During my PhD course I have been involved in research activities into the frame of the NA62 experiment, which main goal is the measurement of the branching fraction B(K+ -> pi+ nu anti-nu). NA62 is a very challenging experiment due to ultra rare nature of this decay (BR is about 8e(-11)). The study of the decay K+ -> pi+ nu anti-nu is very important because it allows the first direct measurement of CKM element Vtd. Moreover it could provide signals of physics beyond Standard Model (SM) as that decay is highly sensitive to new physics.
The experiment will be located at CERN experimental SPS North Area (hence the acronym NA). It is a fixed target experiment done using a unseparated 75 GeV/c beam of positive hadrons, produced by a 400 GeV/c proton beam. Positive Kaons, although being only 6% of the beam, are produced in a very abundant fashion, and will allow us to collect enough statistics to reach a about 10% relative uncertainty after a 2 years long data taking. To reach such level of uncertainty and to keep signal/background ratio below 10, the apparatus is designed in order to provide both particle identification and kinematical rejection.
My work was focused on two veto subsystems with different scope, different architecture and different dimensions: the Large Angle photon Veto (or LAV) and the CHarged ANTIcounter (or CHANTI).
The LAV is made of 12 different stations all along the decay region. Each station is ring shaped. The main task of LAV is to veto photons from neutral pions decay with an inefficiency lower than 10e(-4), to reduce background from K+ -> pi+ pi0. In order to choose the best technology to implement the detector we have had an intense R&D program. Three different prototypes were tested and finally a solution that uses lead glass blocks from former OPAL electromagnetic calorimeter was chosen. The prototype used to measure inefficiency was made in Naples and tested at Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati beam test facility with electrons of energy between 300 and 500 MeV/c. Unfortunately the area at CERN where blocks were stored was flooded and all blocks were involved. This major event forced a massive recovering campaign, of which I was responsible. During recovering operations many problems were found and (most of them) solved. However not all flooded blocks may be used for LAV. Part of them were damaged (9%) and an other part showed an abnormal behaviour. During the recovering operation the design of the LAV was refined and construction started. In order to reduce costs we opted for a read-out electronics based on Time over Threshold (ToT) technique. The first station out of 12 was realized and tested at CERN in June-September 2009. It was an important mile stone.
The test was intended, basically, as confirmation of ToT usefulness and as check of off-line equalization procedure that each block needes to pass before being mounted.
To test ToT, signals were splitted and read on one side by custom ToT electronics and from the other side by a commercial CAEN QDC, in order to produce a ToT versus charge curve. Surprisingly not a unique curve was found. After an accurate data analysis the problem was isolated and a solution proposed, consisting in changing the HV dividers of all blocks. A second module was built with new dividers and tested again at CERN. Preliminary data analysis (still going) is showing that the problem is solved and ToT can be used as read-out solution.
The other item I was involved on is the CHANTI project. It is a small detector that will be placed just after last station of incoming Kaon tracking system (called Giga TracKer or GTK). GTK is made of three silicon station hit by the 800 MHz incoming beam of hadrons. About 0.3% of particles crossing the GTK undergo in inelastic collision in which the incoming hadron strongly interacts with a nuclei of GTK station producing many particles, among them pions.
If inelastic events involves the third station a signal event could be mimicked if only a pion is detected.
CHANTI aims to veto these events detecting the cloud of particles produced together with pion. It is made by a series of guard ring made by X and Y scintillating bars planes. Bars have a triangular shape, thus are naturally staggered. Each bar is read through a Wave Length Shifter fiber coupled to a Silicon PhotoMultiplier (SiPM). A detailed Monte Carlo was adopted to improve geometry design and to estimate the efficiency of CHANTI; moreover neutron fluence, crucial if SiPM are to be used, was estimated.
Finally we designed and constructed a first full size prototype. Preliminary results about response and time resolution have been done using cosmic rays.


Investigation of Emerging Materials for Optoelectronic Devices Based on III-Nitrides Mufasila Mumthaz Muhammed III-nitride direct bandgap semiconductors have attracted significant research interest due to their outstanding potential for modern optoelectronic and electronic applications. However, the high cost of III-nitride devices, along with low performance due to dislocation defects, remains an obstacle to their further improvement. In this dissertation, I present a significant enhancement of III-nitride devices based on emerging materials. A promising substrate, (-201)-oriented β-Ga2O3 with unique properties that combine high transparency and conductivity, is used for the first time in the development of high-quality vertical III-nitride devices, which can be cost-effective for large-scale production. In addition, hybridizing GaN with emerging materials, mainly perovskite, is shown to extend the functionality of III-nitride applications. As a part of this investigation, high-performance and high-responsivity fast perovskite/GaN-based UV-visible broadband photodetectors were developed. State-of-the-art GaN epilayers grown on (-201)-oriented β-Ga2O3 using AlN and GaN buffer layers are discussed, and their high optical quality without using growth enhancement techniques is demonstrated. In particular, a low lattice mismatch (⁓4.7%) between GaN and the substrate results in a low density of dislocations ~4.8×10 cm. To demonstrates the effect of (-201)-oriented β-Ga2O3 substrate on the quality of III-nitride alloys, high-quality ternary alloy InxGa1−xN film is studied, followed by the growth of high5 quality InxGa1−xN/GaN single and multiple quantum wells (QWs). The optical characterization and carrier dynamics by photoluminescence (PL) and time-resolved PL measurements were subsequently performed. Lastly, to investigate the performance of a vertical emitting device based on InGaN/GaN multiple QWs grown on (-201)-oriented βGa2O3 substrate, high-efficiency vertical-injection emitting device is developed and extensively investigated. The conductive nature of the substrate developed as a part of this study yields better current and heat characteristics, while its transparency ensures high light extraction. The straightforward and direct growth process employed does not require a high-cost complex fabrication process. Finally, a broadband photodetector composed of the emerging CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite with the p-GaN, is developed. The findings reported in this dissertation demonstrate the superior performance of CH3NH3PbI3/GaN photodetectors produced by simple and cost-effective solution processed spray-coating method. In particular, it is demonstrated that perovskite/GaN device can work as a self-powered photodetector.


For all the discourse on the state of architecture education today, little is written about the student experience in architecture schools. With increasing emphasis on Service Quality, Learning Outcomes, and Completion Rates, understanding student motives, and perspectives of professional education is particularly significant. This paper reports on the findings of a research study that gathered views of key stakeholders in architecture education, and is part of a broader study examining architecture education in the context of East Africa and Uganda in particular. The paper presents the findings of Focus Group Discussions held with students at Part I and Part II levels of the architecture programme in Uganda. Of interest, were the perceptions of students in relation to their chosen careers, as well as their experience in the programmes, stemming from anecdotal evidence indicating that a hidden curriculum in programmes presented a significant challenge for students, at times having a negative impact on their learning. While not conclusive at this stage, the initial findings suggest that a lot can be learned from what students reveal about how they relate to their programme of study, and may be valuable in defining a revised approach to architecture education in East Africa.


The Computer and the Internet have enriched people's perspectives on how individuals communicate and establish intimate online relationship across cultures. With the appearance of Computer-aided Communication (CAC), new notions towards understanding the importance of relationship maintenance, interdependence, commitment and relationship barriers in Cross-cultural communication situation have surfaced. Some individual find the use of modern communication technology dynamic while others find it superficial. Because of this, issues and concerns relating to the parameters of its use and how it affects friendship in the context of cross-cultural communication are opening all kinds challenging ideas for researchers all over the globe to explore. Hence, this study ventured into investigating the Computer-aided intimate friendship between Filipino students and their foreign friends: Towards an emerging Cross-cultural communication. Cultural Dimension, Relational Maintenance, and CAC theories served as primary theoretical backbones for this research. As this research was qualitative in nature, methodologies used include in-depth interviews, questionnaire and focus group discussion (FGD) which was voluntarily participated in by Filipino college students and their intimate online foreign friends. Results showed that informants utilized practical relationship maintenance strategies. Relative to publicized relationship maintenance strategies, however, another three notable strategies came to the surface. These are Material and financial support, Cyber-sensual activity and Constant and regular communication through CAC. Such strategies profoundly created strong interdependence and commitment that help broke certain relationship barriers between the collectivist and individualist informants. Further, informants convincingly explicated seven (7) online interaction practices that magnified the conceptualization of an emerging cross-cultural communication pattern. These practices are: a) Openness in communication; b) Willingness to commit to one's online friend; c) Benefiting from distance interaction; d) Strong Interdependence; e) Practical relationship maintenance strategies amidst relationship barriers; f) Active participation of social networks; and, g) Mutual support. Overall, the study brought the "techno-dyadic cross-cultural communication pattern" to the fore.


The 10th anniversary of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between the EU and Russia, which falls on 1 December 2007, is already prompting thoughts on whether and how to replace it. This raises basic issues about the form, purpose and content of bilateral treaties in the context of an integrating Europe. This Policy Brief looks at the relative merits of 6 possible scenarios: 1. Retire the PCA without replacement 2. Extend the status quo 3. Extend the status quo, adding a Political Declaration on Strategic Partnership 4. Replace the PCA with a short Treaty on Strategic Partnership 5. Replace the PCA with a comprehensive Treaty on Strategic Partnership 6. Negotiate a Treaty of Strategic Union We argue that the model of the comprehensive multi-sectoral treaty, well known to the EU and its neighbours that aspire to membership, is not suited to the case of Russia, which is not an applicant for membership. Attempts to produce weaker derivatives of this model result in long-winded and pretentious texts that are thin or devoid of legally-binding substance. The treaty form also involves extremely long and risky ratification procedures on the side of the EU and its member states, and is extremely inflexible, even possibly becoming outdated before entry into force. For the foreseeable future, it would be best to focus efforts on concrete, sector-specific agreements. We advocate a three-stage concept, starting with an extended status quo in the short-run (scenario 2), trying to give useful effect to the four Common Spaces agreed in May 2005 and various sector-specific agreements. This could lead on in the medium-term to a Political Declaration on Strategic Partnership (scenario 3) to revise and update priorities after Russia's WTO accession and more experience with the four Common Spaces. In the long term, we would like to see a Treaty of Strategic Union (scenario 6), as and when there is a greater convergence and mutual trust on matters of political values.


