G. A. Cohen argues that egalitarians should compensate for expensive tastes or for the fact that they are expensive. Ronald Dworkin, by contrast, regards most expensive tastes as unworthy of compensation — only if a person disidentifies with his own such tastes (i.e. wishes he did not have them) is compensation appropriate. Dworkinians appeal, inter alia, to the so-called 'first-person' or 'continuity' test. According to the continuity test, an appropriate standard of interpersonal comparison reflects people's own assessment of their relative standing: Person A can only legitimately demand compensation from person B if he regards himself as worse off, all things considered, than B. The typical bearer of expensive tastes does not regard herself as being worse off than others with less expensive tastes. Hence, in the typical case, pace Cohen, compensation for expensive tastes is inappropriate. The article scrutinizes this rationale for not compensating for expensive tastes. Especially, we try to bolster the continuity test by relating it to Dworkin's distinction between integrated and detached values, pointing out that an argument for the continuity test can be built on the assumption that equality has integrated value. In brief, the point is that a metric of equality should be assessed, partly, in virtue of its consequences for related ideals. One of these is the kind of justificatory community promoted by the continuity test. We defend this view against an objection to the effect that equality is a detached value. We conclude that the continuity test constitutes a strong foothold for the resourcist egalitarian reluctance to compensate people for their expensive tastes.


In order to understand today's Russia and former Soviet republics, it is vital to consider their socialist past. Caroline Humphrey, one of anthropology's most highly regarded thinkers on a number of topics including consumption, identity, and ritual, is the ideal guide to the intricacies of post-Soviet culture. The Unmaking of Soviet Life brings together ten of Humphrey's best essays, which cover, geographically, Central Russia, Siberia, and Mongolia; and thematically, the politics of locality, property, and persons.Bridging the strongest of Humphrey's work from 1991 to 2001, the essays do a great deal to demystify the sensational topics of mafia, barter, bribery, and the new shamanism by locating them in the lived experiences of a wide range of subjects. The Unmaking of Soviet Life includes a foreword and introductory paragraphs by Bruce Grant and Nancy Ries that precede each essay.


Transthyretin (TTR) is a homotetrameric plasma protein associated with human amyloid diseases. Although Tafamidis has been recently approved for the treatment of TTR familial amyloid polyneuropathy (FAP), there is still a need for more effective drugs in the treatment of TTR amyloidosis diseases. In this study, a computer-aided approach combining molecular docking, virtual screening and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations was employed to identify potent TTR amyloidosis inhibitors from National Cancer Institute (NCI), Maybridge and Asdi databases. A receptor-specific scoring function was also developed using comparative binding energy (COMBINE) method to accurately predict the inhibitory activities for the selected compounds during virtual screening. The developed receptor-specific scoring function demonstrated good predictive ability by yielding strong correlation coefficients between experimental activities and estimated activities for 32 training set and 9 test set compounds, respectively. Moreover, it was successfully applied to rank the candidate compounds from structure-based virtual screening. Finally, three compounds (NSC220163, MFCD00276817 and SPB06319) were identified as potential leads, which exhibited higher predicted inhibitory activities and higher binding affinities in comparison to the Tafamidis. Our results further suggest that halogen bonding interaction plays a crucial role in stabilizing the TTR-inhibitor complex. These results indicate that our computational approach could effectively discover more potent TTR amyloidosis inhibitors, which can be further validate by in vitro and in vivo biological tests.


The problem addressed by this paper is accurate and automatic gene annotation following precise identification/annotation of exon and intron boundaries of biologically verified nucleotide sequences using the alignment of human genomic DNA to curated mRNA transcripts. We provide a detailed description of a new cDNA/DNA homology gene annotation algorithm that combines the results of BLASTN searches and spliced alignments. Compared to other programs currently in use, annotation quality is significantly increased through the unambiguous junction of genomic DNA sequences. We also address gene annotation with both noncanonic splice sites and short exons. The approach has been tested on the genie learning subset as well as full-scale human RefSeq, and has demonstrated performance as high as 97%.


Always a complex and demanding task, parenthood can be an extra challenge when parents have severe mental illness. Clients with children may experience extra stress, feelings of uncertainty, and a lack of energy. They may have difficulty in talking about their disabilities with their children. Often, there are struggles with limited material resources and stigma or grief over the loss of having direct custody of their children. In all these situations, clients need support in interacting and communicating with their children in ways that benefit both parties. However, although there is a growing awareness of the needs of these clients and of parental responsibility for the children involved, the parental role is seldom a topic in mental health care. Within the field of rehabilitation, although there is considerable professional literature on skills training and experience in helping clients to realize personal goals in the areas of work, education, living arrangements, and social contacts, there are few or no tools to support clients who wish to strengthen their parenting skills.


Kawesqar and Yaghan are the only two extant languages of the southernmost region of South America. However Kawesqar is the only endangered Fueguian language that is still spoken, since Yaghan is in its last stage with just one speaker with a very deteriorated competence. In 1966 in an international conference sponsored by the Wenner Gren Foundation and the Smithonian Institution, Kawesqar was listed as an endangered language that needed urgent documentation. Since that date a good amount of work has been done, but only recently it has been possible to gather an important quantity of linguistic and ethnographic data. Kawesqar is spoken today by only 7 persons as a first language in their daily interaction. There is a small number of urban semi-speakers who rarely speak the language and use only Spanish as their means of communication, and more than 200 Kawesqar-descendants whose mother tongue is Spanish. A project funded by the Regional Government and as a result of a demand from the urban communities who urged the authorities to provide funds for the gathering of linguistic and ethnographic material that could be used in a revitalization program, after 9 months it was possible to obtain a sound archive which today is the largest and unique sound archive of an indigenous language in Chile. In this paper a description of the corpus is presented: what has been rescued and as a result what has been necessary to modify in the description of the language because of the new information gathered. For instance, a previous corpus of more than 600 texts but of short duration (the largest is a 6 minute text), showed a rather rigid word order. The new corpus with one or two-hour monologic spoken texts shows a more flexible word order, depending on various factors. Similarly the morpheme inventory increased because the speakers used certain morphemes that have become partially obsolete. Methods employed and the use of technology with its pitfalls is also presented, both recording instruments and treatment of digitalized materials for publication. The latter implies the employment of software and the issues encountered that determined the use of certain available instruments, comprising an evaluation of common commercial standard software, as well as specialized software (mainly from SIL), and the difficulties encountered with this software to adapt it to the requirements of publication needs. Finally what preservation decisions have been taken are also examined in this paper.


The Olami-Feder-Christensen model is a simple lattice based cellular automaton model introduced as a prototype to study self-organization in systems with a continuous state variable. Despite its simplicity there remains controversy over whether the system is truly critical in the nonconservative regime. Here we address this issue by introducing the layer branching rate, which measures how contributions to the system branching rate vary across the lattice. By considering this quantity for layers far from the edges of the finite-sized lattices, we find that the model is only critical in the conservative limit, but that previous studies have underestimated the system branching rate in the nonconservative case. We further derive expressions for the branching rate in systems where the state variable across the lattice is described by a uniform distribution, in order to determine the effect of self-organization upon the level of criticality. We find that organization raises the branching rate in the nearest-neighbor case, but in contrast lowers the level of criticality in a random-neighbor model.


Data layouts play a crucial role in determining the performance of a given application running on a given architecture. Existing parallel programming frameworks for both multicore and heterogeneous systems leave the onus of selecting a data layout to the programmer. Therefore, shifting the burden of data layout selection to optimizing compilers can greatly enhance programmer productivity and application performance. In this work, we introduce ADHA: a two-level hierarchal formulation of the data layout problem for modern heterogeneous architectures. We have created a reference implementation of ADHA in the Heterogeneous Habanero-C (H2C) parallel programming system. ADHA shows significant performance benefits of up to 6.92× compared to manually specified layouts for two benchmark programs running on a CPU+GPU heterogeneous platform.


Practitioners of data mining and machine learning have long observed that the imbalance of classes in a data set negatively impacts the quality of classifiers trained on that data. Numerous techniques for coping with such imbalances have been proposed, but nearly all lack any theoretical grounding. By contrast, the standard theoretical analysis of machine learning admits no dependence on the imbalance of classes at all. The basic theorems of statistical learning establish the number of examples needed to estimate the accuracy of a classifier as a function of its complexity (VC-dimension) and the confidence desired; the class imbalance does not enter these formulas anywhere. In this work, we consider the measures of classifier performance in terms of precision and recall, a measure that is widely suggested as more appropriate to the classification of imbalanced data. We observe that whenever the precision is moderately large, the worse of the precision and recall is within a small constant factor of the accuracy weighted by the class imbalance. A corollary of this observation is that a larger number of examples is necessary and sufficient to address class imbalance, a finding we also illustrate empirically.


Modulational instability in fiber Bragg gratings is investigated by coupled-mode theory. In the presence of anomalous dispersion the standard nonlinear Schrodinger results are obtained at low powers, although at higher powers, deviations from this well-known behavior occur. For normal dispersion an instability with a finite threshold is found. This instability has no equivalent in the nonlinear Schrodinger equation.


