Automatic speech recognition bases its models on the acoustic features derived from the speech signal. Some have investigated replacing or supplementing these features with information that can not be precisely measured (articulator positions, pitch, gender, etc.) automatically. Consequently, automatic estimations of the desired information would be generated. This data can degrade performance due to its imprecisions. In this paper, we describe a system that treats pitch as an auxiliary information within the framework of Bayesian networks, resulting in improved performance.


The interaction of metal powder and pulsed laser heat flux is investigated on two levels, the powder bed level and the particle level. The locations of the thermal penetration depth and the liquid-solid interface are obtained using the integral approximate method. Melting and resolidification of a subcooled, two-component metal powder bed subjected to temporal Gaussian heat flux is investigated analytically. An increase in heat source intensity or powder bed porosity will result in an increase of the melt pool depth, melt pool temperature, and the overall processing time. The melt pool becomes shallower with increasing subcooling. Heat conduction in a single subcooled metal powder particle subjected to nanosecond pulsed laser heating is also investigated analytically. A change in the repetition rate of the laser or an increase in maximum heat flux will result in a larger temperature rise on the surface of the particle, as well as a higher thermalized particle temperature after the laser pulse is finished. Although a discrepancy exists where peak surface temperatures are concerned, the thermalized temperatures of different-sized spheres are all the same. The time at which the particle is fully penetrated is only affected by a change in thermal diffusivity, laser pulse width, or particle radius. The physical model and results of this investigation pave the way for further modeling of Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) processes with a pulsed laser.


The Devonian Redwater reef, northeast of Edmonton, Alberta, is being evaluated for geological storage of CO2 for the Heartland Area Redwater CO2 Storage Project (HARP). It is close to large sources of CO2 in the Redwater-Fort Saskatchewan-Edmonton region. The main objective of the study was to build a 2D geological model of the Redwater reef, from the reef center to off-reef, and investigate the seismic response of the reef to CO2 saturation in the Leduc Formation. Fluid substitution and seismic modeling were undertaken to generate PP and PS synthetic seismic data to study the consequences of CO2 saturation on the seismic response of the various reef facies and formations below the reef, based on seismic attributes and character.


Recent debates over the relationship between class and voting in democratic capitalist societies havefocusedprimarily on the question of whether levels of class voting have declined. As a result,few studies have distinguished between "class voting" as an outcome versus classfactors as causal mechanisms of vote choice. This distinction is critical to understanding what role class-relatedfactors play in explaining vote choice - and thus to advancing debates over the changing relationship between class and political behavior in the U.S. and elsewhere. We use National Election Studies data to first investigate class-specific changes in voting behavior in presidential elections and then analyze the causal mechanisms explaining the three most significant class-specific trends. Wefind that while the realignment of the self-employed with the Republican Party is largely explained by class-relatedfactors, professionals' realignment with the Democratic Party is a product of their increasingly liberal views of social issues. Also, prompted by higher levels of economic satisfaction and declining supportfor the welfare state, unskilled workers' historically high levels of supportfor Democratic candidates have eroded since the 1980 Presidential election. Our analyses also show that while class politics increasingly competes with other salient bases of voting behavior, the political impact of social issue attitudes has not displaced the class cleavage in recentpresidential elections.


Full-dimensional vibrational spectra are calculated for both X-(H2O) and X-(D2O) dimers (X = F, Cl, Br, I) at the quantum-mechanical level. The calculations are carried out on two sets of recently developed potential energy functions (PEFs), namely, Thole-type model energy (TTM-nrg) and many-body energy (MB-nrg), using the symmetry-adapted Lanczos algorithm with a product basis set including all six vibrational coordinates. Although both TTM-nrg and MB-nrg PEFs are derived from coupled-cluster single double triple-F12 data obtained in the complete basis set limit, they differ in how many-body effects are represented at short range. Specifically, while both models describe long-range interactions through the combination of two-body dispersion and many-body classical electrostatics, the relatively simple Born-Mayer functions employed in the TTM-nrg PEFs to represent short-range interactions are replaced in the MB-nrg PEFs by permutationally invariant polynomials to achieve chemical accuracy. For all dimers, the MB-nrg vibrational spectra are in close agreement with the available experimental data, correctly reproducing anharmonic and nuclear quantum effects. In contrast, the vibrational frequencies calculated with the TTM-nrg PEFs exhibit significant deviations from the experimental values. The comparison between the TTM-nrg and MB-nrg results thus reinforces the notion that an accurate representation of both short-range interactions associated with electron density overlap and long-range many-body electrostatic interactions is necessary for a correct description of hydration phenomena at the molecular level.


Background
This project investigated further the respective contributions of ecstasy (MDMA) and cannabis to aberrant visuospatial processing, with earlier studies having reported both drugs to be associated with deficits in such functioning.

Method
Passive visuospatial memory (PVM) was operationalised by recalling sequentially highlighted computer generated grid squares. Visuospatial working memory (VWM) was operationalised by a similar task requiring concurrent processing for a pointing task. The dependent variable for both tasks was the number of correct grid locations recalled in sequence. Participants (N = 47, 24 male) had a mean age of 22.0 years (SD = 3.6 years). All participants claimed to have been drug-free for at least 7 days. Measures of IQ and mood were also taken.

Results
Hierarchical regression analyses for both tasks employed IQ in the initial model, with measures of time since last cannabis use and estimated cannabis consumption added to the final model. For PVM the final model significantly improved prediction, with time since last use being significantly and inversely predictive of performance. IQ was not predictive in the final model. For VWM, IQ was significantly and positively predictive of performance in both models. Prediction was not significantly improved in the final model. However, time since last use approached significance, being inversely related to performance once again. Ecstasy related variables appeared to have no relationship to performance on either task.

Conclusions
Lower levels of ecstasy consumption, compared to previous studies, may account for the lack of any relationship to VWM performance here. The predictive ability of the cannabis related variables is consistent with earlier findings from our laboratories that cannabis may affect both PVM and VWM, whilst ecstasy may only affect executive based VWM processes. However, the inverse nature of performance prediction by time since last use requires further research.


On December 2 and 3, 2004, the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) conducted a Phase I survey of the 108acre Naegelin Tract in northwest Bexar County, Texas, for Raba-Kistner Consultants, Inc. The proposed development consists of extending De Zavala Road through the southern portion of the tract and Kyle Seale Road through the eastern margin of the tract. Drainage easements are planned to cross through the center of the property and also along the northern and eastern margins of the tract. Thirty-six shovel tests were excavated along 30-meter transects and in areas considered to have high or moderate probability of buried cultural materials. No buried cultural materials were identified by any of the hand-excavated shovel tests. The survey resulted in the identification of eight isolated finds including one heavily fragmented projectile point that may represent a Bulverde dart point. This was the only artifact collected during the survey. No prehistoric sites were identified within the project area. One historic site was identified during the survey (41BX1600). The survey documented the remains of a main stone building and nine outbuildings on the property. Although an age could not be determined based on the sparse artifacts noted on surface, the site appeared to represent a historic homestead built during the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. A 1939 aerial photograph of the area shows that many of the outbuildings and the main stone structure had been built by this date. Comprehensive deed research and oral histories conducted between February and June, 2005, helped to establish that the earliest structures on the complex were built in 1888. This research also revealed the presence of an unmarked grave on the property. Subsequent to the pedestrian survey and prior to the completion of the archival research, the main stone building was severely damaged by fire. The fire damage exposed construction and architectural details not visible during the pedestrian survey. During a subsequent site visit, a tenth wood-framed outbuilding was identified. One isolated stone building of the same construction technique and age remained in good condition following the fire until it was recently torn down during asbestos abatement activities. The principal stone-built structures on the compound were exceptional examples of Texas vernacular architecture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The interior of the main stone structure had been dilapidated through years of neglect and abandonment, nonetheless, it retained structural integrity and exemplified changes in architectural elements over a period of roughly 10 years of additions to the original core structure. Following the fire, and the razing of the only undamaged building on site, the stone buildings retain no structural integrity and the site is not recommended as eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places or for designation as a State Archeological Landmark. No additional archaeological work is recommended in association with this development. These archaeological investigations were conducted under Texas Antiquities Committee permit number 3597 with Dr. Raymond P. Mauldin, CAR Assistant Director, serving as Principal Investigator. The single prehistoric artifact collected during the survey and a small number of potentially temporally diagnostic artifacts collected from the surface of 41BX1600 following the fire, as well as all project-related documents are curated at the Center for Archaeological Research at The University of Texas at San Antonio.


We study the magnetic properties of Fe_1+y Te, a parent compound of the iron-based high-temperature superconductors. Motivated by recent neutron scattering experiments, we show that a spin-1 exchange model, supplemented by a single-ion spin anisotropy, accounts well for the experimentally observed low temperature magnetic phase diagram, that exhibits a commensurate bicollinear order at low Fe dopings (y 0.12). We suggest that the commensurate-incommensurate transition at y = 0.12 is due to the competition between the exchange interaction and the local spin anisotropy. At low Fe dopings, the single-ion spin anisotropy is strong and pins the spins along the easy axis, which, together with the spatially anisotropic exchanges, induces a unusual bicollinear commensurate magnetic order. The low-energy spin-wave excitation is gapped due to the explict breaking of spin-rotational symmetry by the local spin anisotropy. At high Fe dopings, the single-ion anisotropy is weak, and the exchange favors an incommensurate coplanar state. The incommensurate magnetic wavevector averages out the spin anisotropy so that a gapless low-energy spin-wave excitation is obtained. We also analyze the low-energy hydrodynamic model and use it to describe the magneto-structural transition and the static and dynamical spin structure factors across the magnetic ordering transitions.


