Aim: The main objective of the study was to assess the potential application of Chitosan/Karaya gum interpolymer complex to develop the novel rate controlled buccal mucoadhesive drug delivery system. Developed drug delivery system is capable to administer opioid analgesic drug tramadol HCl directly into systemic circulation via buccal mucosa. The developed drug delivery system would be more effective in terms of improving bioavailability, quick onset of action and reduction in dose related side effects of drugs which are suffering from hepatic first pass metabolism. Materials and Methods: Chitosan and karaya gum were selected for the preparation of interpolymer complex. Resulted interpolymer complex was characterized by Fourier-transform infrared and scanning electron microscopy. Further, the swelling behaviour of interpolymer complex was studied compare to karaya gum alone. Mucoadhesive bilayered buccal films were prepared from Interpolymer complexes by solvent casting method. An impermeable ethyl cellulose backing layer was placed to ensure unidirectional drug release from filmes. The resulted mucoadhesive buccal films were evaluated for swelling index, folding endurance, bioadhesive strength, ex vivo diffusion of the drug, in vitro dissolution and in vivo absorption of the drug. An opioid analgesic Tramadol HCl was used to study the nature of drug release from buccal films. A software aided optimization was carried out to understand the effect of formulation factors like amount of inter polymer complex and plasticizer at three different levels on three major properties of films like swelling index, tensile strength and in vitro dissolution. Result and Discussion: It has been observed that all resultant buccal films prepared by using inter polymer complex between Karaya gum and chitosan have shown good structural integrity, good mucoadhesive strength, satisfactory drug release and are capable to improve the in vivo absorption as well as plasma residence time.


This paper, originally published in 1988, argues that there is nothing special about government-issued money, that without restrictions of some kind, privately issued money would be a perfect substitute for it. The paper describes the type of intermediation this argument implies for a laissez-faire economy. One important implication is that there would be only one risk-adjusted rate of return; either all assets would pay a low return to match that on money, or money would pay interest. Another important implication is that open market operations would be irrelevant. The paper argues that the reason we don't frequently observe economies with such characteristics is that governments generally impose restrictions which prevent the private issue of money. However, the paper does examine some historical periods when restrictions seemingly were not imposed. And it concludes with some reservations about the oversimplifying suggestion. The paper is reprinted, with permission, from the Economic Journal.


In changing and unpredictable environments, higher education institutions need to adapt their models of leadership to ensure sustainability and continued development. The evidence base on how leadership is implemented as a part of major institutional change is limited. This research critically examined a model of organisational change through the implementation of a devolved model of leadership and management in a research intensive institution. The aim of this research was to identify the key characteristics of the activity and gain an understanding of the working relationships in the implementation of the model.
The research used an exploratory case study drawing upon Activity Theory. This single site study illuminates a detailed understanding of the complex and unfolding interactions underpinning the practice of leadership of change and other factors in the institution.
Participants for the study included senior executive staff, senior academic staff with education leadership roles, senior administrative and experienced academic staff at school level. Data was collected from semi structured and focus group interviews and relevant institutional documents.
This research reveals key emergent themes which are a sense of ownership and empowerment, a shift in power and influence, the education and research interface and the dynamics of leadership. This study offers a deeper understanding of the process and practice of leadership of change in one large, research intensive university which is predicated on leadership as an activity, relationship building and empowerment of individuals.
The research findings do not suggest that a devolved model is a panacea for major organisational change but that it does have the potential to liberate new ways of thinking and working. However, specific tensions became apparent from implementation of this model and these required identification, management and attention. While these tensions may not be unavoidable, a framework for managing them is proposed, based on the research outcomes, for the leadership of change, namely a framework for the leadership process in a rapidly changing environment in a research intensive institution.
This research is concerned with the practice of leadership of change on the education aspect of a research intensive institution but key principles emerge which have the potential for application to other situations of major change in the higher education sector.


Computational design and digital fabrication have expanded the use of digital manufacturing machineries for the realization of architecture, yet they have their own limitations of material use. These limitations caused some materials like cement, plaster and clay become marginal in this new digital context, despite their vast use in the building industry. In this context, this paper will present a research, focusing on the use of concrete through the development of a custom-designed device, which is an adjustable digital mould. This digital mould has been designed specifically for a project called Procrystalline Wall and has been 'adapted' to the conditions of its agenda in terms of size, shape, typology, and even technical matters. However, this adaptability means that the device is not aimed to work for any other project and remain exclusive to this particular design only. This paper will further discuss the validity and obstacles of the presented method in a more global context.


Gymnotidae is a family of electric fish endemic to the Neotropics consisting of 2 genera: Electrophorus and Gymnotus. The genus Gymnotus is widely distributed and is found in all of the major Brazilian river systems. Physical and molecular mapping data for the ribosomal DNA (rDNA) in this genus are still scarce, with its chromosomal location known in only 11 species. As other species of Gymnotus with 2n = 54 chromosomes from the Paraná-Paraguay basin, G. mamiraua was found to have a large number of 5S rDNA sites. Isolation and cloning of the 5S rDNA sequences from G. mamiraua identified a fragment of a transposable element similar to the Tc1/mariner transposon associated with a non-transcribed spacer. Double fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis of this element and the 5S rDNA showed that they were colocalized on several chromosomes, in addition to acting as nonsyntenic markers on others. Our data show the association between these sequences and suggest that the Tc1 retrotransposon may be the agent that drives the spread of these 5S rDNA-like sequences in the G. mamiraua genome.


The study of floating oscillating water column (OWC) wave energy conversion (WEC) device performance includes analysis of the dynamic coupling of the water column and the floating structure. In the present investigation, a mechanical oscillator model was proposed in order to examine this relationship for the heave motion of a floating wave energy conversion device. Characterisation of the dynamic system optimal behaviour was performed by examining the effect of relative OWC and floating structure natural frequencies, the phase relationships of the various system components and the optimal power take-off damping of the system. It was determined that separation of the natural frequencies results in significant increases in maximum power capture. When the OWC and structure natural frequencies are coincident the motions are essentially in phase and limited power capture is achieved. For optimal power capture the separation of the natural frequencies should be such that the floating structure has the lower natural frequency. This should also generally result in improved alignment of the system resonant response with the available wave power. The model also provides evidence of the capacity of power take-off damping control to improve the nonresonant performance ofthe OWC WEC device in a spectrally distributed wave environment.


