The aim of this work was to evaluate the feasibility of the use of Landsat imagery to map soybean crop areas in Parana, Brazil, during crop years from 2000/2001 to 2006/2007. The analysis of the quick look images from the TM and ETM+ sensors was performed to select useful images to map soybean crop. The quick looks were classified according to the presence or absence of clouds and technical problems. It was verified that for none of the seven crop years it would have been possible to map soybean crop for the entire Parana state, even for the three crop years during which both satellites Landsat 5 and 7 were operating simultaneously. The presence of clouds, detected through the optical sensors, should be considered for systematic mapping of summer crops in Brazil.


Sports scandals are often discussed in the media and research literature without any deeper reflection on their specificities or development. As the economic and political significance of sport seem to grow in correlation with the development of globalization and new social media, the call for a sociological understanding of the downsides of sport becomes imperative. By deploying a communication-theory framework supplemented with insights from discourse theory, this article aims to develop a theoretical model of the sports scandal. It presents a 5-step model encompassing initial steps of transgression, followed by a publicly observed dislocation destabilizing the social order, which subsequently results in moral communication, environmental pressure for appropriate action, and, finally, an institutional solution.


The productivity of many industrial cutting processes is limited by high amplitude chatter vibrations. An optimization technique based on the use of the stability lobes helps to increase the productivity of these processes, improving the life of machine elements and reducing the tool wear as well. The best-known lobes correspond to Hopf bifurcations. However, in case of interrupted cutting, additional lobes appear due to period doubling or flip bifurcation. When the system has more than one dominant vibration mode, important variations can appear in stability due to interaction between modes. The basic mathematics for the appearance of these new lobes are shown in this article. The frequency domain study shows that lobes related to flip bifurcation are a special case of the interaction between modes. The results of these interactions are verified by comparison with semi-discretization method and time domain simulations, respectively.


About the book:
State of the Wild is a biennial series that brings together international conservation experts and writers to discuss emerging issues in the conservation of wildlife and wild places.
Each volume in the series combines evocative writings with a fascinating tour of conservation news highlights and vital statistics from around the world. One-third of each volume focuses on a topic of particular concern to conservationists working to protect wildlife and our last wild places. This 2008–2009 edition considers the integration of wildlife health, ecosystem health, human health, and the health of domestic animals—a "One World–One Health" approach to disease and conservation.
This focus is complemented with essays clustered into sections that address other key issues—conservation of species; conservation of wild places; people, culture, and conservation; and the art and practice of conservation. Essays cover a broad range of topics, from restoring biodiversity on the prairies to mapping the state of the oceans to the conservation impacts of lawlessness and coca cultivation in Colombia. Essay contributions come from people directly involved in on-the-ground conservation efforts and offer a unique and valuable perspective on often-overlooked topics.
State of the Wild's accessible approach educates a wide range of audiences while at the same time presenting leading-edge scientific overviews of hot topics in conservation. Uniquely structured with magazine-like features up front, conservation news in the middle, and essays from eminent authors and experienced scientists throughout, this landmark series is an essential addition to any environmental bookshelf.


Objective Mindfulness‐integrated cognitive behaviour therapy (MiCBT) is a transdiagnostic psychological intervention for the alleviation of chronic mental health conditions. Although health workers utilise the approach in Australasia, Europe, and North America, the modality has been overlooked in the literature. Furthermore, few qualitative studies have investigated mindfulness training for experienced healthcare professionals. This study addresses these gaps and is the first investigation of an Australian sample in this field of study. Method The design comprises a two‐stage qualitative analysis of the recorded experiences of six health professionals during introductory MiCBT training in Australia, using course workbooks and semi‐structured interviews conducted at between 3 and 21 months' follow‐up. Results Results show a high level of agreement with the extant literature on other mindfulness‐based approaches. Themes involve harnessing of personal challenges during training to one's advantage, gaining equanimity through exposure, and personal benefits linked to home practice. However, notable themes from the literature relating to group cohesion and professional self‐care are absent. Novel findings include the reported ability of participants to regard personal difficulties as opportunities, rather than threats, to practice; and differences in how mindfulness training is implemented professionally by psychologists and social workers working with dissimilar client groups. Conclusions Results suggest that specifics of the training delivery, occupation of professionals, and level of client functioning could all play a part in determining perceived outcomes of mindfulness training for participants. The findings will be of interest to anyone who designs, implements, or participates in mindfulness‐based training programmes.


An analytical exposition of the law regarding a patient's "right to die" as it has developed in the United States over the last 30 years provides an exemplar overview of the variety of legal mechanisms that American legal institutions can and do bring to bear to deal with the challenges posed by new developments in medicine and the biosciences. Opposing "pro-life" and "pro-choice" ideological and political forces have been channeled through the federal and state legislative, judicial, and executive branches, where the various legal actors have developed legal principles that so far provide patients with a right to refuse any form of life-prolonging treatment while denying them (in all but one state) the right to physician-assisted suicide. The tension between these forces continues to exist, and the law is in a constant process of change.


In order to study the prevalence and etiology of subclinical mastitis a bacteriological survey on 16 Awassi dairy sheep flocks in southern Turkey was conducted. A total of 1458 milk samples from 729 Awassi ewes in mid-lactation were tested with the California mastitis test (CMT). Samples from 170 (11.7%) glands and 135 (18.5%) sheep had positive CMT results. Bacteria were isolated from 93 (6.4%) udder halves and 82 (11.2%) ewes. Positive CMT and bacteriological results were combined to define subclinical mastitis. The prevalence of subclinical mastitis and positive CMT samples among the different flocks ranged from 1.9% to 11.5% and 2.8% to 21.9% of the glands, and 3.8% to 19% and 5.7% to 31.3% of the ewes, respectively, with averages of 6.4% and 11.7% of the glands, and 11.2% and 18.5% of the ewes, respectively. Coagulase-negative staphylococci (CNS) were the most prevalent bacteria, representing 76.5% of the isolates. Staphylococcus epidermidis (35.7%) was the most prevalent species, followed by Staphylococcus xylosus (10.2%), Staphylococcus saprophyticus (10.2%), Staphylococcus warneri (9.2%), and Staphylococcus intermedius (7.1%). Antimicrobial susceptibility of 78 Staphylococcus isolates was evaluated in this study. The most effective antibiotics were cephalothin (97.4%), sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim (97.4%), amoxicillin + clavulanic acid (97.4%), enrofloxacin (94.9%), gentamycin (92.3%), and erythromycin (84.6%). The relationship between CMT +1 score and the Staphylococcus spp. isolation rate was statistically significant (P < 0.001). It was concluded that subclinical mastitis is not highly prevalent and it does not pose a significant health problem for milking Awassi sheep flocks in southern Turkey.


Weather Risk Management, Erik Banks, editor, 2002, Palgrave, Houndmills, Basinstroke, Hampshire, and New York: Element Re Capital Products, Inc "Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it." That old saw has been around for a long time. It suffers from the disadvantage of being false. As an inland marine underwriter over 40 years ago, I underwrote rain insurance policies on air races and sports car shows. My department wrote rain insurance on western movies, an insufficiency of water policy for the Shasta Dam and some ill-fated contracts insuring drying raisins against rainfall. Weather insurance in this country and the world market as a whole has been around for a long time. With its emphasis on derivatives, this book seems to view the area of weather risk management as a recent development. There is no question that the advent of derivatives has changed the weather risk financing field in a dramatic fashion. In fact, the title of this book is misleading since it covers what risk management professionals will recognize as risk financing rather than the larger topic of risk management. The book lacks any treatment of the risk management decision process starting with risk identification and measurement, including loss control and evaluation of alternatives and cuts right to the financing decision. This orientation can be seen on page three when they state "We use the term 'weather risk' to describe the financial exposure that a business may have to weather events such as heat, cold, snow, rain or wind." This is not surprising since the book is written by the employees of Element Re Capital Products, Inc. On the book cover we are told that the market for weather risk has grown to an estimated US$7.5 billion in just four years. Element Re, a division of XL Capital is a provider of weather risk management products and "a recognized leader in the weather risk market." This book attempts to provide information about weather derivatives and to promote that product. The bias in this book toward weather derivatives and against weather insurance can be further seen in the fact that the topic "weather derivatives versus weather insurance" is found in the chapter entitled Legal and Regulatory Issues. Here we learn that the pattern of state regulation results in insurance products being "highly regulated" unlike derivatives, which Enron has shown contain certain regulatory loose ends. This text points out that a disadvantage of weather insurance is that one has to show an insurable interest while, "An entity executing a weather derivative does not need to show an insurable interest in property, it just needs to be adversely impacted by fluctuations in weather. …


