Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) provides an inexpensive way to support the popular shared address space programming model on networks of workstations or personal computers. Despite recent advances in SVM systems, their performance for all but coarse-grained or regular applications is not well understood. Nor is there an understanding of whether and how ne-grained, irregular programs should be written differently for SVM, with its large granularities of communication and coherence, than for the more familiar hardware coherent at cache line granularity. In this paper we try to understand the performance and programming issues for emerging, irregular applications on SVM systems. We examine performance on both an aggressive all-software system as well as one with a little hardware support in the network interface. We also present approaches to improve the performance of irregular applications at both the programming and the system level. As a result of our experiences, we identify a set of guidelines and techniques that pertain speciically to programming SVM systems, beyond the guidelines commonly used for programming hardware-coherent systems as well. We also present a further relaxation of the memory consistency model, called scope consistency, which is particularly eeective for such applications.


Broadcasting in MANET's has traditionally been based on flooding, but this can induce broadcast storms that severely degrade network performance due to redundant retransmission, collision and contention.

Probabilistic flooding, where a node rebroadcasts a newly arrived one-to-all packet with some probability, p, was an early suggestion to reduce the broadcast storm problem. The first part of this thesis investigates the effects on the performance of probabilistic flooding of a number of important MANET parameters, including node speed, traffic load and node density. It transpires that these parameters have a critical impact both on reachability and on the number of so-called "saved rebroadcast packets" achieved. For instance, across a range of rebroadcast probability values, as network density increases from 25 to 100 nodes, reachability achieved by probabilistic flooding increases from 85% to 100%. Moreover, as node speed increases from 2 to 20 m/sec, reachability increases from 90% to 100%.

The second part of this thesis proposes two new probabilistic algorithms that dynamically adjust the rebroadcasting probability contingent on node distribution using only one-hop neighbourhood information, without requiring any assistance of distance measurements or location-determination devices. The performance of the new algorithm is assessed and compared to blind flooding as well as the fixed probabilistic approach. It is demonstrated that the new algorithms have superior performance characteristics in terms of both reachability and saved rebroadcasts. For instance, the suggested algorithms can improve saved rebroadcasts by up to 70% and 47% compared to blind and fixed probabilistic flooding, respectively, even under conditions of high node mobility and high network density without degrading reachability. The final part of the thesis assesses the impact of probabilistic flooding on the performance of routing protocols in MANETs. Our performance results indicate that using our new probabilistic flooding algorithms during route discovery enables AODV to achieve a higher delivery ratio of data packets while keeping a lower routing overhead compared to using blind and fixed probabilistic flooding. For instance, the packet delivery ratio using our algorithm is improved by up to 19% and 12% compared to using blind and fixed probabilistic flooding, respectively. This performance advantage is achieved with a routing overhead that is lower by up to 28% and 19% than in fixed probabilistic and blind flooding, respectively.


Compared to serial robots, parallel kinematic machines (PKM) offer superior properties. However, modelling and analysis of PKMs are challenging tasks due to their complicated kinematic structure. In this paper methods are presented to analyze the workspace of a class of 6 degree-of-freedom (dof) PKMs with constant leg length. These methods apply interval analysis in order to calculate the orientation workspace and to verify if a certain machine covers a desired workspace. The machines are assembled from a construction kit that defines components like legs, frames, and platforms. In this paper algorithms are presented to calculate and to validate the workspace of parallel kinematic machines with constant leg length. Due to the application of interval analysis the validity of the results is guaranteed. Equations have been introduced that take into account the link interference and the limits on both articulated and passive joints. The algorithms supply orientation workspace calculation and verification at a short runtime. Therefore, it is capable for the optimization of the parameters of the Linapod which requires a large number of function evaluations


Since the PointNet was proposed, deep learning on point cloud has been the concentration of intense 3D research. However, existing point-based methods usually are not adequate to extract the local features and the spatial pattern of a point cloud for further shape understanding. This paper presents an end-to-end framework, SK-Net, to jointly optimize the inference of spatial keypoint with the learning of feature representation of a point cloud for a specific point cloud task. One key process of SK-Net is the generation of spatial keypoints (Skeypoints). It is jointly conducted by two proposed regulating losses and a task objective function without knowledge of Skeypoint location annotations and proposals. Specifically, our Skeypoints are not sensitive to the location consistency but are acutely aware of shape. Another key process of SK-Net is the extraction of the local structure of Skeypoints (detail feature) and the local spatial pattern of normalized Skeypoints (pattern feature). This process generates a comprehensive representation, pattern-detail (PD) feature, which comprises the local detail information of a point cloud and reveals its spatial pattern through the part district reconstruction on normalized Skeypoints. Consequently, our network is prompted to effectively understand the correlation between different regions of a point cloud and integrate contextual information of the point cloud. In point cloud tasks, such as classification and segmentation, our proposed method performs better than or comparable with the state-of-the-art approaches. We also present an ablation study to demonstrate the advantages of SK-Net.


The subject of this thesis is the origins and implications of the elaborate apparatus of assessment procedures which characterises educational provision in advanced industrial societies. The analysis is divided into two parts. Part I which is entitledtSociological Perspectiveslis concerned with establishing the conceptual framework for such a study. An initial review of the literature, which delineates both the need for and the scope of such an analysis, is followed by a review which draws on comparative datatto identifythe major functions of educational assessment and the way in which such functions may change their form, but not their essential purpose, in response to changing social conditions. Having identified these functions as the attestation of competence, the regulation of competition and the control of both curriculum content and educational practice, subsequent chapters in Part I examine firstly-. the way in which the characteristics of industrial society give rise to the need for such educational assessment and condition its form, and secondly, how these forms and functions differ in relation to the idiosyncratic social context of different societies. Part 11 of the thesis comprises case studies of two national education systems France and England. in which the conceptual frameworks developed in Part I are applied in some detail to two very different social contexts. Each case study offers a brief historical review of the role educational assessment procedures have played in the emergence of the characteristic features of educational provision in the two countries studied and examines their contemporary role in terms of both the individual pupil and the system as a whole. ' A final, concluding chapter discusses some of the common trends which may be identified in both countries at the present time and attempts to assess their importance for the future role that education might play in such societies".


Recently, Renault (2016) studied the dual bin packing problem in the per-request advice model of online algorithms. He showed that given $O(1/\epsilon)$ advice bits for each input item allows approximating the dual bin packing problem online to within a factor of $1+\epsilon$. Renault asked about the advice complexity of dual bin packing in the tape-advice model of online algorithms. We make progress on this question. Let $s$ be the maximum bit size of an input item weight. We present a conceptually simple online algorithm that with total advice $O\left(\frac{s + \log n}{\epsilon^2}\right)$ approximates the dual bin packing to within a $1+\epsilon$ factor. To this end, we describe and analyze a simple offline PTAS for the dual bin packing problem. Although a PTAS for a more general problem was known prior to our work (Kellerer 1999, Chekuri and Khanna 2006), our PTAS is arguably simpler to state and analyze. As a result, we could easily adapt our PTAS to obtain the advice-complexity result.
We also consider whether the dependence on $s$ is necessary in our algorithm. We show that if $s$ is unrestricted then for small enough $\epsilon > 0$ obtaining a $1+\epsilon$ approximation to the dual bin packing requires $\Omega_\epsilon(n)$ bits of advice. To establish this lower bound we analyze an online reduction that preserves the advice complexity and approximation ratio from the binary separation problem due to Boyar et al. (2016). We define two natural advice complexity classes that capture the distinction similar to the Turing machine world distinction between pseudo polynomial time algorithms and polynomial time algorithms. Our results on the dual bin packing problem imply the separation of the two classes in the advice complexity world.


Background Fertility rates in Europe are among the lowest in the world, which may be attributed to both biological and lifestyle factors. Cost and reimbursement of fertility treatments vary across Europe, although its citizens enjoy wide access to fertility care. Since few regional studies evaluating public support for fertility treatment exist, we conducted the Listening IVF and Fertility in Europe (LIFE) survey to ascertain public perception of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and gamete donation as a treatment for infertility among European men and women. Methods and findings This survey was distributed via an online questionnaire to 8,682 individuals who were voluntary participants in an online research panel residing in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, or the UK. The survey covered items to determine respondents' beliefs regarding IVF and its success, the need for public funding, the use of IVF among modern families with different lifestyles, and the support for gamete donation. Results were analyzed by age, country of origin, sex, and sexual orientation. A total of 6,110 (70% of total) men and women responded. Among all respondents, 10% had undergone IVF treatment and 48% had considered or would consider IVF in case of infertility. Respondents estimated IVF mean success rate to be 47% and over half of respondents believed that availability of IVF would encourage people to delay conception. Although 93% of respondents believed that IVF treatment should be publicly funded to some extent, a majority believed that secondary infertility or use of fertility treatments allowing to delay parenthood should be financed privately. Survey respondents believed that the mean number of stimulated IVF cycles funded publicly should be limited 2 to 3 (average 2.4). 79% of respondents were willing to pay for IVF if needed with a mean amount of 5,400 € for a child brought to life through IVF. According to respondents, mean minimum and maximum ages for IVF should be 29 and 42 years old, respectively. The current survey showed support for egg and sperm donation (78%), for IVF in single women (61%) and for same-sex female couples (64%). When analyzing the results per group (i.e., sex, age, sexual orientation, and countries), youngest age groups, homosexuals, bisexuals, German respondents, and men had similar overall positive attitudes and beliefs toward IVF and opinions on public funding. Perceived limits to availability were stronger in women. Conclusion Overall, the survey results demonstrate a positive attitude among respondents in an online panel toward IVF, gamete donation, and support for public funding for fertility treatment. These findings could potentially drive discussions between patients and prescribers to explore IVF treatment and among legislators and payers to support public funding for these procedures.


