Critics of environmental law often condemn the law for its anthropocentric foundations and for its failure to incorporate a platform of deep environmental ethics. Such "radical environmental critiques" propose perspectives and norms for our treatment of the environment that diverge from existing legal vocabularies and concepts. This article questions the effectiveness of radical environmental critique for two related reasons: first, because the conceptual scheme underlying radical alternative theories undercuts their normative force; and, second, because deeply held beliefs alone are ill-equipped to achieve progress in environmental law. This article offers environmental pragmatism as a means to avoid the problems, while maintaining the goals, of radical environmental critique. In particular, this article argues that the challenge of integrating environmental ethics and law requires the pragmatic distrust of claims of ultimate truth and the replacement of that concept with a recognition of the importance of persuasion. In support of this thesis, this article generalizes what might be called the traditional adversaries in environmental matters - property rights and non-use environmental values - as environmental paradigms. This article then questions whether the debate on environmental values is necessarily polemic - that is, whether we are all limited to being either property rights proponents or environmental activists. Environmental pragmatism, by its own terms a middle ground to any debate, offers a means to fuse the various value paradigms into a coherent system of law. Environmentalists are beginning to experiment with this type of visionary thinking, and have initially succeeded in convincing adversaries to see the other side of the land--the side not defined by its economic value.


A Tale of Two EdD Programs: A Case Study of Intersectionality between Program Structure and Advising Model Peggy F. Itschner Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor James Soto Antony College of Education The purpose of this study is to explore the intersectionality of program structure and advising models in Doctor of Education (EdD) programs. This study examines two EdD programs, one that is traditional in its structure and advising approach and one that has intentionally modified its design/structure and advising model, to be attuned to the practical and developmental needs of practitioners. This study takes a collective case study approach, examining the issue through the perspectives of faculty and students who are or have been involved in the two programs. The researcher discusses themes that emerged from the perspectives of the participants through an exploration of faculty perceptions of the EdD, students' choices to pursue the EdD, key strategies for advising EdD students that faculty in each program identified, the general advising experiences of students in both programs, and how faculty and students believe their respective programs' structure and advising model influence and impact one another. The findings reveal that a core faculty leadership structure is a key factor in the ultimate success of a program. The traditionally structured program lacks this core leadership, which has led to a consensus among students in the NEP that their EdD program is treated like a stepchild to the PhD and that the faculty recognizes the lack of differentiation between the PhD and EdD in the NEP specializations, particularly in the dissertation or culminating project requirement. Because of this and other major program structure issues, students in the program have an overall neutral satisfaction level and many creative suggestions for how to improve the program structure and advising model. EP faculty have worked continually throughout the history of the program to improve the structure, understanding that this will impact the advising model. In turn, EP students appreciate the cohort model and built-in advising structures of the program and overall have a very high level of satisfaction. Recommendations are offered in the final chapter for best practices in both programs based on data from the faculty and students, the existing literature, and the researcher's insights.


Body-Centric Wireless Communication (BCWC) is a central topic in the development of healthcare and biomedical technologies. Increasing healthcare quality, in addition to the continuous miniaturisation of sensors and the advancement in wearable electronics, embedded software, digital signal processing and biomedical technologies, has led to a new era of biomedical devices and increases possibility of continuous monitoring, diagnostic and/or treatment of many diseases. However, the major difference between BCWC, particularly implantable devices, and conventional wireless systems is the radio channel over which the communication takes place. The human body is a hostile environment from a radio propagation perspective. This environment is a highly lossy and has a high effect on the antenna elements, the radio channel parameters and, hence a dramatic drop in the implanted antenna performance. This thesis focuses on how to improve the gain of implanted antennas.
In order to improve the gain and performance of implanted antennas, this thesis uses a combination of experimental and electromagnetic numerical investigations. Extensive simulation and experimental investigations are carried out to study the effects of various external elements on the performance improvement of implanted antennas. The thesis also shows the design, characterisation, simulation and measurements of four different antennas to work at ISM band and seventeen different scenarios for body wireless communication. A 3- layer (skin, fat and muscle) and a liquid homogenise phantom were used for human body modelling in both simulation and measurements.
The results shows that a length of printed line and a grid can be used on top of the human skin in order enhance the performance of the implanted antennas. Moreover, a ring and a hemispherical lens can be used externally in order to enhance the performance of the implanted antenna. This approach yields a significant improvement in the antenna gain and reduces the specific absorption rate (SAR) in most cases and the obtained gain varies between 2 dB and 8 dB.


During its propagation along a fiber, any noise is amplified by the modulated signal through the fiber's nonlinearity-induced parametric gain. This nonlinear amplification of noise has been previously studied with the assumption that the signal can be approximated as continuous-wave. We present a novel method to analyze the parametric-gain-induced, nonlinear amplification of noise by an arbitrarily modulated signal based on perturbation theory. Because of the nonstationary nature of the output noise after its interaction with the modulated signal, the detailed correlation function is best computed in the frequency domain by assuming a given input bit sequence. The results are validated by split-step Fourier simulation and applied to obtain the probability distribution function of the detector statistics.


COVEN (Collaborative Virtual Environments) is a European project that seeks to develop a comprehensive approach to the issues in the development of collaborative virtual environment (CVE) technology. COVEN brings together twelve academic and industrial partners with a wide range of expertise in CSCW, networked VR, computer graphics, human factors, HCI, and telecommunications infrastructures. After two years of work, we are presenting the main features of our approach and results, our driving applications, the main components of our technical investigations, and our experimental activities. With different citizen and professional application scenarios as driving forces, COVEN is exploring the requirements and supporting techniques for collaborative interaction in scalable CVEs. Technical results are being integrated in an enriched networked VR platform based on the dVS and DIVE systems. Taking advantage of a dedicated Europe-wide ISDN and ATM network infrastructure, a large component of the project is a trial and experimentation activity that should allow a comprehensive understanding of the network requirements of these systems as well as their usability issues and human factors aspects.


We present release 2.0 of the ALPS (Algorithms and Libraries for Physics Simulations) project, an open source software project to develop libraries and application programs for the simulation of strongly correlated quantum lattice models such as quantum magnets, lattice bosons, and strongly correlated fermion systems. The code development is centered on common XML and HDF5 data formats, libraries to simplify and speed up code development, common evaluation and plotting tools, and simulation programs. The programs enable non-experts to start carrying out serial or parallel numerical simulations by providing basic implementations of the important algorithms for quantum lattice models: classical and quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) using non-local updates, extended ensemble simulations, exact and full diagonalization (ED), the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) both in a static version and a dynamic time-evolving block decimation (TEBD) code, and quantum Monte Carlo solvers for dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). The ALPS libraries provide a powerful framework for programmers to develop their own applications, which, for instance, greatly simplify the steps of porting a serial code onto a parallel, distributed memory machine. Major changes in release 2.0 include the use of HDF5 for binary data, evaluation tools in Python, support for the Windows operating system, the use of CMake as build system and binary installation packages for Mac OS X and Windows, and integration with the VisTrails workflow provenance tool. The software is available from our web server at http://alps.comp-phys.org/.


Background Child mental health problems have been linked to a variety of negative outcomes over the lifecourse. In recent years there has been a focus on exploring the development of mental health problems during childhood and adolescence. However, these analyses often use data from cohort studies, which suffer from differential attrition, and parent-reported data, which is liable to be affected by the parent's own mental state. The current study used routine data to explore what happened to children's mental health problems during this time; whether this differed for children from different backgrounds; and whether schools made a difference to the development of these problems over the first three years. Methods This study used data collected through nurseries and primary schools for all children in Local Authority funded nurseries or schools in Glasgow City. The study used Goodman's Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire to assess internalising and externalising symptoms. Data were collected for children in their preschool year (age 4–5) in 2010 and then in Primary 3 (P3, age 7–8) in 2013. Data were available for 2131 children. Multilevel binomial models were fitted in MLwiN in order to explore the impact of child and school level characteristics on mental health problems at P3. Results Data were assessed for representativeness. Children from an ethnic minority, as well as affluent children with mental health problems, suffered from greater attrition. Children's mental health in Glasgow was similar to the UK, though with heightened levels of hyperactivity at P3. Results showed a widening of inequalities in mental health problems by deprivation: levels of difficulties in children from the most affluent quintile of area deprivation stayed level between the two time points, whilst levels for children from the most deprived quintiles started higher and increased over time. Multilevel models showed evidence of school effects. Significant predictors of mental health problems at P3 included being male, having been under supervision of the state in early childhood, having an abnormal score at Preschool and being in a school with higher levels of Free School Meals (p < 0.01). Conclusion In conclusion, children in Glasgow show a similar pattern of difficulties compared with UK norms, though with increased levels of Hyperacitivity/inattention by P3. Patterns differ for children from different backgrounds, with children who have experienced adversity having increased levels of difficulties by P3. There does seem to be an effect of schools in the first few years, though a large proportion of this variance is accounted for by the demographics of the pupils within them.


