Purpose

The EarthCube Technology and Architecture Committee working groups needed current information on the development of existing EarthCube-funded projects (e.g. building blocks, conceptual designs, and research coordination networks) to fulfill the goals of the working groups (e.g. gap analysis, use cases, standards bodies and testbed). The aims of this study include a compilation of planned outcomes, an assessment of current work and an investigation of interests in research collaboration among select EarthCube-funded projects.

Design/methodology/approach

Twenty-four principal investigators of 24 different EarthCube projects completed the Funded Projects Questionnaire composed of 35 questions in March and April 2015.

Findings

The survey response rate was 100 per cent and included a diversity of results ranging from planning stages to early development to final development. The funded projects in this study received awards in 2013 and 2014.

Research limitations/implications

The results are EarthCube-specific and are not generalizable. Suggestions for future research include integration of crosscutting disciplines and perspectives, best practices, guidelines and standards for broader impact.

Practical implications

This study identified potential collaboration opportunities, use cases and gaps (e.g. unmet architectural, functional, operational, organizational and/or technical needs).

Social implications

The impact on society include an improved understanding of the various EarthCube-funded projects and potential for collaboration within and across multiple disciplines.

Originality/value

This study contributed to the development of select outputs for EarthCube-funded projects' presentations, Tech Hands Meeting, 2015 All Hands Meeting, select working groups' outcomes and EarthCube Strategic Technology Plan and is of value to stakeholders, scientists and users.


Good Jobs, Bad Jobs and Redistribution by Kjell Erik Lommerud, Bjørn Sandvik and Odd Rune Straume We analyse the question of optimal taxation in a dual economy, when the government is concerned about the distribution of labour income. Income inequality is caused by the presence of sunk capital investments, which creates a 'good jobs' sector due to the capture of quasi-rents by trade unions. We find that whether the government should subsidise or tax investments is crucially dependent on union bargaining strength. If unions are weak, the optimal tax policy implies a combination of investment taxes and progressive income taxation. On the other hand, if unions are strong, we find that the best option for the government is to use investment subsidies in combination with either progressive or proportional taxation, the latter being the optimal policy if the government is not too concerned about inequality and if the cost of income taxation is sufficiently high.


Listing the steps that have been endorsed by district attorneys and prosecutors, this guide explains both responsibilities and legal liabilities in identifying and reporting possible child abuse, determine when intervention is necessary and protect yourself against wrongful accusation. Designed for teachers, police, day care workers, school nurses - and anyone in a position to help a child who might be abused - this book is essential and may help save children's lives.


Cyber-attacks have become increasingly common in recent years. Capable of shutting down nuclear centrifuges, air defense systems, and electrical grids, cyber-attacks pose a serious threat to national security. As a result, some have suggested that cyber-attacks should be treated as acts of war. Yet the attacks look little like the armed attacks that the law of war has traditionally regulated. This Article examines how existing law may be applied — and adapted and amended — to meet the distinctive challenge posed by cyber-attacks. It begins by clarifying what cyber-attacks are and how they already are regulated by existing bodies of law, including the law of war, international treaties, and domestic criminal law. This review makes clear that existing law effectively addresses only a small fraction of potential cyber-attacks. The law of war, for example, provides a useful framework for only the very small number of cyber-attacks that amount to an armed attack or that take place in the context of an ongoing armed conflict. This Article concludes that a new, comprehensive legal framework at both the domestic and international levels is needed to more effectively address cyber-attacks. The United States could strengthen its domestic law by giving domestic criminal laws addressing cyber-attacks extra-territorial effect and by adopting limited, internationally permissible countermeasures to combat cyber-attacks that do not rise to the level of armed attacks or that do not take place during an ongoing armed conflict. Yet the challenge cannot be met by domestic reforms alone. International cooperation will be essential to a truly effective legal response. New international efforts to regulate cyber-attacks must begin with agreement on the problem — which means agreement on the definition of cyber-attack, cyber-crime, and cyber-warfare. This would form the foundation for greater international cooperation on information sharing, evidence collection, and criminal prosecution of those involved in cyber-attacks — in short, for a new international law of cyber-attack.


For a variety of inter-related cultural, organizational, and political reasons, progress in climate science and the actual solution of scientific problems in this field have moved at a much slower rate than would normally be possible. Not all these factors are unique to climate science, but the heavy influence of politics has served to amplify the role of the other factors. By cultural factors, I primarily refer to the change in the scientific paradigm from a dialectic opposition between theory and observation to an emphasis on simulation and observational programs. The latter serves to almost eliminate the dialectical focus of the former. Whereas the former had the potential for convergence, the latter is much less effective. The institutional factor has many components. One is the inordinate growth of administration in universities and the consequent increase in importance of grant overhead. This leads to an emphasis on large programs that never end. Another is the hierarchical nature of formal scientific organizations whereby a small executive council can speak on behalf of thousands of scientists as well as govern the distribution of 'carrots and sticks' whereby reputations are made and broken. The above factors are all amplified by the need for government funding. When an issue becomes a vital part of a political agenda, as is the case with climate, then the politically desired position becomes a goal rather than a consequence of scientific research. This paper will deal with the origin of the cultural changes and with specific examples of the operation and interaction of these factors. In particular, we will show how political bodies act to control scientific institutions, how scientists adjust both data and even theory to accommodate politically correct positions, and how opposition to these positions is disposed of.


Chronic prostatitis is a poorly understood and difficult-to-treat condition. The authors discuss a guideline produced by the Prostatitis Expert Reference Group (PERG), which provides a framework for initial assessment and effective management in the community. Roger Kirby and Culley Carson comment from a secondary-care perspective on page 17.


The paper proposes a method to improve flexibility of the motion planning process for mobile manipulators. The approach is based on the exploitation of perception data available only from simple proximity sensors distributed on the robot. Such data are used to correct pre-planned motions to cope with uncertainties and dynamic changes of the scene at execution time. The algorithm computes robot motion commands aimed at fulfilling the mission by combining two tasks at the same time, i.e. following the planned end-effector path and avoiding obstacles in the environment, by exploiting robot redundancy as well as handling priorities among tasks. Moreover, a technique to smoothly switch between the tasks is presented. To show the effectiveness of the method, four experimental case studies have been presented consisting in a place task executed by a mobile manipulator in an increasingly cluttered scene. Graphical Abstract


Rationale Thrombolysis with intravenous alteplase is both effective and safe when administered to particular types of patient within 4·5 hours of having an ischemic stroke. However, the extent to which effects might vary in different types of patient is uncertain. Aims and Design We describe the protocol for an updated individual patient data meta-analysis of trials of intravenous alteplase, including results from the recently reported third International Stroke Trial, in which a wide range of patients enrolled up to six-hours after stroke onset were randomized to alteplase vs. control. Study Outcomes This protocol will specify the primary outcome for efficacy, specified prior to knowledge of the results from the third International Stroke Trial, as the proportion of patients having a 'favorable' stroke outcome, defined by modified Rankin Score 0–1 at final follow-up at three- to six-months. The primary analysis will be to estimate the extent to which the known benefit of alteplase on modified Rankin Score 0–1 diminishes with treatment delay, and the extent to which it is independently modified by age and stroke severity. Key secondary outcomes include effect of alteplase on death within 90 days; analyses of modified Rankin Score using ordinal, rather than dichotomous, methods; and effects of alteplase on symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage, fatal intracranial hemorrhage, symptomatic ischemic brain edema and early edema, effacement and/or midline shift. Discussion This collaborative meta-analysis of individual participant data from all randomized trials of intravenous alteplase vs. control will demonstrate how the known benefits of alteplase on ischemic stroke outcome vary across different types of patient.


Neighbouring countries have often chosen different atmospheric dispersion prognosis models for use in emergency situations. This may result in differences in the predictions, which in turn can lead to the authorities adopting different countermeasures. In a Nordic project within the Nordic Nuclear Safety Research Programme (NKS), a Nordic harmonisation and comparison effort was initiated in the programme period 1991 to 1994, with subsequent follow-up activities. The five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) have chosen five different medium to long-range models for atmospheric dispersion calculations in emergency situations. The models were tested and compared in four Nordic exercises, which were followed by meetings. The exercises revealed an urgent need for harmonisation in the manner in which the results of calculations are presented during an emergency. Differences in the manner of results presentation by different institutions performing predictions, may lead to misunderstandings, confusion, and stress.


Heat waves are considered to be the major cause of environmental and weather-related fatalities. Heat waves also have a severe impact on people with chronic cardiac and respiratory diseases, such as asthma. With climate change and global warming processes taking place, general global climatic models predict that heat wave events will increase in frequency, duration, and intensity. Therefore, heat wave modelling has attracted considerable attention from scientists and decision-makers alike. Yet it remains challenging, complex, and an imperative problem. This complexity is introduced mainly by land surface and atmospheric spatial variability, such as land use and air pollution concentration. This study addresses this spatial complexity by using remotely sensed thermal data in the form of Land Surface Temperature (LST) images, along with meteorological data to model heat waves in Qatar. Multi-criteria/multi-parameters/multi-layer analysis is carried out using Geographic Information System (GIS) by combining many complex parameters that influence or determine heat waves in the region. Gumble statistical frequency analysis is carried out on time series data to predict heat wave events. RESULTS from the model show that a high portion of the population's vulnerable age groups are likely to be severely affected by future heat wave events in Qatar- based on a five year return period. The analysis revealed that at least 87% of children aged 4 or under would be exposed to a very high intensity level of heat wave events, while more than 86% of elderly people, over 65 years of age, would be exposed to the same intensity level of hazard. The study proves that thermal satellite imaging improves heat wave hazard modelling, as it addresses the complex spatial variability of land surface. The developed model is applicable at a local, as well as regional, scale, making an original contribution to heat wave modelling. Language: en


Focusing on the native ceramic technology of central Mexico during the early colonial period and the present-day, this book offers a refreshing view into the process of cultural continuity and change in the indigenous Mesoamerican world after the Spanish conquest.