In order to improve our understanding of the connections between the biological processes and abiotic factors, we clustered complex long-term ecological data with the self-organizing map (SOM) technique. The available 21-year long (1990–2010) data set from a small pristine humic lake, in southern Finland, consisted of 27 meteorological, physical, chemical, and biological variables. The SOM grouped the data into three categories of which the first one was the largest with 12 variables, including metabolic processes, dissolved oxygen, total nitrogen and phosphorus, chlorophyll a , and taxonomical groups of plankton known to exist in spring. The second cluster comprised of water temperature and precipitation together with cyanobacteria, algae, rotifers, and crustacean zooplankton, an association emphasized with summer. The third cluster was consisted of six physical and chemical variables linked to autumn, and to the effects of inflow and/or water column mixing. SOM is a useful method for grouping the variables of such a large multi-dimensional data set, especially, when the purpose is to draw comprehensive conclusions rather than to search for associations across sporadic variables. Sampling should minimize the number of missing values. Even flexible statistical techniques, such as SOM, are vulnerable to biased results due to incomplete data.


Abstract V-band clamp joints are used in a wide range of applications to connect circular flanges, for ducts, pipes and the turbocharger housing. Previous studies and research on V-bands are either purely empirical or analytical with limited applicability on the variety of V-band design and working conditions. In this paper models of the V-band are developed based on the classical theory of solid mechanics and the finite element method to study the behaviour of theV-bands under axial loading conditions. The good agreement between results from the developed FEA and the classical model support the suitability of the latter to modelV-band joints with diameters greater than 110mm under axial loading. The results from both models suggest that the axial stiffness for thisV-band cross section reaches a peak value for V-bands with radius of approximately 150 mmacross a wide range of coefficients of friction. Also, it is shown that the coefficient of friction and the wedge angle have a significant effect on the axial stiffness of V-bands.


Making long-term commitments to exclusive suppliers, or relational sourcing, is critical in industries where quality includes social, ethical, and technical elements concerning which contractual terms would be costly to verify or enforce. This study identifies supplier network topologies that best facilitate such relational sourcing. We consider a brand-owning firm that sources in an ongoing fashion from a general multi-tier network of idiosyncratic suppliers. Alternate network designs are compared in terms of three defining structural properties: network scope, the number of suppliers at each tier in the network; degree of control/delegation, the number of tiers in the network; and network connectivity, the connections between firms located at different tiers. Our analysis reveals that neither network connectivity nor the distribution of costs among suppliers affects the ability to sustain relational sourcing. Networks characterized by more delegation or less scope have the most to gain from relational sourcing, but they are also most vulnerable to exploitation of a relational agreement. We characterize this trade-off and identify preferred network topologies. Our analysis shows that, all else equal, delegation is better than control for products with higher margins, greater sourcing stability, or lower costs of noncompliant quality. Numerical analysis reveals that low-scope networks, too, are preferable for higher-margin products with greater sourcing stability; however, low-scope networks are preferred at higher costs of noncompliant quality. These results are robust to alternate information environments, supplier replaceability and equilibrium concepts.


From 2017 the Norwegian teacher education in primary and lower secondary school will be a five-year master education. UiT - The Norwegian Arctic University started a master education already in 2010. The main differences between the old and new program are: increased credits in both pedagogy and the master subject, more emphasize on pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and more focus on the master subject early in the education. In this case study, teacher supervisors evaluate students' knowledge in their school practice. All teacher supervisors in the study with practice from both former and new education, experienced that the master students had increased subject matter knowledge and PCK. These changes in preservice teacher knowledges can possibly be explained by changes in the education program. Our results show that early emphasize on subject, increased focus on PCK and subject matter knowledge are important features in the development of the pre-service teachers' professional knowledge.


It is well established that negative attitudes towards immigrants are strongly associated with lower public support for European integration. But the impact of actual immigration levels on immigration attitudes is still contested. As a result, the relationship between immigration levels and EU public support remains uncertain from a theoretical point of view. We offer an empirical study of the link between immigration from the new EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and EU support at the regional level in Spain, France, Ireland and The Netherlands. The results of the analyses suggest that in all four countries immigration from CEE had negative effects on support for European integration in the host societies. In short, immigration seems to undermine integration, although internal migration within the EU is necessary for the successful functioning of its economic union and the future of political integration.


This is the final report of an evaluation of an Asphalt-Rubber Binder Stress Absorbing Membrane Interlayer (SAMI) to control transverse, alligator and longitudinal cracking in the asphalt concrete overlay. A control section consisting of a tack coat of CSS-1 applied to the existing pavement was used to compare against the Asphalt-Rubber SAMI and a paving grade asphalt SAMI. Crack mapping for a period of 9 years disclosed the Asphalt-Rubber SAMI to perform slightly better than the paving grade asphalt and much better than the control.


There are many calls to use the COVID 19 crisis as an opportunity for transforming to a future trajectory that is more equitable and environmentally sustainable What is lacking is a cohesive framework for bringing these calls together We propose that such transitions could be informed by lessons from three decades of scholarship on abrupt and surprising change in systems of humans and nature Over time, many social-ecological systems exhibit cycles of change consisting of sequential patterns of growth, development, crisis, and reorganization A critical phase in the cycle is the brief period after crisis when novelty and innovation can change the future trajectory Without being prepared for this window of opportunity, deep, systemic change may be unachievable We propose a three-step process to identify the major drivers of the global system that need to be changed: (1) identifying what society values;(2) identifying the determinants of these valued variables;and (3) identifying the underlying drivers of the determinants and how they need to be changed A tentative list of five such drivers are identified and discussed: (i) the economic system, (ii) homogenization, (iii) human population growth, size, and densities, (iv) consumption patterns, human ethics, and behavior, and (v) governance They are linked to seven questions relating to how we might proceed in addressing the drivers If response to the crisis merely reinforces the existing system, its incompatibility with the natural world and its propensity to increase inequity and conflict will likely increase fragility and lead to another version of the present calamity If it is a deliberately transformed system that emerges its future will depend on the reorganization process, and the way the system is guided into the future What is needed is a deliberate, fundamental cultivation of emergence to enable transformation toward better futures in order to avoid an inevitable deepening of a system that ultimately is worse for all © 2020 by the author(s)


Stargardt's disease is probably under-diagnosed in sub-Saharan Africa as its subtle macular changes in the earlier stages of the disease are often out of proportion to the bilateral gradual impairment of central vision. In addition, the paucity of well-equipped eye clinics manned by trained retinal sub-specialists makes the detection of the disease a rare event. We present a patient in whom we made a diagnosis of Stargardt's disease on clinical grounds in Nigeria and who subsequently had corroboratory fundus angiographic and electro diagnostic tests in the United Kingdom. The patient, who was already severely visually incapacitated in his mid-twenties, had to abandon medical studies for a perceived less visually demanding one. His hope for a restoration of his eyesight now rests on the promising advances being made in gene and stem cell therapy.


We demonstrate a method that enables in situ modification of the spectral shape of the parametric-gain profile in quasi-phase-matching crystals. In our experiment we used the electro-optic effect to modify the phase-matching profile for second-harmonic generation in a 57-mm-long nonuniformly poled LiNbO3 crystal. In the direction of beam propagation the crystal is divided into three segments, where the first and the third segments have an equal length of 17 mm. Both segments are periodically poled with the same period of 21.6 µm, in order to obtain quasi phase matching for frequency doubling a fundamental wavelength of 1653 nm. The center segment is single-domain LiNbO3 whose index of refraction is changed by the electro-optic effect by applying a voltage. Using a continuously tunable, single-frequency, single-stripe, distributed-feedback diode laser as the fundamental source, we recorded the parametric phase-matching profile for second-harmonic generation as a function of the laser wavelength and investigated the modification of the profile in dependence of the voltage applied to the crystal center segment. The measured phase-matching spectra are in excellent agreement with the theoretical prediction. The demonstrated method opens the possibility of rapidly changing the parametric-gain profile for all types of χ(2) nonlinear conversion processes.


This paper argues that the cross-linguistic study of subjective experience as expressed, described and construed in language cannot be set on a sound footing without the aid of a systematic and non-Anglocentric approach to lexical semantic analysis. This conclusion follows from two facts, one theoretical and one empirical. The first is the crucial role of language in accessing and communicating about feelings. The second is the demonstrated existence of substantial, culture-related differences between the meanings of emotional expressions in the languages of the world. We contend that the NSM approach to semantic and cultural analysis (Wierzbicka 1996; Gladkova 2010; Levisen 2012; Goddard 2011; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014a; Wong 2014; among other works) provides the necessary conceptual and analytical framework to come to grips with these facts. This is demonstrated in practice by the studies of "happiness-like" and "pain-like" expressions across eight languages, undertaken in the present volume. At the same time as probing the precise meanings of these expressions, the authors provide extensive cultural contextualization, showing in some detail how the meanings they are analyzing are truly "cultural meanings". The project exemplified by the volume can also be read as a linguistically-anchored contribution to cultural psychology (Shweder 2004, 2003), the quest to understand and appreciate the mental life of others in a full spirit of psychological pluralism.