Background : Pineapple (Ananas comosus (L.)Merr), a kind of fruit which is often consumed by people, can be used as a traditional medicine. Pineapple fruit and leaf have many functions,such as an anthelmintic. This research was aimed to prove that fresh pineapple fruit squeeze and pineapple leaf infuse have the anthelmintic potency by comparing with NaCl 0,9 % as negatif control and piperazin citrat (as positif control), as well as comparing anthelmintic potency between pineapple fruit squeeeze and pineapple leaf infuse.
Methods : This research is an experimental research with post test only controlled group design. The sample were Ascaridia galli worms, which were taken randomly. The sample were treated with pineapple fruit squeeze in concentration 10%,20%,30%,40% and Pineapple leaf infuse was in the concentration of 25%, 45 %, 65 %,85%. Positif control was piperazin citrat in the concentrationm of 0,2% and The negatif control was NaCl 0,9% Liquid. Sample from each groups was replicated three times. Data were collected through the observation of total mortality in every hour. LC100 and LT100 was calculated by probit analysis.
Result : Probit analysis showed that LC100 of fresh pineapple fruit squeeze at the concentration 47,775% and LT100 of fresh pineapple fruit squeeze was 665,529 minutes. Pineapple leaf infuse had LC100 88,629 % and LT100 of pineapple leaf infuse was 1119,951 minutes. Kaplan-Meier test showed that pineapple fruit squeeze 40% was the most effectif . Pineapple fruit squeeze had effectivity less than control positif .

Conclusion : Pineapple fruit squeeze and pineapple leaf infuse have the anthelmintic potency to Ascaridia galli worms in vitro. Pineapple fruit squeeze has more effective anthelmintic potency than pineapple leaf infuse. Piperazin citrat is the most effective than pineapple fruit squeeze and pineapple leaf infuse.

Key Words : Pineapple fruit squeeze, pineapple leaf infuse, anthelmintic potency, Ascaridia galli.


Degradation of rice straw was observed to be higher (p<0.01) in the buffaloes than in cattle. At 48 h, the dry matter (DM) loss of straw for buffaloes was 53.6 ± 0.8% and that for cattle was 48.7 ± 2.6%. Palm press fibre (PPF) was poorly degraded in the rumen of both animal species. A loss of about 21% DM was observed in both cattle and buffaloes after 48 h of incubation in the rumen. The pattern of bacterial and fungal colonization of straw and PPF seemed to be similar in both cattle and buffaloes. Microbial colonization was restricted by plant structures like the silica crystals in both straw and PPF. The predominant bacteria colonizing both straw and PPF fragments were the rods. Eroded zones and digestion pits were pronounced in straw fragments after 1 h of incubation. The PPF fragments appeared undergraded even after 6 h of incubation. Fungal colonization of straw was rapid and extensive in both cattle and buffaloes. The sporangia observed in straw were mainly spherical or oval in shape, but fusiform sporangia with acuminate tip were predominantly seen in PPF fragments.


Extracted from text ... 14 October 2006 Moneyweb's PERSONAL FINANCE
RETIREMENT
How to stretch your
retirement rand
The hints that follow are not "investments" in the truest
sense of the word, but will help your retirement rand go
a little further, nonetheless.
By STEVEN JONES
PEOPLE are always telling you
that if you enter your 50s without
having adequately prepared for
retirement, it's too late to do anything
about it.
Not true!
There are a number of creative
ways that you can bolster your
pension, even as you enter your
sixth decade. They are not conventional
investments. In fact, in
many cases, they do ..


Capacity-building projects can be a vehicle for fostering policy diffusion. They should not, however, be considered as exclusively externally driven; the receiving jurisdiction's receptiveness and leverage to steer the design of those projects can be crucial factors, shaping the process of infusing different external policy expertise and experiences into domestic policy design and implementation. This article shows that the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has played a key role in steering the capacity-building efforts of external financiers in the case of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading. The focus here is twofold: analyzing, on the one hand, the interaction among capacity-building projects financed by different external financiers, and on the other, the role that central actors and brokers can play in the complex structure of interacting projects.


Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in the exile's life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement. (173)


Observations from the HERschel Inventory of the Agents of Galaxy Evolution (HERITAGE) have been used to identify dusty populations of sources in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC). We conducted the study using the HERITAGE catalogs of point sources available from the Herschel Science Center from both the Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS; 100 and 160 μm) and Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE; 250, 350, and 500 μm) cameras. These catalogs are matched to each other to create a Herschel band-merged catalog and then further matched to archival Spitzer IRAC and MIPS catalogs from the Spitzer Surveying the Agents of Galaxy Evolution (SAGE) and SAGE-SMC surveys to create single mid- to far-infrared (far-IR) point source catalogs that span the wavelength range from 3.6 to 500 μm. There are 35,322 unique sources in the LMC and 7503 in the SMC. To be bright in the FIR, a source must be very dusty, and so the sources in the HERITAGE catalogs represent the dustiest populations of sources. The brightest HERITAGE sources are dominated by young stellar objects (YSOs), and the dimmest by background galaxies. We identify the sources most likely to be background galaxies by first considering their morphology (distant galaxies are point-like at the resolution of Herschel) and then comparing the flux distribution to that of the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (ATLAS) survey of galaxies. We find a total of 9745 background galaxy candidates in the LMC HERITAGE images and 5111 in the SMC images, in agreement with the number predicted by extrapolating from the ATLAS flux distribution. The majority of the Magellanic Cloud-residing sources are either very young, embedded forming stars or dusty clumps of the interstellar medium. Using the presence of 24 μm emission as a tracer of star formation, we identify 3518 YSO candidates in the LMC and 663 in the SMC. There are far fewer far-IR bright YSOs in the SMC than the LMC due to both the SMC's smaller size and its lower dust content. The YSO candidate lists may be contaminated at low flux levels by background galaxies, and so we differentiate between sources with a high ("probable") and moderate ("possible") likelihood of being a YSO. There are 2493/425 probable YSO candidates in the LMC/SMC. Approximately 73% of the Herschel YSO candidates are newly identified in the LMC, and 35% in the SMC. We further identify a small population of dusty objects in the late stages of stellar evolution including extreme and post-asymptotic giant branch, planetary nebulae, and supernova remnants. These populations are identified by matching the HERITAGE catalogs to lists of previously identified objects in the literature. Approximately half of the LMC sources and one quarter of the SMC sources are too faint to obtain accurate ample FIR photometry and are unclassified.


With increasingly available stereoscopic technology and techniques, it is interesting to investigate new ways of representing information using stereoscopy. Within this context a user study was performed to compare if it is worthwhile to use 3D map presentations over 2D, and to identify how much a 3D stereoscopic map can be slanted without losing the perception of information. Two different visual tasks were evaluated, these visual tasks were: 1) identification of the smallest distance between two points; 2) combinational task that included both the identification of the smallest distance between two points, and the comparison of bar heights. The tested visual conditions were a 2D ("2D") visualization, static monoscopic 3D visualization ("W3D"), and a headtracking stereoscopic visualization ("S3D"). The respective performance was measured in terms of accuracy and time of execution of the stimuli. Results showed no benefit of using 3D map presentation over a 2D map presentation in both visual tasks. Slanting a 3D stereoscopic map, 55 degrees got the best performance.


Cryosurgery is a physical therapy of tumor treatment, which is becoming more and more popular recent years due to its important clinical merit1. However, in many clinical cases, treatment by cryosurgery has high recurrence rate, especially for tumors in some internal organs, such as liver. Most of these recurrent cases are caused by the low freezing efficiency, for example, it can't destroy all the tumor cells especially the cells in the edge of the tumor or near the vascular network during conventional cryosurgery process. In view of this, Liu et al. proposed a new surgical strategy, "nano-cryosurgery", to enhance freezing efficiency2.Copyright © 2013 by ASME


A detailed guide to the complex new animation tools in Unity, packed with clear instructions and illustrated with original content in the context of a next generation zombie apocalypse adventure game. About This Book Create and export models and animation sequences to Unity from 3ds max and Maya Prepare character models and animation for games using Mecanims rigging tools Retarget, adjust, and mix and match motion capture and other animation data Write and edit scripts compatible with Mecanim Animation Controllers Who This Book Is For If you are a Unity developer looking to get to grips with the character animation specific tools, a 3D software user who is new to Unity, or a beginner game developer who is interested in character animation and interaction, this book is ideal for you. Some experience with either the Unity interface or basic 3D coordinates is recommended, but not required. What You Will Learn Learn how to prepare a rigged character model to receive animation within Unity Acquire efficient techniques to refine and optimize motion capture data Retarget animation sequences between different character rigs Discover how to rig a humanoid character and export for use in Unity Script character interaction for a First Person character model Create dynamic animation sequences from scratch using key frame techniques, in a variety of 3D software packages Learn Project Management in Unity Understand how to set up a complex facial rig for speech Set up Animation Controllers with masked states and blend trees to create seamless and additive animation transitions Construct a ragdoll game object and instantiate it in a game Devise Mecanim animation integration for the player and AI driven animation for enemy characters In Detail Game animation for independent developers has taken a giant leap forward with Unity's Mecanim toolset, which streamlines the import/export, retargeting, and many other aspects of the


Most species of petalurid dragonflies have a fossorial larval stage, which is unique in the Odonata. Larvae typically excavate burrows in soft peaty soils in mires, seepages or along stream margins, which are occupied by a single larva throughout the long larval stage. This paper reports on a study of burrow morphology in Petalura gigantea, with the objectives of describing their burrows, documenting any variability in burrow morphology across the hydrogeomorphic range of habitats used by the species, identifying factors contributing to any such variability, resolving questions in relation to the single previous illustration of a burrow system and identifying the level of groundwater dependence of larvae. The species was found to be an obligate, groundwater dependent, mire-dwelling species with well-maintained and sometimes complex burrows. Burrow complexity and morphological variation are inferred to be a response by larvae to the hydrogeomorphic characteristics of the habitat and substrate attributes. All burrows were occupied by a single larva, consistent with previous observations of other fossorial petalurids, but in contrast to the previous description of a P. gigantea burrow complex occupied by multiple larvae. The functional role of identified burrow features is discussed. Although the fossorial larval habit confers ecological benefits, the species' groundwater dependence and restriction to mire habitats places it at increased risk in the event of any reduction in groundwater availability, more intense fire regimes, and the potential compounding effects of rapid climate change.


