Crowdsourcing, as a digital process employed to obtain information, ideas, and solicit contributions of work, creativity, etc., from large online crowds stems from business, yet is increasingly used in research. Engaging with previous literature and a symposium on academic crowdsourcing this study explores the underlying assumptions about crowdsourcing as a potential academic research method and how these affect the knowledge produced. Results identify crowdsourcing research as research about and with the crowd, explore how tasks can be productive, reconfiguring, and evaluating, and how these are linked to intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, we also identify three types of platforms: commercial platforms, research-specific platforms, and project specific platforms. Finally, the study suggests that crowdsourcing is a digital method that could be considered a pragmatic method; the challenge of a sound crowdsourcing project is to think about the researcher's relationship to the crowd, the tasks, and the platform used.


In this paper, it is argued that the possibility for a formal synergy between Indigenous knowledges of health and healing and biomedicine-particularly in remote, Indigenous regions like the Canadian Arctic-at the clinical practice level may be difficult to sustain as a result of the major philosophical differences between the two systems. If a synergy of some form is to occur at all, it is more likely that it would not be at the level of formal services offered, but at the phenomenological level with respect to the help-seeking experiences and lived actualities of those in distress, crisis, or those labelled as "patients." Building on the practice and experience of medical pluralism, it is claimed that it may be more likely for help seekers (in the capacity of nomadic bricoleurs) to form their own creative and strategic healing synergies. From the patients' perspectives, the formation of synergies is achieved by availing themselves of practitioners of Indigenous healing, biomedicine, and any other types of healing services as resources to utilize in their quest for meaning and existential reconciliation in the face of illness and uncertainty. It follows, then, that my own theoretical position with respect to illness is that it is not only a subjective experience of pain or malady (and the physical manifestation thereof qua signs and symptoms), but also a crisis of interpretation: the introduction of illness into a help seeker's life creates a sense of existential and interpretive volatility. It is argued that from a methodological standpoint, a phenomenologically-inspired approach is the most appropriate means through which to access patients' experiences of the synergies of the help-seeking experience. Normal.dotm 0 0 2010-08-26T20:17:00Z 1 250 1429 University of Victoria 11 2 1754 12.256 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false


Purpose
This paper aims to argue that certain insights offered by Kuhn and Foucault may be of use to those seeking to resist a global paradigm of inequality in access to the outcomes of pharmaceutical development. It is further argued that these relationships are not independent of certain power relationships. This critical review seeks to highlight certain of these power relationships, and to suggest how they might be better managed to ensure more equitable outcomes for those in society that are most vulnerable to innovation failure.

Design/methodology/approach
This research takes the form of a critical review paper, seeking to develop theory though a synthesis of literature.

Findings
Unlike market incentives, it might be the research process itself that is most vulnerable to stakeholder resistance to slow and unequal delivery of life-saving pharmaceutical development. Given that a lack of responsiveness to societal needs can itself be considered unethical, Kuhnian theory predicting pharmaceutical innovation failure is related to what Foucault describes as a system of oppression, whereby power relationships disadvantage those most vulnerable and powerless.

Research limitations/implications
Given the rise of movements like citizen science and participant-led research, as well as new ethical frameworks premised on increasing accountability in science, Foucault's principles are considered to echo a general trend towards the democratisation of science, and towards increasing the responsiveness of pharmaceutical development to societal needs.

Originality/value
A novel synthesis of literature is undertaken, offering useful theoretical insights into how social actors might contribute to enabling a more responsive system of international healthcare business.


The Naval Air Systems Command commissioned the E-2C Hawkeye Group II Mission Computer Replacement Program and tasked Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Two-Zero and the E-2C Integrated Test Team to evaluate the integration of the form, fit, and function of the OL-698/ASQ Mission Computer Replacement (MCR) for replacement of the Litton L-304 Mission Computer in the E-2C Group II configured aircraft. As part of the life cycle support of the E-2C aircraft, the MCR configuration fields a new, more reliable Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) hardware system and preserves the original software investment by emulating the existing Litton Instructional Set Architecture (LISA) legacy code. Incorporating Northrop Grumman Space Technology's Reconfigurable Processor for Legacy Applications Code Execution (RePLACE) software re-hosting technique, the investment in the LISA software is maintained. Conducting developmental test of robust software systems, such as the MCR and its associated software, provided dramatically different challenges than traditional developmental testing. A series of lessons were learned through particular discrepancies and deficiencies discovered through the six month flight test period. Specific deficiencies illustrate where proper planning could ease the difficulties encountered in software testing. Keys to successful developmental software tests include having the appropriate personnel on the test team with the proper equipment and capability. Equally important, inadequate configuration management creates more problems than fixes. Software re-programming can provide faster fixes than traditional developmental test. The flexibility of software programming makes configuration management a challenge as multiple versions become available in a short amount of time. Multiple versions of software heighten the risk of configuration management breakdown during limited amount of available flight tests. Each re-programmed version potentially fixes targeted deficiencies, but can also cause new issues in functional areas already tested. Inherently, regression testing impacts the schedule. Software testing requires a realistic schedule that the author believes should compensate for anticipated problems. Data collection, reduction, and analysis always prove to be valuable in developmental testing. A solid instrumentation plan for data collection from all parties involved in flight tests, especially data link network tests, are critical for trouble shooting discovered deficiencies. Software testing is relatively new to the developmental test world and can be seen as the way of the future. Software upgrades lure program managers into a potentially cost effective option in the face of aging avionics systems. With realistic planning and configuration management, the cost and performance effectiveness of software upgrades and development is more likely to become realized.


A scientific conference is a type of event where attendees have a tremendous activity on social media platforms. Participants tweet or post longer status messages, engage in discussions with comments, share slides and other media captured during the conference. This information can be used to generate informative reports of what is happening, where (which specific room) and when (which time slot), and who are the active participants. However, this information is locked in different data silos and platforms forcing the user to monitor many different channels at the same time to fully benefit from the event. In this paper, we propose a framework named Confomaton that aggregates in real-time social media shared by conference attendees and aligns it with event descriptions. Developed with Semantic Web technologies, this framework enables to relive past events and to follow live conferences. A demonstrator is available at http://eventmedia.eurecom.fr/confomaton.


MIHA is an inhibitor of apoptosis protein (IAP) that can inhibit cell death by direct interaction with caspases, the effector proteases of apoptosis. DIABLO is a mammalian protein that can bind to IAPs and antagonize their antiapoptotic effect, a function analogous to that of the proapoptotic Drosophila molecules, Grim, Reaper, and HID. Here, we show that after UV radiation, MIHA prevented apoptosis by inhibiting caspase 9 and caspase 3 activation. Unlike Bcl-2, MIHA functioned after release of cytochrome c and DIABLO from the mitochondria and was able to bind to both processed caspase 9 and processed caspase 3 to prevent feedback activation of their zymogen forms. Once released into the cytosol, DIABLO bound to MIHA and disrupted its association with processed caspase 9, thereby allowing caspase 9 to activate caspase 3, resulting in apoptosis.


In 1996, the UK Department for Transport (DfT) embarked on a 'Safe Town' initiative, to demonstrate that it was possible to substantially reduce urban road accidents and casualties by implementing a coherent range of actions for road safety according to a well-defined strategy. This strategy was intended to bring together all the activities of a local authority as an education authority as well as a highways and planning authority. 5m was provided through the Local Roads Capital Settlement to treat a whole town (City of Gloucester) in a strategic manner, and with safety integrated into other town policies and activities. The report describes how the project was planned, designed, implemented and monitored and what the achievements in accident and casualty reduction were. Urban Safety Management was used to define the appropriate road hierarchy, to manage traffic onto the right roads, to manage the speed of traffic so that it circulates at a more appropriate speed and more safey, and to co-ordinate all work that influences road safety in the pursuit of objectives for the whole urban area. The results were compared with those for 'control' towns with only the normal efforts of local authorities. Injury accidents and casualties showed good reductions, particularly those in the fatal and serious categories. The number of accidents involving cyclists increased. .Speeds were substantially reduced in areas with speed management measures, and slight speed reductions were seen elsewhere. Public opinion about the project was largely positive but traffic redistribution was a less popular policy. (A)


Egg yolk low-density lipoproteins (LDL) and soybean lecithin were evaluated as replacements for egg yolk in extenders used for the cryopreservation of brown-bear spermatozoa. The motility, viability and acrosomal status of post-thawed spermatozoa were analysed, and an egg-yolk extender was used as a control. The total antioxidant capacity of these extenders was tested. Soybean lecithin showed an effect that was dependent on the soybean concentration (2%, 3.5% and 5%) and source (Type A: 24% L-α-phosphatidylcholine, and Type B: 14-23% L-α-phosphatidylcholine). Only semen cryopreserved with 5% Type A soybean exhibited a sperm motility similar to that of semen cryopreserved in egg-yolk-based extender after thawing, although the sperm viability and acrosome status were not as high. Semen frozen in an extender containing LDL (10-15%) exhibited improved sperm viability in comparison with the control, but sperm motility was lower. The LDL-based extender exhibited a higher anti-oxidant activity than the egg-yolk extender and soy lecithin-based extenders. The extenders with higher anti-oxidant activity showed improvements in frozen sperm viability but lower semen motility. These results indicate that soybean lecithin did not have the same protective effect as egg yolk during the freezing of brown-bear spermatozoa but suggest that LDL (10-15%) could be a useful substitute for egg yolk in these extenders.


