Abstract Nonradiating sources of energy have traditionally been studied in quantum mechanics and astrophysics but have received very little attention in the photonics community. This situation has changed recently due to a number of pioneering theoretical studies and remarkable experimental demonstrations of the exotic states of light in dielectric resonant photonic structures and metasurfaces, with the possibility to localize efficiently the electromagnetic fields of high intensities within small volumes of matter. These recent advances underpin novel concepts in nanophotonics and provide a promising pathway to overcome the problem of losses usually associated with metals and plasmonic materials for the efficient control of light-matter interaction at the nanoscale. This review paper provides a general background and several snapshots of the recent results in this young yet prominent research field, focusing on two types of nonradiating states of light that both have been recently at the center of many studies in all-dielectric resonant meta-optics and metasurfaces: optical anapoles and photonic bound states in the continuum. We discuss a brief history of these states in optics, as well as their underlying physics and manifestations, and also emphasize their differences and similarities. We also review some applications of such novel photonic states in both linear and nonlinear optics for the nanoscale field enhancement, a design of novel dielectric structures with high-Q resonances, nonlinear wave mixing, and enhanced harmonic generation, as well as advanced concepts for lasing and optical neural networks.


Background: Diabetes mellitus has an effect on the peripheral nerves. Such effect may start as asymptomatic peripheral neuropathy. Objectives: To assess the role of electrodiagnostic study in the diagnosis of patients with different types of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) and evaluate the usefulness of it in early detecting diabetic peripheral neuropathy in asymptomatic patients and to correlate the findings of nerve conduction study in patients with asymptomatic diabetic peripheral neuropathy with various risk factors. Subjects and Methods: subjects were allocated into three groups: 50 normal (non-diabetics apparently healthy subjects without peripheral neuropathy), 50 asymptomatic DPN patients and 50 symptomatic DPN patients. Clinical questionnaire, blood sugar, neurological examination and nerve conduction studies were performed for each subject. Results: This study showed that the prevalence of positive nerve conduction studies was 58% in asymptomatic diabetic patients, 100% for symptomatic diabetic patients and negative for control. The positive nerve conduction study findings in asymptomatic diabetic patients involved sensory more than motor fibers and the lower limbs nerves were affected more than that of the upper limbs. The most commonly involved nerve is the sural nerve sensory fiber which was more prevalent in old age patients (87.5%), patients with longer duration of diabetes (81.8%), over weight (71.4%), patient taking only oral antihyperglycemic drugs (76.9%) and in diabetic patients with poor glycemic control (84.2%) (86.3%) in fasting blood glucose (FBG) and HbA1c respectively. Using the logistic regression, only oral antihyperglycemic drugs (without insulin) and poor control HbA1c were significant predictors of abnormal nerve conduction. Conclusion: Even in asymptomatic patients, nerve conduction studies show diffuse changes, in a predictable pattern. Electrophysiological finding correlate with age, duration of disease, glycosylated hemoglobin levels, fasting blood glucose, type of the treatment if only oral antidiabetic and body mass index.


Single nucleotide polymorphisms are valuable tools for ecological and evolutionary studies. In non-model species, the use of SNPs has been limited by the number of markers available. However, new technologies and decreasing technology costs have facilitated the discovery of a constantly increasing number of SNPs. With hundreds or thousands of SNPs potentially available, there is interest in comparing and developing methods for evaluating SNPs to create panels of high-throughput assays that are customized for performance, research questions, and resources. Here we use five different methods to rank 43 new SNPs and 71 previously published loci for sockeye salmon: FST, informativeness (In), average contribution to principal components (LC), and the locus-ranking programs BELS and WHICHLOCI. We then tested the performance of these different ranking methods by creating 48and 96-SNP panels of the top-ranked loci for each method and used empirical and simulated data to obtain the probability of assigning individuals to the correct population using each panel. All 96-SNP panels performed similarly and better than the 48-SNP panels except for the 96-SNP BELS panel. Among the 48-SNP panels, panels created from FST, In, and LC ranks performed better than panels formed using the top-ranked loci from the programs BELS and WHICHLOCI. The application of ranking methods to optimize panel performance will become more important as more high-throughput assays become available.


Soil organic carbon (SOC) accumulation occurs mostly in the top 5 cm of soil with continuous no-till (NT) while SOC losses often occur at deeper depths. We hypothesize that one-time tillage conducted once in >10 yr to mix the high SOC surface layer with deeper soil will not result in large SOC losses following tillage with a net positive gain in SOC eventually. Two experiments in long-term NT fields were installed under rainfed corn (Zea mays L.) or sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench.] rotated with soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] in eastern Nebraska. Tillage treatments were applied in the spring or fall and included: NT, disk, chisel with 10-cm wide twisted shanks, moldboard plow (MP), and mini-moldboard plow (miniMP). A portable infrared gas analyzer was used to monitor CO 2 flux immediately following tillage. Effect of tillage on profile distribution of total and labile (particulate and oxidizable) SOC was determined. At 24 to 32 mo following tillage, SOC mass was determined for depths of 0 to 5, 5 to 20, and 20 to 30 cm. Some tillage operations effectively redistributed total and labile SOC with little increase in CO 2 flux compared with NT. Total and labile SOC concentrations were reduced by 24 to 88% in the 0- to 2.5-cm depth and increased by 13 to 381% for the 5- to 10-cm depth for the various tillage operations. Moldboard plowing caused the greatest redistribution of SOC. On an equivalent soil mass basis, tillage did not cause significant losses of total or labile SOC between tillage and planting of the next crop or by 24 to 32 mo after tillage. Stratification of SOC in long-term NT soil could be reduced most effectively by means of one-time MP tillage without increased loss of labile SOC.


"[Necessity is the mother of our invention." Plato, The Republic, Book II Trans. Benjamin Jowett I. INTRODUCTION From time to time practical necessity gives expression to a new legal development that is implicit in established forms of rights or remedies. On November 8, 2004, the United States Supreme Court denied a petition for certiorari with respect to East Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. v. Sage.1 By denying the petition, the United States Supreme Court refused to review the application of an immediate entry remedy in federal takings by private entities in the United States district courts (USDC). This remedy, which authorizes a private condemnor to enter and possess or use condemned property prior to the time that compensation for the property is finally decided and paid, has evolved unevenly during the last fifty years, and the first documented request for immediate entry by a private party holding delegated federal eminent domain authority was denied. That denial occurred in 1957 after a USDC was asked to consider a novel application of its general equity jurisdiction in aid of delegated federal eminent domain authority. Entry was sought by a natural gas company2 holding a certificate of public convenience and necessity (Certificate) issued by the Federal Power Commission (FPC)3 under section 7(c) of the Natural Gas Act (NGA).4 The plaintiff in the case,5 relied on United States v. Fish Building,6 arguing that a USDC exercising its inherent equity jurisdiction could, prior to determining compensation for the easement to be taken, grant the holder of an FPC Certificate immediate entry of an affected property.7 The court found decisions to be equivocal, reading United States v. a Parcel of Land8 to reach the opposite result from Fisk Building. Nevertheless, the court stated that it could exercise "its inherent equity power under suitable circumstances to order an immediate taking"9 because " there [was] an equity in favor of the public which call[ed] for the exercise of that power . . . determined by whether or not the public would be prejudiced or injured if the exercise of that power were withheld."10 The USDC, however, found little prejudice to the natural gas company and, to avoid harm to the landowner, decided that the immediate entry petition should be denied. The remedy was not sought again and obtained in the USDC until 1981.12 Subsequently it evolved rapidly13 and by 2004, the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found it necessary to affirm an immediate entry remedy framed in terms of a mandatory preliminary injunction.14 In doing so the Fourth Circuit attempted to distinguish its decision from a Seventh Circuit decision which defendant landowners argued was inconsistent with immediate entry.15 The purposes of this article are to examine the evolution of the federal immediate entry remedy for private entities, identify its sources, constituent elements and purposes, assess the equity theory affirmed by Sage, assess applicability of the remedy to changes in the NGA and FPA16 rendered by the enactment of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005),17 and suggest some points of practice in the area of takings and entry. The authors believe that the USDCs' exercise of authority granted under the NGA, the FPA, and Rule 71 A of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) has evolved into several approaches to the remedy of immediate entry for federally regulated but privately owned projects of which Sage is the best articulated. We hope that this article will help to inform future application of the remedy, by continuing to assure protection of property owners' rights in the face of public interest findings by Congress and the FERC that are implemented in part via the exercise of federal eminent domain authority. In this article, we have chosen to use the terms "immediate entry" broadly to mean any court order or decision, issued in connection with a taking,18 to enter and use property for purposes specifically authorized by FERC under the NGA or FPA in advance of a final, non-appealable decision on and payment of compensation to an effected property owner. …


Young interprets codification as part of a larger process that included the collapse of the Lower Canadian rebellions, the decline of seigneurialism, expansion of bourgeois democracy in central Canada, professionalization of the bar, and formation of the institutional state. Central to codification was a profound ideological shift in Lower Canadian society that gave priority to exchange and individual property rights. Young examines the evolution of codification from its nationalist origins in the 1820s and 1830s into a Civil Code that was integral to Confederation and became a flagship of bilingualism in Quebec. The formation of the commission, the work of the codifiers, and the reaction of the anglophone minority and the Roman Catholic hierarchy are considered, as is the Code's meticulous blending of a conservative social vision with the principles of freedom of property. The Politics of Codification will be of great interest to students of law, members of the legal professions, and Canadian social and legal historians.


