Abstract In the short story collection Why Don't You Carve Other Animals (1992) the Zimbabwean author Yvonne Vera initiates her construction of alternative historical narratives, particularly ones that are able to voice women's experiences. Her project of fostering an alternative engagement with Zimbabwean history locates her in a group of writers that have moved away from simple adherence to historical narratives. The importance of addressing the elision of women from history becomes all the more apparent when one considers that the silencing of their voices and the construction of identity has been twofold: identity was shaped by both the imperial discourse of the coloniser and by the patriarchal discourse of men. While women have certainly negotiated these pressures in myriad ways, imperial and patriarchal discourses have established the frameworks within which they were able to construct their identities. The need to create texts that will mirror the experiences of the female subject from their own perspectives is thus an important feminist and post-colonial project. While academic discussions of Vera's texts have often compared and contrasted her work with male Zimbabwean authors, no work has focussed on analysing her together with one of the most prominent female authors to have emerged from Zimbabwe since Vera herself. This article focuses on Vera's work and Petina Gappah's short story collection An Elegy for Easterly (2009) to explore the concerns that these two Zimbabwean authors address in their fiction.


We econometrically estimate a consumption-based asset pricing model with stochastic internal habit and test it using the generalized method of moments. The model departs from existing models with deterministic internal habit (e.g., Dunn and Singleton (1983), Ferson and Constantinides (1991), and Heaton (1995)) by introducing shocks to the coefficients in the distributed lag specification of consumption habit and consequently an additional shock to the marginal rate of substitution. The stochastic shocks to the consumption habit are persistent and provide an additional source of time variation in expected returns. Using Treasury bond returns and broad equity market index returns, we show that stochastic internal habit formation models resolve the dichotomy between the autocorrelation properties of the stochastic discount factor and those of expected returns. Consequently, they provide a better explanation of time-variation in expected returns than models with either deterministic habit or stochastic external habit. JEL Classification: E21, G10, G12


This text was developed over a five-year period during which its authors were teaching the subject. It is the culmination of successful editions of class notes and preliminary texts prepared for their one-semester course at MIT designed for sophomores majoring in physics but taken by students from other departments as well.The book describes the features that vibrations and waves of all sorts have in common and includes examples of mechanical, acoustical, and optical manifestations of these phenomena that unite various parts of physics. The main emphasis, however, is on the oscillatory aspects of the electromagnetic field -- that is, on the vibrations, waves, radiation, and the interaction of electromagnetic waves with matter. The content is designed primarily for the use of second or third year students of physics who have had a semester of mechanics and a semester of electricity and magnetism. The aim throughout is to provide a mathematically unsophisticated treatment of the subject, but one that stresses modern applications of the principles involved. Descriptions of devices that embody such principles -- such as seismometers, magnetrons, thermo-nuclear fusion experimental configurations, and lasers -- are introduced at appropriate points in the text to illustrate the theoretical concepts. Many illustrations from astrophysics are also included.


Small celestial bodies such as Near Earth Objects (NEOs) have become a common subject of study because of their importance in uncovering the mysteries of the composition, formation and evolution of the solar system. Among all asteroids, NEOs have stepped into prominence because of two important aspects: they are among the easiest celestial bodies to reach from Earth, in some cases with less demanding trajectories than a simple Earth-Moon trajectory and, even more meaningful, they may pose a threat to our planet. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive insight into the asteroid hazard problem and particularly to its mitigation. Six different concepts are fully described; specifically models for nuclear interceptor, kinetic impactor, low-thrust propulsion, mass driver, solar collector and gravity tug are developed and their efficiency is assessed for a complete set of different types of hazardous celestial objects. A multi-criteria optimization is then used to construct a set of Pareto-optimal asteroid deflection missions. The Pareto-optimality is here achieved not only by maximizing the deflection of the threatening object, but also by minimizing the total mass of the deflection mission at launch and the warning time required to deflect the asteroid. A dominance criterion is also defined and used to compare all the Pareto sets for all the various mitigation strategies. The Technology Readiness Level for each strategy is also accounted for in the comparison. Finally, this thesis will also show that impulsive deflection methods may easily catastrophically disrupt an asteroid if the required energy for a deflection reaches a certain limit threshold. A statistical model is presented to approximate both the number and size of the fragments and their initial dispersion of velocity and then used to assess the potential risk to Earth posed by the fragmentation of an asteroid as a possible outcome of a hazard mitigation mission.


Rarely has an individual's life been so inseparable from his writing as was Randolph Bourne's. His work reveals not only his political viewpoints but also his humanistic personality and the tumultuous era during which he lived. "Forgotten Prophet" carefully examines the intellect and personality of the "born essayist" who saw clearly both his century's potential for harmony and the danger that it faced from the lingering tides of nineteenth-century European nationalism.Disfigured and hunchbacked, Bourne reacted to his disability not with bitterness or self-pity, but rather with an exuberant love for beauty and a compassion for humanity that created in him a longing for a truly cosmopolitan society a "trans-national America" that would draw its strength from ethnic diversity and political pluralism. Nearly alone among American intellectuals, Bourne actively denounced involvement in World War I. He foresaw that, beyond the horrible cost in young lives, the war would bring in its wake the spiritual impoverishment of the nation and the disillusionment of its youth; it would strangle reform and social tolerance, exacerbate racism and nativism, and plant the seeds for further international instability. Although derided and largely ignored at the time they were written, Bourne's fearful predictions would all too quickly be confirmed in the dissolute frenzy of the jazz age, the turmoil of the 1930s, and the social chaos that brought about the rise of fascism in Europe and, soon, an even more destructive war.Bourne did not live to witness this terrifying unfolding of events. His career as a social critic was brief but prolific. When he died in 1918 at the age of thirty-two, a victim of the flu epidemic, he had completed three books and more than a hundred essays. His first book, "Youth and Life, " is considered by some to be the original manifesto of the counterculture. From his earliest years as a writer, Bourne was identified as a voice for youth, idealism, and progress in human relations. "Forgotten Prophet" characterizes Bourne not just as a foreseer of this century's bloodshed but, equally important, as an apostle of hope a champion of what was best, most truthful in the arts, in politics, and in the conduct of our daily lives."


Despite advancements in technology and medication therapy, coronary artery disease continues to remain the number one cause of death. Treatment for coronary artery disease requires life style modifications, medication therapy, percutaneous coronary interventions, and sometimes coronary artery bypass surgery. Though percutaneous coronary interventions are considered safe and are commonly occurring procedures, there are still risks for complications. One of the most frequently occurring complications is hematoma of the femoral artery site. The purpose of this study was to determine if there was an increased incidence of hematomas in individuals undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention with associated sheath times of less than five hours (Group A) as compared to sheath time of greater than five hours (Group B). The study used a retrospective, two group design and was conducted at a tertiary care center that performs over 1500 PCI's annually. Inclusion criteria included adults over the age of 18 who were hemodynamically stable, had no known bleeding disorders, and were punctured once at the femoral artery to perform the percutaneous intervention. Two hundred fifty medical records were reviewed utilizing a data collection tool designed by the researcher. Total sample size was 55, 21 in Group A and 34 in Group B. Six hematomas were documented as occurring, but were not reportable based on the ACC definition. Hematomas were documented in the medical record using the terms "small", "medium," and "large" versus an objective measurement. No hematomas were identified using the ACC definition, which was the measurement standard for this research hospital. Sheath times in Group A averaged 4.02 hours, and group B 7.42 hours. There was a higher incidence of descriptive hematoma that did not meet the criteria of this study in Group B. Results call for recommendations of on-going documentation of post procedure hematomas using a standardized, reliable, and valid measuring tool. APRN's can be instrumental in implementing change in patient care , hospital policy and on the national level by assuring that hematomas are accurately and consistently documented. Further research is indicated related to sheath times and potential associated negative outcomes.


Orientation: Positive organisational behaviour impacts strongly on various individual and work-related outcomes. Gender perspectives in this paradigm have not yet been comprehensively researched. Research purpose: This article explores female perspectives on mental health and sense of coherence. The aim is to promote an understanding of gender-related subjective perceptions on mental health and sense of coherence from an emic perspective. Motivation for the study: Limited research exists regarding the perceptions of positive leadership behaviour of female leaders within South African who experience unique challenges within the business environment and remain healthy at the same time. Research design, approach and method: Data from a mixed-method research study are presented, thereby providing insights into quantitative and in-depth qualitative empirical data from 15 female leaders. The study followed a single, embedded case study approach. Main findings: The main findings show that sense of coherence, mental health and gender awareness are connected. Female leaders with a high sense of coherence refer to gender in a positive or neutral way in a male-dominated work environment. The results emphasise individual and social health-promoting strategies in an organisation and the way personal life orientation contributes to individual (mental) health. Practical/managerial implications: Organisations need to focus more on promoting mental health in terms of gender and gender-related positive psychology frames. Contribution/value-add: This study contributes to the literature on gender within the positive organisational behaviour paradigm, presents recommendations for future research and highlights the practical implications for organisations.


Narrative coherence (the context in which statements are made) and narrative integrity (protecting a witness' statements from "contamination" by extrinsic narratives) shape some evidentiary rules and practices. For example, allowing or restricting leading questions usually reflects whose story is being told - the witness' own narrative, or one presented by a cross-examining attorney. In addition, prohibiting the use of "speaking objections" protects against attorneys' arguments being presented at inappropriate times, and also protects against impermissible coaching of witnesses while they are being questioned by the opposing attorney. Furthermore, the development of context in dealing with embedded narratives provides a better explanation than more conventional justifications for treating most forms of party admissions as non-hearsay (or as admissible hearsay). However, narrative considerations also suggest that - contrary to common practice, such as under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)(D) - a vicarious statement by a party's agent should not be treated as a party admission, but should instead be tested for admissibility either as a previous statement by a non-party witness, or as an exception to the hearsay rule.