Objective: Currently, there are four generations in the nursing workforce. Each generation holds a different set of values that create challenges for managing a multi-generational workforce; these values affect nurses' perceptions of quality of work life (QWL), psychological empowerment (PE), and job satisfaction (JS). The aims of this study are to (1) identify differences in the characteristics of Baby Boomer, Generation X, and Millennial nurses, (2) identify differences in the QWL between Baby Boomer, Generation X, and Millennial nurses, (3) identify differences in JS between Baby Boomer, Generation X, and Millennial nurses, and (4) identify differences in PE between Baby Boomer, Generation X, and Millennial nurses. Methods: This descriptive, comparative design was conducted via a web-based survey among 223 registered nurses in the USA. Data was collected using Survey Monkey. Results: Baby Boomers had significantly more years of experience, higher levels of both PE and JS as compared to Generation X and Millennial nurses. Conclusions: The findings of this study indicate the prominence of RNs' sociological value systems on their perceptions of their workplace. Based on these findings, nurse managers can work to create an environment that is supportive of multiple generations; an environment that enhances PE and, in turn, JS.


Agroforestry systems (AFS) are policultures with at least one tree species. These systems provide various ecosystem services, income increments and food safety. These ecosystem services include biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, reduction of crop diseases, increased biological controls, biological nitrogen fixation and nutrient cycling. A review of potential ecosystem services of AFS on Southern Brazil is presented. In addition, the potential of carbon uptake through conversion to AFS is estimated. The predominant AFS are agroforestry with yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis A. St. Hil.), silvopastures, citrus and banana orchards, and the palm açaí-juçara (Euterpe edulis Mart.). Considering the conversion of conventional systems to AFS, the silvopastures present the greatest carbon sequestration potentiality due to the great area used for cattle ranching. The conversion of citrus and banana cropping also present great carbon uptake potential besides reducing fungal and bacterial diseases. Southern Brazil presents more than 15 million hectares which could be converted into silvopasture and other AFS by taking as a model the already well-established experiences. Moreover, AFS has become a strategy for forest restoration. There are no negative trade-offs related to the silvopasture and citrus agroforestry adoption. The reasons for the low adoption of AFS are discussed.


BACKGROUND
Major gaps persist in the development, validation, and implementation of clinical decision rules (CDRs) for diagnostic imaging.

OBJECTIVES
The objective of this working group and article was to generate a consensus-based research agenda for the development and implementation of CDRs for diagnostic imaging in the emergency department (ED).

METHODS
The authors followed consensus methodology, as outlined by the journal Academic Emergency Medicine (AEM), combining literature review, electronic surveys, telephonic communications, and a modified nominal group technique. Final discussions occurred in person at the 2015 AEM consensus conference.

RESULTS
A research agenda was developed, prioritizing the following questions: 1) what are the optimal methods to justify the derivation and validation of diagnostic imaging CDRs, 2) what level of evidence is required before disseminating CDRs for widespread implementation, 3) what defines a successful CDR, 4) how should investigators best compare CDRs to clinical judgment, and 5) what disease states are amenable (and highest priority) to development of CDRs for diagnostic imaging in the ED?

CONCLUSIONS
The concepts discussed herein demonstrate the need for further research on CDR development and implementation regarding diagnostic imaging in the ED. Addressing this research agenda should have direct applicability to patients, clinicians, and health care systems.


User generated texts on tourism-related social network sites do not only contain factual information, but also valuable opinions and ratings of locations. Nevertheless, most maps on these sites only show markers where something described in a user generated text is located. In particular, no further information is derived from the text and displayed on the maps. Moreover, generalization operations are not employed, although in most cases aggregation and displacement of the user generated content would be necessary to achieve more readable maps. Therefore, we propose a method which automatically creates user-sentiment enriched maps. We use natural language processing tools in order to mine user sentiments for specific places from user generated texts and we propose specially designed point symbols which represent the corresponding mined user sentiment for each location. Additionally, we propose a heuristic, based on Voronoi diagrams, which slightly displaces the aforementioned symbols in case they are very close. This makes the provided map easier to read.


The global energy demand is growing substantially. Clean and secure energy supply is a must for our civilization's sustainable development. Solar and wind energy is growing fast and can contribute significantly to meet the goals set by many countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A deep and wide investigation of the environmental impact of solar and wind energy is important before any solar or wind plants' construction is made. In this study, the literature is reviewed to summarize the environmental impact of solar and wind energy systems in terms of the following factors; land use, water consumption, impact on biodiversity, visual and noise effects, health issues, and impact on micro climate. Although the benefits of solar and wind energy are obvious and great, negative perception of these technologies can inhibit their wide penetration in some regions. This review paper includes a critical and an inclusive analysis of solar and wind energy's environmental impact and may serve as an important tool to conduct a proper environmental impact assessment. This critical analysis may serve also as a tool for developers


Market failure can be corrected using different regulatory approaches ranging from high to low intervention. Recently, classic regulations have been criticized as costly and economically irrational, and thus, policy makers are giving more consideration to soft regulatory techniques such as information remedies. However, despite the plethora of food information conveyed by different media there appears to be a lack of studies exploring how consumers evaluate this information and how trust towards publishers influence their choices for food information. In order to fill such a gap, this study investigates questions related to topics that are more relevant to consumers, who should disseminate trustful food information, and how communication should be conveyed and segmented. Primary data were collected both through qualitative (in-depth interviews and focus groups) and quantitative research (web and mail surveys). Attitudes, willingness to pay (WTP) for food information and trust towards public and private sources conveying information through a new food magazine were assessed using both multivariate statistical methods and econometric analysis. The study shows that consumer attitudes towards food information topics can be summarized along three cognitive-affective dimensions: the agro-food system, enjoyment and wellness. Information related to health risks caused by nutritional disorders and food safety issues caused by bacteria and chemical substances is the most important for about 90% of respondents. Food information related to regulations and traditions is also considered important for more than two-thirds of respondents, whereas information about food production and processing techniques, lifestyle and food fads are considered less important by the majority of respondents. Trust towards food information disseminated by public bodies is higher than that observed for private bodies. This behaviour directly affects WTP for food information provided by public and private publishers when markets are shocked by a food safety incident. WTP for consumer association (€1.80) and the European Food Safety Authority (€1.30) are higher than WTP for the independent and food industry publishers that cluster around zero euro. Furthermore, trust towards the type of publisher also plays a key role in food information market segmentation together with socio-demographic and economic variables such as gender, age, presence of children and income. These findings invite policy makers to reflect on the possibility of using information remedies conveyed using trusted sources of information to specific segments of consumers as an interesting soft alternative to the classic way of regulating modern food markets.

JEL codes: D12, D18, D89, Q18.


Abstract This introductory essay examines the role of two articles on the Cuban painters Roberto Álvarez Ríos and Wifredo Lam, "A Young Cuban Painter Before Surrealism: Álvarez Ríos" (1962) and "Lam" (1977), in the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser's writing on art. It argues that these largely ignored articles offer snapshots of two key shifts in Althusser's thought: his transition, during the early 1960s, from Hegelian Marxism to structural Marxism, and, during the late 1970s, from structural Marxism to so-called aleatory materialism. It contextualizes the articles in the social and political milieu of French philosophy during the 1960s and 70s and shows how his articles on the Cuban painters, specifically, and art, more generally, are largely concerned with contemporary developments in the third world, a subject that receives scant attention elsewhere in his work. The articles not only register Althusser's reflections on Lacanian psychoanalysis, the nature of language, and the philosophy of history, but also reveal that his connections with Latin America to exceed mere questions of intellectual reception.


In this article, we present a few lessons we learnt in the establishment of the Sciences Po médialab. As an interdisciplinary laboratory associating social scientists, code developers and information designers, the médialab is not one of a kind. In the last years, several of such initiatives have been established around the world to harness the potential of digital technologies for the study of collective life. If we narrate this particular story, it is because, having lived it from the inside, we can provide an intimate account of the surprises and displacements of digital research. Founding the médialab in 2009, we knew that we were leaving the reassuring traditions of social sciences to venture in the unexplored territory of digital inscriptions. What we couldn't foresee was how much such encounter would change our research. Buying into gospel of Big Data, we imagined that the main novelty of digital research came from handling larger amounts of data. We soon realized that the interest of digital inscriptions comes instead from their proliferating diversity. Such diversity encouraged us to reshape our professional alliances, research practices and theoretical perspectives. It also led us to overcome several of the oppositions that used to characterize social sciences (qualitative/quantitative, situation/aggregation, micro/macro, local/global) and to move in the direction of a more continuous sociology.


While most research on ultraviolet radiation (UVR) was focused on the effect of UVR on the physiology of individual organisms, little is known about the impact of UVR on assemblages in combination with other ecologically relevant factors. In particular, field-experiments on macrophytobenthos are scarce, even more in the Antarctic region. As macroalgae may be affected by enhanced UVR due to stratospheric ozone depletion, we studied the effects of UVR and consumers on early successional stages of a hard bottom macroalgal community on King George Island, Antarctica. In a two-factorial design 32 experimental units (PAR+UVA+UVB=280-700 nm; PAR+UVA=320-700 nm; PAR=400-700 nm vs. grazerno grazer) were installed for 106 days. In general, biomass and growth rates were very low. Both UVAR and UVBR showed negative effects during succession. The UV depleted treatment exhibited a significantly higher diversity after 106 days of exposure. Species richness was significantly depressed by UVAR at the end of the experiment. UVB radiation led to a significant difference in species composition between the UV depleted treatment and the one with the total solar spectrum. Small developmental stages of macroalgae were particularly sensitive to UVR but spores from intertidal macroalgae were better adapted to UVR than species occurring in the subtidal as shown in laboratory experiments. Both, UV radiation and herbivory exhibit a significant impact on macroalgal succession in the Antarctic intertidal. UVR may therefore change the community structure and alter trophic interactions in this system.