Background: Primary care reform in Ontario, Canada, included the initiation of a blended capitation model in 2001‐2002 and an enhanced fee-for-service model in 2003. Both models involve patient rostering, incentives for preventive care and requirements for after-hours care. We evaluated practice characteristics and patterns of care under both models. Methods: Using administrative data, we identified physicians belonging to either the capitation or the enhanced fee-for-service group throughout the period from Sept. 1, 2005, to Aug. 31, 2006, and their enrolled patients. Practices were stratified by location (urban v. rural). We compared the groups in terms of practice characteristics and patterns of care, including comprehensiveness of care, continuity of care, after-hours care, visits to the emergency department and uptake of new patients. Results: Patients in the capitation and enhanced fee-forservice practices had similar demographic characteristics. Patients in capitation practices had lower morbidity and comorbidity indices. Comprehensiveness and continuity of care were similar between the 2 groups. Compared with patients in enhanced fee-for-service practices, those in capitation practices had less after-hours care (adjusted rate ratio [RR] 0.68, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.61‐0.75) and more visits to emergency departments (adjusted RR 1.20, 95% CI 1.15‐1.25). Overall, physicians in the capitation group enrolled fewer new patients than did physicians in the enhanced fee-for-service group (37.0 v. 52.0 per physician); the same was true of new graduates (60.3 v. 72.1 per physician). Interpretation: Physicians enrolled in the capitation model had different practice characteristics than those in the enhanced fee-for-service model. These characteristics appeared to be pre-existing and not due to enrolment in a new model. Although the capitation model provides an alternative to fee-for-service practice, its characteristics should be the focus of future policy development and research.


Like many coral specialists fifteen years ago, J. E. N. Veron thought Australia's Great Barrier Reef was impervious to climate change. "Owned by a prosperous country and accorded the protection it deserves, it would surely not go the way of the Amazon rain forest or the parklands of Africa, but would endure forever. That is what I thought once, but I think it no longer." This book is Veron's Silent Spring for the world's coral reefs.Veron presents the geological history of the reef, the biology of coral reef ecosystems, and a primer on what we know about climate change. He concludes that the Great Barrier Reef and, indeed, most coral reefs will be dead from mass bleaching and irreversible acidification within the coming century unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed. If we don't have the political will to confront the plight of the world's reefs, he argues, current processes already in motion will become unstoppable, bringing on a mass extinction the world has not seen for 65 million years.Our species has cracked its own genetic code and sent representatives of its kind to the moon - we can certainly save the world's reefs if we want to. But to achieve this goal, we must devote scientific expertise and political muscle to the development of green technologies that will dramatically reduce greenhouse emissions and reverse acidification of the oceans.


This Note explores the regulatory role of tax policy in New York City and argues that the City's power to tax independently should be increased. Currently, New York City must seek permission from the New York State Legislature to impose new taxes or change the structure of existing taxes. This restriction is justified primarily by the revenue-raising function of tax policy — an analysis that ignores the important role tax policy plays in creating effective regulatory regimes. The first Part of this Note sorts out the tangled relationship between fiscal policy tools such as taxation, regulation, user fees, and spending, and suggests factors relevant to determining which tool is most appropriate to use in a given situation. The Note next discusses New York State's scheme for distributing authority over taxation and regulation, and provides an overview of local government law. The concluding Part of this Note argues that New York City should be given more independent taxing authority and directly addresses arguments against the granting of greater municipal taxing power.


The spherical tokamak (ST) is a leading candidate for a Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF) due to its compact size and modular configuration. The National Spherical Torus eXperiment (NSTX) is a MA-class ST facility in the US actively developing the physics basis for an ST-based FNSF. In plasma transport research, ST experiments exhibit a strong (nearly inverse) scaling of normalized confinement with collisionality, and if this trend holds at low collisionality, high fusion neutron fluences could be achievable in very compact ST devices. A major motivation for the NSTX Upgrade (NSTX-U) is to span the next factor of 3–6 reduction in collisionality. To achieve this collisionality reduction with equilibrated profiles, NSTX-U will double the toroidal field, plasma current, and NBI heating power and increase the pulse length from 1–1.5 s to 5–8 s. In the area of stability and advanced scenarios, plasmas with higher aspect ratio and elongation, high βN, and broad current profiles approaching those of an ST-based FNSF have been produced in NSTX using active control of the plasma β and advanced resistive wall mode control. High non-inductive current fractions of 70% have been sustained for many current diffusion times, and the more tangential injection of the 2nd NBI of the Upgrade is projected to increase the NBI current drive by up to a factor of 2 and support 100% non-inductive operation. More tangential NBI injection is also projected to provide non-solenoidal current ramp-up as needed for an ST-based FNSF. In boundary physics, NSTX measures an inverse relationship between the scrape-off layer heat-flux width and plasma current that could unfavourably impact next-step devices. Recently, NSTX has successfully demonstrated substantial heat-flux reduction using a snowflake divertor configuration, and this type of divertor is incorporated in the NSTX-U design. The physics and engineering design supporting NSTX Upgrade is described.


Various techniques have attempted to localize imagery. However, early findings using single cell recordings of human receptive fields during imagery tasks have had little impact. Reports by Marg and his coworkers (1968) found no evidence for imagery in human Area 17, 18, and 19. Single cells from humans suggest later imagery-related activity in hippocampus, amygdala, entorhinal cortex, and parahippocampal gyrus.


Purpose: To compare the prevalence of refractive errors and factors associated with spectacle use in a rural and urban south Indian population. Materials and Methods: Four thousand eight hundred subjects (age >39 years) each from rural and urban Tamil Nadu were enumerated for a population-based study. All participants underwent a complete ophthalmic evaluation including best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), objective and subjective refraction. Out of 3924 rural responders 63.91% and out of 3850 urban responders 81.64% were phakic in the right eye with BCVA of 20/40 or better and were included in the study. Association of spectacle use and refractive errors with different parameters were analysed using logistic regression. Statistical Analysis: Chi square, t test, Chi square for trend and Pearson′s correlation coefficient were used for analysis. Results: Spectacle use was significantly higher and positively associated with literacy and employment in the urban population. The age and gender-adjusted prevalence of emmetropia, myopia of spherical equivalent (SE) ≤-0.50 diopter sphere (DS), high myopia (SE ≤-5.00DS), hyperopia (SE >0.50DS) and astigmatism ≤ 0.50 diopter cylinder (DC) were 46.8%, 31.0%, 4.3%, 17.9% and 60.4% respectively in the rural population and 29.0%, 17.6%, 1.5%, 51.9%, 59.1% respectively in the urban population. The prevalence of emmetropia decreased with age (p < 0.001); prevalence of myopia and high myopia increased with age (p = 0.001) and were associated with nuclear sclerosis (p = 0.001) in both populations. Hyperopia was commoner among women than men (p = 0.001); was positively associated with diabetes mellitus (p = 0.008) in the rural population and negatively with nuclear sclerosis (p = 0.001) in both populations. Conclusion: Spectacle use was found to be significantly lower in the rural population. The pattern of refractive errors was significantly different between both populations.


The work in this thesis is concerned with the modelling and forecasting of the KLCI's returns with a 'complete' technique. The selection of the model for estimation is not only based on the value of the goodness of fit test, but also on the test of the stability of parameters obtained, the checking of the characteristic of the standardized residual such as the ARCH-LM test, Ljung-Box test, asymmetry test (SB, NSB, and PSB test). Its distribution is examined by qq-plot. The forecasting is carried out by using the multi-step-ahead forecast.

This study also proposes the PCA(Principal Component Analysis) as an alternative method to compare the performance of several GARCH models. It is found that this method has a clear edge over its rival because PCA uses actual values of the goodness of fit test criteria (LogL, SBC, and AIC in estimation and RMSE, MAE, AMAPE and MAPE in forecasting) and hence the inability to specify exactly the relative positions of each of the competing models as faced by the ranking method may be overcome. Another plus point is that, this method enables models to be classified into several distinct groups ordered in such a way that each group is made up of models with about the same level of fitting and forecasting abilities.

The characteristics of the numerous tests in modelling for GARCH have been checked by Monte Carlo simulation. The tests are the ARCH-LM test, the SB, NSB and PSB tests, the parameters constancy test and the ARCH remaining test (to test whether the standardized residual still contain signs of conditional heteroscedasticity). The results show that the ARCH remaining test is inconsistent, but the other tests are accurate and stable for all experiments.

Since the volatility of the KLCI's returns series is non-uniform, the data is split into three periods of time. In the beginning, the division of the data is based on the plot of the returns, but for the later part, it is based on the distribution of the returns. Methods for correcting the outliers and splitting the heterogeneous data are proposed. The EM algorithm is applied to split the heterogeneous data, and the estimated parameters are used to correct the outlying data using the Mahalanobis Distance.