Objective:To investigate whether community engagement (participation in grassroots organizations) contributed to increases in HIV testing in Zimbabwe. Methods:Prospective data on membership of local community organizations (e.g. women's groups and burial societies) and uptake of HIV testing and counselling (HTC) and prevention-of-mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) services were collected from 5260 adults interviewed in two consecutive rounds of a general-population cohort survey in eastern Zimbabwe between 2003 and 2008. The effects of community engagement on uptake of services during the follow-up period were measured using logistic regression to adjust for observed confounding factors. Results:Sixteen percent of men and 47% of women were consistent members of community organizations; 58 and 35% of these people discussed HIV in their meetings and were members of externally sponsored organizations, respectively. Fewer men (10.1%) than women (32.4%) took up HTC during follow-up [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 4.08, 95% confidence interval (CI) 3.43–4.86, P < 0.001]. HTC uptake was higher for members of community organizations than for nonmembers: men, 15.0 versus 9.2% (1.67, 1.15–2.43, P = 0.007); women, 35.6 versus 29.6% (1.26, 1.06–1.49, P = 0.008). Membership of community organizations showed a nonsignificant association with PMTCT uptake amongst recently pregnant women (42.3 versus 34.2%; 1.30, 0.94–1.78, P = 0.1). The most consistent positive associations between community participation and HTC and PMTCT uptake were found in organizations that discussed HIV and when external sponsorship was absent. Conclusion:Grassroots organizations contributed to increased uptake of HTC services in eastern Zimbabwe in the mid-2000s. Partnerships with these organizations could harness community support for the further increases in HIV testing needed in sub-Saharan Africa.


This is a speech given to the National Press Club, September 26, 2008 outlining the need for comprehensive reform of the electric power sector in the U.S. It outlines the centrality of the electricity sector to the economy and to any national energy and climate policies. The U.S. electric power sector is the last energy sector in the U.S. to be brought into the 21st century with organization and regulatory governance institutions that are compatible with modern technology, future technological opportunities, reliability and environmental goals. The speech details the elements needed in a comprehensive national policy for the electric power sector.


Background The Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden (CATSS) is an on-going, large population-based longitudinal twin study. We aimed (1) to investigate the reliability of two different versions (125-items and 238-items) of Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) used in the CATSS and the validity of extracting the short version from the long version, (2) to compare these personality dimensions between twins and adolescents from the general population, and (3) to investigate the genetic structure of Cloninger's model. Method Reliability and correlation analyses were conducted for both TCI versions, 2,714 CATSS-twins were compared to 631 adolescents from the general population, and the genetic structure was investigated through univariate genetic analyses, using a model-fitting approach with structural equation-modeling techniques based on same-sex twin pairs from the CATSS (423 monozygotic and 408 dizygotic pairs). Results The TCI scores from the short and long versions showed comparable reliability coefficients and were strongly correlated. Twins scored about half a standard deviation higher in the character scales. Three of the four temperament dimensions (Novelty Seeking, Harm Avoidance, and Persistence) had strong genetic and non-shared environmental effects, while Reward Dependence and the three character dimensions had moderate genetic effects, and both shared and non-shared environmental effects. Conclusions Twins showed higher scores in character dimensions compared to adolescents from the general population. At least among adolescents there is a shared environmental influence for all of the character dimensions, but only for one of the temperament dimensions (i.e., Reward Dependence). This specific finding regarding the existence of shared environmental factors behind the character dimensions in adolescence, together with earlier findings showing a small shared environmental effects on character among young adults and no shared environmental effects on character among adults, suggest that there is a shift in type of environmental influence from adolescence to adulthood regarding character.


The author discusses aspects of Internet's resource discovery problem: how users specify searches, the difference between discovering classes of resources and locating appropriate instances, system-management problems that can be cast as global state discovery searches, issues involved with characterizing resources and with the efficient distribution of characterizing information, and social issues, especially privacy. Results of efforts to address these problems as part of the Networked Resource Discovery project at the University of Colorado are presented. These efforts use a variety of experimental approaches, including prototype systems, network measurement studies, and simulation studies.<<ETX>>


Twenty-two states, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Government currently have statutory mechanisms in place to provide compensation for wrongfully convicted individuals. Most of these statutes focus on the need for monetary compensation for individuals who have spent years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Only three of these statutes also provide meaningful post-release services. This is despite the fact that these programs are critical to address the unique reentry obstacles that face wrongfully convicted individuals and to ensure successful reintegration into society. This article examines the need for all states to provide meaningful post-release services to wrongfully convicted individuals. Focusing on the Massachusetts statute—the first compensation statute to include a meaningful services provision—the authors also assert that non-monetary "compensation" should include reentry services immediately upon release that are at least comparable to those received by parolees, but yet are tailored to the distinct needs of wrongfully convicted


In a book that will both enlighten and provoke, Daniel Boyarin offers an alternative to the prevailing Euro-American warrior/patriarch model of masculinity and recovers the Jewish ideal of the gentle, receptive male. The Western notion of the aggressive, sexually dominant male and the passive female reaches back through Freud to Roman times, but as Boyarin makes clear, such gender roles are not universal. Analyzing ancient and modern texts, he reveals early rabbis - studious, family-oriented - as exemplars of manhood and the prime objects of female desire in traditional Jewish society. Challenging those who view the 'feminized Jew' as a pathological product of the Diaspora or a figment of anti-Semitic imagination, Boyarin argues that the Diaspora produced valuable alternatives to the dominant cultures' overriding gender norms. He finds the origins of the rabbinic model of masculinity in the Talmud, and though unrelentingly critical of rabbinic society's oppressive aspects, he shows how it could provide greater happiness for women than the passive gentility required by bourgeois European standards. Boyarin also analyzes the self-transformation of three iconic Viennese modern Jews: Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis; Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism; and Bertha Pappenheim (Anna O.), the first psychoanalytic patient and founder of Jewish feminism in Germany. Pappenheim is Boyarin's hero: it is she who provides him with a model for a militant feminist, anti-homophobic transformation of Orthodox Jewish society today. Like his groundbreaking "Carnal Israel", this book is talmudic scholarship in a whole new light, with a vitality that will command attention from readers in feminist studies, history of sexuality, Jewish culture, and the history of psychoanalysis.


Background ExCyto PCR cells provide a novel and cost effective means to amplify DNA transformed into competent bacterial cells. ExCyto PCR uses host E. coli with a chromosomally integrated gene encoding a thermostable DNA polymerase to accomplish robust, hot-start PCR amplification of cloned sequences without addition of exogenous enzyme. Results Because the thermostable DNA polymerase is stably integrated into the bacterial chromosome, ExCyto cells can be transformed with a single plasmid or complex library, and then the expressed thermostable DNA polymerase can be used for PCR amplification. We demonstrate that ExCyto cells can be used to amplify DNA from different templates, plasmids with different copy numbers, and master mixes left on ice for up to two hours. Further, PCR amplification with ExCyto cells is comparable to amplification using commercial DNA polymerases. The ability to transform a bacterial strain and use the endogenously expressed protein for PCR has not previously been demonstrated. Conclusions ExCyto PCR reduces pipetting and greatly increases throughput for screening EST, genomic, BAC, cDNA, or SNP libraries. This technique is also more economical than traditional PCR and thus broadly useful to scientists who utilize analysis of cloned DNAs in their research.


ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper was to explore the lived experiences of people with substance abuse disorders over the course of their lengthy participation in a music scene. When the use of drugs and alcohol either begins or is enabled in a leisure context and progresses to a state of dependency, the leisure activity often becomes secondary to the use of those substances. As will be displayed, the participants of this study maintained a high level of participation during their period of indulgence and then sustained that high level of participation after overcoming their addiction. This paper challenges a commonly held assertion that the type of leisure people with substance abuse disorders engage in is different from those of people without drug or alcohol dependencies.


Empirical studies on information communication technologies (ICT) typically aggregate the "information" and "communication" components together. We show theoretically and empirically that these have very different effects on the empowerment of employees, and by extension on wage inequality. If managerial hierarchies are devices to acquire and transmit knowledge and information, technologies that reduce information costs enable agents to acquire more knowledge and 'empower' lower level agents. Conversely, technologies reducing communication costs substitute agent's knowledge for directions from their managers, and lead to centralization. Using an original dataset of firms in the US and seven European countries we study the impact of ICT on worker autonomy, plant manager autonomy and spans of control. Consistently with the theory we find that better information technologies (Enterprise Resource Planning for plant managers and CAD/CAM for production workers) are associated with more autonomy and a wider span of control. By contrast, communication technologies (like data networks) decrease autonomy for both workers and plant managers. Our findings are robust to using exogenous variation in cross-country telecommunication costs arising from differential regulatory regimes.


This paper aims to compare the economies of two of the EU countries of cohesion – Greece and Ireland – which are countries displaying similar initial macroeconomic and structural characteristics. Greece and Ireland have been included in the EU countries of cohesion because of their low level of development. However, Ireland showed higher growth rates in comparison to Greece. The article examines the factors that contributed to the difference in growth rates between the two countries under study. Amongst the most important factors to the advantage of Ireland are: the higher emphasis that Ireland laid on research and technology, the reforms that Ireland performed in education and training, its developmental strategy to attract foreign investments, its neighborhood with the United Kingdom, as well as the financial transfers of the European Union to Ireland.