The stalks of peritrich protozoa have aroused great interest for many years and for many reasons. Some are contractile, some are not. This attribute of contractility, first observed by Leeuwenhoek in Vorticella and published in this journal in 1676, is one good reason for further studies of a structural, cytochemical and physiological character. This paper is mainly concerned with matters of fine structure which relate not only to the mechanism of contraction in those stalks that behave in this way, but also to wider problems of morphogenesis in ciliates. The early literature of this subject is clouded with optical artifact and one of the first problems to be solved is the precise difference between non-contractile and contractile stalks. Seven families are now included in the suborder Sessilina of the Peritrichida and members of the Epistylididae and the Vorticellidae have been selected for this investigation. This choice has made possible a detailed comparative study of fine structure in the non-contractile stalks of the first group and the contractile ones of the second. All stalks possess longitudinally arranged structures. In the non-contractile stalks these structures are tubular in form and may be observed in the phase-contrast microscope. In the contractile stalks the longitudinal structures are of two main kinds, one of which is confined to the annulus and the other to an inner canal separated from the annulus by a membrane. The annular structures are tubular and numerous in Carchesium and Zoothamnium and transversely striated, while in Vorticella they are composed of unstriated fibres, few in number. The structure within the canal is the main feature that distinguishes the stalks of Vorticellidae from those of Epistylididae. It consists of a long bundle of closely packed fine fibrils and is to be identified with the stalk spasmoneme or myoneme of the older literature. Only one type of fibril has been observed in the spasmonemes and present facts are not consistent with the idea that they contract in the same way as muscles. The spasmoneme is protein in nature with positive indications of the presence of —NH2, S—H, and S—S groups. The annular structure in the Vorticellidae and the tubular structures of Epistylididae have cytochemical affinities with the keratin group of proteins. Structurally, they grow out as the stalk develops from an assembly of organelles known collectively as the scopula. In the contractilia the spasmoneme passes into the zooid through a more or less central gap in the scopula and terminates in the form of a circular fan of fibrils on or close to the zooid pellicle. The fine structure of the stalk tubules of the Epistylididae has been investigated in some detail, particularly for one species of Epistylis. In Epistylis and Opercularia the tubules are transversely striated in a manner similar to that described for Carchesium and Zoothamnium. In Campanella each tubule consists of a loose helix of fibrils interlocked with those of neighbouring tubules. The form of attachment of the tubules of Epistylis and Opercularia to the scopula organelles has been determined. Wherever the preparations were of sufficient quality a comparison has been made of scopula organelles and the corresponding and possibly homologous structures of normal cilia known as basal bodies or kinetosomes. There are similarities and, of course, differences. It seems justifiable to regard the scopula organelles as basal bodies modified in the course of the evolution of this Order for the purpose of contributing a degree of structural stability and rigidity to the stalks. No such obvious 'origin' for the spasmoneme has been found in the adult organisms. This illustrates the danger and perhaps sterility of attempts to link the genesis of one structure to another on purely morphological grounds. The role of the scopula organelles and in a wider context kinetosomes in the organization and possibly the synthesis of fibrous proteins is discussed.


This book illustrates hitherto unexamined connections between the present state of teacher education in the UK and past models of practice. It locates contemporary debates within ongoing historical tensions over what constitutes a sound and proper start to a career in teaching. Questions as to the constituents of a professional training, the essential skills, knowledge and attitudes desired of an effective teacher, the most suitable locus of expertise, the relative roles of participants, and the balance of theory and practice lie at the heart of this book. The book reviews apprenticeship and teach-exemplar models of training, expert-novice relationships, model and demonstration teaching, school-based practice and the elaboration of core pedagogical principles in educational debate and research. These developments are assessed against recent initiatives in ITT, such as partnership models of ITT, school-based mentoring, advanced skills teaching, training schools, a standards-driven model of assessment for student teachers and models of effective teaching. Central to the book is the concept of the power to teach. By reclaiming this notion, the book offers challenging new perspectives on current policy and practice in teacher education today and adds to existing histories of teacher training of the past.


Mulga is a distinctive woodland or shrub community with a wide distribution across the semi-arid zone of southern and central Australia. Mulga (Acacia aneura) is the dominant shrub and small tree, but other species of Acacia are common. Typical of Australian habitats in the arid zone, mulga has a core of resident bird species that is augmented by nomadic (opportunistic) species when conditions are favourable. This paper describes the foraging behaviour and habitat use of a mulga avifauna in the vicinity of Alice Springs during late winter, when many opportunistic species were present. Data were obtained for 24 species, of which 16 were confirmed as nesting. Many birds, regardless of their normal foraging habits, converged on a common food resource: a geometrid moth (Geometridae) that was abundant on mulga plants. Despite their use of a common food resource, species differed in their foraging behaviour, proportions of different substrates used, and foraging heights. Ground-foraging species dominated the avifauna, but in most respects the guild structure of the community was a scaled-down version of Eucalyptus forest avifaunas. Differences in guild structure between mulga and eucalypt forest are best explained by differences between the two habitats in the kinds of resources (e.g. foraging substrates, types of food) that are available.


The industrial plasticizer di-(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) is used in manufacturing of a wide variety of polyvinyl chloride (PVC)-containing medical and consumer products. DEHP belongs to a class of chemicals known as peroxisome proliferators (PPs). PPs are a structurally diverse group of compounds that share many (but perhaps not all) biological effects and are characterized as non-genotoxic rodent carcinogens. This review focuses on the effect of DEHP in liver, a primary target organ for the pleiotropic effects of DEHP and other PPs. Specifically, liver parenchymal cells, identified herein as hepatocytes, are a major cell type that are responsive to exposure to PPs, including DEHP; however, other cell types in the liver may also play a role. The PP-induced increase in the number and size of peroxisomes in hepatocytes, so called 'peroxisome proliferation' that results in elevation of fatty acid metabolism, is a hallmark response to these compounds in the liver. A link between peroxisome proliferation and tumor formation has been a predominant, albeit questioned, theory to explain the cause of a hepatocarcinogenic effect of PPs. Other molecular events, such as induction of cell proliferation, decreased apoptosis, oxidative DNA damage, and selective clonal expansion of the initiated cells have been also been proposed to be critically involved in PP-induced carcinogenesis in liver. Considerable differences in the metabolism and molecular changes induced by DEHP in the liver, most predominantly the activation of the nuclear receptor peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)α, have been identified between species. Both sexes of rats and mice develop adenomas and carcinomas after prolonged feeding with DEHP; however, limited DEHP-specific human data are available, even though exposure to DEHP and other phthalates is common in the general population. This likely constitutes the largest gap in our knowledge on the potential for DEHP to cause liver cancer in humans. Overall, it is believed that the sequence of key events that are relevant to DEHP-induced liver carcinogenesis in rodents involves the following events whereby the combination of the molecular signals and multiple pathways, rather than a single hallmark event (such as induction of PPARα and peroxisomal genes, or cell proliferation) contribute to the formation of tumors: (i) rapid metabolism of the parental compound to primary and secondary bioactive metabolites that are readily absorbed and distributed throughout the body; (ii) receptor-independent activation of hepatic macrophages and production of oxidants; (iii) activation of PPARα in hepatocytes and sustained increase in expression of peroxisomal and non-peroxisomal metabolism-related genes; (iv) enlargement of many hepatocellular organelles (peroxisomes, mitochondria, etc.); (v) rapid but transient increase in cell proliferation, and a decrease in apoptosis; (vi) sustained hepatomegaly; (vii) chronic low-level oxidative stress and accumulation of DNA damage; (viii) selective clonal expansion of the initiated cells; (ix) appearance of the pre-neoplastic nodules; (x) development of adenomas and carcinomas.


The population structure of Aphanius anatoliae in Lake Egirdir-Isparta-Turkey was studied, using 522 fish monthly in 2008. This study were observed in the number of individuals of each sex, age, weight and size compositions. In addition, the total length-weight relationship was calculated as well as the Von Bertalanffy growth equation. A study of the food uptake throughout the year has been carried by examination of the content of the digestive track. Males made up 51.92%, and females 48.08% of the population. The length-weight relationship and Von Bertalanffy growth equation were estimated as W= 0.0232 e 0.098L , r=0.8262, Lt = 54.51 (1 – e –0.279 ( t+1.345) ), respectively. Bacillariophyta, Gammarus pulex and aquatic insecta are the major food items for Aphanius anatoliae.


Especially for large projects intending to develop distributed and dynamically evolving software systems the requirements engineering process involves various authorities with different needs and even conflicting views. Thus, detection and handling of inconsistencies is the requirements engineer's everyday business. Traditionally, consistency and completeness of the requirements documents is regarded as a virtue, the final state which is worth all the requirements engineer's efforts. Inconsistency is seen as a bug, the state which is to avoid at all costs. Our approach takes a broader view: within software development changing of requirements is a continuous process which is not completed until the software system's lifetime has ended. We regard inconsistencies as positive information which finally serve to push development forward. However, requirements engineers, software engineering environments, and also the applications themselves have to be adapted such that inconsistencies are tolerated and are automatically taken into account in a useful way. In this paper we explore how inconsistency management can be automated based on general strategies for detecting and handling inconsistent information. We present the ViewPoints framework for structured integration of various kinds of requirement documents and processes and sketch how automated detection and handling of inconsistencies can be realized using graph grammars. Finally, we show the applicability of our approach by providing an example from the discipline of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).