A Functional Competition Policy for India comes at a time when the country is poised to implement a new Competition Law, whilst there is a lack of understanding of the nature, and extent of prevalence, of different types of anti-competitive practices. The study helps in getting a better understanding of the competition and economic regulation scenario in India. Contrary to popular perception, the study does not treat Competition Policy as just adoption and implementation of a competition law, but looks at it as a broader policy framework where competition is encouraged as a market process to generate competitive outcomes. Accordingly, the report comprises 22 chapters, giving comprehensive treatment to competition policy in India, covering both systemic as well as sectoral issues. The study tracks the evolution of Competition Policy and Law in India; discusses the interface of Competition Policy with Government Policies (at the Federal as well as State level), and Consumer Welfare; and identifies competition and economic regulation issues in agriculture, manufacturing, and services. The present volume is the result of the effort put in by top experts in the country. The study will be useful to all those who are interested in economic policies, in general, and competition policy, in particular.


This paper presents a methodology for generating photo realistic computer simulation environments of nighttime driving scenarios by combining nighttime photography and videography with video tracking [1] and projection mapping [2] technologies. Nighttime driving environments contain complex lighting conditions such as forward and signal lighting systems of vehicles, street lighting, and retro reflective markers and signage. The high dynamic range of nighttime lighting conditions make modeling of these systems difficult to render realistically through computer generated techniques alone. Photography and video, especially when using high dynamic range imaging, can produce realistic representations of the lighting environments. But because the video is only two dimensional, and lacks the flexibility of a three dimensional computer generated environment, the scenarios that can be represented are limited to the specific scenario recorded with video. However, by combining the realistic imagery from video and photographs with the flexibility of a computer generated environment, it is possible to vary any number of factors such as the speed of vehicles and the driver lane position, and to vary the types of vehicles and lighting conditions involved in the scenario. The combination of projection mapping, video tracking, and nighttime video and photography methodologies allow this flexibility. In addition to presenting the methodology and the resulting computer simulation environment, the final simulation is compared to actual video recordings of the same driving scenario to evaluate how similar they are in value, tone, color and visibility.


The neural crest gives rise to a number of adrenergic derivatives, including sympathetic neurons and adrenal chromaffin cells, which contain catecholamines (CAs) but differ in other morphological and functional characteristics. Small intensely fluorescent (SIF) cells, which exist primarily as a minority cell population in autonomic ganglia, are a third cell type in the sympathoadrenal branch of the neural crest lineage. In some respects these cells appear intermediate in phenotype between sympathetic neurons and adrenal chromaffin cells. We established pure dissociated cell cultures of SIF cells from rat superior cervical ganglia (SCG) and used these to study the role of environmental factors in SIF cell development and the relationship of these cells to the other cell types of the sympathoadrenal lineage. When cells from neonatal rat SCG were grown for 3 weeks in the presence of glucocorticoid and in the absence of nerve growth factor (NGF), pure cultures of SIF cells developed. The properties of the cells included (i) small cell size and the occasional presence of short neurites, (ii) intense CA histofluorescence and immunoreactivity for CA synthetic enzymes, (iii) synthesis and storage of CA from radioactive precursors, and (iv) characteristic ultrastructure. The concentration of the glucocorticoid and the presence or absence of non-neuronal cell factors influenced which types of SIF cells developed. In micromolar glucocorticoid most of the cells resembled adrenal chromaffin or type II SIF cells: they displayed immunohistochemically detectable phenylethanolamine-N-methyltransferase (PNMT), synthesized and stored epinephrine, and contained large granular vesicles (100 to 300 nm). When SCG cells were grown in 10(-8) M hormone, many fewer SIF cells developed and a higher percentage of these lacked PNMT immunoreactivity, had neurites, and contained vesicles of smaller mean diameter (70 to 130 nm), similar to those of type I SIF cells in vivo. In the presence of conditioned medium (medium conditioned by non- neuronal cells) as well as glucocorticoid, virtually all of the cells morphologically resembled type I SIF cells. In the absence of glucocorticoid, no SIF cells were ever observed after 3 weeks in culture. By following the development of CA histofluorescence and SIF cell ultrastructure in the cultures over time, we demonstrated that SIF cells were not present in large numbers in these cultures immediately after plating, but were induced from an apparently undifferentiated precursor by the hormonal environment, whereas most of the principal neurons died.


The additive main effects and multiplicative interaction (AMMI) model has been proposed for the analysis of genotype-environmental data. For plant breeding, the recovery of pattern might be considered to be the principal objective of analysis. However, some problems still remain with the analysis, notably in selecting the number of multiplicative components in the model. Methods based on distributional assumptions do not have a sound methodological basis, while existing data-based approaches do not optimize the cross-validation process. This paper first summarizes the AMMI model and outlines the available methodology for selecting the number of multiplicative components to include in it. Then two new methods are described that are based on a full leave-one-out procedure optimizing the cross-validation process. Both methods are illustrated and compared on some unstructured multivariate data. Finally, their applications to analysis of genotype x environment interaction (GEI) are demonstrated on experimental grain yield data. Conclusions of the study are that the leave-one-out procedure is preferable in practice to either distributional F-test or cross-validation randomization methods, and of the two leave-one-out procedures the Eastment-Krzanowski method exhibits the greater parsimony and stability.


This workshop launches the program Trends in Complex Systems [http://www.pks.mpg.de/ tcs or http://ifisc.uib.es/tcs]. We will address the current state of research of extreme events to stimulate new work in this field. The talks will cover a wide range of issues related to extreme events in complex systems, such as listing systems and model classes where evidence for extreme events exists, presenting current statistical tools for the characterization of extreme events including temporal and spatial correlations, and highlighting examples where a detailed understanding of underlying mechanisms has been achieved. This will be completed by the issue of prediction and predictability, of scoring and evaluating predictions, and control of extreme events, as well as considerations about the discrepancy between physical impact of some event and societal impact. In addition to the invited speakers, the workshop facilities enable us to target an audience of about 60 additional participants, who will also present their work in contributed talks and posters. A special emphasis of this workshop lies on discussion, for which ample time is available.


STAKEHOLDERS' SATISFACTION IN A NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION: THE CASE STUDY OF THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS Our aim with this project was to analyze the importance of Service Quality (SQ) and Customer Satisfaction (CS) while taking into consideration the engagement and the role that the stakeholders have through their involvement at the University of Cyprus (UCY) Library. We have used the LibQUAL+ as a service quality measurement tool in order to engage the stakeholders o f the Library of the UCY by providing feedback through a questionnaire. The results of the analysis and the commitment of the library to proceed with the questionnaire were part o f a journey that the UCY started few years ago with the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). The Library has been selected by the Steering Committee to act as a "role model" unit and obtain the Recognized for Excellence (R4E) certification and a prerequisite for the R4E is the feedback from the customer user. Through this process we have analyzed feedback from 1574 users. LibQUAL+ is the adaptation o f the well known SERVQUAL in a library setting. It identifies and analyze thee dimensions: affect of service, information control and library as a place. The aim of the analysis is to effectively allocate resources were needed; asses whether the library meets users' expectations, for future planning purposes and at the same time identify areas that require internal or external funding. Nonetheless some of the limitations that the system has include the complicating rating, the fact that the terms minimum and desired level of service were not easily understood, user group demographics are not easily customizable, it should be repeated for better longitudinal results and also the fact that it must be combined wit other assessment tools. The results have shown that some groups o f stakeholders are satisfied with several issues however the general opinion is that the library needs to proceed with fundamental changes in order to meet the users/stakeholders needs. Assessment is an on going process that needs to be repeated for planning and decision making purposes. By using similar assessment tools with other libraries there is benchmarking for better comparison. In addition staff training and development is necessary for the improvement of the service provided to the users.