This paper presents an automatic convergence estimation method for the reinforcement learning (RL) of autonomous agents. Recently, a multi-agent robot system (MARS) that uses an RL algorithm has been studied in real-world situations. This system can obtain behaviors autonomously through multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). However, MARL takes a long time to obtain an optimal or near-optimal solution. Furthermore, the agents continued learning after obtaining of the solution may lead to overfitting. It is difficult for the MARL operator to determine whether the learning has been converged or not, because the operator has to determine the convergence of all learning agents. The convergence of the learning curve indicates that knowledge has been obtained. However, judging the convergence of RL depends on human intuition and experience, and few studies have discussed convergence estimation methods. Therefore, in this paper, we address development of an automatic convergence estimation method that does not require human judgement. In prior work, we proposed automatic convergence estimation method using fractal dimensional analysis which evaluates the learning curve of the learner as agents, and we confirmed the effectiveness of our previous method by conducting a computer simulation. In this study, we propose a method based on fractal dimensional analysis considering implementation to the robots and evaluate the effectiveness of the method by using an expanded experimental setup that considering a computer simulation and an actual mobile robot environment.


The primary function of floodplains remains to be to ensure the safe passage of flood waves. As flood control problems are serious along some river sections, this also requires international cooperation. In landscape ecology, floodplains perform two related functions: they are riparian buffer zones (vital for maintaining river water quality) on the one hand and ecological corridors (ensuring connectivity and high biodiversity) on the other. Floodplain wetlands play an important part of the ecological integrity of riverine ecosystems as they fundamentally influence the ecological status of adjacent water bodies. It is all the more important since along most of its length the Danube crosses densely inhabited areas with intensive agriculture, large-scale industries and welldeveloped communication networks. Consequently, environmental pressure on the active and protected floodplains is of considerable extent and sharp conflicts arise between different land use types. Land use types promoting the fulfilment of the riparian buffer zone function must have priority. Unfortunately, only restricted sections of the Danubian floodplain are retained in seminatural conditions. In the Danube catchment 80% of the former wetlands are now disconnected and cannot fulfil their nature conservation role. The national NATURA 2000 networks are so much dependent on seminatural riparian ecosystems that they cannot be efficient without floodplain restoration measures. Predictable climate change tendencies (increasing drought liability) are also a threat to the survival of floodplains as ecological corridors. Remediation efforts are necessary along extensive floodplain sections and better connectivity is identified as an important target. According to the Danube River Basin District Management Plan (ICPDR 2009, p. 76):"The ICPDR's basin-wide vision is that floodplains/wetlands in the entire DRBD are re-connected and restored. The integrated function of these riverine systems ensures the development of self-sustaining aquatic populations, flood protection and reduction of pollution in the DRBD."


In this thesis, we have investigated the nonlinear dynamics of low-frequency electrostatic/electromagnetic waves in a nonuniform electron-positron-ion (e-p-i) magnetoplasma with sheared ion flows. The ion dynamics is governed by the ion continuity and momentum balance equations, whereas the electrons and positrons are assumed to follow Boltzmann distributions, for electrostatic case. It is shown that the low-frequency ion-acoustic and electrostatic-drift waves can become unstable due to the ion sheared flow. In a collisional case a drift-dissipative instability can also take place. For the nonlinear case, it is shown that a quasi-stationary solution of the mode coupling equations can be represented in the form of monopolar vortex. We have also generalized the said work by considering non uniform strongly magnetized electron-positron plasma with finite ion-temperature effect and in the presence of sheared ion flows. In the linear limit, a dispersion relation is obtained that admits new instability of drift-waves. Whereas, the nonlinear interaction between the finite amplitude short-wavelength waves give rise to quadrupolar vortices.

We have extended our earlier studies to the ion-temperature-gradient (lTO) driven electrostatic waves in a collisionless e-p-i magnetoplasma that contain equilibrium density, temperature, magnetic field, velocity and electrostatic potential gradients. We thus use hydrodynamic equations under drift-approximation and derive a set of non linear equations composed of ion continuity, the ion equation of motion and ion energy balance equations. In the linear limit, it is shown that non-zero equilibrium ion-temperature-gradient and the presence of positrons modify the basic drift modes. On the other hand, in the nonlinear case, it is shown that under certain conditions possible stationary solutions of the same set of nonlinear equations are reduced in the form of various types of vortex patterns. We have also incorporated the self-gravitational effect of ions in this work and have shown that possible stationary solutions of the nonlinear equations can be represented in the form of dipolar and tripolar vortices of gravitational potential.

Furthermore, we have also extended our study of electrostatic ITO modes to the electromagnetic case and derived a new set of coupled nonlinear equations which governs the dynamics of low-frequency electromagnetic ITO-driven modes in a nonuniform electronpositron-ion magnetoplasma with non-zero ion-temperature-gradients.

We reexamined nonlinear mode coupling equations under various approximations. In the linear limit, a local dispersion relation has been derived and analyzed in several interesting limiting cases. On the other hand, a quasi-stationary solution of the mode coupling equations in the absence of collisions can be represented in the form of dipolar and vortex-chain solutions.

Finally, we have studied the temporal behavior of electrostatic/electromagnetic ITG modes in e-p-i magnetoplasma and showed that the mode coupling equations can be represented in the form of well-known Lorenz and Stenflo type equations that admit chaotic trajectories. The results of our investigations are helpful to understand the wave phenomena in laboratory and astrophysical plasmas.


Breeding of maize (Zea mays L.) in the Atlantic coast of Europe has focused on developing hybrids to exploit heterosis between flint and dent germplasm. Flint × flint hybrids could have some advantages because of their earliness and early vigor that are important in short growing season areas. The objective of this work was to study the adaptation of a set of 10 flint varieties crossed to flint and dent testers and in a diallel design to check the feasibility of a breeding program to obtain flint hybrids well adapted to European Atlantic conditions. In the testcrosses, general combining ability (GCA) of the flint tester EP42 for kernel moisture at harvest and days to silking was lower than those of dent testers. Improvement of flint varieties for combining ability with inbred line EP42 could be done to obtain earlier flint x flint hybrids with a better dry-down rate than flint x dent hybrids. Diallel entries were analyzed following Analysis II of Gardner and Eberhart. Variety and heterosis effects were significant for all traits. Varieties Gallego and Norteno, besides having large variety effects, also showed intermediate variety heterosis for adaptive traits and they would be the best adapted varieties to include in breeding programs. The cross 'Gallego × Basto/Enano levantino' combined the best yield and good specific heterosis for adaptive traits. Thus, flint hybrids to be grown in short season areas could be obtained following this heterotic pattern.


Background The CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain recommends considering prescribing naloxone when factors that increase risk for overdose are present (e.g., history of overdose or substance use disorder, opioid dosages ≥50 morphine milligram equivalents per day [high-dose], and concurrent use of benzodiazepines). In light of the high numbers of drug overdose deaths involving opioids, 36% of which in 2017 involved prescription opioids, improving access to naloxone is a public health priority. CDC examined trends and characteristics of naloxone dispensing from retail pharmacies at the national and county levels in the United States. Methods CDC analyzed 2012–2018 retail pharmacy data from IQVIA, a health care, data science, and technology company, to assess U.S. naloxone dispensing by U.S. Census region, urban/rural status, prescriber specialty, and recipient characteristics, including age group, sex, out-of-pocket costs, and method of payment. Factors associated with naloxone dispensing at the county level also were examined. Results The number of naloxone prescriptions dispensed from retail pharmacies increased substantially from 2012 to 2018, including a 106% increase from 2017 to 2018 alone. Nationally, in 2018, one naloxone prescription was dispensed for every 69 high-dose opioid prescriptions. Substantial regional variation in naloxone dispensing was found, including a twenty-fivefold variation across counties, with lowest rates in the most rural counties. A wide variation was also noted by prescriber specialty. Compared with naloxone prescriptions paid for with Medicaid and commercial insurance, a larger percentage of prescriptions paid for with Medicare required out-of-pocket costs. Conclusion Despite substantial increases in naloxone dispensing, the rate of naloxone prescriptions dispensed per high-dose opioid prescription remains low, and overall naloxone dispensing varies substantially across the country. Naloxone distribution is an important component of the public health response to the opioid overdose epidemic. Health care providers can prescribe or dispense naloxone when overdose risk factors are present and counsel patients on how to use it. Efforts to improve naloxone access and distribution work most effectively with efforts to improve opioid prescribing, implement other harm-reduction strategies, promote linkage to medications for opioid use disorder treatment, and enhance public health and public safety partnerships.