The last part of the thesis is concerned with the validation of the model obtained for fitting the GARCH model for the new data set (January 2001-April 2004 or Period IV). It is found that the pattern of the new data set resembles of Period III, and both models are also the same. Finally, the model selected for Period IV is used to determine the VaR (Value at Risk) of the KLCI. The VaR at the 5% level for next 5 trading days (the next week) starting from the forecast origin on the 30th April 2004 is RM 35,492.55, which means that if someone invest RM 1 million in the KLSE, and if some extraordinary event happens, the maximum loss incurred for the next 5 trading days (starting from the forecast origin on the 30th April 2004) with 95% probability is RM 35,492.55.


The collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent stranded Russian-speaking diaspora in former Soviet republics created a unique environment for testing the effect of political institutions and economic climate on minority integration. Using descriptive quantitative data and over 30 interviews performed in Russian while living in Estonia and Kyrgyzstan, I analyze the levels of integration of these Russian-speaking minorities. Estonia and Kyrgyzstan provide the necessary conditions to test the effect of political institutions and economic climate on minority integration because they differ dramatically in these areas after independence. In comparing the two Russian-speaking minorities, I also assess overall identification, personal relation to the Russian Federation, general relation to the titular population, and reactions to Ukraine and Crimea.

My findings from both Estonia and Kyrgyzstan reveal that both minority groups have integrated into their host countries, but the degree of that integration differs substantially. The more robust Estonian economy and the inherent benefits from European Union membership prevented mass emigration after 1991, but slight discriminatory citizenship and Russian language policies result in a less integrated Russian community that tends towards local identification. The more accommodating Kyrgyz governmental policies, both in terms of citizenship and the Russian language, created a highly integrated minority population, but the poor economic climate of Kyrgyzstan incentivized the majority of the Russian-speaking community to immigrate back to Russia. The separate levels of integration and different forms identification achieved by both communities suggest that political institutions largely effect integration, but economic climate dictates emigration and can mitigate detrimental effects from discriminatory political institutions.


Over the last few years, microbiome-focused studies have propelled our understanding of the importance and contribution of several species of gut microbes to immunity and tissue homeostasis.1 Certain microbiota were discovered to essentially shape the intestinal immune system, and changes in the composition of the gut microbiome were found associated with a wide range of diseases, including IBD, metabolic diseases such as diabetes or even neurological disorders like autism.1 These studies laid the foundation for novel therapeutic interventions like microbiome-tailored treatments. As a first, seemingly simple but nevertheless effective step, faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is increasingly recognised as a powerful means to treat conditions associated with dysbiosis, most notably Clostridium difficile enteritis.2

In a parallel attempt, the lungs moved into the focus of microbe-interested scientists and clinicians alike. As a result, the lung microbiome as its own unique habitat was explored, ending the century-old misconception that lungs are sterile sites. Empowered by more sophisticated technical tools like pyrosequencing, a number of studies established the composition of the lung microbiome in healthy people and discovered various degrees of alterations in …


Laparoscopy is commonly referred to as keyhole surgery. Operational techniques based on laparoscopy have been widely applied in humans, and recently also in veterinary medicine, with a wider application. Laparoscopy is a minimally invasive surgical technique for viewing various abdominal organs like adrenal gland, spleen, kidney, ovaries, gallbladder, bile ducts, liver and intestines. The most common indications for laparoscopy in animals are: biopsy of abdominal organs or abdominal tissue masses, as well as surgical operations such as: gynaecological procedures, cholecystectomy, adrenalectomy, nephrectomy, hernia repair, bowel resection and vasoligation. Therefore, the same surgical interventions in traditional surgery can be performed by this innovative surgical technique: minimally invasive surgery.


We develop monotone iterative technique for a system of semilinear elliptic boundary value problems when the forcing function is the sum of Caratheodory functions which are nondecreasing and nonincreasing, respectively. The splitting of the forcing function leads to four different types of coupled weak upper and lower solutions. In this paper, relative to two of these coupled upper and lower solutions, we develop monotone iterative technique. We prove that the monotone sequences converge to coupled weak minimal and maximal solutions of the nonlinear elliptic systems. One can develop results for the other two types on the same lines. We further prove that the linear iterates of the monotone iterative technique converge monotonically to the unique solution of the nonlinear BVP under suitable conditions.


of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of M.Appl.Sc Dairy Runoff Management and Profitability Case Studies in the Canterbury region of New Zealand By Brendan Richards This study investigated the issues pertaining to runoff ownership in Canterbury, focusing particularly on reasons for purchase, how the runoff was used, and profitability. Six case study farmers were selected and interviewed, following identification by industry key informants. Initial selection criteria were runoff ownership, and availability of comprehensive and reliable information. Final criteria included achieving diversity of situation in respect to land type and farming system. The runoffs were evaluated according to the net benefits they contributed to the overall dairying operation. Achieving greater business control was the major driver for runoff purchase. A secondary driver related to increased profitability opportunities, including both operating returns and capital gains. Farmers also enjoyed the diversity of operations and decision making challenges that runoff ownership provided. All case study farmers used their runoff for wintering purposes and supplying feed to the milking platform for lactating cows. Four farmers used the runoff for rearing their heifers, with three farmers pursuing dairy beef, carrying-over empty cows, and cash cropping activities. Three farmers also sold surplus feed on the open market. The relative amount of runoff area to milking platform area ranged from 0.4 to 0.98ha (per Iha of milking platform). The value of runoff capital invested ranged from $1,540 to $8,645 per lactating cow (on peak numbers). These ratios were dependent on both the management activities undertaken on the runoff and the runoff's resources. Annual operating returns (EBIT) ranged between 3.4% and 6.0% for the 2004/05 year. These cash rates of return are comparable to returns generated through other capital appreciating assets. Capital gains ranged from 15.5% to 23.9% compounded per annum, from the year of purchase through to 2005, net of development expenditure. Currently these operating returns are less than the interest costs incurred, assuming the current market value is totally funded with debt capital. Runoff cashflow levels were found to become self-funding after a small period of time. Due to capital gains, a 4% cash return on current market values is considerably greater when expressed across the historical purchase price (debt employed). The financial success of future runoff investments will depend strongly on market price movements for runoff-grown feed and the levels of capital gains that are achieved.


Facial behavior contains rich non-verbal information. However, to date studies have typically been limited to the analysis of a few hundred or thousand video sequences. We present the first-ever ultra large-scale clustering of facial events extracted from over 1.5 million facial videos collected while individuals from over 94 countries respond to one of more that 8000 online videos. We believe this is the first example of what might be described "big data" analysis in facial expression research. Automated facial coding was used to quantify eyebrow raise (AU2), eyebrow lowerer (AU4) and smile behaviors in the 700,000,000+ frames. Facial "events" were extracted and defined by a set of temporal features and then clustered using the k-means clustering algorithm. Verifying the observations in each cluster against human-coded data we were able to identify reliable clusters of facial events with different dynamics (e.g. fleeting vs. sustained and rapid offset vs. slow offset smiles). These events provide a way of summarizing behaviors that occur without prescribing the properties. We examined the how these nuanced facial events were tied to consumer behavior. We found that smile events - particularly those with high peaks - were much more likely to occur during viral ads. This data is cross-cultural, we also examine the prevalence of different events across regions of the globe.


Do trade shocks affect conflict? The evidence on this question has so far focused mainly on commodity price shocks. This paper moves beyond this focus and use data from the entire trade sector to examine whether changes in Palestinian trade in the second half of the 1990s affected the subsequent Palestinian uprising ('second Intifada'). The findings support the opportunity cost hypothesis. An increase of USD 10 million in Palestinian exports of a sector employing 10 percent of the locality's private employment reduces conflict intensity in that locality by 2.1-2.8 percent . On the other hand changes in Palestinian and Israeli imports have no significant impact on conflict. We provide evidence that these trade shocks were determined by factors exogenous to Palestinian localities, including the emergence of new global suppliers and the unilateral trade opening of Israel, i.e. the main Palestinian export destination.


A finite strain consolidation test with a constant surcharge to determine the compressibility (e − σ′) and permeability (e − k) relationships of very soft clay is proposed. The method uses Gammarays and pore pressure transducers to measure density and pore pressure profiles, respectively, at various times of the test without hindering the consolidation process. The constant surcharge applied accentuates the changes in density and pore pressure profiles enabling them to be measured reliably. These profiles are then used to determine the compressibility and permeability of the soft clay. A test is carried out to extract these properties, which are used in a finite strain consolidation theory to predict the settlement, void ratio, and pore-pressure distributions of other tests done under different initial and boundary conditions. The predictions are found to agree well with the experimental data, thus suggesting that the properties determined are accurate.