Antescofo is recently developed software for musical score following and mixed music: it automatically, and in real-time, synchronizes electronic instruments with a musician playing on a classical instrument. Therefore, it faces some of the same major challenges as embedded systems. The system provides a programming language used by composers to specify musical pieces that mix interacting electronic and classical instruments. This language is developed with and for musicians and it continues to evolve according to their needs. Yet its semantics has only recently been formally defined. This paper presents a synchronous semantics for the core language of Antescofo and an alternative implementation based on an embedding inside an existing synchronous language, namely ReactiveML. The semantics reduces to a few rules, is mathematically precise and leads to an interpretor of only a few hundred lines. The efficiency of this interpretor compares well with that of the actual implementation: on all musical pieces we have tested, response times have been less than the reaction time of the human ear. Moreover, this embedding permitted the prototyping of several new programming constructs, some of which are described in this paper.


Supply chain security has become a major concern to the private and public sector, after the disastrous event of September 11, 2001. Prior to September 11, 2001, supply chain security concerns were related to controlling theft and reducing contraband such as illegal drugs, illegal immigrants, and export of stolen goods. But after September 11, 2001, the threat of terrorist attacks has heightened the need to assure supply chain security. The public is of course concerned with the potential of having weapons of mass destruction embedded in the shipments through the supply chain. In addition, the private sector is concerned with the costs of assuring security, and the potential disruptions associated with real or potential terrorist acts. Governments and industry have all responded with proposals to create more confidence in supply chain security, while maintaining smooth flows of goods and services in a global supply chain. One of the most effective strategies may be to apply the lessons of successful quality improvement programs. In this paper, we describe how the principles of total quality management can actually be used to design and operate processes to assure supply chain security. The central theme of the quality movement – that higher quality can be attained at lower cost by proper management and operational design – is also applicable in supply chain security. By using the right management approach, new technology, and re-engineered operational processes, we can also achieve higher supply chain security at lower cost. We will demonstrate how this can be done with a quantitative model of a specific case example. Acknowledgment: The authors would like to thank the inputs from Steve Lambright and Larry Trebesch of Savi Technology in writing this article. The government initiatives are drawn from Lee and Wolfe (2003) and we are grateful to Michael Wolf of North River Consulting Group for sharing his knowledge.


The spreading of the Covid-19 virus causes a reduction in economic activity worldwide and may lead to new risks to financial stability. The authors draw attention to the urgency of the targeted mitigation strategies on the European level and suggest taking coordinated action on the fiscal side to provide liquidity to affected firms in the corporate sector. Otherwise, virus-related cashflow interruptions could lead to a new full-blown banking crisis. Monetary policy measures are unlikely to mitigate cash liquidity shortages at the level of individual firms. Coordinated action at European level is decisive to prevent markets from losing confidence in the resilience of banks, particularly in countries with limited fiscal capacity. In contrast to the euro crisis of 2011, the cause of the current crisis does not lie in the financial markets; therefore, the risk of moral hazard for banks or states is low.


In the last issue of the Clinical Law Review, Stefan Krieger argues that clinical law teachers who emphasize problem-solving approaches to lawyering incorrectly downplay as a necessary prerequisite to learning effective legal practice the significance of domain knowledge, which he mainly identifies as knowledge about legal doctrine. Among the writings on clinical law teaching criticized by Krieger are those of Mark Aaronson, who has articulated as a teaching goal helping students learn how to improve their practical judgment in lawyering, which he describes as a process of deliberation whose most prominent features are a contextual tailoring of knowledge, a dialogic form of reasoning that accounts for plural perspectives, an ability to be empathetic and detached at the same time, an intertwining of intellectual and moral concerns, an instrumental and equitable interest in human affairs, and a heavy reliance on learning from cumulative experience. Krieger stresses the foundational importance for law students of acquiring substantive legal knowledge; Aaronson focuses on developing the ability of students to think critically and appropriately in role as a lawyer. In this brief exchange of ideas, Aaronson comments on Krieger's critique of problem-solving teaching in law schools, to which Krieger then responds.


This article focuses on one of the most urgent problems of the European Company law. It covers the conflicts of corporate law and their influence to the unification of the European Union Company law. It analyses the regimes of conflicts of corporate laws as well as overviews which matters shall be governed by the law applicable to the company. The article analyses the Convention on the Mutual Recognition of Companies and Bodies Corporate, signed on 29th February 1968, the provisions of the Treaty Establishing the European Community and the relevant cases of the Court of Justice. The article concludes the necessity to unify the regimes of conflicts of corporate laws in all the member states to the European Union.


In central Philippines, the Aquaculture Department of the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC/AQD), with strong collaboration and support from the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) of Kyoto, Japan, has been looking into the stock enhancement of tiger shrimp Penaeus monodon in the New Washington Estuary (NWE), province of Aklan, central Philippines. The NWE was a productive fishing ground that has been suffering from degenerating brackishwater fisheries and estuarine environment. Average daily catch declined from 24 kg in 1970s to only 0.7 kg at present. Shrimp fisheries, the most important livelihood, declined in quality and quantity. Tiger shrimps were abundant in catch until the early 1990s when these were observed to decline in volume, replaced by smaller and cheaper species. This was coincidental with the rapid decline in mangrove cover for ponds and huge increase in fishing pressure. It is clear that crucial interventions are required to restore the tiger shrimp fisheries in the NWE in order to increase income of local fishers, while promoting reduction of fishing gears and restoration of mangroves. Stock enhancement of tiger shrimps shows good potential in answering these needs. Site-specific assessments were conducted to evaluate prospects of shrimp stock enhancement in NWE. Conservative simulations of capture of released stocks showed that fishers can increase income by 300%. To decrease fishing pressure in the area, number of gears per fisher may have to be reduced but shrimp catches will be relatively high-priced. Comparative experiments using aquaculture techniques were done to identify strategies especially in the delicate intermediate acclimation rearing. Aquaculture protocols like those for pond preparation were also adapted to be used in a mangrove pen nursery rearing system for shrimps. Supplemental feeding with formulated feeds increased carrying capacity of the culture area, while enhancing growth and survival of stocks. Culture experiments showed that shrimps grow to 0.5 g within 1 mo and >1g in 2 mo. High stocking density of 40-60 shrimps m -2 can be used for <2 mo rearing in a mangrove pen. Release experiments showed that 60-d old shrimps have higher chances of survival when released in the estuaries. With strong support from local communities, government and other sectors, together with effective management and law enforcement, aquaculture-based stock enhancement of tiger shrimps can be a viable intervention to restore livelihood and promote estuarine rehabilitation in the NWE.


The General Directorate of Surveying and Mapping (GDSM), under the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs (MOMRA) is responsible for the production and dissemination of accurate geospatial data for all the metropolitan cities, towns and rural settlements in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. GDSM maintains digital geospatial databases that support the production of conventional line and orthophoto maps at scales ranging from 1:1,000 to 1:20,000. The current procedures for the acquisition of new aerial imagery cover a long time cycle of three or more years. Consequently, the availability of recently acquired High Resolution Satellite Imagery (HRSI) presents an attractive alternative image data source for rapid response to updated geospatial data needs. The direct sensor orientation of HRSI is not accurate enough requiring ground control points (GCP). A field survey of GCP is time consuming and costly. Seeking an alternative approach, a research study has recently been completed to use existing image and data base information instead of traditional ground control for the orthoprojection of HRSI in order to automate and speed up as much as possible the whole process. Based on a series of practical experiments, the ability for automated matching of aerial and satellite images by using the Speeded-Up Robust Features (SURF) algorithm is demonstrated to be useful for this task. Practical results from matching with SURF validate the ability for multi-scale, multi-sensor and multi-season matching of aerial and satellite images. The matched tie points are then used to transform the satellite orthophoto to the aerial orthophoto through a 2D affine coordinate transformation. GeoEye-1 and IKONOS imagery, when geo-referenced through SURF-based matching and transformed meet the MOMRA Map Accuracy Standards for 1:10,000 and 1:20,000 scale. However, a similarly processed SPOT-5 image does not meet these standards. This research has led to the development of a simple and efficient tool for the geo-referencing of HRSI of 0,5 m to 1 m ground sampling distance (GSD) that can be used for updating map information. The process completely eliminates the need for any ground control as well as image measurements by human operators.


Our empirical study examines the role and importance of arbitration clauses in standard form contracts primarily with other businesses. While much has been written about the impact of mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer contracts, relatively little has been written on mandatory arbitration clauses in customer agreements where the customer was a business and not an individual consumer. In this Article, we specifically address the findings presented in Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey Miller, and Emily Sherwin's study, Arbitration's Summer Soldiers: An Empirical Study of Arbitration Clauses in Consumer and Nonconsumer Contracts. Our study finds that many businesses employ mandatory arbitration clauses in their customer contracts with other businesses. Our study also suggests that the primary reason for mandatory arbitration clauses in customer contracts where the customer is a business is the avoidance of expenses associated with litigation. Our study may help companies to better understand attitudes about arbitration and assist in contract negotiations. The results of our study may also help courts determine whether arbitration clauses in merchant form agreements - and changes to those clauses - are "material" under section 2-207(2) of the Uniform Commercial Code.