Orbital-density-dependent functionals, such as the Perdew-Zunger or the Koopmans-compliant functionals, are used to remove unphysical self-interaction energies and to restoremissing piece-wise linearity in approximate formulations of density-functional theory (DFT). At variance with functionals of the total density, orbital-density-dependent functionals are typically not invariant with respect to unitary transformations of the occupied states. Such additional degrees of freedom require an extension of established approaches for direct minimization that preserve their numerical robustness and efficiency, and make it possible to apply these advanced electronic-structure functionals to large or complex systems. In this work we adapt the ensemble-DFT algorithm [N. Marzari, D. Vanderbilt, and M. C. Payne, Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 1337 (1997)] to the case of orbital-density-dependent functionals, partitioning the variational problem into a nested loop of (i) minimizations with respect to unitary transformations at a fixed orbital manifold, that lead to a projected, unitary-covariant functional of the orbitals only that enforces the Pederson condition and (ii) variational optimization of the orbital manifold for this projected functional. We discuss in detail both general and functional-dependent trends and suggest a procedure to efficiently exploit the combination of the different minimization strategies. The overall formulation allows for a stable, robust, and efficient algorithm, yielding great improvements over conventional techniques.


Civic education is not taught as a separate subject at Swiss schools. In this context, it is of great interest to look for specific characteristics of how civic education can be observed as a cross-disciplinary subject in schools through video recordings. The empirical analysis is based on classroom observation in ninth grade classes in various Swiss cantons (Aargau, Bern, and Zurich) from 2003 to 2007. Criteria that allow the identification of elements of civic education in various school subjects are developed, the concept of "political perspective". The analysis provides useful hints for planning and running classes where civic education is used as an overarching, cross-disciplinary approach. The concept of "political perspective" should not be taken as substitute for institutional knowledge. But the concept can rise above the function of an analytical tool and become a tool that serves the planning and designing of lessons. The perspective could as such be related to the postulate for epistemological knowledge.


In this paper, we consider retransmission strategies for centralized cyclic polling-based systems over wireless channels subject to external interference. The considered strategies differ in the time when retransmissions for one particular node are carried out, and in the number of retransmissions that can be carried out for one node. We show experimentally and by simulation that two related strategies introduced in this paper, called the queueing-based strategies, significantly outperform the traditional strategy (in which all admissible trials towards one node are carried out subsequently) in terms of the average number of nodes that cannot be successfully served in a cycle. These performance gains are achieved without increasing the average total transmission effort.


OBJECTIVE
To compare the efficacy and safety of the recommended usual starting and next highest doses of ezetimibe/ simvastatin and atorvastatin in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and hypercholesterolemia.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
This double-blind, multicenter study (June 22 to December 7, 2005) consisted of adult patients randomized to the recommended usual starting (ezetimibe/simvastatin, 10/20 mg/d, vs atorvastatin, 10 or 20 mg/d) or next highest (ezetimibe/simvastatin, 10/40 mg/d, vs atorvastatin, 40 mg/d) doses. Efficacy end points included percent changes from baseline in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels (primary) and proportion of patients attaining LDL-C levels less than 70 mg/dL (secondary).

RESULTS
A total of 1229 patients participated in the study. Significantly greater mean reductions were found in LDL-C levels with ezetimibe/simvastatin, 10/20 mg/d (-53.6%; 95% confidence interval [CI], -55.4% to -51.8%), than with atorvastatin, 10 mg/d (-38.3%; 95% CI, -40.1% to -36.5%; P < .001) or 20 mg/d (-44.6%; 95% CI, -46.4% to -42.8%; P < .001), and with ezetimibe/simvastatin, 10/40 mg/d (-57.6%; 95% CI, -59.4% to -55.8%), vs atorvastatin, 40 mg/d (-50.9%; 95% CI, -52.7% to -49.1%; P < .001). Ezetimibe/simvastatin was also superior to atorvastatin in attainment of LDL-C levels less than 70 mg/dL (P < .001 for all dose comparisons). Significantly better improvements with ezetimibe/simvastatin than with atorvastatin (P < or = .001) were observed for total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Ezetimibe/ simvastatin, 10/20 mg/d, reduced high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and triglyceride levels significantly more than atorvastatin, 10 mg/d (P = .02), with comparable reductions at other doses. Incidences of clinical adverse events, including serious drug-related and prespecified gastrointestinal-, gallbladder-, and hepatitis-related allergic reactions or rash events, and laboratory adverse events, including repeated elevation of hepatic transaminases or creatine kinase levels, were similar for both treatments.

CONCLUSION
Ezetimibe/simvastatin provided additional lipid-modifying benefits over atorvastatin monotherapy at the recommended usual starting and next highest doses in patients with type 2 diabetes. Both treatments were generally well tolerated.


Abstract During the uncontrolled consumption period the building sector has come to account one of the greatest proportions of greenhouse gas emissions and energy use in industrial countries. In this context, European countries have decided to address the environmental challenge by promoting the use of renewable energies and the implementation of low energy consumption requirements. For these reasons, zero emission buildings, which have a net zero annual energy demand, were regarded as a possible solution. And everything points to believe that they will continue to be crucial in a recent future. Consultants and contractors have shown the need towards a better understanding and knowledge regarding the selection of renewable energy supply solution for ZEBs. Accordingly, this Mater Thesis aims to explain how to use the new methodology for a cost-optimal selection of energy systems in early design phase analysis. It consists on a number of guidelines and Excel files that serve as templates for different calculations. The project is part of the development of a decision support method that automates the process of selecting the best system, in this particular case in office buildings. This early design phase study is not only focused on giving a cost-optimal alternative but also on performing a full analysis in terms of energy performance. It also shows the steps for both the energy systems dimension and the selection of office building parameters. A concept office building with four storeys is selected and modelled in connection with the Norwegian ZEB centre's project report 8. Following the Norwegian NZEB definition, the simulation software IDA-ICE is used as a tool for modelling the building and simulating the energy demand. It analyses six different energy supply combinations which were selected between available renewable technologies in Norway. In comparison to the previous study applied in residential buildings, this project introduces the building's cooling demand as a new feature of the analysis. Therefore, reversible heat pumps, free-cooling with the ground and chillers are also taken into account. Further, energy systems are economically compared by using global cost calculations, following the European Cost Optimal Methodology. Results are given in a graph where global costs and CO2 emissions produced by the energy balance of the building are shown in each axis. Finally the cost-optimal energy supply, the system with lower global costs, is selected like the most suitable option. In addition, the building energy performance is also discussed as an important parameter to be considered in the decision making process. At the end, the sensitivity analysis shows stable results with regard to changes in energy price development and PV area.


In November 1995, the sleepy Canadian town of Sackville, New Brunswick, was witness to what Freud and Foucault might have called an age-old autoerotic drama, one characterized by a predictable latency - a discrepancy between action and reaction, performance and reception. The event to which I am referring took place at Mount Allison University's Owens Art Gallery, where performance art and theater are regularly staged. Student Chris Yorke and a female actor, clad only in smashed eggs and silver tree tinsel, performed simulated oral sex on one another in front of an audience of almost fifty people. Although no one in the audience complained, and no one walked out, the viewers' acceptance, even appreciation, of the performance did little to sanction it. Very little. When the performance was subsequently reviewed in the local newspaper, the public's moral outrage was silently and decisively marshaled. A few days later, Chris Yorke was charged with public indecency. In finding Yorke guilty of indecency in the performance of his art, New Brunswick Judge Irwin Lampert declared that "community standards are the best measure of what is obscene and what is not." Yorke's only comment was as historically encoded as the judge's: "Human sexuality has been the subject of art for centuries; I feel violated by this decision" (Telegraph Journal E5). Indeed, Yorke had been subject to the same social forces that violated the turn-of-the-century performance artists of Serpentine Dance (1895) and Pull Down the Curtains, Suzie (1904), two early peepshows made for Edison's Kinetscope. If the Mount Allison situation teaches us anything, it is how fundamentally sexuality is inscribed with cultural sanction, and how that sanction recurs as regular historical performance. With increasing frequency over the last few years, the Internet has become a flash point for the debate between free speech and censorship. Various Netscape sites have been removed from the Web, and others have been blackened by Internet Providers to protest social sanction. Two years ago in the United States, Congress hurriedly passed the Communication Decency Act, only to see it ruled unconstitutional a short time later. In Canada, a January 1999 British Columbia judgment challenged the legality of restricting access to child pornography on the Web. Since that ruling, public opinion has been galvanized for censure: the call for Internet censorship - what I am terming "cybriety" (cyber-sobriety) - has been mobilized. The Internet, that vast mystical panacea that holds, we are told, so much of our hope for the future, is under threat. What are we to make of this, we non-cybrarians, occasional-surfers of the virtual world? In the early days of this debate, we can be certain of only one thing: left to the pundits, censorship becomes obscured. As Sallie Tisdale writes, "Censorship...makes it impossible not only to talk about the censored object, but about censorship" (13). "Pornography," concurs Walter Kendrick, "names an argument, not a thing" (31). And so censorship debates, regardless of what is being censored, are ideologically laden. These debates therefore require some historio-cultural archaeology to make sense of them. The novel, photography/film, and now the Internet are good sites with which to ground an exploration of the social psychology of censorship, as these are not only our most popular media, but those which perhaps best illustrate the action of all new media in the self-satisfying ("autoerotic") and unregulated ("offensive") stage of infancy. I do not mean to suggest any kind of structural evolution across these media, but to point simply to a historical recurrence that is observable in each medium's infancy, the time when each thrives in the unreflexive rapture of its own autoeroticism, independent of the sanction of the censor. Hybridizing McLuhan and Freud, I will argue that because all media are extensions of the body - speech extends the ear, print extends the eye - any new medium is inherently pleasurable; and, being pleasurable, any new medium invites the infantile game of daring, a pushing of the limits of what is "socially" acceptable in order to fulfill desire. …