Abstract Objectives: To compare the oocyte count, embryo count, pregnancy rate, and the presence of OHSS in patients undergoing In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) with long and short protocols at Yasmin Clinic, Dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, Jakarta. Methods: A cross sectional study was done at Yasmin Reproductive Clinic, Dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, Jakarta, Indonesia. Data was collected from the medical records of 200 infertile women undergoing IVF, 100 women with long protocols and the other 100 with short protocols. Variables compared in these 2 groups are the oocyte count, embryo count, the pregnancy rate, and presence OHSS using Mann-Whitney U Test with SPSS 11 Program. Result: From 200 women undergoing IVF procedure, 45.5% of them aged between 35-40 years old, with the youngest is 22 years old and the oldest is 48 years old (average age=35 years, SD=4.7), and almost half of them (45%) have BMI between 18.01-23.00 kg/m2. 185 women has primary infertility. These subjects came to the clinic mostlydue to male factor (23.5%), idiopathic cause (19%), and ovulation disturbance (13%), whilst endometriosis, tubal factor, and other factors take just little percentage. When compared between long and short protocols, the number of oocyte retrieved is significantly different (p=0.007, CI=5.84-7.11), whereas embryo numbers (p=0.054, CI=1.80-2.39) and the pregnancy rate (p=0.525, CI=0.21-0.33) found to be not significantly different. There were 2 cases of moderate OHSS developed in the long protocol group. Conclusion: Although the number of embryo produced and the pregnancy rate are found to be not significantly different between the two groups, long protocol of IVF is found to produce more oocyte to be retrieved and develop more OHSS events compared to short protocol. Due to this result, GnRH antagonist can be considered when planning an IVF procedure. However, a longitudinal multicenter study with larger sample size is needed to validate the current data. Keywords: in vitro fertilization, long protocol, pregnancy rate, short protocol


OF THESIS CLOGGING OF FINE SEDIMENT WITIHIN GRAVEL SUBSTRATES: MACROANALYSIS AND MOMENTUM-IMPULSE MODEL An understanding of the clogging of fine sediments within gravel substrates is advanced through the use of dimensional analysis and macro-analysis of clogging experiments in hydraulic flumes. Dimensional analysis is used to suggest that the dimensionless clogging depth can be collapsed using the original and adjusted bed-tograin ratios, substrate porosity, roughness Reynolds number, and Peclet number. Macroanalysis followed by statistical analysis of 146 experimental test results of fine sediment deposition in gravel substrates suggests that the dimensionless clogging depth can be collapsed using the substrate porosity and roughness Reynolds number reflecting the processes of gravity settling and turbulence induced fluid pumping between substrate particles. In addition, a clear cutoff of fine sediment unimpeded static percolation and sediment clogging is found using the adjusted bed-to-grain ratio. Thereafter, a physics-based approach is used to predict the clogging depth of fine sediment in gravel and in turn approve upon the preliminary findings in the empirical analysis. A momentum-impulse model that accounts for the critical impulse of a particle bridge is balanced with a fluid pulse resulting from turbulent pumping. The momentumimpulse model reduces the number of unknown parameters in the clogging problem and increases the model predictability as quantified using k-fold validation and model comparison with the empirical approach. A nomograph derived from applying the momentum-impulse model is provided herein, which will be useful for stream restoration practitioners interested in estimating embeddedness. Also, prediction of the clogging profile is shown using the clogging depth predicted with the momentum-impulse model.


Equilibrium adsorption of methane (CH4), C2+ gases (ethane (C2H6), ethylene (C2H4), propane (C3H8), and propylene (C3H6)), and carbon dioxide (CO2) was measured on a series of tbo-MOFs (topological analogues of the prototypical MOF, HKUST-1, correspondingly dubbed tbo-MOF-1), which were developed via the supermolecular building layer (SBL) pillaring strategy. Specifically, tbo-MOF-2 and its isoreticular, functionalized analogue, tbo-MOF-2-{CH2O[Ph(CO2H)2]}2 (or tbo-MOF-3), which is characterized by pendant isophthalic acid moieties freely pointing into the cavities, were evaluated on the basis of potential use in methane storage and C2+/CH4 separation. The parent, tbo-MOF-2, showed high gravimetric and volumetric CH4 uptake, close to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) target for methane storage at 35 bar and room temperature. Though the presence of the pendant isophthalic acid moiety in the analogous compound, tbo-MOF-3, led to a decrease in total CH4 uptake, due mainly to the reduced size of the cavities, interestingly, it increased the affinity of the SBL-based tbo-MOF platform for propane, propene, ethane, and ethylene at low pressures compared with CH4, due additionally to the enhanced interactions of the highly polarizable light hydrocarbons with the isophthalic acid moiety. Using Ideal Adsorption Solution Theory (IAST), the predicted mixture adsorption equilibria for the C3H8/CH4, C3H6/CH4, C2H6/CH4, C2H4/CH4, and C3H8/CO2 systems showed high adsorption selectivity for C2+ over methane for tbo-MOF-3 compared with tbo-MOF-2. The high working storage capacity of tbo-MOF-2 and the high affinity of tbo-MOF-3 for C2+ over CH4 and CO2 make tbo-MOF an ideal platform for studies in gas storage and separation.


Von Dassow et al. have developed a computer simulation for segmentation based on the Drosophila segment polarity genes. The model was based on the interactions of the products of five genes (wingless, engrailed, hedgehog, cubitus interruptus, and patched) and the repressor fragment of Cubitus interruptus and the Patched-Hedgehog complex. Nearly 50 free parameters, such as binding constants, protein and mRNA half-lives, and cooperativity coefficients, were predicted by the simulation. In order for the simulation to produce the appropriate biological patterns of expression, two factors that bias engrailed expression and Wingless responsiveness needed to be incorporated. The experimental data for autoactivation of Wingless and repression of engrailed by the repressor fragment of Cubitus interruptus justify the addition of these two factors to the model. The computer-generated pattern of expression was stable to wide variations in any individual parameter, and the pattern could be generated with high frequency, even when initial conditions were varied. As Dearden and Akam point out, modeling may become more important for deciphering complex signaling patterns particularly as genome databases and functional proteomics flood us with data. von Dassow, G., Meir, E., Munro, E.M., and Odell, G.M. (2000) The segment polarity network is a robust developmental module. Nature 406: 188-192. [Online Journal] Dearden, P., and Akam, M. (2000) Segmentation in silico. Nature 406: 131-132. [Online Journal]


Tropical forests play a substantial role in the global carbon (C) cycle and are projected to experience significant changes in climate, highlighting the importance of understanding the factors that control organic matter decomposition in this biome. In the tropics, high temperature and rainfall lead to some of the highest rates of litter decomposition on earth, and given the near-optimal abiotic conditions, litter quality likely exerts disproportionate control over litter decomposition. Yet interactions between litter quality and abiotic variables, most notably precipitation, remain poorly resolved, especially for the wetter end of the tropical forest biome. We assessed the importance of variation in litter chemistry and precipitation in a lowland tropical rain forest in southwest Costa Rica that receives >5000 mm of precipitation per year, using litter from 11 different canopy tree species in conjunction with a throughfall manipulation experiment. In general, despite the exceptionally high rainfall in this forest, simulated throughfall reductions consistently suppressed rates of litter decomposition. Overall, variation between species was greater than that induced by manipulating throughfall and was best explained by initial litter solubility and lignin:P ratios. Collectively, these results support a model of litter decomposition in which mass loss rates are positively correlated with rainfall up to very high rates of mean annual precipitation and highlight the importance of phosphorus availability in controlling microbial processes in many lowland tropical forests.


The ambiguity of Joseph's image is due mainly to readers' different (or even contradictory) evaluations of his actions. This thesis attempts to provide a portrayal of this character by scrutinising his speeches in order to expose the problematic nature of his claims to knowing God's intentions. Judah is forced by Joseph's test to choose slavery for the sake of his father's survival (44.33-34); the ironic reversal of his role as a victimiser to becoming a victim of his rationale to sell Joseph in order to save him (37.26-27) is unmistakable. Unwittingly, Joseph mistakes the rationale for a divine principle to explain his suffering and dreams of domination and subordination for the same purpose of survival (45.5-11). To complicate the matter further, his repeated pronouncements of the God-sent famine (45.25,28,32) portray God as the source of destruction and deliverance, the same role Judah played in his betrayal. His final declaration of divine good overriding human evil (50.20), intended to draw a radical distinction between God's intentions and those of his brothers, would make it harder for him to explain the remarkable similarity between God's actions and those of Judah. However, he is unaware of the anomaly his speeches yield due to his ignorance of Judah's excuse. This double blindness calls into doubt any certainty about the coalescence of perspectives of Joseph and the narrator. It is also Joseph's assertion of domination over Egypt (45.8-9) instead of over his brothers that exposes its link with his subsequent policy of enslavement of a whole nation (47.13-26). However benevolent his measures are, his ambiguous behaviour clearly derives from his belief in his right to subjugate others in order to save them. It is undoubtedly an ironic and tragic ending that the protagonist would repeat the enslavement (which he has suffered, abhorred and condemned as evil) on such a grand scale.


In this thesis, we study the question of achieving cryptographic security on devices that leak information about their internal secret state to an external attacker. This study is motivated by the prevalence of side-channel attacks, where the physical characteristics of a computation (e.g. timing, power-consumption, temperature, radiation, acoustics, etc.) can be measured, and may reveal useful information about the internal state of a device. Since some such leakage is inevitably present in almost any physical implementation, we believe that this problem cannot just be addressed by physical countermeasures alone. Instead, it should already be taken into account when designing the mathematical specification of cryptographic primitives and included in the formal study of their security. In this thesis, we propose a new formal framework for modeling the leakage available to an attacker. This framework, called the continual leakage model, assumes that an attacker can continually learn arbitrary information about the internal secret state of a cryptographic scheme at any point in time, subject only to the constraint that the rate of leakage is bounded. More precisely, our model assumes some abstract notion of time periods. In each such period, the attacker can choose to learn arbitrary functions of the current secret state of the scheme, as long as the number of output bits leaked is not too large. In our solutions, cryptographic schemes will continually update their internal secret state at the end of each time period. This will ensure that leakage observed in different time periods cannot be meaningfully combined to break the security of the cryptosystem. Although these updates modify the secret state of the cryptosystem, the desired functionality of the scheme is preserved, and the users can remain oblivious to these updates. We construct signatures, encryption, and secret sharing/storage schemes in this model.