Abstract We have developed a modification of the two-grid upscatter acceleration scheme of Adams and Morel. The modified scheme uses a low-angular-order discrete ordinates equation to accelerate Gauss-Seidel multigroup iteration. This modification ensures that the scheme does not suffer from consistency problems that can affect diffusion-accelerated methods in multidimensional, multimaterial problems. The new transport two-grid scheme is very simple to implement for different spatial discretizations because it uses the same transport operator. The scheme has also been demonstrated to be very effective on three-dimensional, multimaterial problems. On simple one-dimensional graphite and heavy-water slabs modeled in three dimensions with reflecting boundary conditions, we see reductions in the number of Gauss-Seidel iterations by factors of 75 to 1000. We have also demonstrated the effectiveness of the new method on neutron well-logging problems. For forward problems, the new acceleration scheme reduces the number of Gauss-Seidel iterations by more than an order of magnitude with a corresponding reduction in the run time. For adjoint problems, the speedup is not as dramatic, but the new method still reduces the run time by greater than a factor of 6.


It has been widely acknowledged that creep and shrinkage of concrete are greatly influenced by the surrounding ambient. In spite of various research carried out to investigate the phenomena, little were conducted on time-dependent deformation for concrete in tropical climate. Locally, most creep and shrinkage predictions are obtained by referring to foreign design codes developed in temperate climate countries, risking inaccurate predictions. Therefore this research is dedicated to determine the magnitude of time-dependent deformation of concrete in the tropical climate. The objectives are to systematically collect creep and shrinkage data under the influence of tropical climate and to empirically develop a set of modification factors based on the best prediction model. Time-dependent deformation tests were carried out on standard specimens and on reinforced concrete columns and prestressed concrete beams under laboratory-controlled environment with temperature and relative humidity (RH) of 27±2oC and 50±4% respectively, and natural tropical ambient. On site monitoring of pre-camber of post-tensioned prestressed beams was also carried out. The experimental data were assessed against various existing creep and shrinkage models such as Eurocode 2, ACI 209, B3 Model, CEB-FIP 1990, and Australian Standard 3600 in order to determine the best prediction for tropical concrete. The results show that time-dependent deformation of HSC in the tropical climate is significantly lower than most of the prediction by foreign standard codes. Based on statistical analysis, Eurocode 2 is identified as the best model for tropical concrete and thus chosen as reference model for development of modification factors. Through empirical analysis, modification factors named as TROPCS which stands for 'Tropical Creep and Shrinkage' is introduced. Statistically, the prediction with adoption of TROPCS to Eurocode 2 model results in better accuracy. The coefficient of variation for prediction with TROPCS is at an average of 10.0% for creep and at 21.1% for shrinkage. Validations on the accuracy of TROPCS on structural members were conducted through the results of structural deformation. The results prove that the prediction with TROPCS factors is better than the prediction by EC 2 with the average coefficient of variation for TROPCS predictions on structural members at 12.5%, as compared to the coefficient of variation by EC 2 at 14.8%. The TROPCS modification factors are proposed to be included in the National Annex of Malaysian version of Eurocode 2 as an optional reference.


According to the theory of group polarisation, perceived invulnerability could be greater in multi-crew operations than for single pilots. The purpose of this study was to measure the level of perceived invulnerability among general aviation pilots in New Zealand and to examine whether the level of perceived invulnerability was influenced by the presence of other pilots. Whilst it is of some concern that the majority of the pilots exhibited perceived invulnerability, no evidence was found to suggest that the level of perceived invulnerability is affected by a group polarisation effect, although further replication of this study is recommended.


A high resolution model mesh was required to numerically simulate sediment transport in tidal marshes. The timing of flooding is dependent on the tidal marsh ground elevation, which requires accurate topographic elevation data. The tidal prism of the marsh is determined by the volume provided by tidal channels in the system. Hence, their location and bathymetry needed to be represented adequately. Due to the high spatial variability and inaccessibility of marshes, remote sensing techniques such as light detection and ranging (LiDAR) are a significant resource for elevation data. LiDAR measures the highest elevation of elements. To determine the bare ground elevation, filter techniques exist but are often inadequate to eliminate elevation errors that are introduced by the vegetation of marshes. We introduce a simple method to remove remaining vertical elevation errors in high resolution digital terrain models (DTMs) of vegetated marshes and present an approach to determine the bathymetry of tidal channels based on a limited number of cross-sectional measurements. Forcing polygons for mesh generation were extracted from the DTMs to assure an accurate spatial representation of the marsh. DTMs (2 × 2 m/1 × 1 m) derived from LiDAR data from the Blackbird Creek Reserve and Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware, USA, were used.


Working with the Duquesne University School of Nursing and Office of Military and Veteran Students, Duquesne's Gumberg Library used grant funds to purchase a collection of resources that address the social, economic, physical, and psychological issues veterans face in the transition to civilian and student life. The library collaborated with campus partners to select materials that fit the needs of students and faculty, and purchased approximately 170 new books, ebooks, DVDs, and streaming videos. As a result of the project the library also increased programming and outreach to veteran students on campus. This article discusses the methods used to select materials, the marketing efforts to promote the new collection, usage to date, and the library's plans to further enhance veteran student engagement with both the library and the university.


Current trends regarding telco network equipment evolution and changing paradigms in energy generation and power supply allow for a re-design of telco network production sites: On the one hand general-purpose hardware together with design ideas borrowed from IT data centers enter the telecom's world and on the other hand concepts of own and de-centralized electrical energy generation and power supply are maturing. As an example, parts of a transport network element are implemented on general-purpose server hardware using virtualization techniques. Calculations and measurements show that in particular the pooling of network functions allows for improved energy efficiency. The results of an economical assessment of different cases for the design of and co-location in future network production sites using such general-purpose systems as well as own and renewable de-centralized power generation and supply yields energy-related cost advantages for the involved parties.


This book is intended to serve a wide variety of users. This updated third edition provides the detailed background necessary to understand how to meet important new safety regulations and reliability engineering topics. Professional control system designers will learn to properly evaluate control system components, various system architectures, how to better communicate with vendors, and how to increase accuracy of life-cycle cost estimates. The book is also an excellent text for college courses due to its detailed explanations, practical presentation, and discussion of the difference between theory and real-world application. It provides a basic foundation of material, including probability, statistics, reliability theory definitions, and basic reliability modeling techniques, as well as advanced topics relevant to safety instrumented and control systems. Each chapter contains exercises to assist the reader in applying the theories presented with their practical implementation.