Where is home if you have no definitive place to call home such as a house you grew up in and someone in your family still lives there? My early life was spent living on Seymour Johnson and For Walton Beach Air Force bases. After my parents separated me my mom and siblings moved backed to Rocky Mount NC. We lived in an apartment and later a rented house. My mother did not own a home until I was an adult. I started reflecting on "where is home" while working on my cemetery project during spring Semester 2011. Part of my project and research was done on the Dempsey family a local family from the Sandy Cross Community in Elm City N.C. Their homestead though dilapidated stands on property still owned by his family. His granddaughter still refers to the house as "granddaddy's house."  In Nature writing class during winter semester 2011 when fellow students chose their parent's homes and the places where they grew up as their nature spots I once again began to think about where home is for me. Home is not a place for me. Instead home is all my family's stories that make up who I am: a sharecropper's granddaughter the daughter whose parents survived a tremendous loss and the granddaughter of a woman who danced with the Lord.  Finding Home: I've Been This Girl All Along will contain a collection of creative nonfiction stories that make me feel a sense of home and give me an understanding of who I am as it relates to the world. The four stories contained in the collection are:  Catching the Holy Ghost: A religious themed story about the time I spent going to church with my grandmother; A Place For the Living: A story about my mother losing her first child; Riding to Medoc Mountain: A story about my grandfather and Sunday drives; and Exploding Into Destiny: A story about chasing unrealized dreams


This essay explores the role of rhetoric in an American West town that embraced prostitution as integral to its sense of identity from 1884–1991, when its economy began to shift from silver mining to tourism. The circulation of social values negotiated through gossip enabled a century-long period during which brothels flourished in an illegal yet decriminalized way. Even though the madams and sex workers were subject to spatial restrictions and the whims of local political and regulatory power, they managed to harness the available means of opportunistic discourse often overlooked in rhetorical analysis. I highlight the influence of the semi-private exchange of rumor and normative small talk. Arising out of spatial and qualitative public memory, gossip can be a persuasive force that harmonizes community needs across past, present, and future.


Go beyond HTML5's Audio tag and boost the audio capabilities of your web application with the Web Audio API. Packed with lots of code examples, crisp descriptions, and useful illustrations, this concise guide shows you how to use this JavaScript API to make the sounds and music of your games and interactive applications come alive. You need little or no digital audio expertise to get started. Author Boris Smus introduces you to digital audio concepts, then shows you how the Web Audio API solves specific application audio problems. You'll not only learn how to synthesize and process digital audio, you'll also explore audio analysis and visualization with this API. Learn Web Audio API, including audio graphs and the audio nodes Provide quick feedback to user actions by scheduling sounds with the API's precise timing model Control gain, volume, and loudness, and dive into clipping and crossfading Understand pitch and frequency: use tools to manipulate soundforms directly with JavaScript Generate synthetic sound effects and learn how to spatialize sound in 3D space Use Web Audio API with the Audio tag, getUserMedia, and the Page Visibility API


: This account focuses on novel amine-catalyzed reactions recently discovered in our laboratories. Among the newly developed transformations are efficient proline-catalyzed intermolecular aldol, Mannich, Michael reactions and a novel three-component reaction.


Research on consumption can shed light on many fundamental questions, such as the character of society, including social and cultural dimensions; the relations between the generations; dependency on technology and the risks involved; the rise of Asia and its potential consumption preferences; the question of whether we must continuously increase our consumption to avoid a recession and whether this is ecologically sustainable. In the field of consumption research there is need for analytical rigor based on theory and empirical evidence as well as discussions that will inspire readers to ask important questions regarding future development. The contributors to this innovative volume are scholars and experts in the field of consumption representing a variety of disciplines such as anthropology, economics, history, marketing, political science, and sociology. This book not only provides readers with a nuanced picture of consumption, but intends to enrich and sharpen the general debate about society today.


Summary Th e eff ects of pretreatment solution (no treatment, boiling water, salty boiling water, ethil oleat) on drying time of sour cherry were studied experimentally. Th e thin layer drying of sour cherries was carried out at three air temperatures of 50, 60, 70°C and with constant airfl ow velocity of 1 m/s. Drying kinetic, energy consumption and organoleptic properties as taste, visual color and texture were evaluated in dried fruits. Results of experiments showed that pretreatment solutions and air temperatures had signifi cant eff ect on drying time and organoleptic properties of dried sour cherry. Using of pretreatment solution is necessary before drying process. It reduced drying time up to 80% and energy saving was approximately 83% in comparison with no treatment samples. Results of this research indicated that using of salty boiling water as pretreatment and temperature of 50°C in sour cherry drying process cause the best result in drying time and organoleptic evaluation such as taste quality, visual color and texture suitability of dried fruit. In addition, energy consumption for drying reduced noticeably when sour cherry was pretreated with salty boiling water.


The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health is being warned that it risks damaging its reputation if it does not reject income from manufacturers of infant formula milk.

A group of paediatricians has submitted a motion to the college's annual general meeting on 27 April highlighting the income it receives from manufacturers that have stands at conferences and clinical meetings and the core funding it receives from one manufacturer. The college said that it received income from more than one manufacturer but could not disclose the amounts because of commercial sensitivity.

The paediatricians say that although the college has "progressively distanced" itself from such sponsorship, they warn that receiving any form of funding from manufacturers "will distort public and professional perceptions of the college stance on breast feeding as well as their advice on …


Table of Contents ONE: ARTISTS: CONCEPTS OF CREATIVITY.
Plato: The Ion (Woodruff translation).
Wordsworth: Preface to the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads.
Nietzsche: "Attempt at a Self-Criticism," and extensive excerpts from sections 1-15 of The Birth
of Tragedy (Kaufmann translation).
Freud: "Creative Writers and Day-dreaming" (Grant Duff translation).
Eliot: "Tradition and the Individual Talent."
Beardsley: "On the Creation of Art."
John Dewey: "Having an Experience."
Hans-Georg Gadamer: "The Play of Art," from The Relevance of the Beautiful.
Christine Battersby: "The Male Gift" and "The Great +I AM'," Chapters 4 and 5 of Gender and Genius.
TWO: ARTWORKS.
Form and Content.
Clive Bell: "The Aesthetic Hypothesis," from Art.
Clement Greenberg: "Modernist Painting."
R. G. Collingwood: Excerpts from the Introduction and Book I, "Art and Not Art," of The Principles of Art.
R. K. Elliott: "Aesthetic Theory and the Experience of Art."
The Project of Definition
Morris Weitz: "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics."
Maurice Mandelbaum: "Family Resemblances and Generalizations Concerning the Arts."
Arthur C. Danto: "The Artworld."
George Dickie: "The New Institutional Theory of Art."
Jerrold Levinson: "Defining Art Historically."
Richard Eldridge: "Form and Content: An Aesthetic Theory of Art."
THREE: AUDIENCES.
The Logic of Taste.
David Hume: "Of the Standard of Taste."
Immanuel Kant: "Analytic of the Beautiful."
Edward Bullough, "Psychical Distance."
Frank Sibley, "Aesthetic Concepts.
Kendall Walton: "Categories of Art."
Stanley Cavell: "Aesthetic Judgment and a Philosophical Claim."
Arnold Isenberg: "Critical Communication."
Intention and Interpretation.
Dewey: "Having an Experience," from Art as Experience.
Wimsatt & Beardsley: "The Intentional Fallacy."
Roland Barthes: "The Death of the Author," from Image-Music-Text.
E. D. Hirsch: "In Defense of the Author" (Chapter 1 of Validity in Interpretation).
Richard Wollheim: "Criticism as Retrieval."
Michael Baxandall: "Intentional Visual Interest" from Chapter 2 of Patterns of Intention.
Jenefer Robinson: "Style and Personality in the Literary Work."
Beardsley: "The Testability of an Interpretation."
Stanley Fish: "Is There a Text in this Class?"
Susan Sontag: "Against Interpretation."
FOUR: ART: PURPOSES AND PERILS.
Plato: Republic, Excerpts from Book III (386-398b), and Book X (595-608b) (Lee translation).
Aristotle: Poetics, Chapters 1-15, first half of 17, 23-26 (Halliwell translation).
Leo Tolstoy: Excerpts from What is Art?
John Dewey: "Art and Civilization," from Art as Experience.
Theodor Adorno: "On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening," from The Culture Industry.
Monroe C. Beardsley: "The Arts in the Life of Man," from Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism.
Linda Nochlin: "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"


In this paper, we describe how we have used a combination of the LASSi tool (developed by Cray) and the SAFE software (developed by EPCC) to collect and analyse Lustre I/O performance data for all jobs running on the UK national supercomputing service, ARCHER; and to provide reports on I/O usage for users in our standard reporting framework. We also present results from analysis of parallel I/O use on ARCHER and analysis on the potential impact of different applications on file system performance using metrics we have derived from the LASSi data. We show that the performance data from LASSi reveals how the same application can stress different components of the file system depending on how it is run, and how the LASSi risk metrics allow us to identify use cases that could potentially cause issues for global I/O performance and work with users to improve their I/O use. We use the IO-500 benchmark to help us understand how LASSi risk metrics correspond to observed performance on the ARCHER file systems. We also use LASSi data imported into SAFE to identify I/O use patterns associated with different research areas, understand how the research workflow gives rise to the observed patterns and project how this will affect I/O requirements in the future. Finally, we provide an overview of likely future directions for the continuation of this work.