Book synopsis: One of the striking features of the European Community's regulatory regimes is the role assigned to committees at all stages of the preparation of new measures and the implementation of its policies. Despite their obvious importance in the European polity, the 'comitology' of the EC has been understudied and poorly understood. This book fills a number of gaps in the literature by bringing together legal, political and policy analysts to examine the emergence of the committee role. For the European Parliament comitology represents obstacles to its own participation in policy making. For lawyers comitology is indicative of a strengthening of the administrative branch of government which seems to be evading parliamentary control and susceptibility to judicial review. These are the issues discussed and analysed in this book of original essays.


A Bayesian network approach to self-organization and learning is introduced for use with intelligent agents. Bayesian networks, with the help of influence diagrams, are employed to create a decision-theoretic intelligent agent. Influence diagrams combine both Bayesian networks and utility theory. In this research, an intelligent agent is modeled by its belief, preference, and capabilities attributes. Each agent is assumed to have its own belief about its environment. The belief aspect of the intelligent agent is accomplished by a Bayesian network. The goal of an intelligent agent is said to be the preference of the agent and is represented with a utility function in the decision theoretic intelligent agent. Capabilities are represented with a set of possible actions of the decision-theoretic intelligent agent. Influence diagrams have utility nodes and decision nodes to handle the preference and capabilities of the decision-theoretic intelligent agent, respectively.
Learning is accomplished by Bayesian networks in the decision-theoretic intelligent agent. Bayesian network learning methods are discussed intensively in this paper. Because intelligent agents will explore and learn the environment, the learning algorithm should be implemented online. None of the existent Bayesian network learning algorithms has online learning. Thus, an online Bayesian network learning method is proposed to allow the intelligent agent learn during its exploration.
Self-organization of the intelligent agents is accomplished because each agent models other agents by observing their behavior. Agents have belief, not only about environment, but also about other agents. Therefore, an agent takes its decisions according to the model of the environment and the model of the other agents. Even though each agent acts independently, they take the other agents behaviors into account to make a decision. This permits the agents to organize themselves for a common task.
To test the proposed intelligent agent's learning and self-organizing abilities, Windows application software is written to simulate multi-agent systems. The software, IntelliAgent, lets the user design decision-theoretic intelligent agents both manually and automatically. The software can also be used for knowledge discovery by employing Bayesian network learning a database.
Additionally, we have explored a well-known herding problem to obtain sound results for our intelligent agent design. In the problem, a dog tries to herd a sheep to a certain location, i.e. a pen. The sheep tries to avoid the dog by retreating from the dog. The herding problem is simulated using the IntelliAgent software. Simulations provided good results in terms of the dog's learning ability and its ability to organize its actions according to the sheep's (other agent) behavior.
In summary, a decision-theoretic approach is applied to the self-organization and learning problems in intelligent agents. Software was written to simulate the learning and self-organization abilities of the proposed agent design. A user manual for the software and the simulation results are presented.
This research is supported by the Office of Naval Research with the grant number N00014-98-1-0779. Their financial support is greatly appreciated.


XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting language) was recently, in 2008, in its 10th year. The concept was articulated in 1998 by Charles Hoffman, known as XFRML (eXtensible Financial Reporting Mark Up Language) to facilitate the business reporting process and improve financial reporting. The objective of this paper is to examine a decade (1998-2008) of XBRL articles published in various publications including trade, practitioner and academic journals to identify trends and patterns, milestones, and organizations actively contributed to this development. Another goal is to assess public perceptions of XBRL, its capabilities and its future. We examined published articles where XBRL appeared either in the title or abstract of the article during 1998-2008. Considering that XBRL reporting is being required only in recent years, the research shows various interest groups worked together for a long time to achieve a common goal. The academic community has also been proactive in contributing to and assessing this new reporting standard. There is a trail of research articles to document this contribution. This paper provides various charts and interesting statistics.


This article extends the concept of using the steady state ranked simulated sampling approach (SRSIS) by Al-Saleh and Samawi (2000) for improving Monte Carlo methods for single integration problem to multiple integration problems. We demonstrate that this approach provides unbiased estimators and substantially improves the performance of some Monte Carlo methods for bivariate integral approximations, which can be extended to multiple integrals' approximations. This results in a significant reduction in costs and time required to attain a certain level of accuracy. In order to compare the performance of our method with the Samawi and Al-Saleh (2007) method, we use the same two illustrations for the bivariate case.


This book presents a critical edition of the twelfth/eighteenth century ah/ce manuscript on the subject of legal maxims ʿUmdat al-Nāzir ʿalā al-Ashbāh wa'l-Naẓāʾir. It was composed by the distinguished Ḥanifite jurist Abū 'l-Suʿūd al-Ḥusaynī and is a commentary on an earlier seminal text Al-Ashbāh wa'l-Naẓāʾir', authored by Ibn Nujaym in the tenth/sixteenth century. The volume is divided into three main parts, the first of which provides an historical and theoretical introduction to the genre of al-qawāʿid al-fiqhiyyah (legal maxims). The second part introduces the two texts and their authors, discusses their literary legacy within the Ḥanafī School of law and covers issues of editing, authenticity and provenance. Finally, the third part of the book consists of seven edited chapters of the ʿUmdat al-Nāzir ʿalā al-Ashbāh wa'l-Naẓāʾir. The first of these is the author's introduction to his work followed by one for each of the first six qawāʿid. The work is important as a commentary on one of the most significant legal texts which revived interest in the subject within the Ḥanafī School of law after five centuries of stagnation. It is also the most copious of all the forty-four commentaries on Ibn Nujaym's book and it is a combination of the commentaries of at least three well known Ḥanafite scholars. Because Abū'l-Suʿūd synthesises the most authoritative opinions from these commentaries, ʿUmdat al-Nāẓir serves as a definitive summation of the discourse on legal maxims within the school.


Being a life partner and having a family is one of the tasks of personal development in early adulthood, as well as a homosexual person or a gay person. Differences in sexual orientation and rejection in relation to the environment, family and religion, however, make the desire to get marry being a conflict in a gay person. In this study, the author highlights the phenomenon of the inner conflict between love and marriage that occurs in a gay person. The author reveals phenomenology to express the experience and psychological dynamics of a gay person who wishes to change and marry. The results showed that a person with homosexual has a great desire to change and marry. However, this desire is not a wish or a hope that is easy for a gay person to realize. Many experiences have been shared, views on his life, fears, conflicts and hopes that exist in him, which also encourage and complicate his desire to marry.


In this paper, a set of 145 type II bursts-associated solar flares observed during the period November1997 to December 2006 has been investigated. The radio bursts have been observed by Culgoora radio spectrograph and X-ray flares have been observed by GOES spacecraft. The main objectives are to study the distribution of locations of flares associated with type II bursts on the Sun and association of type II radio bursts with major solar flares and halo CMEs. Among the different latitudinal bins considered, more number of events occurred in the active latitude range 11-20° in both hemispheres. Shifting of dominance of type II-associated flare events from higher latitudes to equator has been seen from the butterfly diagram. Among the different longitudinal bins, more number of type IIs are found in the solar active longitudes around 50 degrees on both the eastern and western regions and in the range 10-20° west. That might be due to the favorable ambient/source conditions in the solar corona. In addition, the DH type II association with metric type IIs has been found to be nearly absent beyond the east longitude 50°. This east-west asymmetry in the low frequency type II bursts (DH type IIs) may be due to emission directivity of the low frequency radiations produced by CME-driven shocks.


Computed tomography (CT) scanning is one of the viable techniques to evaluate apertures of rough walled fractures. However, quantitative evaluation of small fracture apertures using CT data requires use of calibration curves. In this study, the increments of fracture apertures were physically measured using the DEMEC points and the integrated CT numbers across the fracture aperture were calculated from the CT data for development of the calibration chart. This method overcomes the difficulty in fabrication of perfectly smooth rock fractures for the calibration process. It was demonstrated that the calibration curve developed from this method could be used to characterize variable aperture fractures in sandstone within a certain accuracy. In addition, geostatistic tools were used to quantify any anisotropy in fracture aperture. Results reveal that the induced fracture in sandstone displays a high aperture variation and undulation with an anisotropy in aperture distribution.


PURPOSE
Implementation of a standardized daptomycin dosing protocol in a community teaching hospital to determine potential cost savings, effectiveness, and safety is presented.

METHODS
A retrospective review of randomly selected patients receiving daptomycin therapy from October 2013 to January 2014 was performed to establish a preimplementation patient control group. A specific time for preparing daptomycin in the i.v. room was used based on a standardized administration time of 4 p.m. Reconstituted doses were stored for up to 48 hours in the refrigerator in plastic syringes. All daptomycin doses were given by rapid i.v. administration. For all patients who received daptomycin, the protocol specified that a baseline creatine phosphokinase level be evaluated within 24 hours of the start date and on day 3, day 7, and weekly thereafter until daptomycin therapy was completed or discontinued.