In this study, we develop an analytical based simulation method to determine laser parameters such as laser power and its duration for laser induced thermal ablation. This method utilizes two important physical approaches to model i) the light propagation and ii) the change in temperature due to the laser absorption in turbid media. First, the photon density is obtained analytically from the solution of the diffusion equation by deriving a special Greens' function. Next, the Pennes bio-heat equation is solved analytically for a source term consisting of the product of the photon density and the optical absorption coefficient. Our approach is validated with the results obtained by Finite Element Method (FEM) and experimental results acquired from the gold-nanoparticle embedded phantom.


In order to deal with innovations and the associated complexity of work, ongoing collaboration between teachers has become more important in secondary education. Teacher collaboration is one of the factors that contribute to the successful implementation of innovations in secondary schools. However, there is no consensus regarding the definition of the concept of collaboration. As a consequence, there is little agreement as to whether and to what degree collaborative processes actually occur in schools. Hence, the general research question of this dissertation was formulated as: What is the nature of collaboration in teacher teams? Four empirical studies were conducted in the context of seven interdisciplinary teacher teams from an innovative secondary school in the Netherlands. The first study reports on different perspectives on collaboration. The aim of this study was to conceptualise the nature of collaboration in teacher teams. We explored the usefulness of four existing conceptual frameworks for research on collaboration in teacher teams: the social network perspective, the interpersonal perspective, the interdependence perspective, and the community of practice perspective. The community of practice perspective was most useful because it's discriminative potential and intervention potential. The second study reports on the status quo of collaboration in teacher teams using the community of practice perspective. The first aim of this study was to explore the extent to which communities of practice occur in schools. We concluded that the overall degree of community in the teacher teams was moderate. The second aim was to explore the relationship between the degree of community and diversity in team composition. We concluded that diversity in terms of the educational level and gender was positively related to the degree of community, while diversity in terms of tenure and work experience was negatively related to the degree of community. Study 3 reports on ways to stimulate collaboration between teachers. The aim of this study was to formulate a set of design principles in order to foster community development of teacher teams. We concluded that the set of design principles should be aimed at developing group goals, developing group norms, organising group roles, stimulating a critical reflective attitude, promoting trust, promoting perceived interdependence, promoting ownership, and organising a collective memory. Study 4 reports on the design principles that teacher teams have already integrated into their daily practice. The first aim of this study was to explore whether and to what extent the community development of teacher teams takes place. We concluded that the community development of the seven teacher teams was limited. The second aim of this study was to investigate what community-building efforts teacher teams undertake themselves. We concluded that, in spite of limited support from the school management, the teacher teams made a considerable amount and range of community-building efforts.


IT IS DIFFICULT TO AVOID THE CONCLUSION that teleology plays a central role in Aquinas' ethics. Even the new natural law theorists, such as Finnis and Grisez, who have eschewed teleology within ethics, opting instead for a kind of practical intuition of moral norms, have conceded a link between a normative human nature and the human good. As Christian thinkers, they must acknowledge that God has made us for some purpose, and this purpose is pivotal for the human good. Their rejection of teleology is relegated to the domain of epistemology, that is, they deny that we become aware of the human good by first becoming aware of certain natural teleological inclinations; instead, they claim that we first become aware of the good, and thereby recognize our human nature with its teleological inclinations. I am not presently concerned with the implications of this view, for I inquire only into the role of teleology for the good and evil of human actions; the manner in which we become aware of this role and of this teleology is beyond my purpose. I wish, rather, to investigate two possible roles that teleology might play in the ethics of Aquinas. That Aquinas sees teleology as essential to the good and evil of human actions is most evident in his treatment of sexual sins. In the De Malo, for instance, he is particularly straightforward. All human acts are said to be disordered when they are not proportioned to the proper end. For example, eating is disordered if it is not proportioned to the health of the body, to which the act of eating is ordered as to an end. Since the end of using the reproductive organs is the generation and education of offspring, every use of these organs that is not proportioned to the generation of offspring, and to their due education, is of itself disordered, for example, every act of these organs outside the union of male and female is manifestly unfit for the generation of children. (1) Aquinas has in mind some natural teleology as opposed to some human generated endpoint, for in the reply to the objection that fornication can be done for some good end, Aquinas says, The end of the act itself is ordered according to its very nature, even though the intention of the agent might be for a good end, which is not sufficient to excuse the act, as is plain in one who steals intending to give to charity. (2) This end of nature shows up again in the very next reply. "Every voluntary emission of semen is illicit unless it is suitable for the end intended by nature." (3) Aquinas presents us with a teleology that serves as a standard of human actions. Teleology defines what is good and proper; our actions must live up to it. For instance, since sexual actions are ordered to new life they are good and perfected when they live up to this order. An act of bestiality, since it fails from this direction to new life, is an evil action. In the following text, Aquinas presents this teleological worldview as a standard for all virtue. Virtue is a certain disposition of what is perfect. I call something perfect, however, when it is disposed according to nature, from which it is plain that the virtue of anything is said in order to some preexisting nature, namely, when everything is disposed insofar as it is fitting to its nature. Plainly, however, the virtues acquired through human actions, which were discussed above, are dispositions by which someone is fittingly disposed to the nature by which he is a human being. (4) Virtue must be properly disposed to human nature, with its natural ends and perfections; in contrast, sin opposes the natural purpose and teleology of human nature. As I have already suggested, it is difficult to contest this normative role of teleology within Aquinas's ethics. I am, however, more concerned with another possible use of teleology, suggested in one text of the Prima Secundae. …


Ten red raspberry genotypes selected from the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada breeding program ('RSK88', 'RSK88-1', 'RSK88-2', 'RSK88-3', 'RSK88-4', 'RSK88-5', 'RSK88-6', 'RSK88-7', 'RSK88-8' and 'SM222') were studied for their yield, fruit weight, soluble solids content, titratable acidity, shelf life, phenolic content and composition (anthocyanins, flavonols, ellagic acid, procyanidins and resveratrol), and total antioxidant capacity (TAC) compared with two commercially grown cultivars ('Festival' and 'Killarney'). The results showed that 'RSK88-7' had higher yield, longer shelf life, higher total phenolic content (TPC; measured by both the Folin–Ciocalteu method and high-performance liquid chromatography), stronger antioxidant capacity, better fruit quality, and higher concentrations of anthocyanins, flavonols, ellagic acid and procyanidins. There was a positive correlation (r = 0.55, p = 0.0006) between TAC and TPC measured by the Folin–Ciocalteu method, and a significant correlation (r = 0.92, p < 0.0001) was found between anthocyanins content and TPC, which was calculated based on the sum of the five classes of phenolic compounds. Anthocyanins were the most predominant phenolic class, accounting for 69.4% of total phenolic, followed by procyanidins. Resveratrol content was lowest among the five classes of phenolic compounds.


Recent scholarship has stressed the importance of deliberation in legislative decision making. Yet the empirical basis for claims about deliberation is weak, and the concept of deliberation itself needs to be sharpened. In this article I attempt to lay the groundwork for a systematic analysis of deliberation in real-world legislatures. I provide a framework for studying deliberation, consider the largely ignored issue of deliberation quality, and offer a set of indicators for determining the extent and quality of deliberation. Additionally, I provide testable hypotheses about factors that promote deliberation. Perhaps most importantly, I provide recommendations for analyzing the consequences of deliberation.


By the mid-1980s researchers from artificial intelligence, computer science, brain and cognitive science, and psychology realized that the idea of computers as intelligent machines was inappropriate. The brain does not run "programs"; it does something entirely different. But what? Evolutionary theory says that the brain has evolved not to do mathematical proofs but to control our behavior, to ensure our survival. Researchers now agree that intelligence always manifests itself in behavior--thus it is behavior that we must understand. An exciting new field has grown around the study of behavior-based intelligence, also known as embodied cognitive science, "new AI," and "behavior-based AI."This book provides a systematic introduction to this new way of thinking. After discussing concepts and approaches such as subsumption architecture, Braitenberg vehicles, evolutionary robotics, artificial life, self-organization, and learning, the authors derive a set of principles and a coherent framework for the study of naturally and artificially intelligent systems, or autonomous agents. This framework is based on a synthetic methodology whose goal is understanding by designing and building.The book includes all the background material required to understand the principles underlying intelligence, as well as enough detailed information on intelligent robotics and simulated agents so readers can begin experiments and projects on their own. The reader is guided through a series of case studies that illustrate the design principles of embodied cognitive science.


Mary Scott is an avid collector of objects and images; she is also a maker of drawings, paintings and other stuff. She travels habitually; for her, travel provides a framework for unsystematic learning. In 2011 she returned to Italy after an absence of 20 years, well-versed in accounts of the 18 C English gentlemen's fascination with the Grand Tour, to undertake her own tour. Her task was to study the remnants of pre-Enlightenment object collections, the ordering of which, preceded taxonomic systems around which museums, today, are arranged. Founded in the traditions of curiosity these early object collections promote non-linear, syncretic and analogous forms of knowledge. Scott's talk contextualises her current art project that draws on a large personal image archive to classifying objects according to her own principles. In a formative stage, the project visualises her interest in repetition, symmetry, analogical juxtapositions and poetic resonances that provide sensate, tactile and intellectual knowledge at variance with the rigid reasoning and systemisation that has been given free rein in the pursuit of modern knowledge. She is also interested in reinstating the important connection between the arts and sciences, between nature and culture and demonstrating value in the intuitive aspects of human cognition to cultural and social construction of knowledge.

