Poland entered the twenty-first century with an unsustainable energy/electricity mix, strongly over-dependent on coal. This situation seems to be changing very slowly, while there are multiple factors that make it imperative for the issue to be urgently addressed. On the one hand, this paper aims to assess the security of the stationary fuel supply by applying the conventional three-dimensional approach, encompassing availability, affordability and sustainability. On the other, we plan to use our own scheme to analyse gas diversification (Weiner, 2017: 6), i.e. a fuel which, alongside coal, is a very sensitive issue linked to the security of the Polish electric power fuel supply. We demonstrate that the three-dimensional approach is also appropriate for addressing the issue of supply security in the case of a country with a securitized energy agenda based on fears of problems with the availability and affordability of Russian gas supplies. It also highlights Poland's concern over foreign technological reliance regarding renewables production. We show how the energy perspective, the institutional context, as well as perceptions regarding threat, dependence and Russia influence choices made from among different security of supply dimensions. We find that though the role of coal will surely decrease, there is great uncertainty about Poland's energy policy and security of supply because of deficiencies in infrastructure and the unknown future role of the particular fuels in the energy/electricity mix, also expected to include nuclear. We can observe that every energy policy step possible is being taken to maintain the role of coal, and Poland moves toward sustainability only as much and as soon as it is required by its EU membership. Not only does the coal industry capture Poland's energy policy, but also geopolitical considerations cement reliance on coal, providing low energy import dependence. Regarding gas, we find that since the January 2009 Russian–Ukrainian gas crisis, Poland has taken action to diversify its gas supplies, and it has finally achieved results, but there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding Russian gas imports.


Within data gathered through passive monitoring of patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), there is a clear necessity for improved methodological approaches to match the emergence of continuous, objective, measuring technologies. As most gold standards measure infrequently and require clinician presence, fluctuations in the daily progression are not accounted for. Due to the underlying conditions of homogeneity and stationarity (the main tenets of ergodicity) not being met for the majority of the statistical methods employed in the clinical setting, alternative approaches should be investigated. A solution is to use a non-linear time series analysis approach. Here, Early-Warning Signals (EWS) in the form of critical fluctuations in Keystroke Dynamics (KD), collected using participant's smartphones, are investigated as indicators for a clinical change in three groups. These are patients with MS and changes in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), patients with MS but without changes in MRI, and healthy controls (HCs). Here, we report examples of EWS and changes in KD coinciding with clinically relevant changes in outcome measures in both patients with and without differences in the amount of MRI enhancing lesions. We also report no clinically relevant changes in EWS in the HC population. This study is a first promising step toward using EWS to identify periods of instability as measured by a continuous objective measure as a proxy for outcome measures in the field of MS.


GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) have been widely applied in railway applications as timing, passenger information, track survey, and also safety relevant applications as train localization for train control purposes on lines like Chicago-Detroit Line, Qinghai-Tibet railway line, etc. However, due to the continuous dynamic movement of the locomotive, it goes through various environments as tunnels, bridges, mountainous areas, urban canyons, etc. GNSS performance is affected and thus degraded in some GNSS signal reception constrained environment scenarios, which leads the localization result not meeting the required accuracy and safety requirements. With the dynamic movement of the locomotive, the measurement results are not abundantly enough. It is quite necessary to investigate the methodology for GNSS performance evaluation in signal reception constrained environments using both simulation and field test results together. This will reduce the test complexity and also provide the possibility to compare between different parameters. In this paper, a 3-km-long railway environment scenario in Qinghai-Tibet railway is selected and modelled with signal reception limitations recorded several times in the on-board log files. After an investigation of the terrain structure of the environment, a hill near the railway tracks namely mountainous environment is causing the "half sky" signal blocking scenario. The terrain is modelled using Google SketchUp. Then, the model data is converted into QualiSIM, which is a matlab-based tool to provide the possibility to understand the sky plot of the location according to almanac and relevant information. The satellite visibility, satellite geometry and signal propagation trajectories are calculated and illustrated in QualiSIM. Using the output from QualiSIM, the locomotive operation route, 3D environment "half sky" model and signal propagation trajectory are all configured and simulated using Spirent GSS8000 system. The GNSS signals are repeated using Spirent GSS8000 together with Spirent SimGEN software. A UBLOX M8N and Unicore UB370 GNSS receivers were used to test and compare the performance of both receivers under the modelled mountainous environment. The accuracy levels of both receivers are compared by satellite visible number, HDOP (Horizontal Dilution of Precision) and position error. The measurement errors are illustrated using error ellipse, which shows the different accuracy level and the reliability level for the two receivers. Comparing the recorded results of open sky and different levels of obstruction, GNSS performance can be gradually degraded when the degree of obstruction is increased.


A study was conducted with the objective to investigate the effect of cutter
design, cutting angle and frond maturity on specific cutting force and energy
requirement per unit cut area for cutting oil palm fronds. Two designs were tested, that
is sickle cutter and claw cutter. Cutting angles were studied at 90°, 60° and 45°, while
three levels of frond maturities were used as test samples.
The experiment conducted showed significant effect of cutter design, cutting
angle, frond maturity and the interaction of cutter design and cutting angle on specific
cutting force (FOCSA) and energy (ENCSA) requirement for cutting oil palm fronds.
The maximum FOCSA for sickle and claw cutter were 12.18 kg/cm2 and 22.9 kg/cm2
respectively, while the maximum ENCSA for sickle and claw cutter were 65.41 kg-cm/
cm2 and 115.5 kg-cm/cm2 respectively. This indicated that sickle cutter required
88% less FOCSA and 76.5% less ENCSA to that of claw cutter. It was found that
increasing the cutting angle would result in higher FOCSA and ENCSA requirements.
The trend was found similar to frond maturity in that the mature the frond, the higher
the FOCSA and ENCSA required to accomplish the cutting. Another experiment using a spring activated sickle cutter (without countershear)
to investigate the effect of cutting angle and frond maturity on specific reaction force
and energy requirement for cutting oil palm fronds was carried out. This experiment
was conducted to determine the reaction force that would be transferred to the
harvester in the cutting operation. The experiment carried out showed significant effect
of cutting angle on specific reaction force (ROC SA) and energy (RENCSA) but not on
the frond maturity. Increasing the cutting angle from 45° to 9<F would Increase the
ROCSA to about 72%. The maximum and minimum value of ROCSA were 2.5
kg/cm2 and 1.1 kg/cm2 respectively.
Cutting angle and frond maturity were found to significantly affect the R/F Cmax
(the ratio of reaction force to maximum cutting force). The maximum and minimum
ratio were 35% and 14% at cutting angle of 70° and 4S for cutting F3 and FI
respectively.
A prototype spring activated sickle cutter was then developed based on
information obtained from the experiments. The prototype was field tested in which
a time and motion study to cut fronds as well as fruit bunches was carried out. Test
conducted revealed that the cutter could cut a frond and a fruit bunch in 20.08 s and 7.2
s respectively. On average the cutter needed three strokes to accomplish a cutting due
to insufficient length of spring. Therefore, in future, some improvements and
modifications should be made on its spring design so as to increase its efficiency.


Since the innovation of dance medicine, many studies have been carried out to investigate injuries in a range of dance populations of varying genres, ages and ability levels. Recent survey results (Bronner, et. al, 2003) show the increase in knowledge of prevention techniques and services has reduced the prevalence of injuries and the length of rehabilitation for dancers. There is valuable and effective information presented from dance medical research to the dance community about prevention techniques and yet preventable injuries still appear to have a prominent occurrence in dance students. I therefore question the accessibility of this specialised information for full-time training dance students. Today the larger dance companies such as The Australian Ballet Company employ physiotherapists and other physicians to ,support their dancers (The Australian ballet, 2007.). They also have their own body conditioning team to prevent and rehabilitate injuries. My understanding is that many tertiary dance students find it difficult to access such specialised services and therefore do not benefit from this kind of effective treatment for injuries. The difficulty of accessing services for many dancers maybe due to several reasons such as: the financial limitations of students or the inability to find a dance-specific physician within close proximity to their place of study. To help answer these questions I conducted a survey. Four Australian universities offering full time dance degrees were asked to participate in this research. Only one volunteered to participate fully. Seventy-three surveys were directly handed to these dance students and were returned and collected at the end of the week. The survey entailed 19, both closed-ended and open-ended questions about injury histories, preventative strategies and treatment choices. The aim of the survey was to get an understanding of what injury services Australian tertiary dancers have access to and the correlation of this access with injury occurrence.