Book synopsis: This highly original collection brings together some of the most important minds in both contemporary art history and theory, and law and legal history. The result is a fascinating discussion of the diverse relationships between law and the artistic image.

The essays draw on the critical procedures of law, art history, and cultural studies in order to create a new interdisciplinary field of visual culture and law. In exploring the hidden interdependence of law and art, the writings refute the generally held conception that law is fixed and rational while the judgment of art is autonomous and ambiguous. Among the topics addressed are the history of the relationship between art and law, the ways in which the visual is made subject to the force of the law, and the complex relations between law, the image, and identity.

With its groundbreaking ideas from a variety of intellectual traditions and disciplines, this book puts law and art into a new and exciting conversation that will introduce a new field of study and spark international debate.


Florida experiences sea breezes, lake breezes, and bay breezes almost every day during the year, and there are frequently complex interactions between many of these breezes. Given the often-rapid changes in temperature, humidity and wind speed that accompany these breezes, most wildfires and prescribed fires in Florida are affected in some way by their interaction with these circulations. In this paper, we explore the interaction between sea breezes and wildland fires from both an observational and an idealized modeling perspective. The progression of the sea-breeze front and its interaction with the smoke plume from a 26,000 acre wildfire are tracked using a variety of data sources including surface and upper-air observations as well as NEXRAD radar imagery. Idealized numerical simulations of a thermally buoyant plume interacting with a density current are performed in an effort to enhance our understanding of the dynamics of the interaction between sea breeze circulations and the convective column of the fire. Our observational analysis and idealized modeling results suggest that the arrival of a sea breeze front induces a temporary, but significant, increase in fire intensity. This intensification precedes the arrival of the sea-breeze front at the location of the fire, such that the fire intensity is at a maximum at the time of, and slightly after, the passage of the front, and decreases gradually thereafter as cooler and moister air behind the front arrive.


The solid-liquid equilibrium of the ternary system of H2O-Al (NO3)3-Ni (NO3)2 were studied using a synthesis process based on conductivity measurements. Three isotherms included between 20 and 40°C were determined and the stoichiometric phases that appear are Al(NO3)3.9H2O and Ni(NO3)2.6H2O, it was found that there is one eutectic point and two crystallization regions corresponding to Aluminium nitrate and Nickel nitrate. The system belongs to a simple co-saturated type, and neither double salts nor solid solution was found.


Selected ion flow tube mass spectrometry, SIFT-MS, has been used to monitor the volatile compounds in the exhaled breath of 30 volunteers (19 male, 11 female) over a six-month period. Volunteers provided breath samples each week between 8:45 am and 1 pm (before lunch), and the concentrations of several trace compounds were obtained. In this paper the focus is on methanol in breath. The median methanol level determined using the H3O+ precursor ions for all samples was 461 parts-per-billion (ppb), the concentrations for all the samples ranging from 32 to 1684 ppb. The distribution of breath methanol concentration is seen to be log-normal for this healthy population; the geometric mean was 450 ppb, close to the median value, and the multiplicative (geometric) standard deviation was 1.62. Breath methanol is not correlated with age, breath ethanol or ethanol consumed in the previous 24 h, but there was an inverse correlation with body mass index (BMI) for the cohort of volunteers recruited for this study. Observed breath methanol levels are well compatible with the previously published blood methanol levels. Some tentative suggestions are made concerning the origin of endogenous methanol.


There is an evolution underway in terms of how Internet access is perceived and understood. The view that Internet access should be a fundamental right has continued to gain traction. At the same time, concerns are increasing about the very real threat of offline harm posed by the dissemination of misinformation and hate speech online. This Special Section looks at these tensions within the context of one particularly extreme solution to perceived online threats: shutting off Internet access. While Internet shutdowns have now occurred across nearly all continents, they are on the rise in Africa, where some of the longest shutdowns have taken place. This Special Section brings together authors from law, communications, political science, and human rights to encourage a reevaluation of how we understand Internet shutdowns by reframing how they are situated within a broader landscape of other censorship and infrastructure challenges. The articles in this collection examine the causes and effects of shutdowns in the African context and challenge our current thinking about them.


We propose a novel feature mapping approach that is robust to channel mismatch, additive noise and to some extent, non-linear effects attributed to handset transducers. These adverse effects can distort the short-term distribution of the speech features. Some methods have addressed this issue by conditioning the variance of the distribution, but not to the extent of conforming the speech statistics to a target distribution. The proposed target mapping method warps the distribution of a cepstral feature stream to a standardised distribution over a specified time interval.
We evaluate a number of the enhancement methods for speaker verification, and compare them against a Gaussian target mapping implementation. Results indicate improvements of the warping technique over a number of methods such as Cepstral Mean Subtraction (CMS), modulation spectrum processing, and short-term windowed CMS and variance normalisation.


This book offers the first in-depth investigation into the relationship between today's criminal identities and consumer culture. Using unique data taken from criminals locked in areas of permanent recession, the book aims to uncover feelings and attitudes towards a variety of criminal activities, investigating the incorporation of hearts and minds into consumer culture's surrogate social world and highlighting the relationship between the lived identities of active criminals and the socio-economic climate of instability and anxiety that permeates post-industrial Britain. This book will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers and lecturers in all fields within the social sciences, but especially criminology, sociology, social policy, politics and anthropology.


This essay critiques common rationales offered for establishing new global courts or tribunals to address terrorism, acts by ISIS, corruption, human trafficking, human rights abuses committed by states, businesses, and international organizations, and the rights of foreign investors. It argues that the three general rationales for these courts, including the International Investment Court that is most likely to be established - that they are needed to fill gaps in international law, to provide remedies or permit enforcement, and to harmonize or 'de-fragment' the law - are more Eurocentric myth than reality.


The rise of highly digitalized businesses, such as Google and Amazon, has strained the traditional income tax rules on nexus and profit allocation. Traditionally, profit is allocated to market countries where consumers are located only if the business has a physical presence. However, in the digital economy, profits can be easily generated in market countries without a physical presence, resulting in tax revenue loss for market countries. In response, market countries have started imposing a new tax, called the digital services tax (DST), on certain digital business models, which has ignited heated debate across the globe. Supporters defend the DST, designed as a turnover style consumption tax, as an effective measure to make up the foregone revenue in the digital economy because it is not bound by the traditional rules of income taxation. Opponents criticize DSTs as "ring-fencing" or segregating certain digital business models, discriminating against American tech giants, and arguably imposing a disguised income tax. The debate has been focused on the imminent impact, such as who is the immediate winner and loser, but the discussion lacks efforts to understand the fundamentals of DSTs, especially with regard to the consumption tax aspect.