Community engagement has come to the fore as a policy and programme approach that seeks to connect citizens both with each other and with government in order to deliver improved social and economic opportunities and outcomes. This model has become a key aspect of the intervention approach within Indigenous communities and is seen to have particular application in addressing community justice issues. This article examines a suite of community justice initiatives being used in Indigenous communities in Australia with a view to ascertaining how the principles of community engagement are operationalized. The article draws on this information and argues that community engagement is only one aspect of a number of community-oriented justice initiatives currently being applied. These initiatives range from concepts of community as a location, community as an interest group, and the leveraging of community capital so as to tap into and build better and stronger relationships. In so doing, the latter attempts to increase the social infrastructure, resources and capacity of communities. However, despite government attention in this area, there is a lack of a policy and programmatic framework to guide a coherent and apposite approach to issues of community in specific policy settings. The article contributes to the development of a framework that begins the process of differentiating and assessing justice administration interventions.


We depict and analyze wealth mobility in a national sample of nearly 4,000 households interviewed by the National Longitudinal Survey over a ten year period from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s. A transition matrix, the Shorrocks measure, average decile position for various subgroups, and wealth in period two compared with wealth in period one are used to describe patterns of wealth mobility. These results and regression models of change in percentile position, of persistence in the top, of movement into the top, of persistence into the bottom, and of movement into the bottom identify winners and losers. The losers include single people, blacks, and those who experienced marital disruption, while winners were the skilled and more educated. These findings have implications for the interpretation of cross-sectional measures of inequality, the explanation of long-term trends in wealth mobility, and the consequences of recent trends in the wage structure.


T cell activation requires two distinct signals. The first is delivered through the antigen-specific T cell receptor (TCR), and the second is provided by costimulatory molecule(s) present on the surface of the antigen-presenting cell (APC). Stimulation of T helper type 1 T cell clones through the TCR in the absence of the costimulatory activity results in a lack of interleukin 2 (IL-2) secretion and proliferation, and the induction of a long-lived state of nonresponsiveness, termed anergy. In this study, we have examined the transcription factors involved in IL-2 gene expression that are expressed after stimulation of normal T cell clones through the TCR with and without engagement of the necessary costimulatory molecule(s). Antigen-specific activation of the clones results in the induction of a similar pattern of transcription factors that have been previously shown to regulate IL-2 expression. In contrast, antigen presentation by chemically fixed APC, a condition that results in T cell anergy, induces neither NF-AT nor one of the two NF-kappa B binding factors. Thus, the failure to express IL-2 during the induction of T cell anergy may be attributed to the absence of these two transcription factors. When anergized T cells are restimulated with antigen and conventional APC, they induce the transcription factors associated with IL-2 expression, but they fail to synthesize measurable IL-2. Taken together, these data indicate that the control of IL-2 gene expression during anergy induction and during normal stimulation of anergized cells are distinct, and suggest the presence of additional regulatory elements in the IL-2 gene.


ABSTRACT A major unknown in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) vaccine design is the efficacy of antibodies in preventing mucosal transmission of R5 viruses. These viruses, which use CCR5 as a coreceptor, appear to have a selective advantage in transmission of HIV-1 in humans. Hence R5 viruses predominate during primary infection and persist throughout the course of disease in most infected people. Vaginal challenge of macaques with chimeric simian/human immunodeficiency viruses (SHIV) is perhaps one of the best available animal models for human HIV-1 infection. Passive transfer studies are widely used to establish the conditions for antibody protection against viral challenge. Here we show that passive intravenous transfer of the human neutralizing monoclonal antibody b12 provides dose-dependent protection to macaques vaginally challenged with the R5 virus SHIV162P4. Four of four monkeys given 25 mg of b12 per kg of body weight 6 h prior to challenge showed no evidence of viral infection (sterile protection). Two of four monkeys given 5 mg of b12/kg were similarly protected, whereas the other two showed significantly reduced and delayed plasma viremia compared to control animals. In contrast, all four monkeys treated with a dose of 1 mg/kg became infected with viremia levels close to those for control animals. Antibody b12 serum concentrations at the time of virus challenge corresponded to approximately 400 (25 mg/kg), 80 (5 mg/kg), and 16 (1 mg/kg) times the in vitro (90%) neutralization titers. Therefore, complete protection against mucosal challenge with an R5 SHIV required essentially complete neutralization of the infecting virus. This suggests that a vaccine based on antibody alone would need to sustain serum neutralizing antibody titers (90%) of the order of 1:400 to achieve sterile protection but that lower titers, around 1:100, could provide a significant benefit. The significance of such substerilizing neutralizing antibody titers in the context of a potent cellular immune response is an important area for further study.


Muslim Americans, Islam, and the "War on Terrorism" at Home and Abroad Bin Laden, Islam, and America's New "War on Terrorism," by As'ad AbuKhalil. New York: Seven Stories/Open Media, 2002. 106 pages. $8.95 paper. Namaste Sharon: Hindutva and Sharonism Under U.S. Hegemony, by Vijay Prashad. New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2003. 111 pages. Rs. 75. Civil Rights in Peril: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims, ed. by Elaine C. Hagopian. London, UK and Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2004. xi + 238 pages. Notes to p. 308. Index to p. 318. Contribs. $75 cloth; $22.95 paper. Muslims' Place in the American Public Square: Hope, Fears and Aspirations, ed. by Zahid Bukhari, Sulayman Nyang, Mumtaz Ahmad, and John Esposito. New York: AltaMira Press, 2004. xlii + 379 pages. Index to p. 394. $75 cloth; $29.95 paper. Since the events of September 11, 2001 there has been an outpouring of writing and scholarship that focuses on the relationship of Muslim Americans to the United States (the nation) and the relationship between the United States (the state) and the countries involved in the "war on terrorism." Although some of these works address the construction of Muslim American identity as a process shaped by both domestic and international factors, most of these books have not taken into account the simultaneous effects of domestic and international geopolitical pressures on Muslim American identity. Today, Muslim Americans reside in an arena where the multiculturalist debate about the politics of cultural inclusion in the United States coexists with the domestic "profiling" of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian Americans as well as the particular political agenda and military interventions of the United States in the Middle East and South Asia. Four new works provide critical perspectives and important information that shed light on the political implications of the construction of "Muslim-ness" and the "Muslim world" in the post-9/11 era, and even earlier, in the context of US interests in the Middle East and South Asia and the US government's profiling of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian Americans. While the domestic war on terrorism targets both Muslims and Arabs, and also South Asians, in the United States, there is often a conflation of "Muslim" and "Arab" identities, both in public and academic discourse. Two of the books we review here focus specifically on Islam in their titles, while the other two works address questions of Islam and Islamophobia in the context of Arab and South Asian nation-states. The categories of "Muslim," "Muslim American," and the "Muslim world" are political constructions that sometimes elide factors such as the specific history of the relationships of Arabs and of Arab and South Asian nation-states to the United States. THE DOMESTIC "WAR ON TERRORISM" Two recent monographs brilliantly illuminate the challenges Muslim Americans have faced in the United States both before and after 9-11: Civil Rights in Peril: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims, edited by Elaine C. Hagopian, and Muslims ' Place in the American Public Square: Hopes, Fears and Aspirations, edited by Zahid Bukhari et al. Although these books address the key issues and concerns facing Muslim Americans today, each book captures from a different angle the multiple obstacles that Muslims must overcome on a daily basis. Muslims ' Place in the American Public Square discloses, in an elaborate and sophisticated manner, what it means to be Muslim in America today. Chapters in this volume, written by authoritative scholars on the Muslim American community, outline the multiple factors that shape the civic and political life of Muslim Americans. Recognizing that Islam is both new and old and local and global, this compilation of essays enriches our understanding about what it means to be Muslim in the United States. The average Muslim is concerned about a plethora of issues that arise in everyday life experiences. …


The growing parallel development of mobile learning and of service oriented architecture approaches can modify the way to conceive, deploy and use learning management system. One of the main problems in combining these approaches is in the integration of learning services while taking into account the user interactions. The Ubi-Learn platform aims to provide an intermediation between services and user accessibility to the LMS. In this paper, we explain the methodology we follow to integrate services. For this, we take the example of an e-Portfolio service. We show the entire life-cycle departing from the task models to the multi-channel access.