The effect of surface active substances (sodium cholate, sodium oleate and cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (C. T. A. B.)), upon the penetration of hexyl resorcinol into the pig round-worm (Ascaris lumbricoides var. suis) has been measured quantitatively, and parallel measurements carried out upon the interfacial activity of these solutions again staninert mineral oil. In all three cases a marked similarity of action, differing only in degree, was observed. Using a fixed hexyl resorcinol concentration (0∙025%) the soap in dilute solution accelerated the penetration of this drug, the maximum accelerations being in the order sodium cholate sodium oleate < C. T. A. B., but when present in high concentration the penetration was completely inhibited. The soaps alone were found to penetrate Ascaris very slowly, if at all, the amounts taken up being reasonably explained on the basis of surface adsorption only. Measurement of interfacial tensions showed that the soap and hexyl resorcinol molecules associate at an interface, forming a labile complex of increased surface activity. Using a fixed drug concentration (0∙025% as above), the interfacial tension went through a minimum as the soap concentration was increased, ultimately rising to the value for the soap alone. Maximum interfacial activity (i. e. minimum interfacial tension), was found in all cases to occur at that soap concentration giving maximum hexyl resorcinol penetration into Ascaris, and was in the same order, viz. cholate ≪ oleate < C. T. A. B. The interfacial tension measurements also showed that this particular soap concentration corresponded to the onset of micellar aggregation of the soap molecules. From the interfacial tension data a simple explanation for the biological measurements can be suggested, which at the same time appears to explain a number of observations upon other biological systems, in particular the effect of soaps upon the bactericidal activity of phenols. This explanation suggests that the biological activity of hexyl resorcinol (as measured by its rate of penetration) is determined by the interfacial activity of the mixture, and that when soap micelles are present the drug distributes itself between the micelles and any other interface present (e. g. oil/water or Ascaris/water). The maximum biological activity thus occurs at the critical concentration for micelle formation, since this has maximum interfacial activity. At high soap concentrations the hexyl resorcinol is mainly held by the soap micelles, so that the biological activity is thereby diminished, ultimately to zero since the soaps alone penetrate so extremely slowly. In the case of C. T. A. B./hexyl resorcinol mixtures it has been possible, from physical data only, to calculate a theoretical curve for the biological activity which is in good agreement with experiment. The possible bearings of these conclusions upon in vivo activity of hexyl resorcinol as an anthelmintic, and upon drug action in general, are briefly mentioned.


In this study, we provide a direct comparison of the Stochastic Maximum Likelihood algorithm and Contrastive Divergence for training Restricted Boltzmann Machines using the MNIST data set. We demonstrate that Stochastic Maximum Likelihood is superior when using the Restricted Boltzmann Machine as a classifier, and that the algorithm can be greatly improved using the technique of iterate averaging from the field of stochastic approximation. We further show that training with optimal parameters for classification does not necessarily lead to optimal results when Restricted Boltzmann Machines are stacked to form a Deep Belief Network. In our experiments we observe that fine tuning a Deep Belief Network significantly changes the distribution of the latent data, even though the parameter changes are negligible.


We examine earnings records for more than 130,000 classroom teachers employed by Florida public schools between the 2001–2 and 2006–7 school years, roughly 35,000 of whom left the classroom during that time. A majority of those leaving the classroom remained employed by public school districts. Among teachers in grades 4–8 leaving for other industries, a 1 standard deviation increase in estimated value added to student math and reading achievement is associated with 6–8 percent higher earnings outside teaching. The relationship between effectiveness and earnings is stronger in other industries than it is for the same groups of teachers while in the classroom, suggesting that current teacher compensation systems do not fully account for the higher opportunity wages of effective teachers.


Abstract: The definition of marriage and its purpose in the Compilation of Islamic Law is stated in article 2 that is, the marriage according to Islamic Law is marriage, that is a very strong contract of duty to obey God's commands and to implement it is worship and Article 3 that is, Marriage aims to realize the life of a household that sakinah, mawaddah, and rahmah. Marriage is an inner born bond between a man and a woman as a husband and wife with the aim of forming a happy and eternal family based on the Supreme Godhead. The above definition is contained in Act No. 1 of 1974 on Marriage. Marriage has a very close relationship with religion, so marriages not only have physical / physical elements, but also have inner / spiritual elements that have an important role in life. Sraten village, Cluring subdistrict, Banyuwangi district is one of the villages in Banyuwangi with different cultures in marriage. In the village of Sraten there is a marriage where a prospective bride is kidnapped by the man. According to information on observation and interim interview information to informal grandchildren such practice has been passed down to generations, so it is not taboo anymore, because not just one or two times, the practice of marriage with a kidnapped female candidate has been done a lot. Therefore, according to researchers it is important to be more in-depth on the basis of appropriate research theory and methodology so as to produce credible and scientifically accountable data. It is concluded based on the distinction between the theoretical and field data analysis that the marriage collateral that occurs in the Sraten Village of his law is legitimate, since the wedding of the colong is not substantive in terms of the terms and the rukun pernikahan, but the wedding of the colong is just an expression or name of a custom in a the area in this case is the Sraten village community with the aim of maintaining the relationship between the two lovers so that the spouses are involved. Furthermore, the views of the Sraten village community towards the colong marriage during the marriage are approved by both families and guardians from the parties who are willing to guard, the legal status of the marriage is valid and there is no problem.


Purpose – There has been considerable research into the global phenomenon of luxury brand consumption, but relatively few studies have empirically explored key relationships influencing purchase intention. This research aims to consider the respective roles of social context, individual perception, and vanity, and to set these relationships within a broader theoretical context of the literature on possession and consumer identity. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical study consisted of a large-scale survey conducted among Chinese luxury brand consumers in Taiwan. The data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression. Findings – The findings support the influence of the social context on purchase intention for luxury brands. There was weaker support for the role of perception. The experiential and functional aspects of luxury brand purchase were positively correlated with purchase intention, but symbolic value was not. Physical and achievement vanity had a positive impact on purchase intention while only achievement vanity had a moderating effect on perception. Practical implications – This study offers new empirical support for the proposition that vanity has a role in luxury brand purchase intention and thereby shades both theoretical and managerial understanding of luxury brand consumption. It also suggests that symbolic value, which is highly influential in western conceptualizations of luxury brand meaning, needs to be re-evaluated in the context of Chinese consumers. Originality/value – This study offers new empirical findings which contribute to a re-conceptualization of the antecedents of purchase intention in the area of luxury brand consumption. In particular, the study provides evidence of the roles of social context, perception and vanity in a Chinese consumption context to inform the primarily western models of luxury brand purchase intention.


Foreword The Huis and Where They Came From The Formation of the Hui Zu The Fate of the Hui During and After the Qing Dynasty Further Assimilation of Minorities and its effects of Muslims How the Hui Zu Lives in China Influential Muslim Personalities Admiral Zheng He and His Achievements Contributions of the Chinese Muslims The Staunchness of the Chinese Muslims.


Zooplankton species found during studies of the zooplankton of the southeastern
coastal waters of Tasmania are recorded, and discussed taxonomically where appropriate.
A brief account is given of the distribution of the 71 pelagic copepods, eight
euphausids, one sergestid, 11 chaetognaths and seven pelagic tunicates. Except for
two copepod species which are assigned only to a genus, the remaining are positively
identified to species level. Amongst the species recorded, 22 copepods are new to
Australian waters whereas 38 copepods, one euphausid and two chaetognaths are new
records for Tasmanian waters. Keys to the copepod genera and species are also given.


Time grating, a temporal analogy of the diffraction grating, is proposed. In the time grating, a laser pulse is split into several embranchments, which are modulated in phase by the phase-modulation function and then combined into a short pulse train. The characteristics and dispersion of the time grating are studied theoretically. Its dispersion, similar to that of the diffraction grating, is time dependent. The characteristics of the output pulse train are controllable by the phase-modulated function. The time grating has several applications, such as in temporal spectrum measurement and in the generation of a short pulse train with arbitrary shape.


The SPT 0311–58 system at z = 6.900 is an extremely massive structure within the reionization epoch and offers a chance to understand the formation of galaxies at an extreme peak in the primordial density field. We present 70 mas Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of the dust continuum and [C ii] 158 μm emission in the central pair of galaxies and reach physical resolutions of ∼100–350 pc, among the most detailed views of any reionization-era system to date. The observations resolve the source into at least a dozen kiloparsec-size clumps. The global kinematics and high turbulent velocity dispersion within the galaxies present a striking contrast to recent claims of dynamically cold thin-disk kinematics in some dusty galaxies just 800 Myr later at z ∼ 4. We speculate that both gravitational interactions and fragmentation from massive parent disks have likely played a role in the overall dynamics and formation of clumps in the system. Each clump individually is comparable in mass to other 6 < z < 8 galaxies identified in rest-UV/optical deep field surveys, but with star formation rates elevated by a factor of ~3-5. Internally, the clumps themselves bear close resemblance to greatly scaled-up versions of virialized cloud-scale structures identified in low-redshift galaxies. Our observations are qualitatively similar to the chaotic and clumpy assembly within massive halos seen in simulations of high-redshift galaxies.


Importance Multiple therapies are currently available for patients with neuroendocrine tumors (NETs), yet many therapies have not been compared head-to-head within randomized clinical trials (RCTs). Objective To assess the relative safety and efficacy of therapies for NETs. Data Sources PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, trial registries, meeting abstracts, and reference lists from January 1, 1947, to March 2, 2018, were searched. Key search terms included neuroendocrine tumors, gastrointestinal neoplasms, therapy, and randomized controlled trial. Study Selection Randomized clinical trials comparing 2 or more therapies in patients with NETs (primarily gastrointestinal and pancreatic) were evaluated. Thirty RCTs met the selection criteria. Data Extraction and Synthesis Pairs of independent reviewers screened studies, extracted data, and assessed the risk of bias. A network meta-analysis with a frequentist approach was used to compare the efficacy of therapies; the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses guideline was used. Main Outcomes and Measures Disease control, progression-free survival, overall survival, adverse events, and quality of life. Results The systematic review identified 30 relevant RCTs comprising 3895 patients (48.4% women) assigned to 22 different therapies for NETs. These therapies showed a broad range of risk for serious and nonserious adverse events. The network meta-analyses included 16 RCTs with predominantly a low risk of bias; nevertheless, precision-of-treatment estimates and estimated heterogeneity were limited. The network meta-analysis found 7 therapies for pancreatic NETs: everolimus (hazard ratio [HR], 0.35 [95% CI, 0.28-0.45]), everolimus plus somatostatin analogue (HR, 0.35 [95% CI, 0.25-0.51]), everolimus plus bevacizumab plus somatostatin analogue (HR, 0.44 [95% CI, 0.26-0.75]), interferon (HR, 0.37 [95% CI, 0.16-0.83]), interferon plus somatostatin analogue (HR, 0.31 [95% CI, 0.13-0.71]), somatostatin analogue (HR, 0.46 [95% CI, 0.33-0.66]), and sunitinib (HR, 0.42 [95% CI, 0.26-0.67]), and 5 therapies for gastrointestinal NETs: bevacizumab plus somatostatin analogue (HR, 0.22 [95% CI, 0.05-0.99]), everolimus plus somatostatin analogue (HR, 0.31 [95% CI, 0.11-0.90]), interferon plus somatostatin analogue (HR, 0.27 [95% CI, 0.07-0.96]), Lu 177–dotatate plus somatostatin analogue (HR, 0.08 [95% CI, 0.03-0.26], and somatostatin analogues (HR, 0.40 [95% CI, 0.21-0.78]) with higher efficacy than placebo and suggests an overall superiority of combination therapies. Conclusions and Relevance The findings from this study suggest that a range of efficient therapies with different safety profiles is available for patients with NETs.