This Article is the first academic paper that highlights DSTs as a consumption tax and provides normative implications for policy makers deliberating a DST. It argues that a DST, with certain modifications, can be a good solution for the tax challenges of the digital economy. First, the Article offers an in-depth analysis of DSTs' economic impact in multisided digital platforms. Second, it offers the advantages of DSTs over other types of consumption tax, such as value added tax and cash-flow tax. Finally, it illustrates how the recent Supreme Court case of South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., which discusses a sales tax imposed on certain remote sellers, and the subsequent Netflix Tax may shed light on ways to overcome the ring-fencing problem of the DST.


This presentation will reflect upon the findings of a SOLSTICE funded project on the way in which the utilisation of wikis impacted upon student learning and identity on a first year literature module. What the data implies is that student activity on the wikis was indicative, and predicative, of student attainment. With that in mind, suggestions will be made as to how and why (in this instance) online activity was so closely related to achievement in assessment. In order to support the arguments and explanations for the impact of the wiki tasks, reference will be made to elements of CHAT theory and to the ethical philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre. It will be argued that the notion of social practices has a direct impact on the way in which a person forms and conceptualises their own identity, and that, through engaging with wikis, students were engaged in a form of social practice that altered their identity and thereby changed (possibly for the better) the way in which they engaged with the module content. The presentation will conclude with a critique of the way in which wikis were used on this project, and will highlight deficiencies and strengths that will go towards honing the use of this technology in future.


The Work Programme is the coalition government's flagship employment programme. Since its conception, it has emerged as a critical case in debates concerning the third sector's involvement in commissioned public services. After over two and a half years of delivery, this article reconsiders the concerns raised by elements of the third sector prior to the programme's launch. Drawing on a range of published research findings and documentary evidence, it considers three main areas of debate: whether third sector organisations have been squeezed out of provision, whether they have been mistreated when working as subcontractors, and whether the programme has proved successful for their client base. It concludes by reflecting on the third sector's role in the Work Programme, and government-funded quasi-markets more generally.


In this investigation, lizard species of Turkish Thrace are investigated indetail for the first time. Morphological characrteristics, range, distribution and subspecific states of the species are given. Furthermore, some observations concerning their biological and ecological characteristics are also given. In this study a total of 678 specimens and 10 species belonging to 3 families of Lacertilia have been investigated from Turkish Trace.


Following verbal route instructions requires knowledge of language, space, action and perception. We present MARCO, an agent that follows free-form, natural language route instructions by representing and executing a sequence of compound action specifications that model which actions to take under which conditions. MARCO infers implicit actions from knowledge of both linguistic conditional phrases and from spatial action and local configurations. Thus, MARCO performs explicit actions, implicit actions necessary to achieve the stated conditions, and exploratory actions to learn about the world.

We gathered a corpus of 786 route instructions from six people in three large-scale virtual indoor environments. Thirtysix other people followed these instructions and rated them for quality. These human participants finished at the intended destination on 69% of the trials. MARCO followed the same instructions in the same environments, with a success rate of 61%. We measured the efficacy of action inference with MARCO variants lacking action inference: executing only explicit actions, MARCO succeeded on just 28% of the trials. For this task, inferring implicit actions is essential to follow poor instructions, but is also crucial for many highly-rated route instructions.


We present here observations of gamma rays in the energy range between 3.0 and 8.3 MeV gathered by the SONG instrument aboard low-altitude polar-orbiting satellite CORONAS-I throughout the period March-June 1994. We concentrate on the emissions related to the trapped particles and organize CORONAS-I measurements in the magnetic L B coordinate system. The spatial distribution of the av- erage gamma-ray counts reveals that the most intense fluxes were observed under the inner radiation belt, at L<2, and that they are exclusively confined into the region of stably trapped particles, where daughter gamma rays could result from the interactions within the spacecraft and instrumen- tal matter. In the outer radiation zone (L 4), the enhanced gamma radiation, also detected outside the stably trapping region, shows pronounced longitudinal variations. The ob- served eastward increase in the gamma-ray count rate sug- gests quasi-traped energetic (megavolt) electrons as a source of the gamma rays both in the upper atmosphere and in the satellite matter, most likely, through the bremsstrahlung process in the studied energy domain.


Aim Obstetric cholestasis (OC) is an incompletely understood hepatobiliary disease that typically affects women in the third trimester of pregnancy. It is associated with increased morbidity and mortality for the fetus, including intrauterine fetal death (IUFD). However, the diagnosis is complex and requires exclusion of other pregnancy-related complications and the serological measurements used are non-specific. A sensitive and specific diagnostic test is needed to help simplify diagnosis. Mothers with obstetric cholestasis are managed by early induction of labour or caesarean section, to try and prevent IUFD. This practice lacks conclusive evidence of benefit; with evidence that expectant management has equivalent outcomes. 1,2 A prognostic test to identify high-risk fetuses is needed to prevent unnecessary inventions in potentially uncomplicated pregnancies. Method: Using Ovid SP Medline, Web of Science and the Cochrane library. The literature relevant to emerging diagnostic and prognostic tests was identified. The papers were synthesised to identify likely candidates for further research and incorporation into the diagnosis and management of obstetric cholestasis. Discussion: Potential candidates for providing a sensitive and specific test for obstetric cholestasis were identified. Autotaxin is a promising candidate that merits further study. 3 Potential prognostic tests were found that identify fetuses with a higher risk of complications. Serum bile acid level and cardiotocography have been shown to be ineffective screening tools. Umbilical artery Doppler pulsatility index and systolic/diastolic ratio correlate well with fetal outcome and could be used as a screening tool. 4 There remains a need to review current management protocols for OC informed by best evidence. References Chappell LC, Gurung V, Seed PT, et al. Ursodeoxycholic acid versus placebo, and early term delivery versus expectant management, in women with intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy: semifactorial randomised clinical trial. British Medical Journal. Jun 13 2012;344 Marschall HU, Shemer EW, Ludvigsson JF, Stephansson O. Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy is not associated with intrauterine fetal death but with gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. Gastroenterology. May 2012;142(5):S912–S913 Kremer AE, Dixon PH, Ris-Stalpers C, et al. Autotaxin is a novel diagnostic marker for intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy. Journal of Hepatology. Mar 2011;54:S11–S12 Zhang K, He J, Dong M. Relationship between umbilical artery Doppler waveform analysis and perinatal prognosis in women with intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy. International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Nov 2010;111(2):187–188


Belief merging aims at extracting a coherent and informative view from a set of belief bases. A first requirement for belief merging operators is to obey basic rationality conditions. Another expected property is to preserve as much information as possible from the input bases. In this paper, we show how new merging operators, called compositional operators, can be defined from existing ones. Such operators aim at offering a higher discriminative power than the merging operators on which they are based, without leading to a complexity shift or losing rationality postulates. We identify some sufficient conditions for ensuring that rationality is fully preserved by composition.