Scott is Senior Lecturer and Head of Drawing, at the Tasmanian School of Art. Recent exhibitions include Keepers and Kind (2011), Criterion Gallery, Hobart; Wilderness: Balnaves Contemporary Painting (2010), Art Gallery of NSW; Look Out (2010), CAST in collaboration with Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery; Hobart City $15,000 Invitation Art Prize (Winner Drawing) (2009), TMAG; The Keeping Room (2009), Criterion Gallery, Hobart; Every Minute of Every Day (2009), in 'Trust', Ten Days on The Island Festival, Tasmania. Her artwork is referenced in numerous professional texts and catalogues and is included in significant public and private collections. In 2010 she was recipient of Rising Stars Research Grant, University of Tasmania and her commitment to high quality teaching and learning has been recognised through seven teaching certificates and two teaching awards, including a Vice-Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Contribution to Teaching and Learning (2008) and Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning, The Australian Learning and Teaching Council (2008).


Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2MD) is a complex, chronic, metabolic disease with hyper- glycemia arising from insulin resistance, progressive pancreatic beta cell failure, insufficient insulin secretion and increased hepatic glucose output. In the Chinese medicine theory, T2DM is often referred to as a form of Xiao Ke ( 消 渴 ) or " wasting-thirst disorder. " Genetic, dietary, lifestyle and environmental factors play a role in T2DM. People with a family history of diabetes or who are obese are at the highest risk of developing the disease. T2DM is often associated with hypertension, dyslipidemia and atherosclerosis and if not managed can lead to complications including cerebrovascular accident, peripheral vascular disease and nephropathy. T2DM can be well managed with biomed- ical and Chinese medicine treatment approaches. Lifestyle changes including appropriate diet and exercise are paramount in managing T2DM. Regular Qigong practice can be a beneficial part of one's exercise routine for T2DM self-care. Qigong exercise has shown promising results in clinical experience and in randomized, controlled pilot studies for affecting aspects of T2DM including positive associations between participation in Qigong and blood glucose, triglycerides, total cholesterol, weight, BMI and insulin resistance. This chapter looks at how traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) views diabetes as well as new understandings of how Qigong can support the management of T2DM.


Hu, Min (2018). Studies of the fibre direction and local bending stiffness of Norway spruce timber for application on machine strength grading, Linnaeus University Dissertations No 307/2018, ISBN: 978-91-88761-13-2 (print), 978-91-8876114-9 (pdf). Written in English. Machine strength grading is a production process in the sawmill industry used to grade sawn timber boards into different strength classes with specific characteristic values of the bending strength, modulus of elasticity (MOE) and density. These properties are called grade determining properties. Each of these is predicted on the basis of a statistical relationship between the property and a so-called indicating property (IP), which is based on non-destructively assessed board properties. In most cases, the prediction of strength is crucial for the grading. The majority of commercial grading machines rely on a statistical relationship of strength to an IP, which is either a global dynamic MOE or an averaged flatwise bending MOE measured over a board length of about one meter. The problem of today's machine strength grading is that the accuracy of the strength prediction is rather poor with a coefficient of determination of about R2 ≈ 0.5 − 0.6. One consequence of this is that much of the strength potential of timber is unused. The intention of this research is to contribute to a long-term goal, which is development of a method for prediction of bending strength that is more accurate than the methods available today. The research relies on three hypotheses. First, accurate prediction of bending strength can be achieved using an IP that is a localized MOE value (determined over a short length) that represents the lowest local bending stiffness of a board. Second, knowledge of the local bending stiffness with high resolution along a board's longitudinal direction can be established on the basis of fibre direction within the board in combination with dynamic MOE. Third, fibre directions in the interior of a board can be determined by application of fibre angle models utilizing data of fibre directions on the board's surfaces obtained from tracheid effect scanning. Following these hypotheses, this work has included laboratory investigations of local material directions, and development of models for fibre directions of the interior of boards. The work also included application of one-dimensional (1D) analytical models and three-dimensional (3D) finite element models of individual boards for the mechanical behaviour, analysis of mechanical response of boards based on experiments and based on the suggested models. Lastly, the suggested models were evaluated by comparisons of calculated and experimentally determined local bending stiffness along boards, and of predicted and experimentally determined bending strength. The research contributes with in-depth knowledge on local fibre directions close to knots, and detailed information on variation of the local bending stiffness in Studies of the fibre direction and local bending stiffness of Norway spruce timber – for application on machine strength grading Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Building Technology, Linnaeus University, Växjö, 2018 ISBN: 978-91-88761-13-2 (print), 978-91-88761-14-9 (pdf) Published by: Linnaeus University Press, 351 95 Växjö Printed by: DanagårdLiTHO, 2018 Abstract Hu, Min (2018). Studies of the fibre direction and local bending stiffness of Norway spruce timber for application on machine strength grading, Linnaeus University Dissertations No 307/2018, ISBN: 978-91-88761-13-2 (print), 978-91-8876114-9 (pdf). Written in English.Hu, Min (2018). Studies of the fibre direction and local bending stiffness of Norway spruce timber for application on machine strength grading, Linnaeus University Dissertations No 307/2018, ISBN: 978-91-88761-13-2 (print), 978-91-8876114-9 (pdf). Written in English. Machine strength grading is a production process in the sawmill industry used to grade sawn timber boards into different strength classes with specific characteristic values of the bending strength, modulus of elasticity (MOE) and density. These properties are called grade determining properties. Each of these is predicted on the basis of a statistical relationship between the property and a so-called indicating property (IP), which is based on non-destructively assessed board properties. In most cases, the prediction of strength is crucial for the grading. The majority of commercial grading machines rely on a statistical relationship of strength to an IP, which is either a global dynamic MOE or an averaged flatwise bending MOE measured over a board length of about one meter. The problem of today's machine strength grading is that the accuracy of the strength prediction is rather poor with a coefficient of determination of about R2 ≈ 0.5 − 0.6. One consequence of this is that much of the strength potential of timber is unused. The intention of this research is to contribute to a long-term goal, which is development of a method for prediction of bending strength that is more accurate than the methods available today. The research relies on three hypotheses. First, accurate prediction of bending strength can be achieved using an IP that is a localized MOE value (determined over a short length) that represents the lowest local bending stiffness of a board. Second, knowledge of the local bending stiffness with high resolution along a board's longitudinal direction can be established on the basis of fibre direction within the board in combination with dynamic MOE. Third, fibre directions in the interior of a board can be determined by application of fibre angle models utilizing data of fibre directions on the board's surfaces obtained from tracheid effect scanning. Following these hypotheses, this work has included laboratory investigations of local material directions, and development of models for fibre directions of the interior of boards. The work also included application of one-dimensional (1D) analytical models and three-dimensional (3D) finite element models of individual boards for the mechanical behaviour, analysis of mechanical response of boards based on experiments and based on the suggested models. Lastly, the suggested models were evaluated by comparisons of calculated and experimentally determined local bending stiffness along boards, and of predicted and experimentally determined bending strength. The research contributes with in-depth knowledge on local fibre directions close to knots, and detailed information on variation of the local bending stiffness in Studies of the fibre direction and local bending stiffness of Norway spruce timber – for application on machine strength grading Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Building Technology, Linnaeus University, Växjö, 2018 ISBN: 978-91-88761-13-2 (print), 978-91-88761-14-9 (pdf) Published by: Linnaeus University Press, 351 95 Växjö Printed by: DanagårdLiTHO, 2018 To Qingai and Emma boards. Moreover, fibre angle models for fibre directions in the interior of boards are presented. By application of the fibre angle models in the 3D model of the whole board, the local bending stiffness along timber boards can be determined over a very short length (l < 50 mm). A comparison with results determined on an experimental basis show a very close similarity implying that the applied models are sufficient to capture the variation of local bending stiffness, caused by knots and fibre distortions, with very high accuracy. Furthermore, it is found that by means of IPs derived using the suggested models, bending strength can be predicted with high accuracy. For a timber sample comprising 402 boards, such IPs results in coefficient of determination as high as R2 = 0.73. However, using IPs based on the 3D finite element model did not improve the R2 value achieved when using the IPs based on the 1D model.


The performance analysis of a system in which storage is provided by a file server node on a network of client processors is discussed. The server controls a hierarchy of storage devices, and provides all the necessary file management functions. The clients are large mainframe systems that have their own local storage devices. The movement of files among the various storage levels is managed by a hierarchical storage management system. A closed queuing network model of the client-server storage system is used to analyze the performance of the system for various file movement criteria and to study the tradeoffs between recalling a file and accessing it by a distributed file system. Several network topologies (Ethernet, token ring, channel-to-channel) and their effect on performance are considered. >


Baseline assessment of coral reefs of North Ari is the first study to investigate spatial variation in reef condition within the context of different human pressures in one atoll in the Maldives. Specifically, this study aimed to investigate whether and how coral reef condition (fish biomass, structural complexity, coral composition and live cover, and foraminiferal assemblages) vary spatially among reefs with different population levels and/or under different management regimes within North Ari atoll.