The burden of a number of pleural diseases continues to increase internationally. Although many pleural procedures have historically been the domain of interventional radiologists or thoracic surgeons, in recent years, there has been a marked expansion in the techniques available to the pulmonologist. This has been due in part to both technological advancements and a greater recognition that pleural disease is an important subspecialty of respiratory medicine. This article summarises the important literature relating to a number of advanced pleural interventions, including medical thoracoscopy, the insertion and use of indwelling pleural catheters, pleural manometry, point-of-care thoracic ultrasound, and image-guided closed pleural biopsy. We also aim to inform the reader regarding the latest updates to more established procedures such as chemical pleurodesis, thoracentesis and the management of chest drains, drawing on contemporary data from recent randomised trials. Finally, we shall look to explore the challenges faced by those practicing pleural medicine, especially relating to training, as well as possible future directions for the use and expansion of advanced medical interventions in pleural disease. Technological advances and greater availability of techniques give a broad range of interventions for pleural disease http://ow.ly/ZNya2


Series Editor: Robert Lecker, McGill University Written in an easy-to-read, accessible style by teachers with years of classroom experience, Masterwork Studies are guides to the literary works most frequently studied in high school. Presenting ideas that spark imaginations, these books help students to gain background knowledge on great literature useful for papers and exams. The goal of each study is to encourage creative thinking by presenting engaging information about each work and its author. This approach allows students to arrive at sound analyses of their own, based on in-depth studies of popular literature. Each volume: Illuminates themes and concepts of a classic text Uses clear, conversational language Is an accessible, manageable length from 140 to 170 pages Includes a chronology of the authors life and era Provides an overview of the historical context Offers a summary of its critical reception Lists primary and secondary sources and index


Economics and the Future tackles the discounting issue from a number of angles, ranging from relatively short-term private financial decisions, to very long-term public issues spanning generations. The authors present differing perspectives and original ideas in a style that remains accessible while addressing some of the more difficult questions about discounting in theory and practice. It reveals that the economic issues regarding time are embedded in a broader social, ethical and philosophical context.


The conceptual model necessary for an assessment of biotechnology's economic benefits and costs is outlined, emphasizing the need to account for the proprietary nature of biotechnology innovations. The model is illustrated with an application to Roundup Ready soybeans. The estimated value of this innovation is sizeable, with consumers and innovators claiming the largest shares of net benefits. Also, disparities in intellectual property rights protection across countries affect the distribution of benefits. Consumer resistance toward GMOs and the issue of labelling and market segregation complicate the economic evaluation of biotechnology innovations; a number of related regulation and public policy issues are discussed. Emerging output-trait GMOs are potentially less controversial than some earlier GMOs and may bring more benefits to all participants in the agri-food sector, but this outcome depends crucially on the development of an effective, credible, and internationally harmonized regulatory system.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)


We analyze a model of oligopolistic competition with ongoing investment. Special cases include incremental investment, patent races, learning by doing, and network externalities. We investigate circumstances under which a firm with low costs or high quality will extend its initial lead through investments. To this end, we derive a new comparative statics result for general games with strategic substitutes, which yields the desired conditions for our investment game. Finally, we highlight plausible countervailing effects that arise when investments of leaders are less effective than those of laggards, or in dynamic games when firms are sufficiently patient.


For decades, Colombia was the 'narcostate'. Now it's seen as one of the rising stars of the global economy. Where does the truth lie? How did a land likened to paradise by the first conquistadores become a byword for hell on earth? And how is it rebuilding itself after decades of violence? Writer and journalist Tom Feiling has journeyed throughout Colombia, down roads that were until recently too dangerous to travel, talking to people from former guerrilla fighters to nomadic tribesmen and millionaires. "Vital, shocking, wry and never simplistic, Short Walks from Bogota unpicks the tangled fabric of Colombia to create a stunning work of reportage, history and travel writing". (Books of the Year 2012 Boyd Tonkin, The Independent). "Creates a portrait of Colombia that is perceptive, unsensational, and full of humanity...Feiling is a brilliant reporter, lucid, unflinching, morally engaged, and with an occasional deadpan sense of humour.. one of the most consistently intelligent and compelling books to have appeared on any South American country in recent years". (Michael Jacobs, Independent). "Tom Feiling takes us on an enlightening journey through a changing country that few understand". (Rachel Aspden, Observer). "A deeply political account of one man's journey to the violent heart of modern, rural, Colombia ...a must read". (Kevin Howlett, Colombia Politics). "Feiling...venture[s] into areas that have been off limits for decades ...the sense of a vibrant nation worth discovering peeks out". (Siobhan Murphy, Metro). "The best British travel writers like Norman Lewis or Bruce Chatwin give the reader more than simple travellers' tales. Feiling is of their company ...a brilliant, penetrating and highly readable account". (Robert Carver, Spectator). "Some of the best insights in the book come from the people Feiling meets, and memorably portrays ...a well-written, thoughtful book". (David Gallagher, Times Literary Supplement Dramatic and captivating Wanderlust). "Elegantly written and knowledgeable. Feiling writes with the eye of a seasoned journalist and the style of a travel writer". (Carl Wilkinson, Financial Times). Tom Feiling spent a year living and working in Colombia before making Resistencia: Hip-Hop in Colombia, which won numerous awards at film festivals around the world, and was broadcast in four countries. In 2003 he became Campaigns Director for the TUC's Justice for Colombia campaign, which organizes for human rights in Colombia. His first book was The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over The World, which was based on over sixty interviews with people involved in all aspects of the cocaine business and the 'war on drugs,' and was published by Penguin in 2009.


The study of history, by its nature, is constantly evolving, as contemporary society reestablishes values and examines history under a new scope of social priorities. During this process of historical evolution, it is not events alone that take on new importance, but also the portrayal of historical figures themselves, personalities and influences changing from biography to biography over the years. Such has been the case with the historical Abigail Adams, best known for her well-preserved and archived correspondence with her husband, the Revolutionary Founding Father John Adams, among many other acquaintances. Abigail Adams has been portrayed in a number of lights over the years, from that of ideal New England matron, to republican mother to wife, and flirtatious, insidious manipulator. Each portrayal was motivated by the historian's personal agenda, social background, or contemporary context. The true Abigail can hardly be described in a single cliche.


The Obama administration has proposed restructuring financial services regulation by transferring all consumer protection functions from existing agencies to a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). The goal of the CFPA legislation is to address the flaws in the regulatory architecture that have inhibited effective responses to the substantive problems, rather than mandate specific new substantive consumer protection laws. The current consumer financial protection is based on disclosure regime and is policed through supervisory feedback, enforcement actions, and occasionally prohibitions on terms, products, and practices that are deemed inherently unfair and deceptive. On the federal level, consumer protection in financial services is divided among a number of agencies: the OCC, OTS, NCUA, Federal Reserve Board, FDIC, FHFA, HUD, VA, FTC and DOJ. Some of these agencies have the ability to promulgate regulations, some also exercise supervisory authority over financial institutions, and some may only enforce existing regulations. Sometimes authority is over a class of institutions, and sometimes it is over a particular type of product. There are four main structural criticisms of the current regulatory structure: that consumer protection is a so-called 'orphan' mission; that consumer protection conflicts with, and is subordinated to, safety-and-soundness concerns; that no agency has developed an expertise in consumer protection in financial services, and; that regulatory arbitrage of the current system fuels a regulatory race-to-the-bottom. Consolidation of consumer financial services protection authority could: place all financial services companies, regardless of the form of their charter, under a single regulator, thus ending its orphan status; separate consumer protection from safety-and-soundness regulation, thus ending subordination; encourage the development of a deep bench of regulatory expertise and knowledge, and; end the opportunity for regulatory arbitrage and any potential race to the bottom. There are several potential concerns about a CFPA: conflicts with prudential regulators; ambiguity with respect to Consumer Reinvestment Act authority, and; potential overregulation resulting in higher costs of financial products, less product availability, and discouragement of innovation. Still, there are compelling reasons to believe that the present regulatory architecture cannot produce the optimal consumer protection regime and will continue to fail in its task, resulting in unfair treatment of consumers and a potentially significant source of systemic risk. To this extent, consideration of a CFPA should strive to distinguish between the basic thrust of the legislation - a consolidation of the regulatory authority of - and the proposed new substantive powers granted to the agency.