We introduce a conceptually simple and scalable framework for continual learning domains where tasks are learned sequentially. Our method is constant in the number of parameters and is designed to preserve performance on previously encountered tasks while accelerating learning progress on subsequent problems. This is achieved by training a network with two components: A knowledge base, capable of solving previously encountered problems, which is connected to an active column that is employed to efficiently learn the current task. After learning a new task, the active column is distilled into the knowledge base, taking care to protect any previously acquired skills. This cycle of active learning (progression) followed by consolidation (compression) requires no architecture growth, no access to or storing of previous data or tasks, and no task-specific parameters. We demonstrate the progress & compress approach on sequential classification of handwritten alphabets as well as two reinforcement learning domains: Atari games and 3D maze navigation.


The continued growth of the internet driven by the demand for media rich content and escalating IP traffic has been fuelling the massive growth in demand for bandwidth to handle very high data rates. In order to meet this demand for capacity, optical multiplexing techniques such as wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) and hybrid WDM/OTDM systems need to be utilised.

The development of a source of wavelength tunable picosecond optical pulses with excellent temporal and spectral purity at high repetition rates is extremely important for use in such high-speed optical communication systems. The technique of gain switching a commercially available laser diode and self seeding it is shown to be one of the simplest and most cost effective methods of generating transform limited, wavelength tunable pulses with a high Side Mode Suppression Ratio (SMSR).

This thesis examines the use of optical gain-switching for the generation of optical pulses that may be used in high-speed OTDM and WDM/OTDM systems. This work specifically deals with the investigation and characterisation of the SMSR and non-linear chirp of optical pulses generated using the gain-switching technique, and outlines how these characteristics, that may degrade system performance, can be optimised such as that optimum performance is attained. In particular, the work demonstrates the development of an optical pulse source with duration 30 dB, jitter 30 dB, that would be suitable for use in OTDM systems operating at 80 Gbit/s.


Book synopsis: The demand for recognition, responsibility, and reparations is regularly invoked in the wake of colonialism, genocide, and mass violence: there can be no victims without recognition, no perpetrators without responsibility, and no justice without reparations. Or so it seems from law's limited repertoire for assembling the archive after 'the disaster'. Archival and memorial practices are central to contexts where transitional justice, addressing historical wrongs, or reparations are at stake. The archive serves as a repository or 'storehouse' of what needs to be gathered and recognised so that it can be left behind in order to inaugurate the future. The archive manifests law's authority and its troubled conscience. It is an indispensable part of the liberal legal response to biopolitical violence.

This collection challenges established approaches to transitional justice by opening up new dialogues about the problem of assembling law's archive. The volume presents research drawn from multiple jurisdictions that address the following questions. What resists being archived? What spaces and practices of memory - conscious and unconscious - undo legal and sovereign alibis and confessions? And what narrative forms expose the limits of responsibility, recognition, and reparations? By treating the law as an 'archive', this book traces the failure of universalised categories such as 'perpetrator', 'victim', 'responsibility', and 'innocence,' posited by the liberal legal state. It thereby uncovers law's counter-archive as a challenge to established forms of representing and responding to violence.


Reports on traditional medicinal uses of chlorophyll in alternative forms of medicine are known since ages. Now-a-days chlorophyll has been used in the field of medicine as remedy and diagnostics. Chlorophyll molecules are used in pharmacy as photosensitizer for cancer therapy. Their roles as modifier of genotoxic effects are becoming increasingly important, besides these it being known to have multiple medicinal uses. Chlorophyll has its place in modern medicine. Here, we present a review of recent developments in medicinal uses of chlorophyll. This article enumerates therapeutic claims of chlorophyll as drugs based on investigative findings of modern science. A brief overview of research and developments of medicinal uses of chlorophyll will be presented in this review along with challenges of potential applications of chlorophyll and its derivatives as chemotherapeutic agents


Markov networks are an effective way to represent complex probability distributions. However, learning their structure and parameters or using them to answer queries is typically intractable. One approach to making learning and inference tractable is to use approximations, such as pseudo-likelihood or approximate inference. An alternate approach is to use a restricted class of models where exact inference is always efficient. Previous work has explored low treewidth models, models with tree-structured features, and latent variable models. In this paper, we introduce ACMN, the first ever method for learning efficient Markov networks with arbitrary conjunctive features. The secret to ACMN's greater flexibility is its use of arithmetic circuits, a lineartime inference representation that can handle many high treewidth models by exploiting local structure. ACMN uses the size of the corresponding arithmetic circuit as a learning bias, allowing it to trade off accuracy and inference complexity. In experiments on 12 standard datasets, the tractable models learned by ACMN are more accurate than both tractable models learned by other algorithms and approximate inference in intractable models.


Are democratic or authoritarian unions more effective in defending and advancing workers' interests? Generally, the answers given are untheoretical, agnostic, or impressionistic-and unsupported by systematic empirical studies. The theory guiding our analysis is that a union with a democratic constitution, institutionalized opposition, and an active membership would tend to constitute a worker's immediate political community and sustain both class solidarity and a sense of identity between members and their leaders. As a result, such democratic unions would also defy the hegemony of capital in the sphere of production. Consistent with this theory, a contingency analysis of a sample of contracts won by CIO unions from 1938 to 1955 shows that those contracts won by stable highly democratic unions were more likely to be pro-labor than were those won by stable moderately democratic or stable oligarchical unions. The contracts won by unions with organized factions also were far more likely to be pro-labor than were those won by unions with sporadic factions or no factions. This pattern held both among the unions in the Communist camp and those in shifting or anti-Communist camps. Further, OLS analysis shows that constitutional democracy, organizedfactions, and Communist leadership (which approached statistical significance) each had independent effects in limiting the power of capital in


Temperature stratification plays an important role in HCCI combustion. The onsets of auto-ignition and combustion duration are sensitive to the temperature field in the engine cylinder. Numerical simulations of HCCI engine combustion are affected by the use of wall boundary conditions, especially the temperature condition at the cylinder and piston walls. This paper reports on numerical studies and experiments of the temperature field in an optical experimental engine in motored run conditions aiming at improved understanding of the evolution of temperature stratification in the cylinder. The simulations were based on Large-Eddy-Simulation approach which resolves the unsteady energetic large eddy and large scale swirl and tumble structures. Two dimensional temperature experiments were carried out using laser induced phosphorescence with thermographic phosphors seeded to the gas in the cylinder. The results revealed different mechanisms for the development of temperature stratification: intake gas and residual gas mixing, heat transfer in the wall boundary layer, compression of the charge, and large scale flow transport. The sensitivity of LES results to different wall boundary conditions and inflow conditions was analyzed. (Less)


Understanding how images of objects and scenes behave in response to specific ego-motions is a crucial aspect of proper visual development, yet existing visual learning methods are conspicuously disconnected from the physical source of their images. We propose to exploit proprioceptive motor signals to provide unsupervised regularization in convolutional neural networks to learn visual representations from egocentric video. Specifically, we enforce that our learned features exhibit equivariance, i.e, they respond predictably to transformations associated with distinct ego-motions. With three datasets, we show that our unsupervised feature learning approach significantly outperforms previous approaches on visual recognition and next-best-view prediction tasks. In the most challenging test, we show that features learned from video captured on an autonomous driving platform improve large-scale scene recognition in static images from a disjoint domain.


Abstract.
 The Middle and early Late Triassic of southern China is well known for a remarkable diversity of marine vertebrates, particularly reptiles, including an abundance of intriguing new forms (e.g., Jiang et al., 2005; Hu et al., 2011; Li et al., 2016). Here we describe a new diapsid from Yunnan Province. It possesses an elongate neck that exhibits a remarkable similarity to that of many Protorosauria, yet in other respects the skull and postcranium are much less derived. The new taxon is part of the so-called Panxian-Luoping Fauna and the deposits correspond to the Upper Member of the Guanling Formation, comprising thin to medium bedded, gray to dark-gray laminated marly limestone and limestone, with several layers of bentonite intercalated in the fossil level at Panxian (Wan, 2002; Motani et al., 2008; Jiang et al., 2009). Their age is Pelsonian (middle Anisian, Middle Triassic) as is indicated by the conodont Nicoraella kockeli Zone (Sun et al., 2006; Zhang et al., 2009). A recent U-Pb study indicates the absolute age of these middle Anisian beds to be close to 244 Ma (Wang et al., 2014).


Individuals in common pools-employees in firms, shareholders in firms, individuals in insurance plans, and citizens in a jurisdiction - want the managers of those common pools to act paternalistically toward other individuals, because this lowers the costs of being in the pool. The nanny state, which bans smoking in public places and imposes innumerable sin taxes, and the nanny corporation, which is starting to force employees to be more healthy, are simply responding to this demand. These two can thought of as competing in the "market for paternalism" to deliver paternalism to individuals that demand it. Where nannyism is inevitable, as it is in a world in which others pay, the question then becomes which of the two sources of nanny rules - the state or the firm - is the most efficient supplier of paternalism. This essay describes numerous reasons why corporate nannies are superior to their state analogs in some cases. For instance, corporate policies are subjected to more instantaneous feedback from labor markets, which reduces overreaching but also helps solve information problems in ways likely to reduce the sum of decision and error costs. There is, however, no theory under which the state or firm will always be superior at imposing nanny limitations on behavior. Because of this, we might expect firms to supply nanny rules when it is efficient for them to do so, say because of better monitoring, lower agency costs, or the like, and not to do so when government rules could be supplied at lower cost for a given efficacy level. The problem, however, is that there are government rules, regulations, statutes, constitutional provisions, and case law that may distort the market from efficiency. This essay makes the case for corporate nannyism and shows how government regulation may be biased without justification in favor of the nanny state.