Permanent Down-hole Gauge (PDG) is the down-hole measuring device installed during the well completion. It can provide the continuous down-hole transient pressure in real-time. Since 1980s, PDG has been widely applied in oilfields. The wide field applications have demonstrated that the long-term pressure monitoring with PDG is useful for production optimization, reservoir description and model calibration. Analysing the long-term, noisy and large volume of PDG pressure data and extracting useful reservoir information are very challenging. Although lots of achievement has been made in PDG data processing, such as denoising, outlier removal and transient identification, analysis of long-term transient pressure from PDG is still difficult due to several challenging problems. The first problem is the dynamic changes in reservoirwell properties, which can cause the linearity assumption for pressure-transient analysis invalid, also the reservoir model needs calibration to match the field performance. The second problem is unknown or incomplete flow rate history. These problems together make it a very challenging task for engineer to interpret long-term transient pressure from PDG. This study investigates novel methods to analyse the long-term transient pressure from PDG with Wavelet Transform (WT). Firstly, a new diagnostic function named as Unit Reservoir System Response Aurc has been developed, and it can effectively diagnose the nonlinearities from PDG pressure due to the changes in reservoir-well properties. The nonlinearity diagnostic and evaluation is an important procedure before pressure analysis. Secondly, a model-independent method of reconstructing unknown rate history has been developed. This method has wide applications, considering the effects of skin, wellbore storage, reservoir heterogeneity and multiphase flow. Thirdly, based on the nonlinearity diagnostic result, sliding window technique is proposed to analyse long-term pressure with nonlinearities and update reservoir model with time-dependent reservoir properties. The synthetic cases and field data application have demonstrated that the developed methods can reveal more useful reservoir information from PDG pressure and realize the potential of PDG as the tool of reservoir management.


Purpose: The present study was designed to determine whether brand engagement in selfconcept was a function of materialistic values (social recognition, appealing appearance, financial success, defining success, acquisition centrality, pursuit of happiness) among Thai consumers of luxury goods. Design/Methodology/Approach: The participants were selected using multistage sampling on the basis of their shopping experience for luxury items. Multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the best linear combination of materialistic values that could predict brand engagement in self-concept. Findings: Appealing appearance, acquisition centrality, social recognition and defining success formed the significant variate that predicted brand engagement in self-concept. Practical Implications: Taken together, these findings support strong recommendations to marketing managers of luxury products on how to tap into consumers' values in order to market a luxury brand. Originality/Value: The study addresses the symbolic value of luxury brands and how such brands and their brand images interact with how consumers view their own identities.


Most of the existing models of speleogenesis are limited to situations where flow in all conduits is pressurized. The feedback between the distribution of hydraulic head and growth of new solution conduits determines the geometry of the resulting conduit network. We present a novel modeling approach that allows a transition from pressurized (pipe) flow to a free-surface (open-channel) flow in evolving discrete conduit networks. It calculates flow, solute transport and dissolution enlargement within each time step and steps through time until a stable flow pattern is established. The flow in each time step is calculated by calling the US Environmental Protection Agency Storm Water Management Model (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2014), which efficiently solves the 1-D Saint-Venant equations in a network of conduits. Two basic scenarios are modeled, a low-dip scenario and a high-dip scenario. In the low-dip scenario a slightly inclined plane is populated with a rectangular grid of solution conduits. The recharge is distributed to randomly selected junctions. The results for the pressurized flow regime resemble those of the existing models. When the network becomes vadose, a stable flow pathway develops along a system of conduits that occupy the lowest positions at their inlet junctions. This depends on the initial diameter and inlet position of a conduit, its total incision in a pressurized regime and its alignment relative to the dip of the plane, which plays important role during the vadose entrenchment. In the high-dip scenario a sub-vertical network with recharge on the top and outflow on the side is modeled. It is used to demonstrate the vertical development of karst due to drawdown of the water table, development of invasion vadose caves during vadose flow diversion and to demonstrate the potential importance of deeply penetrating conductive structures.


With interest in steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR) involvement in the luteolytic process, we studied changes in serum progesterone levels and the concomitant expression of StAR mRNA and protein (37-, 32-, and 30-kDa forms) in postovulatory Day 7 corpora lutea (CL) isolated from rats 1 h after injection with prostaglandin F2a (PGF2a, n 5 6) or saline (n 5 6). Serum progesterone levels were determined by RIA, StAR and b-actin mRNA expression by Northern analysis, and StAR and b-actin protein expression by Western analysis. Adrenal, brain, and spleen from control animals were used as positive and negative controls for StAR expression. Scanning optical densitometry measurements were standardized by dividing the signal strength from each StAR autoradiogram lane by that from the corresponding b-actin autoradiogram lane. ANOVA was used for significance testing, with a set at 0.05. The 37-, 32-, and 30kDa forms of StAR protein were expressed in all adrenal samples, whereas only the 37and 30-kDa forms were found in CL. Serum progesterone levels and expression of the 30-kDa and 37kDa forms of the StAR protein in CL were all found to be significantly lower in the PGF2a-treated than the saline-treated group. StAR mRNA expression was not significantly different in the salineand PGF2a-treated rats. The rapid decline in StAR protein expression that accompanies PGF2a induced luteolysis, therefore, does not result from significant decline in mRNA expression.


This book is situated against the background of the debate on recent institutional changes in
the public sector. These changes concern the privatization, liberalization and autonomization
of different kinds of public services. The main incentives for introducing such new modes
of governance were, and still are, expectations of efficiency improvements. Whether or not
these, in fact, were realized is questioned, however.
Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) has been put forward as an approach to address this
issue. Our study focuses on the question whether and in which form TCE, which was originally
developed by Oliver Williamson to analyse commercial transactions, can be applied
to institutional changes at the local government level in the Netherlands. More specifically,
this study addresses the question what the discriminating alignment hypothesis - stating that
transactions, which differ in their attributes, are aligned with governance structures, to effect
a transaction cost economizing result - can contribute to comparative assessments of the
efficiency and performance of governance structures at the local level.
To that end, this book studies the local public service of collecting household waste. Here,
a number of institutional changes have resulted in a variety of modes of governance, i.e. contracting
out to private companies, public companies, and municipal services. A comparative
case study of eight municipalities with a high urbanization degree shows that with regard
to this particular public service, alignment between governance structures and transactions
matters. The misaligned mode 'public company' has the highest relative level of transaction
costs, while the aligned modes 'municipal service' and 'contracting out' have a lower relative
level of transaction costs. These findings are consistent with the theory.


The United States spends approximately $4 million each year searching for near-Earth objects (NEOs). The objective is to detect those that may collide with Earth. The majority of this funding supports the operation of several observatories that scan the sky searching for NEOs. This, however, is insufficient in detecting the majority of NEOs that may present a tangible threat to humanity. A significantly smaller amount of funding supports ways to protect the Earth from such a potential collision or "mitigation." In 2005, a Congressional mandate called for NASA to detect 90 percent of NEOs with diameters of 140 meters of greater by 2020. Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies identifies the need for detection of objects as small as 30 to 50 meters as these can be highly destructive. The book explores four main types of mitigation including civil defense, "slow push" or "pull" methods, kinetic impactors and nuclear explosions. It also asserts that responding effectively to hazards posed by NEOs requires national and international cooperation. Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies is a useful guide for scientists, astronomers, policy makers and engineers.


Ruk/CIN85l SETA is a member of a separate and evolutionary conserved family of adapter I scaffold proteins implicated in apoptic and receptor tyrosine kinases signalling, rearrangement of actin cytoskeleton and cell adhesion, podocyte and T cell functions. Self-regulation through intra- and intercellular interactions can be supposed for RuklCIN85l SETA as this protein contains SH3 domains and proline-rich sequence, localized within one polypeptide chain, as well as C-terminal coiled-coil region. The ability of Ruk proline-rich motifs to interact with its own SH3 domains in an intramolecular fashion and coiled-coil region to mediate oligomerization between different isoforms was assessed in GST pull down experiments. It was shown that both Ruk SH3A and to a less extent SH3B domains can interact with its own proline-rich sequences in a cooperative manner, while coiled-coil region provide for isoforms oligomerization. SH3C domain appear exerts conformational constraints, imposed on coiled-coil region, restricting the level of oligomerization. We also demonstrated that the ability of exogenous ligands to interact with Ruk polyprotine motifs is changing during the course of TNFa-induced apoptosis of human myelomonocytic W37 cells.


Effective targeting by uniformly functionalized nanoparticles is limited to cancer cells expressing at least two copies of targeted receptors per nanoparticle footprint (approximately ≥2 × 10(5) receptor copies per cell); such a receptor density supports the required multivalent interaction between the neighboring receptors and the ligands from a single nanoparticle. To enable selective targeting below this receptor density, ligands on the surface of lipid vesicles were displayed in clusters that were designed to form at the acidic pH of the tumor interstitium. Vesicles with clustered HER2-targeting peptides within such sticky patches (sticky vesicles) were compared to uniformly functionalized vesicles. On HER2-negative breast cancer cells MDA-MB-231 and MCF7 {expressing (8.3 ± 0.8) × 10(4) and (5.4 ± 0.9) × 10(4) HER2 copies per cell, respectively}, only the sticky vesicles exhibited detectable specific targeting (KD ≈ 49-69 nM); dissociation (0.005-0.009 min(-1)) and endocytosis rates (0.024-0.026 min(-1)) were independent of HER2 expression for these cells. MDA-MB-231 and MCF7 were killed only by sticky vesicles encapsulating doxorubicin (32-40% viability) or α-particle emitter (225)Ac (39-58% viability) and were not affected by uniformly functionalized vesicles (>80% viability). Toxicities on cardiomyocytes and normal breast cells (expressing HER2 at considerably lower but not insignificant levels) were not observed, suggesting the potential of tunable clustered ligand display for the selective killing of cancer cells with low receptor densities.