There are many policies and principles of Corporate Governance in different countries around the world. Different countries have their own approaches and corporate governance models. However, the globalization of economics and the technological development made more countries capable of competing with their products and services on the international market and also enterprises built networks and leverage worldwide. Corporate Governance is applying under different rules, regulations, laws and ethics, etc. Corporate Governance in a multinational company will meet a lot of challenges while conducting their business and executing the projects across national, cultural and political boundaries. This study aims to find out these challenges, tries to discuss and find out the difference and possibilities of different Corporate Governance models between Continental European countries (Germany, Norway) and China. Not one of these approaches is right or more right than another. In order to work with this culture difference in multinational companies, not just the employees working in a different culture need to get to know the new culture and how people in this new culture work and behave. But also, as a manager or director working in a multinational company with different culture, he or she also needs to know the culture difference, trying to understand what and how their employees going to behave, and why they are doing that, trying to respect the difference and not just trying to judge that. Both the employees and the managers need to respect the difference and try to understand each other, finding a balance or a common understanding point to create their own working culture and working relationship in the company. The understanding must permeate the whole organization, from top to bottom, from first line to support and so on. However, working across boundaries will also create more practical issues, for example, which law and regulation to follow, how to register expenditures in accounts and so on which requires both logical and cultural flexibility to find workable solutions.


In civil litigation around the globe, the usual process is that investigative discovery is allowed (if at all) only after the plaintiff files an initial pleading. Recently, however, a growing number of jurisdictions have adopted general mechanisms for presuit investigative discovery. This paper explores these mechanisms and probes their nature and importance. It first finds that presuit investigative discovery is surprisingly prevalent among common-law systems, despite the usual order of pleading and discovery. The paper then argues that presuit investigative discovery can provide a useful tool for enabling plaintiffs to file a sufficient complaint in fact-pleading jurisdictions. Finally, the paper suggests that the US federal system, as its pleading system moves closer to the fact-pleading regime typical of the rest of the world, ought to look to foreign mechanisms of presuit investigative discovery as a model for its own reform.


This paper summarizes the current status of an ongoing research project whose objective is to collect time data from videotapes of field construction operations and use the data as input to a microcomputer-based simulation model of the operations. The purpose is to make it more economical to collect production time data in the field and to make powerful simulation analysis and design techniques available at the field office level. As now implemented, a videotape camera taken to the field records data about the logical relationships between, and the cycle times of, the various elements in an operation. With the aid of a computer connected to a videotape player (VCR), this data can be extracted from the tape and statistically analyzed to yield estimated values for the productivity of the system and its components. With the aid of a graphical networking technique and a computer-based problem-oriented language, the user can build a network-based simulation model in the computer with a program called INSIGHT (INteractive SImulation using GrapHics Techniques.


In 2004 the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (the Committee) published a revised Capital Accord for banks entitled "International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards: A Revised Framework" (Basel II). (without prejudice: February 2008 p17 and April 2008 p12) The publication is a result of the revision of the 1990 Capital Accord (Basel I). The primary purpose was to develop a framework that would further strengthen the safety, soundness and stability of the international banking system.


PURPOSE
This laboratory study assessed the influence of surface roughness and contact time on the formation of a multi-species biofilm on dental materials (adhesive patch, composite, amalgam and enamel).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Rough and smooth specimens of each material were prepared and the mean surface roughness was assessed profilometrically. The biofilms were then allowed to grow either for 15 min or 15 h respectively on saliva-preconditioned specimens of each material, and colony-forming units on blood agar were counted (N = 9/group) Surface morphology was assessed using a scanning electron microscope.

RESULTS
No difference was found in the biofilm formation rate among all the materials that were tested. After a short incubation period, a statistical significant difference between smooth and rough samples could be detected on amalgam and on the resin composite material (P < or = 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS
Surface roughness may influence the initial biofilm adherence, but differences vanish following growth and maturation. The multi-species biofilm offers a reliable laboratory model for studying plaque formation.


Though uninteresting individually, Twitter messages, or tweets, can provide an accurate reflection of public sentiment on when taken in aggregation. In this paper, we primarily examine the effectiveness of various machine learning techniques on providing a positive or negative sentiment on a tweet corpus. Additionally, we apply extracted twitter sentiment to accomplish two tasks. We first look for a correlation between twitter sentiment and stock prices. Secondly, we determine which words in tweets correlate to changes in stock prices by doing a post analysis of price change and tweets. We accomplish this by mining tweets using Twitter's search API and subsequently processing them for analysis. For the task of determining sentiment, we test the effectiveness of three machine learning techniques: Naive Bayes classification, Maximum Entropy classification, and Support Vector Machines. We discover that SVMs give the highest consistent accuracy through cross validation, but not by much. Additionally, we discuss various approaches in training these classifiers. We then apply our findings to on an intra-day market scale to find that there is very little direct correlation between stock prices and tweet sentiment on specifically an intra-day scale. Next, we improve on the keyword search approach by reverse correlating stock prices to individual words in tweets, finding, reasonably, that certain keywords are more correlated with changes in stock prices. Lastly, we discuss various challenges posed by looking at twitter for performing stock predictions.


We report the operation of a gigabit-capable passive optical network (GPON, 2.488 Gb/s downstream and 1.244 Gb/s upstream) over 135 km giving performance that is consistent with the standards of International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunications Standardization Sector (ITU-T). Advanced dense-wavelength-division-multiplexing (DWDM) equipment is used to extend the physical reach and to provide fiber gain.


In solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells (ssDSCs), the poor pore filling of the mesoporous semiconductor and the short diffusion length of charge carriers in the hole-transport material (HTM) have limited the mesoscopic titania layer to a thickness of 2–3 μm. To increase the amount of light harvested by ssDSCs, organic dyes with high molar extinction coefficients are of great importance and have been the focus of intensive research. Here we investigate ssDSCs using an organic D−π–A dye, coded Y123, and 2,2′,7,7′-tetrakis(N,N-di-p-methoxyphenylamine)-9,9′-spirobifluorene as a hole-transport material, exhibiting 934 mV open-circuit potential and 6.9% efficiency at standard solar conditions (AM1.5G, 100 mW cm–2), which is a significant improvement compared to the analogue dyes C218, C220, and JK2 (Voc values of 795, 781, and 914 mV, respectively). An upward shift in the conduction band edge was observed from photovoltage transient decay and impedance spectroscopy measurements for devices sensitized with Y12...


Purpose: This study examined the effect of peppermint spirits on postoperative nausea in women following a scheduled C-section. Design: A pretest-posttest research design with three groups was used. The peppermint group inhaled peppermint spirits, the placebo aromatherapy control group inhaled an inert placebo, green-colored sterile water, and the standard antiemetic therapy control group received standard antiemetics, usually intravenous ondansetron or promethazine suppositories. Methods: Women were randomly assigned to a group on admission to the hospital. If they became nauseated, nurses on the mother-baby unit assessed their nausea (baseline), administered the assigned intervention, and then reassessed participants' nausea 2 and 5 minutes after the initial intervention. Participants rated their nausea using a 6-point nausea scale. Findings: Thirty-five participants became nauseated post-operatively. Participants in all three intervention groups had similar levels of nausea at baseline. The nausea levels of participants in the peppermint spirits group were significantly lower than those of participants in the other two groups 2 and 5 minutes after the initial intervention. Conclusions: Peppermint spirits may be a useful adjunct in the treatment of postoperative nausea. This study should be replicated with more participants, using a variety of aromatherapies to treat nausea in participants with different preoperative diagnoses.


We demonstrate an approach to measure temporal correlations of photons in the near infrared range using frequency up-conversion. In this approach, the near infrared signal photons are converted into the visible range, in which highly efficient silicon avalanche photodiodes are used to perform the temporal correlation measurements. A coherent light source and a pseudo-thermal light source were used in the experiment. The results are in agreement with theoretical values and those obtained from measurements directly made using superconducting nanowire single photon detectors. We conclude that the temporal correlation (up to 4th order) of photons was preserved in the frequency up-conversion process. We further theoretically and experimentally studied the influence of the dark counts on the measurement. The setup uses commercially available components and achieves high total detection efficiency (~26%).


Rainfall-runoff processes can be considered a single input-output system where the observed rainfall and runoff are inputs and outputs, respectively. Conventional models of these processes cannot simultaneously identify unknown structures of the system and estimate unknown parameters. This study applied a combinational optimization and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) for simultaneous identification of system structure and parameters of the rainfall-runoff relationship. Subsystems in proposed model are modeled using combinations of classic models. Classic models are used to transform the system structure identification problem into a combinational optimization and can be selected from those typically used in the hydrological field. A PSO is then applied to select the optimized subsystem model with the best data fit. The parameters are estimated simultaneously. The proposed model is tested in a case study of daily rainfall-runoff for the upstream Kee-Lung River. Comparison of the proposed method with simple linear model (SLM) shows that, in both calibration and validation, the PSO simulates the time of peak arrival more accurately compared to the SLM. Analytical results also confirm that the PSO accurately identifies the system structure and parameters of the rainfall-runoff relationship, which are a useful reference for water resource planning and application.


The extent to which education provides protection in the face of a large-scale natural disaster is investigated. Using longitudinal population-representative survey data collected in two provinces on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, before and after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, we examine changes in a broad array of indicators of well-being of adults. Focusing on adults who were living, before the tsunami, in areas that were subsequently severely damaged by the tsunami, better educated males were more likely to survive the tsunami, but education is not predictive of survival among females. Education is not associated with levels of post-traumatic stress among survivors 1 year after the tsunami, or with the likelihood of being displaced. Where education does appear to play a role is with respect to coping with the disaster over the longer term. The better educated were far less likely than others to live in a camp or other temporary housing, moving, instead, to private homes, staying with family or friends, or renting a new home. The better educated were more able to minimize dips in spending levels following the tsunami, relative to the cuts made by those with little education. Five years after the tsunami, the better educated were in better psycho-social health than those with less education. In sum, education is associated with higher levels of resilience over the longer term.