Crowding is the identification difficulty for a target in the presence of nearby flankers. Previous studies have shown that perceptual learning could reduce crowding effect. However, the underlying neural mechanisms of the perceptual improvement are still largely unknown. It has been hypothesized that the reduction of crowding effect might be due to the shrinkage of neurons' receptive field by training. Here, we used the fMRI-based population receptive field (pRF) technique to examine this issue. Subjects were trained with an orientation discrimination task for five days. In the task, a target grating (radius: 1.25°; contrast: 1.0; spatial frequency: 2 cycles/°) was centered at 6.25° eccentricity with two adjacent flankers positioned radially. The target and flankers rotated round the fixation point and were displaced 20° every 2 seconds. Subjects needed to detect a near-threshold orientation change in the 2 second intervals. Before and after training, subjects viewed the same stimuli and performed the same task as those during training. Meanwhile, we acquired BOLD signals for estimating the pRF of the voxels in visual cortex. We found that, after training, subjects' orientation discrimination threshold reduced by 66% and the pRF size in V2 decreased significantly. These results support the above mentioned hypothesis. We speculate that the pRF size reduction might serve to prevent the interference from flankers and thus weaken the crowding effect. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Because computers zoom across magnifications, it is easy to conclude that both knowledge and things exist by nature in precision-nested scales. The technical term is "scalable," the ability to expand without distorting the framework. But it takes hard work to make knowledge and things scalable, and this article shows that ignoring nonscalable effects is a bad idea. People stumbled on scalable projects through the same historical contingencies that such projects set out to deny. They cobbled together ways to make things and data self-contained and static, and thus amenable to expansion. In European New World plantations, the natives were wiped out; coerced and alienated plants and workers came to substitute for them. Profits were made because extermination and slavery could be discounted from the books. Such historically indeterminate encounters formed models for later projects of scalability. This essay explores scalability projects from the perspective of an emergent "nonscalability theory" that pays attention to the mounting pile of ruins that scalability leaves behind. The article concludes that, if the world is still diverse and dynamic, it is because scalability never fulfills its own promises.


In this study, a 3-dimensional interconnected hierarchical ordered macro/mesoporous titania (HOPT) with thin walls, crystalline framework, large cavities (∼420 nm), uniform mesopores (3.7 nm) and high surface area (177 m2 g−1) was synthesized through a facile bi-template interface-directed deposition method using poly(propylene oxide)-block-poly(ethylene oxide)-block-poly(propylene oxide) (Pluronic P123) triblock polymer as a soft template and structure directing agent, titanium isopropoxide (TIPO) as a titania source and 3-dimensional ordered macroporous carbon (3DOMC) as the hard template and the nanoreactor. This was followed with a two-step thermal treatment in nitrogen and air. Under simulated sunlight irradiation at room temperature, the HOPT shows an ultrahigh photocatalytic activity for the degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) with a fast reaction rate that is three times higher than commercial titania nanoparticles (P25).


Alison Jones and Milly Thompson were LGP's Autumn Artists-in-Residents, continuing the long-standing discussion and project that erupts every now and again for an altered re-iteration and rethinking. For this they produced a 'poster', a photomontage which considers gendered labour set against the backdrop of the C21st art world. The full size colour print was displayed on a Coventry city centre adboard from 25 September – 20 October. A stack of mass produced A3 riso prints, in navy, was available as a free carry-out from the gallery in association with the exhibition 'Stolen planks from under the bourgeois phalanx'. Lanchester Gallery Projects (LGP) is an ongoing curatorial and educational research project that ran a contemporary


Within wool textile industries, a very important role is played by the so-called finishing processes, in which the textile substrate undergoes steam treatments to achieve the desired level of stabilisation and appearance. Process parameters, namely temperature and moisture content, are known only at the beginning of the process but not in the textile material being treated, where the actual physicochemical effects takes place. They have been evaluated during time dependent simulations, showing a fast increase of the fibre temperature which reaches values higher than the steam one, due to the heat of moisture sorption, whereas the moisture content increases very slowly, demonstrating that the diffusion coefficient of water molecules into the fibre is the limiting factor of the whole process


This article seeks to understand network governance within the context of the North American automotive industry. Within this industry, original equipment manufacturers (lead firms) have outsourced a substantial portion of parts production over the last 30 years. This paper argues that in an aim to govern their supplier relations, North American lead firms imposed quality assurance standards upon their suppliers. In addition, this paper considers how nodes situated in the network are called upon to pre-emptively manage failures. Utilizing the quality assurance standards themselves, and 15 in-depth interviews with quality assurance managers at different part supplier plants, this article explores the technologies of performance used to manage failures. The focus of this paper is on the creation of part narratives, and particularly, the quality audit and its role in governing the conduct of part suppliers at-a-distance. Lastly, this paper focuses on the network prudential subject who is called upon to pre-emptively manage failures on behalf of the network.


A rigorous mathematical model is developed for the complex impedance of a solid-state electrochemical cell, which is commonly used for the measurement of oxygen transport, oxygen exchange kinetics and thermodynamic properties of nonstoichiometric mixed conducting oxides. The model leads to a simple equivalent circuit for the cell with unambiguous definition of the physical significance of its components. A method is proposed for the analysis of experimental data. The methodology thus developed is validated by comparing the experimental data measured for a well-studied perovskite (SrCo0.5Fe0.503-delta) with the results obtained from the completely equivalent potential-step technique. In addition, various electrochemical properties of the other cell components, such as Pt electrodes and YSZ electrolyte, also obtainable from measurements, show good agreement with the available literature data. The cell design, which significantly minimizes the gas space in contact with the sample, has a clear advantage over similar relaxation cells in terms of reducing the dominating effect of the gas phase capacitance in numerical data analysis. A possible disadvantage, however, is the large impedance of the oxygen pump at low oxygen partial pressures, which may in a similar manner obstruct deconvolution of the sample properties from the measured data.


Date of Award Spring 2013 Document Type Thesis Degree Name Bachelor of Arts Department History First Advisor Dr. John Treadway Second Advisor Dr. Sydney Watts Abstract This paper examines how both the Army as an organization and its small unit leaders attempted to maintain the soldiers' morale in the European Theater of Operations during World War II. Morale was critical to the Allied victory in the war, yet the morale of frontline GIs was often neglected. This occurred with such frequency that many combat soldiers suffered from a new category of wound known as "combat exhaustion." Through an examination of what influenced combat soldiers' morale, a clearer understanding of what the Army did well and how it failed to support combat GIs emerges, as does an explanation for why combat exhaustion caused so many casualties during the European campaign. This link between morale maintenance and combat exhaustion was critical to the efficiency of combat units during the war and ultimately helped determine the shape and outcome of every battle. Recommended Citation Kane, Kevin, "Morale maintenance in World War II US Army ground combat units : European theater of operations, 1944-45" (2013). Honors Theses. 17. https://scholarship.richmond.edu/honors-theses/17  Download


Reconfigurable arrays combine the benefit of spatial execution, typical of hardware solutions, with that of programmability, present in microprocessors. When mapping software applications (or parts of them) onto hardware, however, fine-grain arrays, such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), often provide more flexibility than is needed, and do not implement coarser-level operations efficiently. Therefore, coarse grained reconfigurable arrays (CGRAs) have been proposed to this aim. Most CGRA design emerged in research present ad-hoc solutions in many aspects; in this paper we propose an architectural template to enable design space exploration of different possible CGRA designs. We called the template expression-grained reconfigurable array (EGRA), as its ability to generate complex computational cells, executing expressions as opposed to single operations, is a defining feature. Other notable EGRA characteristics include the ability to support heterogeneous cells and different storage requirements through various memory interfaces. The performed design explorations, as shown trough the experimental data provided, can effectively drive designers to further close the performance gap between reconfigurable and hardwired logic by providing guidelines on architectural design choices. Performance results on a number of embedded applications show that EGRA instances can be used as a reconfigurable fabric for customizable processors, outperforming more traditional CGRA designs.


We consider the multivariate linear model for multilevel data where units are nested within a hierarchy of clusters. We propose permutation procedures to test for variance components at any given level. The tests are moment based and require no distributional assumptions except finite second moments. We introduce the R package mvctm, which implements the tests. It can perform tests based on the original observations and score–based tests using ranks and signs. A simulation study shows that the new tests maintain the desired type I error. It also compares their power. The results suggest that the tests based on the original observations and the rank-based tests are very competitive. With univariate data, the former one is even more powerful than a likelihood ratio test based on a mixture of chi-squared distributions. The proposed tests are illustrated using the PISA data.


Which groups of elected officials should be in charge of decisions about the imposition of lockdowns and other social distancing rules? People throughout the UK have debated this issue since the start of the pandemic. When central government, local governments, and devolved administrations all enjoy democratic legitimacy, disputes over who should have the power to impose social distancing rules are almost inevitable. The nature of the British constitution also means that the recent debates about parliamentary insight and social distancing rules were predictable. This paper sheds lights on these debates over who should have the power to impose social distancing rules by drawing on economic theory, particularly the work of Nobel Laureates Hayek (1945) and Ostrom (1990). We review UK policy since March 2020 using this lens and then present policymakers with actionable recommendations. We argue that local rather than national governments should be given authority over whether or not to impose lockdowns and similar measures. We argue that in areas in which local government powers are not unified into a single unit and instead dispersed to different levels (e.g. county and borough councils), power over social distancing rules should be vested in the most junior unit of government. We use economic theory to argue that the legislative branches within each level of government should exercise close and continuous parliamentary oversight of all social distancing rules. In light of this pandemic, the UK might also consider investing resources in acquiring a written constitution that would clearly specify who has power over public health measures such as social distancing rules.