Genome duplications increase genetic diversity and may facilitate the evolution of gene subfunctions. Little attention, however, has focused on the evolutionary impact of lineage-specific gene loss. Here, we show that identifying lineage-specific gene loss after genome duplication is important for understanding the evolution of gene subfunctions in surviving paralogs and for improving functional connectivity among human and model organism genomes. We examine the general principles of gene loss following duplication, coupled with expression analysis of the retinaldehyde dehydrogenase Aldh1a gene family during retinoic acid signaling in eye development as a case study. Humans have three ALDH1A genes, but teleosts have just one or two. We used comparative genomics and conserved syntenies to identify loss of ohnologs (paralogs derived from genome duplication) and to clarify uncertain phylogenies. Analysis showed that Aldh1a1 and Aldh1a2 form a clade that is sister to Aldh1a3-related genes. Genome comparisons showed secondarily loss of aldh1a1 in teleosts, revealing that Aldh1a1 is not a tetrapod innovation and that aldh1a3 was recently lost in medaka, making it the first known vertebrate with a single aldh1a gene. Interestingly, results revealed asymmetric distribution of surviving ohnologs between co-orthologous teleost chromosome segments, suggesting that local genome architecture can influence ohnolog survival. We propose a model that reconstructs the chromosomal history of the Aldh1a family in the ancestral vertebrate genome, coupled with the evolution of gene functions in surviving Aldh1a ohnologs after R1, R2, and R3 genome duplications. Results provide evidence for early subfunctionalization and late subfunction-partitioning and suggest a mechanistic model based on altered regulation leading to heterochronic gene expression to explain the acquisition or modification of subfunctions by surviving ohnologs that preserve unaltered ancestral developmental programs in the face of gene loss.


Numerical simulations and physical fragmentation experiments confirm the theoretical prediction that the fractal dimension of a two-dimensional (2-D) cut through a set of three-dimensional objects with fractal dimension D is approximately equal to D – 1. This leads to a size distribution in two-dimensional cuts that is skewed strongly toward larger objects compared to the three-dimensional distribution. Three-dimensional shape (aspect ratio) does not significantly affect the resulting 2-D size distribution except for highly nonequant objects, such as prolate ellipsoids with aspect ratios of 10 or more. In contrast, fragmentation of an object by breakage along persistent fractures results in a non-fractal distribution of sizes and far fewer small objects than predicted by fractal statistics. Powdering a rock by extensive crushing also results in non-fractal size distributions because particles are reduced to sizes on the order of 1 μm, a comminution limit below which further brittle fracture is difficult. Natural examples of fragmental objects observed in two-dimensional cuts, such as crushed rocks, breccias, and xenoliths, are generally consistent with a three-dimensional fractal dimension near 2.5 over one or two orders of magnitude in size. However, a limestone breccia from Death Valley exhibits a nonfractal size distribution consistent with fragmentation of a strongly jointed rock. Mafic enclaves in Yosemite National Park have a restricted size range of about one order of magnitude and a three-dimensional fractal dimension of ∼3.1, consistent with other enclave swarms. The restricted size range of enclaves may reflect the apertures of mafic dikes that fed them.


Death distress includes death anxiety, death depression, and death obsession. There are different approaches to death education program include didactic, experiential, and 8A model. Death distress of nurses can have an impact on their mental, physical, general health aspects, and the quality of care that they provide during the terminal stages of a patient's life. Aim of this study was comparison of effectiveness of death education program by methods of didactic, experiential, and 8A model on the reduction of death distress among nurses. The study was a quasiexperimental method with four-group pretest/posttest design. The participants were 42 nurses in four groups (12 didactic, 10 experiential, 10 8A model, and 10 controls). The groups were selected randomly from different wards of the Khatom-Al-Anbia General Hospital in Tehran city, and they matched with together for demographic variables. The nurses completed Death Concern Scale (DCS), Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale (CLFDS), Death Anxiety Scale (DAS), Death Obsession Scale (DOS) and Death Depression Scale (DDS), before and after intervention. Death education programs were held by 36-hours 6 workshops weekly. Data were analyzed through χ²,t-test, One- Way ANCOVA, and One-Way ANOVA using SPSS/WIN 16.0 program. On the DAS, DOS and DDS scores more increased in control group in posttest compared to didactic and experiential approaches and 8A model. But these differences were no significant statistically. The most Eta (Effect size) was on the DOS (14%), and the DDS (11%), respectively. On the Scale of Death Education Program Evaluation (SDEPE), there was a significant difference between didactic approach and 8A model. The nurses evaluated 8A model more useful compared to didactic approach. In the present study self-report scales was used; sample was small; education was not trained by teamwork of death education, it was trained only by one educator and the study had no follow-up phase so there is difficulty in generalizing results. Based on the results, it is apparent that the death education programs have some affirmative impacts on the death distress of nurses. Our study paved the way for the establishment of a similar program in the hospitals and community in the future and the use of the program was expected to improve the quality of the palliative nursing services, end of life care as well as the satisfaction of the patients and their families.


The whitefly Bemisia tabaci Gennadius biotype "Q" is an efficient vector of tomato yellow leafcurl virus (TYLCV), the principal cause of damage in tomato, and also causes direct injury to pepper. Management of this pest in protected culture of these crops in southern Spain has relied primarily on chemical control. aHowever, overlapping crop cycles, insecticide resistance and public pressure have spurred development of alternative management tactics more compatible environment for biological control such as insect netting for pest exclusion, and, in tomato, TYLCV-tolerant cultivars. Nevertheless, there is minimal information on the feasibility of biological control in the commercial tomato and pepper production systems of this region. In pepper, control of B. tabaci using augmentative releases of two parasitoids, E. mundus and E. eremicus alone and in combination (3 treatments) was compared in 12 commercial greenhouses (4 replicates) in Campo de Cartagena. In tomato, a biologically based integrated pest management (IPM) system was evaluated in 12 greenhouses throughout the production area compared with 7 greenhouses utilizing only chemical control. Parasitism rates in pepper were greater and whitefly populations were lower in greenhouses where E. mundus was released alone or with E. eremicus in a 1:1 mixture as compared to E. eremicus alone confirming the value of augmentation with E. mundus. In tomato, incidence of parasitized whiteflies in IPM greenhouses where both parasitoids were released averaged around 50%, with E. mundus predominating, compared to less than 3% parasitism in conventional greenhouses. Insecticide use was lowest and biological control most effective where TYLCV-resistant cultivars and exclusion strategies (insect netting) were used to reduce whitefly populations and the risk of virus disease. The effectiveness of E. mundus and increasing use of compatible control tactics should lead to greater implementation of biologically based pest management in protected tomato and pepper culture.


THE JAPANESE ECONOMY has faced difficult times in the 1990s, and the overall economic situation has grown worse in 1998. One core aspect has been the emergence of an enormous amount of bad debt, now officially estimated to be roughly 25 percent of GDP. Resolution of this problem has proceeded slowly and, as of the summer of 1998, doubts remain concerning the ability or willingness of the Japanese government to deal adequately with it. This paper considers how the problem emerged, evaluates existing policies, and offers some thoughts on probable outcomes.


This work describes a novel procedure based on the use of a 1030 nm femtosecond (fs) laser ablation (LA) device operating at a high repetition rate (30 000 Hz) coupled to a sector field-inductively coupled plasmamass spectrometer (ICP-MS), enabling the complete ablation of dried blood spot (DBS) specimens in a reasonable time (200 s for samples of 5 mL). The integration of the complete signal obtained, in combination with the use of Pt as an internal standard (which can be added to the clinical filter paper prior to the blood deposition, ensuring compatibility with unsupervised sample collection schemes), permits obtaining an analytical response that is independent of the particular characteristics of every sample. On the basis of this methodology, an analytical method was developed for the direct determination of several elements (Cd, Co, Cu and Pb) in four blood reference materials as well as in three real samples, providing accurate results in all cases evaluated, at concentration levels ranging from 0.1 to hundreds of mg L . Detection limits of 0.043 (Cd), 0.42 (Co), 0.54 (Cu), and 0.040 (Pb) mg L 1 are achieved, and precision values most often range between 3 and 9% RSD. Finally, the potential to couple the LA device simultaneously to a multicollector-ICP-MS and a sector field-ICP-MS unit by split-flow is also demonstrated, thus allowing us to obtain both elemental (Co, Cu, Cd and Pb) and isotopic (Cu isotopic composition) information from every particular DBS, and therefore maximizing the amount of information that can be drawn from a single DBS specimen. Still, the precision of the approach is limited at this point, as RSD values of approx. 1500 ppm and delta variations of almost 4& were observed for five DBS specimens created from the same blood sample.


The current monograph is a collection of essays on the productivity-trade nexus. In a world, where many trade impediments have been removed a country's ability to succeed in international markets is associated with its ability to improve cost competitiveness. A main objective of the book is to check the empirical validity of the neoclassical theories of trade and specialization. Why countries produce what they produce? Ioannis attempts to provide an assessment to these questions paying special attention to nation-wide factor endowments and productivity performance. Throughout the whole book productivity is a key measure, but after all is productivity just "manna from heaven" or is it something that countries can stimulate with the passage of time? Chapter four analyzes the sources of productivity growth recognizing among others that for a technologically laggard country, imitation of technological advancements, already implemented somewhere else, are rather important engines. Although, the present book emphasizes to Greece, the reader can obtain lessons with respect to many other countries, especially those that comprise of the so- called periphery of Europe.


The Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal (ADCAIJ) is an open access journal that publishes articles which contribute new results associated with distributed computing and artificial intelligence, and their application in different areas. The artificial intelligence is changing our society. Its application in distributed environments, such as the Internet, electronic commerce, mobile communications, wireless devices, distributed computing and so on, is increasing and becoming and element of high added value and economic potential in industry and research. These technologies are changing constantly as a result of the large research and technical effort being undertaken in both universities and businesses. The exchange of ideas between scientists and technicians from both academic and business areas is es-sential to facilitate the development of systems that meet the demands of today's society. We would like to thank all the contributing authors for their hard and highly valuable work. Their work has helped to contribute to the success of this special issue. Finally, the Editors wish to thank Scientific Committee of Ad-vances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal for the collaboration of this special issue, that notably contributes to improve the quality of the journal. We hope the reader will share our joy and find this special issue very useful.


Devising indicative evaluation metrics for the image generation task remains an open problem. The most widely used metric for measuring the similarity between real and generated images has been the Frechet Inception Distance (FID) score. Because it does not differentiate the fidelity and diversity aspects of the generated images, recent papers have introduced variants of precision and recall metrics to diagnose those properties separately. In this paper, we show that even the latest version of the precision and recall metrics are not reliable yet. For example, they fail to detect the match between two identical distributions, they are not robust against outliers, and the evaluation hyperparameters are selected arbitrarily. We propose density and coverage metrics that solve the above issues. We analytically and experimentally show that density and coverage provide more interpretable and reliable signals for practitioners than the existing metrics. Code: this https URL.


This study attempted to investigate the effects of aphasia on word retrieval skills in a bilingual (Spanish-English) anomic patient. Two aspects of word finding difficulties were considered. First, an attempt was made to determine whether the patient exhibited the same degree of difficulty in both languages. Second, after the presentation of three different types of facilatory cues (initial syllable, sentence completion, translated word) the correct number of correct responses per cue were analyzed to determine whether or not the same kinds of cues were equally effective in English and in Spanish. Results indicated that word retrieval was affected to essentially the same degree in both languages, with performance in Spanish only slightly better than in English. Cue effectiveness also appeared to differ across languages.


Reactive MgO has recently emerged as a potential activator for ground granulated blastfurnace slag (GGBS), which is one of the most widely used by-products in the cement industry. However, it is known that the characteristics of reactive MgO vary significantly, which may affect the activation process and hence the performance of MgO-GGBS blends. In this study, seven commercially available reactive MgOs, whose characteristics vary widely, were chosen to activate GGBS. The unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of MgO-GGBS pastes up to 90 days was measured and the hydration products studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The primary hydration products were identified as calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H) and hydrotalcite-like phases (Ht). Minor hydration products included magnesium silicate hydrate (M-S-H) and ettringite. The reactivity and calcium oxide content of the MgO samples were found to be the two major factors affecting the hydration process of the MgO-GGBS blend. Higher reactivity did not change the hydration products but resulted in more hydration products in the same time. Sufficient CaO content increased the pH of the system, which enhanced the slag dissolution degree and was beneficial to the strength development.


The neurotransmitter serotonin (5HT) is produced in certain neurons of vertebrates and invertebrates in response to a variety of sensory stimuli, but a longstanding question has been how serotonergic neurons transduce these stimuli into intracellular signals that induce 5HT neurotransmission. Zhang et al. report that in the worm C. elegans, two Ca2+ ion channels at the surface of specific ADF-type chemosensory neurons regulate the synthesis of 5HT. Worms with loss-of-function mutations in either of two transient receptor potential V (TRPV) ion channels displayed decreased expression of tryptophan hydroxylase (TPH), a key enzyme in 5HT biosynthesis. TRPV channels are only expressed in the ADF neurons. Other genes involved in 5HT synthesis or neurotransmission were unaffected by the TRPV mutations, which indicates that TPH expression is the major target of TRPV channel signaling in these neurons. A gain-of-function mutant in the Ca2+-sensitive enzyme Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) partially rescued TPH expression in the TRPV mutants, which suggests that it acts downstream of the ion channels to control 5HT production. The authors propose that sensory input signals that alter Ca2+ influx through the TRPV channels could control CaMKII activity, thereby affecting a downstream signaling cascade to control TPH expression and 5HT production. S. Zhang, I. Sokolchik, G. Blanco, J. Y. Sze, Caenorhabditis elegans TRPV channel regulates 5HT biosynthesis in chemosensory neurons. Development 131, 1629-1638 (2004). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The vestibular system is composed of otolith organs and semi-circular canals that encode linear and angular accelerations, as well as the position of the head with respect to gravity. Thus, the detection of self-motion, the distinction between self- and object-motion, as well as gaze stabilisation and maintenance of postural stability are the core vestibular functions. Recent research shows that vestibular information interacts with higher-level cognitive processes, such as space perception, attention orienting, body schema and bodily self-consciousness. In order to contribute to these faculties, vestibular information is dynamically combined with visual, somatosensory and proprioceptive signals. In the present thesis we explore such multimodal interactions using a human centrifuge (rotating chair). In Part 1 we show that visual and vestibular cues are integrated in accordance with statistical optimality even when large directional conflicts are introduced between these modalities. Participants were significantly better in discriminating rotation magnitude when simultaneously presented with visual and vestibular cues, as compared to each modality independently, despite the fact that the axes of rotation implied by the two cues were different (Study 1). We also demonstrate that visuo-vestibular integration is present and optimal in patients with unilateral vestibular loss (Study 2). Part 2 of the present thesis examined vestibularsomatosensory interactions. We show that vestibular stimulation in the form of passive whole-body rotations increases tactile sensitivity at the fingertips, as compared to a no-rotation baseline (Study 3). We also demonstrate that the effect of vestibular stimulation on touch is not direct, but mediated by visual information about self-motion: visual and vestibular cues first combine, and only subsequently influence tactile sensitivity (Study 4). In Part 3 of this thesis, we explored how vestibular stimulation affects visual attention and awareness. We show that when acting as an exogenous cue, vestibular stimulation orients attention at short cue-to-target delays. When acting as an endogenous cue, vestibular stimulation strongly orients attention at all cue-to-target delays (Study 5). Vestibular stimulation also affects visual awareness. Using a continuous flash suppression paradigm to suppress an optic flow stimulus during passive whole-body rotations, we show that optic flow that is congruent (i.e. counterdirectional) with the direction of the vestibular rotation breaks suppression faster than incongruent optic flow (Study 6). In sum, our findings refine the existing knowledge on multisensory processing in general and vestibular interactions with other senses in particular. Our results are of relevance for the understanding of how visual, vestibular, proprioceptive and somatosensory information are combined by the brain in order to form a coherent representation of the self in space.


In administrative law, the sine qua non of agency independence lies in the enabling statute. If the statute protects the agency's head from removal except "for cause," then the agency is considered insulated from Presidential control and classified as independent. On the other hand, if the statute is silent on for-cause tenure protection, then the agency is classified as executive. This Note questions that central assumption by relying on the history of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, arguably one of the most independent agencies in Washington. By tracing the Board's history from a limited institution in 1913 to the powerful central bank of today, this Note demonstrates that in at least some cases, the driving factors behind operative independence have more to do with the practical realities of governance than the formalities of administrative law. Indeed, even though the Fed's enabling statute is silent on the issue of for-cause tenure protection, the President has never fired the head of the agency. Even President Trump has declined to go so far. This Note addresses this paradox through a detailed look at the Board's history and the major inflection points in its rise. Throughout, this Note also highlights the active role that the Board played in its own ascendency, demonstrating the dynamic life of administrative agencies and the powerful role they can play in shaping their own futures.


The interception of the action-perception loop in virtual reality [VR] causes that understanding the effects of different display factors in spatial perception becomes a challenge. For example, studies have reported that there is not size-constancy, the perceived size of an object does not remain constant as its distance increases. This phenomenon is closely related to the reports of underestimation of distances in VR, which causes remain unclear. Despite the efforts improving the spatial cues regarding display technology and computer graphics, some interest has started to focus on the human side. In this study, we propose a perceptual calibration method which can ameliorate the effects of non-size-constancy in heterogeneous VR displays. The method was validated in a perceptual matching experiment comparing the performance between an HTC Vive HMD and a four-walls CAVE system. Results show that perceptual calibration based on interpupillary distance increments can solve partially the phenomenon of non-size-constancy in VR.


To understand interactions of lake physical characteristics, trophic dynamics and climate in Lago Maggiore, we compare longterm limnological and meteorological monitoring data and results from sediment cores. We include analyses of nutrients, pigments, diatoms and cladoceran microfossils. Over the past decades, caloric content increased. Eutrophication from the 1960s to early 1980s was followed by oligotrophication. DDTs, PCBs and Hg showed high contamination in the '60s, compared to point source inputs in the '90s. Algal biomass was predicted by total pigments and some algal specific carotenoids. Following nutrient enrichment, Chydorus sphaericus, and total abundance of cladocerans changed inversely with trophic status. Fewer large Daphnia since the late '80s matched an increase in with subfossil Eubosmina mucro lengths. Both were explained by the 10-fold increase in Bythotrephes longimanus from 1987 to 1993, when an increase of its mean annual population density occurred during warmer winter and springs. Bythotrephes remained abundant and further increased during the following 10 years as water temperature increased. We conclude that warmer water affects food chains indirectly by changing habitat use and predator-prey interactions. Relative abundances of Daphnia and its peak population density in the warm year of the oligotrophic period (2003) were close to the record from the mesotrophic period in 1982, supporting the hypothesis that warming can produce a eutrophication-like signal. The study illustrates the complexity of biological responses to synchronous changes in multiple drivers (e.g., eutrophication, fish introduction, ban of fish harvesting, chemical pollution, and climate) and, despite this complexity, how Lago Maggiore responded to multiple stressors.