Biological hydrogels are continuously turned over through secretion and degradation. This non-equilibrium flux may be important for cellular and molecular transport through mucus and the extracellular matrix. Gel-digesting enzymes can drastically change the physical and chemical properties of the hydrogel environment. We report that a spatial gradient in the degradation of two gel/enzyme systems—gelatin/trypsin and hyaluronan/hyaluronidase—leads to directional motion of particles embedded in the gel in the direction of higher enzyme concentration. We study the rate at which the degradation front propagates through the gel and the ensuing velocity of the embedded particles, as functions of enzyme and gel concentrations. We propose that asymmetric degradation leads to asymmetric swelling, which transports particles up the enzyme concentration gradient.


We investigated whether ultraendurance runners in a 100-km run suffer a decrease of body mass and whether this loss consists of fat mass, skeletal muscle mass, or total body water. Male ultrarunners were measured pre- and postrace to determine body mass, fat mass, and skeletal muscle mass by using the anthropometric method. In addition, bioelectrical impedance analysis was used to determine total body water, and urinary (urinary specific gravity) and hematological parameters (hematocrit and plasma sodium) were measured in order to determine hydration status. Body mass decreased by 1.6 kg (p < .01), fat mass by 0.4 kg (p < .01), and skeletal muscle mass by 0.7 kg (p < .01), whereas total body water increased by 0.8 L (p < .05). Hematocrit and plasma sodium decreased significantly (p < .01), whereas plasma urea and urinary specific gravity (USG) increased significantly (p < .01). The decrease of 2.2% body mass and a USG of 1.020 refer to a minimal dehydration. Our athletes seem to have been relatively overhydrated (increase in total body water and plasma sodium) and dehydrated (decrease in body mass and increase in USG) during the race, as evidenced by the increased total body water and the fact that plasma sodium and hematocrit were lower postrace than prerace. The change of body mass was associated with the change of total body water (p < .05), and we presume the development of


The native filesystem of Linux, Ext2, inherits its basic structure from Unix systems that were in widespread use at the time Linus Torvalds founded the Linux project more than ten years ago. Although Ext2 has been improved and extended in many ways over the years, it still shares an undesireable characteristic with those early Unix filesystems: each directory operation (create, open or delete) requires a linear search of an entire directory file. This results in a quadratically increasing cost of operating on all the files of a directory, as the number of files in the directory increases. The HTree directory indexing extension was designed and implemented by the author to address this issue, and has been shown in practice to perform very well. In addition, the HTree indexing method is backward and forward-compatible with existing Ext2 volumes and has a simple, compact implementation. The HTree index is persistent, meaning that not only mass directory operations but single, isolated operations are accelerated. These desirable properties suggest the the HTree index extension is likely to become part of the Ext2 code base during the Linux 2.5 development cycle. hotel & travel press photo archive audio key signing 2002


We analyze theoretically and empirically the impact of the shadow economy on entrepreneurial entry, utilising 1998-2005 individual-level Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data merged with macro level variables. A simple correlation coefficient suggests a positive linear link between the size of the shadow economy and entrepreneurial entry. However, this masks more complex relationships. With appropriate controls and instrumenting for potential endogeneity where required, the impact of the shadow economy on entry is found to be negative, based on a linear specification. Moreover, there is also evidence of nonlinearity: entrepreneurial entry is least likely when the shadow economy is of medium size. We attribute the negative effects of shadow economy on entry to perceived strong competition faced by new entrants when the shadow economy is widespread. At the individual level, an extensive shadow economy has a more negative impact on respondents who are risk averse. In addition, in the economies where property rights are strong, the negative impact of the shadow economy is weaker.


Abstract Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata subsp. wyomingensis [Beetle & A. Young] S.L. Welsh) plant communities of the Intermountain West have been greatly reduced from their historic range as a result of wildfire, agronomic practices, brush control treatments, and weed invasions. The impact of prescribed fall burning Wyoming big sagebrush has not been well quantified. Treatments were sagebrush removed with burning (burned) and sagebrush present (control). Treatments were applied to 0.4-ha plots at 6 sites. Biomass production, vegetation cover, perennial herbaceous vegetation diversity, soil water content, soil inorganic nitrogen (NO−3, NH+4), total soil nitrogen (N), total soil carbon (C), and soil organic matter (OM) were compared between treatments in the first 2 years postburn. In 2003 and 2004, total (shrub and herbaceous) aboveground annual biomass production was 2.3 and 1.2 times greater, respectively, in the control compared to the burned treatment. In the upper 15 cm of the soil profile, inorganic N concentrations were greater in the burned than control treatment, while soil water, at least in the spring, was greater in the control than burned treatment. Regardless, greater herbaceous aboveground annual production and cover in the burned treatment indicated that resources were more available to herbaceous vegetation in the burned than the control treatment. Exotic annual grasses did not increase with the burn treatment. Our results suggest in some instances that late seral Wyoming big sagebrush plant communities can be prescribed fall burned to increase livestock forage or alter wildlife habitat without exotic annual grass invasion in the first 2 years postburn. However, long-term evaluation at multiple sites across a larger area is needed to better quantify the effects of prescribed fall burning on these communities. Thus, caution is advised because of the value of Wyoming big sagebrush plant communities to wildlife and the threat of invasive plants.


The recent Ebola threat from western Africa raised unanswered questions about the scope of the U.S. federal government's quarantine authority. For decades, a widespread assumption has existed that states have absolute control over quarantines imposed within their boundaries. This article suggests that the presumption of limited federal authority is overly restrictive and not constitutionally mandated. The history of the "shotgun quarantines" imposed during the yellow fever epidemics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries offers an alternative constitutional interpretation. This fascinating but previously untold account reveals that leading politicians of the day believed the federal government had a broad constitutional authority. The human suffering and disruption to commerce caused by the local shotgun quarantine led the South to implore Congress for legislation to remedy it – the only significant instance in which the post-Civil War South united in favor of ceding state's rights to the federal government. The controversy faded as effective measures against yellow fever were found, only to emerge again when Ebola confronted public health policy makers a century later. Because Congress never acted, we have largely forgotten the history of these legal debates over interstate quarantine authority. In recovering that history, this Article offers a new perspective on how to manage public health crises in our federal system. The need for regulatory standards that could preempt an unnecessary, parochial local quarantine requires Congress to act.


PURPOSE
Evaluate validity of Monte Carlo(MC) based treatment planning system(TPS) used for lung SBRT.

METHODS
A commercial TPS(XVMC, iPlan4.1, BrainLAB, Germany) was validated using benchmark dose measurements in water and heterogeneous-slab phantoms. Five phantoms were built using four different density materials: tissue-equivalent plastic-water, lung-equivalent(low-& high-density) cork, and bone. EDR-films at various depths in phantoms were irradiated with 6MV photons. MC plans were calculated dose to medium using 2mm grid-size and 1% dose-variance. Ion chamber and film measurements of depth-dose, dose-profiles and output-factors for a range of field-sizes(12×12 - 60×60mm) were performed. Measured versus calculated dose profile differences were quantified using two dose-indices: Ddiff for the central 80% of field, and Dspill for dose outside field-edge(50%-10% dose).

RESULTS
For homogeneous and hetero-bone phantoms, MC and PB calculations agreed well with measurements. For hetero-lung phantoms, there was excellent agreement between MC-calculations and measured doses (Ddiff <3%) for all field-sizes and depths. The agreement improved with increasing field-size(2.6% for 12×12mm vs. 1.1% for 60×60mm @4cm depth in lung). However, at the same depth and field-size, PB calculations significantly over-predicted measured dose (34% and 6.7% respectively). PB and measured dose differences increased with decreasing field-size, decreasing density and increasing depth within heterogeneity, but converged to <1% beyond heterogeneity. In contrast, significant under-prediction of dose by PB model(up to 50%) was seen in the penumbra region outside field. Dspill differences between calculated and measured dose increased with field size but were lower for MC than PB.

CONCLUSION
Our TPS validation measurements highlight need for MC planning in lung SBRT. PB calculations Result in significant under-dosing of target and over-dosing of surrounding tissue. Over-prediction of target dose is inversely proportional to field-size. Knowing the magnitude of Ddiff for PB for a given field-size, one can easily calculate this index at any other field-size.


We study the electrodynamics of a superlattice that consists of two kinds of layers: the layers of a type-II superconductor and the layers of a normal metal in a perpendicular magnetic field. The problem is treated in the framework of London electrodynamics taking into account simultaneously the nonlocality of the intervortex interaction and the Abrikosov vortex elasticity. The dependence of the surface impedance Z on the dc-magnetic-field induction B much less than H(c2) (H(c2) is the upper critical field) is analzyed for different values of the parameters of the superlattice. It is shown that, in the low-frequency limit, three types of Z (B) dependence are possible: (i) Z is-proportional-to B for small fields and Z is-proportional-to B1/2 for large fields, with a crossover at B almost-equal-to H(c1) (H(c1) is the lower critical field); (ii) Z is-proportional-to B1/2 for any fields; or (iii) Z = AB1/2 for small fields and Z = CB1/2 for large fields, the coefficients A and C being nonequal, with the crossover AB1/2-->CB1/2 at B almost-equal-to H(c1). The type-(i) dependence characteristic of a uniform superconductor converts into a type-(ii) dependence as one diminishes the thickness of the superconductor layers. The physical origin of this conversion is explained. It is suggested that observed dependence in multilayer superconductor systems Z is-proportional-to B1/2 is due to the effect discussed in the paper.