This article provides new insights into the performance of commercial real estate, focusing on the environmental performance of institutional assets. The authors employ a proprietary dataset of energy consumption data that includes more than 26,000 buildings between 2009 and 2018. They document that, in their sample of commercial real estate, the median energy intensity decreased by more than 40% over the decade. Using a difference-in-difference analysis, the authors find that adoption of environmental building certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is associated with significantly lower energy consumption and that there is substantial variation in these effects, depending on certification level and program, and label tenure. Moreover, specific interventions aimed at improving the energy efficiency of buildings considerably reduce ex post energy consumption, with effects varying based on local climatic conditions. TOPICS: Real estate, ESG investing Key Findings • Real estate investors and lenders have started to consider environmental certification and/or energy efficiency in financing and underwriting decisions. • We find that green building certification and investments in energy efficiency lead to significant reductions in building energy consumption. • The median energy consumption of commercial real estate decreased by 42% over the past decade.


The objective of my research was to examine the physiology and behavior of metamorphosing oysters, Crassostrea virginica, and to investigate the effects of low oxygen stress on metamorphic processes. Specifically, I examined the effects of hypoxia (20% of air saturation) and microxia (< 1% of air saturation) on settlement, survival, growth, morphology, metabolic rate and feeding on post settlement oysters. All of the functions I measured were adversely affected by hypoxia and microxia, compared to normoxic controls. Survival times indicate that, like larvae and adults, post settlement oysters are capable of anaerobic metabolism. The 2 week period following settlement is especially critical to recruitment. Low oxygen conditions increases mortality and have detrimental effects on the development and growth of post-settlement oysters. Oysters have the ability to feed at nearly all stages of settlement and metamorphosis. While hypoxic conditions reduce feeding only in the youngest metamorphosing oysters, microxic conditions affect all ages. Not only does weight-specific metabolism decrease as the oysters grow, but metabolic responses to low oxygen change from relatively oxygen independent to oxygen dependent. I conclude that oyster distribution may be influenced by low oxygen, especially in those areas that experience prolonged (24-48 h) hypoxia or severe microxic events. Low oxygen events may control recruitment into the adult population directly, because of larval settlement failure and post-settlement mortality, and indirectly, because of reduction in feeding, development rate, and growth of post settlement oysters.


Abstract The effect of coke and bituminous coal on the reduction of medium-grade manganese ore in ferromanganese production was investigated. Charges of 30 kg medium grade manganese ore, 12 kg limestone and varied amounts of coke and coal were smelted in a Submerged Electric Arc Furnace (SAF) at temperatures of 1300°C to 1500°C. The composition of the ferromanganese and the slag were determined by X-Ray Fluorescence. It was found that using coke as a single reductant resulted in a 96% yield of ferromanganese which was higher than by using coal either as a single reductant or in a mixture of coal and coke. It was also found that using coke as a single reductant resulted in the lowest specific energy consumption. Using coal as reductant produced ferromanganese containing high sulfur and phosphorus.


The paper below largely is an extract of the testimonial filed by the authors to the Secretary of the ITC in response to the Notice on the Federal Register dated August 29, 2013 titled Trade, Investment, and Industrial Policies in India: Effects on the U.S. Economy. Where required, the paper also draws from the written submissions that the authors made to the United States Trade Representative's (hereinafter, USTR) office on the related question of whether India deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights or deny fair and equitable market access to U.S. persons who rely on intellectual property protection. The authors submitted the testimonials to the ITC as well as the USTR and as legal academics with expertise in patent law, trade law, the TRIPS agreement and the law of India. Each of the authors had engaged in this field for more than 10 years and has closely followed the developments within India in relation to the prescriptions of the TRIPS agreement.


The annual cycle for roach (Rutilus rutilus) and perch (Perca fluviatilis) in Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland can be divided into warm `growing' and cold `non-growing' seasons. Summer water temperatures declined between 1991-1993, as did the sizes of 0+ fish of both species. Small overwinter increases in length occurred after poor summers due, in roach, to size-selective mortality. Fat content was size-dependent and increased over the summer in both species. Ail sizes of roach but only small perch lost fat overwinter. Dead roach collected towards the end of the 1992/3 winter had significantly less fat than live individuals. The allocation of energy to growth (and ultimately reproduction) and to fat (and overwinter survival) was modelled as a tradeoff, assuming that fat has twice the energy density of protein and using observed summer and winter changes in body composition. The predicted allocation optima were close to observed values but, for roach, this entailed a substantial survivorship cost. (C) 1995 The Fisheries Society of the British Isles


Abscission of seeds in some plant species occurs as a result of strong wind gusts that exert sufficient drag forces to liberate the seed from its parent. This may be an adaptive feature, as release into stronger wind gusts has been shown to lead to greater dispersal distances, which is likely to have evolutionary advantages. We test the hypotheses that (i) seeds released into upward wind gusts will, on average, travel further than those seeds released into wind gusts with horizontal or downward orientations and (ii) that the preferential abscission of seeds into upward wind gusts will result in the dispersal of seeds over greater distances. As a case study, we studied the abscission dynamics of Conyza bonariensis (L.) Cronquist (fleabane), which is an important weed with global distribution. Using abscission data obtained through a series of seed release experiments, we confirm that abscission of seeds in C. bonariensis is most likely to occur during strong and upward wind gusts. We demonstrate that, for a given wind speed, seeds released into upward wind gusts will, on average, travel further than those seeds released into wind gusts with horizontal or downward orientations. We also show that preferential release into upward wind gusts has some influence on the distance travelled, but the strength of this influence is dependent on the correlation between wind orientation and wind speed. For this particular study, the sensitivity of release to the horizontal wind speed seems to have a larger effect on the distance travelled than sensitivity to wind orientation.


We introduce an extension of the multi-instance learning problem where examples are organized as nested bags of instances (e.g., a document could be represented as a bag of sentences, which in turn are bags of words). This framework can be useful in various scenarios, such as text and image classification, but also supervised learning over graphs. As a further advantage, multi-multi instance learning enables a particular way of interpreting predictions and the decision function. Our approach is based on a special neural network layer, called bag-layer, whose units aggregate bags of inputs of arbitrary size. We prove theoretically that the associated class of functions contains all Boolean functions over sets of sets of instances and we provide empirical evidence that functions of this kind can be actually learned on semi-synthetic datasets. We finally present experiments on text classification, on citation graphs, and social graph data, which show that our model obtains competitive results with respect to accuracy when compared to other approaches such as convolutional networks on graphs, while at the same time it supports a general approach to interpret the learnt model, as well as explain individual predictions.