Many distributed applications have a strong requirement for efficient dissemination of large amounts of information to widely spread consumers in large networks. These include applications in e-commerce and telecommunication. Publish/subscribe is considered one of the most important interaction styles with which to model communication on a large scale. Producers publish information on a topic and consumers subscribe to the topics they wish to be informed of. The decoupling of producers and consumers in time, space, and flow makes the publish/subscribe paradigm very attractive for large scale distribution, especially in environments like the Internet. This paper describes the architecture and implementation of DACE (Distributed Asynchronous Computing Environment), a framework for publish/subscribe communication based on an object-oriented programming abstraction in the form of Distributed Asynchronous Collection (DAC). DACs capture the variants of publish/subscribe, without blurring their respective advantages. The architecture we present is tolerant of network partitions and crash failures. The underlying model is based on the notion of Topic Membership: a weak membership for the parties involved in a topic. We present how Topic Membership enables the realization of a robust and efficient reliable multicast on a large scale. The protocol ensures that, inside a topic, even a subscriber who is temporarily partitioned away eventually receives a published message. Copyright  2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


When many flows are multiplexed on a non-saturated link, their volume changes over short timescales tend to cancel each other out, making the average change across flows close to zero. This equilibrium property holds if the flows are nearly independent, and it is violated by traffic changes caused by several, potentially small, correlated flows. Many traffic anomalies (both malicious and benign) fit this description. Based on this observation, we exploit equilibrium to design a computationally simple detection method for correlated anomalous flows. We compare our new method to two well known techniques on three network links. We manually classify the anomalies detected by the three methods, and discover that our method uncovers a different class of anomalies than previous techniques do.


Xinpusaurus is one of two thalattosaur genera known from the early Carnian (Upper Triassic) of Guizhou Province, P.R. China (Yin in Yin et al., 2000; Liu and Rieppel, 2001; Luo and Yu, 2002; Jiang et al., 2004). The genotypical species is Xinpusaurus suni, originally based on three specimens figured by Yin, in Yin et al. (2000:pl. VII, figs. 1–3). An isolated skull, referred to Xinpusaurus cf. X. suni, was described by Liu and Rieppel (2001), whereas the description of part of the postcranial skeleton was based on a fifth specimen (Liu, 2001). The cranial anatomy of Xinpusaurus suni was the subject of further comments by Luo and Yu (2002) on the basis of yet another well-preserved, isolated skull. The second species, Xinpusaurus bamaolinensis, was described by Cheng (2003) on the basis of a single specimen. The species differs from Xinpusaurus suni in size and skull morphology, with Xinpusaurus bamaolinensis being nearly twice as large as Xinpusaurus suni. Differences in skull morphology include the striking overbite of the premaxillary rostrum in Xinpusaurus bamaolinensis, where the rostrum is longer than the rest of the skull, and the premaxilla extends anteriorly far beyond the dentary. Jiang et al. (2004) commented on the skull anatomy of Xinpusaurus suni once again, and described a new species, Xinpusaurus kohi, which, however, is a subjective junior synonym of Xinpusaurus bamaolinensis Cheng (2003). Their phylogenetic analysis showed Xinpusaurus to be the sister taxon of Nectosaurus from the Upper Triassic of California (Merriam, 1905, 1908; Nicholls, 1999). This relationship of Xinpusaurus, previously reported by Liu and Rieppel (2001), now seems highly questionable in the light of ongoing research on the rostrum morphology in Nectosaurus and other thalattosaurs (Rieppel, Muller, and Liu, in press). Here, we will not comment further on analyses of the phylogenetic relationships of thalattosaurs, but rather describe a new skull of Xinpusaurus suni (Figs. 1, 2), which is the best preserved in its genus and thus helps to clarify a number of previously problematic issues of cranial anatomy. Indeed, it turns out that the motivation for the repeated revisions of the skull anatomy of Xinpusaurus suni were uncertainties and ambiguities that resulted from the partially problematic preservation of previously available specimens. The new skull described here (Figs. 1, 2) is kept at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IVPP V14372). Like the skulls of Xinpusaurus suni described by Liu and Rieppel (2001) and Luo and Yu (2002), the new specimen was completely removed from the surrounding matrix and mechanically prepared from both sides. As are all the other specimens, this skull is from the early Carnian Wayao member of the Falang Formation (L. Wang et al., 2001; the Falang Formation is also known as the Xiaowa Formation: X. Wang et al., 2002, 2003), and it is somewhat smaller that the specimen described by Liu and Rieppel (2001).


In this work a homogenous capillary tube model using R600a (isobutane) as refrigerant is presented. The capillary tube model underlies common restrictions; it is assumed to be adiabatic, straight with constant cross section and operates under steady state conditions. Different empirical correlations for friction and two-phase-viscosity are applied, and the resulting mass flow rates for given boundary conditions are compared with experimental data, available in open literature. The computational scheme comprises cell-wise iterative solution of conservation equations for mass, momentum and energy on a non-uniform, one-dimensional grid. Invariability-studies follow, where the number of computational cells is varied and the impact on the mass flow is investigated. In a next step, parameter variations of length, diameter, wall roughness, subcooling, inlet pressure, outlet pressure, friction laws, viscosity relations and the influence of gravity are investigated under different working conditions (choked and nonchoked) with respect to the mass flow.


These remarks are subtitled "ruminations of an aging neophyte," in recognition of my somewhat odd status as a labour law teacher. On the one hand, I've been at Dalhousie Law School for more than 30 years, teaching full time and conducting research in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, comparative law and, latterly, restorative justice. On the other hand, while I studied labour law with Innis Christie at Dalhousie using the first edition of the national labour and employment casebook in the early 1970s, I began teaching the subject only four years ago, and feel very much a neophyte. This does not mean that I have no experience in the field of labour and employment law. Having acted part-time as a labour arbitrator in private-and public-sector rights disputes under collective agreements since the early 1980s, and had many years' experience serving on labour relations and employment law tribunals, I have a reasonably secure sense of how our major institutions in that field operate. I also keep up connections with members of the labour relations community across Canada, who represent its disparate and often polarized cultures. But when I recently came to teach labour law, I was forced to come to grips with the "big picture," which can in many ways be avoided by someone "in the trenches."


IMPORTANCE
Basal and squamous cell carcinoma are the most common types of cancer in the United States and represent the vast majority of all cases of skin cancer; however, they rarely result in death or substantial morbidity, whereas melanoma skin cancer has notably higher mortality rates. In 2016, an estimated 76,400 US men and women will develop melanoma and 10,100 will die from the disease.

OBJECTIVE
To update the 2009 US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendation on screening for skin cancer.

EVIDENCE REVIEW
The USPSTF reviewed the evidence on the effectiveness of screening for skin cancer with a clinical visual skin examination in reducing skin cancer morbidity and mortality and death from any cause; its potential harms, including any harms resulting from associated diagnostic follow-up; its test characteristics when performed by a primary care clinician vs a dermatologist; and whether its use leads to earlier detection of skin cancer compared with usual care.

FINDINGS
Evidence to assess the net benefit of screening for skin cancer with a clinical visual skin examination is limited. Direct evidence on the effectiveness of screening in reducing melanoma morbidity and mortality is limited to a single fair-quality ecologic study with important methodological limitations. Information on harms is similarly sparse. The potential for harm clearly exists, including a high rate of unnecessary biopsies, possibly resulting in cosmetic or, more rarely, functional adverse effects, and the risk of overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION
The USPSTF concludes that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of visual skin examination by a clinician to screen for skin cancer in adults (I statement).


The present study has three main aims; a) to investigate the relationship between the tumor grade (TG), type (TT) and size (TS) on the renal carcinoma cancer (RCC) types, and demographic features of the patients such as gender and age, b) to find out the correlation between KI67 proliferation index and COX-2 and CD117 on the RCC, and c) to find out whether the immunohistochemical (IHC) reagents can determine the prognosis of some renal tumor diseases.In this research, 50 cases with RCC in Dicle University Hospital (30 clear cell type, 8 multi-lobular type, 5 sarcomatoid type, 4 papillary type, 3 chromophobe type), and 1 with radical nephrectomy were investigated retrospectively.The TG was carried out using Fuhrman grading system (FGS) and IHC examination was carried out on KI67, COX2, and CD117.The results of the present study did not indicate that gender had any effects on tumor parameters, but CD117 and age had an effect on CD117 and COX2. The results indicated strong correlations between tumor parameters such as TT and TG and CD117, KI67, TG and TT and CD117, and COX2 and KI67.


The animated feature "Finding Nemo" swept the box office last summer, and audiences of all ages and critics alike were overwhelmed by how a seemingly simple story had made such a splash. Recently having a second life on DVD, the film has become the most financially successful film of 2003 and the largest grossing animated feature of all time, outshining Disney/Pixar's previous hits Toy Story I and II and Monsters, Inc., as well as its competing summer blockbusters. "Finding Nemo" surfaced as a characteristic Disney epic adventure and heart-warming coming of age tale with resplendent twists. The plot follows a young clown fish, Nemo (Alexander Gould), who is separated from his father, Marlin (Albert Brooks), by the human intervention of a scuba diver and held captive in the office fish tank of a Sydney, Australia dentist (Bill Hunter). Nemo is rescued through the joint efforts of exotic, yet familiarly goofy, ironically down-to-earth, and cleverly caricatured populations of marine creatures. Seagulls, pelicans, turtles, manta rays, jellyfish, squid, starfish, sharks, whales, lobsters, other curious crustaceans, and a glorious array of tropical fish in all configurations and designs animate the film's lavish oceanic world. The creatures are not only strikingly heterogeneous in appearance, but also have international accents or dialects and personas that convey a variety of social styles. This cast of characters, their tongue-in-cheek, witty dialogue, and appropriately colorful depictions add to the appeal and smash success of the film, as vivid and illusionistic artistry positions the viewer as a visually awed undersea explorer.