Background The importance of good end-of-life care for older people in nursing homes is recognised internationally and competence based training has been highlighted to improve palliative care provision in this care setting. Aim This aim of this study was to evaluate a three day competency based, Regional Palliative and End-of-Life Care Learning and Development Programme targeted at nursing staff (n=1330) working within nursing homes (n=266) in Northern Ireland. Methods Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used in two key phases. In Phase 1 participants were asked to complete the Regional Palliative and End-of-Life Care Competency Assessment Tool before and after the training. The content of the programme was mapped to the domains of this tool. In Phase 2, following the programme, seven focus groups with registered nurses (n=29), telephone interviews with managers (n=8) and one focus group, which two managers chose, took place. Results 619 participants completed the programme and 95.3% (n=590) completed the competency tool before and after the training. Descriptive statistics show participants self-reported a significant increase in core palliative care knowledge and skills across all five competency domains after training. Common themes emerging from focus groups and telephone interviews were: 'Outcomes of attending the programme', programme delivery and issues of access', challenges to palliative care in care homes' and 'enablers to palliative care in the nursing home setting'. Conclusions This example of training mapped to a competency tool may have relevance given other national and international competency frameworks which exist. Factors relating to attrition have also been identified.


In collaborative environments, members may try to acquire similar information on the web in order to gain knowledge in one domain. For example, in a company several departments may successively need to buy business intelligence software and employees from these departments may have studied online about different business intelligence tools and their features independently. It will be productive to get them connected and share learned knowledge. We investigate fine-grained knowledge sharing in collaborative environments. We propose to analyze members' web surfing data to summarize the fine-grained knowledge acquired by them. A two-step framework is proposed for mining fine-grained knowledge: (1) web surfing data is clustered into tasks by a nonparametric generative model; (2) a novel discriminative infinite Hidden Markov Model is developed to mine fine-grained aspects in each task. Finally, the classic expert search method is applied to the mined results to find proper members for knowledge sharing. Experiments on web surfing data collected from our lab at UCSB and IBM show that the fine-grained aspect mining framework works as expected and outperforms baselines. When it is integrated with expert search, the search accuracy improves significantly, in comparison with applying the classic expert search method directly on web surfing data.


Abstract A well preserved plant assemblage at the Colwell Creek Pond locality of Leonardian (Kungurian) age provides an opportunity to evaluate taphonomic conditions in a dryland alluvial setting. A narrow channel body incised to 5 m depth through red paleo-Vertisols contains 2 m of varicolored laminated mudstone with graded layers and plant material. X-ray diffraction analysis of individual laminae indicates the presence of chlorite, illite, kaolinite, and mixed-layer clay, with hematite in red and gray layers and goethite in yellow-brown laminae. No carbonate was identified, and the total organic carbon content is minimal. The fine sediment accumulated in a shallow abandoned channel from suspension and gentle underflows, probably linked to seasonal inflow, and analysis of lamina thickness suggests that standing water may have persisted for up to a few millennia. The preservation of lamination is attributed to a lack of bioturbation, possibly linked to a paucity of subsurface oxygen, low productivity, elevated salinity, rapid deposition, or a combination of these factors; minimal bioturbation may also reflect the limited use of freshwater ecospace during the Early Permian. Clay-rich paleo-Vertisols complete the fill, with drab root traces that indicate growth of vegetation in a strongly seasonal setting. Abundant plant material in the laminated beds includes branches of walchian conifers, the possible cycadophyte Taeniopteris spp., and the comioid, possible peltasperm, Auritifolia waggoneri. They were derived from an adjacent riparian zone and preserved as 3D goethite petrifactions. Much of the foliage shows evidence of arthropod herbivory. Although a humid climatic episode cannot be ruled out, the exceptional abundance and preservation of the plants probably reflects the persistence of an oxbow lake on a relatively arid alluvial plain, where riparian plants experienced periodic moisture stress but had access to groundwater nearly year round. Rapid burial in standing water, the lack of bioturbation in the laminated sediments, and early biomineralization probably explain the exceptional preservation of the plant remains.


Successful technology commercialization requires the integration of multiple perspectives and collaboration of experts from very different backgrounds. More often than not, key individuals in the process reside in different organizational units--each with their own mission, agendas, and cultures. This volume addresses the challenges that can arise when individuals from technical, business, and legal environments must converge on the goal of commercialization. Specifically, it brings together studies from organizational behavior, marketing, economic, and sociological perspectives on commercialization of university technologies. Chapter foci range from theoretical research on academic entrepreneurship, multidisciplinary student team management conflicts such as background, purpose, communication, and learning style, to a patent data examination of sociological factors in technology paths in nanotechnology innovation. New results are presented on career goals of PhD scientists and engineers highlighting their desire for education providing skills from these other domains. Educational responses such as cross disciplinary team models, as well as multidisciplinary entrepreneurship centers and specialized masters programs for scientists are presented.


SUMMARY. The chloroform extract of Cladonia substellata Vainio was assayed against larvae of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito vector of Dengue fever and Artemia salina. The extract was tested at concentrations ranging from 1 to 15 ppm in an aqueous medium for 24 h. LC50 and LC90 were evaluated. Since the chloroform extract proved to be lethal for third to fourth instar larvae, downstream processing was undertaken to purify the active agents in the extract. The major compound in the chloroform extract was purified by crystallization followed by column chromatography to yield yellow crystals. Furthermore, usnic acid (UA) was evaluated for its larvicidal potential. The major compound in the chloroform extract, UA, exhibited LC50 of 6.6 ppm (6.1 to 7.0 ppm). Therefore, UA is most likely the active principle in C. substellata. UA showed to be toxic to A. salina, a reference organism in assays to evaluate the potential toxicity hazard to invertebrates in ecosystems.


Objective: There is no definitive consensus on asthma exacerbation scoring for preschool children with recurrent wheezing. The Clinical Asthma Score (CAS) and Asthma Severity Score (ASS) are two scoring systems that can be used in this population. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between CAS and ASS, acute treatment, and exacerbation outcomes in preschool children with wheezing. Materials and Methods: The study included 70 patients aged 2-5 years who presented to the pediatric emergency department due to an acute wheezing episode. CAS and ASS were evaluated at exacerbation presentation and after initial salbutamol therapy. Results: Presenting scores were significantly higher among patients who had three or more episodes within the last year (p=0.01 for CAS, p=0.019 for ASS). Presenting scores were significantly higher in patients treated with systemic steroid therapy during the episode compared to those who were not (p=0.006 for CAS; p=0.003 for ASS). CAS and ASS predicted the use of acute steroid therapy with a sensitivity of 73.7% and 52.6%, and predicted hospitalization with a sensitivity of 95% and 82.5%, respectively. Conclusion: Our data suggest that these scoring systems can be used to judge the need for systemic steroid therapy and that high scores are associated with greater likelihood of hospital admission. Keywords: Asthma score, children, hospitalization, wheezing, exacerbation


The kinetics and magnitude of antibody responses to different proteins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Sinopharm/BBIBP-CorV vaccinees has not been previously studied. Therefore, we investigated antibody responses to different SARS-CoV-2 proteins at 2 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months post-second dose in previously infected (n = 20) and uninfected (n = 20) Sinopharm/BBIBP-CorV vaccinees. The IgG antibodies to the S, S1 and S2 and N were several folds higher in those who had natural infection compared to uninfected individuals at all time points. We then compared the persistence of antibody responses and effect of natural omicron infection or BNT162b2 booster in Sinopharm/BBIBP-CorV vaccinees. We measured the total antibodies to the RBD, ACE2 blocking antibodies and antibody responses to different SARS-CoV-2 proteins in Sinopharm vaccinees at 7 months post second dose, including those who remained uninfected and not boosted (n = 21), or those who had previous infection and who did not obtain the booster (n = 17), those who were not infected, but who received a BNT162b2 booster (n = 30), or those who did not receive the booster but were infected with omicron (n = 29). At 7 months post second dose uninfected (no booster) had the lowest antibody levels to the RBD, while omicron infected vaccinees showed significantly higher anti-RBD antibody levels (p = 0.04) than vaccinees who received the booster. Only 3/21 cohort A (14.3%) had ACE2 blocking antibodies, while higher frequencies were observed in naturally infected individuals (100%), those who received the booster (18/21, 85.7%), and omicron infected individuals (100%). Pre-vaccination, naturally infected had the highest antibody levels to the N protein. These data suggest that those previously infected Sinopharm/BBIBP-CorV vaccinees have a robust antibody response, 7 months post vaccination, while vaccinees who were naturally infected with omicron had a similar immune response to those who received the booster. It will be important to investigate implications for subsequent clinical protection.


Abstract The great variousness and plurality of goodness has given comfort to general scepticism about values and a multitude of metaethical attitudes or predilections. But is this variousness and plurality really the hotch-potch it has appeared? The paper recapitulates and expands von Wright's typology of the varieties of goodness and looks to explain the order or system that underlies the phenomena by developing and extending a conjecture of Aristotle's, the so-called 'focal hypothesis', and combining therewith a suggestion of von Wright's, to the effect that the central case of something good is the faring well of a being. By means of focal hypothesis, one may account fairly well for medical, technical, instrumental, beneficial and utilitarian goodness. Other varieties such as hedonic and ethical goodness complicate the picture, as also do all cases where it seems that an antecedent kind of goodness impinges upon a being. These complications mirror in part the finding that the human scale of values is not a scale exclusively of human values.