RESULTS
The most frequent indications for daptomycin use preimplementation and postimplementation were related to catheter use or persistent bacteremia and skin and soft tissue infections. Through the implementation of the standardized dosing nomogram and optimization of i.v. room workflow, the amount of waste decreased by 21,500 mg and generated a savings of $13,845 over the course of the four-month study period, which can be extrapolated to $41,535 annually. The infection cure rate at completion of therapy was 56.7% in the preimplementation population compared with 70.0% in the postimplementation population. Daptomycin was well tolerated at the standardized doses used in the study.

CONCLUSION
Implementation of a standardized dosing nomogram reduced the amount of daptomycin wasted and resulted in cost savings. The standardized dosing nomogram did not impair the rate of clinical effectiveness or cause adverse events.


A custom 90-nm bulk digital CMOS switch driver is codesigned and integrated with a silicon photonic switch. A photonic device model is created within the electronic design environment, facilitating driver optimization and performance evaluation prior to fabrication. The fabricated drivers implemented in two variations produce transition times as low as 50 ps and generate open eye diagrams using supply voltages ranging from 0.8 to 5 V. The driver is hybrid integrated with a broadband low-power silicon photonic 2 × 2 switch, based on a modified Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The switch has demonstrated operation over 100 nm of spectral bandwidth with less than -17-dB crosstalk, greater than 25 °C tolerance to temperature variations, and compatibility with 1-V driving signals. The integration demonstrates the interoperability of the switch and driver, which together achieve transition times below 4 ns and average power consumption of 2 mW. Finally, throughput bandwidth of 160 Gb/s is demonstrated for all switch configurations via eye diagrams and bit error rate curves.


Objective: Shark type II collagen (SCII) is extracted as a glycoprotein from the cartilage of blue shark (Prionace glauca). We aim to confirm the effects of oral tolerance of SCII on inflammatory and immune responses to the ankle joint of rheumatoid-arthritis rats induced by Complete Freund's Adjuvant (CFA). Materials and Methods: The onset of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) was observed 14 ± x days after injection of CFA. Rats in the control group were treated with acetic acid by oral administration (0.05 mmol kg−1d−1, days 14–28), while rats in experimental groups were treated by oral administration with SCII (1 or 3 mg kg−1d−1, days 14–28), Tripterygium wilfordii polyglycosidium (TWP) (10 mg kg−1d−1, days 14–28), and bovine type II collagen from US (US-CII) (1 mg kg−1d−1, days 14–28), respectively. The severity of arthritis was evaluated by the articular swelling. The immunological indexes observed included delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH) reaction, the level of interleukins 10 (IL-10) in rat blood serum and morphological characterization. Mixed lymphocyte culture (MLC) was performed to investigate the relationship between T cell apoptosis and specific immune tolerance induced by SCII. Results: Treatment with SCII for 2 weeks significantly attenuated the acute inflammation. The rats orally administrated with SCII at the level of 3 mg kg−1d−1 (SCII 3) and US-CII had decreased DTH reaction compared with rats in control group. Rats treated with SCII 3 had the highest level of IL-10 with 102 pg/mL. SCII with concentration of 10 μg/L could help to significantly enhance level of Fas/Apo-1 in T cell in vitro. The result of histological staining indicated that the recovery of the articular membranes of ankle joint in SCII 3 group was greatly enhanced. Conclusions: Our results suggest that appropriate dose of SCII can not only ameliorate symptoms but also modify the disease process of Complete-Freunds-Adjuvant-induced arthritis. Oral administration of SCII might be a potential candidate as a novel drug for further investigation.


Background In spite of legislations and policies to ensure an inclusive society in South Africa for the accommodation of people with disabilities, there are reports that they still struggle to move freely within society. Objectives As part of a larger qualitative exploratory study on the preparation of undergraduate civil engineering students in a local university to contribute to the development of an inclusive society, this article seeks to understand the impact of the lived experiences of people with disabilities in their interaction with the built environment. Method Four persons with disabilities, considered to be knowledgeable about South African legislations relating to disability, were purposely selected to each share one specific experience whilst interacting with the built environment. The transcribed texts of the interviews were analysed by using the phenomenological–hermeneutic method. Results The participants exhibited strong desires to participate in society. However, the sense of loss of control and independence as they encountered challenges in the built environment changed the euphoria to disempowerment, rejection, anger and despondency. In spite of their experiences, participants expressed a commitment towards overcoming the challenges encountered in the broader interest of people with disabilities. Conclusion A deeper understanding of the impact of the experiences of people with disabilities when they participate within the built environment in South Africa revealed a broad spectrum of negative emotions, which may impact the quality of life and well-being of the participants.


Sustainability is becoming increasingly relevant in higher education, as the need to address complex cultural and ecological problems intensifies. How sustainability is taught has a profound influence on the kind of learning that takes place and the impact it has in the world. Sustainability pedagogy is offered as a tool for creating transformational sustainability learning that is thematic and cocreated, critically questions dominant norms and incorporates diverse perspectives, is active, participatory and relational, and is grounded in a specific place. This pedagogical design draws on the wisdom of ecological systems, recognizing that ecological systems are our best teachers for creating sustainable and regenerative systems. This article connects this pedagogical model with Okanagan indigenous teachings about the whole self, to explore how the whole self can be intentionally included in an ecological design process to promote transformational learning.


Rhinoplasty is one of the most common cos-metic surgery performed by the otorhi-nolaryngologists. The main indication for rhinoplasty is cosmetic or functional or both. In regard to paucity of research regarding pa-tient satisfaction after surgery, we have done this prospective clinical study in our hospital. 40 patients were included in the study from January 2012 to December 2012. Rhinoplasty Outcomes Evaluation (ROE) Questionnaire was applied to all the patients and evaluation of the satisfaction pre op and post opera-tively was assessed and the results were sta-tistically analysed. The age of the study group ranged from 20 yrs to 39 yrs with the mean age of 24.85 +/- 3.43 years. The average satisfaction mark of patients un-dergoing rhinoplasty in pre-operative state was 28.05 & post-operative it improved and reached to 67.91.The average satisfaction of female were 26.75 preoperatively reached to 63.68 postoperatively. The average satisfaction of male were 31.2 preoperatively reached upto 67.91 post operatively. The degree of the satis-faction pre and post operatively was compared using student t test and paired t test. It was 67.91 in males and 36.53 among females which was statistically significant (p < 0.05). Patient satisfaction is as important as technical aspects of rhinoplasty. Hence a novel attempt is made in this direction to assess and understand pa-tient expectations to achieve realistic goals in rhinoplasty.


. Companies from various domains record their operational behavior in a form of event logs. These event logs can be analyzed and relevant process models representing the real companies' behavior can be discovered. One of the main advantages of the process discovery methods is that they commonly produce models in a form of graphs which can be easily visualized giving an intuitive view of the executed processes. More-over, the graph-based representation opens new challenging perspectives for the application of graph comparison methods to find and explicitly visualize differences between discovered process models (representing real behavior) and reference process models (representing expected behav-ior). Another important area where graph comparison algorithms can be used is the recognition of process modeling patterns. Unfortunately, exact graph comparison algorithms are computationally expensive. In this paper, we adapt an inexact tabu search algorithm to find differences between BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) models. The tabu search and greedy algorithms were implemented within the BPMNDif-fViz tool and were tested on BPMN models discovered from synthetic and real-life event logs. It was experimentally shown that inexact tabu search algorithm allows to find a solution which is close to the optimal in most of the cases. At the same, its computational complexity is significantly lower than the complexity of the exact A ∗ search algorithm investigated earlier.


Catch-and-release angling is popular in many parts of the world and plays an increasingly important role in management of recreational fisheries. Although the magnitude of catch-and-release mortality is well documented for many species, potential sublethal effects have been little studied. An experiment was conducted to assess directly the effects of catch-and-release angling on growth of largemouth bass, Micropterus salmoides Lacépède. Angling mortality was 0.00 ± 0.092% for largemouth bass caught on plastic grubs. There was no difference (P 1⁄4 0.57) in weight gain between caught and uncaught fish over a 40-day angling and recovery period. Although catch-and-release angling appears to have no effect on largemouth bass growth, previous studies documented sublethal effects on growth and reproduction in other species, suggesting that the occurrence and magnitude of sublethal effects vary among species.


Communication scholars have articulated the concept of protest paradigm to capture the news media's tendency to portray social protests as deviant, threatening, or impotent. Developments in the media and social environment have led to more diversified media representations of protests, however. Correspondingly, scholars have started to treat the protest paradigm as a variable. Extending this line of research, this study content-analyzed Hong Kong newspaper coverage of protests. The results show that the protest paradigm is more likely to emerge if the protest involved radical tactics, if the protest's target responded to the media, and, in politically conservative newspapers, when the protest addressed political topics. Protest coverage is less negative when the protest addressed a political matter, and there is evidence that protest coverage has become less negative over time.