Geochemical methods have been used to assist the petroleum exploration in sedimentary basins of the northern South China Sea_ A total of 1,560 stations have been sampled on 12 cruises for sea-surface air, near-bottom water, and seabed or near-surface sediments. Irregular grids or cross sections were deployed above target traps to identify geochemical anomalies. Known oiUgas fields and barren structures were sampled to provide anomaly models for comparison. About 50 chemical indices have been determined, including gaseous hydrocarbons (C l to Cs)' dissolved hydrocarbons, alternation carbonates (.1C), mercury, trace elements, ultraviolet and fluorescence intensities, as well as carbon isotopes in methane. These data were analyzed by robust statistical methods to ensure the reliability of anomaly delineation. Identified anomalies were interpreted based on geochemical theories and the comparison with known models. It is found that composite geochemical anomalies with various assemblages of indices and of halo or circularlhalf circular shapes appear above all of the oil/gas fields studied, in a clear contrast with the geochemical features of their adjacent barren traps. Geochemical methods provide important multivariate geochemical information for the assessment and prediction of hydrocarbon potential of traps identified by geophysical means.


This Article - part of a symposium on civil litigation and terrorism - focuses on the potential of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) to serve as a vehicle for asserting civil claims in U.S. courts for acts of terrorism. Although this paper primarily considers terrorism torts under the "law of nations" prong of the ATS (which requires a showing that the relevant prohibition is part of customary international law), terrorism torts may provide a vehicle for activating the ATS's dormant treaty prong as well, given the strong support for the terrorism treaties exhibited by the United States and the high degree of domestic incorporation of the crimes identified therein. One of the first modern cases to be filed under the Alien Tort Statute, Tel-Oran v. Libyan Arab Republic, immediately called into question the utility of the ATS as a counter-terrorism tool. Ever since, the statute has been relatively underutilized in this context, even while U.S. courts have gradually extended jurisdiction under the ATS over other international crimes. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress has vastly expanded opportunities for U.S. nationals to pursue civil claims in domestic courts for acts of terrorism. For example, the Antiterrorism Act (ATA) enables U.S. nationals - as well as their estates, survivors, and heirs - to sue individuals responsible for personal, property, or business injuries incurred by reason of acts of international terrorism. U.S. victims and claimants may also sue states and state agents implicated in acts of terrorism under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA), so long as the state itself has been specifically designated as a "sponsor of terrorism" by the Department of State or where the circumstances otherwise satisfy one of the codified exceptions to foreign sovereign immunity. As compared with these statutory causes of action for U.S. citizen victims and claimants, only the ATS has the potential to provide jurisdiction over civil claims arising out of acts of terrorism brought by non-nationals who have access to U.S. courts. This paper argues that the uncertainty surrounding the availability of the ATS to permit such terrorism claims reveals a lacuna in the United States' anti-terrorism statutory scheme. Since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark opinion in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain and finally set forth a methodology for considering actionable claims under the ATS, a few cases involving terrorism allegations have begun to work their way through the federal court system. Although it is still difficult to draw broad conclusions, the existing cases do demonstrate that the various federal statutes - the ATA, FSIA, and ATS - can work in tandem to provide causes of action to alien and U.S. plaintiffs injured in terrorist incidents. Furthermore, litigants are creatively utilizing multiple causes of action drawn from statutes, the common law, and international law to press their claims. While the federal courts have yet to definitively recognize a standalone cause of action for terrorism stricto sensu, developments in the law of terrorism at the international level reveal the gradual crystallization of a consensus set of elements that comprise a definitive prohibition against terrorism applicable to all but a narrow set of circumstances. What lingering definitional impasse exists highlights an unsettled and highly contentious area of international law: the legal categorization and consequences of attacks by unprivileged combatants against privileged combatants or military targets. In all other situations, the international law governing acts of terrorism is sufficiently precise, robust, and uncontroversial to support the recognition by the federal courts of a cause of action for terrorism under the ATS, assuming the other jurisdictional requirements are satisfied. Recognizing such causes of action will bolster the United States' counter-terrorism regime by enabling a broader array of victims of acts of terror to pursue the assets of individuals and groups that finance or otherwise support acts of terrorism.


Given the large magnitude of energy in waste heat, its efficient conversion to electrical power offers a significant opportunity to lower greenhouse gas emissions. However, it has been difficult to optimize the performance of new direct energy conversion approaches because of the coupling between entropy change and thermal and electrical transport in continuously operating devices. With electrochemical cells driving flowing electrolytes in symmetric redox reactions at different temperatures, we demonstrate two continuous electrochemical heat engines that operate at 10–50 °C and at 500–900 °C, respectively. Simulations of kilowatt-scale systems using electrochemical cells stacked in series suggest efficiencies over 30% of the Carnot limit and areal power densities competitive with solid-state thermoelectrics at maximum power. Although entropy change, thermal transport and electrical transport are inherently coupled in solid-state thermoelectrics, they can be somewhat circumvented in electrochemical systems, thus offering new opportunities to engineer efficient energy conversion systems.


Cancer and its treatment exert a heavy psychological and physical toll. Of the myriad symptoms which result, pain is common, encountered in between 30% and 60% of cancer survivors. Pain in cancer survivors is a major and growing problem, impeding the recovery and rehabilitation of patients who have beaten cancer and negatively impacting on cancer patients' quality of life, work prospects and mental health. Persistent pain in cancer survivors remains challenging to treat successfully. Pain can arise both due to the underlying disease and the various treatments the patient has been subjected to. Chemotherapy causes painful chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), radiotherapy can produce late effect radiation toxicity and surgery may lead to the development of persistent post-surgical pain syndromes. This review explores a selection of the common causes of persistent pain in cancer survivors, detailing our current understanding of the pathophysiology and outlining both the clinical manifestations of individual pain states and the treatment options available.


Background and Aim: Open access to scientific information is a new paradigm in scientific communication that facilitates access to research. This study was carried out to identify Tehran University of medical science faculties members' familiarities with Open access and to survey their attitude about it. Materials and Methods: A descriptive survey method was applied. The study population consisted of 163 members of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Data gathering tool was questionnaires that its validity and reliability was confirmed. Data was collected and analyzed by SPSS software and descriptive statistic methods. Results: Results show that more than 50 percent of population have modest familiarites with Open acces. Furthermore, the faculties's members familiarites with Open access technique was moderate. More than 70 percent (114 person) of them have positive attitude toward Open access and it's techniques. Conclusion: Faculties members' familiarity with Open access relatively is low but when they received information about the concept, rules and aim of this paradigm, their attitudes positively changed. Therefore, open access should be considered as a perfect method in scientific communication.


Sulfur isotope mass-independent fractionation (S-MIF) is a unique geologic record of Archean atmospheric chemistry that provides important constraints on the evolution of the early Earth's atmosphere and its impact on early life. In this contribution, we report multiple-sulfur (33S/32S, 34S/32S, and 36S/32S) isotope ratios of sulfide minerals and carbon (13C/12C) isotope ratios of organic carbon for shale in the ~2.96 to ~2.84 Ga Mozaan Group of the Pongola Supergroup, Southern Africa. The δ13C of organic carbon shows two populations: one with δ13C of ~ −26 ‰ and another with δ13C of −32 ‰. The Δ33S values from nine samples ranges from −0.49 to +0.36 ‰, which is considerably smaller than what was measured for the sulfide and sulfate minerals from other Archean intervals but outside the range of Δ33S values measured for post-2.0 Ga sulfide and sulfate minerals. Moreover, some samples from the Mozaan Group yield Δ36S/Δ33S ratios that are different from Phanerozoic sulfides, suggesting sulfide sulfur from the Mozaan Group carries mass-independent isotope fractionation originated from atmospheric photochemistry.

The relatively small Δ33S values for the Mozaan Group may suggest that the atmosphere became slightly oxidized at ~2.9 Ga with oxygen level above 10−5 but below 10−2 times present atmospheric level. This intermediate oxygen level would allow production of S-MIF in atmospheric chemistry but prohibit preservation of large S-MIF signatures in surface deposits. Our hypothesis implies the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis as early as ~2.9 Ga. Such an ephemeral oxidation event could have triggered the Mozaan-Witwatersrand glaciation by destabilizing an existing methane-rich Archean atmosphere.


Despite a well-established social gradient for many mental disorders, evidence suggests that individuals near the middle of the social hierarchy suffer higher rates of depression and anxiety than those at the top or bottom. Although prevailing indicators of socioeconomic stratification (e.g., SES) cannot detect or easily explain such patterns, relational theories of social class, which emphasise political-economic processes and dimensions of power, might. We test whether the relational construct of contradictory class location, which embodies aspects of both ownership and labour, can explain this nonlinear pattern. Data on full-time workers from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (N=21,859) show that occupants of contradictory class locations have higher prevalence and odds of depression and anxiety than occupants of non-contradictory class locations. These findings suggest that the effects of class relations on depression and anxiety extend beyond those of SES, pointing to under-studied mechanisms in social epidemiology, e.g. , domination and exploitation.


Parallel developments in neuroscience and deep learning have led to mutually productive exchanges, pushing our understanding of real and artificial neural networks in sensory and cognitive systems. However, this interaction between fields is less developed in the study of motor control. In this work, we develop a virtual rodent as a platform for the grounded study of motor activity in artificial models of embodied control. We then use this platform to study motor activity across contexts by training a model to solve four complex tasks. Using methods familiar to neuroscientists, we describe the behavioral representations and algorithms employed by different layers of the network using a neuroethological approach to characterize motor activity relative to the rodent's behavior and goals. We find that the model uses two classes of representations which respectively encode the task-specific behavioral strategies and task-invariant behavioral kinematics. These representations are reflected in the sequential activity and population dynamics of neural subpopulations. Overall, the virtual rodent facilitates grounded collaborations between deep reinforcement learning and motor neuroscience.