The leadership of schools can make a significant difference to enhancing the life chances of students in schools and enabling them to succeed. This book examines leadership within schools, focusing on securing success within a challenging social and political environment. It explores the approaches to leadership adopted by four successful secondary school headteachers in a local authority situated in an area of high social deprivation and identifies the impact the headteachers of these schools have on staff, students and community. It analyses the key leadership strategies of these successful school leaders, strategies that can be deployed in all schools, and explores the links between leadership theories and leadership actions. The book goes on to examine how these strategies were actually implemented in a failing school in challenging circumstances and shows how other schools might benefit from such strategies and the insights on which they are based.


Current devices have limited battery life, typically lasting less than one day. This can lead to situations where critical tasks, such as making an emergency phone call, are not possible. Other devices, supporting different functionality, may have sufficient battery life to enable this task. We present PowerShake; an exploration of power as a shareable commodity between mobile (and wearable) devices. PowerShake enables users to control the balance of power levels in their own devices (intra-personal transactions) and to trade power with others (inter-personal transactions) according to their ongoing usage requirements. This paper demonstrates Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) between mobile devices. PowerShake is: simple to perform on-the-go; supports ongoing/continuous tasks (transferring at ~3.1W); fits in a small form factor; and is compliant with electromagnetic safety guidelines while providing charging efficiency similar to other standards (48.2% vs. 51.2% in Qi). Based on our proposed technical implementation, we run a series of workshops to derive candidate designs for PowerShake enabled devices and interactions, and to bring to light the social implications of power as a tradable asset.


Acupuncture has been used for thousands of years in treating diseases. Meridians and acupoints, on which acupuncture is practiced, have also attracted many research interests. Moxibustion is often used in conjunction with acupuncture as a thermal stimulation on acupoints. Laser, which generates extremely pure light of single wavelengths, is now used widely to stimulate acupoints, because it is noninvasive and easy to manipulate.

This special issue contains 1 human research investigating the electrical characteristics of the acupoints, 2 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the effect of traditional moxibustion on patients with knee osteoarthritis and lumber disc herniation, respectively, 3 animal studies exploring the effect and mechanism of the traditional moxibustion and laser moxibustion on irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), cyclophosphamide-induced leucopenia, and knee osteoarthritis (OA), respectively, 1 systematic review reviewing the safety of moxibustion, 1 paper describing the design of an electrical thermal stimulation system comparable to moxibustion, and 2 animal researches studying the effect and mechanism of electroacupuncture on disc degeneration and hepatic blood perfusion respectively.

The results of these researches showed that acupoints may have special electrical characteristics at pathological status; moxibustion may relieve back pain and improve quality of life in patients with knee OA. Although the two RCTs did not report severe adverse events related to moxibustion, the systematic review found many factors may affect the safety of the moxibustion. The results of these researches also enhanced our knowledge of how traditional moxibustion, laser acupuncture-moxibustion, and electrical-acupuncture work in treating IBS, knee OA, cyclophosphamide-induced leucopenia, disc degeneration, and hepatic blood perfusion.

The encouraging findings in this special issue will promote further investigations in the fields of biophysical and clinical research of acupuncture and moxibustion and may encourage more use of moxibustion in clinic. The electrical thermal moxibustion and laser moxibustion might be good substitutes for traditional moxibustion, because they produce thermal effect but with no chocking smoke and smell, thus being more suitable in modern medical environment. However, in this current special issue, researchers only investigated the effect of laser moxibustion on animal and introduced a design of electrical thermal moxibustion device; further clinical research on both moxibustion devices is needed in the future.


We construct a family of nef divisor classes on every moduli space of stable complexes in the sense of Bridgeland. This divisor class varies naturally with the Bridgeland stability condition. For a generic stability condition on a K3 surface, we prove that this class is ample, thereby generalizing a result of Minamide, Yanagida, and Yoshioka. Our result also gives a systematic explanation of the relation between wall-crossing for Bridgeland-stability and the minimal model program for the moduli space. We give three applications of our method for classical moduli spaces of sheaves on a K3 surface: 1. We obtain a region in the ample cone in the moduli space of Gieseker-stable sheaves only depending on the lattice of the K3. 2. We determine the nef cone of the Hilbert scheme of n points on a K3 surface of Picard rank one when n is large compared to the genus. 3. We verify the "Hassett-Tschinkel/Huybrechts/Sawon" conjecture on the existence of a birational Lagrangian fibration for the Hilbert scheme in a new family of cases.


Twenty-four products suspected of containing anabolic steroids and sold in fitness equipment shops in the United Kingdom (UK) were analyzed for their qualitative and semi-quantitative content using full scan gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), accurate mass liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), high pressure liquid chromatography with diode array detection (HPLC-DAD), UV-Vis, and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. In addition, X-ray crystallography enabled the identification of one of the compounds, where reference standard was not available. Of the 24 products tested, 23 contained steroids including known anabolic agents; 16 of these contained steroids that were different to those indicated on the packaging and one product contained no steroid at all. Overall, 13 different steroids were identified; 12 of these are controlled in the UK under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Several of the products contained steroids that may be considered to have considerable pharmacological activity, based on their chemical structures and the amounts present. This could unwittingly expose users to a significant risk to their health, which is of particular concern for naïve users.


— The dismantling of disused industrial facilities such as nuclear power plants or refineries is an enormous challenge for the planning and control of the logistic processes. Existing control models do not meet the requirements for a proper dismantling of industrial plants. Therefore, the paper presents an approach for the control of dismantling and post-processing processes (e.g. decontamination) in plant decommissioning. In contrast to existing approaches, the dismantling sequence and depth are selected depending on the capacity utilization of required post-processing processes by also considering individual characteristics of respective dismantling tasks (e.g. decontamination success rate, uncertainties regarding the process times). The results can be used in the dismantling of industrial plants (e.g. nuclear power plants) to reduce dismantling time and costs by avoiding bottlenecks such as capacity constraints.


It has often been claimed that Chinese does not have an independent class of adjectives, which are seen by some authors as a subclass of verbs (cf. Li & Thompson 1981; Hengeveld 1992; Tang 1998, among others). In this paper, I shall first provide evidence for the status of adjectives as an independent word-class in Mandarin Chinese, both as the instantiation of a universal prototype (Croft 2000, 2001) and as a language-specific category, following Paul's (2005, 2010) distributional analysis. Secondly, I shall show that the category of adjectives in Mandarin Chinese includes at least two subclasses, namely predicative adjectives ('verb-like' adjectives) and non-predicative adjectives (non-verb-like; cf. Lu & Rao 1981), i.e. those property-denoting words which can neither fill a nominal slot nor be stand-alone predicates but may act as modifiers of a noun, as liangxing "positive, benign" (cf. Li 1996). I shall also discuss the category of 'non-attributive' or 'predicative-only' adjectives (Hu 1979; Deng, Wang & Li 1996), i.e. property-denoting words which can never be used as modifiers of a noun, but only as intransitive predicates, and I shall argue that they do not represent a separate (sub-)class in Mandarin Chinese.


Even though gender and gender analysis are still often equated with women, men and masculinities are equally gendered. This applies throughout society, including within organizations. Following pioneering feminist scholarship on work and organizations, explicitly gendered studies on men and masculinities have increased since the 1980s. The need to include the gendered analysis of men and masculinities as part of gender studies of organizations, leadership and management, is now widely recognized at least within gender research. Yet, this insight continues to be ignored or downplayed in mainstream work and even in some studies seen as 'critical'. Indeed the vast majority of mainstream work on organizations still has either no gender analysis whatsoever or relies on a very simplistic and crude gender analysis. Research on men and masculinities has been wide-ranging and has raised important new issues about gendered dynamics in organizations, including: cultures and counter-cultures on factory shopfloors; historical transformations of men and management in reproducing patriarchies; the relations of bureaucracy, men and masculinities; management-labour relations as interrelations of masculinities; managerial and professional identity formation; managerial homosociality; and the interplay of diverse occupational masculinities. Research has revealed how structures, cultures and practices of men and masculinities continue to persist and to dominate in many contemporary organizations. Having said this, the concepts of gender, of men and masculinities, and of organization have all been subject to complex and contradictory processes that entail both their explicit naming and their simultaneous deconstruction and critique. This is illustrated, respectively, in: the intersectional construction of gender; the pressing need to name men as men in analysis of organizational dominance, but also deconstruct the category of men as provisional; and in the multiplication of organizational forms as, for example, inter-organizational relations, net-organizations, and cyberorganizations. These contradictory historical and conceptual namings and deconstructions are especially important in the analysis of transnational organizations operating within the context of globalization, transnationalizations, production, reproduction, and trans(national)patriarchies. Within transnational organizations such as large gendered multinational enterprises, the taken-for-granted nature of transnational gendered hierarchies and cultures persists in management, maintained partly through commonalities across difference, gendered horizontal specializations and controls. Transnational organizations are key sites for the production of a variety of developing forms of (transnational) business masculinities, some more individualistic, some marriage-based, some nation-based, some transcending nation. These masculinities have clear implications for gendered practices in private spheres, including the provision of domestic servicing often by black and minority ethnic women. The growth of the knowledge economy brings further complications to these transnational patterns, through elaboration of techno-masculinities, and interactions of men, masculinities, and information and communication technologies. This is particularly relevant in the international financial sector, where constructions of men and masculinities are impacted by the gendering of capital and financial crisis, and gender regimes of financial institutions, as in men financiers' risky behavior. Further studies are needed addressing the 'gender-neutral' hegemony of organizations, leaderships and managements, especially in transnational arenas, and organizations subject to changing technologies. Other key research issues concern analysis of neglected intersectionalities, including intersectional privileges; male/masculine/men's bodies; and the taken-for-granted category of "men" in and around organizations. Keywords gender, gender relations, knowledge, management, masculinities, men, multinational enterprises, organizations, transnational


Goal is a widely used concept in requirements engineering methods. Several kinds of goals, such as achievement, maintenance and soft goals, have been defined in these methods. These methods also define heuristics for the identification of organizational goals that drive the requirements process. In this paper, we propose a set of principles that explain the nature of goal-oriented behavior. These principles are based on regulation mechanisms as defined in general systems thinking and cybernetics. We use these principles to analyze the existing definitions of these different kinds of goals and to propose more precise definitions. We establish the commonalities and differences between these kinds of goals, and propose extension for goal identification heuristics.