A growing awareness within the real estate sector about how much the business is peopledriven and how diverse the workforce actually is underscores the need for studies on people management within the sector. Remuneration programmes are important tools in this regard; however, studies on these programmes have focused almost exclusively on senior executives, and little has been done on real estate firms in particular. This paper reports a survey of reward schemes within real estate firms in Sweden. The study was done using a postal questionnaire survey. The paper identifies the motives for using reward plans as well as exploring the various types of reward items in use. The reward plans used by the firms were analyzed from a total compensation perspective. The survey points to the fact that while most of the firms use standard pay and benefits packages, there is little or no emphasis on learning and development for non-managers and almost no involvement of non-managers in determining variable pay component of the total reward package. The survey also finds a disproportionate use of financial performance measures among firms that implement some form of variable pay as part of their reward schemes. The conclusion of the study is that firms in the real estate sector in Sweden probably underestimate or may not be sufficiently aware of the motivational impacts of two components of the total rewards package, namely learning and development as well as the work environment. The sectoris ability to retain and motivate critical talent is probably being compromised. In addition, the focus on using mainly financial performance measures, which are essentially historical, may imply that reward programs are not being oriented enough towards ensuring future long-term financial performance of the firms.


This essay addresses a serious deficiency in the literature on women and politics in the United States today: the lack of attention to regional variation and, more specifically, the absence of research on women's representation in New England. This deficiency is particularly troubling since political analysts of all stripes typically portray New England as imbued with ideological, individual, and structural characteristics likely to lead to rates of political representation higher than the nation as a whole. This essay provides a brief history of women in politics for New England as a whole; describes the current status of women at congressional, statewide, state legislative, and municipal levels of government in each of the states (with a comparison to other regions and the nation as a whole); and analyzes the prospects for increasing women's political representation in the region. This essay concludes that it is unlikely that the New England states will achieve anything close to parity in the higher-level offices if the numbers do not increase substantially in the city or town councils, boards of selectmen, boards of aldermen, and other local governing bodies.


The blueprint for hair follicles, sweat glands, nails and teeth is laid down during embryonic development. This process starts with the formation of thickenings of the epidermal layer, called placodes. These are brought about by reciprocal signaling between the epithelial cells and the underlying mesenchyme. In humans, the inability to properly produce or pattern these placodes leads to diseases referred to as the ectodermal dysplasias (EDs).

Approximately, 200 distinct ectodermal dysplasias have been described in the literature. These disorders encompass a spectrum of developmental abnormalities of skin, hair, teeth, nails and sweat glands. Recent molecular studies have now begun to provide new insight into the pathogenesis of several ectodermal dysplasias. Indeed, over 30 EDs have been characterized through molecular analysis.

In the present study, five consanguineous, multigeneration Pakistani families with various types of EDs have been ascertained. Three of these families (A, B and C) were segregating autosomal recessive ED of hair and nail type while the other two families (D and E) were segregating autosomal recessive hypohidrotic ED. Pure hair and nail ED is a rare congenital disorder characterized by trichodysplasia (hypotrichosis, partial, or total alopecia) and dystrophy of finger and toe nails with no other associated abnormality. Various clinical forms of the disorder have been reported, the molecular bases of which are entirely unknown. To identify the gene underlying the hair and nail ED phenotype in the three Pakistani families (A, B and C), microsatellite markers from candidate gene regions were genotyped and two-point and multipoint parametric linkage analysis was performed.

In family A, the disease locus was mapped to a 16.6-centimorgan region on chromosome 12q12-q14.1 (Zmax = 8.2). The locus harbors six type II hair keratin genes. DNA sequence analysis revealed a homozygous missense mutation in the hair matrix and cuticle keratin KRTHB5, leading to substitution of a conserved arginine residue with histidine (R78H), located in the head domain. This mutation provides the first direct evidence in the molecular pathogenesis of pure hair-nail ectodermal dysplasias.

In family B, significant evidence of linkage was obtained for markers linked to type II keratin gene cluster on chromosome 12q13.13 (Zmax = 3.1). The linkage interval in this family maps to a 29.5 cM region according to the Marshfield genetic map. Sequence

analysis of the coding exons and splice junction sites of the hair keratin genes including KRTHBl, KRTHB3, KRTHB5 and KRTHB6, present in the disease interval, failed to identify a pathogenic mutation. These data suggest that the mutation may lie in a regulatory region of one of these hair keratin genes or in another gene within the linkage interval of family B on chromosome 12pll.l-q2l.1. In family C, the gene for pure hair and nail ED has been assigned to chromosome l7p 12q21.2. Significant evidence of linkage to this chromosomal region was found with multipoint Zmax > 4 at several markers. Haplotype analysis located the ED locus in a 24.2 cM genetic interval between markers D17S839 and D17S1299. The disease interval contains six epithelial keratin genes (KRT25A, KRT25B, KRT25C, KRT25D, KRT24 and KRTIO), and a homeobox gene (WHN). DNA sequence analysis of the coding exons and the splice junction sites of five epithelial keratin genes (KRT25A-KRT25D and KRT24) failed to reveal any sequence aberration in the affected individuals. However, the mutation may lie in a regulatory region of one of these epithelial keratin candidate genes.

Hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia (HED) is a genetic disease characterized by abnormal hair, teeth, and sweat gland development that may lead to life-threatening hyperthermia. Although most cases of HED display X-linked recessive inheritance, autosomal dominant and autosomal recessive forms also exist. X-linked HED is caused by mutations in the EDA gene, and the autosomal forms result from mutations in either the EDAR or EDARADD gene. In the present study, the molecular defect underlying autosomal recessive HED in eight patients belonging to two Pakistani families (D and E) has been investigated. Genotyping results showed linkage in both the families to the EDAR locus. DNA sequence analysis of EDAR gene in the two families led to the identification of two novel mutations. In family D, a missense mutation, replacing a non-polar glycine with polar serine (G382S) occurs in the death domain (DD), encoded by exon 12, of EDAR. In family E, sequence analysis revealed a four base pair deletion (718delAAAO) in exon 8 of the EDAR gene.


We analyze the potential impact of continuing the existing U.S. sugar program, replacing it with a standard program, and implementing the standard program with multilateral trade liberalization. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), duty-free sugar imports from Mexico will undermine the program's ability to operate on a "no-cost" basis to U.S. taxpayers. As the Mexican beverage industry is likely to expand considerably its high-fructose corn syrup use, the sugar thereby displaced will seek a market in the United States. Under these conditions, marketing allotments could not be utilized under current legislation and prices would likely fall to the loan rate. The government would accumulate significant sugar stocks. The replacement of the current sugar program by one similar to other major U.S. crop programs would solve the problem of stock accumulation and accommodate further trade liberalization under a new World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement or future bilateral trade agreements. Our analysis of recent WTO proposals suggests that a WTO agreement is unlikely to impose significant adjustment pressures on the U.S. sugar market beyond those created by NAFTA. The adoption of a standard program would make it easier for the United States to meet its commitments under a new WTO agreement in terms of reductions in trade-distorting amber-box support. Moving to a standard program would increase the costs of the program for taxpayers but would lower costs for sugar users. Given reasonable assumptions about program parameters, the principal program cost would likely be through direct payments rather than through countercyclical or loan-deficiency payments. These costs could be lower than the maximum estimated here, because of limitations on payments to individual producers. KEYWORDS: DOHA, NAFTA, POLICY, SUGAR, U.S. SUGAR PROGRAM.


As derivative securities become more complex, solution by Monte Carlo simulation is an increasingly necessary tool. But Monte Carlo methods are computationally demanding, and the size of the simulation sample required to achieve reasonable accuracy rapidly escalates beyond what is feasible given current technology when multiple stochastic factors are involved. Variance reduction techniques help considerably. One of the simplest is use of antithetic variables, which imposes on the simulated data the true constraint that the distribution from which the sample is to be drawn is symmetric. Moment matching goes further, by constraining the mean and variance of the sample to match the desired values. In this article, Wang goes further still, to show how to force simulated multivariate vectors to have the right correlations. In the first step a multivariate sample of independent variables is simulated and its sample correlation matrix is calculated. This will be close to the identity matrix but not exactly equal, due to sampling noise. Cholesky factorization of the sample correlation matrix is then used to transform the initial sample of slightly correlated factors into one whose elements are perfectly uncorrelated in the sample. A second Cholesky factorization of the target correlation matrix that is desired for the variables transforms them into a sample with exactly the correct correlations. As Wang demonstrates, this produces a sharp increase in performance for multivariate Monte Carlo problems, even when the simulation sample is constructed from nonrandom low-discrepancy sequences rather than by stochastic simulation.


Objectives:
To develop methods for mapping to preference-based measures using mixture model approaches. These methods are compared to map from the Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (AQLQ) to both EQ5D-5L and HUI-3 as the target health utility measures in an international dataset.

Methods:
Data from 856 patients with asthma collected as part of the Multi-Instrument Comparison (MIC) international project were used. Adjusted limited dependent variable mixture models (ALDVMMs) and beta-regression based mixture models were estimated. Optional inclusion of the gap between full health and the next value, and a mass point at the next feasible value were explored. Response-mapping could not be implemented due to missing data.