Advancements in our knowledge of red tape have been handicapped by a serious neglect in the development of red tape as an organizational concept. Progress has also been hindered by the rather haphazard application of this concept in much of the empirical research. In this paper we examine some of the principal factors that have impeded conceptual development, paying particular attention to the relationship between red tape and bureaucratic formalization. We argue that progress in red-tape research and knowledge requires attention to several issues, including the measurement of red tape, origins and sources of red tape, and the need to consider red tape from the perspective of multiple stakeholders.


Because Plessy v. Ferguson and Lochner v. New York were decided within a decade of each other, and are two of the most maligned Supreme Court opinions of all time, legal scholars and historians have naturally been inclined to try to find commonalities between the two opinions. The history of the Berea College v. Kentucky case shows that this anachronistic approach is misguided. Plessy and Lochner were not cut from the same cloth; in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the statism and racism of Plessy went hand in hand, while the skepticism of state power reflected in Lochner was a weapon in the battle against state-sponsored segregation. In 1908, just three years after the Court decided Lochner, the battle between the ideologies reflected in Plessy and Lochner reached the Supreme Court in Berea College. The Court chose to evade the conflict. Compared to Plessy's blunt endorsement of racism and state-sponsored segregation, that evasion, while hardly courageous, reflected a change in attitude toward the constitutionality of state-enforced segregation in the private sector that would come to full fruition less than a decade later in Buchanan v. Warley, in which the Supreme Court invalidated a residential segregation law.


Background: Since the first wave
of COVID-19 in March 2020, people returning to New Zealand have been required
to undergo managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) for 14 days with mandatory testing
for SARS-CoV-2. As of 20 October, testing in MIQ had identified 215 cases of SARS-CoV-2
from a total of 62,698 arrivals. While the majority of infections were likely
obtained in the country of origin prior to departure, there have been possible reports
of in-flight transmission.

Methods: Seven people who arrived
in New Zealand on the same flight on 29 September tested positive during their stay
in MIQ (out of 86 passengers). The seven passengers originated from five
different countries before travelling on the same flight from Dubai, United
Arab Emirates (UAE) to Auckland, New Zealand. Information about their journeys,
disease progression and virus genomic data was used to assess possible points
of infection.

Findings: All seven SARS-CoV-2
genomes were genetically identical, with the exception of a single mutation in
one case, and all genomes had five signature mutations seen in only six other
genomes from the >155,000 genomes sequenced globally. Four of these six related
genome sequences were from Switzerland, the country of origin of the suspected
index case.

Interpretation: By combining
information on disease progression, travel dynamics and genomic analysis, we conclude
that at least four in-flight transmission events of SARS-CoV-2 likely took
place.


Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) are developed to reduce the fuel consumption and the emission of carbon dioxide. The transmission is a core component in PHEVs since it defines the interaction between the internal combustion engine and the electric motors. Due to the complexity of PHEVs, a model-based development is carried out for novel transmission concepts, which takes the overall power train into account, as well. In this contribution, an approach for the model-based development of transmission concepts for PHEVs is presented. It incorporates the development and evaluation of new concepts as well as the development and test of corresponding controllers. Since each step of the development requires a power train model with an appropriate level of detail, an automatic model generation is used to enable an efficient workflow. This contribution focuses on the development of new transmission concepts only. It comprises an optimization of the number of gears and transmission ratios for an exemplary transmission. As a result of the proposed approach a novel transmission concept for PHEVs including a model-based evaluation is presented.


Organisations are going through significant change and strategic transformation in these dynamic times. However, emotions have often been under-leveraged in the process of strategic change management. This research thesis explores how collective emotions are formed, and how leaders and organisational routines can create appropriate collective emotions to achieve relevant objectives in their strategic transformation. It also examines how firms can build an emotion-based dynamic capability through leader actions and organisational routines. The methodology adopted in this research is of a case study of an organisation going through radical change, where five teams were observed over a period of 15 months and a number of people and leaders interviewed, along with analysis of secondary data. Based on the thematic analysis of the interviews and other data, the study uses the case replication method to confirm findings. This research shows that collective emotions are formed by affective events, building on the Affective Events theory. The collective emotions formed are dependent on the type of affective events and the current emotion state of the team, including their 'identity' strength, and is mediated by the organisational processes of listening and addressing concerns and the historical learning of the team from similar experiences, and moderated by leader emotion management actions. The Emotional Capability of an organisation is identified as the function of the strength of three types of organisational routines, and leader emotion management actions. This paper outlines the key emotions of excitement, optimism, gratitude, interest, happiness, pride and dissatisfaction, which are necessary at different stages in the strategic transformation process, and the organisational routines and leader actions needed to build them. Finally, this research confirms the way organisational routines and HRM practices can help organisations to build an Emotional Capability as a dynamic capability, to help them in periods of dynamic change, and proposes a new conception of the role of HRM for the changing times.


Paul's messianism put him at the margins of Pharisaism, his preaching placed him in tension with the Synagogue, and his Gospel set him on the outer border of Hellenistic religion. This book explores the tensions and creativity that Paul's marginality let loose. In six short chapters, Roetzel explains Paul's complex relationship to first century Judaism and elements of the early church. In so doing, he tackles a great many of the most disputed areas of Pauline theology: How can we speak of Paul as a convert? How far did Paul accept the apocalyptic myth? What are we to make of Paul's theology of weakness? How far did Paul embrace pluralism? And how could Paul preach that Gentiles shared in God's election without excluding Jews?


Observing interactions among chemical species and microorganisms in the earth's sub‐surface is a common task in the field of geology. Bioremediation experiments constitute one such class of interactions which focus on getting rid of pollutants through processes such as carbon sequestration. The main goal of scientists' observations is to analyze the dynamics of the chemical reactions and understand how they collectively affect the carbon content of the soil. In our work, we extract the high‐level goals of geologists and propose a visual analytics solution which helps scientists in deriving insights about multivariate, temporal behavior of these chemical species. Specifically, our key contributions are the following: i) characterization of the domain‐specific goals and their translation to exploratory data analysis tasks, ii) developing an analytical abstraction in the form of perceptually motivated screen‐space metrics for bridging the gap between the tasks and the visualization, and iii) realization of the tasks and metrics in the form of VIMTEX, which is a set of coordinated multiple views for letting scientists observe multivariate, temporal relationships in the data. We provide several examples and case studies along with expert feedback for demonstrating the efficacy of our solution.


Chaos and Integrability in Ideal Body-Fluid Interactions We consider interaction of a rigid body with a surrounding ideal uid containing a number of point vortices. The uid is assumed to be planar and unbounded and the body is assumed to be free to move in response to the uid forces. Except that the body should be simply connected and rigid, no assumptions are made on the body shape or on its internal mass distribution. There may also be an arbitrary and constant circulation around the body. The governing equations reduce to an autonomous set of coupled ODEs for the vortex positions and the body position and orientation. The form of these equations are derived by combining the classical equations for free body motion in ideal uid of G. Kirchho and Lord Kelvin with C. C. Lin's bounded domain generalisation of H. Helmholtz's celebrated point vortex equations. The Hamiltonian nature of the coupled body-vortex ODEs is demonstrated and the existence of additional conserved quantities is discussed. A survey of the integrable motions of the system is given. Integrability is demonstrated explicitly by exploiting conservation laws to devise reduced phase space coordinates in which the orbits of the system are the contours of an energy landscape. The existence of relative equilibria, their stability, and the qualitatively dierent kinds of motion is studied analytically and numerically. We then perform small parametric perturbations destroying the symmetry or conservation law that makes the system integrable. The emergence of chaos in the system is diagnosed by generating Poincare sections from numerically obtained solutions. By identifying the chaotic solutions and studying the body and vortex orbits, we obtain a better mechanistic understanding of the causes of chaotic behavior. As is well-known from dynamical system theory, the chaos can often be traced back to unstable relative equilibria of the perturbed integrable system. By this methodology we demonstrate that, even when there are no vortices in the uid, a freely moving elongated body, whose motion is dominated by rotation, may have an atmosphere of uid particles following it through the uid. This atmosphere contains both regular and chaotic regions, and may be understood from KAM theory. We also discover two separate chaotic regimes in the interaction of a body and one point vortex when the body is either noncircular or has asymmetric internal mass distribution. For one of these chaotic regimes the eect of chaos seems to be largest on the vortex, while for the other, the chaos primarily expresses itself in the body motion. Finally we brie y demonstrate the occurrence of chaos in the interaction of a body with two point vortices.


Flexible work has steadily increased in the Dutch labour market and on-call employment represents the fastest growing group. Although on-call work is both the largest and the least institutionally regulated form of flexible employment, little is known on its developments and impacts. The main objective of this study, commissioned by the ILO, is to compensate this gap and provide an insight of the most relevant legal and socio-economic issues concerning the forms of on-call work that are used in the Netherlands. The paper relies both on available data and own research.