The Mekong delta is Vietnam's premier rice growing region, forming the livelihood basis for millions of farmers. At the same time, the region is facing various challenges, ranging from extreme weather events, saline water intrusion, and other anthropogenic pressures. This study examines how saline water intrusion and drought have affected rice yield in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD). Applying the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the maximum and minimum values of annual average salinity, we spatially examine the effects of drought and saline water intrusion on rice yields over a 40-year period (1980–2019). Our results highlight that 42% of the natural land area of the VMD has experienced increased drought occurrence during the winter-spring (WS) rice cropping season, while certain inland regions have additionally experienced increased drought occurrence during the summer-autumn (SA) rice cropping season. The Tri Ton Station, which has a significant Sen's slope of −0.025 and a p-value of 0.05, represents an upstream semi-mountainous part of the delta, indicative of a rising severity of reoccurring drought. It should be noted that the yield decreases during the summer-autumn season as the positive SPI_SA increases. Salinity, on the other hand, is associated with SPI_WS during the winter-spring season. Our results highlight the need for improved evidence-based planning and investments in priority adaptation for both sustainable water infrastructure and to improve system resilience.


In this thesis we present work done in an analysis of models of brane induced gravity. These are higher dimensional generalizations of Einstein's General relativity where our universe is considered as a brane in a higher dimensional bulk and where the gravitational dynamics on the brane is enhanced. This provides a modification of gravity on the brane as compared to ordinary general relativity, primarily at very large distances. These models are therefore very interesting for adressing the cosmological constant problem. Even though the basic setup is natural to consider from the perspective of effective field theory and also follow from certain string theoretical considerations, the models have been plagued by inconsistencies in the form of unstable modes. In particular, a ghostlike and tachyonic scalar mode appears already at the linear level in a perturbative treatment. In order to gain a deeper insight into the nature of these consistency problems we have revisited the models, performing a more extensive analysis of the generic models than has previously been done. We have worked entirely in a gauge invariant formalism in order not to be obscured by gauge issues. We have also incorporated an effective thickness of the brane in our analysis and performed an explicit analysis of the effect of contributions from the extrinsic geometry. Although our analysis has been carried out at the linear level in a perturbative treatment we are able to get a deeper understanding of the unstable mode and illuminate some of the difficulties of these models that would likely persist even in a full nonlinear analysis.


Java Software Solutions teaches a foundation of programming techniques to foster well-designed object-oriented software. Heralded for its integration of small and large realistic examples, this worldwide best-selling text emphasizes building solid problem-solving and design skills to write high-quality programs. MyProgrammingLab, Pearson's new online homework and assessment tool, is available with this edition.


Pearl millet is a major cereal crop in northwestern India. The crop is grown in very harsh,
arid, dry climatic areas having high temperature and low and erratic rainfall. It's use as food
is declining but its use as cattle feed, poultry feed and source of starch in the alcohol industry
is increasing. Its fodder is an important source of animal feed particularly in dry months when
alternative sources of feed are not available. In the last decade, pearl millet was also grown
under irrigation in the summer months. Gujarat state has the highest area under summer
pearl millet not only among the northwestern states but also at the all-India level. In this
paper, we have analyzed the productive potential of both kharif (rainy season) and summer
pearl millet particularly in Gujarat state. Kharif pearl millet still contributes to the bulk of the
pearl millet production in western India although its yields are relatively low. To compete with
crops like guar, green gram, cotton, etc, both grain and fodder yields of the kharif crop need
to be increased. With the adoption of improved cultivars and low-cost improved technology,
yields can be increased by 20-30% from the existing levels. Yields of summer pearl millet
are much higher since it is grown under irrigation and its grain quality is also superior. It is
grown as a commercial crop with the bulk of the crop sold domestically, and also exported
to neighboring countries. There is a need to explore opportunities to expand the area under
summer pearl millet particularly in areas where irrigation is available and the fields are vacant
during the summer season.


Hierarchical embeddings, such as HSNE, address critical visual and computational scalability issues of traditional techniques for dimensionality reduction. The improved scalability comes at the cost of the need for increased user interaction for exploration. In this paper, we provide a solution for the interactive visual Focus+Context exploration of such embeddings. We explain how to integrate embedding parts from different levels of detail, corresponding to focus and context groups, in a joint visualization. We devise an according interaction model that relates typical semantic operations on a Focus+Context visualization with the according changes in the level‐of‐detail‐hierarchy of the embedding, including also a mode for comparative Focus+Context exploration and extend HSNE to incorporate the presented interaction model. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, we present a use case based on the visual exploration of multi‐dimensional images.


Summary
Antifungal biopolymers were prepared by incorporating natamycin (NA) and NA + rosemary extract (RE) into wheat gluten (WG) and methyl cellulose (MC) films. Interaction between antimicrobial agents and biopolymers was determined with mid-infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Water vapour permeability and mechanical properties of these films were also measured. Mid-infrared spectroscopy did not indicate any interaction. SEM observations showed that NA crystallises at high concentrations in biopolymers. There were no significant changes in water vapour permeabilities of biopolymers containing active agents at P < 0.05. While NA incorporation did not result in any changes in mechanical properties of WG films a reduction in tensile strength was observed for MC films containing high concentration of NA. In general, active agent incorporation into WG and MC films did not result in any considerable changes in their physical properties that could affect their application.


Spider Woman, the Cosmic Weaver, as healing symbol and image of empowerment, found a prominent place in the linguistic landscape of second-wave feminist discourse. Although not synonymous with feminism, feminist spirituality emerged as a strong current within the movement, a current which continues today. In Gyn/Ecology, a highly influential text of this era, Mary Daly shows the link between language, myth, and oppression and sets women to the task of recognizing ways in which our words and stories betray us. Further, she sets us to design words and stories through the power of Spider Woman imagery and textile metaphors. Using Daly's work as a springboard, the following essay traces the emerging role of Spider Woman in developing a "gynocentric language" and a new linguistic landscape, evidenced in women's writing as it continues into the new millennium.


This article considers the nature and patterns of labor migration in Vietnam since the introduction of market reforms or Doi Moi in 1986. Using data from the 1989 census, the article examines provincial or area characteristics and human capital resources in determining migration. Migration was found to play a role in providing human resources to labor-scarce areas and it has also become a means for people to improve their life chances. Among others, the findings indicate the selective impacts of market reforms on the migration propensities of men and women. Possible explanations for the findings and their policy implications of the results are discussed.


In 2005, the Australian Government conducted a review of copyright legislation and the exception of fair dealing. Following this review, the framework of the existing fair dealing exemptions was retained, with the addition of a new exception of fair dealing for the purpose of parody or satire. Debate on the topic was posited within the traditional framework of commercial producer and consumer. The surge of user-generated digital content, and the novel issues surrounding such content, only emerged in the periphery. This article will examine the potential scope of fair dealing exemptions applied to user-generated digital content. Emphasis is placed on the 'grey zone' of user-generated content: those works that push the boundaries of copyright law into unchartered territory. As parody and satire constitute a novel area in Australian copyright law, less restrained by prior court decisions, the article places emphasis on fair uses within user-generated content for these purposes.


This article will introduce traditional library practice for licensing multimedia content and discuss the way that consumer-licensing and streaming services disrupt that practice. Sections II and III describe the statutory copyright regime designed by Congress to facilitate the socially-valuable work done by libraries and the impact of the move from ownership to licensed content. Collecting multimedia materials has always presented special legal challenges for libraries, particularly as licensed content has replaced the traditional practice of purchasing and circulation based on the first sale doctrine. These issues have grown even more complex as streaming services like Netflix and Amazon and video game downloads through services like Steam have come to dominate the landscape. Section IV will describe the way that consumer-licensed materials, which not only remove the ownership that undergirds library practice, but also the ability to negotiate for library use, imperil the congressionally-designed balance. Section V will present a path forward for libraries to develop robust, cutting-edge collections that reflect a sophisticated understanding of the contractual and copyright issues at play.


The study examined the ethnic identity and other-group orientation of ethnic Chinese in Malaysia. The data were collected from 504 Chinese respondents (252 students, 252 parents) using Phinney's (1992) Multiethnic Identity Measure. The results showed that the parents had a stronger ethnic identity than their children. For both groups, the mean scores for affirmation and belonging were the highest among the four ethnic identity components, and the ethnic identity achievement mean scores were the lowest. The results indicate that the Foochow Chinese respondents had a foreclosed identity, whereby they have made a commitment to their ethnicity without extensive exploration of the meaning of belonging to their ethnic group. Gender and socio-economic background have significant effects on strength of ethnic identity, but Chinese-medium education is not linked to ethnic identity. The findings suggest that the Chinese are moderating their ethnic identity, but their positive other-group orientation is far from the level of cultural adaptation that is required for assimilation.


Contact tracing for COVID-19 is especially challenging because transmission often occurs in the absence of symptoms and because a purported 20% of cases cause 80% of infections, resulting in a small risk of infection for some contacts and a high risk for others. Here, we introduce risk-based quarantine, a system for contact tracing where each cluster (a group of individuals with a common source of exposure) is observed for symptoms when tracing begins, and clusters that do not display them are released from quarantine. We show that, under our assumptions, risk-based quarantine reduces the amount of quarantine time served by more than 30%, while achieving a reduction in transmission similar to standard contact tracing policies where all contacts are quarantined for two weeks. We compare our proposed risk-based quarantine approach against test-driven release policies, which fail to achieve a comparable level of transmission reduction due to the inability of tests to detect exposed people who are not yet infectious but will eventually become so. Additionally, test-based release policies are expensive, limiting their effectiveness in low-resource environments, whereas the costs imposed by risk-based quarantine are primarily in terms of labor and organization.