Utilizing the refractometric method (3) to measure water flow by the resulting changes in concentration of a sucrose solution, we have designed an apparatus and procedure to measure the rate of water movement through seed coats of snap beans (Phaseolus vulgaris, L.). The degree of accuracy obtainable in reading the sucrose concentration on the refractometric scale was ± 0.05%. Using 0.2 ml of solution, it was thus possible to detect the movement of 0.4 mm³ of water across the seed coat membrane. Permeability of the seed coats-ranged from 0.78 mg/mm²/hr for the least permeable to 1.82 mg/mm²/hr for the most permeable of the 11 varieties tested. With one exception, the white-seeded beans were more permeable than the dark-seeded ones.


Speciation remains a process that is poorly understood. In particular, little progress has been made in elucidating the mechanisms underlying prezygotic isolation. A full understanding requires a knowledge of underlying genetics. To date the only real progress has been made using Drosophila: more model organisms are needed.

It is proposed that the zebrafish, Danio rerio, a species well suited to the laboratory environment and with much information available about its genetics, has potential in this area. However, currently little is know about mate choice in this species and whether its behaviour
and morphology exhibit any genetic variation in the wild that may be amenable to further analysis. This thesis addresses these questions by investigating the behaviour and morphology of zebrafish deriving from several wild populations in Nepal and Bangladesh.

Mate choice trials in the laboratory revealed several features of the zebrafish that make it less amenable to such studies than several alternative teleost species. These include a lack of strong sexual dimorphism and the absence of behaviours that reliably indicate mate choice.
Nevertheless observations in the course of this study suggest that male carotenoid coloration, longitudinal melanophore stripes and symmetry of caudal fin pattern may have behavioural roles in this species.

Investigations into the shoaling behaviour of the zebrafish revealed no evidence for association preferences for familiar individuals or kin. The ubiquity of a preference for familiars in shoaling fish may have been over emphasized. This study did, however, find evidence for
inter-population variation in grouping behaviour that may provide another avenue for the investigation of the genetics of behavioural adaptations.

Documentation of morphological variation revealed heritable inter-population variability, in particular in body stripe pattern, as well as consistent sexual dimorphisms in body
shape and anal fin morphology. Further investigation of the quantitative genetic basis of these traits revealed that several features of body stripe pattern were not heritable under laboratory conditions. This may indicate stabilising selection on body stripe pattern. In contrast, elements
of anal fin morphology exhibited more underlying genetic variation.


Online social media plays an important role in the mix of many companies' marketing communications. Thus, scholars have recently tried to uncover patterns that positively affect social media communication effectiveness, predominantly focusing on message characteristics. Although a lot of valuable insights have been generated, it remains unclear what the drivers of 'super successful posts' (SSP) are. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to reveal why a very small proportion of social media posts significantly outperforms the majority of other posts. For this purpose, we employed case evidence from the automotive industry and collected 2,000 Facebook posts. In regard to the numbers of likes, comments and shares, the 20 most successful posts each were selected. After removing the duplicates, a final sample of 42 SSP remained. With an explorative multi-level approach, including two focus group sessions, an in-depth analysis was conducted for every post. Aiming to capture a comprehensive picture, we also investigated the context of each post beyond the online environment. With our analysis, we reveal five typical patterns of social media excellence (co-branding, wow effect, cognitive task, timing, and campaign). In addition, we further elaborate on four selected SSP to enhance the understanding of underlying mechanisms. Among other things, our findings are supposed to sensitize practitioners in regard to a broader view on social media posts. Moreover, the understanding about the five patterns of SSP may support practitioners to enhance the popularity of their future posts.


This paper provides a presentation on cross self-confrontation (CSC) as a useful qualitative method to address the challenges in studying active information-seeking of youth. There are two great methodological challenges and a major theoretical issue. First, youth information-seeking behaviour is characterised by frequent heuristic reasoning, very quick ways of dealing with digital media, making it difficult to give an exhaustive account of actions. This fundamental characteristic has never been discussed from a methodological point of view. Second, a well-known problem is that young people may have difficulties in articulating all their thoughts. Third, young information seekers are frequently compared to expert information seekers. Therefore, what they aren't doing is well known and what they are doing is unknown. The CSC method presented is based on confronting individuals with their own activity and also with the activity of others with the help of video recordings. The method emerged from educational research known as stimulated recall and developed for work analysis in occupational settings, in allowing individuals to comment on the activities of others. Expected benefits are to assist memory, increase the participants' reflexivity and provide significant knowledge about "personal touch", "personal dexterity". To discuss the potential methodological and theoretical benefits of studying youth information-seeking behaviour, we examine CSC using data from our former research project in Library and Information Science with 30 students aged 10-19 in France, working in tandem on imposed and self-generated information tasks. The results contribute to knowledge about using image and copying and pasting in the youth information-seeking process. Keywords : cross self-confrontation method, youth information-seeking behaviour, students, image, copy and paste.


Oreocharis uniflora , a new species of Gesneriaceae from Guangdong, China, is described and illustrated. The new species is morphologically similar to O. striata and O. lungshengensis , but differs mainly by its white villous leaf blades and petioles, 1-flowered cymes, shorter peduncles (1.8–3.5 cm long), 3–5-serrate calyx lobes, pale purple to reddish purple corollas, inside with longitudinally purple striations, campanulate-tubular corolla tubes, 4 free stamens, and 1 disc-shaped stigma. Based on the current information, O. uniflora should be considered as 'Critically Endangered' (CR), following the IUCN categories and criteria.


The aim of this article is to identify the managerial competencies in FIHE (Federal Institutions of Higher Education). The theoretical framework focuses on the evolution of FIHE , the challenges facing public managers and possible actions in a changing context and managerial competencies. This is a qualitative and exploratory study that sought to raise the perception of a group of managers concerning the managerial competenciesof technical and administrative servers for three FIHE in the northeast of Brazil: the Federal University of Paraiba (UFPB), the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). The sample included twenty-one public managers in the areas of human resources, finance, accounting and security who work at these institutions. The data collection method was the focus group, whose sessions were audio recorded and transcribed. The reports were analyzed in a comprehensive interpretation. The research findings advance the understanding of managerial competencies within the FIHE under study, and enabled the identification of four groups of managerial competencies:cognitive, functional, behavioral and political. These results may encourage discussions among FIHE concerning the development of the skills required of servers, particularly managers, in their professional practice, which can assist in the implementation of guidelines for FIHE and establish a development policy for public managers to mobilize competencies and enable the development of institutional skills. From the exploratory study, we intend to conduct a quantitative survey to assess the level of the domain of competenciesas well as the encouragement level of these Federal Institutions of Higher Education for the development of managerial competencies.


The physical properities of sea turtle nesting beaches may strongly influence embryo development and hence conservation planning. In this study, we compared the characteristics of two nesting beaches of Green Turtles, Chelonia mydas, at Akyatan and Samandağ in southern Turkey. A total of 48 sand samples from 48 nests was examined and compared in respect to moisture content (M), temperature (TT), electrical conductivity (EC), salinity (S), total dissolved solution (TDS), pH, air ratio (AR), sand grain size together with distance from sea (DFS), depth (ND), incubation period (ID) and hatching success. Significant differences between the two areas were found in nest chamber moisture, conductivity, salinity, total dissolved solution and sand grain size. In a principal component analysis (PCA), the first component explained 45.1% of the variability and was dominated by the effects of the TDS, EC, S, pH and M. The second component explained 24.2 % of the variation and was dominated by the contributions of the TT, ID and ND. This is evidence that moisture plays a more important role than thermal properties in differentiating between the two beaches.


Observations of dichlorodifluoromethane obtained several times daily over the period July 1978 to June 1981 at Adrigole, Ireland (52°N, 10°W), Ragged Point, Barbados (13°N, 59°W), Point Matatula, American Samoa (14°S, 171°W), and Cape Grim, Tasmania (41°S, 145°E), are reported. Observations at Cape Meares, Oregon (45°N, 124°W), are also given for the period November 1980 to June 1981. On January 1, 1980, the average mixing ratio of dichlorodifluoromethane in the lower troposphere is estimated to have been 285 pptv and to have been increasing at 6.0%/year. The atmospheric lifetime of this compound is estimated from this data by adjusting its destruction rate in a two-dimensional model of the atmosphere so as to provide the best fit to the observations. Assuming destruction of CF2Cl2 in the stratosphere only, the lifetime estimate for January 1, 1980, by the inventory technique is 69+36−18 years. The trend technique principally provides a lower limit to the lifetime of 81 years. The results suggest a need for further assessment of dichlorodifluoromethane release estimates, particularly those from the USSR and eastern Europe.


Deconstructionism as a method in transgender studies has been useful to collapse concepts and ideas about (trans) gender and sexuality. In spite of the usefulness of undoing the gender and sexuality canon, by way of concentrating on transgender practices, the resulting deconstructions often leave us with no place to go. This article develops an analysis of transsexual and genderqueer people's bodily aesthetic assemblages, challenging theorizations that exclusively pit transsexual people as subjugated and genderqueer people as subversive. Drawing on interview data from 23 transsexual and genderqueer people, this article argues that transsexual and genderqueer people, regardless of their desire for particular bodily aesthetic interventions and gender recognition, productively flee, elude, flow, leak and disappear from categorizing legal statutes and healthcare protocols. The article concludes by arguing that deconstructive work becomes divisive and unproductive for theorizing and understanding the bodily aesthetics and diverse connectivities and affectivities of transsexual and genderqueer people, all of whom become territorialized, deterritorialized and reterritorialized through polyvocal bodily aesthetic assemblages.