The security of modern electronic devices relies on secret keys stored on secure hardware modules as the root-of-trust (RoT). Extracting those keys would break the security of the entire system. As shown before, sophisticated side-channel analysis (SCA) attacks, using chip failure analysis (FA) techniques, can extract data from on-chip memory cells. However, since the chip's layout is unknown to the adversary in practice, secret key localization and reverse engineering are onerous tasks. Consequently, hardware vendors commonly believe that the ever-growing physical complexity of the integrated circuit (IC) designs can be a natural barrier against potential adversaries. In this work, we present a novel approach that can extract the secret key without any knowledge of the IC's layout, and independent from the employed memory technology as key storage. We automate the -- traditionally very labor-intensive -- reverse engineering and data extraction process. To that end, we demonstrate that black-box measurements captured using laser-assisted SCA techniques from a training device with known key can be used to profile the device for a later key prediction on other victim devices with unknown keys. To showcase the potential of our approach, we target keys on three different hardware platforms, which are utilized as RoT in different products.


In technology-enhanced learning, metadata interoperability has been identified as an important issue. It allows not only the
exchange and preservation of crucial learning and teaching information (such as competency profiles, learning activities, and
descriptions of learning resources), but also its future re-use among a large number of different systems and repositories. In the field of agricultural education and training, learning technologies' specifications and standards have not yet been widely adopted. Few initiatives have reported implementing them, and in most cases only to describe learning resources by using IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM), Dublin Core (DC) or a combination of the two. This results in introduction of dispersed efforts and systems with
significant differences between them. In this paper, we present results of a study aiming at the review and assessment of
implementations of metadata standards in agricultural learning repositories. More specifically, it assesses the current status of development and implementation of metadata application profiles based on standards such as IEEE LOM and DC.


Decentralized partially observable Markov decision processes (DEC-POMDPs) are used to plan policies for multiple agents that must maximize a joint reward function but do not communicate with each other. The agents act under uncertainty about each other and the environment. This planning task arises in optimization of wireless networks, and other scenarios where communication between agents is restricted by costs or physical limits. DEC-POMDPs are a promising solution, but optimizing policies quickly becomes computationally intractable when problem size grows. Factored DEC-POMDPs allow large problems to be described in compact form, but have the same worst case complexity as non-factored DEC-POMDPs. We propose an efficient optimization algorithm for large factored infinite-horizon DEC-POMDPs. We formulate expectation-maximization based optimization into a new form, where complexity can be kept tractable by factored approximations. Our method performs well, and it can solve problems with more agents and larger state spaces than state of the art DEC-POMDP methods. We give results for factored infinite-horizon DEC-POMDP problems with up to 10 agents.


If the question is whether there is a parliamentary technology assessment (PTA) unit in Portugal or Spain, the clear answer is that there is still no such unit at the central state level at the present time, neither in Portugal nor in Spain. The question then has to be modified addressing previous and current efforts to establish PTA and the current framework conditions and opportunities. Practices of PTA are framed here as a democratic innovation in the context of changes in representative democracies. Against this backdrop, the efforts and opportunities to establish PTA in Spain and Portugal are studied. By sketching these developments and outlining the opportunities in these countries, our aim is to contribute to the debate about the likelihood of a new wave of PTA in Europe (Hennen/Nierling 2014).


From the Publisher:
This all-in-one reference offers comprehensive, in-depth coverage of the M68HC11 to readers who will be designing real systems using this popular microcontroller. Focusing on the M68HC11 as a laboratory measurement and process control platform, it provides all the design and development tools needed to create a microcontroller-based "product" that can solve common application problems; no outside data or references are needed. Organized into four sections: Part I covers the M68HC11 microcontroller and the Evaluation Board (EVB) system; Part II features new chapters on Program Design and Designing and Writing Program Modules; Part III includes four re-written chapters on software considerations and hardware design procedures to acquire input data and provide output interface and control with the microcontroller; Part IV provides five applications chapters solving five typical engineering problems. Appropriate for anyone interested in microcontrollers or microprocessors.


We consider classes of not bandlimited signals, namely streams of Diracs and piecewise polynomial signals, and show that these signals can be sampled and perfectly reconstructed using wavelets as sampling kernel. Due to the multiresolution structure of the wavelet transform, these new sampling theorems naturally lead to the development of a new resolution enhancement algorithm based on wavelet footprints (Dragotti, P.L. and Vetterli, M., IEEE Trans. Sig. Process., vol.51, no.5, p.1306-23, 2003). Preliminary results show the potentiality of this algorithm.


This paper presents the application and calibration of the recently proposed Restricted Stochastic User Equilibrium with Threshold model (RSUET) to a large-scale case-study. The RSUET model avoids the limitations of the well-known Stochastic User Equilibrium model (SUE) and the Deterministic User Equilibrium model (DUE), by combining the strengths of the Boundedly Rational User Equilibrium model and the Restricted Stochastic User Equilibrium model (RSUE). Thereby, the RSUET model reaches an equilibrated solution in which the flow is distributed according to Random Utility Theory among a consistently equilibrated set of paths which all are within a threshold relative to the cost on the cheapest path and which do not leave any attractive paths unused. Several variants of a generic RSUET solution algorithm are tested and calibrated on a large-scale case network with 18,708 arcs and about 20 million OD-pairs, and comparisons are performed with respect to a previously proposed RSUE model as well as an existing link-based mixed Multinomial Probit (MNP) SUE model. The results show that the RSUET has very attractive computation times for large-scale applications and demonstrate that the threshold addition to the RSUE model improves the behavioural realism, especially for high congestion cases. Also, fast and well-behaved convergence to equilibrated solutions among non-universal choice sets is observed across different congestion levels, choice model scale parameters, and algorithm step sizes. Clearly, the results highlight that the RSUET outperforms the MNP SUE in terms of convergence, calculation time and behavioural realism. The choice set composition is validated by using 16,618 observed route choices collected by GPS devices in the same network and observing their reproduction within the equilibrated choice sets generated by the RSUET model. Relevantly, the RSUET model is very successful in reproducing observed link.


Temperature increase due to climate change may affect the growth and physiological traits of trees. To cope with climate change, it is important to understand the responses of trees to these changes, as well as how these responses vary among species, functional groups, and biomes. In this study, we aimed to examine the species-specific growth and photosynthetic responses of first-year seedlings of 4 coniferous species to future temperature increase by conducting an open-field experimental warming study. The air temperature in the warmed plots was maintained at 3.02 °C higher than that in the control plots with an open-field experimental warming system. The seeds of Pinus densiflora, Pinus koraiensis, Abies holophylla, and Abies koreana were planted in 2012, and the effects on growth, biomass allocation, leaf area, net photosynthetic rate, and chlorophyll contents of first-year seedlings were measured. Compared to the other species, P. densiflora showed pronounced responses to warming after the growing period, including increase in root collar diameter (RCD) and seedling height respectively by 10% and 6%, total biomass by 45%, net photosynthetic rate by 61%, and total chlorophyll content by 45%. For P. koraiensis, RCD, seedling height, and total chlorophyll contents increased by 7%, 5%, and 20% in warmed plots, respectively. A. holophylla showed an increase in RCD by 7%, whereas A. koreana responded inconsistently to warming. Changes in the seedling height to diameter ratio, organ-specific biomass, leaf area, and specific leaf area were also species-dependent. In addition, altered growth throughout the observation period was due to acclimation and phenological change. This suggests that species-specific growth responses to warming are affected by altered net photosynthetic rate, chlorophyll contents, and leaf area. Species-specific responses of first-year seedlings of 4 coniferous species to warming and the relationship between growth and photosynthesis might be applied to estimate the growth and distribution of coniferous species after future temperature rises.


The programs for selecting the equipment and determining the average annual energy have been separated from the detailed financial analysis. The BASIC language was selected for the first type of calculations and logic, while LOTUS was more readily applied to the finances. However, the outputs of the BASIC programs were designed to easily input into the LOTUS programs. This paper concentrates more on the technical programs. The major features of the BASIC programs are described, including the variations for impulse, Francis and axial-flow turbines. An example of penstock sizing is given. The importance of financial rates on equipment sizing is also illustrated.


This qualitative short report considers the viability of the use of rubrics or alternative methods to assess writing in Asia and the Middle East. The background of learning theories, assessment types, and self-assessment literature provides a foundation for further discussion of the appropriate use of rubrics, including the prioritization of criterion, the quality of scoring, the impact of organizational features on scoring, the influence of bias, and the best application of rubric assessment. Relevant points for further study are identified, such as differentiation in research between generalized analytical rating systems and rubric assessment with specific, empirical criterion. The contradictory research regarding the advantages and disadvantages of rubric assessment in comparison with holistic assessment are of particular and crucial interest for global pedagogy. Many of the reviewed Western articles excluded Asian perspectives- except for China- and thus present a limited understanding of social and educational compatibility with new assessments and rubric assessments in particular. The discussion identifies patterns and points of contention and seeks to explore viewpoints rather than limit the scope of inquiry and consideration thus noting that relevant literature suggests that with appropriate teacher training, teachers may appropriately use rubrics as a formative assessment tool for writing in Asia and the Middle East.