Three Bacillus isolates, B. subtilis AB65, B. pumilus AB58 and B. liheniformis AB69 from brackish water environment were studied for their potential use in aquaculture bioremediation. In laboratory, all three Bacillus species grew well in Glucose-Ammonium-Peptone and reduced total ammonia nitrogen (TAN) effectively, however, combination of B. subtilis and B. licheniformis was the best in reducing TAN to 2.098 mg/l compared to control (without Bacillus) at 5.368 mg/l. All three Bacillus isolates significantly reduced TAN in water from shrimp culture tank as compared to the control (without Bacillus), and B. pumilus was the best in reducing TAN to 0.578 mg/l compared to control (without Bacillus) at 3.284 mg/l. Among the three agriculture products used, i.e. tapioca starch, sago starch and molasses, to enhance bioremediation, only Bacillus isolates supplemented with molasses were able to reduce TAN concentration whereby B. pumilus was the best isolate in reducing TAN to 0.92 mg/l. Experiment conducted in prototype shrimp hatchery showed that addition of carbonaceous source (sugar) reduces TAN in tanks treated with Bacillus as well as in control tanks (without Bacillus). Combination of B. pumilus and B. licheniformis with sugar was the best treatment reducing TAN to 0.05 mg/l. Overall, studies conducted in laboratory showed that B. pumilus and B. licheniformis when used as individual species were the best ammonium bioremediator whereas study conducted in shrimp hatchery showed that combination of B. pumilus and B. licheniformis was the best bioremediator. The Bacillus isolates produced extracellular enzymes protease, lipase and amylase which were of alkalophilic characteristics. The optimum condition for enzyme activity was similar to the optimum culture condition of Bacillus isolates which ranged from 30°C to 35°C and pH 7.5 to pH 9. Feed 1 (F1), Feed 2 (F2) and casein were used to elicit the production of protease and amongst the three isolates, B. licheniformis (F2) produced the highest amount of protease activity at 40.93 U/ml followed by B. pumilus (F2) at 32.82 U/ml and B. subtilis (F2) at 29.7 U/ml when assayed at pH 9. Feed 1, F2 and olive oil were used to elicit the production of lipase and lipase activity was the highest in B. licheniformis (F2) followed by B. pumilus (F1) and B. subtilis (F1) at 1.5568, 1.5338, 1.4856 U/ml respectively. Starch was used to elicit the production of amylase and only B. subtilis produced amylase at 13.5255 U/ml. The Bacillus isolates proved to be able to bioremediate ammonium and hold promising future in aquaculture bioremediation


The robustness of watermarks to geometric attacks is viewed as an issue of great importance. Indeed, it constitutes one of the most challenging design requirements for watermarks. This study proposes a robust image watermarking scheme using visually significant feature points and image normalisation. In order to tackle the issue of geometric distortions, the authors adopt a feature extraction method based on end-stopped wavelets to extract significant geometry preserving feature points, which are shown to be robust against various types of common signal processing and geometric attacks. These feature points can be used as synchronisation marks between watermark embedding and detection. The watermark is embedded into non-overlapping normalised circular images, which are determined by feature points. Rotation invariance is achieved via image normalisation. The watermark embedding process is performed by modifying low-frequency coefficients of discrete cosine transform blocks, which are randomly selected using a secret key. Moreover, the security of the scheme is further guaranteed by an image-dependent key. The proposed scheme is blind as the original image is not required at the watermark detection. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme is robust against geometric attacks as well as common signal processing attacks and outperforms related techniques found in the literature.


Determination of wind tides and wave action is an essential step in the design of flood-control and navigation projects and of structures near large bodies of water which may be subjected to hurricane winds. In 1948, the Corps of Engineers initiated a program to collect wind-tide and wave data on Lake Okeechobee. Basic data collected and investigations made under that program have been published as a series of project bulletins, "Waves and Wind Tides in Inland Waters, Lake Okeechobee, Florida, and in a summary report, "Civil Works Investigation CW-167, Waves and Wind Tides in Shallow Lakes and Reservoirs." Data on wind velocities, wind tides, and waves have been collected under that program during six hurricanes and many minor storms. In this paper an attempt is made to summarize the results of the wind-tide studies and outline the procedure developed for computing wind tides on Lake Okeechobee.


Outright victories against urban elitisation are rare in the current urban revolution. This article highlights how urban elitisation is confronted in Chacao, the most elite and urban part of Venezuela. Initially it reviews how this urban elitisation created the main economic, political and military strongholds of the opposition to the Bolivarian revolution. Then, in contesting it, the urban and Bolivarian revolutions feed each other through women's participation in invited and invented spaces of citizenship. From such spaces, Chacao women in their settler's movement organised struggles of insurgent citizenship to stop elitist urban renewal agendas and develop further forms of insurgent urbanism to conduct an urban renewal from below and establish a New Socialist Community for 600 families. They emerged as a revolutionary class to implement Bolivarian policies addressing the inefficiency and opportunism of the bureaucratic state and contesting urban elitisation with an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist insurgent urbanism.


Given some unknown object belonging to a known finite set of n possibilities, it is required to determine its identity by successive comparisons with each of the possibilities. Associating with each of these possibilities a testing cost and a probability that it is identical to the unknown object, we would like to obtain such a testing procedure which has minimum expected testing cost. Intuitively, it would appear that one should proceed by always applying the remaining test with least cost/probability ratio. We show that this technique does not necessarily yield the optimal procedure and present an algorithm which determines the optimal testing sequence in a number of steps proportional to n · log2 n.


From as early as 1988, the Civil/Structural Group of Bechtel Corp.'s Houston Regional Office has viewed its automated production tools as components of a production system. Intergraph's Structural Products were key elements of the system in 1988, and remain so in the current production cycle. Since that time, however, both hardware and software components of the system have changed significantly. This paper discusses these changes and describes various components of the system, such as: Bechtel 3DM, WalkThru, and FOUNDS. The Plant Layout & Piping Group uses Bechtel 3DM to consolidate electronic models prepared by the respective design disciplines and to check for interferences. WalkThru, a software that allows the user to view fully rendered 3DM models, is used for electronic model reviews. FOUNDS, a Bechtel-developed software is used within the system to design typical foundations, and produce the related working drawings. Finally, this paper addresses several changes proposed for the current production system.


In this paper we present a system for agent-based support of clinical processes. We describe the basic engineering concept, along with specific simulation and testing scenarios for agent-based software engineering. Another important focus is the integration of existing agent or healthcare standards like FIPA, DICOM and HL7. Objectives of our research activities in this project are: a substantial increase of the efficiency of hospital process management as well as the development of a specific goal oriented requirements engineering methodology. As most important challenges of the healthcare domain we have identified on the one hand individualized, patient oriented processes in diagnostics, therapy, nursing and administration and on the other hand extremely distributed decision processes and strong local (individual) autonomy with a high degree of situational dynamics. The example scenario on "clinical trials" illustrates how the system shall support distributed clinical processes and how it interacts with other multiagent systems within the Agent.Hospital Framework and hospital information systems in the eHealth Lab introduced in this paper. The system development is part of the German Priority Research Program (SPP) 1083 "Intelligent Agents and their application in business scenarios".


The period from 1460 to 1515 in France was marked by a number of significant shifts—both politically as feudal systems were consolidated under a more powerful centralized monarchy, and artistically, as print and panel painting challenged the primacy of traditional medieval media. Previous scholarship has treated the enduring French preference for manuscripts among court patrons as an anachronistic medieval holdover, and likewise, the period's illumination as an art in decline. This project revises this view by considering adherence to the manuscript form as a core component of French royal and aristocratic identity. Manuscripts, with their ability to imitate, contain, and transcend other media, provided a tactile, visual, and conceptual connection to an imagined past: a Middle Ages of knightly deeds, romances, bibliophile kings, and the courtly splendor before the rupture of the Hundred Years' War. Closely analyzing this nostalgic turn to the past—revival and performance of chivalric values in semi-public aristocratic venues, preservation of history in terms of military and cultural traditions, and efforts to make the past not simply legible but extremely relevant and important to a late fifteenth-century audience—reveals noble-class anxieties about the future of family, identity, and ways of life. This dissertation examines several aspects of late medieval manuscript culture at the French courts to provide an account of the material and ideological significance of the manuscript book during a time of major political and artistic restructuring. It addresses how royal and aristocratic patrons negotiated the political transitions of the age in visual and material ways. It establishes that any discussion of late medieval manuscripts must consider the other media with which they interacted, particularly exchange with print, which was mobilized for specific political and artistic purposes and only within the frameworks of courtly taste and patronage. In this complex and uncertain moment in French royal history and in the history of the book, manuscripts became implicated in the conception of the idealized stability of the medieval past, functioned as repositories for aristocratic identity, and stood as objects of collective memory—a status maintained well into the sixteenth century. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group History of Art First Advisor Larry Silver


Automated physical design tuning for database systems has recently become an active area of research and development. Existing tuning tools explore the space of feasible solutions by repeatedly optimizing queries in the input workload for several candidate configurations. This general approach, while scalable, often results in tuning sessions waiting for results from the query optimizer over 90% of the time. In this paper we introduce a novel approach, called Configuration-Parametric Query Optimization, that drastically improves the performance of current tuning tools. By issuing a single optimization call per query, we are able to generate a compact representation of the optimization space that can then produce very efficiently execution plans for the input query under arbitrary configurations. Our experiments show that our technique speeds-up query optimization by 30x to over 450x with virtually no loss in quality, and effectively eliminates the optimization bottleneck in existing tuning tools. Our techniques open the door for new, more sophisticated optimization strategies by eliminating the main bottleneck of current tuning tools.