Introduction The United States was founded on the principles of democracy and for over two hundred years, the majority of its citizens have benefited from living in a democratic society. However, there exists a growing number of Americans who are not enjoying the fruits of a democracy, but instead are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the status quo. In general, it is the poor minority groups, namely, African Americans, American Indians, and Latinos that feel disenfranchised. Although there has been some progress made in the advancement of minority groups as can be seen in Senator Barack Obama's bid for the presidency, minority groups, in general, are still encountering difficulties in their quest for attaining and maintaining a better way of life. Research reveals that many minorities still live in poverty, live in segregated communities, and drop out of school at a higher rate than Whites (College Scholarship 2006; Orfield 2001; National Education Association 2003). In its most recent attempt to improve the quality of education in the United States, the Federal Government passed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-110) or NCLB. This federal legislation seeks to improve the performance of primary and secondary schools in the U.S. by: a) increasing the standards of accountability for schools, school districts, and states; b) affording parents the opportunities to select which schools they wish their children to attend; and c) requiring states to develop assessments in basic skills to be administered to all students in particular grades (NCLB 2001). Proponents of NCLB argue that it has helped to narrow the achievement gap between minority and non-minority students because it has focused attention on the academic achievement of traditionally under-represented groups of children, namely, African Americans and Latinos, and by so doing has encouraged school districts to devise and implement appropriate interventions. Second, its supporters believe that systematic testing improves the quality of education because it places a spotlight on the schools that are not teaching basic skills effectively. They believe that once low performing schools are identified, measures can be taken to transform them into high performing schools. Third, supporters of NCLB contend that the improvements made in administration, curriculum development, instruction, and business practices are the result of a reliance on assessment data to formulate all decisions (NCLB 2001). Although NCLB has garnered support from some politicians, the No Child Left Behind Act has generated criticism in the sociopolitical and pedagogical arenas. The major criticism associated with this legislation is that it may cause states to lower achievement goals or manipulate test results in order to ensure that more students pass the exams. A second criticism of NCLB is that it encourages teachers to teach to the test. With the pressure of having students pass a standardized test, teachers may be inclined to teach only the content that will be assessed on the test. Another criticism surrounding NCLB is that it narrows the curriculum being taught in schools (Whelan 2006). Currently, NCLB focuses only on mathematics, reading, or language arts. As a result, school districts are paying less attention to the arts, social studies, and physical education (Wills 2007). Detractors of NCLB argue that students lose the benefits of a broad education when they are not allowed to develop skills in subjects other than mathematics, reading, and the language arts (Cawelti 2006). In spite of the changes that school districts have implemented in response to NCLB, the overall status of disadvantaged students has not improved in the United States. In Thermal, California, for example, "19 of the 21 schools of the Coachella Valley Unified School District have not met the federal law's performance benchmarks for four years. In the U.S., 411 school districts in 27 states face intervention" (Williams 2008, 3A). …


This Article provides the first ranking of legal scholars and law faculties based on citations in non-law journals. Applying the methods, as much as possible, of the widely used Leiter-Sisk "Scholarly Impact Score," which includes only citations in law publications, we calculate a "Interdisciplinary Scholarly Impact Score" from the non-law citations over a five-year period (2012-2018) to the work of tenured law faculty published in that period in non-law journals. We also provide the weighted scores for law faculty at the top 25 law schools as ranked by the US News rankings, a school-by-school ranking, and lists of the top five faculty by non-law citations at each school and of the top fifty scholars overall.

The work of legal scholars outside of law journals is not trivial. Over 600 faculty members from the 25 schools in our cohort published almost 3,000 articles in non-law journals from 2012-2018, and those articles received close to 21,000 citations in non-law journals. The faculties that rank in the top ten based on weighted scores for Interdisciplinary Scholarly Impact using the Leiter-Sisk weighting method (2x the mean + the median) for all faculty with at least one publication in the study period are: Minnesota, Stanford, Yale, Duke, Cal-Irvine, Georgetown, Boston University, USC, Vanderbilt, and George Washington. The rankings, although subject to limitations similar to those faced by the law journal citation studies, demonstrate that it is possible with reasonable effort to include citations in both law and non-law journals in rankings of legal scholars and law school faculties.

Legal scholars are cited in non-law journals for the work they publish in legal journals and, in many cases, for work they publish in non-law journals. Counting only their citations in law journals thus underestimates both the impact of their legal scholarship and their interdisciplinary impact. Non-law journals are widely read by law and policy scholars, scientists who influence legal scholarship, and policymakers, and publications and citations of legal scholars in non-law journals can be an indication of work that has transcended the conceptual frameworks, assumptions, or methods of legal research. Publications and citations in non-law journals thus provide an additional indication of the influence of legal scholars. Citations in non-law journals also provide an indication of the influence of legal scholars on the overall scholarly enterprise outside of law, and accounting for non-law citations in legal rankings can also encourage interdisciplinary scholarship. Scholars from non-law fields have made important contributions to legal scholarship, but the reverse should also be the case. Acceptance by other fields of legal scholars' proposed legal reforms can play an important role in determining their success, which is made more likely when legal scholars are included in the work of other disciplines.

For these reasons, we suggest in the Article that future evaluations of legal scholars' work include both the Law Scholarly Impact Score and the new Interdisciplinary Scholarly Impact Score, or combine the two into a Total Scholarly Impact Score. Although there is some mismatch in the citation engine capacities and the time frames for our non-law journal citation study and the most recent Sisk et al. law journal citation study, a combination of the two can provide a rough approximation of the Total Scholarly Impact Score. The top ten law faculties based on this combined measure are: Yale, Harvard, Chicago, NYU, Stanford, Columbia, Duke, Cal-Berkeley, Pennsylvania, and Vanderbilt.

The databases used in the law and non-law studies and their search capacities differ, making it difficult to develop a citation study method that captures all of a faculty members' law and non-law publications and all citations to them in defined time frames. We are working to improve the non-law citation study database and search capacity.

Following an introduction to the project, in Part I we discuss why accounting for legal scholars' non-law publications and citations is important when assessing scholarly impact. Part II describes our methodology. Part III presents our results, and Part IV discusses the results.


Numerous studies have demonstrated that annotation is an important part of human reading behavior in both printed and electronic environments. Annotation in the electronic environment requires special support due to limited media
affordances. We have witnessed continuous improvement of annotation functions in some electronic reading environments, such as text documents in Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat and images in Flickr. However, comparatively
little research has been conducted to understand people's needs for making annotations when they watch videos, let alone work to develop tools to support their needs. With the increasing use of videos in many aspects of our lives, from
professional activities to personal entertainment, by not only specialists but also general consumers, there is need for more efforts on designing annotation facilities for video navigation and manipulation devices. This study focuses on video annotation in a learning environment. We studied how people in a teaching assistant training class annotated videotaped instructional presentations. We
attempted to understand the value of annotation in achieving their learning objectives and how video annotation functions helped in supporting their tasks. The results of this study provide implications for video annotation system design.


For four years now, the London Contemporary Music Festival has been organising some of the most exciting new music events in town. In contrast to the eclectic extravaganzas of previous years, LCMF 2016 was tightly focused: three nights only, dedicated to the work of Julius Eastman. The programme was a revelation, even for those who are aware of Eastman and his music.


This practitioner's guide explains how to promote gender-responsive forest tenure reform in community-based forest regimes. It is aimed at those taking up this challenge in developing countries. There is no one single approach to reforming forest tenure practices for achieving gender equality and women's empowerment. Rather, it involves taking advantage of opportunities that emerge in various institutional arenas such as policy and law-making and implementation, government
administration, customary or community-based tenure governance, or forest restoration at the landscape scale.This sourcebook provides multiple forms of guidance from: conceptual ideas, operational direction, good practices, case-study insights, research findings and resources for further exploration from across Africa, Asia and Latin America. It is designed to support a wide range of practitioners, women and men, from a range of institutions such as government offices, non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations, donor agencies, women's organizations, as well as networks and federations. This includes gender experts who are responsible for the integration of gender equality and women's empowerment in their respective organizations, and also those working broadly in the world of land tenure, forest tenure and governance, forest landscape restoration, agroforestry, value-chain development and social impact enterprises.The goal is to journey along the pathways to forest tenure reform through a three-step process: Analyze, Strategize and Realize. Focused diagnostic analysis to create an empirical foundation for change can support the design of sequential interventions to promote gender-responsive forest tenure reform at various scales. To this end, the guide is a timely resource to support high-impact interventions suited to accelerating change within the national and local context in community-based forest tenure regimes.Contents
Acknowledgments and The Practitioner's Guide in a nutshellGender-responsive accelerators for forest tenure reform
With gender in mind: Forest tenure policy, legal reform and
government administration
Gender matters in community-based forest tenureReferences
Annexes