The purpose of this chapter is to discuss methods of acquisition, visualization and analysis of the dynamics of a complex biomedical system, illustrated by the human stomatognathic system. The stomatognathic system consists of the teeth and the skull bones with the maxilla and the mandible. Its dynamics can be described by the change of mutual position of the lower/mandibular part versus the upper/maxillary one due to the physiological motion of opening, chewing and swallowing. In order to analyse the dynamics of the stomatognathic system its morphology and motion has to be digitized, which is done using static and dynamic multimodal imagery like CBCT and 3D scans data and temporal measurements of motion. The integration of multimodal data incorporates different direct and indirect methods of registration - aligning of all the data in the same coordinate system. The integrated sets of data form 4D multimodal data which can be further visualized, modeled, and subjected to multivariate time series analysis. Example results are shown. Although there is no direct method of imaging the TMJ motion, the integration of multimodal data forms an adequate tool. As medical imaging becomes ever more diverse and ever more accessible, organizing the imagery and measurements into unified, comprehensive records can deliver to the doctor the most information in the most accessible form, creating a new quality in data simulation, analysis and interpretation.


One major neurobiological substrate regulating social processes is dopamine (DA). DA is implicated in social behavior in species as diverse as fish and birds, and has an established role in regulating relationships between mates in socially monogamous rodents. Marmoset monkeys display traits associated with social monogamy including high rates of affiliation, biparental care, distress upon separation, and aggression toward strangers; several of these behavioral patterns change throughout the development of relationships. This temporal change may represent changing demands, as pairs are likely to jointly face new experiences (e.g., parenthood) throughout pairing. We investigated the role of DA and pairing length on social behavior during reunion after separation from the partner. Marmosets were removed from their home environment and treated with agonists and antagonists for the D1 and D2 receptor subtypes. They were exposed to a novel environment containing an opposite-sex stranger and the pair mate, and then reunited with their mate in the home enclosure. Marmosets in long term pairs exhibited higher levels of food sharing during reunion than marmosets in short term pairs, with females in long term pairs sharing food more than males; no sex difference were observed in short term pairs. Subjects in short term pairs spent more time grooming their mate than receiving grooming during reunion, while marmosets in long term pairs displayed similar amounts of both initiated and received grooming. DA treatment altered pair-level behavior. When females received either a D2 agonist or antagonist, short term pairs spent less time in proximity, compared to when males received the same treatments. In long term pairs, treatment of females with either a D1 agonist or antagonist resulted in pairs spending less time in social proximity than when males were treated. These findings suggest that the function of the DA system in mate behavior may be similar between rodents and primates, with the D1 system modulating the expression of behavior in long term pairs and the D2 system regulating behavior in short term pairs. Furthermore, these results supplement a large body of work suggestive of deep evolutionary roots of the DA system in regulating social behavior.


Some active mutual funds are more active than others. Indeed, research finds that many so-called active funds are not nearly as active as they appear because they each hold a portfolio that can be quite similar to the benchmark index. Furthermore, in general, research indicates that funds that are consistently active (i.e., hold a portfolio that is quite different from the benchmark) but take positions that are sufficiently well diversified across industries (i.e., do not have high tracking error) may have better risk-adjusted performance. Given the importance of an active fund being truly active, this article tries to predict a fund's activeness by examining mutual fund manager educational characteristics. After controlling for many factors, including the firm at which the fund is located, the finding is that funds with managers who attend undergraduate schools with higher mean SAT scores are significantly more active than the funds of other managers. However, apart from this variable, other educational variables do not help explain fund activeness. TOPICS: Mutual fund performance, performance measurement, manager selection


Objective The role of exercise in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases is widely accepted and regular physical exercise may play an irreplaceable role beyond traditional medicine and drug treatments. However,  current guidelines do not provide details on the characteristics of exercise programs which are aimed to be carried out concomitantly to drug treatments. Moroever, the safety of combined exercise and drug treatments has rarely been considered.
The future of exercise is medicine research will likely need to focus on questions such as how to build customized exercise programs for different patients in the context of individual physiological responses to exercise? When combining drug and concomitant exercise treatment, what is the optimal exercise prescription in terms of timing, intensity and duration? Does exercise only have an additive effect or may exercise actually reverse or even cancel out some of the expected effects induced by the drug treatment?  What is the role of diet in exercise interventions? Does a given exercise program affect the lipid and glucose metabolism to the same extent?
In this report, we will present different randomized clinical trials conducted in our research group to tackle some of the abovementioned questions. This particularly includes patients with comorbidity conditions (prediabetes and non-alcohol fatty liver disease,NAFLD), as well as patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D).
Methods Two different randomized trials are included, both of which were conducted in China (ChiCTR-IOR-16008469 and ISRCTN 42622771). The ChiCTR-IOR-16008469 study was a randomized crossover trial. The aim of this study was to assess whether the duration between metformin administration and high-intensity cycling (HIIT) affects the glucose metabolism. T2D patients performed a single session of  HIIT (~25 minutes) at 30 (EX30), 60 (EX60), and 90 (EX90) minutes following breakfast and metformin administration in a randomized order. Subjects' diurnal glucose metabolism was assessed between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. (Metf) of each exercise day as well as on a control day. Furthermore, insulin was assessed both before and immediately after each exercise bout.
The ISRCTN42622771 trial was a four arm randomized trial. Six-hundred and three patients from seven clinics were recruited, out of which 115 individuals aged 50-65-year fulfilled the inclusion criteria (impaired fasting glucose (IFG) or impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and NAFLD) and were randomly assigned (1:1:1:1) to either of the four groups: aerobic exercise (AEx, n = 29), diet intervention (Diet, n = 28), aerobic exercise plus diet intervention (AED = 29), or no intervention (NI = 29). The study spanned over anaverage period of 8.6 months (7-11 months). Progressive supervised aerobic exercise training (60-75% intensity) was carried out 2-3 times/week in 30-60 min/sessions, and the diet intervention consisted of a lunch with 38% carbohydrate and diet fibre of 12g per day, while the remaining meals were freely chosen but with supervised nutrition intakes. The hepatic fat content (HFC) assessed by 1H MRS, glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) and insulin sensitivity were assessed by conventional methods.
Results In study 1, we found that in diabetes patient glucose levels significantly decreased in all exercise settings, irrespective of the timing.  However, whenHIIT was performed at 30 minutes post-metformin administration, the peak glucose was lowered, thereby further stabilizing the postprandial glucose fluctuation. The risk for hypoglycemia at different times to exercise after metformin administration was highest in EX90 (22.2%) compared to EX30 (3.7%) and EX60 (7.4%). While the lactate level was 19% higher in EX60 and 8% higher in EX90 compared to EX30. Compared with Metformin, the decrease in insulin was larger in EX30 and EX60 (both p < 0 001). These results indicate that timing of exercise is an important factor to consider when prescribing exercise as adjuvant to metformin therapy for T2DM patients.
In study 2, we showed that in patients with morbidity (prediabetes with NAFLD), HFC was significantly reduced in the AEx (–24.4%), diet (–23.2%), and AED (–47.9%) groups, as opposed to the 20.9% increase in the NI group (p=0.006, p=0.002, and P<0.0001, respectively).Importantly, HFC decreased to normal levels (<5.6%) in ten (44%) out of 23 participants in the exercise plus diet group and nine (41%) out of 22 participants in the diet group, while the in the exercise group it decreased only in three (14%) out of 29  participants. Further, all intervention groups showed improvements ininsulin sensitivity (AEx 33%, p=0.023, Diet 37%, p=0.012, and AED 34%, p=0.029) but only the AED group significantly decreased HbA1c (-4.4%, p=0.01) compared with the NI group (1.9% and -0.6%). However, after controlling for the change of body weight as well as for the duration of the intervention and baseline values, the significant differences in HbA1cand insulin sensitivity between the groups disappeared. Furthermore, based on HbA1c IFG or IGT, no significant remission and progression from prediabetes to diabetes were observed between the intervention and NI.
Conclusions The results derived from these two trials imply that: 1) the combined effects of exercise and metformin therapy on T2D should take into account that both exercise and metformin are likely to affect the lactic metabolism because T2D is considered as a redox disease. For the acute effect of exercise combined with metformin therapy, exercising at 30 minutes post-metformin administration appeared to be optimal for reducing glucose fluctuation. To avoid the risk for hypoglycemia and lactases with the combined treatment, selecting optimal timing may be the first and easiest step towards personalized exercise medicine. Thus, when exercise is recommended to diabetic patients, the timing of exercise may be an important consideration so that the therapeutic effects of metformin are not compromised. However, further studies are warranted to elucidate the long-term effects of combining metformin and exercise on glycemic control and lactic metabolism as well as the underlying mechanisms. 2) Aerobic exercise training combined with a fibre-enriched diet can aid reduce HFC more effectively than either exercise or increased fibre intake alone in pre-diabetic patients with NAFLD. However, the effect on glycaemic control and insulin sensitivity is not substantial. Therefore, it remains to be addressed why the same intervention protocol did not show the similar effect on the HFC and glycaemic control/insulin sensitivity in the same subjects. When these questions being uncovered, the combined intervention could be considered as an integral part of lifestyle interventions for patients with a cordiality condition for an increased risk of developing T2D.


Nudges receive growing attention as an effective concept to alter people's decisions without significantly changing economic incentives or limiting options. However, being often very subtle and covert, nudges are also criticized as unethical.By not being transparent about the intention to influence individual choice they might be perceived as limiting freedom of autonomous actions and decisions. So far, empirical research on this issue is scarce. In this study, we investigate whether nudges can be made transparent without limiting their effectiveness. For this purpose we conduct a laboratory experiment where we nudge contributions to carbon emission reduction by introducing a default value. We test how different types of transparency (i.e. knowledge of the potential influence of the default, its purpose, or both) influence the effect of the default. Our findings demonstrate that the default increases contributions, and information on the potential influence, its purpose, or both combined do not significantly influence the default effect. Furthermore, we do not find evidence that psychological reactance interacts with the influence of transparency. Findings support the policy-relevant claim that nudges (in the form of defaults) can be transparent and yet effective.