We suggest a methodology that allows statistical agencies to form approximations to the benefits that flow to households from new free goods. The present production-oriented GDP measures are not satisfactory for measuring real household consumption and will be increasingly inaccurate as free goods, such as those made possible by the digital revolution, become more important. Advertising expenditures are not an adequate substitute for measuring the benefits of new goods to the household sector. Instead, we need to draw on estimates such as those provided by choice experiments.


The Aviation and Transportation Security Act mandates that by December 2002 100 percent of checked baggage be screened. Can this schedule be met? RAND assessed the feasibility of using explosive detection system machines or whether less-expensive explosive trace detection machines could shoulder part of the load. After studying operations at Dulles and Dallas-Fort Worth Airports, the authors concluded that a bottom-up approach an airport-by-airport basis was better than the top-down approach mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). They identified six problem areas and propose improvements that, while not meeting the deadline, will increase security.


The purpose of this paper is to examine the short-run effects of economic sanctions taking the form of restrictions on international trade in goods and services, as well as brakes on international financial flows. A Keynesian disequilibrium, demand driven macroeconomic paradigm is postulated. The target country is envisaged to be part of the global South, the sender country is viewed to be located in the global North, and the sanctions are general rather than targeted at specific firms and sectors. The trade sanctions can take two forms: a diminution of exports to the target country and a reduction in exports from the target nation. Both type of sanctions damage the target country's economy on impact: the first by lowering aggregate supply in the target country, the latter by worsening its terms of trade. From the viewpoint of the sender country, its economy may benefit from the demand generated by the rent from export restrictions to the targeted economy. Financial sanctions are more unequivocal in their damage to the target economy, they lower the supply of funds or capital in the target nation with adverse consequences for the supply of credit, investment finance, as well as reduced options on how to finance government expenditure.


This paper reports on knowledge management (KM) practices in the customer service and lending departments of one of Bulgaria's top retail banks and investigates how KM processes can be further improved. The Bank's KM activities have been studied using observations, interviews and informal discussions for data collection. Findings were compared and contrasted with existing literature in similar contexts. Although rudiments of knowledge sharing are evident from the KM activities in different departments of the bank, the limitations such as resistance to change of the implemented KM systems are impeding the effectiveness of the knowledge management process. More training and incentives are needed to increase knowledge creation and sharing. Moreover, a clearly articulated KM strategy along with success criteria and commitment and support from senior management is needed. There is a severe lack of knowledge management studies in Bulgarian context in general and Bulgarian banking sector in particular. The authors' findings will potentially help in improving knowledge sharing practice as well as provide a valuable insight into knowledge management related issues in the Bulgarian context. The findings from this research can be useful to companies from Eastern Europe and other regions in improving their knowledge sharing practice.


BACKGROUND
Understanding the natural history of anal high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) infection is key for designing anal cancer prevention programmes but has not been systematically characterised.

METHODS
We reanalysed data from 34 studies with 16 164 individuals in six risk groups defined by HIV status, gender, and male sexuality: men who have sex with men (MSM) living with HIV (LWH) [MSMLWH], HIV-negative MSM, women LWH (WLWH), HIV-negative women, men who have sex with women (MSW) LWH (MSWLWH), and HIV-negative MSW. We used Markov models to estimate incidence and clearance of 13 hrHPV types and their determinants.

RESULTS
HPV16 had the highest incidence:clearance ratio of the hrHPV types. MSMLWH had highest hrHPV incidence (e.g. 15.5% newly HPV16-infected within two years), followed by HIV-negative MSM (7.5%), WLWH (6.6%), HIV-negative women (2.9%), MSWLWH (1.7%), and HIV-negative MSW (0.7%). Determinants of HPV16 incidence included HIV status and number of sexual partners for MSM, women, and MSW, and anal sex behaviour for MSM only. HPV16 clearance was lower for people LWH (PLWH), and lower for prevalent than incident infection. Among MSM, increasing age was associated with lower clearance of prevalent, but not incident, HPV16 infection.

CONCLUSIONS
This robust and unifying analysis of anal hrHPV natural history is essential to designing and predicting the impact of HPV vaccination and HPV-based screening programmes on anal cancer prevention, particularly in MSM and PLWH. Importantly, it demonstrates the higher carcinogenic potential of longstanding anal prevalent hrHPV infection than more recent incident infection.


BACKGROUND
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in the regulation of many fundamental biological processes. So far miRNAs have been only identified in a few fish species, although there are over 30,000 fish species living under different environmental conditions on the earth. Here, we described an approach to identify conserved miRNAs and characterized their expression patterns in different tissues for the first time in a food fish species Asian seabass (Lates calcarifer).

METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS
By combining a bioinformatics analysis with an approach of homolog-based PCR amplification and sequencing, 63 novel miRNAs belonging to 29 conserved miRNA families were identified. Of which, 59 miRNAs were conserved across 10-86 species (E value ≤ 10⁻⁴) and 4 miRNAs were conserved only in fish species. qRT-PCR analysis showed that miR-29, miR-103, miR-125 and several let-7 family members were strongly and ubiquitously expressed in all tissues tested. Interestingly, miR-1, miR-21, miR-183, miR-184 and miR-192 showed highly conserved tissue-specific expression patterns. Exposure of the Asian seabass to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) resulted in up-regulation of over 50% of the identified miRNAs in spleen suggesting the importance of the miRNAs in acute inflammatory immune responses.

CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE
The approach used in this study is highly effective for identification of conserved miRNAs. The identification of 63 miRNAs and determination of the spatial expression patterns of these miRNAs are valuable resources for further studies on post-transcriptional gene regulation in Asian seabass and other fish species. Further identification of the target genes of these miRNAs would shed new light on their regulatory roles of microRNAs in fish.


CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Acid-functional monomers in self-adhesive resin cements may decrease their self-curing polymerization ability. Light irradiation optimizes polymerization performance.

SUMMARY
Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate Knoop microhardness of self-adhesive resin cements under dual- and self-curing modes in simulated canals for describing the polymerization behavior.Methods and Materials: Slots in lightproof silicone cylinders with one open end were filled with the following eight materials: a traditional resin cement (Duolink), a core build-up resin material (MultiCore Flow), and six self-adhesive resin cements (RelyX Unicem 2, G-Cem Automix, Maxcem, Biscem, Multilink Speed, and PermaCem 2.0). The resins were exposed to light through the open end and then stored in a lightproof box. The Knoop hardness gradient for each resin was measured after 1 hour and 120 hours. Surface readings were obtained at 1-mm intervals from 1 mm to 10 mm away from the open ends. The data were analyzed by two-way analysis of variance and the Student-Newman-Keuls test (α=0.05).Results: All the resin materials had stable Knoop hardness numbers (KHNs) at a certain depth; their KHNs in the self-curing mode did not change (p>0.05). The region above this certain depth was regarded as having undergone the dual-curing mode, and the KHN decreased gradually with depth (p<0.05). Between 1 and 120 hours postexposure, the ratio of the KHN at a 5-mm depth (self-cured) to that at a 1-mm depth (dual-cured) increased in Duolink and MultiCore Flow. However, the ratios of the six adhesive resin cements varied.Conclusion: Without light, most self-adhesive resin cements differed from traditional dual-cured resin materials in terms of Knoop micro-hardness, and they had a lesser capacity for chemical-induced curing.


Environmental factors may affect the growth, size, phenotype, behavior, and other characteristics of avian embryos at different developmental stages; however, the roles of individual embryonic physiological systems in these effects remain largely unclear. Embryonic motility is an important component of the prenatal development observed almost throughout embryogenesis and may be a precursor of post-hatching motor behavior. The influences of the environment on the development of motor behavior during embryogenesis (notably the embryonic motility affected by hypoxia) remain poorly studied. Consequently, using the chick embryo, we investigated the effect of acute hypoxia (10% or 5% О2 for 20 or 40 min) on embryonic cyclic motility at incubation days (D) 10, 12, 14, and 15 using in vivo video recording. Hypoxia inhibited motility; specifically, the average duration of activity and inactivity phases during hypoxic exposure were shortened and prolonged, respectively. Age-related changes in the responses to 10% and 5% O2 differed. The time course of the motility response to acute hypoxia varied during the D10-15 period and demonstrates that the embryo was capable of recovering motility under hypoxia. The recovery was likely enhanced with age due to maturation of regulatory capacity.


We investigate the scattering properties of a single surface plasmon in metal nanowire coupled to a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond nanocrystal under optical excitation. We demonstrate that, by spatially modulating a classical control beam, alternating regions of high reflection and absorption as well as high transmission and absorption of a single plasmon can be created in the left- and right-going directions that act as a kind of scattering grating. Such approach to induce grating gets out the well investigating region in which the weak interactions between single atoms and light is often used. The proposal may be used for chip-integrated grating, switcher and multi-channel drop filter.