Results:
In all cases, model specifications which formally modelled the gap between full health and the next value were an improvement on those which did not. Mapping to HUI3 required more components in the mixture models than mapping to EQ5D-5L due to its uneven distribution. The optimal beta-based mixture models mapping to HUI3 included a probability mass at the utility value adjacent to full health. This is not the case when estimating EQ5D-5L, due to the low proportion of observations at this point.

Conclusion:
The beta-based mixture models marginally outperformed ALDVMM in this dataset when comparing models with the same number of components. This is at the expense of requiring a larger number of parameters and estimation time. Both model types are able to closely fit the data without biased characteristic of many mapping approaches. Skilled judgment is critical in determining the optimal model. Caution is required in ensuring a truly global maximum likelihood has been identified.


Time-resolved Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was used to investigate the structural differences between cold- and melt-crystallized poly(trimethylene terephthalate) (PTT) samples. To elucidate the arrangement of different chain segments in the crystalline phase obtained through different crystallization processes, characteristic bands associated with the phenylene rings, the CH2 segments, and the C–O–C segments were followed during the cold and the melt crystallizations. The results show that the alignment of the phenylene rings and the C=O) groups in the PTT crystals produced via cold- and melt-crystallization processes are essentially the same, while the alignment of the CH2 segments depends on the crystallization condition. It was found that the CH2 segments in the melt-crystallized sample were more stable than those in the cold-crystallized sample. This was ascribed to the different crystallization environment. Melt-crystallized PTT chains have higher mobility, and the variation of flexible segments is quicker than that of the rigid segments. However, in cold crystallization, the CH2 segments are restricted by the adjacent environment in the glass state, which weakens their capability of transforming their conformation; this leads to a cooperative change of CH2 segments, phenylene rings, and C=O groups. Therefore, the stability of CH2 segments in crystalline structure is lowered accordingly.


This study is an examination of three proposals for a \"causal joint\" model of God\'s action in the world. Adapting the thought of Austin Farrer and David Burrell, the author seeks to show how these hypotheses are theologically flawed. The flaws stem from an overemphasis on the doctrine of creatio continua. Without an affirmation of both creatio ex nihilo and creatio continua, the latter is mistakenly removed from its theological context and adds unnecessary incoherence to the doctrine of creation.


Background: Men who have sex with men (MSM) are disproportionately affected by HIV in Vietnam. Regardless of international and national agencies' efforts, the HIV epidemic in MSM has been increasing in recent years. Novel and evidence-based HIV antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) maybe needed to combat the HIV epidemic among this population in Vietnam. This study aims to identify how MSM accept the use of PrEP as an HIV prevention method and their ability to pay for it. Method: This is a cross-sectional study of 373 MSM seeking HIV testing in a community-based HIV clinic in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from January to April 2016. Potential participants were briefly informed about ethical considerations, screened for eligibility, and signed an informed consent form when selected. Face-to-face interviews were conducted by the clinic's staff. Descriptive and analytical analysis was performed by STATA 13.0. Results: Of 373 participants, only 92 men (24.7%) reported having known about PrEP. Out of 360 men who were questioned about their acceptance of PrEP as an HIV prevention method, 274 (76.1%) embraced the use of PrEP. The median maximum affordable monthly PrEP cost was one million Vietnam Dong (VND) (equivalent to US$43) and the median average affordable monthly PrEP cost was 0.5 million VND (approximately $21.7). The majority of men (68.8%) could afford an average of less than $43 a month for PrEP. Conclusion: There is a relatively high level of PrEP acceptance among MSM in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. To increase PrEP acceptance, raising awareness and understanding of PrEP is recommended. To expand PrEP interventions in Vietnam, the target population's ability to pay should be a key focus.


Sequence data are increasingly shared to enable mining applications, in various domains such as marketing, telecommunications, and healthcare. This, however, may expose sensitive sequential patterns, which lead to intrusive inferences about individuals or leak confidential information about organizations. This paper presents the first permutation-based approach to prevent this threat. Our approach hides sensitive patterns by replacing them with carefully selected permutations that avoid changes in the set of frequent nonsensitive patterns (side-effects) and in the ordering information of sequences (distortion). By doing so, it retains data utility in sequence mining and tasks based on item set properties, as permutation preserves the support of items, unlike deletion, which is used in existing works. To realize our approach, we develop an efficient and effective algorithm for generating permutations with minimal side-effects and distortion. This algorithm also avoids implausible symbol orderings that may exist in certain applications. In addition, we propose a method to hide sensitive patterns from a sequence dataset. Extensive experiments verify that our method allows significantly more accurate data analysis than the state-of the-art approach.


The ability to accurately model a sentence at varying stages (e.g., word-phrase-sentence) plays a central role in natural language processing. As an effort towards this goal we propose a self-adaptive hierarchical sentence model (AdaSent). AdaSent effectively forms a hierarchy of representations from words to phrases and then to sentences through recursive gated local composition of adjacent segments. We design a competitive mechanism (through gating networks) to allow the representations of the same sentence to be engaged in a particular learning task (e.g., classification), therefore effectively mitigating the gradient vanishing problem persistent in other recursive models. Both qualitative and quantitative analysis shows that AdaSent can automatically form and select the representations suitable for the task at hand during training, yielding superior classification performance over competitor models on 5 benchmark data sets.


Common to recent accounts of atheism in continental philosophy is the conviction that much recent theological engagement – notably the work of John D. Caputo – has not taken sufficient recognition of the deep, radical, character of these passionate philosophical atheisms. In this paper I propose that the 9 critiques of Caputo's over-quick theological co-option of Heidegger and Derrida (and more recently Deleuze and Badiou) are well founded; but that this analysis ought by no means to deny the possibility for an alternative – more radical and more Tillichian – theological correlation to radical continental philosophical atheism.
Central to my argument is an appreciation of quite how little radical continental philosophical atheisms have to do with a denial of the existence of God. Instead, properly philosophical atheisms are concerned with ontological and metaphysical questions of the interpretation of being and the nature of life. As such, I argue that a theological response that seeks to co-opt such atheistic philosophy whilst carefully exempting a "genuine" theology – variously articulated as "non-idolatrous", "non-metaphysical" or "non-ontotheological" - is profoundly misguided and fails to respond substantively to the real a-theological force of these philosophical atheisms. Instead, I wish to propose the outlines of a radically Tillichian theological correlation to these philosophical atheisms – one which is, I suggest, foreshadowed by a distinction Caputo himself draws between "radical" and "confessional" theologies. The key to such a correlation lies in Tillich's own radical revisionary theology that enables us to think (or at least clears some of the conceptual space for such thinking) of an "atheistic theology" that returns us to the primordial piety of the unconditioned without succumbing to the comforting fidelities of the religions


for advanced riser analysis. Deep water oil recovery have forced a change in the systems used to tension risers, the traditional wire-pulley systems are replaced with direct acting hydraulic-pneumatic systems. In order to design these systems to obtain the desired operability, analysis tools including the heave compensation system is necessary. As a result a pipe in pipe RIFLEX model have been developed. In this masters thesis the pipe in pipe model will be used to investigate drive-off and weak link fracture. Both subjects investigated exposes the riser to large forces, and will push the model to its limits. Another part of the thesis is focused around batch execution of analyses with the use of MATLAB. The focus of the drive-off study lies mainly in investigating the dynamic behaviour of a deep water riser (3000[m] water depth) compared to a shallow water riser (300[m] water depth). Results are presented for upstream and downstream drive off scenarios. The maximum offset is 100[m] obtained during a 50[s] period. Driveoff scenarios include cases where the vessel remains at the 100[m] offset, and cases where the vessel returns to its original position. Drive-off simulations revealed large differences in dynamic behaviour of the deep water versus the shallow water system. When observing the lower riser angle for shallow water simulations, the angle were closely related to the vessel offset position. Deep water simulations showed a delay of almost one minute before the lower angle responded with a rotation in the vessels movement direction. During the first minute an initial effect that caused the riser to rotate away from the vessel position was observed. Current had a limiting effect on the lower angle when driving upstream, and increased the angle for downstream drive-off. By including a return motion the riser angle increased more rapidly to large values. Variation in return motion had little effect on the maximum amplitude. The results show that it might be difficult to take advantage of the dynamic delay in the riser response. Bear in mind that offsets of only 100[m] was investigated, the picture might change for simulations including larger vessel offset. Weak link fracture is of concern since it will release large amounts of stored energy that is potentially harmful for personnel and equipment. Establishing analysis methods for weak link fracture can help to better understand the dynamics of the problem. In the present work a suitable analysis model was selected and a parametric study on the effect of drag on response was performed. A weak link fracture was simulated with 460 tonnes over pull. Weak link fractures is a highly complex problem since the high pressure content of the riser is released into the water, causing a rocket effect. The presented results are only accounting for potential energy stored as strain in the riser and heave compensation system. A parametric study of the tangential drag versus the maximum vertical amplitude of the riser is presented. The results are meant to be used as a starting point in an investigation of measures to limit the weak link fracture response. The weak link simulations showed that large accelerations are involved during the weak link fracture, and therefore added mass and mass can be of importance to the response. Due to the rapid movement after fracture, it was found that special care needs to be taken when selecting the time incrementation for the simulations.