Determining mortality risk is important for critical decisions in Intensive Care Units (ICU). The need for machine learning models that provide accurate patient-specific prediction of mortality is well recognized. We present a new algorithm for ICU mortality prediction that is designed to address the problem of imbalance, which occurs, in the context of binary classification, when one of the two classes is significantly under--represented in the data. We take a fundamentally new approach in exploiting the class imbalance through a feature transformation such that the transformed features are easier to classify. Hypothesis testing is used for classification with a test statistic that follows the distribution of the difference of two chi-squared random variables, for which there are no analytic expressions and we derive an accurate approximation. Experiments on a benchmark dataset of 4000 ICU patients show that our algorithm surpasses the best competing methods for mortality prediction.


Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty--power is ever stealing from the many to the few. (1) Wendell Phillips, January 28, 1852 Introduction I. Symbolic Speech II. Symbolic Sleeping and the Courts III. The Landscape of Symbolic Sleep Protection After Clark v. CCNV IV. The Occupy Movement in the Courts Conclusion INTRODUCTION The Occupy movement, starting with Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park in New York City, captured the public imagination and spread across the country with a force and rapidity that no one could have predicted. The original occupation in New York, the product of the efforts of a number of groups, (2) was fueled by a call put out by Adbusters magazine in July of 2011 featuring the image of a ballerina posing atop the iconic bronze buli sculpture of Wall Street--while protesters gather in the background amida cloud of tear gas--and the following text: WHAT IS OUR ONE DEMAND? #OCCUPYWALLSTREET SEPTEMBER 17TH. BRING TENT (3) The image was resonant and electrifying. "Charging Bull," the giant bronze sculpture that stands in Bowling Green Park near Wall Street, the symbol of the financial optimism that characterizes a "Bull Market," was to be challenged. The October 2008 stock market crisis--together with bank bailouts, high unemployment, and the increasing income disparity between the highest earners and everyone else--had fostered discontent and hopelessness among those who bore the brunt of disastrous financial decisions that appeared to have enriched the few at the expense of the many. To occupy Wall Street was an empowering way to give voice to this outrage. It was also an assertion of control over Wall Street as a symbol, and the power of the people to change its meaning. On September 17, 2011, about a thousand demonstrators answered the call to Occupy Wall Street, converging in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan near the New York Stock Exchange. (4) Several hundred spent the night, and from that day forward, the park was "occupied" by demonstrators on a twenty-four-hour basis. (5) The numbers were small by New York City protest standards; hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers had taken to the streets to demonstrate in opposition to the imminent Iraq War in 2003. (6) But the concept of occupying Wall Street was provocative. "We are the 99%," a popular chant at Occupy protests, and the movement's core slogan, pointed not only to the vast wealth inequality between rich and poor, but to the power that Occupy movement protesters--that all of us--have to combat inequality and injustice: the power of numbers. Over the course of the weeks that followed, many others visited Zuccotti Park, widely known in the movement by its original, pre-2006 name of Liberty Square or Liberty Plaza. (7) Once there, it was difficult to remain a bystander or spectator. Everyone was invited to participate directly in the process of determining what Occupy Wall Street was all about, through the democracy of the "General Assembly," daily meetings at which collective decisions were made in an open, participatory manner. (8) Adbusters had called for a single demand to emerge from the action. (9) As the Occupy movement continued over weeks, the press focused on the lack of a clear demand or demands of the protesters. (10) What was their purpose? What were they asking for? The protesters themselves, through the General Assemblies, struggled with this issue. (11) Various lists of demands were circulated, some held forth by the press. But over time, it became clear that the "demand" was the occupation itself and the direct democracy that was taking place there. (12) The occupation of Zuccotti Park in New York, and of other parks and plazas across the country, became model communities that literally demonstrated the protesters' vision of the form a more just society might take. But it was the round-the-clock nature of the protests that was--and continues to be--the source of their expressive power, as well as the concept that unified Occupy protests across the country. …


The global number of child soldiers has grown significantly in the last two decades despite a series of protocols designed to curb this trend. They are generally employed in wars where belligerents spend more time attacking civilian populations than fighting professional armies. Used by both governments and rebel groups, child soldiers epitomize many of the problems associated with states at risk: intergenerational violence, poverty, and the failure of efforts to instill the rule of war. Both scholars in security studies and policymakers have largely regarded child soldier recruitment as a humanitarian issue. But recent events have linked child soldiering to insurgency and terrorism, suggesting that this issue is also developing a security dimension. This article examines contrasting arguments about the causes of child soldiering. Using data drawn from nineteen African conflicts, the authors argue that the major explanation for the significant variation in the percentage of child soldiers recruited is the degree of protection against abduction provided by governments and external actors to camps housing internally displaced persons and refugees.


In this paper, we address the issue of bilingual sentiment lexicon learning(BSLL) which aims to automatically and simultaneously generate sentiment words for two languages. The underlying motivation is that sentiment information from two languages can perform iterative mutual-teaching in the learning procedure. We propose to develop two classifiers to determine the sentiment polarities of words under a co-training framework, which makes full use of the two-view sentiment information from the two languages. The word alignment derived from the parallel corpus is leveraged to design effective features and to bridge the learning of the two classifiers. The experimental results on English and Chinese languages show the effectiveness of our approach in BSLL.


Traditionally the ionosphere and thermosphere are considered "data-starved" regions of the atmosphere but recent experimental and operational optical satellite instruments and new techniques to exploit GPS and orbiting radio beacons are dramatically improving the situation. Similarly, new classes of assimilating ionospheric models are under development to exploit these data and provide a significantly improved capability to specify and forecast weather of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. The Advanced Research and Global Observation Satellite (ARGOS), launched by the DoD Space Test Program in 1999 demonstrated ultraviolet remote sensing of the neutral atmosphere and ionosphere from limb sensors in low Earth orbit (LEO). Soon after, the Global Ultraviolet Imager (GUVI) on the NASA TIMED satellite employed a similar capability using cross track ultraviolet remote sensing. The first of five sets of operational versions of both of these instruments, the Special Sensor Ultraviolet Limb Imager (SSULI) and Special Sensor Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Imager (SSUSI), respectively, where launched aboard the first of the DMSP Block 5D3 weather satellites in October of 2003. Radio frequency techniques for ionospheric remote sensing using ground-based dual frequency GPS receivers and GPS occultation receivers on LEO satellites are making a significant contribution to the global ionospheric database. In 2005, the launch of a constellation of six satellites called the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC) will provide ionospheric measurements using GPS occultation receivers ultraviolet photometers and dual frequency UHF radio beacons. The latter will allow tomographic ionospheric reconstructions using ground-based receivers. These and other data will be used to drive the Global Assimilations of Ionospheric Measurements (GAIM) model to dramatically improved current modeling and forecast capabilities for the global thermosphere and ionosphere. More innovations are under development in the form of long-dwell, high temporal and spatial resolution measurements of the ionosphere from geosynchronous orbit using the Ionospheric Mapping and Geocoronal Experiment (IMAGER). IMAGER will provide GOES-like monitoring of the ionosphere and neutral atmosphere.


One of the main challenges in security today is defending against malware attacks. As trends and anecdotal evidence show, preventing these attacks, regardless of their indiscriminate or targeted nature, has proven difficult: intrusions happen and devices get compromised, even at security-conscious organizations. As a consequence, an alternative line of work has focused on detecting and disrupting the individual steps that follow an initial compromise and are essential for the successful progression of the attack. In particular, several approaches and techniques have been proposed to identify the command and control (C8C) channel that a compromised system establishes to communicate with its controller. A major oversight of many of these detection techniques is the design's resilience to evasion attempts by the well-motivated attacker. C8C detection techniques make widespread use of a machine learning (ML) component. Therefore, to analyze the evasion resilience of these detection techniques, we first systematize works in the field of C8C detection and then, using existing models from the literature, go on to systematize attacks against the ML components used in these approaches.


There are two ways that we might respond to the underdetermination of theory by data. One response, which we can call the agnostic response, is to suspend judgment: "Where scientific standards cannot guide us, we should believe nothing". Another response, which we can call the fideist response, is to believe whatever we would like to believe: "If science cannot speak to the question, then we may believe anything without science ever contradicting us". C.S. Peirce recognized these options and suggested evading the dilemma. It is a Logical Maxim, he suggests, that there could be no genuine underdetermination. This is no longer a viable option in the wake of developments in modern physics, so we must face the dilemma head on. The agnostic and fideist responses to underdetermination represent fundamentally different epistemic viewpoints. Nevertheless, the choice between them is not an unresolvable struggle between incommensurable worldviews. There are legitimate considerations tugging in each direction. Given the balance of these considerations, there should be a modest presumption of agnosticism. This may conflict with Peirce's Logical Maxim, but it preserves all that we can preserve of the Peircean motivation.