P-S converted seismic wave exploration plays an important role in detecting complex geologic structures. In this research, we derive two new asymptotic conversion point equations for the P-S converted wave reflected from a dipping reflector. The first is a quadratic asymptotic conversion point equation of the P-S converted wave reflection from a dipping reflector (DACP equation), and the second is a linear asymptotic equation (ADACP equation). DACP and ADACP equations depend on the velocity ratio (VP/VS) of the stratum, the offset (X), the depth (Z) of the conversion point, and the dip angle of the stratum. The last parameter is the most sensitive of the DACP and ADACP equations in determining the conversion point position. The two new equations can predict the conversion point positions on a deep dipping reflector accurately and directly. The accuracy of the conversion point position at shallow depth determined by the DACP equation is better than using the ADACP equation. For a shallow conversion point, for example Z/X = 0.5, the errors of the conversion point prediction in the horizontal distance (CP error) are less than 2% for the DACP equation, but the CP errors are very large for the ADACP equation. If Z/X is greater than 3, the CP errors of the ADACP equation are less than 3% and this equation is more computationally efficient than the DACP equation.


A positive attitude to life or profession has been identified as a means of rapid development. It is a force that compels an individual to go extra mile in any discipline or career of his choice. The purpose of this study is to examine the attitude of undergraduate students in taking a career in Agriculture. A stratified random sampling technique was used to select one hundred and ten respondents across all levels, which made up of 11.8% of the total population of undergraduate students in the Faculty of Agriculture of University of Ilorin at that time. Data were obtained using structured questionnaire. Attitude was measured with a 5-point Likert type scale, while the data was analysed using descriptive statistics and Pearson moment correlation coefficient statistics. The findings showed that more than half of the respondents (63 %) were male, majority (76.4%) were in their twenties. A significant percentage (83.6%) offered agricultural science in their secondary schools, but only few (15.5%) preferred to study agriculture in the university, however, later majority (69.1%) preferred agriculture as a discipline, while 71.8% had no intention of changing to other faculties, because they have developed interest in their course of study. The prevalence factors that influence respondents in studying agriculture were: wide job opportunity in the carrier, room for carrier development, intellectual ability. Pearson correlation coefficient showed a significant relationship between attitude and age(r= 0.23, p <0.05); gender (r= 0.21, p <0.05); level of respondents (r= 0.31, p <0.05) and knowledge of existing Agricultural organization (r= 0.23, p <0.05). Most students did not want to study agriculture initially but later find it interesting. It is therefore recommended that enlightenment programme should be embarked upon to expose undergraduates to the prospect and dynamism of agriculture. Key words: Attitude, Undergraduate Students, Career, Agriculture, Faculty of Agriculture


Modern radiotherapy linacs often use carbon fibre for their couch tops due to its radio translucent properties. Beam attenuation by the couches is often ignored during planning and MU calculation. This work examines beam attenuation and loss of "skin sparing" (dose build up region) when various photon beams transit either the MedTec (Siemens) or Medical Intelligence (Elekta) couches. Additionally, measured doses were compared to CMS treatment planning system (XiO version 4.33.02) predictions. We found the two couches to have different structures, resulting in different attenuation signatures as a function of gantry angle. For normal beam incidence the Siemens and Elekta couches had radiological thicknesses of 4.5 mm and 6.0 mm, respectively. For a normal incidence 10×10 cm2 6MV beam the surface dose after couch transmission was 93% vs. 83% for Elekta and Siemens, respectively. Conversely, the increased mass on the lateral edge of the Siemens couch resulted in a maximum attenuation (6 MV 5×5 cm2 beams) of 8% compared to 5% by the Elekta couch. Incorporating the treatment couch as part of the patient planning CT allowed the CMS TPS model to calculate couch attenuation within 1% of measurement, except at the very edge of the Siemens couch, where the attenuation is strongly gantry angle dependent. The CMS beam model was also able to predict the loss of skin sparing within 1%. In conclusion, the two patient couches are different, but both can significantly affect patient dose which can be accounted for in the CMS TPS.


Recent work has shown that fast, compact low-bitwidth neural networks can be surprisingly accurate. These networks use homogeneous binarization: all parameters in each layer or (more commonly) the whole model have the same low bitwidth (e.g., 2 bits). However, modern hardware allows efficient designs where each arithmetic instruction can have a custom bitwidth, motivating heterogeneous binarization, where every parameter in the network may have a different bitwidth. In this paper, we show that it is feasible and useful to select bitwidths at the parameter granularity during training. For instance a heterogeneously quantized version of modern networks such as AlexNet and MobileNet, with the right mix of 1-, 2- and 3-bit parameters that average to just 1.4 bits can equal the accuracy of homogeneous 2-bit versions of these networks. Further, we provide analyses to show that the heterogeneously binarized systems yield FPGA- and ASIC-based implementations that are correspondingly more efficient in both circuit area and energy efficiency than their homogeneous counterparts.


In this paper, we shall expose the risks inherent to leasing operations, undertaken by the lessor, and their influence on establishing the debtor installment afferent to these operations. Within the theoretical works regarding the establishing of periodic rental payments, two types of risks were identified: the credit risk and the residual value risk. The influence of risks inherent to leasing operations, for the lessor, will be analyzed by means of two models: Miller and Upton's model and Grenadier's model. This analysis will allow us to notice the heterogeneity of lessors' offers, which justify, on the one hand, through the different profile of the lessee enterprises, and, on the other hand, through the nature of the asset financed.


Cadherin-mediated cell adhesion and signaling is essential for metazoan development and yet is absent from all other multicellular organisms. We found cadherin genes at numbers similar to those observed in complex metazoans in one of the closest single-celled relatives of metazoans, the choanoflagellate Monosiga brevicollis. Because the evolution of metazoans from a single-celled ancestor required novel cell adhesion and signaling mechanisms, the discovery of diverse cadherins in choanoflagellates suggests that cadherins may have contributed to metazoan origins.


The vast majority of deep models use multiple gradient signals, typically corresponding to a sum of multiple loss terms, to update a shared set of trainable weights. However, these multiple updates can impede optimal training by pulling the model in conflicting directions. We present Gradient Sign Dropout (GradDrop), a probabilistic masking procedure which samples gradients at an activation layer based on their level of consistency. GradDrop is implemented as a simple deep layer that can be used in any deep net and synergizes with other gradient balancing approaches. We show that GradDrop outperforms the state-of-the-art multiloss methods within traditional multitask and transfer learning settings, and we discuss how GradDrop reveals links between optimal multiloss training and gradient stochasticity.


This paper investigates whether the services of the Federal Reserve System improved the efficiency of the system in the United States for collecting checks relative to the efficiency of the system used by banks just prior to the formation of the Federal Reserve. There are two types of evidence that the Fed's services improved efficiency. First, the Reserve Banks quickly became major processors of interregional checks, even though banks could have continued to use the prior payments arrangements. Second, declines in the ratios of cash to total assets of banks can be attributed to the development of the Fed's check collection services.