Articles in last summer's issue of The Science Teacher (introduced by Metz 2013), and other articles like them, tout the benefits of using scientific argumentation in teaching scientific inquiry. As science education professor Jonathan Osborne says: "Argumentation is the means that scientists use to make their case for new ideas" (2010a). Indeed, understanding scientific practice is, in part, understanding scientific argumentation. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States 2013) recognize "engaging in argument from evidence" as one of eight essential scientific and engineering practices. But be cautious in introducing students to scientific argumentation, especially in choosing a topic. It's tempting to choose controversial topics to teach the skill of arguing from evidence. Controversies, after all, are what people argue about. But controversial topics also pose a risk: Choosing the wrong controversial topic can result in a net loss, rather than a gain, in student understanding. So how can educators choose appropriate controversial topics? Based on our work at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) to protect the teaching of evolution (and more recently climate change science) in public schools, we propose criteria for assessing whether a controversy is appropriate for a science classroom. Many attempts to undermine the teaching of evolution and climate change science are presented as "teaching the controversy" (Scott 2007), so we at NCSE have become particularly adept at assessing controversies, real and supposed. Our criteria, based on and expanding Scott and Branch (2003), are not arcane or complicated, and we claim no particular originality: 1. If a controversy is presented as a scientific controversy, it should be a genuine scientific controversy. Don't confuse a scientific topic that's socially controversial with a scientifically controversial topic. Climate change and evolution, for example, are politically or religiously controversial, provoking headlines and arousing passions. But they are not scientifically controversial (unlike, say, quantum gravity). Indeed, quite the contrary: The vast majority of scientists in the relevant disciplines accept climate change and evolution (on climate change, see Cook et al. 2013; on evolution, see Pew Research Center 2009). Misrepresenting a socially controversial scientific topic as scientifically controversial is committing the deadliest sin in science education: misrepresenting the science. 2. Present a scientific controversy at a level understandable by the students. There's no point, for example, in presenting contemporary debates over metabolism-first and replication-first approaches to the study of the origin of life to introductory high school biology students. While they probably can, with instruction, grasp the basic issue, expecting them to understand the detailed multidisciplinary considerations involved-much less assessing the cogency of the arguments-is unreasonable. Indeed, faced with the task of reading research papers from the primary literature, students might conclude that argumentation in science is a matter of dueling incomprehensible technicalities-which is not the intended outcome. 3. Choose scientific controversies of manageable scope. Asking students to assess the scientific arguments for or against anthropogenic climate change, for example, is unrealistic. That sort of assessment involves a major effort by multiple scientists over the course of years. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's synthesis report (2007), intended as a mere summary of the evidence, involved the work of over 500 scientists. A specific controversy with a narrow focus is preferable. It's far more realistic, for example, to ask students to evaluate competing estimates of how much sea levels will rise over the next 50 years or how bird migration patterns will change over the next 100 years. …


Arsenic contamination of groundwater is a case of mass poisoning in Bangladesh. In order to examine the nature and extent of the problem, household survey was conducted in both arsenic contaminated and non-contaminated areas. The selected arsenic `hot spots' were Faridpur and Lakshimpur while the arsenic free area was Gazipur. One village from each of the three locations was purposively selected and the number of households considered as samples was 250. The analysis showed that severity of arsenic related diseases was more acute in the poor village of Lakshimpur area (where about 50% of the household members were suffering from arsenic related skin diseases) compared to Faridpur while in Gazipur there was no case of any patient suffering from arsenic related diseases. Further, the impact of arsenic problem was found to be extended from immediate health effect to extensive social and economic hardship especially for the poor. On the other hand, access to health care facilities as well as access to save drinking water and even access to information about arsenic mitigation programs were seriously lacking particularly in Lakshimpur. Special attention from the Government, private and NGOs is needed to meet the urgent need of supplying arsenic free water to save lives of the millions of people living in the arsenic contaminated areas of Bangladesh.


We assessed the significance of cyanate utilization in marine primary productivity from the distribution of a dedicated transporter (encoded by cynABD) in different ocean environments. Several lines of evidence indicate that the cyanate utilization potential is associated mainly with surface populations of Prochlorococcus. Spatial and temporal dimensions of cynA, cynS, and ntcA expression by picocyanobacteria in the northern Red Sea supported our previous finding that cynA transcripts accumulate under more stringent N‐limiting conditions. At the same time, cyanate utilization appeared to be more complex than suggested in our earlier publication, as we showed that picocyanobacteria also express their cyanate utilization potential under conditions where labile organic N compounds, such as urea, accumulate. These include N‐sufficient transient conditions that result from nutrient upwelling during early mixing events in autumn as well as during spring bloom conditions that follow deep mixing events. Our finding that cynA occurrence is common in diverse marine environments suggests that cyanate utilization may be of a more fundamental importance to picophytoplankton productivity than previously considered.


The quality (i.e. the degree of uncertainty that results from the interpretation and analysis) of information dictates its value for decision making. There has been much progress towards improving information on the water budgets of ungauged basins by improving knowledge, tools and techniques during the Prediction in Ungauged Basins (PUB) initiative. These improvements, at least in Canada, have come through efforts in both hydrological process and statistical hydrology research. This paper is a review of some recent Canadian PUB efforts to use data to generate information and reduce uncertainty about the hydrological regimes of ungauged basins. The focus is on the Canadian context and the problems it presents, but the lessons learned are applicable to other countries with similar challenges. With a large land mass that is relatively poorly gauged, novel approaches have had to be developed to extract the most information from the available data. It can be difficult in Canada to find gauged or research basins sufficiently similar to ungauged sites of interest that contain the data required to force either statistical or deterministic models. Many statistical studies have improved information or at least an understanding of the quality of that information, of ungauged basin streamflow regimes using innovative regression-based approaches and pooled frequency analysis. Hydrological process research has reduced knowledge uncertainty, particularly in regard to cold regions processes, and this situation has led to the development of new algorithms that are reducing predictive uncertainty. There remains much to do. Current progress has created an opportunity to better integrate statistical and deterministic models via data assimilation of regionalization model estimates and those from coupled atmospheric-hydrological models. Aspects of such a modelling system could also provide more robust uncertainty analyses than traditional approaches.


KRAS is the most frequently mutated oncogene in human cancer, and KRAS inhibition has been a longtime therapeutic goal. Recently, inhibitors (G12C-Is) that bind KRASG12C-GDP and react with Cys-12 were developed. Using new affinity reagents to monitor KRASG12C activation and inhibitor engagement, we found that, reflecting its action upstream of SOS1/2, SHP2 inhibitors (SHP2-Is) increased KRAS-GDP occupancy, enhancing G12C-I efficacy. SHP2-Is abrogated feedback signaling by multiple RTKs and blocked adaptive resistance to G12C-Is in vitro, in xenografts, and in syngeneic KRASG12C-mutant pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) models. Biochemical analysis revealed enhanced suppression of ERK-, MYC-, anti-apoptotic-, and cell-cycle genes, and increased pro-apoptotic gene expression in tumors from combination-treated mice. SHP2-I/G12C-I also evoked favorable changes in the immune microenvironment, decreasing myeloid suppressor cells, increasing CD8+ T cells, and sensitizing tumors to PD-1 blockade. Experiments using cells expressing inhibitor-resistant SHP2 showed that SHP2 inhibition in PDAC cells is required for tumor regression and remodeling of the immune microenvironment, but also revealed direct inhibitory effects on angiogenesis resulting in decreased tumor vascularity. Our results demonstrate that SHP2-I/G12C-I combinations confer a substantial survival benefit in PDAC and NSCLC and identify additional combination strategies for enhancing the efficacy of G12C-Is.


As a biomass material, bone char was investigated for the feasibility to be used as a cost-effective biosorbent for fluoride removal from drinking water in groundwater environment. Based on the batch tests with natural tourmalin and active alumina being the reference adsorbents, bone char has demonstrated a higher fluoride adsorption capacity. This capacity was found to increase with the increase of fluoride concentration. Furthermore, bone char-based column adsorption experiments indicated that the fluoride removal could be significantly affected by flow rate and bed height. A mass transfer model developed in this study can be used to optimise the bed configuration and operation parameters. Experimental results and predicted data by the model have shown good consistency. A full-scale bone char fixed-bed to treat fluoride-containing groundwater in Northeast China has been successfully operated.


Malaria, particularly due to Plasmodium falciparum, remains a major public health threat in Ethiopia. Artemether-lumefantine (AL) has been the first-line antimalarial drug against uncomplicated P. falciparum malaria in the country since 2004. Regular monitoring of antimalarial drugs is recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) to help early detection of drug resistant strains of the parasite and contain their rapid spread. The objective of this study was to assess the therapeutic efficacy of AL in a high-transmission setting in Ethiopia. The study site was Setit Humera, northwest Ethiopia. Single-arm prospective study of a 28-day follow-up was conducted from October 2014 to January 2015 according to the revised WHO 2009 drug efficacy study protocol. Study end-points were classified into primary end-point and secondary end-point. While the primary end-point was the day-28 adequate clinical and parasitological response the secondary end-points were clinical and parasitological evaluations (parasite, fever and gametocyte clearance rate, incidence of drug adverse events) and the relative increment in hemoglobin (Hb) level from baseline to day (D) 14 and D28. A total of 92 patients were enrolled and 79 had completed the 28-day follow-up period. The overall cure rate was 98.8% with 95% confidence interval of 0.915–0.998 without polymerase chain reaction correction. The parasite clearance rate was high with fast resolution of clinical symptoms; 100% of the study participants cleared parasitaemia and fever on D3. Gametocyte carriage was reduced from 7% on D0 to 1% on D3 and complete clearance was achieved on D14. Mean Hb concentration significantly increased on D28 compared to that on D14. There was no serious adverse event. AL was efficacious and safe in a high-transmission setting for treatment of uncomplicated falciparum malaria.