Counting objects in digital images is a process that should be replaced by machines. This tedious task is time consuming and prone to errors due to fatigue of human annotators. The goal is to have a system that takes as input an image and returns a count of the objects inside and justification for the prediction in the form of object localization. We repose a problem, originally posed by Lempitsky and Zisserman, to instead predict a count map which contains redundant counts based on the receptive field of a smaller regression network. The regression network predicts a count of the objects that exist inside this frame. By processing the image in a fully convolutional way each pixel is going to be accounted for some number of times, the number of windows which include it, which is the size of each window, (i.e., 32x32 = 1024). To recover the true count we take the average over the redundant predictions. Our contribution is redundant counting instead of predicting a density map in order to average over errors. We also propose a novel deep neural network architecture adapted from the Inception family of networks called the Count-ception network. Together our approach results in a 20% relative improvement (2.9 to 2.3 MAE) over the state of the art method by Xie, Noble, and Zisserman in 2016.


Context. The paper analyzes the structure and dynamics of a quiescent prominence that occurred on October 22, 2013 and was observed by several instruments including the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS).
Aims. We aim to determine the physical characteristics of the observed prominence using Mg II k and h (2796 and 2803 Å), C II (1334 and 1336 Å), and Si IV (1394 Å) lines observed by IRIS. In addition we study the dynamical behavior of the prominence.
Methods. We employed the one-dimensional non-LTE (departures from the local thermodynamic equilibrium – LTE) modeling of Mg II lines assuming static isothermal-isobaric slabs. We selected a large grid of models with realistic input parameters expected for quiescent prominences (temperature, gas pressure, effective thickness, microturbulent velocity, height above the solar surface) and computed synthetic Mg II lines. The method of Scargle periodograms was used to detect possible prominence oscillations.
Results. We analyzed 2160 points of the observed prominence in five different sections along the slit averaged over ten pixels due to low signal to noise ratio in the C II and Si IV lines. We computed the integrated intensity for all studied lines, while the central intensity and reversal ratio was determined only for both Mg II and C II 1334 lines. We plotted several correlations: time evolution of the integrated intensities and central intensities, scatter plots between all combinations of line integrated intensities, and reversal ratio as a function of integrated intensity. We also compared Mg II observations with the models. Results show that more than two-thirds of Mg II profiles and about one-half of C II 1334 profiles are reversed. Profiles of Si IV are generally unreversed. The Mg II and C II lines are optically thick, while the Si IV line is optically thin.
Conclusions. The studied prominence shows no global oscillations in the Mg II and C II lines. Therefore, the observed time variations are caused by random motions of fine structures with velocities up to 10 km s−1. The observed average ratio of Mg II k to Mg II h line intensities can be used to determine the prominence's characteristic temperature. Certain disagreements between observed and synthetic line intensities of Mg II lines point to the necessity of using more complex two-dimensional multi-thread modeling in the future.


Abstract. Climate impact assessments require information about climate change at
regional and ideally also local scales. In dendroecological studies, this
information has traditionally been obtained using statistical methods, which
preclude the linkage of local climate changes to large-scale drivers in a
process-based way. As part of recent efforts to investigate the impact of
climate change on forest ecosystems in Bavaria, Germany, we developed a
high-resolution atmospheric modelling dataset, BAYWRF, for this region over
the thirty-year period of September 1987 to August 2018. The atmospheric
model employed in this study, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, was configured with two nested domains of
7.5 and 1.5 km grid spacing centred over Bavaria and forced at the outer
lateral boundaries by ERA5 reanalysis data. Using an extensive network of
observational data, we evaluate (i) the impact of using grid analysis
nudging for a single-year simulation of the period of September 2017 to
August 2018 and (ii) the full BAYWRF dataset generated using nudging. The
evaluation shows that the model represents variability in near-surface
meteorological conditions generally well, although there are both seasonal
and spatial biases in the dataset that interested users should take into
account. BAYWRF provides a unique and valuable tool for
investigating climate change in Bavaria with high interdisciplinary
relevance. Data from the finest-resolution WRF domain are available for
download at daily temporal resolution from a public repository at the Open
Science Framework (Collier, 2020;
 https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/AQ58B ).


The objective of the diagnostic review of financial consumer protection in PNG was to assess the FCP legal and regulatory framework and industry practices relevant to key parts of the regulated PNG financial sector. The diagnostic specifically considers the banking, non-bank financial institutions (NBFI), insurance, and payments sectors. Preliminary consideration has also been given to the superannuation sector and the securities, investments and informal sectors are not within the scope of this review. The review was conducted based on the revised and enhanced 2017 World Bank Good Practices for Financial Consumer Protection and the G20 High – Level Principles on Financial Consumer Protection and Digital Financial Inclusion. Regard has also been had to the Better Than Cash Alliance Responsible Digital Payments Guidelines. The following topics have been covered: (i) legal and regulatory framework; (ii) FCP supervision and capacity; (iii) transparency and fair treatment; and (iv) consumer complaints. A broad variety of stakeholders were consulted for the purposes of this diagnostic review, including government entities and regulators, representatives of the banking, NBFI, insurance and payments sectors and industry associations. The report was prepared as part of the PNG Financial Consumer Protection Project, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs in Australia and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in New Zealand under the PNG Partnership.


The purpose of this study, examine the relationship between pre-service teachers' learning styles and self-efficacy perceptions. Gender, faculty, learning styles, and learning strategies differences were also searched in this context. For this purpose 369 (226 females; 143 males) students are randomly recruited from Faculty of arts and science and Faculty of Education, in University of Mugla Sitki Kocman. To collect data, Grasha-Reichmann Learning Style Scale and Teacher Self-efficacy Scale were used. The group differencess were tested by t-test and F statistics with Tukey HSD post comparison range test. Correlational statistics was also employed to search for relationships among all variables. The findings showed that the gender faculty, learning styles, and learning strategies level differences exist on learning styles and self-efficacy perception the results are discussed in the light of previous findings and in the context of learning styles and self-efficacy perception, conducting future research for implications as well. © 2013 IOJES. All rights reserved


Three to eight year old children demonstrate their identity and their meanings through their symbolic representations at home, in nursery and at school. Role play, drawings, cut-outs and selected artefacts and found objects are some of the methods and contexts children employ to express their voices and to build theories of action through reflection and representation of their thoughts, experiences and feelings. Together with freely available resources, children's spontaneous and creative actions provide them with opportunities to draw on their own life experiences. Their representations give an insight into the way they construct their world and make it visible: using what they know, calling on their own cultural experiences, and interpreting it in their own way. This paper reports on a study which explores the ways in which children use their artefacts and symbolic behaviour to make visible their thinking and ideas, and the ways in which adults construct meaning from the children's activities. It draws principally on the work of Freire (1970), Pahl (1999, 2010) and Kress (1997) in an analysis of the children's literacy practices in the form of their symbolic representations.


We report the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) enhancement of three-dimensional (3D) close-packed plasmonic superlattices of truncated octahedral gold nanostructures. Experimentally, we resolved two different types of hot spots, one originates from the face-to-face contacts and the other is from the edge-to-edge contacts among the 3D close-packed plasmonic superlattice of gold nanostructures. The high degree of homogeneity of truncated octahedral Au@Pt nanoparticles (TOh Au@Pt NPs) and truncated octahedral Pt@Au nanoframes (TOh Pt@Au NFs) allowed them to self-assemble into remarkable 3D close-packed plasmonic superlattices. The morphological evolution and the corresponding optical behavior of TOh Pt@Au NFs were systematically monitored during each synthetic process. The measured SERS enhancement on the hot spots from the edge-to-edge contacts of TOh Pt@Au NFs was five times greater than the SERS response from the analogous face-to-face contacts of TOh Au@Pt NPs under the same given experimental conditions. The hollow interior and well-defined structural morphology of TOh Pt@Au NFs will allow researchers to design highly programmable 3D plasmonic superlattices for efficient SERS enhancement.


We test whether S-wave/P-wave amplitude ratio data can improve the computed focal mechanisms of small earthquakes, using events from two southern California aftershock sequences. The observed S/P ratios are generally consistent with the expected mechanisms, implying that S/P ratios can in fact be useful in constraining the focal mechanisms of small events. However, we also find that noise in the observations leads to scatter in the S/P ratios of factors of 2, and sometimes higher. This scatter limits the usefulness of the S/P ratios in two ways: (1) the focal mechanism cannot simply be fit to S/P amplitude data alone without accounting for the noise in a more sophisticated focal mechanism inversion process; (2) while the amplitude ratios may improve poorly constrained mechanisms, they are less useful in refining solutions that are already relatively well constrained.