The philanthropic sector, with private philanthropic foundations as its primary funding arm, is poised to play a major role in this nation's response to the demographic changes in store for the twenty-first century. If they are to actually affect public opinion and public policy in any important way, foundations must envision a more active and energetic leadership than they currently provide. The next ten to fifteen years will witness important challenges-social, political, economic-mat for aging baby boomers will be a test of character in the face of adversity. Their so-called golden years will require a level of leadership they have yet to demonstrate. Foundations can help prepare this cohort and this nation for that pending crossroads. The next ten to twenty years may continue to see an abrogation of public responsibility for the social welfare and other needs of vulnerable members of society. The continued shift from the Roosevelt era and its New Deal, through Lyndon Johnson's Great Society to today's "compassionate conservatism" and expressed values of individual responsibility can be seen in the devolution of federal programs like Social Security and Medicare. Many aging baby boomers will be more at risk and more likely to be left to their own devices. So far, to some extent, foundations have attempted to compensate for the growing gap-between public responsibility and individual risk- but their overall assets (U.S. foundations hold assets of nearly $500 billion) pale in comparison to public funds and public programs. Therefore, the better role for the philanthropic sector might be to work toward reversing the move away from public funding and to reeducate society about the need for a more balanced response to an aging society. Such a balanced response would mean that the public sector assumes responsibility for national needs and the private sector addresses market and entrepreneurial tasks, while individuals assume greater responsibility for planning and saving for retirement. The question then is, Are foundations and, by extension, philanthropy prepared to use resources to engage in explicit policy advocacy with a commitment to alter the public discourse on how society ought to address the needs of an aging population? Drawing on my experience in government as the Assistant Secretary for Aging in the Clinton administration and in philanthropy as a board member of a number of charitable organizations, I have seen first-hand the evolution in attitudes toward aging as well as how at least one foundation, the California Endowment, is moving the frontiers of policy advocacy. Below, I suggest a conceptual model for community empowerment and policy change. CHALLENGES OF THE AGING SOCIETY While it is quite obvious that this country is being fundamentally reshaped by the aging of its population, we as a society have yet to fully accept and begin to plan for this demographic inevitability. A litany of unresolved issues related to aging must be addressed. The growing fiscal uncertainty of Medicare and Social security and the evisceration of the social safety net in other areas such as welfare reform combine with such private sector changes as the demise of traditional defined-benefit pensions and healthcare coverage for retirees. The private sector is also experiencing a "legacy" crisis of too few workers and too many retirees in old-line corporations like United Airlines, General Motors and Ford, and the steel industry. AU mis points to the coming crisis facing the next large generation of elders: baby boomers. This cohort, who now enjoy the longest life expectancy of any generation thus far, is woefully unprepared to meet its longevity. One indicator says it all: The savings rate of baby boomers is dose to zero. Granted, many will do well with private investments, accumulated defined-benefit pension plans, and wellfunded 4OIK savings. Others have done well with real estate investments and other forms of entrepreneurship. …


Pollinators are declining in Europe due to intensification of agriculture, habitat loss and fragmentation. Restored landfill sites are a significant potential reserve of semi‐natural habitat, so their conservation value for supporting populations of pollinating insects was here examined by assessing whether the plant and pollinator assemblages of restored landfill sites are comparable to reference sites of existing wildlife value. Floral characteristics of the vegetation and the species richness and abundance of flower‐visiting insect assemblages were compared between nine pairs of restored landfill sites and reference sites in the East Midlands of the United Kingdom, using standardized methods over two field seasons. No differences were found between the restored landfill and reference sites in terms of species richness or abundance of plants in flower and both types of site had similar assemblages of pollinators. However, plant and insect assemblages differed across the season, with species richness and abundance being lower for the restored landfill sites in the spring and higher in the autumn compared to the reference sites. The results indicate that in this region, landfill sites are being restored to a state comparable to that of the reference sites with regards to their provision of floral resources and the associated insect pollinator assemblages. Since there are currently 2,200 working landfill sites in England and Wales, covering 28,000 ha, and closing at a rate of 100 per year, this is potentially a significant reserve of land that could be restored.


Scale of changes of particular components of cryosphere due to global warming is presented. Cryosphere diminishes its spatial extend and the total volume of all kinds of ice is reduced. The Arctic sea ice cover has recently diminished most intensely. It reached its minimal extend (4.28 mln km2) in September 2007. One expects accelerated disintegration of sea ice of the Arctic as a result of coadjuvancy of oceanic and atmospheric factors. In consequence, more intense warming of climate coming from warmer ocean water is predicted in the Arctic basin. Increase of melting of glaciers during the last three decades results in decrease of their extend and thickness. Additionally, more meltwater is reaching bed of glaciers and is accelerating their flow velocity due to faster basal sliding. Such processes result in more intense breaking off the icebergs from fronts of glaciers terminating into the sea. Dynamic response of Greenland outlet tidewater glaciers has been detected after 2000 and it affects significantly global ocean level rise by ca 0.5 mm/yr. The Antarctic Ice Sheet is actually only insignificantly reacting to global warming. The paper discusses possible scenarios of the consequences of dynamic reaction of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet for increasing warming and slow sea level rise. Permafrost is reacting in a less distinct but detectable scale. The paper is giving not only description of consequences of climate warming for cryosphere, important impact of its spatial extend and features on atmosphere and oceans are considered either. A series of positive feedacks between  warming climate and cryosphere are listed. Described evolution of cryosphere is suggesting that distinct trend of climate warming is irreversible for the next centuries. One can also expect systematic rise of global ocean level as the consequence of glacier melting and dynamic transfer of ice masses based on land to the sea.


Magical Musical Tour: Rock and Pop in Film Soundtracks. By K. J. Donnelly. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. [vii, 207 p. ISBN 9781628921281 (hardcover), $100; ISBN 9781628927481 (paperback), $29.95; ISBN 9781628927146 (e-book), $25.99.] Notes, bibliography, index.While recent scholarship has given due individual focus to film soundtracks, rock 'n' roll, and popular music, a volume examining their intersection is certainly a welcome addition to the canon. K. J. (Kevin) Donnelly, a Reader in Film at the University of Southampton, discusses several areas in this vein; overall, the book is a cleanly written survey of topics that (in this reviewer's experience) are all generally familiar, yet Donnelly regularly includes a sub-discussion or reference that entices the reader to pursue further study.The book's introduction provides an overview of some larger concepts within the discourse of film soundtracks, including the basic notion that music and film images should not be thought of as two distinct areas, but rather a merged entity. Hollywoodproduced musicals reached an apex in the late 1940s through the early 1950s, accompanied by a decline in the sales of show songs, in direct contrast to the emergence of rock 'n' roll records. The success in the 1960s of Cliff Richard's films in England and beach movies in the United States eventually gave way to an "art mode of production" (p. 5) that transitioned rock music away from its status as a niche genre toward recognition as an official branch of pop music. By the 1970s, rock music was considered different from "show business," and the evolving counterculture served as impetus for rock documentaries, with rock musicals and operas solidifying that artistic status. Pairing films with pop songs became de rigueur for marketing in the 1980s, tapping into younger viewers with high school movies and expanding techniques learned from MTV; the 1990s saw more films concerned with rock's (relatively recent) past, and the early twenty-first century enjoyed a renaissance of dance movies.Donnelly spends some time addressing subtler issues (such as the advent of the music video) that rejuvenated music (and video), while noting how rock and pop are epitomized by the strain between creativity and commerce. While studio technologies behind the production of classical musicals resulted in idealized products grounded in recognizable sequences and using wellknown actors, creators of pop and rock musicals were challenged with negotiating the dual modes of realtime performance (where on-screen images show the simultaneous production of sounds being heard) with lip synching. Citing the work of Rick Altman (p. 11), Donnelly discusses the concept of "audio dissolve" and how the emergence of music into the foreground-a development that influenced movements and images, much the opposite of traditional filmmaking-combined with audiovisual aesthetics to create a convergence of pop and rock with traditional film scoring. This development tends toward a lack of subtlety, with emphasis on drumbeats and a domination of sound over image as it becomes more autonomous from pictures on the screen.Donnelly devotes each chapter to an artist or trend within pop film soundtracks, beginning logically with The Beatles. For movies that followed, A Hard Day's Night provided several models, including focus on live performance, a parade of personalities for the artists, use of a strong title sequence, and a climactic conclusion (in this case, the concert broadcast). Help! offered the distinct additions of color film and exotic locations; however, the movie was still constructed around framing the songs. Donnelly touches on two of the film's most memorable sequences: the skiing "music video" for "Ticket to Ride," and the outdoor recording session (with military protection) on Salisbury Plain. Both films share the tension between creation of a dramatic narrative, in which the band members evolve from simple pop stars to songwriters composing for their own art, to simple showcasing of the band and its music. …