The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has confirmed the existence of populations of broad absorption line (BAL) quasars with various unusual properties. We present and discuss 23 such objects and consider the implications of their wide range of properties for models of BAL outflows and quasars in general. We have discovered one BAL quasar with a record number of absorption lines. Two other similarly complex objects with many narrow troughs show broad Mg II absorption extending longward of their systemic host galaxy redshifts. This can be explained as absorption of an extended continuum source by the rotation-dominated base of a disk wind. Five other objects have absorption that removes an unprecedented ∼90% of all flux shortward of Mg II. The absorption in one of them has varied across the ultraviolet with an amplitude and rate of change as great as ever seen. This same object may also show broad Hβ absorption. Numerous reddened BAL quasars have been found, including at least one reddened mini-BAL quasar with very strong Fe II emission. The five reddest objects have continuum reddenings of E(B-V) ≃ 0.5, and in two of them we find strong evidence that the reddening curve is even steeper than that of the SMC. We have found at least one object with absorption from Fe III but not Fe II. This may be due to a high column density of moderately high ionization gas, but the Fe III level populations must also be affected by some sort of resonance. Finally, we have found two luminous, probably reddened high-redshift objects that may be BAL quasars whose troughs partially cover different regions of the continuum source as a function of velocity.


We have investigated microbubble based targeted delivery and combined intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) imaging as potential therapy to reduce incidence of restenosis following stent placement in atherosclerotic coronary arteries. The goal of these studies was to determine whether IVUS could be used to detect targeted microbubbles and enhance drug/gene delivery through targeting. Fluorescently labeled microbubbles targeted to the inflammatory cell surface marker VCAM-1 were combined with cells under flow to measure adhesion compared to control bubbles. Gene delivery was performed using targeted bubble constructs and 1MHz ultrasound at 200 and 300 kPa - acoustic pressures which can be generated by a modified commercial IVUS catheter. Detection of adherent microbubbles to inflamed cells in culture and flow chambers was measured using a clinical IVUS catheter. VCAM-1 targeted microbubbles enhanced adhesion to inflamed cells up to 100 fold over non-targeted microbubbles. Compared to non-inflamed cells VCAM-1 targeted bubbles exhibited a 7.9 fold increase in adhesion to IL- 1beta treated cells. Targeted microbubbles resulted in a 5.5 fold increase in plasmid DNA transfection over non targeted bubbles in conjunction with a focused 1-inch diameter 1MHz transducer and 1.5 fold increase following insonation from a fabricated IVUS transducer at 1.5 MHz. At an equivalent density of 3×104 bubbles/mm2, IVUS image intensity increased 4.3 fold over that of non-bubble-coated surfaces. Rupture of microbubbles from the modified IVUS transducer resulted in a 53% reduction in image intensity. Taken together, these results indicate IVUS may be used to detect targeted microbubbles to inflamed vasculature and subsequently deliver a gene/drug locally.


In this study it has been investigated whether and to what extent, repeated moisture cycles affect the airleakage through clamped overlap joints in the vapour barrier layer. Use of clamped joints is a traditionalway to make airtight joints in the wind- and vapour barrier used in wood frame walls in Norway and othercountries. A laboratory test has been carried out, with a total of 63 pressure tests, being carried out on 9 testsamples, consisting of overlap joints of 0.15 mm polyethylene film clamped between a wooden batten andstud. Each sample was tested seven times after repeated drying and humidification, where the moisturevalues of the sub-cycles were chosen to represent the annual variations of indoor relative humidity.The laboratory test materials were mounted with machine nails with various center spacing (150 mm,300 mm and 450 mm). The overlap joints of the vapour barrier were in the end of the test sealed withadhesive tape, revealing to what extent this over a longer period of time will be beneficial.The results showed that the first moisture cycle (drying) resulted in significant increase of air leakage forall the sample variants. Throughout the moisture cycles, a further strong leakage development for centerspacing 450 mm was observed, which was less for 300 mm, and non-existent for 150 mm. The gain ofusing structural adhesive tape was found to largely depend on the level of perforation resulting from thenails and their center distance. Adhesive tape on the joints resulted in the greatest reduction in leakagenumbers where the center distance between the nails was high, i.e. the reduction was 58% for centerdistance 450 mm. However, with shorter center distance the use of tape only decreased the air leakagebetween 22-39%, revealing the fact that a large part of the joint leakage is through the nail perforations.


Many mappings from polarization into color have been developed so that polarization information can be displayed. One of the most common of these maps the angle of linear polarization into color hue and degree of linear polarization into color saturation, while preserving the irradiance information from the polarization data. While this strategy enjoys wide popularity, there is a large class of polarization images for which it is not ideal. It is common to have images where the strongest polarization signatures (in terms of degree of polarization) occur in regions of relatively low irradiance: either in shadow in reflective bands or in cold regions in emissive bands. Since the irradiance is low, the chromatic properties of the resulting images are generally not apparent. Here we present an alternate mapping that uses the statistics of the angle of polarization as a measure of confidence in the polarization signature, then amplifies the irradiance in regions of high confidence, and leaves it unchanged in regions of low confidence. Results are shown from an LWIR and a visible spectrum imager.


Abstract Sodefrin (Ser-Ile-Pro-Ser-Lys-Asp-Ala-Leu-Leu-Lys) is a female-attracting peptide pheromone secreted by the abdominal gland of the male red-bellied newt, Cynops pyrrhogaster. Sequence analysis of a cDNA encoding sodefrin revealed that the peptide is located in the C-terminal region of its precursor protein (residues 177–186 of preprosodefrin) and extended from its C-terminus by the tripeptide sequence Ile187-Ser188-Ala189 and flanked at its N-terminus by Leu174-Gly175-Arg176. This suggests that sodefrin is generated by enzymatic cleavage at monobasic (Lys and Arg) sites within the precursor molecule. To demonstrate the presence in the abdominal gland of proteolytic enzymes capable of generating sodefrin, an enzymatic assay was developed using t-butoxycarbo-nyl (Boc)-Leu-Gly-Arg–4methylcoumaryl-7-amide (MCA) and Boc-Leu-Leu-Lys-MCA as synthetic substrates. A crude extract of the abdominal gland hydrolyzed both substrates to liberate 7-amino-4- methylcoumarin, suggesting that enzymes that generate sodefrin from its precursor molecule are present in the gland. The activity in the extract for cleaving Boc-Leu-Gly-Arg-MCA was optimal at pH 9.0 and 45°C and for Boc-Leu-Leu-Lys-MCA at pH 9.0 and 40°C. The effects of a range of specific inhibitors on activities in the extract suggest an involvement of enzymes belonging to the serine protease family. It was also demonstrated that enzymatic activity in an extract of the abdominal glands of sexually developed males was significantly (three- to six-fold; p<0.01) higher than that of sexually undeveloped males.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which black Generation Y students' exhibit status consumption, materialism and consumer ethnocentrism tendencies, and the relationship between these three constructs. The black Generation Y cohort (individuals born between 1980 and 1994) represents a large percentage of the South African market, and those enrolled at tertiary institutions constitute a particularly attractive target market to marketers given that tertiary education were correlated with higher earning potential and status. A convenience sample of 400 students across the campuses of four South African public higher education institutions situated in the Gauteng Province was taken. Questionnaires, designed to measure black Generation Y students' attitudes towards status consumption, materialism and consumer ethnocentrism, were hand delivered to lecturers at each of these campuses who requested to ask their students to complete them. The collected data were analysed using z-tests and Pearson's product moment correlation coefficient. The findings suggest that the target market has significant materialism, status consumption and ethnocentrism tendencies. A strong positive relationship was found between the constructs of materialism and status consumption. However, there was no significant relationship found between the respective constructs of materialism and status consumption, and that of consumer ethnocentrism.


This study was funded by a grant from the Scottish Economic Policy Network (SEPN) with funding assistance provided by the University of Glasgow, Department of Economics (Professor Nick Hanley) and the University of Sterling (Robert Wright). The goal of the project was to determine the value of differing types of renewable energy projects by how they would effect environmental and community quality of life factors. The key issues examined include; air quality, landscape, wildlife, and long term local employment. Stated preference methods were employed through the use of a discrete choice experiment survey approach. Willingness-to-pay for different types of renewable energy projects was estimated, i.e., moderate onshore windmill farms, large onshore windmill farms, offshore windmill farms, and biomass fueled power plants. The most significant findings were that rural areas likely to be most highly impacted by the new energy projects were willing to accept low or moderate environmental damage in exchange for commercial development gains. Urban respondents on the other hand were more likely to oppose any disturbance to the landscape or wildlife and had no value placed on the economics development gains for the rural areas; income level of households showed no significant difference in environmental values.


We study physical layer multicasting in multicell networks where each base station, equipped with multiple antennas, transmits a common message using a single beamformer to multiple users in the same cell. We investigate two coordinated beamforming designs: the quality-of-service (QoS) beamforming and the max-min SINR (signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio) beamforming. The goal of the QoS beamforming is to minimize the total power consumption while guaranteeing that received SINR at each user is above a predetermined threshold. We present a necessary condition for the optimization problem to be feasible. Then, based on the decomposition theory, we propose a novel decentralized algorithm to implement the coordinated beamforming with limited information sharing among different base stations. The algorithm is guaranteed to converge and in most cases it converges to the optimal solution. The max-min SINR (MMS) beamforming is to maximize the minimum received SINR among all users under per-base station power constraints. We show that the MMS problem and a weighted peak-power minimization (WPPM) problem are inverse problems. Based on this inversion relationship, we then propose an efficient algorithm to solve the MMS problem in an approximate manner. Simulation results demonstrate significant advantages of the proposed multicast beamforming algorithms over conventional multicasting schemes.