Introduction
There exists a 'Scottish effect', a residue of excess mortality that remains for Scotland relative to England and Wales after standardising for age, sex and local
area deprivation status. This residue is largest for the most deprived segments of the Scottish population. Most Scottish areas that can be classified as deprived
are located in West Central Scotland and, in particular, the City of Glasgow. Therefore the central aim of this thesis is to establish the existence of a similar
'Glasgow effect' and identify if the relationship between deprivation and all cause mortality is different in Glasgow to what is in other, comparable cities in
the UK.

Methods

A method to compare the deprivation status of several UK cities was devised using the deprivation score first calculated by Carstairs and Morris. The population of mainland UK was broken into deciles according to the Carstairs score of Scottish postcode sectors and English wards. Deprivation profiles for particular cities were drawn according to the percentage of the local population
that lived in each Carstairs decile. Using data from the three censuses since 1981, longitudinal trends in relative deprivation status for each city could be observed.

Analysis of death rates in cities was also undertaken. Two methods were used to compare death rates in cities. Indirect standardisation was used to compare death rates adjusting for the categorical variables of age group, sex and Carstairs decile of postcode sector or ward of residence. Negative binomial models of death counts in small areas using local population as the exposure variable were also created; such models allow the calculation of SMRs with adjustment for continuous variables. Covariates used in these models included
city of residence, age group, sex, Carstairs z-score and also the z-scores for each of the four variables from which the Carstairs score is comprised (lack of car
ownership, low social class, household overcrowding and unemployment).

Results

The deprivation profiles confirmed that all UK cities have a high proportion of deprived residents, although some cities have far higher proportions than others. Some cities appeared to show relative improvement in deprivation status over time whilst others seemed resistant to change. Glasgow was the most deprived
city at all census time points and the Clydeside conurbation was also more deprived than all other conurbations. SMRs calculated by indirect standardisation indicated that many cities have excess mortality compared to the whole of the UK when adjusting for age group
and sex only. Three cities, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester, had SMRs that were significantly higher than all other cities at every census time point.
Adjusting SMRs for Carstairs deprivation decile diminished the magnitude of this excess mortality in most cities. However, adjusting for Carstairs decile did not
diminish the excess mortality in Glasgow sufficiently and there remained a significant, unexplained residue of excess mortality in Glasgow.

SMRs generated by regression models adjusting for continuous variables were able to reduce the size of the excess mortality in most cities, though the model
producing the lowest SMR varied from place to place and from time to time. In Glasgow, a regression model including age group, sex and lack of car ownership
as covariates explained most of the excess mortality at all three time points.

Discussion and Conclusion

The relationship between deprivation (as measured by the Carstairs index) and death rates in Glasgow did appear to be different to other cities, and there seems to be evidence of a Glasgow effect. There are several reasons why this might be the case, including; the Glasgow effect may be apparent rather than real – an artefact of the Carstairs measure of deprivation failing to capture the
complex nature of multiple deprivation; The effect may be the result of migration patterns to and from the city; the effect may be the result of historical levels of deprivation; or the effect may result from different behavioural patterns among Glasgow residents compared to residents of other UK cities.

In conclusion, the results show that continued efforts by public health professionals, politicians and residents have failed to produce a step change in the city's relative health status and Glasgow continues to lag some way behind other cities in the UK. The ability of the Carstairs measure to describe multiple deprivation is called into question. Future research should focus on identifying specific causes of mortality that contribute to the Glasgow effect; on qualitative work to identify if there is a distinct set of social norms in deprived
neighbourhoods of Glasgow that contribute to unhealthy patterns of behaviour; and on creating a deprivation index that can be used on equivalent units of geographical area in both Scotland and England.


One of the most remarkable aspects pertaining to the legal bans and societal debates on the face veil in Europe is that they rely on assumptions which lack any factual basis. To rectify this, Eva Brems researched the experiences of women who wear a face veil in Belgium and brought her research results together with those of colleagues who did the same in four other European countries. Their findings, which are outlined in this volume, move the current discussion on face veil bans forward by providing a much-needed insider perspective. In addition, a number of legal and social science scholars comment on the empirical findings and on the face veil issue more generally.


ONE IMPORTANT QUESTION asked by students of Peer Gynt, but not often satisfactorily answered concerns Ibsen's choice of location for the fourth act. The first three acts, which are comparatively short, take place in the Gudbrandsdal region and the mountains of east central Norway. The fifth and last act begins onboard a ship in the North Sea approaching western Norway and shows Peer Gynt making his way on land, back--apparently without realizing it--toward the region that he had left half a century earlier while heading for America. But the act between the third and the fifth, the longest and arguably the most eventful, deals with Peers very mixed adventures in north Africa from the southwest coast of Morocco through the Sahara desert to the Nile valley of Egypt and finally the Cairo madhouse. Many critics have commented on the apparent lack of dramatic coherence and thematic relevance in the various scenes of the fourth act; others have tried to find a way to connect these events and characters Peer faces in Africa to some of the enigmatic figures he encounters earlier in the drama, particularly in the second act. This need to find coherence and correlation between the various acts is understandable, and Peer himself is in fact the first to try to recognize the mysterious beings he meets in the desert sands of Africa claiming, for example, that Memnon is the Dovre King and the sphinx is the Boyg. This approach is an easy way out, and it does not make the reader much wiser. To get a better understanding of these enigmatic passages, we must turn to the German philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel. The connection has previously been pointed out but has for some reason been overlooked by the community of Ibsen scholars. The first to point to the Hegelian dimension in Ibsen's drama was the German, Josef Collin, who published a book on Ibsen in 1910 in Heidelberg. Collin even suggested that the curious figure, Professor Dr. phil. Begriffenfeldt, director of the insane asylum at Cairo, could be seen as a caricature of Hegel. This idea was taken up and developed further in 1940 by the Swedish scholar, Arne Liden, in his article "Peer Gynt i Egypten" in which he discusses some possible implications of Hegel's philosophy for his reading of Ibsen's drama. He focuses mostly on Hegel's concept of Verrucktheit [madness] as applied to Peer's experiences in the Cairo asylum but also discusses Ibsen's use of the Aesthetik. My own reading of Peer Gynt is, thus, indebted to Liden. In 1967 in a centennial lecture on Peer Gynt, Rolf Fjelde also suggested that Begriffenfeldt is Hegel although without an awareness of the work of Collin and Liden. Hegel's Aesthetik was put together by his students and friends after his death in 1831 on the basis of drafts for his lectures and their notes and then published in 1835. In this impressive work, Hegel discusses numerous artistic traditions and forms that arose throughout history in various parts of the world. The nineteenth-century European interest in Egyptian art and religion was initially aroused by the expedition of the young French general, Napoleon Bonaparte, to Egypt in 1798-99. The nineteenth century in turn witnessed a growing curiosity among European intellectuals about the art and monuments of ancient Egypt, and various expeditions of archeologists and other scholars went to Egypt to investigate the traces and remains of the ancient civilization of the Nile valley. Against this historical background, it was necessary for Hegel to discuss these newly discovered or rediscovered vestiges of the ancient civilization. Why, though, did Ibsen send his central character to Africa and to Egypt? When Ibsen arrived in Italy in 1864, he was, like so many Scandinavian writers and artists before him, greatly impressed by what he saw of the sculptural and architectural remains of Roman antiquity. The profound impact they made must have stimulated his interest in classical art, and we may assume that he turned to contemporary authorities on the history of these impressive works of art. …


S U M M A R Y We perform numerical simulations of in-plane ruptures with spontaneous Mohr-Coulomb yielding in the bulk and analyse properties of the ruptures and yielding zones at different scales. Using a polar coordinate system, we show that the overall shapes and patterns of the simulated yielding zones can be well explained by combining the slip-induced Coulomb stress change and the background stress. Although there is no apparent mechanism for preferring synthetic versus antithetic shearing at a scalemuch smaller than the yielding zone size, this is not the case at larger scales. For shallow angles Ψ between the maximum background compressive stress and the fault, representing thrust faulting, large-scale off-fault synthetic fractures are dominant but there are two conjugate sets of fractures with a typical size comparable to the yielding zone thickness. For smooth rupture propagation with moderate-to-high Ψ values representing large strike-slip faults, most of the off-fault fractures that grow across the entire yielding zone are of the synthetic type. The less preferred antithetic set may become more pronounced for rupture propagation encountering fault heterogeneities. In particular, a strong fault barrier promotes antithetic fractures with a comparable size to those of the synthetic type around the barrier, where very high permanent strain is also observed. A consideration of non-local properties of the stress field in space or time can explain the above differences. Our results provide an alternative way of understanding Riedel shear structures and the potentially preferred synthetic shear fractures suggested in previous studies. The examined dynamic processes may be distinguished from quasi-static patterns by the timing, location and inclination angle of characteristic fracture elements. In agreement with other studies, we propose that backward or orthogonally inclined antithetic shear fractures on strike-slip faults and very high permanent strain could be used as signals that reflect abrupt rupture deceleration. On the other hand, relative lack of off-fault yielding at given locations may indicate abrupt rupture acceleration.