Nordic historians have asserted for a long time that in the Nordic countries only few people, if any, perceived increased threats of war prior to the World War II outbreak. This would explain, and possibly excuse, why their governments did not mobilize their armies until it was too late. This paper questions this established notion by deriving new estimates of widely held war threat assessments from the fluctuations of sovereign market yields collected from all Nordic bond markets at this period. Our results show that the Nordic contemporaries indeed perceived significant war risk increases around the time of major war-related geopolitical events. While these findings hence question some, but not all, of the standard Nordic World War II historiography, they also demonstrate the value of analyzing historical market prices to reassess the often tacit views and opinions of large groups of people in the past.


The methodology presented here is currently being used in the design of Standard Automated Financial System (STAFS), which is a large scale business system for use by the 14 Naval Laboratories across the nation. The system will be operational in 1987-1988 time-frame. The methodology presented is suitable for all transaction oriented systems. It enforces documentation of design at all levels of system development process allowing managers and users a high visibility into the design. It highlights the human engineering aspects of system design and utilizes thread definition, data designer, and structured design techniques. The methodology requires the use of system verification diagrams which specify the user requirements. The design produces an integrated database with security mechanisms to restrict unauthorized users from accessing data they are not authorized to use. The threads also serve as a useful tool for system testing.


The existence and causes behind the perceived differences between genders in mathematics is the purpose of this research project. An in depth look at previously undertaken research on the matter defines the layout and approach of the investigation, taking into careful consideration ethical issues, ensuring all ethical procedures are thoroughly considered. This leads to an interview process involving 20 undergraduate mathematics students (10 male, 10 female). During this interview, the GCSE and A level grades are obtained to scrutinise any differences in achievement. The interview questions are organised into themes such as attitudes, self-assessment, experiences with failure and knowledge of existing stereotypes. No tangible evidence was found to suggest any differences in ability in terms of grades obtained. However, there were noticeable differences when it came to the effects of failure and stereotypes.


Purpose. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of load and intensity of effort-matched concentric and eccentric knee extension training on isometric strength. Methods. Unilateral isometric torque was measured using a MedX knee extension after which eleven recreationally trained females performed both concentric-only (CONC) and eccentric-only (ECC) unilateral knee extension exercise once per week for 8 weeks. Participants performed a single set of both CONC and ECC exercise load matched at 80% of maximum isometric torque for each condition. All participants exercised to repetition maximum in both CONC and ECC conditions at a pace of ~3 s duration for each muscle action. This ensured that participants exercised to the same intensity of effort for both CONC and ECC training interventions. Results. Analyses revealed significant increases in isometric torque for both CONC (14.8%) and ECC (13.0%) conditions (p 0.05). Effect sizes are reported as 0.60 (CONC) and 0.53 (ECC). In addition, analyses revealed significantly greater mean total training volume for ECC compared with CONC conditions (15903 vs. 8091, respectively; p < 0.001). Conclusions. The present findings indicate that, when matched for intensity of effort, both CONC and ECC knee extension exercise can significantly improve strength to the same
extent. This supports previous research that load and repetitions are not as important as intensity of effort in resistance exercise.


Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) is a popular technique for modeling computational electrodynamics, and is used within many research areas, such as the development of antennas, ultrasound imaging, and seismic wave propagation. Simulating large domains can however be very compute and memory demanding, which has motivated the use of cluster computing, and lately also the use of Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). The previous work of Andreas Berg Skomedal's master thesis from May 2013 includes a heterogeneous FDTD implementation, in the sense that it schedules domains between a CPU and a GPU on a single system. The implementation is a benchmarking code based on the Yee_bench code by Ulf Andersson, and focuses on the performance of simulating many small individual FDTD domains. This thesis introduces a new FDTD implementation based on the work by Skomedal and Andersson. The code is written in C++ and CUDA, and uses a decomposition approach as opposed to scheduling, which allows for larger domains to be divided among multiple execution units. It supports the use of both a CPU and several CUDA capable GPUs on a single system, in addition to multi-node execution through the use of the Message Passing Interface (MPI). A discussion of the differences between the CUDA capable GPU architectures, and how they affect the performance of the FDTD algorithm, is also included. The results shows a performance increase of 66% when simulating large domains on two GPUs compared to a single GPU. Using the CPU in addition to one or two fast GPUs is shown to give a slight improvement, but the main advantage is the possibility to simulate larger domains. Results from multi-node executions is also included, but they refer to poor performance values, due to being severely limited by a 100 Mbit/s Ethernet. The work of this thesis includes a working FDTD decomposition implementation, that can be executed on a cluster of heterogeneous systems with a multi-core CPU, and one or several CUDA capable GPUs. It is also written with the intention that it should be easily extendable to also work with non-CUDA capable GPUs. As with the previous work by Skomedal and Andersson, this implementation is only a benchmarking code, and is not suited for real world problems. It is instead intended to be used as a basis for future works, or as an example on how to do FDTD on a cluster of heterogeneous multi-GPU systems.


Management of plant pests is probably the most serious challenge in sustainable food production and
the maintenance of food security. Due to the strict regulation of or ban on major categories of
pesticide, the potato cyst nematode Globodera pallida has been managed by a combination of crop
rotation and the potato resistance locus Grp1, a relatively narrow range resistance gene which was
introgressed into a range of commercial potato cultivars in Europe. However, in 2014, G. pallida
populations were described that can no longer be controlled by Grp1. Most likely similar highly virulent
populations will also emerge in all major potato growing areas in North Western Europe where
production practices are very similar. Except for laborious, costly and often moderately accurate pot
experiments, there is currently no rapid and reliable method to identify virulent populations. This
represents a strong limitation and prevents an accurate and durable management of infestations. The
PalAdapt project funded by EFSA represents the first step of a European battle plan against the
emergence of virulent G. pallida populations and aims at improving the methods and tools for a fast
identification of virulence outbreaks. Four main research questions were investigated during the
project: (i) Do resistance breaking populations correspond to novel introductions into Europe? (ii) Can
miniaturized in vitro tests be used to get more rapidly an accurate identification of the virulence
status?, (iii) Is cyst size a life history trait useful to estimate the virulence status of a population?, (iv)
Can we identify polymorphism to design molecular tools for an accurate virulence monitoring? The
EFSA partnering grants initiative was an accurate way to improve the EU risk assessment capacity
through a knowledge exchange among partners having complementary resources and expertise.


This book is a complete course in the art of drum programming and the concepts and technologies behind it. It takes the reader from the earliest steps in using a digital audio workstation, through the development of an individual sound signature, and on to the achievement of professional results. Designed to accommodate users of any major drum programming application, it explores: the history of rhythm programming, digital audio workstations and how to use them, one-shot MIDI programming, samplers, romplers, advanced timing for swing and beat-mapping, loops and audio, creating drum sounds by subtractive synthesis, and production and FX. It culminates with detailed guidance on the creation of drum tracks for specific musical styles, ranging from pop and rock to jazz, reggae, drum 'n' bass, and glitch. The course unfolds through extensive use of workstation screenshots and audio examples. Along the way, helpful tips and practical exercises keep students motivated and engaged.


Extracted from text ... A
Total leadership:
instilling spirit in teams
Rakesh Sondhi, who has written a series
of articles on strategy over the past few
months, is now also contribute a 15 part
series on leadership. This is another
article in this series. Sondhi is visiting
executive faculty at Henley Management
College and managing director of BMC
Global Services based in the UK. He
visits South Africa regularly. Sondhi is
the author of Business Improvement for
Learning and Transformation and Total
Strategy - see www.bmcglobalservices
.com.
32 Management Today Yearbook 2007
As a reminder, the objectives of leadership
are to develop long ..


This project furthered the development of three strategies that could positively impact maintaining post-seismic operations of lifeline corridors. In Year 1, most of the focus was on the development of the three individual strategies. In Year 2, a follow-up project will include more formal assessments of the situation in which each strategy might be preferred. The first part of the investigation, performed at Oregon State University, assessed the use of high strength reinforcement (HSS) for use in reinforced concrete (RC) columns.HSS is not currently allowed in RC due to lack of information on the material characteristics and lack of performance information when used in columns. But potential benefits in construction, performance, and economics justify the need for research, especially for critical corridors. Results indicate that a column constructed with Grade 80 HSS reinforcement performs similar to column constructed with conventional Grade 60 reinforcement. The second part of the investigation, performed at the University of Washington, focused on a new type of connection between a precast concrete column and a cast-in-place drilled shaft. The column is precast with a roughened outer surface at the bottom of the column which will be embedded in the cast-in-place shaft. The connection can be built rapidly and allows generous construction tolerances. Building on two previous tests, a third quasi-static scaled connection test between a precast bridge column and a drilled shaft was performed to investigate the seismic performance of the new connection. The geometry of the test specimen was based on the minimum practical difference between the diameters of the shaft and the column, and so represented the most critical cases. The performance of the system was investigated up to a drift ratio of 10%. The experimental results showed that, if adequate confining steel is included in the splice zone, the plastic hinging mechanism forms in the column, without incurring damage in the splice zone or shaft. If the confinement is insufficient, the strength of the splice zone deteriorates rapidly with cyclic loading. Recommendations for transverse reinforcement in the transition area are provided to ensure desirable performance. The third part of the investigation, also performed at the University of Washington, focused on the performance of concrete filled steel tubes (CFST), with specific focus on connections to precast concrete piers and pile caps. CFSTs have the potential to improve performance in seismic events and decrease overall costs. CFSTs may be used for bridge piers, shafts, caissons, and columns, but their use is limited because American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) design specifications for CFSTs are dated and few validated, constructible connections exist. Part 3 of this report (Part 3) compares current CFST design provisions to experimental results, noting limitations and deficiencies. Improved provisions proposed for the AASHTO specifications and partly based on the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) provisions are summarized. CFST connections are also addressed. A foundation connection capable of developing the full composite capacity of a CFST was evaluated experimentally and initial study of CFST column-to-cap beam connections was conducted using numerical simulation. Both are effective in developing and transferring the full capacity of the CFST and are summarized.


