighbor rule in various situations. In particular, attention is paid to the marginal law of X, as well as the smoothness and margin properties of the regression function n(X) = E[Y |X]. We identify two necessary and sufficient conditions to obtain uniform consistency rates of classification and derive sharp estimates in the case of the k-nearest neighbor rule. Some numerical experiments are proposed at the end of the paper to help illustrate the discussion


The notion of a clean ring has many variations that have been widely studied, including the sub-class of nil clean rings. We develop new variations of this concept and discuss the interactions between these new properties and those in the established canon. The first property we define is an ideal-theoretic generalization of the element-wise defined property "nil clean," the condition that an element of a ring is the sum of a nilpotent and an idempotent. We establish a few characterizations for certain families of rings with this property, called ideally nil clean. In particular, a commutative ring is ideally nil clean if and only if it is strongly π-regular. We show that the class of ideally nil clean rings also includes artinian rings, and von Neumann regular rings. Among other results, we demonstrate that ideally nil clean rings behave well under some ring extensions such as direct products and matrix rings. We also expand this generalization to the ideally nil clean property for one-sided ideals, and discuss the interaction between these different generalizations. We explore the interplay between nil clean rings and ideally nil clean rings.


The tax differential caused by variability of taxable income across tax thresholds is estimated for broadacre family farmers using individual taxable income data. Estimates of the tax differential without income averaging are compared with the tax differential under a number of alternative averaging schemes, including the current averaging scheme, modified averaging, block averaging and carry forward tax credits. Only limited evidence is available to indicate the potential tax differential borne by non-primary producers. The availability of such information would assist future analysis of comparative period inequity of farmers and others in the community subject to variable pre-tax incomes.


Little research has focused on children's age, sex, and race/ethnicity as variables that may moderate the relations between parenting stress and children's cognitive development. Using Bronfenbrenner's (1986) bioecological systems theory as a basis, this study used a sample of mothers and their children who participated in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project to examine the effects of parenting stress when children were 14 months old on children's cognitive scores on five measures when children were 24 and 36 months. Hierarchal multiple regression analyses revealed that there was a significant negative association between 14 month parenting stress and 24 and 36 month child cognitive scores. Analyses on four measures indicated that this relation was not moderated by child sex. However, analyses on two measures suggested that European American and African American children showed stronger negative relations between maternal parenting stress and children's cognitive outcomes than Mexican American children.


A study has been made of the earthquake response of the ninestory steel frame Building 180, located at the C.I.T. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, during the San Fernando earthquake of February 9, 1971. The study was motivated by the likelihood that an earthquake similar to the February 9, 1971, shock could occur close to the JPL grounds with consequent very strong ground shaking. It was, therefore, judged desirable to make a thorough study of the response of the building to the moderately strong ground shaking during the February 9, 1971 event. The analysis throws light on the actual dynamical properties of the building during the earthquake, and also demonstrates that it is possible to make accurate calculations of building motions during earthquakes when the ground motion is specified.

Methods of evaluating the lower mode periods and damping ratios from the earthquake records are described and these values are compared with values obtained by dynamic testing before and after the earthquake and with the periods computed from structural models of the building. Although no structural damage, as a result of the earthquake motions, was detected, and computed stresses in the frame were less than yield stresses, the ambient test periods after the earthquake were approximately 1016 higher than the pre-earthquake test values. The maximum periods during the earthquake were found to be about 30% higher than the post-earthquake ambient test values, and it is believed that this significant increase was mainly the result of the non-linear behavior of the concrete encased steel columns. The periods computed from the structural models based on two different assumptions regarding the influence of the composite concrete agreed within 5% of the postearthquake ambient test results and within 10% of the earthquake periods.

The model roof acceleration responses were computed using the recorded base motions as inputs. Good agreement was obtained between the recorded and computed roof responses confirming that the elastic response computation method currently used in the earthquake design of buildings gives satisfactory stress predictions.

A stress analysis of the lower stories of the model gave a maximum total steel stress during the earthquake of 34 Kips/in2. This maximum value occurred in the second story columns and was computed by adding to the gravity load stresses the root- mean- square sum of the two horizontal earthquake stress components.

The Fourier amplitude spectra of the recorded horizontal base motions were found to contain peaks corresponding closely with a number of the lower mode natural frequencies. A study was undertaken to determine whether these peaks could have resulted from soil-structure interaction. It was concluded that soil-structure interaction would be unlikely to have produced significant changes to the horizontal freefield motions. The influence of soil- structure interaction in the vertical direction was found to be rather more significant, producing a peak and a dip in the Fourier amplitude spectrum close to the fundamental vertical frequency.


After the watershed 2008 election when the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition lost its customary two-thirds control of parliamentary seats, there was the not unreasonable expectation that BN would slip even further in the much-anticipated Thirteenth General Election of 2013, which is the subject of this book. In the event, the BN lost the popular vote to the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) but still retained the reins of government. In this book, prominent Malaysian specialists and experts will provide the reader with fresh insights into the evolving character of electoral politics by delving into its failing model of consociationalism, the extent of malapportionment in the electoral system and its effects on outcomes, how 'new politics' continue to meet the resistance of old modes of political behaviour, the path-dependence analysis of twin-coalition politics, the significance of the FELDA vote bank, the issues animating electoral politics in Sabah, Sarawak, Terengganu and Johor, why the PR continues to command urban support, the role of the biased mainstream media, and details of the campaign strategies of both coalitions. In this new study of Malaysia's electoral politics, it is evident that the ruling coalition has lost its first-mover advantage and is only able to hold on to power due to the first-past-the-post (FPTP) single member plurality electoral system. This sort of system has given rise, in the parlance of electoral studies, to 'manufactured majorities', that is, electoral outcomes that confer a majority of seats (simple or large) to a single party or a coalition of parties without commanding a majority of the popular vote. Malaysia's FPTP system, imbued as it is with a generous proportion of 'rural weightage', continues to favour the BN, oftentimes generating large manufactured parliamentary majorities. While some may argue that electoral politics have reached an impasse, after two general elections, Malaysia's twin-coalition system seems to have gained some traction and, thanks to its federalism, with the PR having considerable control of state governments in the Malay heartland and of the more urbanized states of Selangor and Penang.