A few years ago, the country was astonished to learn about bread price fixing. The backlash from most was that of anger, but when all the significant players in the industry are part of the 'cartel' what choice do you have but to keep buying their products? The end result of an investigation by the Competition Commission saw those guilty paying what seemed substantial fines but in reality, the amounts paid in penalties were a small percentage of the profits reaped during the period of price fixing.


Recent experiments on ${\mathrm{UPt}}_{3}$ indicate the existence of more than one superconducting phase and an associated unconventional order parameter belonging to a nontrivial representation of the crystal point group ${\mathit{D}}_{6\mathit{h}}$. In this article we consider the Ginzburg-Landau (GL) theory for the vortex states in the two-dimensional ${\mathit{E}}_{1}$ representation for the order parameter, the representation believed to describe the phases of ${\mathrm{UPt}}_{3}$. One of the zero-field superconducting phases is predicted to break time-reversal symmetry. We show that the lower critical field for vortex nucleation in a ground state with broken time-reversal symmetry exhibits a novel asymmetry. Observation of this asymmetry in any superconductor would provide clear evidence for an unconventional order parameter. We present solutions to the GL equations for singly quantized vortices. For rectilinear vortices along the c axis two classes of solutions are found: (i) axially symmetric vortices and (ii) nonaxisymmetric vortices which spontaneously break the axial symmetry of the condensate density. We discuss the structure of these vortices, their relation to the asymmetry of ${\mathit{H}}_{\mathit{c}1}$, the possibility of phase transitions between vortex states of different symmetry, and the phase diagram of ${\mathrm{UPt}}_{3}$ in the H-T plane.


This article examines the merging of security and development agendas in primary commodity sectors, focusing on the case of peace-building reforms in Sierra Leone's diamond sector. Reformers frequently assume that reforming the diamond sector through industrializing alluvial diamond mining will reduce threats to security and development, thereby contributing to peace building. Our findings, however, suggest that the industrialization of alluvial diamond mining that has taken place in Sierra Leone has not reduced threats to security and development, as it has entailed human rights abuses and impoverishment of local communities without consolidating state fiscal revenues and trust in local authorities. This suggests alternative strategies for resource-related peace-building initiatives, which we consider at the end of the article: the decriminalization of informal economic activities; the prioritization of local livelihoods and development needs over central government fiscal priorities and foreign direct investment; and better integration between local economies and industrial resource exploitation.


This study deals with the conodont biostratigraphy from the uppermost part of La Silla Formation (9.6 m) and the overlying San Juan Formation (264.7 m), at the Cerro La Silla section, Central Precordillera of San Juan, Argentina. The 41 samples of carbonate rocks that were digested for microfossils yielded 11,388 conodont elements corresponding to 78 species. The Paltodus deltifer deltifer Subzone of the Paltodus deltifer Zone from the Baltic biostratigraphic scheme is represented at the top stratum of the La Silla Formation and the basal part of the San Juan Formation (28.4 m), which correlates with the Macerodus dianae Zone (middle Tremadocian) of the Precordilleran and North American schemes. Following upwards, the Paroistodus proteus, Prioniodus elegans, Oepikodus evae, Oepikodus intermedius and Baltoniodus triangularis-Tripodus laevis zones (middle Tremadocian-lower Dapingian) are recorded in the San Juan Formation. The Baltoniodus triangularis-Tripodus laevis Zone is recognized from the second reef level (177.3 m from the base of the San Juan Formation) up to the top stratum in the section, in contrast to previous interpretations that assigned the referred interval to the Baltoniodus navis, Paroistodus originalis and Microzarkodina parva zones of the Baltic biostratigraphic scheme. The division of the Oepikodus evae Zone in subzones, according to its original definition for the Precordillera, is not applicable at the Cerro La Silla section due to the particular species distribution. The conodont elements show a brown alteration color (CAI 2-2.5), which indicates a burial paleotemperature of 60-155°C for the bearer strata.


Abstract The Family Group Conferencing (FGC) forum is often presented by policy entrepreneurs and advocates as indicative of the ability of restorative justice (RJ) to accommodate the cultural and justice needs of diverse populations. In this article, we present recent empirical research from one of the authors on Māori experiences of the forum. Drawing from this research, as well as other secondary sources, we demonstrate that far from being an exemplar of culturally appropriate justice practice, the forum is experienced by some Māori participants as one that encloses Indigenous culture and Indigenous participants within a Eurocentric, formulaic, and standardized process. The final section of our article reveals changes to the development of restorative policies and the practice in the Aotearoa New Zealand context that Māori participants believe are necessary to make the movement, and interventions such as the FGC, an empowering experience for Māori.


Spinal Stargazin-Mediated Cross-Talk of AMPA/NMDA Receptors in Chronic Pain
Chronic pain resulting from a variety of health conditions is the primary reason people seek medical care; yet current therapies either are inadequate or cause intolerable side effects [1-8]. Understanding cellular and molecular processes that lead to the initiation and maintenance of chronic pain will provide substantial promise for the development of more effective and specific pain therapies. Chronic pain is an expression of neuronal plasticity. One component of the plasticity is that the afferent input generated by injury and intense
noxious stimuli triggers an increased excitability of nociceptive neurons in the spinal cord. Glutamate is the principal excitatory amino acid neurotransmitter within the mammalian nervous system.


Cigarettes are the most addictive tobacco product and also the most deadly, causing the highest rates of tobacco-caused mortality and morbidity in most areas of the world.1 ,2 Although current tobacco control efforts have led to significant reductions in smoking prevalence, innovative strategies that can result in a more rapid elimination of cigarette smoking should be a high priority.1 ,3 In the US Surgeon General's report,1 reducing nicotine in cigarettes was considered as one potential strategy. In an article written by Tengs et al ,4 in which the authors modelled the effects of reducing nicotine in cigarettes on public health, taking into account a potential black market, the following statement was made: 'Policy makers would be hard-pressed to identify another domestic public health intervention, short of historical sanitation efforts, that has offered this magnitude of benefit to the population'. Hence, the main goal of the Advisory Note, Global Nicotine Reduction Strategy, issued by the Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation (TobReg), was to provide a scientific review and examine the potential feasibility of reduced nicotine content cigarettes as an approach to tobacco control, and to describe the context in which this approach could be considered. This approach is bold, but worth serious consideration. Why? Because the tobacco control community has known for decades that the harms associated with smoking are primarily driven by its addictiveness. If the reinforcing effects of a drug are reduced, then continued use and consequently toxicant exposures will substantially diminish. However, this strategy is not suitable for all countries. As acknowledged in …


Depth of anaesthesia (DoA) is an important measure for assessing the degree to which the central nervous system of a patient is depressed by a general anaesthetic agent, depending on the potency and concentration with which anaesthesia is administered during surgery. We can monitor the DoA by observing the patient's electroencephalography (EEG) signals during the surgical procedure. Typically high frequency EEG signals indicates the patient is conscious, while low frequency signals mean the patient is in a general anaesthetic state. If the anaesthetist is able to observe the instantaneous frequency changes of the patient's EEG signals during surgery this can help to better regulate and monitor DoA, reducing surgical and post-operative risks. This paper describes an approach towards the development of a 3D real-time visualization application which can show the instantaneous frequency and instantaneous amplitude of EEG simultaneously by using empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and the Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT). HHT uses the EMD method to decompose a signal into so-called intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). The Hilbert spectral analysis method is then used to obtain instantaneous frequency data. The HHT provides a new method of analyzing non-stationary and nonlinear time series data. We investigate this approach by analyzing EEG data collected from patients undergoing surgical procedures. The results show that the EEG differences between three distinct surgical stages computed by using sample entropy (SampEn) are consistent with the expected differences between these stages based on the bispectral index (BIS), which has been shown to be quantifiable measure of the effect of anaesthetics on the central nervous system. Also, the proposed filtering approach is more effective compared to the standard filtering method in filtering out signal noise resulting in more consistent results than those provided by the BIS. The proposed approach is therefore able to distinguish between key operational stages related to DoA, which is consistent with the clinical observations. SampEn can also be viewed as a useful index for evaluating and monitoring the DoA of a patient when used in combination with this approach.


Generalized stochastic Petri nets (GSPN), with immediate transitions, are extensively used to model concurrent systems in a wide range of application domains, particularly including software and hardware aspects of computer systems, and their interactions. These models are typically used for system specification, logical and performance analysis, or automatic code generation. In order to keep modeling separate from the analysis and to gain in efficiency and robustness of the modeling process, the complete specification of the stochastic process underlying a model should be guaranteed at the net level, without requiring the generation and exploration of the state space. In this paper, we propose a net-level method that guides the modeler in the task of defining the priorities (and weights) of immediate transitions in a GSPN model, to deal with confusion and conflict problems. The application of this method ensures well-definition without reducing modeling flexibility or expressiveness.