Quenching of heated surfaces through impinging liquid jets is of great im-portance for numerous applications like steel processing, nuclear power plants, automobile industries, etc. Therefore, computational modelling of the surface quenching through circular water jets impinging normally onto a heated flat surface has vital importance in order to reveal the physics of the quenching process.
 At first, a numerical model was developed for single jet impingement process. A conjugate heat transfer problem was solved implying consideration of both regions, one occupied by fluid (multi-phase flow consisting of water, vapor and ambient air) and one accommodating the solid surface within the same solution domain.
Numerical simulations were performed in a range of relevant operating param-eters: jet velocities (2.5, 5, 7.5 and 10 m/s), water sub-cooling (75 K) and wall-superheat (650 K - 800 K) corresponding closely to those encountered in the industrial water jet cooling banks. Due to the high initial temperature of the surface, the boiling process exhibits strong spatial and temporal fluctuations. Its effect on the boundary layer profiles at the stagnation region at different time intervals are analyzed. The analysis reveals a highly distorted field of both mean flow and turbulence quantities. It represents an im-portant outcome, also with respect to appropriate model improvements. The different boiling characteristics are envisaged in detail to increase the level of understanding of the phenomena. The influence of the turbulent kinetic energy investigated at the boiling front as well as the jet-acceleration region has been studied. The physically relevant results are obtained and analyzed along with reference database provided experimentally by Karwa (2012, 'Experimental Study of Water Jet Impingement Cooling of Hot Steel Plates,' Dissertation, FG TTD, TU Darmstadt). The intensive quenching process is consistent with the high rate of sub-cooling and high jet velocities. The surface temperature predicted by quenching model within the impingement region and the subsequent wall-jet region agrees reasonably well with the measurements, the outcome being particularly valid at higher jet velocities. However, a steep temperature gradient at the position corresponding to boiling threshold has not been captured under the condition of the numerical grid adopted. On the other hand, a reasonably good prediction of the wetting front propagation phenomena advocates the future development of the model. The high-intensity back motion of the vapor phase in the stagnation region at the earlier times of the water jet impingement can induce an appropriately high turbulence level, which could be accounted well by the turbulence model applied.
The second part of the present work deals with multiple liquid jet impingement. When the multiple jets impact onto the heated surface, the heat flux is extracted from the surface by the mass flow rate. The heat flux is dependent on the several flow conditions and configurations of the nozzle array system. Therefore, one needs to study the nozzle array configuration along with several flow parameters for the better design of the cooling header system. Accordingly, the hydrodynamics of the multiple jets has been studied computationally realizing the need for optimum configuration of the nozzle array. The effects of the mass flow rate, target plate width and the turbulence produced due to the impingement were studied. Afterward, an analytical model is proposed for the quenching of the multiple jets system. It has been realized that, when jet impinges onto the surface at very high initial temperature, the film boiling may play a role in the heat transfer mechanism. Therefore, development has been made in the film-boiling model considering the effect of turbulence at the liquid jet stagnation region at the Leidenfrost point. The Leidenfrost point is the minimum temperature at which the film boiling can sustain. However, the vapor-liquid interface has the dynamic character; it oscillates with high frequency and causes the additional momentum diffusivity. Therefore, the need for introducing the effect of associated turbulence has been felt. The length and velocity scale of the turbulent structure has been approximated by assuming homogeneous turbulence. The new model for the heat flux and wall superheat yielded results agreeing well with published experimental results.


Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is commonly used to assess outcomes of patients with loss of consciousness, but it is insufficient in predicting the outcome of some cases. This study aimed to assess the combination of GCS, systolic blood pressure and age to predict the outcome of patients with decreased consciousness. This was a retrospective cohort observational study of 76 loss of consciousness patients that comes into the Emergency Department of Dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital in June-August 2014. Data was obtained from the medical records . GCS, systolic blood pressure and age were recorded when patients were admitted to the triage. Outcome was assessed two weeks after admission in the emergency department. Bivariate analysis on the GCS and age showed significant different between patients with poor outcome group with good outcome group (p 0.05). Multivariate analysis on the GCS and age showed good probability equation based on the calibration test and discrimination. The combination of Glasgow Coma Scale and age was accurate in assessing the outcomes of patients with loss of consciousness. Normal 0 false false false IN X-NONE X-NONE


The sedimentological interpretation of seismic and borehole data derived from the Burdigalian Upper Marine Molasse Group of the central North Alpine foreland basin enables a detailed reconstruction of the shallow-marine architecture. The different seismic facies are assigned to the shoreface/foreshore, nearshore, and offshore depositional systems. Mapping of the seismic facies on the seismic line reveals the presence of two prograding sequences (Luzern and St. Gallen formations) that are separated by an unconformity. The subsidence analysis suggests that the evolution of the Upper Marine Molasse was primarily controlled by the interaction between tectonic subsidence and sediment supply. The distal transgressions of the Luzern and St. Gallen formations and the establishment of shallow-marine environments were caused by enhanced subsidence rates in the distal reaches associated with increased sediment supply rates. The development of the sequence boundaries separating the Luzern and St. Gallen formations and the regression at the end of the St. Gallen Formation, however, were controlled by uplift in the distal part of the basin. The subsidence and sediment flux analyses of the Upper Marine Molasse allow an improved understanding of the tectonic and denudation history of the northern Alps. Out-of-sequence thickening in the rear of the northern Alps by underplating of the Aar massif and forward thrusting of the Helvetic nappes is interpreted to have controlled uplift in the distal part of the basin and the formation of the sequence boundaries. In-sequence crustal thickening at the tip of the orogenic wedge by forward underthrusting of Lower Freshwater Molasse thrust sheets beneath Molasse deposits associated with enhanced erosion of the northern Alps caused a northward shift of the location of the major orogenic load and an increase of the sediment supply to the Molasse basin. These processes are interpreted to have controlled the distal shifts of the basin depocenter and the distal transgressions of the Luzern and St. Gallen formations.


Technology has in general been seen as opposed to humanity: its object, even its enemy. The Grundrisse suggests, however, that technology can be understood as the actualized form of accumulated social knowledge. This actual form can then be understood from the standpoint of a dialectic in which the actual is capable of action only if it can convert its actuality into virtuality, that is to free itself for a future other than its actual present. Critical to this political project is work at the aesthetic level of media and communications technologies.


Multiangle, multispectral remote sensing observations, such as those anticipated from the Earth Observing System (EOS) Multiangle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR), can significantly improve our ability to constrain aerosol properties from space. Simulations over cloud-free, calm ocean conditions were studied for pure particles with natural ranges of optical depth, particle size, and indices of refraction. According to the theoretical simulations we can retrieve column optical depth from measurements over calm ocean for all but the darkest particles, with typical size distributions and compositions, to an uncertainty of at most 0.05 or 20%, whichever is larger, even if the particle properties are poorly known. For one common particle type, soot, constraints on the optical depth over dark ocean are very poor. The simulated measurements also allow us to distinguish spherical from nonspherical particles, to separate two to four compositional groups based on indices of refraction, and to identify three to four distinct size groups between 0.1 and 2.0 μm characteristic radius at most latitudes. The technique is most sensitive to particle microphysical properties in the "accumulation mode" sizes, where particle scattering undergoes the transition from Rayleigh to large-particle regimes for the MISR wavelengths. On the basis of these results we expect to distinguish air masses containing different aerosol types, routinely and globally, with multiangle remote sensing data. Such data complement in situ and field data, which can provide detailed information about aerosol size and composition locally. An extension of this study to mixtures of pure particles is part of continuing work.


Institutional leaders have long championed interdisciplinary research; however, researchers have paid relatively little attention to the people responding to such calls and their subsequent career outcomes. With the benefit of two large datasets spanning from 1986 through 2016, we show that interdisciplinary dissertations have become consistently more common in recent years as institutional leaders have highlighted the value of boundary-spanning research for solving important and emergent problems. With the benefit of survey data from a near-complete population of all dissertators in the US starting in 2001 through 2016, we observe a consistent upward trend in interdisciplinary dissertations. Unfortunately, we show that these interdisciplinary dissertators have experienced a comparably persistent penalty when considering salaries for their first year after earning the PhD. We also show that among interdisciplinary dissertators, individuals in lower-paying fields tend to earn more when choosing distantly related topic-combinations whereas researchers in higher-paying fields tend to be most rewarded for staying within relatively narrow disciplinary silos.


Abstract. We applied a global three-dimensional chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem) to examine the impacts of the East Asian monsoon on the interannual variations of mass concentrations and direct radiative forcing (DRF) of black carbon (BC) over eastern China (110–125° E, 20–45° N). With emissions fixed at the year 2010 levels, model simulations were driven by the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS-4) meteorological fields for 1986–2006 and the Modern Era Retrospective-analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) meteorological fields for 1980–2010. During the period of 1986–2006, simulated June–July–August (JJA) and December–January–February (DJF) surface BC concentrations were higher in MERRA than in GEOS-4 by 0.30 µg m−3 (44 %) and 0.77 µg m−3 (54 %), respectively, because of the generally weaker precipitation in MERRA. We found that the strength of the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM; East Asian winter monsoon, EAWM) negatively correlated with simulated JJA (DJF) surface BC concentrations (r = −0. 7 (−0.7) in GEOS-4 and −0.4 (−0.7) in MERRA), mainly by the changes in atmospheric circulation. Relative to the 5 strongest EASM years, simulated JJA surface BC concentrations in the 5 weakest monsoon years were higher over northern China (110–125° E, 28–45° N) by 0.04–0.09 µg m−3 (3–11 %), but lower over southern China (110–125° E, 20–27° N) by 0.03–0.04 µg m−3 (10–11 %). Compared to the 5 strongest EAWM years, simulated DJF surface BC concentrations in the 5 weakest monsoon years were higher by 0.13–0.15 µg m−3 (5–8 %) in northern China and by 0.04–0.10 µg m−3 (3–12 %) in southern China. The resulting JJA (DJF) mean all-sky DRF of BC at the top of the atmosphere was 0.04 W m−2 (3 %; 0.03 W m−2, 2 %) higher in northern China but 0.06 W m−2 (14 %; 0.03 W m−2, 3 %) lower in southern China. In the weakest monsoon years, the weaker vertical convection at the elevated altitudes led to the lower BC concentrations above 1–2 km in southern China, and therefore the lower BC DRF in the region. The differences in vertical profiles of BC between the weakest and strongest EASM years (1998–1997) and EAWM years (1990–1996) reached up to −0.09 µg m−3 (−46 %) and −0.08 µg m−3 (−11 %) at 1–2 km in eastern China.