1. A simple method for freezing and maintaining tissue specimens in a mixture of solid carbon dioxide and 95 per cent ethyl alcohol at a temperature approximating –78°C. is described. 2. When frozen and maintained at this temperature Treponema pallidum and Treponema pertenue, upon thawing, exhibited normal morphology and motility and their virulence for rabbits was not appreciably altered after periods of at least 1 year. This applied to a number of different strains of each organism. The infectivity of material in which treponemes were scant was maintained as well as of material in which they were abundant. 3. At temperatures of –10°C. and –20°C. syphilis treponemes did not survive as long as 2 months. Death of the organism occurred not at the time of freezing but during the maintenance period. 4. Treponemes did not commonly survive freezing and desiccation, although one lot of dried material which contained T. pallidum was infective for rabbits 1 day after desiccation. 5. The viruses of human influenza, yellow fever, and spontaneous encephalomyelitis of mice when frozen and maintained at –78°C. showed substantially the same titer after 6 months as before freezing. 6. Certain practical applications of the method are suggested.


ABSTRACT For older adults and people with disabilities in the United States, family caregiving is an important part of remaining at home and in the community. As care recipients and caregivers age, family dynamics change, and the health, social, and financial impacts of this (largely unremunerated) work have implications for individuals, families, and social policy. In this review, the authors map the literature across multiple fields related to disability and aging to understand caregiving in late life, what it means to be an older caregiver and/or to care for older people. The authors summarize the findings of 97 articles to address the care, services, and supports family caregivers provide for older adults; negative and positive impacts for caregivers serving in this role; supports that family members use or need; and societal impact of family caregiving. Much of the literature describes the work family caregivers provide and negative impacts of caregiving. Less attention is devoted to caregiving benefits, supports used by family caregivers, and societal impacts. The authors conclude with an agenda for future research that attends to the need for research that includes: more diverse samples, new types of caregivers, longitudinal data, qualitative data and analysis, and comparative research.


Ru-based supported ionic liquid phase (SILP) systems efficiently catalyze the low-temperature water-gas shift reaction (WGSR). While previous studies suggest that Ru-carbonyl species play an important role in the mechanism, detailed knowledge on the catalytically active species is still missing. To identify these carbonyl complexes, we apply in situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS) in combination with density functional theory (DFT). Investigations of an as-prepared [Ru(CO)3Cl2]2/[C4C1C1Im]Cl/Al2O3 catalyst indicate splitting of the dimer induced by Cl−. Subsequently, an equilibrium between several [Ru(CO)xCly]n species is established, in which the IL serves as an effectively infinite Cl− reservoir. We find that the major species in the system freshly-prepared from [Ru(CO)3Cl2]2 is indeed [Ru(CO)3Cl3]−. A smaller amount of [Ru(CO)2Cl3]− and chloride-rich species [Ru(CO)2Cl4]2− or [RuCOCl4]2− are also found in the SILP. Similar Ru-carbonyl species are observed during carbonylation of RuCl3/[C4C1C1Im]Cl/Al2O3, another potential WGSR catalyst. The response of [Ru(CO)3Cl2]2/[C4C1C1Im]Cl/Al2O3 to heating and/or CO dosing was probed in situ and the results confirm the presence of the equilibrium proposed above.


— This study presents an energy management approach for a hybrid energy system comprised of a photovoltaic (PV) array and a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Two storage devices (a Li-ion battery module and a supercapacitor (SC) bank) are used in the proposed structure as a high-energy high-power density storage device. Multi-segment converters for the PV, FC, battery, and SC are proposed for grid independent applications. Nonlinear differential flatness-based fuzzy logic control for dc bus voltage stabilization for power plant are investigated. To validate the control approach, a hardware system is realized with analog circuits for the PV, FC, battery, and SC current control loops (inner controller loops) and with numerical calculation (dSPACE) for the external energy control loop. Experimental results with small-scale devices [a photovoltaic array (800 W, 31 A), a PEMFC (1200 W, 46 A), a


In chapter two, we establish new results for periodic solutions of some second order non-linear boundary value problems. We develop the upper and lower solutions method to show existence of solutions in the closed set defined by the well ordered lower and upper solutions. We develop the method of quasilinearization to approximate our problem by a sequence of solutions of linear problems that converges to the solution of the original problem quadratically. Finally, to show the applicability of our technique, we apply the theoretical results to a medical problem namely, a biomathematical model of blood flow in an intracranial aneurysm.

In chapter three we study some nonlinear boundary value problems with nonlinear nonlocal three-point boundary conditions. We develop the method of upper and lower solutions to establish existence results. We show that our results hold for a wide range of nonlinear problems. We develop the method of quasilinearization and show that there exist monotone sequences of solutions of linear problems that converges to the unique solution of the nonlinear problems. We show that the sequences converge quadratically to the solutions of the problem in the C1 norm. We generalize the technique by introducing an auxiliary function to allow weaker hypotheses on the nonlinearity involved in the differential equations.

In chapter four, we extend the results of chapter three to nonlinear problems with linear four point boundary conditions. We generalize previously existence results studied with constant lower and upper solutions. We show by an example that our results are more general. We develop the method of quasilinearization and its generalization for the four point problems which to the best of our knowledge is the first time the method has been applied to such problems.

In chapter five, we extend the results to second order problems with nonlinear integral boundary conditions in two separate cases. In the first case we study the upper and lower solutions method and the generalized method of quasilinearization for the Integral boundary value problem with the nonlinearity independent of the derivative. While in the second case we show the nonlinearity to depend also on the first derivative.

Finally, in chapter six, we study multiplicity results for three point nonlinear boundary value problems. We use the method of upper and lower solutions and degree arguments to show the existence of at least two solutions for certain range of a parameter r and no solution for other range of the parameter. We show by an example that our results are more general than the results studied previously. We also study existence of at least three solutions in the pressure of two lower and two upper solutions for some three-point boundary value problems. In one problem, we employ a condition weaker than the well known Nagumo condition which allows the nonlinearity f(t, x, x') to grow faster than quadratically with respect to x' in some cases.


Growing international trade has helped lift living standards around the world, and yet free trade is always under attack. Critics complain that trade forces painful economic adjustments, such as plant closings and layoffs of workers, and charge that the World Trade Organization serves the interests of corporations, undercuts domestic environmental regulations, and erodes America's sovereignty. Why has global trade—and trade agreements such as NAFTA—become so controversial? Does free trade deserve its bad reputation? In Free Trade under Fire, Douglas Irwin sweeps aside the misconceptions that litter the debate over trade and gives the reader a clear understanding of the issues involved. This fourth edition has been thoroughly updated to include the most recent policy developments and the latest research findings on the impact of trade.


Background: Silent lacunes are a common finding on brain imaging in ischemic stroke patients, but the prognostic significance of these lesions is uncertain. We aimed at investigating the association of silent lacunes and the risk of ischemic stroke recurrence, death, and cardiovascular events in a cohort of patients with incident ischemic stroke and no atrial fibrillation (AF). Methods: We included 786 patients (mean age 59.5 (SD 14.0); 42.9% females) in a registry-based, observational cohort study on patients with first-ever ischemic stroke. On brain MRI we assessed the number of silent lacunes as none, single, or multiple and we calculated stratified incidence rates of the outcomes. Cox proportional hazard ratios (HRs) adjusted for age, gender, congestive heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, and vascular disease were calculated with no silent lacunes as reference. In additional analyses, we further adjusted for white matter hyperintensities. Patients were followed up until death or recurrence of ischemic stroke. Results: In 81 (10.3%) patients, a single silent lacune was present, and in 87 (11.1%) patients, multiple silent lacunes were present. Patients with at least one silent lacune were older (mean age 66.1 vs. 57.7, p < 0.001) and were more often hypertensive (60.1 vs. 43.4%, p < 0.001) compared to patients with no silent lacunes. During a median follow-up time of 2.9 (interquartile range 3.1) years, we observed 53 recurrent ischemic strokes, 76 deaths, and 96 cardiovascular events. Incidence rates per 100 person-years of ischemic stroke recurrence were 1.6, 2.5, and 5.0 for none, single, and multiple silent lacunes respectively. Corresponding incidence rates were 2.6, 2.4, and 4.4 for death, and 3.4, 4.0, and 6.6 for cardiovascular events respectively. Adjusted HRs of ischemic stroke recurrence were 1.53 (0.67-3.49) and 2.52 (1.25-5.09) for a single and multiple silent lacunes, respectively. Further adjustment for white matter hyperintensities maintained positive association although not significant. Corresponding adjusted HRs were 0.56 (0.25-1.25) and 0.65 (0.33-1.25) for death and 1.16 (0.61-2.22) and 1.51 (0.86-2.66) for cardiovascular events. Conclusions: In this large cohort of patients with incident ischemic stroke and no AF, an increasing number of silent lacunes was associated with increasing incidence rates of ischemic stroke recurrence. In the adjusted Cox proportional hazard analyses, the presence of multiple silent lacunes was significantly associated with an increased risk of ischemic stroke recurrence. The risk of death or cardiovascular events was not significantly influenced by the presence of silent lacunes.