Three point vortices on the unbounded plane have relative equilibria wherein the vortices either form an equilateral triangle or are collinear. While the stability analysis of the equilateral triangle configurations is straightforward, that of the collinear relative equilibria is considerably more involved. The only comprehensive analysis available in the literature, by Tavantzis and Ting [Phys. Fluids 31, 1392 (1988)], is not easy to follow nor is it very physically intuitive. The symmetry between the three vortices is lost in this analysis. A different analysis is given based on explicit formulas for the three eigenvalues determining the stability, including a new formula for the angular velocity of rotation of a collinear relative equilibrium. A graphical representation of the space of vortex circulations is introduced, and the resultants between various polynomials that enter the problem are used. This approach adds considerable transparency to the solution of the stability problem and provides more p...


William Bullein's Dialogue Against the Fever Pestilence (1st ed. 1564) wasreprinted by the Early English Text Society in 1888 and later included in EarlyEnglish Books Online (EEBO). Although much of the scholarly interest in the texthas been in the areas of medical history (e.g. Mitchell 1959) and Early ModernEnglish literature (e.g. Griffiths 2007), it has recently caught the attention ofscholars interested in dialects of Early Modern English (Taavitsainen,Melchers and Pahti (eds.) 1999; Wales 2006; Ruano Garcia 2010). However, thehistory of Bullein's Dialogue as a source of dialect material goes back to thetime of the EETS reprint: it was included in R. O. Heslop's (1896) bibliographicallist of works illustrative of the dialect of Northumberland and Heslop usedit as a source for some of the entries in his Northumberland Words (1892–4).Since Heslop's glossary has, in its turn been widely cited as an authoritativesource for information on traditional Northumbrian dialects, the influence ofBullein's Dialogue has been considerable. In this paper, I discuss Bullein's use ofNorthumbrian dialect within the framework of indexicality and enregisterment(Agha 2003). I argue that Bullein, who had had contact with speakers ofNorthumbrian dialect whilst practising as a physician in Tynemouth, chose toportray the character of Mendicus by referencing features that already indexedNorthern stereotypes due to their association with the Border Ballads. In doingthis, Bullein both drew on and contributed to the enregisterment of Northern,and, more specifically, Northumbrian dialect as 'outlandish'.


Mobile App based market is rapidly becoming popular. As such, it is an opportunity to bring hassle-free transactions to people's mobile phones. But the multi-billion dollar App market pays a great amount of money in transaction costs and banking services. This paper provides a solution by integrating BlockChain technology with Mobile-App based economy. We first describe the various concepts involved in BlockChain and App technology. Then we deliberate on how the two can be brought together without a glitch in either of the systems. This model is named as the SKY Model, each letter in the word SKY respectively standing for the initials of the authors. We also discuss the various merits of a BlockChain amalgamated with Mobile App based economy. We then go on to show how a decentralised economic system can be brought about on Mobile Apps through The SKY Model of Limited BlockChain.


The incidence of microbial keratitis after Intacs implantation is extremely low and channel infection has been infrequently reported. We present a 23-year-old woman with keratoconus of both eyes who underwent implantation of two intrastromal corneal ring segments (Intacs, KeraVision, Inc., Fremont, CA, USA) in the right eye. After 2.5 months, the patient presented with decreased vision, inflammation, and stromal infiltration at the lower channel site of Intacs. Culture was positive for Escherichia coli. The patient was treated with removing of lower segment of Intacs, and subconjunctival and topical antibiotics. The keratitis resolved, leaving opacity and thinning and mild neovascularization in the lower channel site. Our case report illustrates the risk of microbial keratitis even months after Intacs implantation. It shows need for long-term postoperative attention by both patient and physician.


In previous work, we have shown that tadpoles of invasive cane toads (Bufo marinus) strongly avoid scent cues from crushed conspecific tadpoles. Thus, identifying the identity of the chemical involved may provide novel approaches to toad control, by manipulating the behaviour of toad tadpoles. A first step in the search for that chemical is to see whether toad tadpoles are similarly repelled by chemical cues from crushed tadpoles of other species. Our experimental trials with four native Australian frogs (three hylids, one myobatrachid) show that toads do not respond to chemical cues from these taxa. Hence, the specific chemicals that induce avoidance cannot be generic ones (e.g. body fluids, tissue fragments) but instead, must reflect some underlying chemical divergence in body composition between the tadpoles of cane toads versus the other anurans that we have tested.


We consider a sequence of quantized Lorentzian pulses of noninteracting electrons impinging on a quantum point contact and study the waiting time distribution (WTD), for any transmission and any number of pulses. As the degree of overlap between the electronic wave functions is tuned, the WTD reveals how the correlations between particles are modified. In the weak overlap regime, the WTD is made of several equidistant peaks, separated by the same period as the incoming pulses, contained in an almost exponentially decaying envelope. In the other limit, the WTD of a single quantum channel subjected to a constant voltage is recovered. In both cases, the WTD stresses the difference between the fluctuations induced by the scatterer and the ones encoded in the incoming quantum state. A clear crossover between these two situations is studied with numerical and analytical calculations based on scattering theory.


The 2015 EU R&D Scoreboard reports economic and financial information on the world's top 2500 companies that invested €607.2 billion in R&D over the last fiscal year (2014). It comprises 608 companies based in the EU, 829 companies based in the US, 360 in Japan and 703 from the rest of the world. Key findings from the 2015 Scoreboard: - In 2014, the top world 2500 R&D Scoreboard companies raised their R&D by 6.8%, while revenues continued to grow at a significant lower pace (2.2%). - Companies based in the EU showed an annual R&D investment growth rate of 3.3%, slightly improving the previous year's performance (2.6%). Companies based in the US showed a stronger R&D investment growth rate (8.1%). The Chinese companies, 3rd largest country by number of companies in this edition, increased R&D investments by 23.6%. - Companies in the ICT, Pharmaceuticals and Automobiles sectors continue to dominate the top 10 places in the world ranking. As in the previous edition, the top R&D investors are Volkswagen, Samsung, Microsoft, Intel and Novartis. The most significant changes at the top of the ranking in 2014 are the climb of Google to 6th place (from 9th), and of Pfizer to the 10th place (from 15th). Huawei (15th) and Apple (18th) accelerated in 2014 their race to the top, jumping 11 and 16 positions respectively. - An analysis of the patent portfolios of the world's top R&D investors shows that EU and US companies have the highest degrees of internationalisation of their inventive activities: 26% and 22% of their patent families are developed by inventors located outside the region. While the US appear to be the preferred location for health related inventions (pharma and biotech in particular), Europe is the most attractive place for the inventive activities of automobile companies.


We analyse the determinants of social assistance receipt among young adults in three Nordic countries, focusing on social-background and life-course events during early adulthood. We ask whether they are related differently to short-term and long-term receipt. Short-term poverty could be more individualized than long-term poverty which can be expected to be more strongly related to social background. We applied generalized ordinal logit modelling to longitudinal register-based data. Both social-background and life-course factors were found to be important, but our results did not confirm the hypothesis of social background predicting mostly long-term receipt and life-course factors predicting mostly short-term receipt. Leaving the parental home early and parental social assistance receipt were important determinants of social assistance receipt, and both factors predicted longer duration of receipt as well. We found some differences between the countries, which may be related to differences in youth unemployment and social welfare systems.


Police Reform: Building Integrity is about the recurring problem of police corruption and contemporary efforts to find effective strategies to maximise ethical conduct. It draws on international experience, using Australia as a major source. In the last fifteen years Australian policing has been of significant interest because of the combination of advanced democratic processes, exposes of serious police corruption, and extensive - sometimes radical - experimentation with prevention strategies. The book begins with an overview of developments and issues in police integrity control globally, before giving close attention to special problem areas and to innovations in establishing and maintaining best practice. These innovations include modern methods of testing police applicants, assessing organisational integrity, mediating complaints, using stings to reveal secretive corruption, creating integrity profiles of officers and units, and developing effective independent oversight and investigation of complaints. The book is for all stakeholders in police conduct: police managers, professional standards branch personnel, general duties officers, recruits, civilian oversight agencies, civil libertarians, politicians, police studies scholars and students, and the general public. The book brings together the latest research on types of misconduct in a form that is readily accessible to a wide range of readers; with short, clearly focused, chapters on specialist topics. It balances diagnostic and theoretical explanations of police behaviour with a series of expositions of specific practical strategies for creating ethical departments. [Book Synopsis]


Different techniques to automatically generate unit tests for object oriented classes have been proposed, but how to integrate these tools into the daily activities of software development is a little investigated question. In this paper, we report on our experience in supporting industrial partners in introducing the EVOSUITE automated JUnit test generation tool in their software development processes. The first step consisted of providing a plugin to the Apache Maven build infrastructure. The move from a research-oriented point-and-click tool to an automated step of the build process has implications on how developers interact with the tool and generated tests, and therefore, we produced a plugin for the popular IntelliJ Integrated Development Environment (IDE). As build automation is a core component of Continuous Integration (CI), we provide a further plugin to the Jenkins CI system, which allows developers to monitor the results of EVOSUITE and integrate generated tests in their source tree. In this paper, we discuss the resulting architecture of the plugins, and the challenges arising when building such plugins. Although the plugins described are targeted for the EVOSUITE tool, they can be adapted and their architecture can be reused for other test generation tools as well.