African American Literary Theory: A Reader is the first volume to document the central texts and arguments in African American literary theory from the 1920s through the present. As the volume progresses chronologically from the rise of a black aesthetic criticism, through the Blacks Arts Movement, feminism, structuralism and poststructuralism, and the rise of queer theory, it focuses on the key arguments, themes, and debates in each period. By constantly bringing attention to the larger political and cultural issues at stake in the interpretation of literary texts, the critics gathered here have contributed mightily to the prominence and popularity of African American literature in this country and abroad. African American Literary Theory provides a unique historical analysis of how these thinkers have shaped literary theory, and literature at large, and will be a indispensable text for the study of African American intellectual culture. Contributors include Sandra Adell, Michael Awkward, Houston A. Baker, Jr., Hazel V. Carby, Barbara Christian, W.E.B. DuBois, Ann duCille, Ralph Ellison, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Addison Gayle Jr., Carolyn F. Gerald, Evelynn Hammonds, Phillip Brian Harper, Mae Gwendolyn Henderson, Stephen E. Henderson, Karla F.C. Holloway, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Joyce A. Joyce, Alain Locke, Wahneema Lubiano, Deborah E. McDowell, Harryette Mullen, Larry Neal, Charles I. Nero, Robert F. Reid-Pharr, Marlon B. Ross, George S. Schuyler, Barbara Smith, Valerie Smith, Hortense J. Spillers, Sherley Anne Williams, and Richard Wright.


The need to obtain expeditious results in control analyses of complex mixtures has turned multivariate calibration procedures into major choices for routine analyses. The inherent complexity of the calibration process and the practical need for analyses to be carried out as near the manufacturing line as possible occasionally entail calibrating with a different instrument from that subsequently employed for the analytical measurements proper. This paper exposes the problems potentially arising in transferring calibrations between diode array UV-Vis spectrophotometers. Basically, such problems originate in wavelength differences between spectrophotometers, even if they meet the manufacturer's specifications and the pharmacopoeia recommendations. We developed a straightforward method for harmonizing instrumental responses on the basis of reference wavelengths corresponding to zero values in the first-derivative spectra for potassium dichromate and benzoic acid standards. The method was applied to the analysis of binary mixtures of theophylline and doxylamine by multiple linear and partial least-squares regression with the use of one spectrophotometer for calibration and four others for analyses.


In reinforcement learning, agents learn by performing actions and observing their outcomes. Sometimes, it is desirable for a human operator to interrupt an agent in order to prevent dangerous situations from happening. Yet, as part of their learning process, agents may link these interruptions, that impact their reward, to specific states and deliberately avoid them. The situation is particularly challenging in a multi-agent context because agents might not only learn from their own past interruptions, but also from those of other agents. Orseau and Armstrong defined safe interruptibility for one learner, but their work does not naturally extend to multi-agent systems. This paper introduces dynamic safe interruptibility, an alternative definition more suited to decentralized learning problems, and studies this notion in two learning frameworks: joint action learners and independent learners. We give realistic sufficient conditions on the learning algorithm to enable dynamic safe interruptibility in the case of joint action learners, yet show that these conditions are not sufficient for independent learners. We show however that if agents can detect interruptions, it is possible to prune the observations to ensure dynamic safe interruptibility even for independent learners.


Abstract. The Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) is a Fourier transform spectrometer that measured mid-infrared atmospheric limb emission spectra from July 2002 to April 2012 on board the polar-orbiting satellite ENVISAT. We have used MIPAS data to study the latitudinal variations of phosgene (COCl2 or carbonyl chloride) and, for the first time, its seasonal variation in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere region (UTLS). Retrievals of phosgene were made using the 830–860 cm−1 region, corresponding to the ν5 bands of COCl2. Unfortunately, in that region, the ν4 band of CFC-11, which is much stronger than COCl2 ν5, hides the phosgene emission. In order to evaluate seasonality and latitudinal distribution of phosgene we have analysed all the measurements made by MIPAS on days 18 and 20 of each month of 2008 with the optimized retrieval model (ORM) recently upgraded with the multi-target retrieval technique and with the optimal estimation functionality to apply external constraints to the state vector. Average seasonal profiles of phosgene show an evident latitudinal variability with the largest values observed in the tropical regions (maximum  ≈  35 parts per trillion by volume (pptv) at about 300 hPa). In the midlatitude and polar regions, the volume mixing ratio (VMR) values do not exceed 30 pptv and the vertical distributions are less peaked. Our analysis highlights that COCl2 seasonal variability is fairly low, apart from the polar regions.


Milk production in South Africa comes under pressure periodically as a result of market forces, but can dairy producers effectively respond to these market forces? During these periods a large number of dairy cows are slaughtered and their numbers decrease. As the average productive life of dairy cows is 2.3 lactations, their numbers cannot be increased easily if market forces change. This paper demonstrates that the national dairy herd can only increase by 1 - 3% per life cycle through normal population growth. Short-term financial issues influencing the milk price or input costs can thus have a drastic and long-term effect on the population dynamics of the national herd. The low surplus numbers imply that selection pressure from the female side is almost non-existent. This raises the question as to whether South Africa breeds of dairy cattle are adapted to local conditions especially as large quantities of semen are imported. The low participation of only 24% in official milk recording is of concern as the performance of cows in milk recording is substantially better, viz. the difference between cows in milk recording and those that are not, as far as the productive herd life is concerned, is an improvement of 43%, and in milk production 81%. World-wide agricultural production is increasingly practiced in a systems relationship. The South African dairy industry must realize how interdependent they are and begins to think in terms of a systems approach.


Extracted from text ... 21 SA JOURNAL OF RADIOLOGY ? December 2005
Introduction
A higher proportion of paediatric
interstitial lung diseases can be diagnosed
with high-resolution computed tomography
(HRCT) scan than plain radiography,
with the diagnosis being made with more
confidence and higher accuracy.1 HRCT is
probably easier to interpret in the child
than in the adult. There is less pressure to
reach a definitive diagnosis from the HRCT
alone, because many entities resulting in
diffuse lung disease are rare in childhood
and do not require consideration. In addition,
endstage fibrosis, which has nonspecific
appearances, is rare. Lastly, infection is
the most likely ..


Purpose: This poster examines the collaboration between the Joyner Academic and Laupus Health Sciences Library at East Carolina University to establish a shared Neuroscience Collection Development Policy. Setting/Participants/Resources: At East Carolina University the Neuroscience Multidisciplinary Studies Program spans departments on both the Academic and Health Sciences campuses. The Science Librarian at Joyner Library the Librarian Liaison for the School of Medicine and the Collection Development Librarian at Laupus Library collaborated on this policy creation. Brief Description: Neuroscience is an emerging health sciences field that incorporates a wide range of subjects from psychology to neurobiology. Due to the interdisciplinary research needs for an academic neuroscience program Laupus and Joyner librarians saw the opportunity to collaborate on a collection development policy in order to meet the research needs of the neuroscience faculty and students. Prior to writing the policy the librarians examined ECU's neuroscience program curriculum communicated with faculty and students about their resource needs and reviewed available neuroscience collection development policies from other universities. Results/Outcome: The outcome was a more relevant and current Neuroscience Collection Development Policy for the University Libraries. As a result of the policy both libraries will be able to purchase materials that will best fit the needs of faculty and students on their respective campus. This policy will prevent duplication of purchases and strengthens the collaboration between the libraries an important recommendation of an upcoming SACS accreditation visit. Evaluation Method: The libraries will evaluate circulation rates and communicate with faculty to determine satisfaction with the collection.


Situations repeat in every organisation. While some of them may constitute a reassuring structure, others may constitute an irritating obstacle in daily routine. Repeating situations may emerge quickly or slowly, they may be stable over time or volatile, and they may have minor or major consequences within an organisation. Either way, they are likely to affect each and every person within an organisation in one way or another. This raises the question if, in turn, one may influence repeating situations by adequate means. In this work, we try to provide such means and propose three management stances that constitute an approach to address repeating situations. We provide examples of use and mention their limits before codifying them into a pattern format as it is used within the pattern community.


For the first time in an underground stone mine, the relationship between roof movement and microseismic emissions was examined in conjunction with two distinct roof fall areas. As roof monitoring increases in acceptance and monitoring technology advances, the goal of providing reliable roof fall detection systems to enhance the safety of underground mine workers moves closer to reality. Instrumental to reaching that goal is the ability to interpret accurately and completely roof movement and microseismic emissions, which can serve as precursors to roof falls. This paper examines the capabilities of convergence and microseismic monitoring systems to better understand roof rock failure mechanics and to anticipate roof falls. An understanding of how these techniques are used and how they interact with each other is critical in developing the most effective ground control strategy for our nation's mines.