Most environmental lawyers, like ecologists, wish to see broad scale landscape change, better management of land and improved protection of remnant vegetation and threatened species. Incorporating scientific knowledge into effective strategic planning is one step. Implementing strategic planning is another, necessitating the flow of priorities into statutory planning and regulation. The translation of broad landscape scale conservation objectives on to the ground requires not only improved understanding but also active use of the legal system. The law relating to the regulation of land use and vegetation clearing, threatened species conservation and catchment management is complex, inter-dependent and dynamic. While planning was once the exclusive domain of local government, now state government natural resource agencies and catchment management bodies routinely use it to determine priorities for both regulation and investment. In this paper we explore the potential of the current system for conservation. We consider the potential of the land use planning system and argue that its role has been constrained by its history. While there is significant reform in coastal and growth areas, rural areas continue to be neglected by this system. This gap would appear to be being filled in NSW by catchment management, which has a key planning role and is grappling with the management of existing uses; and native vegetation legislation which focuses on new development.


In recent years, immigration enforcement levels have soared, yielding a widely noted increase in the number of noncitizens removed from the United States. Less visible, however, has been an attendant sea change in the underlying nature of immigration governance itself, hastened by new surveillance and dataveillance technologies. Like many other areas of contemporary governance, immigration control has rapidly become an information-centered and technology-driven enterprise. At virtually every stage of the process of migrating or traveling to, from, and within the United States, both noncitizens and U.S. citizens are now subject to collection and analysis of extensive quantities of personal information for immigration control and other purposes. This information is aggregated and stored by government agencies for long retention periods in networks of interoperable databases and shared among a variety of public and private actors, both inside and outside the United States, with little transparency, oversight, or accountability. In this Article, I theorize and assess this underappreciated transformation of the techniques and technologies of immigration enforcement — their swift proliferation, enormous scale, likely entrenchment, and broader meanings. Situating this reconfiguration within a larger set of developments concerning surveillance and technology, I explain how these technologies have transformed a regime of immigration control, operating primarily upon noncitizens at the territorial border, into part of a more expansive regime of migration and mobility surveillance, operating without geographic bounds upon citizens and noncitizens alike. The technologies that enable this immigration surveillance regime can, and do, bring great benefits. However, their unimpeded expansion erodes the practical mechanisms and legal principles that have traditionally constrained aggregations of power and protected individual autonomy, as similarly illustrated in current debates over surveillance in other settings. In the immigration context, those constraints have always been less robust in the first place. Accordingly, I urge more constrained implementation of these technologies, to preserve zones where immigration surveillance activities do not take place and to ensure greater due process and accountability when they do. A complete understanding of immigration enforcement today must account for how the evolution of enforcement institutions, practices, and meanings has not simply increased the number of noncitizens being deported, but has effected a more basic transformation in immigration governance. As the institutions of immigration surveillance rapidly become integrated into the broader national surveillance state, scholars, policymakers, advocates, and community members need to grapple more directly with the implications of that reconfiguration.


Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to drugs, a natural and unavoidable consequence of treating infectious diseases, is a growing global public health threat. The EU Commission is to develop comprehensive proposals by the end of 2012 for addressing the situation. This Paper is meant to provide input into those policy discussions. The paper reviews AMR's implications for the burden of disease, the causes of AMR, the current state of the antibiotic development pipeline and the reasons antibiotic R&D has been de-emphasised by biopharmaceutical companies. Four key sets of factors are identified that provide serious disincentives for R&D. The authors develop a model to assess the push, pull and hybrid approaches that may be applied to reinvigorate the development of new products. Since AMR is global in scope and involves many stakeholders, the authors urge a comprehensive approach that reaches across countries and involves a broad range of interests.


The most powerful word in the language is one that most people find difficult to say. Yet when we know how to use it correctly, it has the power to profoundly transform our lives. That word is 'No'. In Getting to Yes, William Ury helped millions of people across the world discover how to transform their working and personal relationships by saying Yes. In this wise and insightful 'prequel' to the international bestseller, Ury asserts that, although you may be able to say Yes, you cannot get to the right Yes until you know how to say No. Most of us are reluctant to say No when we fear the word could spoil relationships with bosses; lose the deal with clients or upset family members. This indispensable book will help readers know whether and how to say No and provides a simple, proven five-step solution and tried and tested techniques to tackle this everyday dilemma.


Its conceptual appeal and effectiveness has made latent factor modeling an indispensable tool for multivariate analysis. Despite its popularity across many fields, there are outstanding methodological challenges that have hampered practical deployments. One major challenge is the selection of the number of factors, which is exacerbated for dynamic factor models, where factors can disappear, emerge, and/or reoccur over time. Existing tools that assume a fixed number of factors may provide a misguided representation of the data mechanism, especially when the number of factors is crudely misspecified. Another challenge is the interpretability of the factor structure, which is often regarded as an unattainable objective due to the lack of identifiability. Motivated by a topical macroeconomic application, we develop a flexible Bayesian method for dynamic factor analysis (DFA) that can simultaneously accommodate a time-varying number of factors and enhance interpretability without strict identifiability constraints. To this end, we turn to dynamic sparsity by employing Dynamic Spike-and-Slab (DSS) priors within DFA. Scalable Bayesian EM estimation is proposed for fast posterior mode identification via rotations to sparsity, enabling Bayesian data analysis at scales that would have been previously time-consuming. We study a large-scale balanced panel of macroeconomic variables covering multiple facets of the US economy, with a focus on the Great Recession, to highlight the efficacy and usefulness of our proposed method.


One of the central ethical requirements for medical research is that the risks to individual research participants should not be excessive. Despite widespread endorsement of this requirement, how it should be implemented remains controversial. This paper critically reviews the four existing approaches to evaluating the risks and benefits of medical research. It argues that the 'net risks test' is superior to 'component analysis', the 'agreement principle', and the 'integrative approach' and ends by highlighting several important questions that remain to be addressed.


Today people are storing increasing amounts of personal information in digital format. While storage of such information is becoming straight forward, retrieval from the vast personal archives that this is creating poses significant challenges. Existing retrieval techniques are good at retrieving from non-personal spaces, such as the World Wide Web. However they are not sufficient for retrieval of items from these new unstructured spaces which contain items that are personal to the individual, and of which the user has personal memories and with which has had previous interaction. We believe that there are new and exciting possibilities for retrieval from personal archives. Memory cues act as triggers for individuals in the remembering process, a better understanding of memory cues will enable us to design new and effective retrieval algorithms and systems for personal archives. Context data, such as time and location, is already proving to play a key part in this special retrieval domain, for example for searching personal photo archives, we believe there are many other rich sources of context that can be exploited for retrieval from personal archives.


e have the cheapest most capable computers in the history of the world and project management software to match. Great organizations such as the Project Management Institute and the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering International (AACE International) are trumpeting the benefits of Network Analysis Scheduling. Yet, below the highest levels of the Construction Industry the use of these superb methods is spotty, at best. What is going wrong? The answer to this question is multifaceted and complex. But this paper will explore one aspect of the problem, the economics of a small to middling company employing professional scheduling methods. Using the schedules from several projects of less than $10 million the paper will show how the front loaded work load of the scheduler on a given project is a barrier to hiring a skilled fulltime scheduler. The paper will further explore the implications of hiring consultants and suggest strategies for small companies to afford the skills they need to acquire as they grow their businesses.


There is growing interest in renewable energy around the world. Since most renewable sources are intermittent in nature, it is a challenging task to integrate renewable energy resources into the power grid infrastructure. In this grid integration, communication systems are crucial technologies, which enable the accommodation of distributed renewable energy generation and play an extremely important role in monitoring, operating, and protecting both renewable energy generators and power systems. In this article, we review some communication technologies available for grid integration of renewable energy resources. Then we present the communication systems used in a real renewable energy project, Bear Mountain Wind Farm in British Columbia, Canada. In addition, we present the communication systems used in photovoltaic power systems. Finally, we outline some research challenges and possible solutions about the communication systems for grid integration of renewable energy resources.


The Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS) is a multiwavelength Cycle 21 Treasury program on the Hubble Space Telescope. It studied 50 nearby star-forming galaxies in 5 bands from the near-UV to the I-band, combining new Wide Field Camera 3 observations with archival Advanced Camera for Surveys data. LEGUS was designed to investigate how star formation occurs and develops on both small and large scales, and how it relates to the galactic environments. In this paper we present the photometric catalogs for all the apparently single stars identified in the 50 LEGUS galaxies. Photometric catalogs and mosaicked images for all filters are available for download. We present optical and near-UV color–magnitude diagrams for all the galaxies. For each galaxy we derived the distance from the tip of the red giant branch. We then used the NUV color–magnitude diagrams to identify stars more massive than 14 M⊙, and compared their number with the number of massive stars expected from the GALEX FUV luminosity. Our analysis shows that the fraction of massive stars forming in star clusters and stellar associations is about constant with the star formation rate. This lack of a relation suggests that the timescale for evaporation of unbound structures is comparable or longer than 10 Myr. At low star formation rates this translates to an excess of mass in clustered environments as compared to model predictions of cluster evolution, suggesting that a significant fraction of stars form in unbound systems.