Artist Statement Scenocosme use interactive art, music, and architecture to create evolutionary and interactive artwork. With multiple forms of expression, they invite the spectator to participate in the center of collective musical or choreographic performances. SphèrAléas is made of a half-spherical structure and an evolutionary device for producing visual and sonorous shapes. This space is ideal for collective performances; it accommodates in its center a constellation of visible shapes, spinning sound loops, and luminous vibratory elements. The dome-bubble hosts universes and objects endowed with life. They are articulated as subtle microcosms in conversation. Visitors become actively engaged in this matrix space and create sonorous and visual interstices that awaken their senses and open unexpected territories to their imaginations. Visitors (creators) are offered ephemeral face-to-face opportunities for dialogue, and they give themselves up to this sensitive complicity, cradled by flows of random emotions. The show is ever changing. SphèrAléas allows visitors to create moments of interchange and immerses them in spaces that feel like daydreams. Aléas, an original virtual music software/instrument, arose from a reflection on how to materialise or draw sound with 3D images. It's a synthesis software that manipulates sounds and abstract images to create a dialogue with reality. It creates an interactive, sensitive relationship with the audience, and it allows visitors to create, modify, observe, and manipulate moving 3D shapes. By manipulating the sensors, visitors can continuously change the whole structure by playing with the different variables: order, side-by-side positioning, overlapping, speed, rhythm, harmonic pitch, etc. Thus, as they position new materials, visitors create sustained tunes made of rhythmic relationships animated by subtle temporal intervals. Each visitor appropriates the system to create particular processes of repetitive polyphony, where parts overlap then disappear into hypnotic swirls. The audience determines the future of the work by experimenting with infinite orchestrations.


[From the Introduction]. Contemporary American federalism can be described as an era of coercive or regulatory federalism in which the predominant political, fiscal, statutory, regulatory, and judicial trends have entailed impositions of federal dictates on state and local governments. This era began in the late 1960s and succeeded a 35-year era commonly referred to as cooperative federalism. The era of coercive federalism has been marked by a shift of federal policymaking from the interests of places (i.e., state and local governments) to the interests of persons (i.e., voters and interest groups). That is, elected federal officials, as well as the federal courts, have been highly responsive to electoral coalitions, interest groups, and campaign contributors and much less responsive to elected state and local government officials. State and local officials have no privileged voice in Congress or the White House as elected representatives of the people; instead, they must behave like interest groups and compete with all other interest groups in the federal policymaking arena where, quite frequently, they are unable to prevail against powerful interest groups that can bring crucial financial, ideological, and voter rewards and punishments to bear on the electoral fortunes of federal officials. Consequently, as U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) commented to this author in 1988, "There is no political capital [for members of Congress] in intergovernmental relations," that is, in catering to the concerns of governors, state legislators, county commissioners, mayors, and the like.


Abstract. Computer models are necessary for understanding and predicting marine ice sheet behaviour. However, there is uncertainty over implementation of physical processes at the ice base, both for grounded and floating glacial ice. Here we implement several sliding relations in a marine ice sheet flow-line model accounting for all stress components and demonstrate that model resolution requirements are strongly dependent on both the choice of basal sliding relation and the spatial distribution of ice shelf basal melting. Sliding relations that reduce the magnitude of the step change in basal drag from grounded ice to floating ice (where basal drag is set to zero) show reduced dependence on resolution compared to a commonly used relation, in which basal drag is purely a power law function of basal ice velocity. Sliding relations in which basal drag goes smoothly to zero as the grounding line is approached from inland (due to a physically motivated incorporation of effective pressure at the bed) provide further reduction in resolution dependence. A similar issue is found with the imposition of basal melt under the floating part of the ice shelf: melt parameterisations that reduce the abruptness of change in basal melting from grounded ice (where basal melt is set to zero) to floating ice provide improved convergence with resolution compared to parameterisations in which high melt occurs adjacent to the grounding line. Thus physical processes, such as sub-glacial outflow (which could cause high melt near the grounding line), impact on capability to simulate marine ice sheets. If there exists an abrupt change across the grounding line in either basal drag or basal melting, then high resolution will be required to solve the problem. However, the plausible combination of a physical dependency of basal drag on effective pressure, and the possibility of low ice shelf basal melt rates next to the grounding line, may mean that some marine ice sheet systems can be reliably simulated at a coarser resolution than currently thought necessary.


In this second edition of The Repeating Island, Antonio Benitez-Rojo, a master of the historical novel, short story, and critical essay, continues to confront the legacy and myths of colonialism. This co-winner of the 1993 MLA Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize has been expanded to include three entirely new chapters that add a Lacanian perspective and a view of the carnivalesque to an already brilliant interpretive study of Caribbean culture. As he did in the first edition, Benitez-Rojo redefines the Caribbean by drawing on history, economics, sociology, cultural anthropology, psychoanalysis, literary theory, and nonlinear mathematics. His point of departure is chaos theory, which holds that order and disorder are not the antithesis of each other in nature but function as mutually generative phenomena. Benitez-Rojo argues that within the apparent disorder of the Caribbean-the area's discontinuous landmasses, its different colonial histories, ethnic groups, languages, traditions, and politics-there emerges an "island" of paradoxes that repeats itself and gives shape to an unexpected and complex sociocultural archipelago. Benitez-Rojo illustrates this unique form of identity with powerful readings of texts by Las Casas, Guillen, Carpentier, Garcia Marquez, Walcott, Harris, Buitrago, and Rodriguez Julia.


Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the world. Projections indicate that by 2330 million people will die from cardiovascular disease. The impact of heart disease and its treatment with invasive procedures coupled with physiological, psychological changes, changes in lifestyle, recommended therapy among others, can affect sexuality.


This article examines undocumented people's everyday lived experience in
the United States where their legal status is criminalized. It asks how they live with constant
threat and surveillance. It highlights their strategies of invisibility as well as their
generous contributions to their communities. It argues that these acts of "community
caretaking" are acts of "hospitality" that demonstrate their "good citizenship." Every
time undocumented people conduct "know your rights" workshops, they model citizenship
in action. The article also explores the other side of the daily equation to stay
safe and spotlights undocumented people's encounters with law enforcement agents.
Agents do not act in lockstep, but rather make decisions in split seconds that can
change undocumented people's lives forever. Drawing from ethnographic field research
in migrant communities inside the "100-mile border zone" as well as deep in the US
interior, the article argues that "border policing" happens far from the border.


Structures of two–pore domain potassium channels reveal key differences from the more widely found tetrameric channels. More than 60 years ago, Hodgkin and Huxley showed that neurons maintain their negative resting membrane potential by leaking potassium ions (1). In most cells, the Na+- and K+-dependent adenosine triphosphatase (Na+, K+-ATPase) builds up high concentrations of extracellular sodium and intracellular potassium, and because the membrane is more permeable to potassium, there is a net flow of positive ions out of the cell. The channels responsible for the permeability were much later identified to be the twoépore domain potassium (K2P) channels (2). On pages 432 and 436 of this issue, Miller and Long (3) and Brohawn et al. (4) report the structures of the human K2P channels TWIK-1 and TRAAK.


Power and Performance: Software Analysis and Optimization is a guide to solving performance problems in modern Linux systems. Power-efficient chips are no help if the software those chips run on is inefficient. Starting with the necessary architectural background as a foundation, the book demonstrates the proper usage of performance analysis tools in order to pinpoint the cause of performance problems, and includes best practices for handling common performance issues those tools identify. Provides expert perspective from a key member of Intels optimization team on how processors and memory systems influence performance Presents ideas to improve architectures running mobile, desktop, or enterprise platforms Demonstrates best practices for designing experiments and benchmarking throughout the software lifecycle Explains the importance of profiling and measurement to determine the source of performance issues


Antibiotics will soon no longer be able to cure common illnesses such as strep throat, sinusitis and middle ear infections as they have done for the last 60 years. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are increasing at a much faster rate than new antibiotics to treat them are being developed. The prescription of antibiotics for viral illnesses is a key cause of increasing bacterial resistance. Despite this fact, many children continue to receive antibiotics unnecessarily for the treatment of viral upper respiratory tract infections. Why do American physicians continue to prescribe inappropriately given the high social stakes of this action? The answer appears to lie in the fundamentally social nature of medical practice: physicians do not prescribe as the result of a clinical algorithm but prescribe in the context of a conversation with a parent and a child. Thus, physicians have a classic social dilemma which pits individual parents and children against a greater social good. This book examines parent-physician conversations in detail, showing how parents put pressure on doctors in largely covert ways, for instance in specific communication practices for explaining why they have brought their child to the doctor or answering a history-taking question. This book also shows how physicians yield to this seemingly subtle pressure evidencing that apparently small differences in wording have important consequences for diagnosis and treatment recommendations. Following parents use of these interactional practices, physicians are more likely to make concessions, alter their diagnosis or alter their treatment recommendation. This book also shows how small changes in the way physicians present their findings and recommendations can decrease parent pressure for antibiotics. This book carefully documents the important and observable link between micro social interaction and macro public health domains.


Factors affecting the establishment of the gut microbiota in animals living in marine environments remain largely unknown. In terrestrial animals, however, it is well established that the juvenile environment has a major impact on the gut microbiota later in life. Atlantic salmon Salmo salar is an anadromous fish important in aquaculture with a juvenile freshwater stage and an adult seawater stage. For wild salmon, there are major dietary changes with respect to availability of long-chain polyunsaturated n-3 fatty acids (LC-n-3 PUFA) with lower abundance in freshwater systems. The aim of our work was therefore to determine the effect of a juvenile freshwater diet with high LC-n-3 PUFA, as compared to a diet low in LC-n-3 PUFA (designed to increase the endogenous LC-n-3 PUFA production), on the transition to a seawater gut microbiota for Atlantic salmon. We found a juvenile freshwater microbiota high in Firmicutes for fish raised with low LC-n-3 PUFA, while the microbiota for fish given high LC-n-3 PUFA feed was high in Proteobacteria. One hundred days after transfer to a common sea cage, fish that were given low LC-n-3 PUFA diets in freshwater showed significantly higher (p = 0.02, Kruskal-Wallis) Mycoplasma content (90 ± 7%; mean ± SD) compared to fish raised on a high LC-n-3 PUFA diet in freshwater (25 ± 31% Mycoplasma). Shotgun metagenome sequencing from fish raised with a low LC-n-3 PUFA diet identified a salmon-associated Mycoplasma in sea, being distinct from currently known Mycoplasma. The genome sequence information indicated a mutualistic lifestyle of this bacterium. Mycoplasma has also previously been identified as dominant (>70%) in sea-living adult Atlantic salmon. Taken together, our results suggest that the juvenile freshwater diet influences the establishment of the gut microbiota in marine Atlantic salmon.