Despite the potential appeal of dramatically increased liability and sentences in the wake of environmental disasters like the Deepwater Horizon oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, this Article argues that more aggressive criminal provisions and enforcement related to environmental harms, up to and including strict criminal liability, are not likely to protect the environment better or lead to safer work environments. This Article first considers the history and legality of, and the rationale behind, policies designed to make it easier to convict allegedly responsible parties and also discusses the pursuit of increased liability in relation to disaster-related and tragedy-related events in the financial and criminal sectors. The Article then discusses the use of reduced burdens and strict liability in environmental law in both civil and criminal contexts, and argues that the use of strict liability is less effective than a negligence standard because it tends to reduce penalties, which can limit the direct punishment to violators, as well as the prophylactic potential of the laws. Finally, the Article concludes that, rather than reducing mens rea standards and increasing criminal liability, U.S. energy and environmental law needs to focus on encouraging proper risk assessment and risk management to promote safe and effective energy extraction and production while encouraging and protecting both the environment and the economy.


A mirror-lens objective has been developed that focuses a powerful laser beam with a planar wavefront into a straight line 10 mm long. The objective is intended for the creation of extended plasma objects. The construction involves an improved version of Maksutov's meniscus system, based on a toroidal mirror. A sample with an effective diameter of 130 mm and a relative aperture of 1:2.4 has been fabricated and investigated.


Multiview video has gained a wide interest recently. The huge amount of data needed to be processed by multiview applications is a heavy burden for both transmission and decoding. The joint video team has recently devoted part of its effort to extend the widely deployed H.264/AVC standard to handle multiview video coding (MVC). The MVC extension of H.264/AVC includes a number of new techniques for improved coding efficiency, reduced decoding complexity, and new functionalities for multiview operations. MVC takes advantage of some of the interfaces and transport mechanisms introduced for the scalable video coding (SVC) extension of H.264/AVC, but the system level integration of MVC is conceptually more challenging as the decoder output may contain more than one view and can consist of any combination of the views with any temporal level. The generation of all the output views also requires careful consideration and control of the available decoder resources. In this paper, multiview applications and solutions to support generic multiview as well as 3D services are introduced. The proposed solutions, which have been adopted to the draft MVC specification, cover a wide range of requirements for 3D video related to interface, transport of the MVC bitstreams, and MVC decoder resource management. The features that have been introduced in MVC to support these solutions include marking of reference pictures, supporting for efficient view switching, structuring of the bitstream, signalling of view scalability supplemental enhancement information (SEI) and parallel decoding SEI.


Firm coupling of genitalia is critical for copulation in most groups of insects. To counter female resistance that usually breaks off genital connection, male scorpionflies (Mecoptera: Panorpidae) usually provide nuptial gifts for the female and seize their mates with grasping devices. The notal organ, a modified clamp on tergum III of male scorpionflies, plays a significant role in seizing the female wings and helping maintain mating position during copulation. The mating behaviour remains unknown for the scorpionfly Furcatopanorpa longihypovalva (Hua and Cai, 2009) whose male lacks a notal organ. In this paper, we first attempt to study the mating behaviour of F. longihypovalva. The results show that the male provides liquid salivary secretion through a mouth-to-mouth mode for the female, and maintains copulation mainly by continuous provision of salivary secretion rather than by seizing the female with grasping devices. Thus the male copulates with the female in an atypical O-shaped position, with only their mouthparts and genitalia connected to each other. The salivary glands exhibit remarkable sexual dimorphism: short and bifurcated in the female, but well-developed and multi-furcated in the male. The extremely developed salivary glands of the male lay a structural foundation for the male to continuously provide liquid salivary secretion, and to help the male to mediate female resistance, being likely to serve as a compensation to his absence of the notal organ. We also investigated the functional morphology and copulatory mechanism of the male and female genitalia. The evolution of the atypical mating pattern of F. longihypovalva is putatively discussed as an adaptation in the context of sexual conflict.


During the last decades the idea of entrepreneurship in public institutions has been the subject of intense debates, activities and academic research. The scopes of our article are to briefly underline the importance of developing an entrepreneurial spirit by presenting a case study from a Finnish local public administration and making aware the proactive aspect in the process of managing public institutions in Romania. Our hypotheses have been mainly of an interrogative nature. Hypothesis testing was achieved through the analysis of statistical data and conducting a set of sociological interviews with key people from Finnish institutions which were used in the survey. The results of the research emphasize that where there is an entrepreneurial behaviour with the local administration management, the community undergoes a process of conservation and development. The way in which they relate to community partners (such as entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations, citizens) is essential to the entrepreneurial spirit within the local public institution.


Purpose: We examined the relationship between retail clinic use and primary care physician (PCP) continuity among Medicare enrollees in the Houston metropolitan area. Methods: We identified retail clinic providers in the study area using a 2015 health care provider database. Medicare claims data from enrollees who received care from retail clinics in 2015 were compared with propensity score-matched sample of enrollees who received no care from retail clinics. Results: There were 2.32 retail clinic visits per 1000 beneficiaries in a month. Approximately 1.3% of Medicare beneficiaries used retail clinics. Retail clinic users were more likely to be aged 65 to 74 years, female, White, and Medicaid ineligible. In multivariable analyses with adjustments for covariates, significant predictors of retail clinic use included having ≥3 chronic conditions (Odds Ratio [OR], 1.53 vs no condition), living within 1 mile of a retail clinic (OR, 2.44 vs living ≥5 miles), and having no PCP (OR, 1.11 vs having PCP). Compared with propensity-matched controls, among enrollees with an identified PCP, likelihood of seeing their PCP (OR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.73 to 0.93) and continuity of care was lower (0.75 ± 0.33 vs 0.80 ± 0.31) if they had retail clinic visits. Conclusions: Retail clinic use was lower in the elderly population compared with the previously published rate in the younger populations. The lower rate of continuity of care observed among retail clinic users is concerning, especially for those with chronic medical conditions.


We propose a new model of legislative bargaining in which coalitions may have different values, reflecting the fact that the policies they can pursue are constrained by the identity of the coalition members. In the model, a formateur picks a coalition and negotiates for the allocation of the surplus it is expected to generate. The formateur is free to change coalitions to seek better deals with other coalitions, but she may lose her status if bargaining breaks down, in which case a new formateur is chosen. We show that as the delay between offers goes to zero, the equilibrium allocation converges to a generalized version of a Nash Bargaining Solution in which —in contrast to the standard solution— the coalition is endogenous and determined by the relative coalitional values. A form of the hold-up problem specific to these bargaining games contributes to generate significant inefficiencies in the selection of the equilibrium coalition. We show that the model helps rationalize well known empirical facts that are in conflict with the predictions of standard non-cooperative models of bargaining: the absence of significant (or even positive) premia in ministerial allocations for formateurs and their parties; the occurrence of supermajorities; and delays in reaching agreements.


The invention discloses an electronic control system for energy saving in elevator. The system comprises of a thermal sensor, relay unit, logic gate unit and a control unit so connected in a logical way to detect the presence of occupant. The individual component of whole system is placed at appropriate position. Thermal sensor detects and reverts to the control unit about the occupancy of passenger within elevator. Combining the presence of the occupant by thermal sensor with other various possibilities of presence of the passenger reverted by other sensors is used as a logical combinations. Upon detection of the absence of passenger as per the logical output, the control unit signals the relay unit which therefore signals the logic gate unit to turnoff the unnecessary fan and electricity.


Accurate estimation of Software Code Size is important for developing cost-efficient embedded systems. The Code Size affects the amount of system resources needed, like ROM and RAM memory, and processing capacity. In our previous work, we have estimated the Code Size based on CFP (COSMIC Function Points) within 15% accuracy, with the purpose of deciding how much ROM memory to fit into products with high cost pressure. Our manual CFP measurement process would require 2.5 man years to estimate the ROM size required in a typical car. In this paper, we want to investigate how the manual effort involved in estimation of Code Size can be minimized. We define a UML Profile capturing all information needed for estimation of Code Size, and develop a tool for automated estimation of Code Size based on CFP. A case study will show how UML models save manual effort in a realistic case.


This article examines the relation between changes in macroeconomic variables and returns of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). Previous studies show that stock prices quickly absorb news from changes in macro-economic variables. This study examines the components of REIT total returns, income- and pricereturns, to gain a more detailed understanding of how macroeconomic variables affect the movement of these returns. Results using monthly data show that changes in macroeconomic variables have a significant impact on the volatility of the income portion of REIT returns and the news shocks from these variables impact income return volatility for more than one month in duration. These findings may assist REIT investors in their approaches to risk-management.


Oxygen diffusion is treated in a dense electronically conducting cobaltate pellet blocked ionically on one surface, electronically on the other, and sealed on its cylindrical periphery. A procedure is developed for extracting the chemical diffusion and surface exchange coefficients for oxygen by use of the asymptotic equations derived for the current response to a potential step at short and long times. It is shown that, while the formation of interfacial phases by reaction between the sample and the electrolyte may affect the surface exchange coefficient, the chemical diffusion coefficient data determined by the present approach are independent of such interfacial phenomena. The consistency of data obtained from several specimens with varying thickness and manner of interfacing with the electrolyte validates the diffusion model and the method used for data analysis. An oxygen permeation cell is also developed in this work as a modification of the diffusion cell. The new cell allows monitoring of the permeation rate by electrochemical means. The steady-state permeation data obtained by the permeation cell are consistent with the chemical-diffusion and surface- exchange coefficients measured by the blocked diffusion cell as long as the assumptions of the related theoretical models are satisfied. This is a further validation of the diffusion model and the related methodology developed here for obtaining the necessary data for characterizing oxygen exchange and transport in such materials.