Many research and engineering fields, like Bioinformatics or Particle Physics, are confident about the development of Grid technologies to provide the huge amounts of computational and storage resources they require. Although several projects are working on creating a reliable infrastructure consisting of persistent resources and services, the truth is that the Grid will be a more and more dynamic entity as it grows. In this paper, we present a new tool that hides the complexity and dynamicity of the Grid from developers and users, allowing the resolution of large computational experiments in a Grid environment by adapting the scheduling and execution of jobs to the changing Grid conditions and application dynamic demands.


In today's world of digital technologies, cultural heritage institutions, particularly in developed countries, are seeking ways to create national digital memories for the future of the citizenry. However, rapidly developing technologies and their concomitant technological obsolescence put future memories at risk. The challenge is enormous in developing countries that, when compared to their developed counterparts, lack adequate resources and technologies for effective digital resources management and preservation. As a developing country, Ghana appears ready to face the challenges of effective digital resources management. The country has developed programmes and a national policy on information and communication technologies (ICTs) for accelerated development. However, Ghana does not appear to be effective in managing or preserving digital cultural heritage resources.  An interpretive case research design involving 27 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders from 23 institutions was used to explore the various contextual factors influencing the management and preservation of digital cultural heritage resources (or DPM). Rogers' (2003) "diffusion of innovation" (DOI) theory and Davies' (2000) "policy, strategy and resources" (PSR) troika model provided a basis for a preliminary model of factors to guide the research.  Although the DPM innovation was not fully diffused in Ghana, related activities at the base, middle and higher levels of the Ghanaian social system were unintentionally fostering the adoption process. Four main clusters of contextual factors that were influencing the DPM adoption process in Ghana were identified: attitudinal, resources-related, policy-related, and managerial factors. Key stakeholders perceived the design of appropriate strategies, adequate resource allocation, and proper implementation of policies as key enabling factors for effective adoption of DPM in Ghana. However, a general lack of interest in cultural institutions (libraries, archives and museums) and in information management on the part of decision makers and the Ghanaian stakeholders as a whole was found to hinder DPM adoption.  This study extends Information Systems (IS) research involving DOI theory and the PSR troika model into a developing country context. Attitudinal-based complexities involving misunderstandings among various tribal groups in Ghana, and resources-based complexities surrounding technology access and use, were found from the interview data and were added to the initial model which was expanded to aid in understanding the various contextual factors that influence DPM adoption in Ghana. In addition to the study contributing to theoretical understandings in IS research, it provides Ghanaian policy developers with an empirical base for accelerating adoption of DPM in Ghana. It also provides New Zealand and other digital preservation advanced countries with a deeper understanding from which to provide contextually designed advisory services to other developing countries (particularly in the Pacific Island regions) as it enables the contextual understanding of the factors from Ghana.


Almost all earthquakes on the continents are confined within a crustal layer that varies in thickness (Ts) from about 10 to 40 km, and are not in the mantle. Variations in Ts correlate with variations in the effective elastic thickness ( Te), both of them having similar values, although Te is usually the smaller of the two. These observations suggest that the lower crust, at least in some places, is stronger than the mantle beneath the Moho, contrary to most models of continental rheology. Thus the strength of the continental lithosphere is likely to be contained within the seismogenic layer, variations in the thickness of this strong layer determining the heights of the mountain ranges it can support. The aseismic nature of the continental mantle and the lower crustal seismicity beneath some shields are probably related to their water contents.


In this thesis an object oriented model is proposed that satisfies the requirements for a generic, customisable, reusable and flexible machine vision framework. These requirements are identified as being: ease of customisation for a particular application domain; independence from image definition; independence from shape representation scheme; ability to add new domain specific shape descriptors; independence from implemented machine vision algorithms; and the ability to maximise reuse of the generic framework.
The thesis begins with a review of key machine vision functions and traditional architectures. In particular, machine vision architectures predicated on a process oriented framework are examined in detail and evaluated against the criteria stated above.
An object oriented model is developed within the thesis, identifying the key classes underlying the machine vision domain. The responsibilities of these classes, and the relationships between them, are analysed in the context of high level machine vision tasks, for example object recognition. This object oriented approach is then contrasted with the more traditional process oriented approach.
The object oriented model and framework is subsequently evaluated through a customisation, to illustrate an example machine vision application, namely Surface Mounted Electronic Assembly inspection. The object oriented model is also evaluated in the context of two functional machine vision applications described in literature.
The model developed in this thesis incorporates the fundamental object oriented concepts of abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism. The results show that an object oriented approach does achieve the requirements for a generic, customisable, reusable and flexible machine vision framework.


This paper presents an AR videoconferencing approach merging two remote rooms into a shared workspace. Such bilateral AR telepresence inherently suffers from breaks in immersion stemming from the different physical layouts of participating spaces. As a remedy, we develop an automatic alignment scheme which ensures that participants share a maximum of common features in their physical surroundings. The system optimizes alignment with regard to initial user position, free shared floor space, camera positioning and other factors. Thus we can reduce discrepancies between different room and furniture layouts without actually modifying the rooms themselves. A description and discussion of our alignment scheme is given along with an exemplary implementation on real-world datasets.


ABSTRACT This paper demonstrates that Moroccan immigration policymaking is intrinsically tied to the monarchy's authoritarian consolidation agenda. Drawing on archival research and 87 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2011 and 2017 with Moroccan high-level civil servants, international and national civil society representatives, the paper dissects power dynamics among state and societal actors involved in Morocco's 2013 immigration reform. The analysis shows that immigration policy liberalisation not only emerged out of Morocco's autocratic political structures – a dynamic I call the 'illiberal paradox' – but at the same time consolidated them. In particular, the Moroccan monarchy used the 2013 'liberal' immigration reform to pursue three interrelated goals: (1) to perform Morocco's human rights commitment on the world stage and the regime's responsiveness to domestic pressure for political reform, (2) to consolidate the monarchical institution within Morocco's state apparatus and (3) to (at least partially) co-opt Moroccan civil society for humanitarian migration management, thereby silencing dissent in other arenas. At the same time, however, the analysis reveals that the regime consolidation strategy and the King's portrayal as a 'liberal' monarch did not cancel out deeply rooted dynamics among and between state and civil society actors, which required both sides to adapt their cooperation or resistance strategies. Ultimately, the paper showcases that immigration politics reflect the power dynamics within and the legitimation strategies of the Moroccan monarchy. Immigration policy research thus offers a privileged vantage point from which to analyse broader political regime dynamics.


MicroRNA are small non‐coding RNA that mediate mRNA translation repression or mRNA degradation, and thereby refine protein expression levels. More than 30–60% of all genes are regulated by microRNA. Exploring disease‐related microRNA signatures is an emerging tool in biomarker discovery, and silencing has already been used in a clinical phase 2a trial. As microRNA regulate translation of more than 100 genes, they could also provide a focused insight into important pathways, and offer a better understanding of diseases with heterogeneous pathogenesis. The number of studies investigating microRNA related to multiple sclerosis has increased significantly in recent years. Differentially expressed microRNA have been identified in the whole blood, serum, plasma, cerebrospinal fluid, peripheral blood mononuclear cells, blood‐derived cell subsets and brain lesions of patients with multiple sclerosis. Most studies applied a non‐candidate approach of screening by microarray and validation by quantitative polymerase chain reaction or next generation sequencing; others used a candidate‐driven approach. Despite a relatively high number of multiple sclerosis‐associated microRNA, just a few could be repeatedly found, even if similar biological materials were examined. Only part of the identified microRNA has been extensively studied, and the biological function has not been explored in the majority. Some of the microRNA related to multiple sclerosis are also differentially expressed in other autoimmune diseases or autoimmune models. In the present review, we discuss microRNA related to disease compartments, activity and phenotype. We also focus on several microRNA with well‐defined functions, or because of particular interest due to either validation by several independent studies or in‐depth exploration of function.


Two simple, rapid and sensitive extractive spectrophotometric methods have been developed for the assay of sildenafil citrate (SC) in pure and pharmaceutical formulations. These methods are based on the formation of chloroform soluble ion-association complexes of SC with brilliant blue G (BBG) and with bromocresol purple (BCP) in KCl-HCl buffer of pH 1.30 (for BBG) and in NaOAc- HCl buffer of pH 3.5 (for BCP) with absorption maximum at 615 nm and 406 nm for BBG and BCP, respectively. Reaction conditions were optimized to obtain the maximum colour intensity. The absorbance was found to increase linearly with increase in concentration of SC, which was corroborated by the calculated correlation coefficient values (0.9991 and 0.9993). The systems obeyed Beer's law in the range of 0.01-4.0 and 0.021-15.0 μg/mL for BBG and BCP, respectively. Various analytical parameters have been evaluated and the results have been validated by statistical data. No interference was observed from common excipients present in pharmaceutical formulations.