The European Union relies heavily on bioenergy production to fulfil self-imposed renewable energy targets, but there are serious doubts regarding the overall sustainability and carbon mitigation capacity of bioenergy. As part of the 2009 Renewable Energy Directive, bioenergy sustainability criteria were introduced to provide a verification framework, safeguards and transnational standards for sustainable bioenergy production. Even though and because the criteria have not been established to their full extent, energy biomass sustainability has emerged as an object of constant environmental governance rescaling, where elements, actors and knowledge from different governance levels are entwined. This paper employs a scalar politics approach to statements regarding biomass sustainability criteria. Policy documents are analysed on the basis of spatial, jurisdictional and temporal scaling to provide insights about scalar dynamics and mismatches. The governance of bioenergy sustainability could be improved through better understanding and acknowledgement of the different scalar aspects of issues as well as the processes of rescaling.


Males with X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (XSCID) have defects in the common cytokine receptor γ chain (γc) gene that encodes a shared, essential component of the receptors for interleukin-2 (IL-2), IL-4, IL-7, IL-9, and IL-15. The Janus family tyrosine kinase Jak3 is the only signaling molecule known to be associated with γc, so it was hypothesized that defects in Jak3 might cause an XSCID-like phenotype. A girl with immunological features indistinguishable from those of XSCID was therefore selected for analysis. An Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-transformed cell line derived from her lymphocytes had normal γc expression but lacked Jak3 protein and had greatly diminished Jak3 messenger RNA. Sequencing revealed a different mutation on each allele: a single nucleotide insertion resulting in a frame shift and premature termination in the Jak3 JH4 domain and a nonsense mutation in the Jak3 JH2 domain. The lack of Jak3 expression correlated with impaired B cell signaling, as demonstrated by the inability of IL-4 to activate Stat6 in the EBV-transformed cell line from the patient. These observations indicate that the functions of γc are dependent on Jak3 and that Jak3 is essential for lymphoid development and signaling.


The invention/re-invention of community
Society is, generally speaking, in a situation of serious decay, hampered by criminality, violence, corruption, poverty, disaffectivity, and desymbolisation to the point of the pathological. As a result, society's status and, in particular, the possibility of community are deeply questioned. All kinds of adjectives are used to express this status and condition and even the mere possibility, or even absence of possibility, of something like community: inexpressible, inoperative, confronted, disowned, consumed and so forth. At the same time there are some who are less doubtful and express its possibility using terms such as "the coming community" and "the transparent society". Despite the doubtfulness and questionability of community, in the sense of people being together, living together and sharing matters intimately, it seems as if we cannot get rid of the idea of community. Many people still believe in its possibility and keep on dreaming about a better humanity and healthy communities.
The assumption of this article is that society consists of individuals and depending on the quality of individuals community will, in principle, remain a possibility. We can even go further: community is a given but also a task. It does not happen by itself, of course, but must be brought about, must be invented. A sound understanding of the relationship between individuals and the social brings forward the hopeful view that community is a possibility. No room remains open, however, for absolutising either the individual or the social. The social, and communities by implication, are built on and invented by individuals. Disaffected, de-individualised and desingularised individuals destroy communities as well as societies. They are not capable of inventing. What is needed are autonomous, singular, individuated individuals, non-narcissistic and able to go beyond themselves and their personal interests. Psycho-individual and collective individuation, up to the point of singularisation and maturity, create affected and associated individuals capable of loving themselves, as well as others, individuals who are truth driven, value sensitive, thoughtful, knowledgeable, linguistically competent and meaning obsessed, and enabled to take care of themselves and of others and of a collective future.
Individuals are in possession of immense capacity potential, but desymbolisation, disaffectedness create misery of all kinds as well as the disability to employ or even cultivate these capacities. Recapacitation of individuals, the building blocks of communities, is called for as the single most important condition for building a healthy community and eventual society as well. Psychic and collective individuation is the ultimate condition for this to happen. The capacity to think, to affect, to love, to live, to share is required for the invention of communities. The more thoroughly individuated singular individuals there are the more possible it would become to invent community on a grand scale which may have a definite therapeutic effect and impact on society as well. The engagement of individuals in their full singularity in as many critical areas of society as possible, namely economics, education, health care, culture, knowledge, politics, ethics are urgently required for healthy communities to emerge with immense therapeutic implications not only for themselves, but for the whole of society.
Communities of demo-dynamic individuals do not only exist in dreams but are real possibilities, built on the infinite capacity to relate, to share, to care, and in the effectiveness of relationship, nearness and contact in terms of the law of the heart as expressed in the individuation of language in its closeness to being and truth, in knowing and knowledge to the fullness of intelligence and against stupidity, and in recapacitation to the ultimate of individual spiritual, affective and material potentiality.
Same-lewing is in 'n pynlike krisis van verval en word na die wese, aard en moontlikheid daarvan ernstig bevraagteken. Tog kan die versugting na 'n beter samelewing en 'n ander soort mensheid ons nie ontwyk nie. Die soeke na 'n gesonde of beter samelewing en die voorwaardes daarvoor is dus uiters aktueel. Die vertrekpunt vir 'n besinning oor hierdie voorwaardes is dat die boustene van same-lewing (gemeenskap) individue is wat kan saam-lewe, dit wil se, nie individue sonder meer nie (die boustene van samelewing nie), maar individue in 'n bepaalde sin met bepaalde kwaliteite en ingesteldhede: outonoom, singulier en individuerend. Vir die inventiewe handeling van die verwesenliking van same-lewing is die selfstandige individu 'n noodsaaklike voorwaarde. Hierbenewens is die vind van singulariteit, die uniekheid en onvervangbaarheid van die individu eweneens die vind en uitdrukking van sosialiteit en dus van gemeenskap. Hierdie twee kwaliteite kry in individuele lewens beslag deur prosesse van psigies-individuele en kollektiewe individuering wat volwasse-wording en spiritualisering ontsluit en die verlange na herkapasitering met betrekking tot alle menslike vermoens laat ontwaak. Gevoelvolheid, sorgsaamheid, liefdesingesteldheid, waardegedrewenheid, waarheidsgedrewenheid, sinsbeheptheid, taalsensitiwiteit, wetevolheid, denkvernuf en selfoorskryding, die noodsaaklike voorwaardes vir same-lewingstigting, kom in die proses tot stand. Die ontluiking van hierdie kapasiteite, die herkapasitering as mobilisering van die geesteskragte van volwasse, outonome, singuliere individue, en soveel as moontlik van hulle, vir alle terreine, is die noodsaaklike voorwaarde en waarborg vir 'n gesonde same-lewing. Hierdie beweging van herkapasitering is die draer van 'n ware alternatief op die gebiede van onderwys, industrie, ekonomie, sosialiteit, kennis, kultuur, politiek, gesondheid, etiek en volwaardige menswees. So word 'n demo-dinamiese same-lewing, gesmee deur die kragte van individue, as 'n alternatief vir 'n bouvallige demokrasie geinventeer.


The purpose of this research was to obtain the best concentration of xanthan gum to quality of tomato sauce. This research used a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with 4 treatments and 4 replications this obtaining 16 experimental units. The data obtained were stasitiscally analyzed of variance (Anova) if the F countis greater than or aqual to F table then continued with DNMRT tes at 5% level. Results of variance showed different that xanthan gum concentration significantly affect the degree of acidity (pH), total dissolved solids, viscosity, sweetness is descriptive test, assement of the overall hedonic test and had no significant affect on the descriptive colour and flavor. The best formulation of tomato sauce is treatment T3 (xanthan gum concentration 0,6%) with shows a pH 4,15, the total dissolved solids 26,13 obrix, and viscosity 14593 cP.


The Stone of Laughter is a bold and radical novel, full of black humor and cynical observations about life in a war-torn city. The fractured narrative is woven around Khalil, an androgynous young man who is town between masculinity and feminity. Trying to avoid ideological or military afficliations, he finds himself confronted with the collapse of his civil society and reacts by withdrawing into his domestic life. His only contact with the world at large is through friends at a newspaper, for whom falling bombs may mean great stories and promotion, rather than tragedy or destruction. Khalil struggles to keep himself away from the war but is inevitably drawn in as he realises that in a city at war, no one can remain neutral. Written sensitively, and without a trace of sentimentality or political propaganda, The Stone of Laughter shook the preconceptions of Arab readers about women's writing and the necessity of political affiliation for Arab writers. Hailed by many critics as the best novel set against the background of the Lebanese civil war, it wond the prestigious Al-Naqid Award for first novels.


Food safety relates to people's health, society's stability and national economy's development. However, the current security situation of edible agricultural product is a concern, and it is urgent to solve this problem. This paper analyzes the current food safety situation and existing problems of edible agricultural products, theoretically discusses externalities and asymmetric information of edible agricultural products safety, and proposes the conception of constructing safety supervision system of edible agricultural product through learning from the advanced experience of food safety management and based on seamless organization theory.


We propose to use digital holographic microscopy (DHM) with an illumination in the near infrared spectrum bandwidth, where the silicon is known to have small absorption. With such an illumination condition, it is possible to observe a wider range of specimens than in the visible spectrum, providing a new metrology technique for 3D silicon micro-systems characterization. Suitability of DHM with near infrared illumination for micro-optical elements and wafer inspection is demonstrated. The intrinsic robustness and speed of the method place DHM as a valuable candidate for real-time quality check inside production chains, opening a wide field of applications in quality control.