Farm and industry workers are a growing population in the United States (U.S.) and are critical to the success of the agriculture industry. In 1993, the Migrant Legal Services estimated that there were 42,000 migrant and seasonal farm workers in the state of Virginia (Wilson, 1998). These workers are essential in the state's production of fruits, vegetable crops, and poultry. The 1995 National Agricultural Worker Survey (NAWS) indicated that 80% of farm workers in the U.S. are of Latino origin. Data from the Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (HHANES) reveals that Hispanics in the U.S. are at a greater risk for developing serious health problems, such as tuberculosis, cancer, diabetes mellitus, and hypertension, than the general population (HHANES, 1990). Latino farm and industry workers are reported to be at a high risk or developing nutrition-related health problems as a result of their low socioeconomic status and migratory lifestyles (Loria et al., 1995). Farm and industry workers also are at an increased risk of food insecurity due to low incomes, low literacy, poor health, migratory lifestyles, and lack of transportation (Shotland, 1989). The evidence from the literature suggest that long work hours, low wages, inconsistent work opportunities, and linguistic and cultural barriers may make it difficult for Latino farm/industry workers to meet their nutritional needs (Kowalski et al., 1999). About 30% to 40% of the Latino population fails to meet the minimum nutrient standards of the World Health Organization primarily due to poverty (Kittler and Suchar, 1998). A study was conducted to assess the nutrition, health, and food security problems, concerns, and perceived barriers of Latino farm/industry workers in Virginia because Virginia Cooperative Extension is concerned about the nutrition and health status of this important agricultural workforce. Triangulation techniques employing qualitative (focus group discussions and participatory activities) and quantitative (questionnaires) methodologies were utilized. Six focus group sessions were conducted with a total of 51 Latino farm/industry workers. Lack of money, time, transportation, and linguistic barriers were predominant themes that emerged from the focus group discussions related to health and nutrition concerns and barriers. Farm workers reported osteoporosis, anemia, urinary tract infections, and HIV/AIDS as top health concerns. Industry workers indicated gastritis, arthritis, and cancer as their top health concerns. Apples, bananas, oranges, and watermelon were the most commonly consumed fruits. Beans, tomatoes/onions, potatoes, and chili peppers were the most commonly consumed vegetables. Participants indicated that they preferred learning about health and nutrition from non-interactive sources, such as cassettes, radio, brochures, and television, due to lack of time and their migratory lifestyles. The Cornell/Radimer Food Security Questionnaire was administered to assess hunger and food insecurity. Approximately 98% of the 49 Latino farm and industry workers surveyed suffer from food insecurity. Females were more food insecure when compared to males. Data obtained from this study will be used to develop useful and culturally appropriate nutrition education strategies to improve dietary habits and overall health and nutrition status of Latino farm/industry workers and their families.


The thirteenth-century allegorical dream vision, the Roman de la Rose, transformed how medieval literary texts engaged with philosophical ideas. Written in Old French, its influence dominated French, English and Italian literature for the next two centuries, serving in particular as a model for Chaucer and Dante. Jean de Meun's section of this extensive, complex and dazzling work is notable for its sophisticated responses to a whole host of contemporary philosophical debates. This collection brings together literary scholars and historians of philosophy to produce the most thorough, interdisciplinary study to date of how the Rose uses poetry to articulate philosophical problems and positions. This wide-ranging collection demonstrates the importance of the poem for medieval intellectual history and offers new insights into the philosophical potential both of the Rose specifically and of medieval poetry as a whole.


In 1961, when the Krasinski Palace (the Palace of the Republic) was rebuilt, it was given to the National Library's use. All the departments of the Division of Special Collections were placed in the Palace, including the map department. In 1963 the government made a decision to construct a new building for the National Library of Poland. In the beginning it was planned to move all the collections from the buildings, which they had occupied before, placed in three different districts of Warsaw (including the Division of Special Collections) to the new National Library's building. Its construction started in 1977. But during the works on the site and the move of the collections of books and periodicals dating from the 19th and 20th centuries, it became obvious that those departments, and in particular, their collections, took up too much space, and there was no room for them all. So new plans of enlarging the new building of the National Library were made, but the economic crisis which we are now going through in our country has postponed its development until the distant future. Until now, there is still a remaining part of the Division of Special Collections in the Krasinski Palace, the departments which preserve collections of manuscripts, early printed books, graphics and drawings. Special grand exhibitions are also held in the beautiful baroque rooms there.


From 2010 to 2012, a team of academic and civil society researchers conducted extensive ethnographies of litigants, judges, lawyers, and courtroom personnel within multiple districts in three states: Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Himachal Pradesh. This Article provides an in-depth account of the everyday struggles these actors face in the pursuit of their respective objectives. The findings illustrate a complex matrix of variables — including infrastructure, staffing, judicial training and legal awareness, costs and continuances, gender and caste discrimination, power imbalances, intimidation and corruption, miscellaneous delays, and challenges with specialized forums — impact access to justice in the lower tier. The results of this study offer competing yet complementary narratives. On one hand, there is immense despair, frustration, and anger among the various sets of respondents about the current state of the lower tier. At the same time, however, there is great hope and optimism among individuals who work in the judicial sphere, as well as litigants desperately seeking to gain relief from long-endured grievances, toward what the lower tier can offer. Indeed, if the lower tier is empowered with greater resources and certain perverse aspects of the legal system can be reformed, it has vast potential to promote social change that advances the socioeconomic status of India's most disadvantaged groups.


In recent years, photographers around the globe have begun to break the conventional linear sequence in the construction of photographic texts, opting for a new wave that allows multiple narrative strategies of the real or the fictional. They fuse documents, historical photos, texts, and carefully-constructed images, taking viewers to times and places in the past, to boundaries that can or cannot be told. This kind of practice not only reflects the artists' interest and urgent desire to delve into history but also reveals the space that has been opened for photographic practices by the richness of social and cultural environments in history. In China, the research on archival art and its phenomena have appeared continuously in recent years, but it is mostly written based the theories of western scholars, such as T. R. Schellenberg, Jacques Derrida, Michael Shanks and others, and lacks discussion on archives in the political, social and cultural context of modern and contemporary China. Based on my ongoing research on the historical narrative of contemporary Chinese photography, this paper will focus on the relationship between archives and photographic art in a broader context, examining the following three interrelated archival issues: the production, dissemination, and storage of public photo archives in the 1940s; the development of the resource structure of photo archives in the recent past; and the different methods of transforming photo archives into works of art in contemporary Chinese photography.


We will prove that $R(C_4, C_4, K_4-e)=16$. This fills one of the gaps in the tables presented in a 1996 paper by Arste et al. Moreover by using computer methods we improve lower and upper bounds for some other multicolor Ramsey numbers involving quadrilateral $C_4$. We consider $3$ and $4$-color numbers, our results improve known bounds.


Men are far more likely to start new ventures than women. We argue that one explanation of this gap is that women respond differently to signals of past entrepreneurial success due to the "male hubris, female humility" effect. We argue that as a result women are disproportionately less likely to persist in second founding attempts than men when they have succeeded or failed by large margins. Using a data set of serial founders in crowdfunding, we find evidence supporting this prediction. We then turn to a unique survey of founders in crowdfunding in order to examine alternative explanations. We find support for a variety of systematic differences between male and female founders, but the persistence effect remains. While decreased persistence in the face of low quality opportunities benefits women individually, we argue that it disadvantages women as a group, as it leads to 25.3% fewer female-led foundings in our sample than would have occurred if women reacted similarly to men.


As the volume of food waste globally exceeds 30% of the world's total food supply annually, the reduction of food waste is a current priority for policy makers and researchers worldwide. Food waste is especially problematic in the tourism industry, where excessive consumption and solid waste leads to long-term negative social and environmental impacts to local communities. As food waste is 40% of the total solid waste generated by resorts, the reduction of food waste is an important component of decreasing costs in the low profit-margin tourism industry. Thus, industry and non-governmental organizations encourage social and environmentally sustainable practices, primarily though green certification programs, but such efforts have not yet resulted in significant impacts. Issues with program design and administration, lack of consumer demand, cost of program membership, and lack of program evaluative data have been cited as rational in the literature. However, the success of green certification programs in other industries, increasing consumer willingness to pay premiums for products and services using sustainable practices, and the potential for certification programs to reduce food waste shows the potential of such programs in tourism to be successful in the future. Hence, this paper provides a framework for green certification program design based upon MINDSPACE concepts from behavioral economics, where decision-making models seek to change the environment or context in which people make decisions. These contextual changes, or "nudges", lead to improved decision making, and hence, can be used to encourage firm and consumer environmental and social responsibility. Program design and certified firm specific policies which address management, employee and consumer decision making using Mindspace behavioral cues will increase the probability of future success for green certification programs in tourism.