The Half Double mission: Project Half Double has a clear mission. We want to succeed in finding a project methodology that can increase the success rate of our projects while increasing the development speed of new products and services. We are convinced that by doing so we can strengthen Denmark's competitiveness and play an important role in the battle for jobs and future welfare.  The overall goal is to deliver "Projects in half the time with double the impact" where projects in half the time should be understood as half the time to impact (benefit realization, effect is achieved) and not as half the time for project execution. The Half Double project journey: It all began in May 2013 when we asked ourselves: How do we create a new and radical project paradigm that can create successful projects? Today the movement includes hundreds of passionate project people, and it grows larger by the day.  The formal part of Project Half Double was initiated in June 2015. It is a two-phase project: phase 1 took place from June 2015 to June 2016 with seven pilot projects, and phase 2 is in progress from July 2016 to July 2018 with 10 pilot projects. The Half Double consortium: Implement Consulting Group is the project leader establishing and managing the collaboration with the pilot project companies in terms of methodology. Aarhus University and the Technical University of Denmark will evaluate the impact of the pilot projects and legitimize the methodology in academia. The Danish Industry Foundation, an independent philanthropic foundation, is contributing to the project financially with DKK 13.8 million. About this report: This report focuses on phase 2 pilot projects documenting their development and further consolidates results from the phase 1 pilot projects. This is the third report about Project Half Double (Svejvig et al. 2016, Svejvig et al. 2017). This report's target group inludes practitioners in Danish industry and society in general.  The editorial team from Aarhus University prepared the report from October 2017 to December 2017, which means that data about pilot projects from December 2017 is not included.


Scholars have long debated the role for courts with respect to governmental action that responds to crisis. Most of the crises analyzed, however, are exogenous to the political process; the courts' role in response to politically endogenous crises has received less attention. We evaluate the role of the judiciary in a subset of those endogenous crises: the judicial treatment of governmental efforts to resolve the crisis facing underfunded public pensions. Assessing institutional competence schematically with reference to an institution's democratic accountability and fact-finding ability, we argue that, where institutions function properly, judicial intervention in politically endogenous economic crises should be close to nonexistent. But when they must occur — and, consistent with doctrines of justiciability, some adjudication of governmental action in the fiscal context will be inevitable — we argue that such intervention should respect the judiciary's comparative institutional incompetence by treading lightly, constitutionally speaking: where the relevant law allows discretion, and where a non-constitutional determination is possible, courts addressing the state's fiscal policy-making apparatus should avoid constitutional pronouncements entirely. After developing a preliminary framework for assessing this decision rule, we apply it to a hard case (where the statute and contract is silent as to whether executory pension contracts are subject to constitutional protection against modification) and an easy case (where there is a reservation of rights for that very modification). Unfortunately, courts have erred in both the hard and easy cases; our framework explains why the law is not only consistent with our decision rule, but why comparative institutional competence compels the result. In both the easy and the hard cases, the point is not to promote or demote the interests of a single class or faction active within the fiscal policy-making process — whether bondholders, public unions, taxpayers, or the government — but to locate that policy-making process within the most democratically responsive and empirically competent institutions. With this framework, we evaluate the recent effort of the San Jose Superior Court to address these issues. We conclude that the court got the easy case exactly wrong.


Observations of vertical gradients in phytoplankton community structure were made through the water column of the seasonally stratified Celtic Sea, including within the thermocline. A deep chlorophyll maximum (DCM) was located within the thermocline at all stations, coupled to the nitracline. Vertical gradients in phytoplankton community composition were routinely observed within the thermocline. The cell abundance maxima for Synechococcus occurred in the upper part of the DCM coincident with a picoeukaryote abundance minima. Picoeukaryote abundance typically increased at or just above the peak of the DCM. Diatoms were observed occasionally at the DCM peak. Pigment compositions and phytoplankton absorption spectra indicated that the different phytoplankton communities were chromatically well adapted to the spectral composition of irradiance at the depths where they occurred in the water column. Profiles of vertical eddy diffusivity revealed that timescales formixing between the phytoplankton layers within the thermocline were in excess of typical phytoplankton growth rates. The observed vertical gradients in community structure could therefore result from selection and niche partitioning of phytoplankton types on the light and nutrient gradient within the thermocline. The data further indicate that the pigments, light absorption characteristics, and cell size contribute to the phytoplankton selection process.


BACKGROUND
 Several prognostic scores have been proposed to predict functional outcomes after an acute ischemic stroke (AIS). Most of these scores are based on structured information and have been used to develop prediction models via the logistic regression method. With the increased use of electronic health records and the progress in computational power, data-driven predictive modeling by using machine learning techniques is gaining popularity in clinical decision-making.

 OBJECTIVE
 We aimed to investigate whether machine learning models created by using unstructured text could improve the prediction of functional outcomes at an early stage after AIS.

 METHODS
 We identified all consecutive patients who were hospitalized for the first time for AIS from October 2007 to December 2019 by using a hospital stroke registry. The study population was randomly split into a training (n=2885) and test set (n=962). Free text in histories of present illness and computed tomography reports was transformed into input variables via natural language processing. Models were trained by using the extreme gradient boosting technique to predict a poor functional outcome at 90 days poststroke. Model performance on the test set was evaluated by using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC).

 RESULTS
 The AUCs of text-only models ranged from 0.768 to 0.807 and were comparable to that of the model using National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores (0.811). Models using both patient age and text achieved AUCs of 0.823 and 0.825, which were similar to those of the model containing age and NIHSS scores (0.841); the model containing preadmission comorbidities, level of consciousness, age, and neurological deficit (PLAN) scores (0.837); and the model containing Acute Stroke Registry and Analysis of Lausanne (ASTRAL) scores (0.840). Adding variables from clinical text improved the predictive performance of the model containing age and NIHSS scores, the model containing PLAN scores, and the model containing ASTRAL scores (the AUC increased from 0.841 to 0.861, from 0.837 to 0.856, and from 0.840 to 0.860, respectively).

 CONCLUSIONS
 Unstructured clinical text can be used to improve the performance of existing models for predicting poststroke functional outcomes. However, considering the different terminologies that are used across health systems, each individual health system may consider using the proposed methods to develop and validate its own models.


Most projections envision continued rapid growth in the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the People's Republic of China (PRC), and India (collectively, ACI) over the next two decades. By 2030, they could quadruple their output, virtually eliminate extreme poverty, and dramatically transform the lives of their more than 3 billion citizens. The impact will be felt across the world. This study—a background paper to an Asian Development Bank report—used a Computable General Equilibrium model to examine the likely effects of the region's growth on trade, resources and the environment, as well as the implications of the many risks the region's growth path faces from its internal and external environment.


Chronic pelvic pain is defined as pain in the pelvis lasting for more than six months (some say three). The pain may be experienced in any of the structures of the pelvis, including the gynaecological organs; the lower urinary and gastrointestinal tract; and the vascular, neural and musculoskeletal systems. The pain can be continual, cyclical, provoked or unprovoked, and is frequently multifocal. A woman who complains of painful sex, for example, may also report vulvovaginal pain and dyspareunia; bladder frequency, urgency and suprapubic pain, as well as irritable bowel symptoms. Although an initiating event is sometimes described, such as an episode of severe "thrush" or cystitis, or following pelvic surgery or childbirth, this initial insult may be long forgotten and no longer relevant. Vulvodynia, endometriosis, bladder pain syndrome and irritable bowel syndrome are common causes of chronic pelvic pain in women but are often misdiagnosed and poorly managed.


Abstract Despite the fact that many modern preferential trade agreements include commitments to foreign investors in imperfectly competitive services sectors, the literature has not established conditions under which these agreements are beneficial or harmful. The authors fill that void by developing a model with monopolistic competition and foreign direct investment in services with Dixit-Stiglitz endogenous productivity effects from additional varieties. They specify a numerical model, with probability distributions of all parameters. The model is executed 30,000 times, and results are reported as probability of an outcome, based on the sample distribution. In order to ground the results in reality, the authors apply the model to Kenya. They show that preferential commitments in services could be immizerising. Losses are more likely the greater the share of initial rent capture on the services barriers in the home country and the more technologically advanced are the excluded regions relative to the partner region.


We study the problem of learning general rules from concrete facts extracted from natural data sources such as the newspaper stories and medical histories. Natural data sources present two challenges to automated learning, namely, radical incompleteness and systematic bias. In this paper, we propose an approach that combines simultaneous learning of multiple predictive rules with differential scoring of evidence which adapts to a presumed model of data generation. Learning multiple predicates simultaneously mitigates the problem of radical incompleteness, while the differential scoring would help reduce the effects of systematic bias. We evaluate our approach empirically on both textual and non-textual sources. We further present a theoretical analysis that elucidates our approach and explains the empirical results.