Deutsche Wiederholungsgrammatik provides a comprehensive grammatical review for students of German. Each specific topic is explained in a simple and straightforward style and reinforced through a variety of exercises. These activities guide the student's progress from basic theory review and structured practice through open-ended, communicative applications. Experienced students can refine their accuracy, while those unfamiliar with grammatical concepts and terminology can use the various exercises designed to assist them as they advance through the book. Helpful insights on how to learn the material efficiently are included for each topic. Deutsche Wiederholungsgrammatik is designed to accommodate the needs of English-speaking learners. By highlighting differences and similarities between German and English, the book allows students to build on existing grammatical knowledge. Example sentences are used to put abstract principles in context, making it easier for students to learn and apply them effectively.


Over the past decade, a body of scholarship on civilian self-protection (CSP) has emerged, advancing understandings of civilian agency in war. In this article, we argue that CSP has been conceptualized in a narrow manner, reflecting the nascent status of the field. Scholars have focused on responses to threats directly related to the dynamics of conflict, physical in nature, and caused by the presence of armed groups. Using the case study of the Protection of Civilians (PoC) sites in South Sudan and drawing on over 150 interviews, we identify one type of protective response neglected in the literature: community and popular justice. Although the PoC sites provide a measure of protection, residents face a range of daily threats that are indirectly related to the conflict, such as crime. In this context, community justice emerged as a natural response, an overlooked yet vital form of CSP that addresses immediate protection needs and fulfills a social ordering function. By conceiving of justice in this way, this article aims to deepen understanding of civilian agency and start a conversation with scholars and practitioners about the boundaries of (self) protection.


This study explored the effect of using electronic dictionaries and hypermedia annotations on university students' receptive language skills, specifically reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. The subjects of the study consisted of 43 English major students who registered for the Reading One course at Taibah University in the second semester of the 2012-2013 academic year. The group was divided into two sections: section one was assigned as an experimental group, and section two was assigned as a control group. Data was collected over the course of twelve weeks via a pre/post test designed for an equivalent group. The results of the study indicated that students who were taught using electronic dictionaries and hypermedia annotation applications had better results than those who were taught using traditional methods. The researcher concluded that multimedia could facilitate students' learning of vocabulary and improve receptive language skills since they motivate and involve students in the teaching process. Accordingly, English departments at universities should accompany the main reading comprehension textbooks with instructions on how to utilize multimedia applications that render the teaching process more effective and successful. Specifically, this study demonstrates the benefits of multimedia instructional technology on students' reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. The results suggest that teachers may want to consider the merits of multimedia as a means of enhancing students' reading comprehension.


We have previously observed large phasic variations of respiratory mechanical impedance in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients mechanically-ventilated for acute respiratory failure, and postulated that they were due to expiratory flow limitation (EFL). The aim of this study was to test that assumption experimentally and to assess the value of impedance for automatic and noninvasive detection of EFL during mechanical ventilation. The study was performed: 1) in a mechanical analogue, including a flow-limiting element; and 2) in eight anaesthetized and paralysed rabbits, before and during histamine infusion. In both instances, EFL was obtained by lowering the expiratory pressure, using a computer-controlled ventilator; the absence of flow increase when expiratory pressure was further lowered was taken as evidence of EFL. Impedance was measured by applying 15 Hz oscillations at the airway opening. Its real (Re) and imaginary (Im) parts were measured separately during the inspiratory and the expiratory phases, and their differences were related to the mean inspiratory modulus. With the analogue, EFL was accompanied by large decreases both of Re and Im during the expiratory phase. In the rabbits, phasic variations of Re were variable in sign and were not significantly different with and without EFL. In contrast, EFL systematically and specifically decreased Im during the expiratory phase. A threshold of -50% provided a sensitivity of 96% and a specificity of 100% for detecting EFL. The observed phasic variations may be explained by airway wall shunt properties. The study suggests that a large decrease of the imaginary part of impedance during the expiratory phase is a sensitive and specific index of expiratory flow limitation during artificial ventilation.


Since their inception almost fifty years ago, hidden Markov models (HMMs) have have become the predominant methodology for automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems---today, most state-of-the-art speech systems are HMM-based. There have been a number of ways to explain HMMs and to list their capabilities, each of these ways having both advantages and disadvantages. In an effort to better understand what HMMs can do, this tutorial article analyzes HMMs by exploring a definition of HMMs in terms of random variables and conditional independence assumptions. We prefer this definition as it allows us to reason more throughly about the capabilities of HMMs. In particular, it is possible to deduce that there are, in theory at least, no limitations to the class of probability distributions representable by HMMs. This paper concludes that, in search of a model to supersede the HMM (say for ASR), rather than trying to correct for HMM limitations in the general case, new models should be found based on their potential for better parsimony, computational requirements, and noise insensitivity.


An advancement that includes the intellectual history of development ethics is examined in this paper. Relying upon contributions of distinguished scholars, this inquiry considers the intellectual history of the sub-field known as "development ethics". Special attention is paid to the pioneering development ethicist Denis Goulet, recognized as the founder of the field. The paper concentrates on individual contributions on a variety of issues, emphasizing linkages to Goulet's conception of tasks, methods and normative principles. Students of international development can benefit from this distinctive perspective where ethics is integrated into economic development, disclosing an enlightened perspective of an ethical developing world. Overall, the goal is to establish development ethics as an important subcategory of development economics in regards with its ethical aspects and one which deserves greater attention from economists and development studies scholars.
Key Words: Development ethics, Denis Goulet, Ethics, Development economics, Economic Humanism, Development, Social change.
JEL: O1


In order to resist geometric attacks, a robust image watermarking algorithm is proposed using scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) and Zernike moments. As SIFT features are invariant to rotation and scaling, we employ SIFT to extract feature points. Then circular patches are generated using the most robust points. An invariant watermark is generated from each circular patch based on Zernike moments. The watermark is embedded into multiple patches for resisting locally cropping attacks. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme is robust to both geometric attacks and signal processing attacks.


Abstract With the second largest indigenous population by percentage in Latin America, Guatemala is an important case for understanding horizontal inequality and indigenous politics. This paper presents new analysis of survey data, allowing for consideration both of indigenous and ladino populations, as well as of ethno-linguistic diversity within the indigenous population. Our analysis illustrates both the depth and persistence of horizontal inequalities in educational and labour market outcomes, and a broad trend towards greater equality. Earnings gaps have been reduced by, among other factors, improved educational outcomes. Ethnic groups also show distinct patterns of wages and wage gaps, and there is evidence of 'sticky floors' affecting some groups more than others. Our findings suggest that the focus on the indigenous/non-indigenous divide found in much of the economic literature on Latin America obscures meaningful diversity within the indigenous population. We posit that further consideration of such within-group diversity has implications for broader theories of ethnic politics, and in particular for understanding the comparative weakness of indigenous political mobilisation in Guatemala.


Although clinical studies with carbon ions have been conducted successfully in Japan and Europe, the limited radiobiological information about charged particles that are heavier than protons remains a significant impediment to exploiting the full potential of particle therapy. There is growing interest in the U.S. to build a cancer treatment facility that utilizes charged particles heavier than protons. Therefore, it is essential that additional radiobiological knowledge be obtained using state-of-the-art technologies and biological models and end points relevant to clinical outcome. Currently, most such ion radiotherapy-related research is being conducted outside the U.S. This article addresses the substantial contributions to that research that are possible at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), which is the only facility in the U.S. at this time where heavy-ion radiobiology research with the ion species and energies of interest for therapy can be done. Here, we briefly discuss the relevant facilities at NSRL and how selected charged particle biology research gaps could be addressed using those facilities.


Abstract Synchrotron based μ-XRF, μ-XAS and μ-XRD have made a major impact in the field of environmental science in the last ten years. One of the first seven 'day one' beamlines on the Diamond Light Source is a microfocus spectroscopy beamline, beamline I18. Here the current status of the beamline and the opportunities it presents in the field of environmental science are described, with results from two of the first experiments also included. The first is based on the use of bonemeal to remediate soil. We used Zn K-edge and Pb L3-edge spectroscopy to characterize the speciation of these two elements on a soil after bonemeal treatment. The results are compared with bulk measurements taken on the whole soil and standard materials. The second experiment described here is a study of the speciation and association of Ni in a laterite from Moa Bay, Cuba. Here the differences in the Ni speciation associated with Mn oxides are examined and compared with Fe oxides phases.


Book synopsis: This collection of essays on the alternative establishments which both Presbyterians and Catholics attempted to create in Britain and Ireland offers a dynamic new perspective on the evolution of post-reformation religious communities. Deriving from the Insular Christianity project in Dublin, the book combines essays by some of the leading scholars in the field with work by brilliant and upcoming researchers.

The contributions, all of which were commissioned, range from synoptic essays which fill in gaps in the existing historiography to tightly coherent research essays that break new ground with regard to a series of central institutional and intellectual issues and problems.

This is a book which will appeal to all those interested in the religious history of early modern Britain and Ireland.