We define two transformations from term rewriting systems (TRSs) to
context-sensitive TRSs in such a way that termination of the target system
implies outermost termination of the original system. In the transformation
based on 'context extension', each outermost rewrite step is modeled by exactly
one step in the transformed system. This transformation turns out to be
complete for the class of left-linear TRSs. The second transformation is called
`dynamic labeling' and results in smaller sized context-sensitive TRSs. Here
each modeled step is adjoined with a small number of auxiliary steps. As a
result state-of-the-art termination methods for context-sensitive rewriting
become available for proving termination of outermost rewriting. Both
transformations have been implemented in Jambox, making it the most successful
tool in the category of outermost rewriting of the last edition of the annual
termination competition.


It is clear that the development of contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN) is both common and prognostically important in patients undergoing interventional cardiovascular procedures. CIN is now established as the third most common cause of hospital-acquired acute kidney injury (after surgery and hypotension).1 The expansion in the use of iodinated contrast media in both diagnostic and interventional procedures, in combination with an increasingly elderly infirm patient population, means that the incidence of CIN is likely to grow rapidly.

Several studies have shown that CIN is associated with increased morbidity and mortality, extended length of hospital stay and increased hospital costs.2–5 However, the key question remains whether CIN is just a marker of adverse cardiovascular, renal and procedural factors of no direct pathophysiological importance or a direct cause of increased mortality and morbidity. This is a difficult question to answer, but the paper by Wi et al published in this issue of Heart 6 adds to the growing body of evidence that suggests CIN is a protagonist rather than a spectator in the adverse outcomes, and hence that we should increase our efforts to make the administration of iodinated contrast media safer for our patients.

CIN is impairment of renal function, either of new onset or an exacerbation of pre-existing renal dysfunction, following the administration of iodinated contrast media. Using the now increasingly standard definition (an absolute increase in serum creatinine of 44.4 μmol/l (0.5 mg/dl) and/or a 25% increase in serum creatinine concentration from baseline within 72 h of the administration of contrast media7), registry data suggest that the incidence of CIN in a 'low-risk' general population is approximately 3%,4 but the incidence can be >30% in those at highest risk of developing CIN.5 Numerous …


The impregnation of compressible glass fiber mats by a thermoplastic resin in the transverse direction is investigated with application to the Glass Mat reinforced Thermoplastics (GMT) lamination process in a double belt press. Amodel proposed in Part I to simulate the kinetics of impregnation and the evolution of the fiber volume fraction profile as the resin front progresses across the fiber mat, as well as after macro-impregnation is complete, is further developed to include micro-impregnation effects. The predictions are compared with experimental results obtained using model systems such as polyethylene glycol and glass fiber mats, as well as an industrially relevant system consisting of polypropylene and glass fiber mats used in the production of GMT blanks. It is shown that significant compression of the fiber mat may occur during impregnation, with subsequent relaxation on a much longer time-scale. Also, fiber bundle impregnation generally occurs after macro-impregnation is complete, the driving force being the local pressure in the resin around the bundles, dictated by the local state of compression of the mat. The model is then used to provide guidelines for optimization of the preform impregnation conditions for a given material configuration.


The CloudSat satellite supports a W‐band (94 GHz) cloud profiling radar. At this 3.2 mm wavelength, ground‐based measurements of rainfall associated with melting snowflakes do not show the radar reflectivity peak that is characteristic of bright band measurements at longer (Rayleigh scattering‐dominated) wavelengths. Nonetheless, examination of downward‐looking CloudSat returns in precipitation often indicate an obvious signal peak in the melting region. Through melting layer microphysical and scattering model simulations, we demonstrate that this downward‐viewing radar feature is analogous to the lidar bright band observed from the ground in that it owes its existence to strong attenuation. In the upward‐looking lidar case, the strong attenuation comes from large low‐density snowflakes. In the downward‐looking 94 GHz radar case, it is due to the effects of the greater refractive index of water particles compared to ice: it is comparable to an upside‐down lidar bright band. A W‐band radar dark band, which contributes to the visibility of the bright band, is shown to be due to attenuation in the snowfall. For comparison, the bright and dark bands for an upward viewing lidar are also modeled: the latter is simulated by a reduction in light backscattering efficiency of ice‐containing raindrops.


The objective of this work was to study the effect of the substitution of cottonseed meal by canola meal on weight gain, feed intake, feed:gain ratio and dressing percentage of the feedlot Nellore heifers. Thirty Nellore heifers averaging initial of 225 kg LW and 20 months of age were randomly allotted to two treatments (cottonseed meal - COM or canola meal - CAM as protein sources) with 15 animals for each treatment. The experiment was carried out in three periods of 28 days each, plus 14 days of adaptation. The daily average weight gain in CAM treatment (1.05 kg) was higher than in the COM treatment (.87 kg). In the same way, feed:gain ratio of DM in CAM treatment (6.72) was better than COM treatment (8.13). However, the dressing percentage was similar for both treatments (51.6 and 51.7, for CAM and COM, respectively). The use of canola meal, in relation to cottonseed meal, as alternative protein source in the growing and finishing Nellore heifers, was viable, once the weight gain and feed:gain ratio were better.


Pythium species are common soilborne oomycetes that occur in forest nursery soils throughout the United States. Numerous species have been described from nursery soils. However, with the exception of P. aphanidermatum, P. irregulare, P. sylvaticum, and P. ultimum, little is known about the potential for other Pythium species found in nursery soils to cause damping-off of tree seedlings. A greenhouse study was conducted to evaluate the pathogenicity and virulence of 44 Pythium isolates representing 16 species that were originally recovered from soil at three forest nurseries in Washington and Oregon. Seeds of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) were planted into soil infested with each of the isolates. Seedling survival, the number of surviving seedlings with necrotic root lesions, and taproot length were evaluated 4 weeks later. Responses of Douglas-fir to inoculation varied significantly depending on Pythium species and isolate. Eight species (P. dissotocum, P. irregulare, P. aff. macrosporum, P. mamillatum, P. aff. oopapillum, P. rostratifingens, P. sylvaticum, and P. ultimum var. ultimum) significantly reduced the number of surviving seedlings compared to the noninoculated treatment. However, all Pythium species caused a greater percentage of seedlings to develop root lesions (total mean 40%) than was observed from noninoculated seedlings (17%). Taproot length varied little among Pythium treatments and was not a useful character for evaluating pathogenicity. Results confirm the ability of P. irregulare, P. mamillatum, and P. ultimum var. ultimum to cause damping-off of Douglas-fir seedlings, and are indicative that other species such as P. dissotocum, P. aff. macrosporum, P. aff. oopapillum, P. rostratifingens, and P. sylvaticum may also be responsible for seedling loss.


BACKGROUND
Expandable metal stents can be used as a palliative or pre surgical method to decompress obstructing colonic carcinomas.

AIM
To assess the effectiveness of these stents in the treatment of obstructive colonic carcinoma.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Expandable metal stents were placed in nine patients with the diagnosis of colorectal carcinoma and with clinical and radiographic signs of intestinal obstruction. Stents were placed under fluoroscopic guidance in nine patients and with endoscopic help in 2. The indications were palliative treatment in 7 and pre surgical decompression in 2 patients.

RESULTS
Stent placement was successful in all patients. One patient presented a self limited rectal bleeding after the procedure. Obstruction was relieved in less than 24 hours after the procedure.

CONCLUSION
Expandable metal stent placement is an effective means of relieving intestinal obstruction caused by colorectal carcinoma.


With product customisation and emerging business opportunities, small and medium manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) must find ways to collaborate and share competency in a trustable manner to survive a turbulent market. Therefore, service industry turns to the manufacturing industry and SMEs migrate to cloud manufacturing (CM) and ubiquitous manufacturing. However, existing platforms use centralised networking, which suffers from security, scalability and big-data problems. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based platform as a trustable network to eradicate third-party problems, which can improve the scalability, security and big-data problems for SMEs. Our proposed platform is developed based on a consortium blockchain which provides a peer-to-peer communication network between the end user and the service provider. We improve existing consensus mechanism and communication protocol based on a cyber-physical system (CPS), via an autonomous agent. Firstly, we provide a review of cloud manufacturing, ubiquitous manufacturing and blockchain-based manufacturing approaches by highlighting the main problems. Then, the proposed platform, blockchain ubiquitous manufacturing (BCUM), is explained, based on its architecture, consensus algorithm and CPS, with the help of autonomous agent communication. The proposed platform has been developed for 3D printing companies which are geographically distributed and tested based on network performance and three practical scenarios.


An increase in intracellular Na+ during ischaemia has been associated with myocardial injury. In this study, we determined whether inhibition of Na+/K+ ATPase activity contributes to this increase and whether Na+/K+ ATPase activity can be maintained by provision of glucose to perfused rat hearts during low flow, 0.5 ml/min, ischemia. We used 31P NMR spectroscopy to determine changes in myocardial energetics and intracellular and extracellular volumes. 23Na NMR spectroscopy, with DyTTHA3‐ present as a shift reagent, was used to measure changes in intracellular Na+ and 87Rb NMR spectroscopy was used to estimate Na+/K+ ATPase activity from Rb+ influx rates, Rb+ being an NMR‐sensitive congener of K+. In hearts provided with 11 mM glucose throughout ischemia, glycolysis continued and ATP was twofold higher than in hearts without glucose. In the glucose‐hearts, Rb+ influx rate was threefold higher, intracellular Na+ was fivefold lower at the end of ischemia and functional recovery during reperfusion was twofold higher. We propose that continuation of glycolysis throughout low flow ischemia allowed maintenance of sufficient Na+/K+ ATPase activity to prevent the increase in intracellular Na+ that would otherwise have led to myocardial injury.