I'm certainly not alone in noting that the year 2011 brings, for those of us who are students of the work of Frantz Fanon, two different anniversaries. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Les damnes de la terre , Fanon's final book and, for many, his most lasting achievement. But it also marks the fiftieth anniversary of Fanon's death: he died, tragically young, on December 6, 1961, not long after the book's publication. It is no exaggeration to say that Les damnes de la terre was composed by Fanon from his deathbed, and that he was well aware that he was racing death as he rushed to complete the manuscript, as his publisher Francois Maspero remarked, "in pitiful haste." Fanon had managed to complete it by July, although, as he told a friend, "I should have liked to have written something more." As David Macey notes in his indispensable biography, "Fanon did see copies of his last book, but for its first readers, Les damnes de la terre was a posthumous work." The book and Fanon's death thus come to us bound inextricably together, fifty years later. So it would seem that we have an anniversary to celebrate (and in doing so, we would thus be celebrating the continuing relevance of a classic work, as this special issue intends us to do), but also a death to mourn. If I proceed to make a suggestion that will seem at first to be the height of perversity, let me preface it by saying that this suggestion is occasioned by what I believe to be Fanon's greatest legacy, a legacy of unsparing intellectual and political commitment. For I want to begin by suggesting that this year brings us the mournful fact that fifty years on, Les damnes de la terre remains, in many ways, as relevant to our contemporary world as it was in 1961; but conversely, the anniversary of Fanon's death offers us a cause for celebration.


Supramolecular polymer nanocomposites represent an attractive alternative to traditional polymers for advanced materials that exhibit stimuli-responsive and self-healing properties. Here, we investigate the effects of specific hydrogen bonding interactions between surface functionalized silica nanoparticles and ureidopyrimidinone (UPy) based hydrogen bonded supramolecular poly(e-caprolactone) in a supramolecular polymer nanocomposite. The effect of varying levels of nanoparticle UPy surface functionalization is considered. In addition to the anticipated improvements in Young's modulus (∼50%) and storage modulus (∼2×) with silica loading, increases in strain at breaking point (∼25%) with silica loading were observed and attributed to particle–matrix hydrogen bonding. However, increasing the extent of UPy surface functionality at a constant nanoparticle loading level led to a marked decrease in storage modulus relative to nanocomposites prepared with as-received silica nanoparticles. TEM investigation of these nanocomposites show an increase in nanoparticle aggregation. Nanoparticle aggregation provides both an explanation for the observed storage modulus reduction and evidence of particle–particle interactions. These results give interesting insight into the competing effects of specific supramolecular interactions in supramolecular polymer nanocomposite materials.


The relative cost of indoor residual house-spraying (IRS) versus insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs) forms part of decisions regarding selective malaria prevention. This paper presents a cost comparison of these two approaches as recently implemented by Merlin, a UK emergency relief organization funded through international donor support and working in the highland districts of Gucha and Kisii in Kenya. The financial costs (cash expenditures) and the economic costs (including the opportunity costs of using existing staff and volunteers, and an annualized cost for capital items) were assessed. The financial cost for IRS was US dollars 0.86 per person protected, compared with 4.21 dollars for ITNs (reducing to 3.42 dollars to the provider assuming cost recovery). The economic cost per person protected for IRS was 0.88 dollars, compared with 2.34 dollars for ITNs. The costs for ITNs were sensitive to the number of nets sold per community group ('efficiency'), as the delivery costs constituted upwards of 40% of the total cost. However, even marked increases in efficiency of these groups could not reduce the costs of ITNs to that comparable with IRS, except if more than one cycle of IRS was needed. The implications of predicted reductions in the cost of insecticide for both IRS and ITNs are also explored. The provision of itemized cost data allows predictions to be made on changes in the design of these programmes. Under almost all design scenarios, IRS would appear to be a more cost-efficient means of vector control in the Kenyan highlands.


The study assesses the competitive behavior in the Bulgarian general insurance industry by applying an empirical methodology developed by Panzar and Rosse (1987). Based on company data from insurers' balance sheets and profit and loss accounts for the period between 2005 and 2014 a reducedform revenue equation is estimated. The information about the insurers' competitive behavior is provided by the sum of the estimated factor price elasticities, which constitute the so called H-statistic. The fixed effects panel estimation shows that the hypotheses of monopoly or collusive behavior cannot be rejected. These findings suggest that the Bulgarian insurance market is far from being perfectly competitive and may require further actions to promote its competitive development.


The Al2O3 film formed using an atomic layer deposition (ALD) method with trimethylaluminum as Al precursor and H2O as oxidant at a high temperature (450 °C) effectively passivates the p-type surface conduction (SC) layer specific to a hydrogen-terminated diamond surface, leading to a successful operation of diamond SC field-effect transistors at 400 °C. In order to investigate this excellent passivation effect, we carried out an isotope analysis using D2O instead of H2O in the ALD and found that the Al2O3 film formed at a conventional temperature (100 °C) incorporates 50 times more CH3 groups than the high-temperature film. This CH3 is supposed to dissociate from the film when heated afterwards at a higher temperature (550 °C) and causes peeling patterns on the H-terminated surface. The high-temperature film is free from this problem and has the largest mass density and dielectric constant among those investigated in this study. The isotope analysis also unveiled a relatively active H-exchange reaction between the diamond H-termination and H2O oxidant during the high-temperature ALD, the SC still being kept intact. This dynamic and yet steady H termination is realized by the suppressed oxidation due to the endothermic reaction with H2O. Additionally, we not only observed the kinetic isotope effect in the form of reduced growth rate of D2O-oxidant ALD but found that the mass density and dielectric constant of D2O-grown Al2O3 films are smaller than those of H2O-grown films. This is a new type of isotope effect, which is not caused by the presence of isotopes in the films unlike the traditional isotope effects that originate from the presence of isotopes itself. Hence, the high-temperature ALD is very effective in forming Al2O3 films as a passivation and/or gate-insulation layer of high-temperature-operation diamond SC devices, and the knowledge of the aforementioned new isotope effect will be a basis for further enhancing ALD technologies in general.


As college deans and faculty are well aware, cheating and plagiarism have become an epidemic. Some students deliberately download papers, while others break rules they simply don't understand. Unfortunately, there have been no reliable guides to aid students, faculty, and teaching assistants in navigating these challenging issues. Now, there's help. Charles Lipson, a distinguished scholar and teacher who has coached thousands of students in the basics of honest work, provides clear, accessible, and often humorous advice on all aspects of college studies, from papers and exams to study groups and labs. In the first part of the book, Lipson outlines three core principles of academic honesty and explores how these principles inform all aspects of college work. He discusses plagiarism in detail, outlining an ingenious note-taking system and offering guidelines for quoting and paraphrasing. Careful attention is paid to online research, including the perils of "dragging and dropping" text without proper citation. These chapters include numerous tips, all highlighted for students, on how to work honestly and study effectively. The second part of the book gives a full account of citation styles in the humanities, social sciences, and physical and biological sciences, as well as in pre-professional studies. Filled with examples, these chapters show students exactly how to cite books, journals, edited volumes, Web sites, online publications, and much more in every citation style imaginable. By clearly communicating the basic principles of academic honesty and exploring these principles in action, "Doing Honest Work in College" promotes genuine learning and academic success. This must-have reference empowers faculty and students to address questions about academic honesty "before" problems arise. It will be the book students turn to for advice from their first class to their final exam."


Academic Discourse and Global Publishing offers a coherent argument for changes in published academic writing over the past 50 years. Demonstrating how published writing represents academics' decisions about how best to present their work, their readers and themselves in the global context of a rapidly shifting university system, this book provides: An up-to-date reference on contemporary topics in specialist discourse analysis, current research methodologies and innovative approaches to the study of writing; New insights into conceptual and theoretical issues related to the analysis of academic writing; An accessible introduction to diachronic research in EAP and a case for the value of the diachronic study of texts using corpus techniques; A clear overview of how texts work in interaction and how they relate to evolving institutional and political contexts; Links between the practices of different disciplines and the environments in which they operate, as well as observations on the ways in which they differ. This volume is essential reading for students and researchers of EAP/ESP and Applied Linguistics and will also be of significant interest to academics and students looking to have their work published.


A convective cloud field model (CCFM) is substituted for a standard mass flux parameterisation of convective clouds in a limited area atmospheric model (REMO) and is tested for a whole annual cycle (July 1997 to June 1998) over the West Pacific Maritime Continent. REMO with CCFM is run in 0.5-degree resolution and the model at the lateral boundaries is forced 6-hourly by ECMWF reanalysis data. Simulated precipitation from runs with the standard convection parameterisation and with CCFM is compared against two sets of observations. The use of CCFM clearly improves the simulated precipitation patterns and total rainfall over the whole model domain. The distribution between large-scale and convective precipitation becomes more realistic. CCFM shows to be a useful concept to describe convective cloud spectra in atmospheric models, although there are still similar problems with occasionally extreme precipitation as in the original set-up of REMO.


A study was conducted with the objective to measure the nature and magnitude of association between different characters in brinjal (Solanum melongena L.). For this purpose 48 biparental and 60 F3 progenies were developed following NCD-1 and they were evaluated for 16 yield and quality traits. The correlation studies has shown that there was a strong positive association between major yield contributing characters like fruits per plant, plant height and fruit weight and fruit yield. It was also observed that genotypic correlations were high as compared to their phenotypic correlations revealing strong inherent association between the these characters. Therefore, the result of path analysis revealed that the fruit weight had maximum direct effect on marketable fruit yield followed by number of fruits per plant and fruit length.