We often hear that America is a nation of immigrants, but this part of our national self-image raises complex questions. A crucial one is this: how do we treat lawful immigrants who come to this country? The answer is important; it is not only the key to debating intelligently who should be admitted in the first place, but it also reveals our core understandings of nationhood, citizenship, and belonging. This book begins by explaining that our treatment of immigrants reflects tensions among three different ways of viewing immigration: as contract, as affiliation, or as transition. Sometimes we have treated immigrants as if coming to America reflects an agreement, such as a promise not to go on welfare. And sometimes we have treated immigrants as if what matters is the ties that they develop in this country-working, paying taxes, or having children who are U.S. citizens. In earlier historical periods, when most immigrants came from Europe, America's treatment of them reflected a different assumption: that immigration is a transition to citizenship, and that immigrants are future citizens - Americans-in-waiting. But this view has faded in influence, a lost story overshadowed by the assumption that an immigrant's place in America is defined only by promises implied upon arrival, or by ties developed over time in the United States. Analyzing current debates and explaining law and history over the past 200 years, this book explores the idea of Americans-in-waiting and its decline. Synthesizing a vast array of themes - the exclusion of Asian immigrants, the deportation of Communists, the link between immigration and welfare, the role of human rights, the lessons of Mexican immigration, immigration regulation by the states, the deportation of criminals, the rise and fall of noncitizen voting, immigration law after September 11, and the role of race and ethnicity - this book explains why recovering this lost story is the key to ensuring that U.S. citizenship conveys an inclusive sense of belonging that allows all immigrants, as they become citizens, to participate fully in American life. The book's core proposal is to treat lawful immigrants like citizens until they can become citizens - generally five years. For example, lawful immigrants would have the same opportunity as citizens to sponsor close relatives to come to America, the same access to public services, and the same right to vote. When they become eligible to naturalize, they can become citizens and keep enjoying the rights and fulfilling the responsibilities of citizenship. But if lawful immigrants don't take that next step, they would relinquish this citizen-like status for the lesser bundle of rights and responsibilities that they have under current law. This proposal accomplishes two things that are often seen as mutually exclusive. It restores the historical welcome of immigrants as Americans in waiting that prevailed when we became a nation of immigrants. At the same time, it gives immigrants not only an incentive to naturalize, but more importantly, by treating immigrants like citizens, it gives them a springboard for participation in American society. Chapters of the book: Introduction: Immigrants in America 1. Contract and Classical Immigration Law 2. Promises, Promises 3. All Persons Within the Territorial Jurisdiction 4. Alienage and the Ties That Bind 5. The Most Tender Connections 6. The Lost Story of Americans in Waiting 7. Transition at a Crossroads 8. The Meaning of Transition 9. Race, Belonging, and Transition 10. Taking Transition Seriously Conclusion: The Idea of Americans in Waiting


dacy for hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) It has often been joked that as transplanters have aged the "acceptable" age for HCT has increased. It has been assumed that age is a surrogate for likelihood for transplantation morbidity and mortality. Does the use of age in this way make any sense? This issue contains a summary of a symposium that addressed the topic of age and HCT, held in Atlanta, Georgia, prior to the 2005 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting. In the first presentation, Dr. William Ershler points out that the biological behavior and responsiveness to treatment of a number of cancers in the elderly appear to be no different than in younger patients, whereas for some cancers the behavior is different. Moreover, other factors (more frequent in the elderly) are probably more important than chronological age, including the presence or absence of comorbid diseases, frailty, functional status, and alterations in immune function that are yet incompletely understood. In the second presentation, Dr. Nelson Chao reviews the various transplantation strategies and how age and other factors influence which strategy is most appropriate for various considerations. In the third presentation, Dr. Edwin Alyea discusses the role of nonmyeloablative transplantation approaches in the older patient with comorbidities. In the final two presentations, Drs. Stephen Forman and Marcos de Lima discuss specific types of malignancies prevalent in the older patient and the role of nonmyeloablative transplantation. Years ago, we recognized that patients at the early end of the age spectrum should not be treated like "small adults"; the biology of the diseases, tolerance to treatments, metabolism of drugs, and immune effects all are unique. It has only become accepted in recent years that individuals at the other end of the age spectrum similarly may have their own unique issues that require distinct tailoring of therapies. Age, per se, is too blunt a measure to capture the distinct care needs of this population. The advent of effective reduced-intensity conditioning regimens allows consideration of HCT for groups of patients once thought to be too fragile. Thoughtful examination of the heterogeneous biological and health issues in the elderly is now leading to a new and more thoughtful approach that will make our transplantation approaches more successful. The Graying of Clinical Transplantation John R. Wingard, MD, Editor R E V I E W S


With an ever-increasing rate of globalization many firms today find it highly important to internationalize in order to survive and prosper. Swedish companies have also followed this trend of internationalization, among them Swedish banks.This research will investigate if the number of expatriates used is affected by subsidiary age, level of development in the host country and/or the cultural distance between the host market and Sweden.A case study was conducted on Handelsbanken, one of the four major banks in Sweden. Interviews and a questioner were used to gather information about what affects the number of expatriates used. The results indicate that the use of expatriates differs for different periods of the subsidiaries establishment. The study shows that cultural distance affects the use of expatriates in a later stage in the development phase. In the early stages expatriates are used to establish the corporate philosophy. As the philosophy has been well established it is evident that the use of expatriates declines because the use of host country nationals is more advantageous as they know their own culture and business environment better.


Context/Objective: Although personal health record (PHR) portals are designed for patients, healthcare providers are a key influence in how patients use their features and realize benefits from them. A few studies have examined provider attitudes toward PHR portals, but none have focused on those who care for individuals with spinal cord injuries and disorders (SCI/D). We characterize SCI/D provider perspectives of PHR portals, including perceived advantages and disadvantages of PHR portal use in SCI/D care. Design: Cross-sectional; semi-structured interviews. Setting: Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Centers in the Veterans Health Administration. Participants: Twenty-six SCI/D healthcare providers. Interventions: None. Outcome Measures: Perceived advantages and disadvantages of PHR portals. Results: The complex situations of individuals with SCI/D shaped provider perspectives of PHR portals and their potential role in practice. Perceived advantages of PHR portal use in SCI/D care included the ability to coordinate information and care, monitor and respond to outpatient requests, support patient self-management activities, and provide reliable health information to patients. Perceived disadvantages of PHR portal use in SCI/D care included concerns about the quality of patient-generated health data, other potential liabilities for providers and workload burden, and the ability of individuals with SCI/D to understand clinical information accessed through a portal. Conclusion: Our study highlights advantages and disadvantages that should be considered when promoting engagement of SCI/D healthcare providers in use of PHR portals, and portal features that may have the most utility in SCI/D care.


Abstract:This article explores the way PRC historians use analytical categories by looking at the emergence of a divide between production and the social reproduction of labor (all the work that goes into producing and raising laborers) that transformed and structured rural everyday life during the Mao period. Everyday life is historical, produced in different ways under different material conditions, structured and shaped by social forms in motion. Thus, it is not an analytical frame through which historians can view the real content of the Mao period underneath the thin veneer of Maoist high politics and its categories. This article therefore argues that everyday life, far from a sphere resisting the impositions and dictates of the state, is fully implicated in the political-economic structuring of society. This is a call to not simply replace an earlier social science focus on the political economy of the PRC with a bottom-up or empirical view of everyday life, recognizing that everyday life is already a structured terrain. Rather than bringing in social science analytical categories from the outside or searching for an empirical real view from below, we need to investigate the emergence of categories and social forms from the real material limits and tendencies of a rapidly changing PRC society.


Extending from the distinction between two polarities of management philosophy, rationalistic management (RM) and humanistic management (HM), I propose that we must recognise the creative principle (C-principle) of applying the whole understanding of things and human persons to each problem of management just as we must weigh each decision against a vision of the whole of both knowledge and value which interact in complex cultural contexts. Thus, the C-principle emphasises that management is an integral part of the transformation of humanity. Furthermore, it incorporates the use of scientific knowledge and technology side by side with various functions and ends of humanity in an open system of generation, balance and incessant development in both external focus on worldly changes and internal focus on human needs and their harmonisation. The letter C stands for creativity, change, culture, Chinese tradition and Confucianism and their creative and best syntheses for managerial practices.


If G is a none trivial group and t is an element distinct from G then r(t) =g_1 t^l_1 …......g_kt^l_k= 1 , k ≥1, g_i in G\{1}, l_i in Z\{0} is said to be an equation over G. There has been much research aimed to investigate solvability of such equations over groups and these researches adopted two main approaches. The first considers the properties of G. The other direction which we are following here is to put restrictions on r(t). The results obtained in this direction was of length restriction at first. More resent more results have been obtained and the concept of isolated t-exponent has been introduced and used to study a generalized form of equations of unlimited length. In this study we investigate r(t) which has the generalized form w_1t^l_1w_2t^l_2w_3t^l_3w_4t^l_4 where w_i = g_{i,1} t^m_{i,1} .....t^m_{i,k_i-1}g_{i,k_i}. In Chapter 1 we introduce the concept of equations over groups and we give some of the known results and the geometric method of proof is explained. We also state our main theorem and the main lemma which will be proved in the following chapters and some technical lemmas are proved. In Chapter 2, Chapter 3, and Chapter 4 the Cases I, II, III are discussed and the distribution is shown. In Chapter 5 the main lemma is proved and the proof of the main theorem is completed.