Flexible pipes are commonly used for connecting seabed flow-lines to floating production
facilities. The general riser design consists of an internal carcass for collapse
resistance, a polymer fluid barrier, carbon steel interlocked circumferential
pressure armour layer for resisting internal pressure loads, helically wound carbon
steel tensile armour layers to resist axial loads and a watertight external sheath.
Much of the analytical work that has been carried out on flexible composite pipe
is based on the early stress analyses of wire ropes, and this is primarily because
of the helical geometry of many of the metallic elements such as pressure armour
and tensile armour layers of a flexible riser. The general design philosophy of the
layer is defined in API 17J (American Petroleum Institute) in terms of the stress
"utilisation" factor that specifies the maximum allowable average hoop stress in
the layer, which is conventionally produced by the elastic stress analysis. The layers are subjected to severe cyclic bending and twisting deformation during
manufacturing of the pipe which makes the material to exceed the yield point.
Consequently, residual stresses are developed in the pipe material and variable
amounts of non zero stresses exist in the metallic layers of the newly manufactured
pipes. An attempt has been made to model the amount of residual stress evolved
during manufacturing stage for two different metallic layers, namely; pressure
armour and tensile armour layers and its effects on overall pipe's performance
while in service. The strategy is to apply the finite element (FE) method by creating a3 dimensional
wire model of the segment of pipe. Solid structural elements with plasticity were
employed for the analyses. Kinematic hardening with Baushinger effect, contact
and friction effects were also taken into account. Precise boundary conditions were
applied to the model for elastic-plastic bending. The resulting residual stresses
have been transferred to 3D axisymmetric model to investigate the internal and
external pressure effects. This new procedure was carried out for both layers
satisfying equilibrium and compatibility conditions for the pressure and tensile
armours to find the common interface pressure and contact loading. FAT (Factory
Acceptance Test) condition is simulated to investigate the level of residual stress
variation. Experimental measurements of residual stress by X-Ray diffraction are
in well agreement with FE results.


Background: E- Learning gives students an ability to learn through Internet and modify their learning in this process. The purpose of the present study is to assess the effect of e-learning on the academic development of Esfahan University of Medical Sciences' students. Materials and Methods: Methodology used in the study was descriptive. The statistical population included all students (4563) who were selected by cluster sampling (140). Measurement tool used in this study was a researchers-made questionnaire. Validity of the questionnaire was estimated at 0.94 using Cronbach's Alpha. The analysis of the data was done at two levels of descriptive (mean' digression' frequency) and inferential (t-test' f test). Results: The results of this research indicate that e-learning was effective on the academic advancement of the university students. The mean scores of the facets which have had an impact on the academic development are as follows:  enrichment or increase in ability 3.55 ' education with 3.60' facilities with 3.65' change in educational content 3.55' enhancement in awareness with 3.53. Conclusion: The results show that e-learning has a positive impact on academic achievement.


We describe the application of a performance engineering methodology based on UML (unified modelling language) diagrams with annotations taken from the profile for schedulability, performance and time. The methodology targets the early stages of the development process and works exclusively with system scenarios. These scenarios are mechanically translated into the stochastic process algebra FSP and are analysed using existing tools to study both the behavioural and performance properties of the system. A case study of a mobile telecommunications billing system is used to assess the effectiveness of the approach. The results show that our methodology is effective at detecting, quantifying and locating performance bottlenecks. A set of guidelines for resolving performance problems is devised and used with performance analysis results to drive a series of design changes until the performance requirements of the system have been met.


Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. Abstract In Drosophila melanogaster, hindsight (hnt) encodes a putative Zinc-finger transcription factor that is expressed in a highly complex pattern during development. Despite an apparent wealth of information regarding the dynamic expression pattern of hnt, the cellular response and defined target genes of Hnt remain largely unknown. Hnt is important in various developmental processes, and recent work suggests that Hnt function is downstream of the Notch (N) signaling pathway. Interestingly, the mammalian homolog of hnt is RAS-Responsive Element Binding Protein 1 (RREB1), which functions by binding to the RAS-responsive elements of the target gene promoters. Ras is a key downstream effector of the highly conserved Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) signaling pathway, yet the relationship between Hnt and EGFR signaling has not been extensively studied using the powerful approach of Drosophila genetics. This study involved a detailed examination of hnt mutant phenotypes and phenotypes associated with Hnt overexpression. Overall, this work revealed striking similarities between egfr and hnt mutant embryos. In particular, hnt mutant embryos were found to resemble egfr mutant embryos in their failure to properly develop peripheral nervous system (PNS) structures known as chordotonal organs and in their inability to recruit neighbouring secretory oenocytes. In addition, Hnt overexpression was found to induce ectopic DPax2 expression in an EGFR-dependent manner within the embryo. This relationship was also examined in a second developmental context, the pupal retinal neuroepithelium. Overall, the data presented suggests that Hnt's primary function in the development of the PNS is associated with potentiating EGFR signaling.


Today, the idea of social media is radically different from the media of a decade ago. While a decade ago the Internet was considered new media, our society now turns to Facebook, Twitter, and blogs as sources of information. In the United States during election cycles, the use of social media by presidential candidates has become a way for many voters to find out about candidates. As a result, presidential candidates have had to adapt their campaign strategies to work with these media in a way that will effectively target these audiences. This study examines whether campaigns that are more "social media savvy" will ultimately garner more votes, specifically from those aged 18-24. By analyzing social media tactics of the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections and surveying voters in this age range, I ultimately found that there was no relationship between social media use and young voter participation or likelihood of voting for Democratic candidates. However, there was a relationship between social media usage and likelihood of voting for Republican candidates: when social media was used, participants were less likely to vote for the Republican candidate than when no social media use was present.


Existing approaches for visuomotor robotic control typically require characterizing the robot in advance by calibrating the camera or performing system identification. We propose mavric, an approach that works with minimal prior knowledge of the robot's morphology, and requires only a camera view containing the robot and its environment and an unknown control interface. mavric revolves around a mutual information-based method for self-recognition, which discovers visual "control points" on the robot body within a few seconds of exploratory interaction, and these control points in turn are then used for visual servoing. mavric can control robots with imprecise actuation, no proprioceptive feedback, unknown morphologies including novel tools, unknown camera poses, and even unsteady handheld cameras. We demonstrate our method on visually-guided 3D point reaching, trajectory following, and robot-to-robot imitation.


This report has been produced as part of the "Lagging Regions" project of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. Implementing a Preparatory action of the European Parliament in close cooperation with the Commission's Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy, Lagging Regions aims to support selected slow growth and low-income territories in nine EU Member States in the implementation of their smart specialisation strategies. In addition to the provision of targeted support to each of these partner territories, Lagging Regions brings them together to share experiences and to develop cross-regional, horizontal perspectives on the key challenges they and many other regions across Europe are facing. These include: Governance, Monitoring and Evaluation; Managing industrial transitions and Transregional and transnational collaboration. Monitoring and evaluation are important concerns for regions involved in RIS3. Under the Lagging Regions project, horizontal working group activities led to the production of a Massive Open Online course on monitoring. This work also led to the identification of the key next steps in furthering regions' capacities to monitor and evaluate the outcomes of their RIS3 efforts. This report presents the outcomes of one such next step. The Lagging Regions project has previously highlighted the need for better tools and opportunities to compare policy processes, outputs and outcomes across different dimensions and geographies. These issues pointed directly to the role open data, open (government data), open science and open innovation in S3 monitoring, an area so far unexplored. Following a combination of participatory processes, fieldwork, desk research and expert consultation, the working group activities described in this document, have provided great learning opportunities to the participants. This report is an attempt to share such lessons with the wider stakeholder community.


Albinism is a common problem encountered in interspecific crosses and tissue culture experiments including anther culture and generation of doubled haploids. It is characterized by partial or complete loss of chlorophyll pigments and incomplete differentiation of chloroplast membranes. This in turn impairs photosynthesis and the plants eventually die at a young stage without reaching maturity. Environmental conditions such as light, temperature, media composition and culture conditions play some role in determining the frequency of albino plant formation. Genetic factors are even more important, and are major determinants in albinism. Genetic studies in different crops show that it is a recessive trait governed by many loci. Both the nuclear and chloroplast genomes affect albinism and incompatibilities between the two are a probable cause of many pigment defects in hybrid progenies. Such incompatibility has been reported in a large number of angiosperms. The mechanisms behind these incompatibilities are poorly understood. Studies of plastid DNA inheritance together with observations using electron microscopy have established that the transmission of plastids can be maternal, paternal or biparental, even within the same genus, especially following wide crosses; contrary to the widespread belief that plastids are almost always transmitted from the maternal parent. Albinism has been overcome in some crop species through somatic hybridization and development of cybrids (cytoplasmic hybrids). However, the strict requirement of efficient protoplast regeneration is a major limitation of these techniques. This review focuses on albinism following interspecific crosses or development of doubled haploids facilitated by tissue culture experiments, underlying mechanisms, and the possibilities for dealing with this important biotechnological limitation.


We propose an efficient sequential Monte Carlo inference scheme for the recently proposed coalescent clustering model [1]. Our algorithm has a quadratic runtime while those in [1] is cubic. In experiments, we were surprised to find that in addition to being more efficient, it is also a better sequential Monte Carlo sampler than the best in [1], when measured in terms of variance of estimated likelihood and effective sample size.