Objectives: A vital component of the coronavirus response is care of the dying COVID-19 patient. We document the demographics, symptoms experienced, medications required, effectiveness observed, and challenges to high-quality holistic palliative care in 31 patients. This will aid colleagues in primary and secondary care settings anticipate common symptoms and formulate management plans. Methods: A retrospective survey was conducted of patients referred to the hospital palliative care service in a tertiary hospital, south east of England between March 21 and April 26, 2020. Patients included had a confirmed laboratory diagnosis of COVID-19 via reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction nasopharyngeal swab for SARS-Cov-2 or radiological evidence of COVID-19. Results: The thirty-one patients included were predominantly male (77%), elderly (median [interquartile range]: 84 [76-89]), and had multiple (4 [3-5]) comorbidities. Referral was made in the last 2 [1-3] days of life. Common symptoms were breathlessness (84%) and delirium (77%). Fifty-eight percent of patients received at least 1 "as required" dose of an opioid or midazolam in the 24 hours before death. Sixty percent of patients needed a continuous subcutaneous infusion and the median morphine dose was 10 mg S/C per 24 hours and midazolam 10 mg S/C per 24 hours. Nineteen percent of our cohort had a loved one or relative present when dying. Conclusion: We provide additional data to the internationally reported pool examining death arising from infection with SARS-CoV-19. The majority of patients had symptoms controlled with low doses of morphine and midazolam, and death was rapid. The impact of low visitation during dying needs exploring.


HIGHLIGHTS In developing countries, especially in rural areas, 2.5 billion people rely on biomass, such as fuelwood, charcoal, agricultural waste and animal dung, to meet their energy needs for cooking. In many countries, these resources account for over 90% of household energy consumption. In the absence of new policies, the number of people relying on biomass will increase to over 2.6 billion by 2015 and to 2.7 billion by 2030 because of population growth. That is, one-third of the world's population will still be relying on these fuels. There is evidence that, in areas where local prices have adjusted to recent high international energy prices, the shift to cleaner, more efficient use of energy for cooking has actually slowed and even reversed. Use of biomass is not in itself a cause for concern. However, when resources are harvested unsustainably and energy conversion technologies are inefficient, there are serious adverse consequences for health, the environment and economic development. About 1.3 million people – mostly women and children – die prematurely every year because of exposure to indoor air pollution from biomass. Valuable time and effort is devoted to fuel collection instead of education or income generation. Environmental damage can also result, such as land degradation and regional air pollution. Two complementary approaches can improve this situation: promoting more efficient and sustainable use of traditional biomass; and encouraging people to switch to modern cooking fuels and technologies. The appropriate mix depends on local circumstances such as per-capita incomes and the availability of a sustainable biomass supply. Halving the number of households using traditional biomass for cooking by 2015 – a recommendation of the United Nations Millennium Project – would involve 1.3 billion people switching to other fuels. Alternative fuels and technologies are already available at reasonable cost. Providing LPG stoves and cylinders, for example, would cost at most $1.5 billion per year to 2015. Switching to oil-based fuels would not have a significant impact on world oil demand. Even when fuel costs and emissions are considered, the household energy choices of developing countries need not be limited by economic, climate-change or energy-security concerns.


Objective:We examine the extent to which Ugandans accurately know their HIV status and that of their partners. Methods:The 2011 Uganda AIDS Indicator Survey (UAIS) was a nationally representative study of 15–59 year olds that tested 21,366 individuals for HIV. We compared self-reported HIV status with UAIS-determined HIV status for respondents. We were able to link 3285 couples in the survey, and in this group, we compared the reported HIV status of partners with that determined by UAIS. Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to identify factors associated with inaccurate knowledge of HIV status. Results:An estimated 55.8% of adult Ugandans reported having had an HIV test. Of 1495 HIV-infected Ugandans, 59.1% were unaware of their HIV infection. Among 3285 linked couples in this analysis, 273 couples (8.3%) had at least 1 infected partner, with 96 couples (2.9%) having both members infected and the remaining 177 couples (5.4%) being HIV discordant. This meant that 369 persons in the linked couple group had an HIV-infected partner. One hundred ten (29.8%) of this group knew that their partner was HIV infected. In multiple logistic regression analysis, accurately knowing that ones partner was HIV infected was strongly associated with couple HIV testing [adjusted odds ratio (AOR): 4.3, 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.2 to 8.4] and reporting oneself to be HIV positive versus reporting HIV negative (AOR: 7.3, 95% CI: 3.8 to 14.3) or HIV status unknown (AOR: 30.6, 95% CI: 3.8 to 263.4). Conclusions:Respondents may be reporting the HIV status of their partners based on their own HIV status. Campaigns to inform people about the prevalence of serodiscordance in conjunction with further promotion of couple counseling may help increase the proportion of Ugandans who know their own HIV status and that of their partners.


Cultural heritage carries the historical values from the past, cultural heritage therefore, reflects the identity of societies. Thus, it is important to support people learn from these sites, which could be achieved by introducing new tools to assist in this aspect. Designing such tools could be challenging, as they need to enhance visitors' engagement as well as enable them to explore sites smartly to well-invested their time with the rapid pace of life. This paper presents the development of recommendations for designing smart and ubiquitous learning environments for outdoor cultural heritage. A novel list of design recommendations is introduced as a result, which was shaped throughout a research project carried out to develop a theoretical framework for designing such services, FoSLE. A user-centred design approach was used in this research adopting the socio-cognitive engineering methodology. Three field studies were conducted to gather user requirements, which led to introduce the FoSLE framework. A set of general requirements was devised from the framework to guide the design of a proof-of-concept smart and ubiquitous learning environment, SmartC. SmartC was evaluated in the field by potential end-users in terms of usability, usefulness and acceptance; suitability for learning was also investigated. The results enabled us to draw the list of design recommendations presented in this paper. This list consists of three parts: content provision, learning experience design and interaction with context design.


This paper deals with techniques of measuring and assessment of the voice transmitted in IP networks and describes design of quality measurement, which can be used for Cisco Gateways. Cisco gateways send Calculated Planning Impairment Factor in every CDR (Call Detail Record). Our design is based on collection of CDR's, their storing into SQL database and their visualization through web page. This design was implemented and successfully tested in CESNET network.


A wonderful read. -- USA Today Klein... has delved deep into archives that most previous writers on Gould have ignored, and is able to back up his revisionist assertions with a multitude of telling details. -- New York Times He was, for Joseph Pulitzer, one of the most sinister figures that have ever flitted bat-like across the vision of the American people. According to the New York Times, the work of reform is but half done... when people claiming to be respectable are not ashamed of being associated with a man such as he. He was Jay Gould, the individual who for a century has been singled out as the most despicable and unscrupulous of the Robber Barons. In this splendid biography, Maury Klein paints the most complete portrait of the notorious Gould that we have ever had. His Gould is a brilliant but ruthless businessman who merged dying railroads into expansive and profit-making lines, including the giant Union Pacific. Clearly organized, meticulously researched, and skillfully written. -- Washington Post Lucid and engrossing. -- Businessweek Klein's biography is a balanced, objective, and fascinating account. -- Philadelphia Inquirer


Background Over the last 5 years (2013–2017), the Caribbean region has faced an unprecedented crisis of co-occurring epidemics of febrile illness due to arboviruses transmitted by the Aedes sp. mosquito (dengue, chikungunya, and Zika). Since 2013, the Caribbean island of Barbados has experienced 3 dengue outbreaks, 1 chikungunya outbreak, and 1 Zika fever outbreak. Prior studies have demonstrated that climate variability influences arbovirus transmission and vector population dynamics in the region, indicating the potential to develop public health interventions using climate information. The aim of this study is to quantify the nonlinear and delayed effects of climate indicators, such as drought and extreme rainfall, on dengue risk in Barbados from 1999 to 2016. Methods and findings Distributed lag nonlinear models (DLNMs) coupled with a hierarchal mixed-model framework were used to understand the exposure–lag–response association between dengue relative risk and key climate indicators, including the standardised precipitation index (SPI) and minimum temperature (Tmin). The model parameters were estimated in a Bayesian framework to produce probabilistic predictions of exceeding an island-specific outbreak threshold. The ability of the model to successfully detect outbreaks was assessed and compared to a baseline model, representative of standard dengue surveillance practice. Drought conditions were found to positively influence dengue relative risk at long lead times of up to 5 months, while excess rainfall increased the risk at shorter lead times between 1 and 2 months. The SPI averaged over a 6-month period (SPI-6), designed to monitor drought and extreme rainfall, better explained variations in dengue risk than monthly precipitation data measured in millimetres. Tmin was found to be a better predictor than mean and maximum temperature. Furthermore, including bidimensional exposure–lag–response functions of these indicators—rather than linear effects for individual lags—more appropriately described the climate–disease associations than traditional modelling approaches. In prediction mode, the model was successfully able to distinguish outbreaks from nonoutbreaks for most years, with an overall proportion of correct predictions (hits and correct rejections) of 86% (81%:91%) compared with 64% (58%:71%) for the baseline model. The ability of the model to predict dengue outbreaks in recent years was complicated by the lack of data on the emergence of new arboviruses, including chikungunya and Zika. Conclusion We present a modelling approach to infer the risk of dengue outbreaks given the cumulative effect of climate variations in the months leading up to an outbreak. By combining the dengue prediction model with climate indicators, which are routinely monitored and forecasted by the Regional Climate Centre (RCC) at the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH), probabilistic dengue outlooks could be included in the Caribbean Health-Climatic Bulletin, issued on a quarterly basis to provide climate-smart decision-making guidance for Caribbean health practitioners. This flexible modelling approach could be extended to model the risk of dengue and other arboviruses in the Caribbean region.