PRODUCTS LIABILITY, which has its origins in both tort and contract law, typically covers any liability of a manufacturer or a seller of a product where that product's defect results in personal injury or property damage. The plaintiff can make such a claim under a number of different theories of liability. At one time, the most common ground for recovery was negligence, requiring the plaintiff to affirmatively show that the defendant-distributor deviated from accepted standards of conduct in its actions or failure to act. In 1944, Judge Traynor explained the evidentiary difficulty in proving negligence, when he opined, "[a]n injured person, however, is not ordinarily in a position to refute such evidence or identify the cause of the defect, for he can hardly be familiar with the manufacturing process as the manufacturer himself." (1) To avoid this substantial burden, plaintiffs relied on an implied warranty of merchantability, which, according to the Uniform Sales Act and later ruder the Uniform Commercial Code, guaranteed the consumer a product that was "reasonably fit for the ordinary purposes for which such goods are used." (2) This cause of action, requiring defect but no proof of fault, had many of the virtues of strict liability. However, a cause of action based on implied warranty posed its own substantial hurdles. Because the action was contractual, it required privity (3) and, based in sales law, it required proper notice of the breach. Additionally, its statute of limitations ran from the sale rather than the injury. Public policy considerations laid the groundwork for plaintiffs to recover on a third ground: strict liability in tort. One who sells any product "in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user or consumer or to his property" is strictly liable for harm caused to the ultimate consumer or user. (4) Although these theories are not mutually exclusive, many plaintiffs allege alternative theories of liability, a contingency plan of sorts should they fail to provide sufficient evidence on an element of one theory. Although courts allow plaintiffs to allege multiple theories, a plaintiff must, irrespective of the theory, prove that the product is defective. (5) If a jury returns one finding for the plaintiff while returning another for the defendant, with both theories requiring a showing of defect, the verdict could be considered irreconcilable and fatally inconsistent. Inconsistent verdicts are a double-edged sword in that, if a jury, because of confusion in the law, returns an inconsistent verdict, the decision of the historical arbiter of fact is rejected and the case must be retried. (6) On the other hand, harmonizing an inconsistent verdict under an "any possibility of reconciliation under any possible application of the evidence and instructions" standard (7) muddles legal precedent and affects future product litigation. Some scholars have advocated for the use of special interrogatories or special verdicts to deal with the potential hazard posed by alleging alternative theories of liability. Although helpful, this "remedy" would only temporarily address the problem in the short-run and may not be sufficient to remedy the larger, long-term problem. If courts continue to resolve inconsistent verdicts in products liability cases by theorizing a possible reasoning they believe the jury may have had in returning such a verdict, a workable definition of "defect" will prove elusive. The larger problem must be addressed: section 402A of the Restatement (Second) and its amorphous "defective condition unreasonably dangerous," put a "substantive gloss" on the term "defect." (8) Courts have since incorporated their own complicated and, at times, misguided interpretations of the term, sending jurors to deliberate with nearly incomprehensible instructions, leaving them to formulate random, unpredictable, and sometimes irreconcilable judgments. Charging juries with alternative theories of recovery in products liability cases invites the potential for inconsistent verdicts because each theory requires a showing of defect, and courts have not provided juries with a clear, consistent definition of defect. …


In The Unpredictability of the Past , an international group of historians examines how collective memories of the Asia-Pacific War continue to affect relations among China, Japan, and the United States. The contributors are primarily concerned with the history of international relations broadly conceived to encompass not only governments but also nongovernmental groups and organizations that influence the interactions of peoples across the Pacific. Taken together, the essays provide a rich, multifaceted analysis of how the dynamic interplay between past and present is manifest in policymaking, popular culture, public commemorations, and other arenas.

The contributors interpret mass media sources, museum displays, monuments, film, and literature, as well as the archival sources traditionally used by historians. They explore how American ideas about Japanese history shaped U.S. occupation policy following Japan's surrender in 1945, and how memories of the Asia-Pacific War influenced Washington and Tokyo policymakers' reactions to the postwar rise of Soviet power. They investigate topics from the resurgence of Pearl Harbor images in the U.S. media in the decade before September 11, 2001, to the role of Chinese war museums both within China and in Chinese-Japanese relations, and from the controversy over the Smithsonian Institution's Enola Gay exhibit to Japanese tourists' reactions to the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor. One contributor traces how a narrative commemorating African Americans' military service during World War II eclipsed the history of their significant early-twentieth-century appreciation of Japan as an ally in the fight against white supremacy. Another looks at the growing recognition and acknowledgment in both the United States and Japan of the Chinese dimension of World War II. By focusing on how memories of the Asia-Pacific War have been contested, imposed, resisted, distorted, and revised, The Unpredictability of the Past demonstrates the crucial role that interpretations of the past play in the present.

Contributors . Marc Gallicchio, Waldo Heinrichs, Haruo Iguchi, Xiaohua Ma, Frank Ninkovich, Emily S. Rosenberg, Takuya Sasaki, Yujin Yaguchi, Daqing Yang


Common transverse reinforcement of reinforced concrete members with circular cross-section consists of round ties or spirals. Its purpose in members that are not subjected to significant shear loading is to provide proper confinement for concrete, and eliminate buckling of the longitudinal reinforcement bars. If spirals are to be used as both shear enabler and confiner for reinforced concrete beams then, under combined action of moment and shear, spirals will be required to provide or contribute to proper shear resistance. Hence, a proper assessment for spiral shear contribution is required. The validity of concepts which underline current methods for shear design used in design codes will be investigated in this paper, especially for beams with the shear configuration, which violates basic code rules on forming a truss. A simplified sectional model based on sectional crack analysis and a corresponding approach in assessing the shear contribution of spiral shear reinforcement are presented. A method for e...


Mobile technology is developing fast in recent years, and the price of mobile devices is dropping and becoming affordable for the majority of people. As a result, the use of smartphones and tablets is increasing at a rapid rate, even among children. Nowadays, in many countries, smartphones are being used at school as advanced teaching tools to motivate children to learn better. One of the recent examples is the utilization of Augmented Reality mobile applications for educational purposes. This paper is presenting an AR mobile application, which is encouraging children to learn about biodiversity. The application was evaluated during a field trip with 15 pupils of around 10 years of age, and the results illustrate the behavior of the pupils using the application, and the potential of the app to create a connection between the students and the nature. Moreover, analyzing the time the pupils spent on the application demonstrates a motivation among the pupils to find out about various species through a combination of an outdoor activity and a mobile application.


Taxation in Colonial America examines life in the thirteen original American colonies through the revealing lens of the taxes levied on and by the colonists. Spanning the turbulent years from the founding of the Jamestown settlement to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Alvin Rabushka provides the definitive history of taxation in the colonial era, and sets it against the backdrop of enormous economic, political, and social upheaval in the colonies and Europe. Rabushka shows how the colonists strove to minimize, avoid, and evade British and local taxation, and how they used tax incentives to foster settlement. He describes the systems of public finance they created to reduce taxation, and reveals how they gained control over taxes through elected representatives in colonial legislatures. Rabushka takes a comprehensive look at the external taxes imposed on the colonists by Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, as well as internal direct taxes like poll and income taxes. He examines indirect taxes like duties and tonnage fees, as well as county and town taxes, church and education taxes, bounties, and other charges. He links the types and amounts of taxes with the means of payment--be it gold coins, agricultural commodities, wampum, or furs--and he compares tax systems and burdens among the colonies and with Britain. This book brings the colonial period to life in all its rich complexity, and shows how colonial attitudes toward taxation offer a unique window into the causes of the revolution.


An attentional mechanism has lately been used to improve neural machine translation (NMT) by selectively focusing on parts of the source sentence during translation. However, there has been little work exploring useful architectures for attention-based NMT. This paper examines two simple and effective classes of attentional mechanism: a global approach which always attends to all source words and a local one that only looks at a subset of source words at a time. We demonstrate the effectiveness of both approaches on the WMT translation tasks between English and German in both directions. With local attention, we achieve a significant gain of 5.0 BLEU points over non-attentional systems that already incorporate known techniques such as dropout. Our ensemble model using different attention architectures yields a new state-of-the-art result in the WMT'15 English to German translation task with 25.9 BLEU points, an improvement of 1.0 BLEU points over the existing best system backed by NMT and an n-gram reranker. 1


Our seduction into beliefs in competition, scarcity, and acquisition are producing too many casualties. We need to depart a kingdom that creates isolation, polarized debate, an exhausted planet, and violence that comes with the will to empire. The abbreviation of this empire is called a consumer culture. We think the free market ideology that surrounds us is true and inevitable and represents progress. We are called to better adapt, be more agile, more lean, more schooled, more, more, more. Give it up. There is no such thing as customer satisfaction. We need a new narrative, a shift in our thinking and speaking. An Other Kingdom takes us out of a culture of addictive consumption into a place where life is ours to create together. This satisfying way depends upon a neighborly covenant an agreement that we together, will better raise our children, be healthy, be connected, be safe, and provide a livelihood. The neighborly covenant has a different language than market-hype. It speaks instead in a sacred tongue. Authors Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, and John McKnight invite you on a journey of departure from our consumer market culture, with its constellations of empire and control. Discover an alternative set of beliefs that have the capacity to evoke a culture where poverty, violence, and shrinking well-being are not inevitable a culture in which the social order produces enough for all. They ask you to consider this other kingdom. To participate in this modern exodus towards a modern community. To awaken its beginnings are all around us. An Other Kingdom outlines this journey to construct a future outside the systems world of solutions.