Efficient volcanic risk management has three objectives to focus on: (1) Prevention tools based on risk assessment during rest periods of the volcano; (2) Crisis management capabilities during alert and eruptive periods; (3) Recovering capabilities (resilience) after event has occurred. Within the MIAVITA projects, these objectives are addressed over four selected volcanoes (Merapi in Indonesia, Kanlaon in the Philippines, Fogo in Cape Verde and Mount Cameroun in Cameroun) through the use of structured geographical information that form the baseline information for (1) geological hazards and risk maps: interpreting maps at the volcano's scale; (2) WebGIS: using interactive maps: to display, in real time, relevant information following a specific demand (e.g. population at risk versus health centres' positions) and (3) scenarios: description of the effects and impact for a given eruption (real/occurring or hypothetic). This paper discusses the various approaches available for setting up a user-oriented volcanic hazard and risk knowledge database and discusses how to adapt the methodology developed at Merapi volcano to other environment. When sufficient information is available, geological hazard maps can be produced by crossing events expected intensity with their frequency as Thierry et al. (2007) did, or by sectoring the volcano and producing event trees (Marzocchi et al., 2007, Neri et al., 2008). These two approaches can be merged when sufficient information is available, which is not always possible. In such case, simplifications must then be found. Because of the multiplicity of factors involved, risk mapping happens to be appropriately addressed through a "decision support" multicriteria methodology (Saaty et al. 2008), which has been applied by BPPTK / CVGHM on Merapi. Because of its flexibility, this risk mapping methodology appears transposable to other environment with some restrictions. WebGIS use and scenario building approaches are also briefly discussed in this presentation. The MIAVITA project is financed by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, Area "Environment", Activity 6.1 "Climate Change, Pollution and Risks"


Abstract Recent coverage in higher education newspapers and social media platforms implies that chronic conditions, illnesses and disabilities are becoming more prominent amongst academics. Changes to funding structures, increased globalisation, marketisation and bureaucratisation of higher education have resulted in a performance-driven working environment where teaching workload and pressures to publish are further intensified due to excellence exercises in teaching and research. The result is low morale and an ever-rising number of reported mental health issues, burnout and stress-related illnesses within academia. This article explores some of these issues in the context of higher education institutions in the United Kingdom. We draw on our research and our experiences as speakers regarding ableism in academia to provide food for thought, stimulate a debate and raise awareness of those academics experiencing chronic illness, disability or neurodiversity, whose voices are not heard.


Italy's idyllic region of Tuscany is known as a top-tier tourist destination. Less well known is that it is also one of Europe's frontiers of human trafficking and a case-study in the effects of globalization. The garment and textile factories of Prato figured prominently in Italy's "miracle" economic performance of the 1950s and 1960s, with more than 4,500 small shops producing many of the world's most sought-after brands. Garment production is buoyant there again, but "economia sommersa" (submerged economy) sweatshops account for more than a third of the goods produced, and many of the Chinese workers are working long hours for little or no pay, due to huge debts to trafficking gangs. Now that the new anti-immigration mayor is closing illegal operators, hundreds of workers without legal working papers are in limbo as the Chinese government has refused the Italian government's attempts at repatriation. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Immigrant-bashing media in Italy decry the rise of sweatshops, but NYU's Andrew Ross points out that they had their place in Prato decades ago, when there was a high-wage "core" fed by peripheral sweatshops. Hence, the current situation is not a "Chinese import." This mobile workforce has been a hallmark of globalization, spawning a hugely contentious debate and ugly--if understandable--resentment. Aside from the worker migration topic, there are other key globalization questions as well. Has globalization turned good companies bad? Has the outsource model forced the buyers to accept the often brutal practices of supplier-factory managers in some of the world's most corrupt and lawless environments? Is the current wage allocation truly fair and efficient? Several myths occlude helpful discussion of these questions and the solutions to their larger underlying issues. There is one myth that has served the most vulnerable industries (electronics, toys, garments, and footwear) well over the last decade: a global brand will meticulously monitor its supply chain because conscientious consumers, informed by the latest technologies, will punish the company at the retail level for any transgression. Rather, according to Jeffrey Swartz, the CEO of Timberland, consumers do not think too much about workers' rights in the supplier factories. "Don't do anything horrible or despicable" and the company will be safe, he opined in late-2009. His remarks are supported by a striking example: the complete lack of media attention when the toy-maker Mattel scrapped all factory monitoring in 2010. Another misperception--shared by "free trade" critics and proponents alike--is the race-to-the-bottom discourse, which posits that any improvement in wages or conditions will send factory managers off in search of more vulnerable workers. In 2000, shortly after the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, over 200 economists sent an open letter to college presidents in the United States that chastised them for too easily acceding to the students' demand to clean sweatshop-stained apparel out of university bookstores. The message was simple: they will hurt the very workers that they are trying to help because of this outsourcing imperative to seek lower standards. Forced Labor Worldwide Considering Categories of Trafficking Economic Exploitation 7,810,000 Cases Commercial Sexual Exploitation 1,390,000 Cases State-Imposed 2,490,000 Cases Mixed 610,000 Cases International Labour Organization; 2005 Note: Table made from pie chart In practice, there appears to be much room for wage improvement. Indonesia's "real" wage nearly tripled in the early 1990s, while foreign investment continued to flow. China and Vietnam have pushed up minimum wages several times in the last five years while maintaining double-digit growth rates. The incontrovertible and simplest proof that there is ample room for wage growth may be seen in the cost breakdown for a typical university-logo "hoodie" the labor cost of the US$38 garment is less than 20 cents, while the university's licensing fee is over two dollars. …


 Abstract—The climatic condition over Indian region is highly dependent on monsoon. India receives maximum amount of rainfall during southwest monsoon. Indian economy is highly dependent on agriculture. The presence of flood and drought years influenced the total cultivation system as well as the economy of the country as Indian agricultural systems is still highly dependent on the monsoon rainfall. The present study has been planned to investigate the flood and drought years for the north-west Himalayan region from 1951 to 2014 by using area average Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) rainfall data. For this investigation the Normalized index (NI) has been utilized to find out whether the particular year is drought or flood. The data have been extracted for the north-west Himalayan (NWH) region states namely Uttarakhand (UK), Himachal Pradesh (HP) and Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) to find out the rainy season average rainfall for each year, climatological mean and the standard deviation. After calculation it has been plotted by the diagrams (or graphs) to show the resultssome of the years associated with drought years, some are flood years and rest are neutral. The flood and drought years can also relate with the large-scale phenomena ElNino and La-Lina. Keywords—Indian Meteorological Department, Rainfall, Normalized index, Flood, Drought, NWH.


We examine in this paper how need for cognition (NFC), one of the personal characteristics, affects search performance in two aspects: effectiveness measured by precision and efficiency measured by search time. Forty participants were invited individually to an on-campus usability laboratory for the study. Each was asked to perform two search tasks, make usefulness judgments on search results they obtained, and rate the task difficulty level upon finishing each task. Their NFC levels were collected by a standard psychologist-developed NFC Scale. Factor analysis, T-test and General Linear Model in SPSS were used to analyze the collected data. NFC was found to have effects on search effectiveness in general, but not on time (efficiency). Not significant though, there were tendencies that the interaction of task difficulty and NFC affected search effectiveness and efficiency. Results proved that NFC is a significant facet that could influence search performance. More studies are needed to further explore the interaction effect of NFC and the level of task difficulty/complexity. Further research will also examine the effect of elaborative processing of information in contributing to the better performance of people with high NFC level.


Cloud providers have an incomplete view of their hosted virtual infrastructures managed by a Cloud Management System (CMS) and a Software Defined Network (SDN) controller. For various security reasons (e.g. isolation verification, modeling attack paths in the network), it is necessary to know which virtual machines can interact via network protocols. This requires building a connectivity graph between the virtual machines, that we can extract with the knowledge of the overall topology and the deployed network security policy. Existing methodologies for building such models for physical networks produce incomplete results. Moreover, they are not suitable for cloud infrastructures due to either their intrusiveness or lack of connectivity discovery. We propose a method to compute the connectivity graph, relying on information provided by both the CMS and the SDN controller. Connectivity can first be extracted from knowledge databases, then dynamically updated on the occurrence of cloud-related events. This approach shows an exact, complete and up-to-date connectivity graphs computation on a representative infrastructure, in reasonable time.


OBJECTIVE
In recent years, fully endoscopic decompression surgery for degenerative spine disease has become increasingly popular in the US. Although an endoscopic approach has demonstrated some benefits compared with open procedures in randomized controlled trials, the cost of advanced technologies remains contested. The authors evaluated the differences in costs and cost drivers between open and endoscopic decompression surgical procedures performed at a single institution.

METHODS
Using associated Current Procedural Terminology codes, the authors identified all open and endoscopic decompression lumbar surgical procedures performed from January 1, 2016, through December 31, 2022. Preoperative comorbidities, surgical characteristics, and postoperative outcomes were captured. The costs of index surgery-related readmission for revision, washout, or other complications were included in the index surgery expenses. Associated in-hospital costs were collected; these were reported in comparative percentages with open surgical procedures as the baseline because of an institutional agreement. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed.

RESULTS
The retrospective search identified 633 open surgical procedures and 195 endoscopic surgical procedures for inclusion. The two patient cohorts were similar, with clinically nonrelevant but statistically significant differences in mean age (open 55.7 years vs endoscopic 59.4 years, p = 0.01) and mean American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status class (open 2.3 vs endoscopic 2.4, p = 0.03). Postoperatively, patients who underwent open surgical procedures had significantly longer mean hospital stays (open 1.4 days vs endoscopic 0.7, p < 0.01) and more perioperative complications (open 7.9% of patients vs endoscopic 3.1%, p = 0.02), and they required washout surgical procedures in some cases (open 1.3% vs endoscopic 0%, p = 0.12). The largest cost difference between open and endoscopic surgical procedures was the significantly greater cost of disposable supplies for endoscopic cases (10.1% vs 31.7% of the total cost of open procedures, p < 0.01), and open surgical procedures were generally less costly in total (100.0% vs 115.1%, p < 0.01). In multivariate linear regression, endoscopic surgery was independently associated with greater total costs (standardized beta 15.9%, p < 0.01), although length of hospital stay (standardized beta 34.0%) and readmissions (standardized beta 30.0%, p < 0.01) had larger effects on cost.