Euchroite, ideally Cu2(AsO4)(OH)·3H2O, is a supergene copper arsenate mineral, known from a number of oxidation zones in a form of emerald-green crystals. Here, we investigated thermodynamics, crystal structure, and parageneses of euchroite from the Svatodusna Cu-deposit near the village of Ľubietova (Slovakia). The actual chemical composition of the studied sample is Cu2[(AsO4)0.98(PO4)0.02](OH)·3H2O. A single-crystal study added the positions of H atoms to the previously known structural model of euchroite. All of the (H2O) groups in the structure are non-transformer, with their O atoms four-fold coordinated. The structural formula of euchroite can be written as [[6]Cu22+(AsO4)(OH)(H2[4]O)3]. The measured thermodynamic properties of Cu2[(AsO4)0.98(PO4)0.02](OH)·3H2O are Δ f H° = −1884.7 ± 4.7 kJ mol−1, S ° = 276.6 ± 3.3 J mol−1 K−1, and Δ f G° = −1555.7 ± 4.8 kJ mol−1. The equilibrium constant for the reaction Cu2(AsO4)0.98(PO4)0.02(OH)·3H2O+3H+ = 2Cu2++0.98H2AsO4−+0.02H2PO4−+ 4H2O is log K sp = 4.19 ± 0.87. We estimated the properties of the end-member euchroite Cu2(AsO4)(OH)·3H2O with log K sp = 4.19. Euchroite is metastable with respect to olivenite, and numerous observations document this metastability. Yet, there are many samples that persist for centuries without change. Observations in the field show that there are also pseudomorphs of cornwallite after euchroite or complex pseudomorphs of cornwallite + cornubite + olivenite after euchroite. Euchroite at the site studied is younger than chalcophyllite and strashimirite; the temporal relationship to parnauite is more complex, as euchroite can be older or younger than parnauite. Our results suggest that euchroite is one of the less-stable copper arsenates, but the energetic margin to the stable phases in the CuO–As2O5–H2O system is small.


Objective To examine the rates of colorectal cancer (CRC) following a negative screening sigmoidoscopy. Design Cohort study. Setting An integrated healthcare delivery organisation in California, USA. Participants 72 483 men and women aged 50 years and above who had a negative screening sigmoidoscopy between 1994 and 1996. Those at elevated risk of CRC due to inflammatory bowel disease, prior polyps or CRC, or a strong family history of CRC were excluded. Main outcome measures Incidence rates of distal and proximal CRC. Standardised Incidence Ratios were used to compare annual incidence rates of distal and proximal CRC in the cohort to expected rates based on Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results data. Additionally, rate ratios (RR) and rate differences (RD) comparing the incidence rate of distal CRC in years 6+ postscreening with that in years 1–5 were calculated. Results Incidence rates of distal CRC were lower than those in the San Francisco Bay area population at large during each of the first 10 years postsigmoidoscopy screening. However, the incidence of distal CRC rose steadily, from 3 per 100 000 in the first year of follow-up to 40 per 100 000 in the 10th year. During the second half of follow-up, the rate of distal CRC was twice as high as in the first half (RR 2 .08, 95% CI 1.38 to 3.16; RD 14 per 100 000 person-years, 95% CI 6 to 22). Conclusions Though still below population levels, the incidence of CRC during years 6–10 following a negative sigmoiodoscopy is appreciably higher than during the first 5 years.


5 pages, 20 slides.-- Presentation delivered at the conference "Research Information Systems: Integration for Open Access to Scientific Outputs" held Apr 2nd, 2014 at the CVTI SR in Bratislava, Slovakia.


This is a revised and extensively rewritten edition of one of the most influential monographs on legal philosophy published in recent years. Writing in the introduction to the first edition the author characterized Anglophone philosophers as being ..."divided, and often waver[ing] between two main philosophical objectives: the moral evaluation of law and legal institutions, and an account of its actual nature." Questions of methodology have therefore tended to be sidelined, but were bound to surface sooner or later, as they have in the later work of Ronald Dworkin. The main purpose of this book is to provide a critical assessment of Dworkin's methodological turn, away from analytical jurisprudence towards a theory of interpretation, and the issues it gives rise to. The author argues that the importance of Dworkin's interpretative turn is not that it provides a substitute for 'semantic theories of law' (a dubious concept), but that it provides a new conception of jurisprudence, aiming to present itself as a comprehensive rival to the conventionalism manifest in legal positivism. Furthermore, once the interpretative turn is regarded as an overall challenge to conventionalism, it is easier to see why it does not confine itself to a critique of method. Law as interpretation calls into question the main tenets of its positivist rival, in substance as well as method. The book re-examines conventionalism in the light of this interpretative challenge.


Use these videos to learn how to use the library databases then use sample searches or tips sheets to reinforce your learning..


In the early 1970s, Britain's then Northern Secretary Merlyn Rees disdainfully dubbed South Armagh "Bandit Country". The name stuck. Crossmaglen, a town with a peaceful past, was transformed into the most infamous "killing field" for British soldiers stationed in Northern Ireland. The British army presence in the town's fortress, known locally as "the Alamo", is regarded as crucial to security operations but was based on false premises and rash promises that the area would be brought into line. In this book, the author aims to set the record straight. The people of South Armagh are neither bandits nor gangsters and it is not a lawless peace. The book aims to evoke another south Armagh, far from the stereotype of "bandit country".


A total of 111 armed conflicts have been recorded for the years 1989-2000. Of these, 33 were active in 2000. This represents a decrease from 1999 and 1998, and it is the lowest number of armed conflicts recorded in the post-Cold War period. Seven interstate armed conflicts were recorded for the whole period, of which two were still active in 2000. The decrease in the number of armed conflicts is not sufficient to conclude that there will be a further decline. Conflicts have become increasingly complex in terms of number of actors and regional connections between those actors. There is a larger proportion of new and minor armed conflicts being resolved than long-running and complex major armed conflicts.


Three-dimensional compositional zoning patterns in garnet-zone garnets from Harpswell Neck, Maine, United States, suggest complex patterns of nucleation and growth. Compositional zoning is often asymmetric, and core compositions do not always coincide with the geometric center of the garnet. In detail, garnet zoning patterns show multiple, isolated, high-MnO areas that we interpret as sites of garnet nucleation. If it is assumed that garnet growth is close to equilibrium and the Mn zoning is not significantly modified by diffusion, then the MnO contours or isosurfaces can serve as a proxy for patterns of garnet nucleation and growth. Computer-generated, three-dimensional animations of these patchwork MnO zoning patterns reveal that many garnets contain multiple nuclei that grew and coalesced to form a single crystal. New nuclei often appeared next to preexisting porphyroblasts and became incorporated into the growing crystal. Contrary to the widely held idea that garnets grow radially outward from a single nucleus, we propose that many of the garnets examined in this study grew by the coalescence of multiple nuclei.


Designed to be used either as a primary text or with any Law and Religion or First Amendment text, Law and Religion: Cases in Context presents descriptions and discussions of the landmark cases in law and religion and the First Amendment. Cases are selected from the leading religion and First Amendment casebooks, and the authors provide insights into the significance of each while revealing its context and, for many, details about what happened after the case was concluded. This unique text will intrigue students and engage their interest with: - Accessible prose and interesting illustrations; - Cases that involve issues that continue to confound the courts: creation science and evolution; public religious symbols like the cross and the cr che; private religious clothing like the yarmulke and the khimar; tax policy and religion; - Engaging characters, such as: Guy Ballard, who told customers that he was chosen by Saint Germain as a divine messenger and possessed supernatural healing powers that they could purchase; Officer and Doctor Simcha Goldman, who wore a yarmulke to the psychology clinic until an irritated military attorney complained to Goldman's superiors that the yarmulke was not permitted under Air Force regulations; Kimberlie Webb, a Philadelphia police officer who lost her efforts to wear a headscarf while in uniform and on duty; Ronald Rosenberger, who successfully challenged the University of Virginia's denial of funding to his evangelical publication, Wide Awake; - Insights from leading law and religion scholars of diverse professional, religious, geographical, and institutional backgrounds. In her role as editor, Leslie C. Griffin, who holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Yale University as well as a J.D. from Stanford Law School, has brought together an impressive group of contributors to create Law and Religion: Cases in Context.


Geographic information science (GIScience) offers survey researchers a plethora of rapidly evolving research strategies and tools for data acquisition and analysis. However, the potential for incorporating geographic information systems (GIS) tools into traditional survey research has not yet been fully appreciated by survey researchers. In this article, we provide a comprehensive overview of recent advances and challenges in leveraging this potential. First, we present state-of-the-art applications of GIS tools in traditional survey research, drawing mainly on examples from psychological survey research (e.g., socioecological psychology). We also discuss innovative GIS tools (e.g., wearables) and GIScience methods (e.g., citizen sensing) that expand the scope of traditional surveys. Second, we highlight a number of challenges and problems (e.g., choice of spatial scale, statistical issues, privacy concerns) and - where possible - suggest remedies. With increasing awareness of the potential that GIS tools hold for survey research, and intensified dialogue between researchers from both sides, more fruitful collaboration appears within reach.


In this article, Roy Bregman examines a way of solving the problems caused by manually managing the flow of information in a matter with a high volume of documentation. He argues that computer-aided case management systems streamline the litigation process and assist attorneys in winning cases. In particular, the information is completely portable. See 1997 DR 458 for his previous article on the paperless office.


Cataract surgery was planned on 41 ERG positive eyes of 25 dogs of which 9 had unilateral and 16 had bilateral cataracts. Phacofragmentation and aspiration surgery was performed on 32 eyes of 20 dogs (and ECCE was performed on 4 eyes and ICCE was performed on 5 eyes of 5 dogs) of different breeds, sexes and ages. Vision restoration and complications were evaluated postoperatively in the short term (4 weeks). Mean age of the 20 dogs was 7.3 years. Stages of cataracts were classified as mature (n: 17), immature (n: 8) and intumescent (n: 7). While the mean phacoemulsification time was 1.50 min in immature and intumescent cases, it was 5.30 min in mature cases. The mean irrigation volume was 100 ml in intumescent and immature cases and 300 ml in mature cases. Functional vision was established in 22.2% of mature eyes and 77.8% of immature and intumescent eyes. The success rate of phacofragmentation surgery was significantly better in immature and intumescent eyes than in mature eyes (P < 0.0001). Mean age was 8.57 years in the dogs without functional vision and 5.88 years in those with functional vision after phacofragmentation surgery. Age of the dog at surgery was a significant factor in the restoration of vision (P < 0.05). In this study, the most important intraoperatative complications (anterior capsular fibrosis, radial tear of anterior capsule and posterior capsular rupture-vitreous prolapsus) were observed in the mature and aged dogs. The most important postoperative complications in this study (uveitis and corneal thermal injury) were observed in mature and aged dogs. Vision was restored in eyes with immature and intumescent cataracts more successfully (11.7-fold) than in eyes with mature cataracts by phacofragmentation surgery.