This paper develops a new theory of possibly frivolous litigation by focusing on a plaintiff's options to unilaterally abandon a lawsuit. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(i) and its various state law counterparts permit, under certain circumstances, a plaintiff to voluntarily dismiss her lawsuit without prejudice. This paper's options approach to litigation, including quite possibly, frivolous litigation is placed in the context of the literature of economic models about litigation in general and frivolous litigation in particular. This paper demonstrates that possibly frivolous lawsuits will be filed and settled when the values of a plaintiff's options to unilaterally abandon litigation exceed the costs of purchasing those litigation-abandonment options by continuing the litigation. This paper also addresses some of the limitations of an abandonment options game-theoretic model of litigation. In particular, there is reason to believe that people have cognitive limitations in their abilities to reason backwards in sequential interactions. Empirical and experimental evidence also exists that indicates that emotions affect how people make decisions. Finally, recent psychological experiments indicate that decision makers often overvalue options and over-invest in keeping options alive, even if those options present little intrinsic value. This paper briefly explains how and why many laws and judicial doctrines effectively preclude specific legal options. Appendix A provides an accessible, non-technical, self-contained, and user-friendly primer about options for those unfamiliar with options. Appendix B contains a formal, mathematical game-theoretic analysis of a plaintiff's options to unilaterally abandon a lawsuit.


The Chinese Immigration (Exclusion) Act, passed by the Canadian government in 1923, stopped the families of Chinese labourers working in Canada from entering the country. Based on extensive interviews with Chinese women affected by the Exclusion Act, Yuen-fong Woon has written a riveting novel of their experiences told through the character of Sau-Ping. A village woman from South China, Sau-Ping marries an overseas Chinese from Canada in the late 1920s but the Exclusion Act prohibits her from joining him in Canada.For more than twenty years she remains in China, separated from her husband, taking care of his family members and struggling to survive during a turbulent period of Chinese history. To escape political persecution Sau-Ping flees to Hong Kong and spends three years enduring the appalling conditions of a refugee. With the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act she is finally reunited with her husband in Canada, but her struggle continues as she tries to rebuild her life with a husband she barely knows in an alien culture she does not understand. "The Excluded Wife" gives voice to the first generation of post-war Chinese immigrant women, capturing the tragedy, courage, and triumph of those women who made the epic journey from China to Canada. Yuen-fong Woon is professor of Pacific and Asian Studies, University of Victoria.


Cytogenetics is the branch of genetics that studies the structure of DNA within the cell nucleus. This DNA is condensed during cell division and form chromosomes. The cytogenetic studies the number and morphology of chromosomes. Using chromosome banding techniques (classical cytogenetics) or hybridization fluorescently labeled probes (molecular cytogenetics). The number and morphology of chromosomes in a cell of a particular species are always constant, in most cells of the body (with the exception of reproductive cells and others such as the liver). This is a characteristic of each specie, in humans such as the number of chromosomes is 46.


To guide economy-wide modeling efforts to identify specific public investments under Tanzania's second Agricultural Sector Development Programme (ASDP II), this report provides an analysis of the performance of the rural economy of mainland Tanzania over the period 2008 through 2015, with a focus on the agriculture sector. More broadly, we seek to assess the nature and extent of any structural transformation in the rural economy by understanding trends in various components of it. The insights gained will then be used in the economy-wide modeling work to propose portfolios of public investments to foster both agricultural development in the short term—in alignment with the ASDP-II—and, in the longer-term, a sectoral transformation of the rural economy in which far fewer households rely solely on agriculture for their livelihoods. International data sets were used to examine the macroeconomic performance of the economy of Tanzania as a whole, trade performance, trends in labor productivity by sector, and aggregate crop production. To compile information on employment and several features of agricultural production —crop and livestock production, use of inputs, and agricultural commercialization—plus food consumption patterns, we analyze data from the Tanzania National Panel Survey to generate economic performance indicators specific to the rural mainland. Encouraging trends are seen along several dimensions, including in changes in food consumption patterns, uptake of improved seed, and an increase in the share of crops harvested that are sold. However, we also see a generally stagnant agricultural sector, maize productivity levels that are scarcely moving, a seemingly moribund livestock sub-sector, and a breakdown in the provision of technical information to farmers. In sum, despite some positive signs, the rural economy in Tanzania is not yet on the threshold of significant changes in its structure. It is unlikely that rural households will soon be as likely to pursue non-agricultural livelihoods as to engage in farming. Given these findings, using the economy-wide model for Tanzania, we next will assess a range of possible public investments that might be made to accelerate the positive trends observed and to address those factors hindering Tanzania from significant economic growth and transformation, particularly in the agricultural sector.


As the web browser becomes an increasingly powerful tool for the average web user, with more features and capabilities being developed constantly, the necessity to determine which features perform better than others in the same area becomes more important. This thesis investigates the performance of three separate technologies used to achieve full-duplex real time communication over the web: short polling using Ajax, server-sent events and the WebSocket protocol. An experiment was conducted measuring the performance over three custom-built web applications (one per technology being tested), comparing latency and number of HTTP requests over 100 messages being sent through the application. Additionally, the latency measurements were made over three separate network conditions. The experiment results suggest the WebSocket protocol outperforms both short polling using Ajax and server-sent events by large margins, varying slightly depending on network conditions.


Europe is besieged from within and without by anti-liberal threats. The rise within Europe of populist-nationalist parties and renewed jihadist attacks interact with pressure from Putin's Russia, Erdogan's Turkey, and actual and aspiring despotisms in Muslim-majority countries. To varying degrees these threats are reactions to the effects of 21st-century liberalism on societies. Liberalism always has been chiefly concerned to safeguard individual autonomy or self-legislation, but the content of autonomy has shifted over two centuries. First-stage liberalism saw the chief threat to autonomy as the state; second-stage, as capital; the third-stage version now ascendant sees traditional norms and institutions as the main menace. Third-stage liberalism in Europe (and elsewhere) distributes power towards 'symbolic analysts' and away from those adept at services or manual labour. Thus the anti-liberal backlash: within Europe large numbers of people find themselves less autonomous, in the older senses of the word, and ambivalent about the newer notion of autonomy; while on Europe's periphery many find certain features of liberal societies unappealing and threatening. Defending liberalism will require not only devoting more resources to national security and mitigating the disruptions of economic openness, but revisiting what individual autonomy ought to mean in the 21st-century world.


In the wake of the #MeToo movement, companies have taken swift and severe disciplinary action against alleged harassers, raising questions in some instances as to whether their responses were justified. This Essay, prepared for the Yale L.J. Forum's symposium on the sexual harassment scholarship of Professor Vicki Schultz, argues that balancing the goals of the #MeToo movement with principles of fairness to the accused demands attention to an overlooked aspect of the problem: the status of the alleged harasser. The background rule of employment at will, coupled with employer contracting practices and the law of sexual harassment itself, produces a world in which employers are inclined to tolerate sexual harassment and other misconduct by top dog employees, but aggressively police "inappropriate" behavior by the rank-and-file. Changing the calculus will require abandonment of long-standing contracting practices that protect high-level employees and the adoption of collective bargaining-style protocols for dealing with vulnerable workers accused of harassment.


Collections of plant genetic resources stored in genebanks are an important source of genetic diversity for improvement in plant breeding programs and for conservation of natural variation. The establishment of reduced representative collections from a large set of genotypes is a valuable tool that provides cost-effective access to the diversity present in the whole set. Software like Core Hunter 3 is available to generate high quality core sets. In addition, general clustering approaches, e.g., k-medoids, are available to subdivide a large data set into small groups with maximum genetic diversity between groups. Illumina genotyping platforms are a very efficient tool for the assessment of genetic diversity of plant genetic resources. The accumulation of genotyping data over time using commercial genotyping platforms raises the question of how such huge amount of information can be efficiently used for creating core collections. In the present study, after developing a 15K wheat Infinium array with 12,908 SNPs and genotyping a set of 479 hexaploid winter wheat lines (Triticum aestivum), a larger data set was created by merging 411 lines previously genotyped with the 90K iSelect array. Overlaying the markers from the 15K and 90K arrays enabled the identification of a common set of 12,806 markers, suggesting that the 15K array is a valuable and cost-effective resource for plant breeding programs. Finally, we selected genetically diverse core sets out of these 890 wheat genotypes derived from five collections based on the common markers from the 15K and 90K SNP arrays. Two different approaches, k-medoids and Core Hunter 3 were compared,and k-medoids was identified as an efficient method for selecting small core sets out of a large collection of genotypes while retaining the genetic diversity of the original population.


We present a method for computing ambient occlusion (AO) for a stack of images of a scene from a fixed viewpoint. Ambient occlusion, a concept common in computer graphics, characterizes the local visibility at a point: it approximates how much light can reach that point from different directions without getting blocked by other geometry. While AO has received surprisingly little attention in vision, we show that it can be approximated using simple, per-pixel statistics over image stacks, based on a simplified image formation model. We use our derived AO measure to compute reflectance and illumination for objects without relying on additional smoothness priors, and demonstrate state-of-the art performance on the MIT Intrinsic Images benchmark. We also demonstrate our method on several synthetic and real scenes, including 3D printed objects with known ground truth geometry.