CONCLUSIONS
The endoscopic approach was associated with greater total in-hospital costs compared with open procedures. The findings of further cost evaluations, including those of patient-reported outcomes, social cost, and capital costs per procedure type, need to be included in operational and clinical decisions.


Bridge railing systems in the United States have historically been designed based on static load criteria given in the AASHTO Standard Specifications for Highway Bridges. In the past decade, full-scale vehicle crash testing has been recognized as a more appropriate and reliable method of evaluating bridge railing acceptability. In 1989, AASHTO published the Guide Specifications for Bridge Railings, which gave the recommendations and procedures to evaluate bridge rails by full-scale vehicle crash testing. In 1993, the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) published Report 350: Recommended Procedures for the Safety Performance Evaluation of Highway Features, which provided criteria for evaluating longitudinal barriers. Based on these specifications, a cooperative research program was initiated between the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Forest Products Laboratory, and later the FHWA, to develop and crash test 11 bridge rails for wood deck bridges. The research that resulted in successful development and testing of 11 bridge railing systems for longitudinally and transversely laminated wood bridge decks in accordance with AASHTO Performance Level 1 and 2 (PL-1 and PL-2) requirements and Test Levels 1, 2, and 4 (TL-1, TL-2, and TL-4) requirements of NCHRP Report 350 are described here.


We describe a low field, bench-top MRI system for small samples, based on a permanent magnet. Signals are received at 830 kHz using a tuned SQUID magnetometer, cooled in a modified liquid helium cryostat. The SQUID input circuit has an intrinsic Q-factor of 28,000, so this is damped by flux-locking electronics and an additional feedback loop to give an effective Q of between 40 and 200 for imaging. The resonant frequency is adjusted by a control rod coupled to a trimmer capacitor mounted in the liquid helium volume. Images of a test object acquired using the cooled receiver exhibit up to two-fold SNR gains in regions close to the sensor, compared to an equivalent room temperature coil, with the noise level dominated by losses coupled from the magnet pole faces.


We propose a band-separated, bidirectional amplifier based on a bismuth-based erbium-doped fiber for use in long-reach hybrid dense wavelength division multiplexing-time division multiplexing passive optical networks (DWDM-TDM-PONs). We also propose a long-reach hybrid DWDM-TDM-PON architecture in which the proposed amplifier can be effectively used. The feasibility of using the proposed amplifier for long-reach hybrid DWDM-TDM-PONs is experimentally investigated by performing a series of signal transmission experiments with an exemplary PON configuration having a total reach of 75 km and 8 split users. Error-free bidirectional signal transmission at a line rate of 10 Gbit/s is successfully demonstrated. A theoretical investigation also shows that the reach/split limitation issue associated with an insufficient WDM signal gain in the experimental demonstration can be easily solved by optimizing the amplifier.


The Role of Geometry in Wordsworth's "Science of Feelings" Aaron J. Ottinger Chairs of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Marshall Brown Comparative Literature Professor Raimonda Modiano English Counter to previous studies of William Wordsworth that have viewed him as dismissive of mathematics, logic, and the fundamental principles of moral feelings, or ignored the connections between these domains, this dissertation presents Wordsworth as imaginatively reprocessing the discipline of geometry through poetry, or what he refers to as a "science of feelings." Despite the many developments occurring in the realm of mathematics in the eighteenth century, Euclid's Elements remained the primary source for math and logic in secondary schools and universities. As a teaching tool, Wordsworth regarded Euclid as limiting the power of imagination, ultimately reducing the pupil's ability to sympathize with others. Rather than abandon the place of mathematics in education, the dissertation examines how Wordsworth saw Euclid as fulfilling only a part of a more dynamic and speculative philosophical upbringing. Thus the project reevaluates familiar works in light of a mathematical and historical context, recasting Wordsworth as deeply invested in the ways that poetry could adapt the principles of Euclidean geometry to account for change in human thoughts and feelings.


Pore-scale modeling provides opportunities to study transport phenomena in fundamental ways because detailed information is available at the microscopic pore scale. This offers the best hope for bridging the traditional gap that exists between pore scale and macro (lab) scale description of the process. As a result, consistent upscaling relations can be performed, based on physical processes defined at the appropriate scale. In the present study, we have used a Multi-Directional Pore Network (MDPN) for representing a porous medium. One of the main features of our network is that pore throats can be oriented not only in the three principal directions, but in 13 different directions, allowing a maximum coordination number of 26. Using MDPN, flow and transport processes were simulated at the pore scale in detail by explicitly modeling the interfaces and mass exchange at surfaces. The solution of pore network model provides local concentrations and it allows relating concentrations and reaction rates at the macro scale to concentrations and reaction rates at the scale of individual pores, a scale at which reaction processes are well defined. Then, comparing the result of pore-scale simulations with the model representing the macro-scale behavior, we could study the relation between these two scales. We have considered mass transfer of reactive/adsorptive solutes though interfaces, under both saturated and partiality saturated conditions. While under saturated conditions the interfaces are only those of solid-water interfaces, under saturated conditions in addition to solid-water interfaces there will be mass transfer though air-water interfaces as well. Macroscopic quantities were obtained through averaging over the pore network domain. To meet our objectives we focus on both physical heterogeneity and topology (differently sized pores and coordination number distribution) and chemical processes. There are many other novel and unique aspects to this book, through which, we develop more accurate and realistic schemes to study flow and transport processes. For this purpose we have developed an extensive FORTRAN 90 Modular Package which spans though generation of random structure networks, discretizing pore spaces on the basis of their saturation state, and solving flow and reactive transport under both saturated and unsaturated conditions using several complex algorithms. The governing equations are solved applying a fully implicit numerical scheme; however, efficient substitution methods have been applied which made the algorithm more computationally effective and appropriate for parallel computations. Through coupling MDPN with multi-component reactive simulator, BRNS, we could simulate transport of species which may cause changes in porosity and permeability due to reaction with the solid phase. By averaging over a representative MDPN, we calculated upscaled parameters such as permeability, dispersion coefficient and measure of plume spreading, and upscaled adsorption parameters under saturated conditions. For partially saturated conditions the results were capillary pressured-saturation relation, relative permeability, unsaturated dispersivity-saturation relation, and upscale adsorption parameters. Whenever possible, we compared our results with the results of experimental observations and analytical equations. In this way, we could evaluate the limitations and sufficiency of the available analytical equations and macro scale models for prediction of transport behavior of (reactive) solutes.


In Motherless Tongues , Vicente L. Rafael examines the vexed relationship between language and history gleaned from the workings of translation in the Philippines, the United States, and beyond. Moving across a range of colonial and postcolonial settings, he demonstrates translation's agency in the making and understanding of events. These include nationalist efforts to vernacularize politics, U.S. projects to weaponize languages in wartime, and autobiographical attempts by area studies scholars to translate the otherness of their lives amid the Cold War. In all cases, translation is at war with itself, generating divergent effects. It deploys as well as distorts American English in counterinsurgency and colonial education, for example, just as it re-articulates European notions of sovereignty among Filipino revolutionaries in the nineteenth century and spurs the circulation of text messages in a civilian-driven coup in the twenty-first. Along the way, Rafael delineates the untranslatable that inheres in every act of translation, asking about the politics and ethics of uneven linguistic and semiotic exchanges. Mapping those moments where translation and historical imagination give rise to one another, Motherless Tongues shows how translation, in unleashing the insurgency of language, simultaneously sustains and subverts regimes of knowledge and relations of power.


There is relatively little in the Constitution's drafting history or ratification debates to illuminate the intended meaning of the Suspension Clause, and what it specifically protects by preserving "the Privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus" except in cases where habeas is properly suspended. Most jurists and commentators at least seem to agree on the constitutional floor - that, as Justice Stevens put it in 2001, "at the absolute minimum, the Suspension Clause protects the writ 'as it existed in 1789.'" But even that limited point of consensus only begs a separate question: what was the scope of the writ in English law in 1789, the practice from which we presume the Founders meant to borrow?In Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire, Professor Paul Halliday provides a new series of answers to that question, using archival research to survey the scope of English habeas practice during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Rather than rely upon the published reports of English judicial decisions or the works of contemporaneous treatise writers, Halliday's work focuses on the writs themselves, extrapolating a series of conclusions based upon comprehensive archival research. To that end, Halliday's revisionist methodology reveals that many classical accounts of the scope of the writ in pre-revolutionary England (including Blackstone's) are in fact "whig" histories, superimposing modern and anachronistic understandings of rights and remedies onto a practice that was, in reality, far different. As Halliday explains, the dominant feature of pre-revolutionary habeas was the flexibility and dexterity of the justices in applying the common-law writ; and the true threat to such judicial power was Parliament - not just when it suspended habeas, but, ironically, when it codified the writ, as well. Ultimately, habeas corpus in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England was about principles, not rules - about power, not rights. No case expressly refuted the rule against controverting the return, and yet the justices consistently flouted it. No case expressly held that the writ could reach anyone who answered to the sovereign, and yet the justices consistently sent it. No case expressly established the flexibility of the remedy that came to characterize habeas practice into the latter half of the eighteenth century, and yet the justices routinely demonstrated it. In the end, Halliday's book does more than just refute time-honored conceptions of the scope of habeas in England at the Founding; it refutes the way in which we have arrived at those conceptions, proving not just that we have consistently taken the wrong lessons from the wrong sources, but that we have been (and perhaps still are) asking the wrong questions, looking for individual cases to prove what the rules (that must have existed) must have been. Although this review essay uses the Guantanamo detainee cases to both summarize Halliday's conclusions and explain how they should reorient our understanding of the ambit of the writ in contemporary litigation, it suggests that the true significance of Halliday's history runs deeper. As useful as these revisionist conclusions should be in identifying the specific scope of the writ "as it existed in 1789," what they really confirm is the protean dynamism of pre-revolutionary habeas in England. As the essay concludes, tying the Suspension Clause to what was true at the Founding only makes sense if one accepts that the result is a constitutional floor marked by fluid principles, not rigid practices. And although that proposition reveals serious and systematic flaws in how contemporary courts and commentators have approached questions as to the scope and sweep of habeas at the Founding, it remains for future generations, and not historians, to decide if the Constitution does - or should - protect anything more.