Aristotle has split physics at the sphere of the moon; above this sphere there is no change except eternal spherical motion, below are two different kinds of motion: Natural motion (without specific cause) and enforced motion. In modern view motion is caused by gravity and by other forces. The split at the sphere of the moon has been definitely overcome through the observation of a supernova and several comets by Tycho Brahe. The second distinction was eradicated by Isaak Newton who showed that gravitational motion was caused by a force proportional to the inverse square of the distance. By the theory of General Relativity, Albert Einstein showed that there is no gravitational force but motion under gravity (i.e. Aristotles ) is caused by the curved geometry of spacetime. In this way, the Aristotelian distinction between natural motion and enforced motion has come back in the form of two great theories: General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory which are today incompatible. To find a way out of this dilemma is the challenge of modern physics.


The ethnic federalization of the post-1991 Ethiopia and the subsequent adoption of developmental state paradigm are the two most important pillars for the country's political and economic restructuring. An interventionist developmental state model is opted for against the dominant narrative of the non-interventionist neo-liberal approach as the right path to conquer poverty: a source of national humiliation. On the other hand, ethnically federated Ethiopia is considered as an antidote to the historical pervasive mismanagement of the ethno-linguistic and cultural diversity of the polity. The presence of these seemingly paradoxical state models in Ethiopia makes it a captivating case study for analysis. Ethiopia's experiment of pursuing a developmental state in a decentralized form of governance not only deviates from the prevalent pattern but also is perceived to be inherently incompatible due to the competing approaches that characterize the two systems. This article argues that the way in which the developmental state is being practiced in Ethiopia is eroding the values and the very purposes of ethnic federalism. Its centralized, elitist and authoritarian nature, which are the hallmark of the Ethiopian developmental state, defeats the positive strides that ethnic federalism aspires to achieve, thereby causing discontent and disenfranchisement among a swathe of the society. The article posits that the developmental state can and should be reinvented in a manner that goes in harmony with the ideals of ethnic federalism. The notion of process-based leadership remains one way of reinventing the Ethiopian developmental state model.


Vikram Seth's novel is at its core a love story, the tale of Lata - and her mother's attempts to find her a suitable husband, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal. Set in post-Independence India and involving the lives of four large families and those who orbit them, it is also a vast panoramic exploration of a whole continent at a crucial hour as a sixth of the world's population faces its first great General Election and the chance to map its own destiny. 'A SUITABLE BOY may prove to be the most fecund as well as the most prodigious work of the latter half of this century - perhaps even the book to restore the serious reading public's faith in the contemporary novel ...You should make time for it. It will keep you company for the rest of your life' Daniel Johnson, The Times


With the rise of the Chinese Internet a new data source has become available to researchers. Data scientists and China scholars increasingly use computational research methods to acquire and analyze data from China, but area studies have been remarkably absent from the debate about issues of big data. In this article I follow up on a number of critical questions that have been raised about big data, and discuss their relevance for the use of big data from China. How does big data change our understanding of China? What are the limitations of big data from China? What is the context in which big data is generated in China? How should data scientists and China scholars collaborate? Who has access to big data and who knows the tools? How is big data from China used in an ethical way? These questions are meant to spark conversations about how to best address the issues associated with big data from China in ways that create synergies between data science and Chinese studies.


Adapting HIV-1 to infect monkeys, too HIV-1 replicates well in humans but not in monkeys or mice. On the up side, this reduces the risk of cross-species transmissions, but it makes the study of HIV-1 and AIDS more difficult. Hatziioannou et al. overcame this hurdle by serially passaging HIV-1 in pigtailed macaques. Over time, the HIV-1 acquired mutations that allowed it to adapt to the monkeys. Depleting CD8+ T cells during acute infection resulted in a subset of animals developing an AIDS-like disease by the fourth passage. HIV-1 envelope protein gene selection and the acquisition of mutations in the HIV protein Vpu, which allowed HIV-1 to overcome host restriction by the macaque protein tetherin, accompanied the viral adaptation to the monkeys. Science, this issue p. 1401 Development of an AIDS-like animal disease model after serial passage of HIV-1 in pigtailed macaques is shown. Primate lentiviruses exhibit narrow host tropism, reducing the occurrence of zoonoses but also impairing the development of optimal animal models of AIDS. To delineate the factors limiting cross-species HIV-1 transmission, we passaged a modified HIV-1 in pigtailed macaques that were transiently depleted of CD8+ cells during acute infection. During adaptation over four passages in macaques, HIV-1 acquired the ability to antagonize the macaque restriction factor tetherin, replicated at progressively higher levels, and ultimately caused marked CD4+ T cell depletion and AIDS-defining conditions. Transient treatment with an antibody to CD8 during acute HIV-1 infection caused rapid progression to AIDS, whereas untreated animals exhibited an elite controller phenotype. Thus, an adapted HIV-1 can cause AIDS in macaques, and stark differences in outcome can be determined by immunological perturbations during early infection.


Ilya Kabakov was born in the USSR in 1933, and immigrated to New York in 1992. He began working with his wife, Emilia, in 1989. The two continue to produce large-scale installations, similar to theatrical mises-en-scenes, that pose provocative questions about the role of individuals in society, connections between spirituality and science and the possibility of utopia. This volume accompanies the exhibition "The Center of Cosmic Energy" at the Tufts University Art Gallery in Medford, Massachusetts. An introduction by art historian, Jonathan Fineberg, and essays by Tufts Gallery Director, Amy Ingrid Schlegel and Kabakov scholar Matthew Jesse Jackson provide a much-needed contextualization of the Kabakovs' oeuvre, which is widely considered the most important contemporary work to emerge from the former Soviet Union.


Following the economic liberalization in India, the service sector has gained prominence in the economy as it accounts for the largest share of GDP and, also that the share of this sector in GDP has been growing very rapidly. Empirical data reveal two significant trends in the service sector following liberalization in 1991: growth in service sector productivity and growth in services' trade. The objective of this paper is to build a simple three sector quantitative model which can capture the increase in the share of service sector in GDP after liberalization. Within the context of the model, there are two exogenous changes that occur across the two steady states years, 1980 and 1999: growth in sectoral total factor productivity (TFP) and increase in the level of trade in industrial and service sectors. The results from a counterfactual experiment reveal that shutting down sectoral TFP affects the ability of the model to capture the data trends whereas the absence of sectoral trade negligibly affects the results. Hence I conclude that services' productivity growth versus the increase in services' trade can better explain the value added growth observed in the Indian service sector across the two steady states.


The explosive growth in the demand for wireless communication and information transfer using handsets and personal communications (PCS) devices has created the need for major advancements of antenna designs as a fundamental part of any wireless system. One type of antennas that fulfills most of the wireless systems requirements is the microstrip antennas. These antennas are widely used on base stations as well as handheld devices. Microstrip antennas have a variety of configurations and are currently the most active field in antenna research and development. The microstrip antennas, due to their great advantages, have increasingly wide range of applications in wireless communication systems as handheld mobile devices, satellite communication systems, and biomedical applications. In most PCS, the handheld antenna is placed on a small plastic/shielding box that is in close proximity to biological tissue of user body hence its radiation may cause health hazardous effects. Added to the operational requirements, the users and service providers usually demand wireless units with antennas that are small and compact, cost effective for manufacturability, low profile, and easy to integrate with other wireless communication system components. The antenna designer must consider all these issues besides the electrical characteristics of the antenna performance which include antenna tuning (operating frequency), VSWR and return loss (input impedance), bandwidth, gain and directivity, radiation pattern, diversity, and size of the chassis (expressed as a function of wavelengths) and specific absorption rate (SAR) of the antenna. These design considerations have led antenna designers to consider a wide variety of structures to meet the often conflicting needs for different applications. This special issue contains different topics about microstrip antennas. New designs are investigated for several wireless communication applications. Papers are classified from survey about most literature publications in several topics as RF energy harvesting to new designs in UWB antennas, reconfigurable antennas, smart MIMO systems, and so forth. We hope the readers and researches ofmicrostrip antenna systems will find in this special issue not only new designs about different microstrip antenna characteristics but also valuable information about numerical analysis and fabrications.


Disaster has struck Fairyland! Jack Frost has stolen all the jewels from Queen Titania's crown. Without them, the fairies are losing their magical powers. Rachel and Kirsty have to help India the Moonstone Fairy, Scarlett the Garnet Fairy, Emily the Emerald Fairy, Chloe the Topaz Fairy, Amy the Amethyst Fairy, Sophie the Sapphire Fairy, and Lucy the Diamond Fairy to get the jewels back, before it's too late...Lucy the Diamond Fairy's sparkly jewel has a very important job - it helps the fairies to fly! Kirsty and Rachel must help her to find it before this magical power is lost forever...