The β-Amyloid (βA) peptide is the major component of senile plaques that are one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). It is well recognized that Aβ exists in multiple assembly states, such as soluble oligomers or insoluble fibrils, which affect neuronal viability and may contribute to disease progression. In particular, common βA-neurotoxic mechanisms are Ca2+ dyshomeostasis, reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation, altered signaling, mitochondrial dysfunction and neuronal death such as necrosis and apoptosis. Recent study shows that the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway play a crucial role in the degradation of short-lived and regulatory proteins that are important in a variety of basic and pathological cellular processes including apoptosis. Guanosine (Guo) is a purine nucleoside present extracellularly in brain that shows a spectrum of biological activities, both under physiological and pathological conditions. Recently it has become recognized that both neurons and glia also release guanine-based purines. However, the role of Guo in AD is still not well established. In this study, we investigated the machanism basis of neuroprotective effects of GUO against Aβ peptide-induced toxicity in neuronal (SH-SY5Y), in terms of mitochondrial dysfunction and translocation of phosphatidylserine (PS), a marker of apoptosis, using MTT and Annexin-V assay, respectively. In particular, treatment of SH-SY5Y cells with GUO (12,5-75 μM) in presence of monomeric βA25-35 (neurotoxic core of Aβ), oligomeric and fibrillar βA1-42 peptides showed a strong dose-dependent inhibitory effects on βA-induced toxic events. The maximum inhibition of mitochondrial function loss and PS translocation was observed with 75 μM of Guo. Subsequently, to investigate whether neuroprotection of Guo can be ascribed to its ability to modulate proteasome activity levels, we used lactacystin, a specific inhibitor of proteasome. We found that the antiapoptotic effects of Guo were completely abolished by lactacystin. To rule out the possibility that this effects resulted from an increase in proteasome activity by Guo, the chymotrypsin-like activity was assessed employing the fluorogenic substrate Z-LLL-AMC. The treatment of SH-SY5Y with Guo (75 μM for 0-6 h) induced a strong increase, in a time-dependent manner, of proteasome activity. In parallel, no increase of ubiquitinated protein levels was observed at similar experimental conditions adopted. We then evaluated an involvement of anti and pro-apoptotic proteins such as Bcl-2, Bad and Bax by western blot analysis. Interestingly, Bax levels decreased after 2 h treatment of SH-SY5Y with Guo. Taken together, these results demonstrate that Guo neuroprotective effects against βA-induced apoptosis are mediated, at least partly, via proteasome activation. In particular, these findings suggest a novel neuroprotective pathway mediated by Guo, which involves a rapid degradation of pro-apoptotic proteins by the proteasome. In conclusion, the present data, raise the possibility that Guo could be used as an agent for the treatment of AD.


"With this volume, Paul Tillich joins the ranks of the great Christian theologians such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. . . .This volume, compiled by a noted minister and scholar, offers to the theological student, church worker, or, indeed, any serious reader struggling with the existential question, a tantalizing and illuminating introduction to perhaps the greatest mind of twentieth-century Protestant theology."-"Booklist " "Church testifies to the power Tillich provides him for his pastoral work, his intellectual formulation and his personal life. He projects, quite properly, that the 'essential' Tillich can do the same for others. . . ."-"Christian Century ""This book summarizes in Tillich's own words much of the best of his thought, still highly relevant today."-"Library Journal " "[Church] helps Tillich speak to an audience unfamiliar with the breadth and depth of his thought."-"Religious Studies Review"


The ageing characteristics of flame-made 2 wt% Pd supported on YFeO3 were analysed in comparison with a Pd/Al2O3–CeO2–ZrO2 three-way catalyst (TWC) with respect to structural changes and catalytic performance for methane oxidation under stoichiometric reaction conditions. Thermal treatment under lean conditions (air, 900 °C) resulted in slight decrease in the methane oxidation activity of the TWC. In marked contrast, YFeO3-supported Pd catalysts exhibit an increase in activity after such treatment. Activity enhancement is even higher when the treatment was performed under stoichiometric conditions (air–fuel equivalence ratio, λ = 1, 900 °C). To explain this observation, in-depth characterization (BET, STEM, OSCC, XAS, and CO chemisorption) of fresh and aged catalysts was performed. Both thermal and stoichiometric ageing cause a severe sintering of the support particles and the phase transformation from hexagonal to orthorhombic YFeO3. Despite the absence of a mixed Pd–YFeO3 phase, the growth of Pd particles appears to be limited under the λ = 1 atmosphere. In contrast to thermally aged catalysts where large PdO particles are formed, well-defined metallic Pd nanoparticles of 10–20 nm are present after stoichiometric ageing along with higher methane oxidation activity. Although it is tempting to conclude that metallic Pd is active for methane oxidation under the given conditions, reversible and periodic partial oxidation of the large metallic particles is observed in modulation excitation high energy X-ray diffraction (HXRD) experiments designed to simulate the oscillating redox conditions experienced during operation. These results indicate that large Pd particles exhibit improved methane oxidation activity but equally confirm that activity under stoichiometric conditions is the result of a delicate equilibrium dictated by the bulk-Pd/surface-PdO pair.


Abstract Grading has long been recognised to critically influence the mechanical behaviour of ballast. To identify the ballast grading for heavy-haul rail track, monotonic and cyclic triaxial tests are conducted to assess the performances of different gradings. Permanent deformations, aggregates degradation, resilience, shear resistance, maximum and minimum densities are recorded and analysed. The grading is found to affect the behaviour of ballast in that coarser gradings exhibit relatively better strength, resilience and therefore less permanent deformation. However, ballast degradation increases with the overall aggregate size. Therefore, to identify the grading for ballast with different performance objectives, a grey relational theory is used to convert the multi-objective into single-objective, i.e. grey relational grade. A relatively optimal grading that provides the highest grey relational grade is thus suggested for the improved ballast performance. Grading has long been recognised to critically in fl uence the mechanical behaviour of ballast. To identify the ballast grading for heavy-haul rail track, monotonic and cyclic triaxial tests are conducted to assess the performances of different gradings. Permanent deformations, aggregates degradation, resilience, shear resistance, maximum and minimum densities are recorded and analysed. The grading is found to affect the behaviour of ballast in that coarser gradings exhibit relatively better strength, resilience and therefore less permanent deformation. However, ballast degradation increases with the overall aggregate size. Therefore, to identify the grading for ballast with different performance objectives, a grey relational theory is used to convert the multi-objective into single-objective, i.e. grey relational grade. A relatively optimal grading that provides the highest grey relational grade is thus suggested for the improved ballast performance.


This paper introduces a class of mixed-integer formulations for trained ReLU neural networks. The approach balances model size and tightness by partitioning node inputs into a number of groups and forming the convex hull over the partitions via disjunctive programming. At one extreme, one partition per input recovers the convex hull of a node, i.e., the tightest possible formulation for each node. For fewer partitions, we develop smaller relaxations that approximate the convex hull, and show that they outperform existing formulations. Specifically, we propose strategies for partitioning variables based on theoretical motivations and validate these strategies using extensive computational experiments. Furthermore, the proposed scheme complements known algorithmic approaches, e.g., optimization-based bound tightening captures dependencies within a partition.


Erasmus was above all an educator, and his writings as a teacher and theorist give him a claim to be regarded as the greatest figure in the history of education since antiquity. By the decade of the i32os, he had become the leading spokesman for the cause of humanistic education in Europe. The five translations in Collected Works of Erasmus 23 and 26 reflect Erasmus' main ideas about education: concern for the most desirable and effective curriculum; the need to read and appreciate the best writings of the finest classical authors; the importance of well-trained, well-paid, competent, inventive, and compassionate teachers; practical advice on the temperament and conduct of parents; the provision of adequate education for women and mature students; in short, the development of a philosophy of education that would produce the kind of person best educated for the service of God and man. Contained in these volumes are the first modern English translations of De conscribendis epistolis I On the Writing of Letters, Conficiendarum epistolarum formula I A Formula for the Composition of Letters, De civilitate I On Good Manners for Boys, De pueris I A Declamation on the Subject of Early Liberal Education for Children, and De recta pronuntiatione I The Right Way of Speaking Latin and Greek A Dialogue. These works present Erasmus' educational program for children from the very young to pre-university age - a compendium of his views on the nature and value of a humanistic education that remains of importance for all times and places.


The signal works of poetry that prominently feature racialized Blackness in early Arabic literature (c. ad 500–1250) include works composed by authors of Afro-Arab heritage as well as by Arab authors who satirized and panegyrized Black subjects. These poets include the pre-Islamic author ʿAntarah ibn Shaddād and the ʿAbbasid-era figures al-Mutanabbī and Ibn al-Rūmī, and thus reflect the shift, across an extensive timeline, from a local, Bedouin poetics to a self-styled cosmopolitan, courtly aesthetic characterized as muḥdath, or modernist. The works are situated not only within the changing conventions of genre, but also within an arc that traces the emergence of new race concepts and racialized social institutions in the transition from the pre-Islamic era to Islam and from the early conquests to ʿAbbasid imperialization. Critical instances of these works' intertextual movements demonstrate how racial logic accretes in various Arab-Muslim textual traditions, showing how poetry intersects with popular epic as well as high literary geographical, ethnological, and commentarial corpuses. As verse moves across a myriad of later literary forms, its context-specific representations of racial difference are recontextualized and received in ways that contribute to a broader transregional and transtemporal discourse of racialized Blackness.


One important problem in task-based conversations is that of effectively updating the belief estimates of user-mentioned slot-value pairs. Given a user utterance, the intent of a slot-value pair is captured using dialog acts (DA) expressed in that utterance. However, in certain cases, DA's fail to capture the actual update intent of the user. In this paper, we describe such cases and propose a new type of semantic class for user intents. This new type, Update Intents (UI), is directly related to the type of update a user intends to perform for a slot-value pair. We define five types of UI's, which are independent of the domain of the conversation. We build a multi-class classification model using LSTM's to identify the type of UI in user utterances in the Restaurant and Shopping domains. Experimental results show that our models achieve strong classification performance in terms of F-1 score.