This paper uses transnational postcolonial feminist participatory action research (TPFPAR) to examine two sport for development and peace (SDP) initiatives that focus on Indigenous young women residing in urban areas, one in Vancouver, Canada, and one in Perth, Australia. We examine how SDP programs that target urban Indigenous young women and girls reproduce the hegemony of neoliberalism by deploying biopedagogies of neoliberalism to 'teach' Indigenous young women certain education and employment skills that are deemed necessary to participate in competitive capitalism. We found that activities in both programs were designed to equip the Indigenous girls and young women with individual attributes that would enhance their chances of future success in arenas valued by neoliberal capitalism: Eurocentric employment, post-secondary education and healthy active living. These forms of 'success' fall within neoliberal logic, where the focus is on the individual being able to provide for oneself. However, the girls and young women we interviewed argued that their participation in the SDP programs would help them change racist and sexist stereotypes about their communities and thereby challenged negative stereotypes. Thus, it is possible that these programs, despite their predominant use of neoliberal logic and biopedagogies, may help to prepare the participants to more successfully negotiate Eurocentric institutions, and through this assist them participants in contributing to social change. Nevertheless, based on our findings, we argue that SDP programs led by Indigenous peoples that are fundamentally shaped by Indigenous voices, epistemologies, concerns and standpoints would provide better opportunities to shake SDP's current biopedagogical foundation. We conclude by suggesting that a more radical approach to SDP, one that fosters Indigenous self-determination and attempts to disrupt dominant relations of power, could have difficulty in attracting the sort of corporate donors who currently play such important roles in the current SDP landscape.


Robot programming by demonstration (RPD) covers methods by which a robot learns new skills through human guidance. We present an interactive, multimodal RPD framework using active teaching methods that places the human teacher in the robot's learning loop. Two experiments are presented in which observational learning is first used to demonstrate a manipulation skill to a HOAP-3 humanoid robot by using motion sensors attached to the teacher's body. Then, putting the robot through the motion, the teacher incrementally refines the robot's skill by moving its arms manually, providing the appropriate scaffolds to reproduce the action. An incremental teaching scenario is proposed based on insights from various fields addressing developmental, psychological, and social issues related to teaching mechanisms in humans. Based on this analysis, different benchmarks are suggested to evaluate the setup further.


This works examines the question whether a vapour-liquid phase transition exists in systems of particles with purely dipolar interactions, a topic which has been the subject of a longstanding debate. Monte Carlo simulation results for two modi operandi to tackle this issue are presented. One approach examines the phase behaviour of fluids of charged hard dumbbells (CHD), each made up of two oppositely charged hard spheres with diameters σ and separation d. In the limit d/σ → 0, and with the temperature scaled accordingly, the system corresponds to dipolar hard spheres (DHS) while for larger values of d ionic interactions are dominant. The crossover between ionic and dipolar regimes is examined and a linear variation of the critical temperature T ∗ c in dipolar reduced units as a function of d is observed, giving rise to an extrapolated T ∗ c,DHS ≈ 0.15. The second approach focuses on the dipolar Yukawa hard sphere (DYHS) fluid, which is given by a dipolar hard sphere and an attractive isotropic interaction Y of the Yukawa tail form. In this case, the DHS limit is obtained for Y → 0. It is found that T ∗ c depends linearly on the isotropic interaction strength Y over a wide range, coinciding with the results for the CHD model and extrapolating to a similar value of T ∗ c,DHS . However, with the use of specially adapted biased Monte Carlo techniques which are highly efficient, it is shown that the linear variation of T ∗ c is violated for very small values of the Yukawa interaction strength, almost two orders of magnitude smaller than the characteristic dipolar interaction energy. It is found that phase separation is not observable beyond a critical value of the Yukawa energy parameter, even though in thermodynamic and structural terms, the DYHS and DHS systems are very similar. It is suggested that either some very subtle physics distinguishes the DYHS and DHS systems, or the observation of a phase transition in DHSs is precluded by finite-size effects. In the context of phase separation in highly correlated fluids, new flat-histogram Monte Carlo simulation techniques based on the Wang-Landau algorithm are evaluated and shown to be useful tools. This work presents a general and unifying framework for deriving Monte Carlo acceptance rules which facilitate flat histogram sampling. The framework yields uniform sampling rules for thermodynamic states given either by the mechanically extensive variables appearing in the Hamiltonian or, equivalently, uniformly sample the thermodynamic fields which are conjugate to these mechanical variables. Declaration of Authorship I hereby declare that this thesis is of my own composition, and that it contains no material previously submitted for the award of other degrees. The work reported in this thesis has been executed by myself, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text. Georg Clemens Ganzenmüller


The Armstrong-Mobbs Sustainable House is a celebrated case study of sustainable refurbishment of an inner-city terrace house. The owners, Michael Mobbs and Heather Armstrong, went to unprecedented lengths to integrate energy and water saving systems into their Sydney residence. Their aim was not only to minimise their home's environmental footprint, but to prove that a house that significantly reduces its adverse effects on the physical environment does not have to look unusual or be operated by experts. This note was originally published in 1998 as CAS 21. Its authors were Deo Prasad and Jason Veale. Its publication coincided with the publication of the first edition of Michael Mobb's Sustainable House book. The current version was reviewed by Michael Mobbs in September 2011. It follows the publication of the second edition of Sustainable House and incorporates the learnings from an additional 14 years of operation.


In this paper we take the analysis of the role of money in legislative elections one step beyond the extant literature by examining the factors that affect the impact of spending on the vote. We hypothesize that two sets of factors, contextual and conversion, condition money's effect on the vote. The analysis of data from 12 state house races finds some significant support for the notion that spending responds to the context and the characteristics of the race, findings which have important theoretical and practical implications.


This exploration into social meanings packs along with it an assumption that social studies have yet to arrive at any 'moment' of potential in which they can confidently set about describing human behaviour in a way that makes the topic analytically familiar, and therefore warrants the analysis. Indeed, I take it for now that people's actions are new and strange. There is a small band of the 'self-disciplined' who view the social landscapes around them with fresh eyes; the occasional philosopher, some of the historians, ethnomethodologists, and conversation analysts, plus a few of the anthropologists and ethnographers. But they are exceptions. The problem appears to be this: Because everyone, analyst and lay person, is a committed expert on social behaviour, very few have felt the need to attempt an agreement on the details; for example, the profoundly-social properties of the very language we all use to describe it. Practitioners of natural science are not simply observing reality but displaying also their astonishment, frustrations, equivocations, justifications, agreements, criticisms, occasional relief, and other tokens of it. If the early astronomers and chemists had an advantage, it was the lack of experts bending their ears.

Accumulating empirical descriptions of social events will not necessarily result in a progressive discipline, only the potential for a workable philosophy that leaves the landscape unchanged. After that, who knows? But the potential offers more towards a warrant than what currently stands as social science. In the following chapters, the reader will find descriptions of social objects that appear in a court of law, and in settings that involve what we like to gloss as humour, laughter, and play. The analytic logic of these descriptions stands before the action and knows how to do it (such logic is not a reference to something hidden behind or within). This type of understanding features in a growing canon of studies towards which the following project aspires.


Constructing and maintaining useful representations of sensory experience is essential for reasoning about ones environment. High-level associative (topological) maps can be useful for efficient planning and are easily constructed from experience. Conversely, embedding new experiences within a metric structure allows them to be integrated with existing ones and novel associations to be implicitly inferred. Neurobiologically, the synaptic associations between hippocampal place cells and entorhinal grid cells are thought to represent associative and metric structures, respectively. Learning the place-grid cell associations can therefore be interpreted as learning a mapping between these two spaces. Here, we show how this map could be constructed by probabilistic message-passing through the hippocampal-entorhinal system, where messages are scheduled to reduce the propagation of redundant information. We propose that this offline inference corresponds to coordinated hippocampal-entorhinal replay during sharp wave ripples. Our results also suggest that the metric map will contain local distortions that reflect the inferred structure of the environment according to associative experience, explaining observed grid deformations.


The business environment of the 1990s demands significant changes in the way we do business. Simply formulating strategy is no longer sufficient; we must also design the processes to implement it effectively. The key to change is process innovation, a revolutionary new approach that fuses information technology and human resource management to improve business performance. The cornerstone to process innovation's dramatic results is information technology--a largely untapped resource, but a crucial "enabler" of process innovation. In turn, only a challenge like process innovation affords maximum use of information technology's potential. Davenport provides numerous examples of firms that have succeeded or failed in combining business change and technology initiatives. He also highlights the roles of new organizational structures and human resource programs in developing process innovation. Process innovation is quickly becoming the byword for industries ready to pull their companies out of modest growth patterns and compete effectively in the world marketplace.


Although incidence matrix representation has been used to analyze the Petri net based models of a system, it has the limitation that it does not preserve reflexive properties (i.e., the presence of self-loops) of Petri nets. But in many practical applications self-loops play very important roles. This paper proposes a new representation scheme for general Petri nets. This scheme defines a matrix called "reflexive incidence matrix (RIM) Cr," which is a combination of two matrices, a "base matrix Cb," and a "power matrix Cp." This scheme preserves the reflexive and other properties of the Petri nets. Through a detailed analysis it is shown that the proposed scheme requires less memory space and less processing time for answering commonly encountered net queries compared to other schemes. Algorithms to generate the RIM from the given net description and to decompose RIM into input and output function matrices are also given. The proposed Petri net representation scheme is very useful to model and analyze the systems having shared resources, chemical processes, network protocols, etc., and to evaluate the performance of asynchronous concurrent systems.


Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) has been advocated as a more rational approach to the construction of real estate portfolios. The application of MPT can now be achieved with relative ease using the powerful facilities of modern spreadsheet, and does not necessarily need specialist software. This capability is to be found in the use of an add-in Tool now found in several spreadsheets, called an Optimiser or Solver. The value in using this kind of more sophisticated analysis feature of spreadsheets is increasingly difficult to ignore. This paper examines the use of the spreadsheet Optimiser in handling asset allocation problems. Using the Markowitz Mean-Variance approach, the paper introduces the necessary calculations, and shows, by means of an elementary example implemented in Microsoft's Excel, how the Optimiser may be used. Emphasis is placed on understanding the inputs and outputs from the portfolio optimisation process, and the danger of treating the Optimiser as a Black Box is discussed.


Enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS®) is a strategy that seeks to reduce patients' perioperative stress response, thereby reducing potential complications, decreasing hospital length of stay and enabling patients to return more quickly to their baseline functional status. This programme results from the union of several perioperative clinical elements that have individually proved to be beneficial to the patient and have showed, when used together, a synergy that results in a significant outcome improvement. The term was coined at the end of the 1990s and originally used to refer to a complex fast-track programme in open colorectal surgery. Subsequently, the practice has spread to other surgical specialties centralising the interest of clinicians and researchers. The objective of this chapter is to analyse the key elements of an ERAS protocol applicable to minimally invasive thoracic surgery.


e15578 Background: We compared the effect of radiotherapy and cisplatin-based chemotherapy in women with high-risk cervical cancer; we performed a randomized trial of pelvic radiation with two chemotherapy regimens - concurrent cisplatin alone; and concomitant neo-adjuvant cisplatin and cyclophosphamide Methods: Between 2005 and 2009, 140 women with advanced cervical cancer confined to the pelvis (stages IIB and III), were randomly assigned to receive either 50 Gy of radiation to the pelvis (group 1), received 40 mg/m2 of cisplatin per week for five weeks (group 2) and received 75 mg/m2 of cisplatin on day 1, and 400 mg/m2 of cyclophosphamide on day 1, every 28 days per four six concomitant neoadjuvant with radiotherapy (group 3). Patients were then to receive one or two applications of low-dose-rate intracavitary radiation.

RESULTS
The analysis included 101 women. The median duration of followed was 24 months. Both groups that received cisplatin had a higher rate of progression-free survival than the group that received radiotherapy alone was P: 0.022 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.026 to 0.032; 21,31 vs. 17,47 mounts ). The relative risks of progression of disease or death were 0.57 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.40 to 0.75) in group 2, as compared with group 3. The overall survival rate was significantly higher in groups 2 and 3 than in group 1, with relative risk of death of 0.032 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.28 to 0.35; 31.7 mounts group 1, not yet reach the median overall survival in group 2 and 3).

CONCLUSIONS
Regimens of radiotherapy and chemotherapy that contain cisplatin improve the rates of survival and progression-free survival among women with locally advanced cervical cancer.


Evaluation metrics in machine learning are often hardly taken as loss functions, as they could be non-differentiable and non-decomposable, e.g., average precision and F1 score. This paper aims to address this problem by revisiting the surrogate loss learning, where a deep neural network is employed to approximate the evaluation metrics. Instead of pursuing an exact recovery of the evaluation metric through a deep neural network, we are reminded of the purpose of the existence of these evaluation metrics, which is to distinguish whether one model is better or worse than another. In this paper, we show that directly maintaining the relation of models between surrogate losses and metrics suffices, and propose a rank correlation-based optimization method to maximize this relation and learn surrogate losses. Compared to previous works, our method is much easier to optimize and enjoys significant efficiency and performance gains. Extensive experiments show that our method achieves improvements on various tasks including image classification and neural machine translation, and even outperforms state-of-the-art methods on human pose estimation and machine reading comprehension tasks. Code is available at: https://github.com/hunto/ReLoss.


Pervasive systems are composed of a large variety of networked smart devices that supposedly enrich the environment they are deployed in. The access to services provided by a pervasive system should be as natural and "unconscious" as possible. In a large number of cases, the available interaction modality seems to be more oriented towards showing off technological wonders rather than to the actual usability of the interface. In this paper we evaluate and compare two different versions of an information provision system deployed in two editions of a large fair. In particular, we will focus on the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Mediated-Communication (CMC) points of view. The analysis of such case studies is essential to understand the social dynamics of groups of people remotely interacting. One can thus talk about social ergonomics, which together with cognitive ergonomics, sketch these contexts from a perspective of individual usability. This is characterized by rules and guidelines for an accurate design of the communication environments. Such discussions aim at the optimization of the interaction process in accordance with the goals of the information system, in terms of interfaces, user satisfaction, performance and efficiency produced by the correct CMC. The comparison we propose will allows us to infer some important conclusion that can be useful to anyone who want to develop and deploy similar systems within similar events.


For a couple of years already, variable speed compressor technology has become a standard for residential heating and cooling applications. Indeed, as a response to increasing performance requirements, small capacity variable speed scroll compressors optimized for heating and cooling applications were released and progressively adopted on the market. In January 2018, the first tier of the Ecodesign Directive (2009/125/EC) requirements defined for commercial AC chillers will enter into force across European Union. The application of this new regulation will most likely drive the European commercial AC market toward a similar direction than the residential market and a more intensive adoption of the variable speed technology, especially for systems below 400kW rating cooling capacity. This paper presents integrated solutions targeting efficient implementation of variable speed technology in commercial water chillers, allowing system manufacturers to face new regulatory challenges. The considered solution integrates multiple configurations of variable speed and fixed speed scroll compressors, variable frequency drive, electronic expansion valve and control. Compressors envelopes management and protection as well as superheat control capabilities are presented. Seasonal performance simulations have been realized according to EN14825 to quantify the gain of variable speed technology. Laboratory testing has been performed to develop and qualify the considered solution. Testing on a real Air-to-Water chiller has also been realized to fine-tune the control and measure the achieved efficiency levels.


The stability of offshore structures, such as wind turbine foundations, breakwaters, and immersed tunnels can be strongly affected by the liquefaction and cyclic mobility phenomena in the seabed. Our goal is to develop a numerical code for analysis of these situations. For this purpose, we start by formulating the strong interactions between soil skeleton and the pore fluid via a coupled set of partial differential equations. A single bounding surface soil model capable of simulating the accumulations of pore pressures, strains, dilatancy, and strain 'softening', is then adopted for quantifying the cyclic soil constitutive relations. To deal with the high non-linearity in the equations, the finite volume (FV) method is proposed for the numerical simulation. The corresponding discretization strategies and solution algorithms, including the conventional segregated method and the more recent block matrix solver, are discussed as well. Overall, investigations in this paper provide a methodology for developing a numerical code simulating liquefaction and cyclic mobility. In future work this will be implemented in practice with the aid of the open source CFD toolbox, OpenFOAM.


Eight cases of blastic lymphoid leukemia have been treated with myelokentric acid in crude form, because hypothetically in blastic lymphoid leukemia there is a deficiency of this material. The crude myelokentric acid was used because it was more easily obtained than partially purified material. Purification of biologically active materials by methods of extraction and precipitation necessarily results in a considerable loss of material. Thirteen partial remissions occurred following the administration of crude myelokentric acid. Seven of the 8 patients have died, and 5 necropsies were performed.

The necropsy material adds further weight to the belief that the remissions were induced by the myelokentric acid in that in all 5 necropsies there was a definite alteration in the histologic morphology as contrasted with the findings in the necropsies of the controls.

It seems inadvisable, however, to treat a large number of patients with this material because it is crude, it is relatively unavailable, and no standard dose has yet been devised.

We wish to t hank Dr. D. L. Turner and Dr. W. A. Hause for valuable assistance in this work.


Essentially due to the uninterrupted scaling of MOSFET transistors, it has become absolute obligatory to explore for new transistors architectures in order to reach better control of short channel effects. Also the integrity and issues related to electrostatic performance associated with scaling Silicon MOSFET bulk sub 10 nm channel length promotes research in new device architectures such as SOI, double gate and gate all around GAA MOSFETs [1]. In literature GAA structure has been proposed to reduce the SCEs due to scaling of the MOSFET transistor. GAA structures, that are actually strong candidates for the next generation nanoscale devices, show an even stronger control of short channel effects. In this paper, a double metal square surrounding gate MOSFET for reduces short channel effects is presented. Our results take into account quantum confinement. In the latter part of the paper some 2D simulation results of our structure has been shown using SILVACO TCAD tools. We will also exhibit some simulation results we obtained relating to the influence of some parameters variation on our structure), that have a direct impact on their threshold voltage and drain current. In addition, our Transistor showed reasonable Ion/Ioff ratio of (10 4


In the 2006 RoboCup Virtual Rescue Robots competition, teams from different research labs developed methods for controlling teams of mobile robots in a simulated urban search and rescue scenario. The scoring procedure used in this inaugural competition rewards participants for the number of victims found, the amount of area explored in the environment, the quality of the maps created by the robot teams and penalties participants for colliding with a victim or relying on human operators. The analysis of the strategies and scores suggests that the scoring procedure may lead teams to adopt strategies that are not consistent with the needs of a real search and rescue scenario. This paper introduces Robotic Exploration Utility as a measure of exploration quality and analyzes the results of the competition based on this measure. Individual robot contributions to the system were reviewed to account for the costs associated with adding a robot to the environment, indicating that value added per robot is an important measure that is overlooked. The analysis also revealed substantial performance variation, depending on the behavior that was being rewarded, which may indicate a lack of focus for evaluative performance measures of robotic urban search and rescue systems. The Robotic Exploration Utility metric enables the research community to focus on a performance measure which reflects the needs of the domain, while allowing task performance to be easily compared across systems.