This article explores the similarities and differences between the process followed to develop a sermon and that followed to develop a cartoon. It first examines the representation of the jester or clown in some recent publications by homileticians before describing the process of development of a sermon, as proposed by three homiletic sources from namely North America, South Africa and The Netherlands, respectively. The article describes the process followed in the development of a cartoon in a similar way. The article concludes by presenting some observations on the preacher as cartoonist with reference to the process followed in the development of a cartoon. It argues that the cartoonist may currently be viewed as a metaphor for a preacher that could enrich existing images of the preacher such as the clown or jester, especially because of the similarities in the processes for writing/preparing a sermon and drawing a cartoon.


This paper investigates the health of white adolescents, focusing particularly on the roles of family background and preventive medical care. This emphasis is motivated in part by our desire to study adolescent health in the context of the nature-nurture controversy. The findings indicate first, that family characteristics (especially mother's schooling) do have a significant impact on adolescent health and second, that preventive care is an important vehicle for this impact in the case of dental health hut not in the ease of physical health measures. Similarly, the greater availability of dentists has a positive impact on dental health, but greater availability of pediatricians does not alter the physical health measures. On the basis of these results we predict that government efforts to improve the dental health of adolescents with policies to lower the cost of dental care or increase the availability of dentists are much more likely to be successful than similar policies directed at improving their physical health.


Over half a century ago, the New Deal signified a paradigm shift in the American polity. Under the mandate of relief, recovery, and reform, the modern regulatory administrative state was created. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, a new paradigm is emerging that ties together recent developments in the political-economy with advances in legal and democratic theory. This article introduces the new vision as a shift from the traditional New Deal Regulatory model to a Renew Deal Governance model. The article both asserts the emergence of a new model and critically explores the interplay among its various elements. It unpacks the widespread claims of newness in the field of law, asking why legal projects seek to be innovative and to what they respond. At the same time, it offers a comprehensive map for understanding renewal projects collectively, including the internal competition among the possible meanings and interpretations of the emerging paradigm. Integrating into a unified framework central works at the micro-level of doctrine, at the macro-level of administrative and constitutional law, and at the meta-level of jurisprudence, the article explores the possibility of renewal through adoption of a new legal model. Through both theoretical inquiry and case study, the article describes the organizing principles of the governance model, which consist of increased participation of non-state actors, public/private collaboration, diversity and competition, decentralization and subsidiarity, integration of policy domains, flexibility and non-coerciveness (soft law), adaptability and learning, and finally, legal orchestration. These features are closely analyzed in three leading domains of governance - new workplace policies, civic environmentalism, and cyberdemocracy. The article argues that new governance is purposely and ingeniously designed as a school of theoretical and practical hybridization, drawing together elements from rival schools of thought and critical insights concerning both regulatory and market failures. Through the pragmatic synthesis of legal approaches, the governance model confronts the false dilemma of centralized regulation and deregulatory devolution. The article concludes with a discussion of the normative challenges that are evoked in the nascent governance regime of the twenty-first century, and suggests ways in which democracy, accountability, and legitimacy are advanced in the Renew Deal Era.


The classification of microorganisms is an important task in many fields such as food production, medicine, biotechnology. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy can provide comprehensive biochemical information about microorganisms via spectra. To extract the information, an appropriate chemometrics technique is needed to treat the data and get reliable classification results. From the very beginning it was known that utilizing hierarchical structure of the data is an advantage but might be a tedious and time consuming procedure. In this study we evaluate the best way for setting up a classifications scheme to identify microorganisms by FTIR spectroscopy. In this context our task was to classify ten different genera of food spoilage yeasts, which were cultivated in five different media and subsequently analyzed by (FTIR) spectroscopy. The methods, which were used in this study, are: principal component analysis (PCA), partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLSDA), Fisher liner discriminant analysis (FLDA), PLSDA and FLDA combined with HCA, PLSDA and FLDA combined with a one-versus-all (OVA) approach, PLSDA and FLDA combined with a one-versus-one (OVO) approach, and random forest (RF). The last method showed the best performance among the all methods we used. A validation success rate (SR) achieved by RF is equal to 97.5% for one of the media. The other successful methods are PLSDA combined with HCA and PLSDA applied directly to ten groups with SRs equal to 96.3% and 94.4%, respectively. Our results suggest that RF can be used for rapid identification of microorganisms even without utilizing a hierarchical structure in the data and can perform very accurately. Moreover, when using information from other blocks of data representing different cultivation media, the performance of RF was improved.


Societies involved in intractable conflicts form a conflict-supporting master narrative that provides justification and explanation of the conflict as a whole as well as narratives about its specific events and relevant persons. Both types of narratives fulfill important functions in satisfying the basic sociopsychological needs of the individuals and the collectives involved, as well as in maintaining a positive image of the society in the international community. In order to fill these needs, the narratives tend to be selective, biased, and simplistic. Moreover, because these narratives are so functional, societies go to extraordinary lengths to maintain their dominance among their own people and internationally. The present article analyzes the specific case of the Israeli-Jewish narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with regard to the methods that are used in the narrative's construction and the ways through which formal authorities strive to preserve its dominance in Israel and in the international community.


Abstract In 2004, a set of validated guidelines for school bullying prevention and management was released by the Child Health Promotion Research Centre in Australia to guide schools' action to prevent and manage bullying behaviours. At this time little was known about cyber and other forms of covert bullying behaviours. These guidelines were updated in 2010 to include current research that provides a greater understanding of all forms of bullying behaviour. This article describes a summary of the current empirical evidence used to update these guidelines particularly related to relatively new and emergent forms of bullying, such as cyberbullying. Meta-analyses and reviews that assessed the effectiveness of school-based bullying interventions were examined to inform the relevance of the previously validated guidelines and to identify potential intervention strategies to reduce cyberbullying. This review confirmed the importance of a systematic whole-school approach to effectively prevent and manage all forms of bullying behaviours in schools (including cyberbullying) and the need to strengthen capacity supports to enable schools to put evidence into informed practice.


In this paper, we empirically explore designer-user interaction patterns in the design refinement process. To do this, we ask the following research question--what do interactions between designers and users characterize distinctive patterns in the design refinement process? As an empirical approach, this study analyzed twenty-seven design refinement project narratives with a grounded theory appraoch and synthesized three patterns, regarding six sub-designer-user interaction patterns in the design refinement process. The significance of this study is to empirically theorize the patterns of designer-user interaction and suggests a theoretical / practical guideline for researchers and practitioners in the communities of design science and information and organization studies.


The metallic trigger used in commercial heat packs initiates solidification by releasing minute crystals of solid sodium acetate trihydrate into the subcooled solution. These crystals are harbored in submicron cracks on the disk's surface and are released when the disk is flexed. Using scanning electron microscopy, such seed crystals are observed on the surface of a disk after flexing it. Classic nucleation theory is used to investigate the behavior of crystals residing in the cracks on the metallic disk's surface during heating and cooling. Sodium acetate trihydrate crystals are capable of surviving in a 1-nm crack or smaller at regeneration temperatures of the order of 353 K. These seed crystals grow to the mouth of the crack at temperatures below the liquidus, but can only promote solidification of the whole solution surrounding the disk at temperatures below 256 K or when the disk is flexed.


Companies' ability to collect, analyse, and use consumer data to gain insights into consumer preferences and behavior is pivotal in today's marketing landscape and will become even more important as more elements of human life become digitalized. Concerns about consumer privacy may increasingly become an obstacle to obtaining the consumer data required to get the in-depth knowledge about consumers' characteristics, preferences, and behavior that is needed to establish and maintain profitable customer relationships and gain a competitive advantage. The first aim of this dissertation is to study how consumers integrate privacy considerations into their decision-making processes with regard to sharing their data with companies. The second aim is to study how companies' activities with regard to company-consumer interactions throughout the customer journey affect consumers' data sharing. The results of four empirical (series of) studies are presented. The first empirical study focuses on understanding how consumers incorporate privacy concerns in their evaluations of companies in the specific setting of online customer service encounters, drawing on privacy regulation theory and using privacy calculus theory as underlying framework. The next chapter zooms in further on privacy calculus theory and presents a novel theoretical perspective on the flexibility of privacy preferences and data sharing tendencies using construal level theory. The third study looks at the effects of corporate transparency on consumers' data sharing behavior. The final empirical chapter looks beyond 'overcoming privacy concerns' as a means of persuading consumers to share data, by investigating how branded content can stimulate consumer engagement behaviors in different stages of the customer experience.


Cite this article: Contreras N, Alvíz A, Torres J, Uribe S. Bryopsis spp.: Generalities, Chemical and Biological Activities. Pharmacog Rev. 2019;13(26):63-70. ABSTRACT Bryopsis spp, is a marine green algae distributed in tropical regions of worldwide which have been few studied a level of their chemical constitution and evaluation of properties of bioactive metabolites and derivatives with a high potential pharmacological in treatment of possible disease related with viral, fungi and bacterial diseases. Relevant information was selected from scientific journals, books and electronic reports employed database including PubMed, Science Direct, Scielo and Google Scholar. This review describe different aspects of the Bryopsis spp. such as general characteristics, some species found in tropical regions included in Colombia, metabolites derivatives and finally roles in the pharmacological activity with promissory application in drug discovery and therapies related with antitumoral, antioxidant, antimicrobial, antiviral, anti-larvicidal, anticoagulant and antileishmanial. This review offers a new vision of the knowledge about of studies of product naturals and specifically in the investigations referred to Bryopsis spp. may be of great significance for the discovery of drugs for future treatments; thus may be generated new literature of natural elements and its potential drug target.