Formal behavioral specifications written early in the system-design process and communicated across all design phases have been shown to increase the eÆciency, consistency, and quality of the system under development. To prevent introducing design or verification errors, it is crucial to test specifications for satisfiability. Our focus here is on specifications expressed in linear temporal logic (LTL). We introduce a novel encoding of symbolic transition-based Büchi automata and a novel, "sloppy," transition encoding, both of which result in improved scalability. We also define novel BDD variable orders based on tree decomposition of formula parse trees. We describe and extensively test a new multi-encoding approach utilizing these novel encoding techniques to create 30 encoding variations. We show that our novel encodings translate to significant, sometimes exponential, improvement over the current standard encoding for symbolic LTL satisfiability checking.


This pilot analysis is the result of an exploratory collaboration between the UArctic Science & Research Analytics Task Force and Digital Science's international research teams. The aim was to assess the global funding landscape around Arctic-related research for the decade spanning 2006 to 2015 using the funding data from the Dimensions dataset, which includes information from over 200 funders on more than 2,500,000 projects with funding totalling $1 trillion+ (in US Dollars). This project is the first ever attempt to create a comprehensive view of global Arctic research funding using a dataset of such magnitude.


Recent efforts to replicate structural brain-behavior correlations have called into question the replicability of structural brain measures used in cognitive neuroscience. Here, we report an evaluation of test-retest reliability of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measures, including fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, axial diffusivity, and radial diffusivity, in several white matter tracts previously shown to be involved in cognitive control. In a data set consisting of 34 healthy participants scanned twice on a single day, we observe overall stability of DTI measures. This stability remained in a subset of participants who were also scanned a third time on the same day as well as in a 2-week follow-up session. We conclude that DTI measures in these tracts show relative stability, and that alternative explanations for the recent failures of replication must be considered.


The true sand flies are densely covered with setae, have long slender legs, and broad and pointed wings that are held erect at rest. Several phlebotomine species are vectors of the protozoan parasites in the genus Leishmania, that are the causal agents of leishmaniasis. Visceral leishmaniais is the most severe form of the disease, and is fatal to the human or dog host if untreated. This 6-page fact sheet was written by Maria C. Carrasquilla and Phillip E. Kaufman, and published by the UF Department of Entomology and Nematology, June 2015. (Photo credit: Cristina Ferro, Instituto Nacional de Salud, Colombia
EENY 625/IN1091: A Sand Fly Lutzomyia longipalpis (Lutz and Neiva) (Insecta: Diptera: Psychodidae: Phlebotominae) (ufl.edu)


Purpose. To understand vaccine attitudes of Latinx parents highly impacted by COVID-19. Methods. In April 2021, we surveyed parents about their attitudes for COVID-19 vaccination of their children at a community-based outdoor testing/vaccination site serving predominantly low-income, Latinx persons in San Francisco. Results. Among 1,033 parents (75% Latinx), 92% would 'definitely' or 'probably' vaccinate their children. Vaccine hesitancy was higher for younger children; concerns included side effects and impacts on fertility. Doctors and community organizations were noted as trusted sources of information, including among vaccine-hesitant parents. Conclusion. Latinx parents accessing neighborhood-based COVID-19 testing/vaccination services are highly motivated to vaccinate their children for COVID-19.


After a promising start as a prosperous and liberal democratic nation at the end of the nineteenth century, Argentina descended into instability and crisis. This stark reversal, in a country rich in natural resources and seemingly bursting with progress and energy, has puzzled many historians. In "Civilizing Argentina", Julia Rodriguez takes a sharply contrary view, demonstrating that Argentina's turn of fortune is not a mystery but rather the ironic consequence of schemes to "civilize" the nation in the name of progressivism, health, science, and public order. With new medical and scientific information arriving from Europe at the turn of the century, a powerful alliance developed among medical, scientific, and state authorities in Argentina. These elite forces promulgated a political culture based on a medical model that defined social problems such as poverty, vagrancy, crime, and street violence as illnesses to be treated through programs of social hygiene. They instituted programs to fingerprint immigrants, measure the bodies of prisoners, place wives who disobeyed their husbands in "houses of deposit," and exclude or expel people deemed socially undesirable, including groups such as labor organizers and prostitutes. Such policies, Rodriguez argues, led to the destruction of the nation's liberal ideals and opened the way to the antidemocratic, authoritarian governments that came later in the twentieth century.


The paper provides a systematical analysis of ecological restoration effects of natural secondary forest of closure area in Chao Guanxi Gou, Miyun County, Beijing. The results indicate that through more than twenty years of hillclosing afforestation since 1983, canopy closure has improved almost by 0.2; forest cover rate has raised from 7.2% to 93.8%; biodiversity, tree biomass and vegetation community have increased to a great extent. Compared with the average canopy closure before hillclosing afforestation in this area, it has improved to over 0.4 in average and increased by 0.1-0.2. The forest coverage degree has reached more than 90%. Consequently, the forest plays more important roles in intercepting precipitation, improving water storage capacity of soil, decreasing the surface runoff, and preventing soil and water loss.


Reconstructive transplantation has emerged as clinical reality over the past decade. Long-term graft acceptance has been feasible in extremity and facial vascularized composite allotransplantation (VCA) under standard immunosuppression. Minimizing overall burden of lifelong immunosuppression is key to wider application of these non-life saving grafts. Allograft tolerance is the holy grail of many cell-based immunomodulatory strategies. Recent protocols using mesenchymal stem cells from bone marrow and adipose tissue offer promise and potential in VCA. This article provides an overview of the experimental basis, the scientific background and clinical applications of stem cell-based therapies in the field of reconstructive allotransplantation.


1. A requirement of "good administration" stipulates the legal system with the corresponding content. This system is treated as the legal, institutional base of the aforementioned administration. The possibility to "improve an administration" emerges with the conception of the state under the rule of Law. This conception "improves" an administration because it requires to base this administration upon the supremacy of Law (recognition of the priority of human rights), but not of the statute. The supremacy of Law doesn't require to subject Law to the administration, but to treat the administration as the organization of the protection and realization of human rights. 2. Recognition of the supremacy of Law requires to formulate clearly goals of the statute which realizes this supremacy: every statute is created and executed to realize this supremacy of Law. According to such a fact legitimacy and social efficiency of statutes is "measured". 3. Tendency to modify the formulation of aims of statutes into the indication of the object of the legal regulation or measures ("legal order") of such regulation predominates in our legislatation. Legal regulation ends in itself here. Protection and realization of human rights stop being addressees of the activities of legislature. 4. So there is no sense at all to speak about a social efficiency of such a statute: if we don't know the aim of a statute, we don't know what results we may expect. While modifying the aim into the indication of legal order, a statute becomes socially efficient even if it didn't start to operate. 5. Identification of the aim of a statute with the object of the legal regulation or measures (the indication of legal order) is the result of uncritical imitation of the tradition of the legal positivism. This tradition consciously avoids to indicate the aim of a statute that legislature would not be obliged for certain quality of a statute's content. 6. It is important to distinguish legal and nonlegal goals of a statute that it would be possible "to measure" social efficiency of Law. Those goals, which arise from Law itself and which may be reached by legal measures, must be treated as legal. Those aims, which may not be reached solely by legal measures, but may be reached by legal measures jointly with other social factors, must be treated as nonlegal, but social or complex goals. This assists to avoid the overrating of possibilities of Law, and at the same time – the social discredit of Law. 7. An opinion is based that criminal laws punish, but not prohibit. The tendency of the Criminal Code, which attributes to it's norms a function to formulate prohibitions, is treated as an encroachment upon the principle of Law hierarchy and an attempt to separate criminal Law from regulative legal norms, which establish prohibitions (criminal Law exists to guarantee those prohibitions).


Financing renewable energy projects in the United States can be a complex, time consuming, and expensive process. Currently, most equity investment in new renewable power production facilities is supported by tax credits and accelerated depreciation benefits, and is constrained by the pool of potential investors that can fully use these tax benefits and are willing to engage in complex financial structures. For debt financing, non-government lending to renewables has largely been provided by foreign banks that may be under future lending constraints due to economic and regulatory conditions.To discuss these and other renewable energy financing challenges and to identify new sources of capital to the U.S. market, two roundtable discussions were held with renewable energy and financing experts in April 2012. This report summarizes the key messages of those discussions and is designed to provide insights to the U.S. market and inform the international conversation on renewable energy financing innovations.