The 1991-2000 climate over Vietnam and the Indochina Peninsula is simulated using the Regional Climate Model version 3.0 (RegCM3). The domain of interest extends from 80° E to 130° E and 5° S to 40° N. The model is driven by the ERA-40 reanalysis data as initial and lateral boundary conditions, and is forced by the Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) data over the oceans. Validations were carried out by comparing the simulated circulation fields, 2 m air temperatures, and precipitation to globally available observation data, and data from 50 meteoro- logical stations over 7 sub-regions of Vietnam. In general, the simulated patterns of the interested fields are in good agreement with observed data. Although being somewhat wetter or dryer and cooler, RegCM3 reproduces relatively well the observed annual cycle and the inter-annual variabil- ity of surface air temperature and precipitation. A large proportion of the negative biases in temper- ature over Vietnam is explained by the lapse rate correction process. After correction for elevation differences, the model still underestimates air temperature over most of the sub-regions. In rainy and dry seasons, RegCM3 generally underestimates and overestimates precipitation, respectively.


This thesis discusses the estimation and modelling of the Standard Model background contribution to the search for heavy W ′ gauge boson resonance in the W ′ → μν channel. Smearing techniques for the Monte Carlo simulations to match data are explored, followed by a data driven technique to estimate the QCD contribution to the background using sidebands. And finally a next-to-leading-order cross-section correction factor to the electroweak background from higher order QCD and EW diagrams is pursued. We find the QCD background contribution is small in high transverse mass (mT ) tails of the Standard Model background. We also find the higher order cross-section correction factors for the background can be significant.


Federal law excludes millions of American citizens from crucial public benefits simply because they live in the United States territories. If the Social Security Administration determines a low-income individual has a disability, that person can move to another state and continue to receive benefits. But if that person moves to, say, Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands, that person loses their right to federal aid. Similarly with SNAP (food stamps), federal spending rises with increased demand—whether because of a recession, a pandemic, or a climate disaster. But unlike the rest of the United States, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa receive a limited amount of federal food assistance, regardless of need. That's why, after Hurricane Maria, despite additional Congressional action, over a million Puerto Rican residents lost food assistance. And with Medicaid, federal law caps medical assistance for each of these five territories, a limit that does not exist for the fifty states or the District of Columbia.

This Article draws much-needed attention to these discrepancies in legal status and social protection. It surveys the eligibility rules and financing structure of disability benefits, food assistance, and health insurance for low-income Americans in the states and the territories. A comprehensive account of these practices provokes questions about the tiers of citizenship built by a fragmented and devolved American state. Part I invokes the scholarship on social citizenship, the idea that an individual cannot meaningfully participate in society without some modicum of economic security. Part I then explores the tension between that normative commitment and one of the defining features of the American welfare state—federalism. It then elaborates the exceptional legal status of Americans who live in U.S. territories. Part II provides a comprehensive overview of federal food, medical, and disability assistance, and in doing so, demonstrates how the American territories inhabit a different and, in many ways, dilapidated, corner of the American welfare state. Part III begins with an analysis of ongoing cases in federal court that challenge this facial discrimination. It then canvasses legislation introduced in Congress that would make significant progress in putting territorial Americans on par with Americans in the fifty states. The Part ends with proposed legislation. To conclude, Part IV brings the states back in, using the earlier discussion of territories as an invitation to imagine an American welfare state built on a foundation other than a racial order.


There are many reports of bird and bat mortality in vicinity of wind turbines [1]. It is important to quantify numbers and species of birds and bats in a given area which is targeted for wind farm development. It is also necessary to assess the behavior of birds and bats in wind farm areas. Acoustic monitoring techniques have been developed in this work for monitoring of birds and bats. Spectrogram-based Image Frequency Statistics (SIFS) is used for feature extraction and Evolutionary Neural Network (ENN) is used for classification purposes. Data was collected near Lake Erie in Ohio during 2011 spring and fall migration periods. Data analysis was performed in accordance to needs of wildlife biologists.


A mono-oxygenase catalysing the conversion of 2-ethyl-4-thioisonicotinamide (ethionamide) into its sulphoxide was purified from guinea-pig liver homogenates. The enzyme required stoicheiometric amounts of oxygen and NADPH for the sulphoxidation reaction. The purified protein is homogeneous by electrophoretic, antigenic and chromatographic criteria. The enzyme has mol.wt. 85000 and it contains 1g-atom of iron and 1mol of FAD per mol, but not cytochrome P-450. The enzyme shows maximal activity at pH7.4 in a number of different buffer systems and the Km values calculated for the substrate and NADPH are 6.5×10-5m and 2.8×10-5m respectively. The activation energy of the reaction was calculated to be 36kJ/mol. Under optimal conditions, the molecular activity of the enzyme (mol of substrate oxidized/min per mol of enzyme) is calculated to be 2.1. The oxygenase belongs to the class of general drug-metabolizing enzymes and it may act on different compounds which can undergo sulphoxidation. The mechanism of sulphoxidation was shown to be mediated by superoxide anions.


Effects of Syntactic Complexity on Speech Motor Performance Kelsey L Boyce Department of Communication Disorders Master of Science This study evaluated the possible influence of linguistic demands on speech motor control by measuring articulatory movement stability during conditions of increasing grammatical complexity. There were 60 participants in three age groups: 20-30 years, 40-50 years, and 60-70 years, with equal numbers of men and women in each group. These speakers produced 10 repetitions of five different sentence or phrase conditions. These five conditions included two baseline measurements and three sentences of varying complexity. Each complexity condition had an MLU count of 23, word length of 17, syllable length of 25, and contained the phrase open boxes of pompoms. Complexity was measured by node-count and grammatical structure. Lower lip movements during production of the target phrase were used to compute the spatiotemporal index (STI), a measure of lip movement stability over 10 repetitions. It was predicted that STI would be lower (indicating greater stability) in the baseline and low complexity conditions. Comparison of complexity conditions against the baseline-counting condition demonstrated significant differences in the upper lip's STI, displacement, and velocity, as well as in vocal intensity. Speech motor differences between the grammatical complexity levels were minimal and could be attributed to several factors, such as speaking rate or semantic differences. An unexpected finding of this study was the influence of age on speech production. Participants from the 60 year-old group had significantly longer utterance duration, while those from the 20 year-old group had the highest lower lip and jaw STI values. These findings suggest that speech motor control matures even beyond young adulthood and that linguistic complexity does not appear to have a consistent effect on speech movement variables.


The thesis simultaneously builds on and challenges the conventional wisdom on causal factors behind the rise of ethnic political parties in multiethnic democracies. The thesis contends that ethnic party success is primarily driven by insecurities borne from ethnic violence. Original data from fieldwork in India provides evidence that demand for security from ethnic violence stimulates bloc voting and remains a stronger motivator driving ethnic voting than economic incentives like public goods or economic clientelism. Economic patronage is found to be only relevant in peaceful societies with little modern history of ethnic violence, and towards building cross-cutting ethnic coalitions. The findings are moderated by ethnic affiliation of voters who trust their own co-ethnics more than out-groups. Nominating candidates with conspicuous ethnic heuristics is an efficient strategy for political parties to signal low information voters in their targeted voting bases. In the second part of the thesis, I lay down the conditions and mechanisms under which public goods distribution is optimised in a multiethnic democracy. In a party system featuring ethnic parties, public goods provisions are made efficient under conditions of intermediate levels of party competition and party stability. Furthermore, using a quasi-natural research design, the thesis finds causal evidence that ethnic electoral quotas reduce ethnic violence. Findings from the thesis establish that ethnic security remains the main driver of political behaviour above economic incentives. The papers together provide evidence that in an ethnically diverse society, efficient public goods distribution is possible through a concerted institutional setup to reduce ethnic violence. It is achieved through improvement in representation for the ethnically marginalised, which forces state institutions to be more efficient and accessible to those whom they previously ignored.


On November 5, 2007, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Department of Revenue of Ky. v. Davis. At issue is whether state income tax preferences for their own municipal bonds impermissibly discriminate against interstate commerce. This article makes two basic arguments as to why the Court should find such preferences constitutional. First, as a doctrinal matter, Davis is essentially indistinguishable from the Court's decision last term in United Haulers Assn., Inc. v. Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Mgmt. Auth. There, the Court held that laws that "favor the government," that "treat every private business. . . exactly the same," and that concern "a traditional government activity," "do not discriminate against interstate commerce for purposes of the Commerce Clause." State tax preferences for in-state municipal bonds meet all three of these criteria. Second, and more importantly, a decision by the Court in Davis to invalidate these tax preferences would force the 42 states that have enacted these preferences to endure billions of dollars in losses transitioning to a system where all municipal bonds are taxed equally. And these costs would all be attributable to the states' need to honor commitments that they made when they reasonably believed that the preferences were constitutional. Congress, however, could avoid these transition costs by crafting a remedy that applied purely prospectively to municipal bonds that have not yet been issued. Thus, even if interstate commerce would benefit from the states' equal taxation of municipal bonds, there are strong pragmatic reasons for the Court to stay its hand and ratify the status quo. As it has done in several other important state tax cases, the Court should recognize the superior institutional competence of Congress in sorting out the details of a complicated economic question with huge fiscal ramifications.