Abstract. Over the years, the Standard Least Squares (SLS) has been the most commonly adopted criterion for the calibration of hydrological models, despite the fact that they generally do not fulfill the assumptions made by the SLS method: very often errors are autocorrelated, heteroscedastic, biased and/or non-Gaussian. Similarly to recent papers, which suggest more appropriate models for the errors in hydrological modeling, this paper addresses the challenging problem of jointly estimate hydrological and error model parameters (joint inference) in a Bayesian framework, trying to solve some of the problems found in previous related researches. This paper performs a Bayesian joint inference through the application of different inference models, as the known SLS or WLS and the new GL++ and GL++Bias error models. These inferences were carried out on two lumped hydrological models which were forced with daily hydrometeorological data from a basin of the MOPEX project. The main finding of this paper is that a joint inference, to be statistically correct, must take into account the joint probability distribution of the state variable to be predicted and its deviation from the observations (the errors). Consequently, the relationship between the marginal and conditional distributions of this joint distribution must be taken into account in the inference process. This relation is defined by two general statistical expressions called the Total Laws (TLs): the Total Expectation and the Total Variance Laws. Only simple error models, as SLS, do not explicitly need the TLs implementation. An important consequence of the TLs enforcement is the reduction of the degrees of freedom in the inference problem namely, the reduction of the parameter space dimension. This research demonstrates that non-fulfillment of TLs produces incorrect error and hydrological parameter estimates and unreliable predictive distributions. The target of a (joint) inference must be fulfilling the error model hypotheses rather than to achieve the better fitting to the observations. Consequently, for a given hydrological model, the resulting performance of the prediction, the reliability of its predictive uncertainty, as well as the robustness of the parameter estimates, will be exclusively conditioned by the degree in which errors fulfill the error model hypotheses.


Geomorphology of the Copahue Volcano region and vicinities (Central-western Neuquén). This thematic map describes the principal features of the landscape, a relative sequence of its geomorphic evolution, and arrives to important conclusions about its regional stratigraphy. The regional landscape is composed and polycyclic. The geoforms are related to different exogenous processes (glacial, fluvial and mass-wasting). An endogenous process (volcanism) formed the more distinctive features; a great tectonic-volcanic caldera and the preglacial Copahue stratovolcano. Some minor and youngest volcanic forms were formed during postglacial times. A previous fluvial cycle was replaced by glacial morphogenesis (valley glaciation) during the Quaternary, due a climatic intervention. A huge and very thick (500-800 m) ice-blister was lodged into the caldera. The ice-blister exceded the caldera ́s edges forming several glacial diffluences and giving an important and additional supply to neighbouring glacial valleys (Hualcupén and Trocoman), out of to the depression. The Pleistocene glaciation shows two local cycles of volcanic eruptions: preand post-glacial. The origin of many local lakes was related to glacial exharation. Others lakes have different genesis: by blocking slide, crater-lake and glacial exharation associated with important structural weakness (Caviahue Lake related to the Trapa-Trapa lineament or Caviahue graben). During postglacial times important rock-avalanches occurred in the Hualcupén valley: the Cajón Chico and Compul rock-avalanches were related to seismic shocks. Previously, their accumulations were interpreted as terminal moraines of a second glaciation. A fluvial rejuvenation phase was the consequence of a blocking of Agrio River by the Agrio volcanic flows, during the Holocene. After that, the river eroded this obstacle restablishing its previous base level. The Agrio cascade represents the upstream present position of the consequent rejuvenation wave.


Treatments in Germany involving adult stem cells will be more closely regulated after revision of Germany's medical products law received final approval by the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament.

The Bundesrat approved the revisions on 10 July, just over two weeks after the German Society for Neurology and the German Parkinson Society issued a joint statement warning that patients with Parkinson's disease should not undergo treatments involving bone marrow stem cells. Such treatments are being offered around the world, including at the XCell-Center in Cologne, the societies said in the statement on 23 June.

The XCell-Center began operating in Cologne in January 2007, since when "more than 1600 patients have safely undergone our various stem cell treatments," the centre's website states.

The website (www.xcell-center.com), available in 10 languages, gives a detailed overview …


John Rawls' concept of reflective equilibrium has been the subject of widespread interest and debate. Its use in normative ethics has been criticized by many moral and legal theorists and resourcefully defended by others. Rawls' original concept derived from Nelson Goodman's account of how to justify principles of inductive inference. As such, reflective equilibrium has been thought to support a link between ethics and empirical science, and thus to shed light on the nature of moral truth, justification, and objectivity. Reflective equilibrium also plays a significant role in the analogy Rawls draws between moral theory and linguistics. The linguistic analogy has been an object of controversy in its own right and has led to further speculation about whether Rawls considers moral theory to be an empirical discipline - a branch of psychology - and if so, whether its claims to normative authority can be maintained.In this invited essay for the Washington University Jurisprudence Review, I first discuss Rawls' various accounts of reflective equilibrium in his early writings, paying particularly close attention to the different versions of the concept described in Sections 4 and 9 of A Theory of Justice (1971) and to the distinction Rawls draws between wide and narrow reflective equilibrium in "The Independence of Moral Theory" (1975). I then argue that critics such as Richard Brandt, R.M. Hare, and Peter Singer are mistaken to claim that reflective equilibrium is too empirical or insufficiently normative. In addition, I examine Norman Daniels' influential interpretation of reflective equilibrium, arguing that on close analysis Daniels does not defend Rawls' original concept as much as change the topic. The unfortunate result is to divert the attention of moral and legal theorists away from the plausible naturalistic moral psychology embedded in A Theory of Justice.


I NOW WISH TO TURN TO . . . workers in whom certain morbid affections gradually arise from . . . some particular posture of the limbs or unnatural movements of the body called for while they work. Such are the workers who all day long stand or sit, stoop or are bent double; who run or ride or exercise their bodies in all sorts of ways. First to come upon the stage shall be those who stand at their work, such as carpenters when they hew and saw wood, carvers, blacksmiths, masons, and others. . . . Standing, even for a short time, proves so exhausting compared with walking and running, though it be for a long time. It is generally supposed that this is because of the tonic movement of all the antagonist muscles, both extensors and flexors, which have to be continually in action to enable a man to keep standing erect. . . . It follows that whenever occasion offers, we must advise men employed in the standing trades to interrupt when they can that too prolonged posture by sitting or walking about or exercising the body in some way. . . .

The maladies that afflict the clerks . . . arise from three causes: First, constant sitting, secondly the incessant movement of the hand and always in the same direction, thirdly the strain on the mind from the effort not to disfigure the books by errors or cause loss to their employers when they add, subtract, or do other sums in arithmetic. . . . Incessant driving of the pen over paper causes intense fatigue of the hand and the whole arm because of the continuous and almost tonic strain on the muscles and tendons, which in course of time results in failure of power in the right hand. . . .

Those who sit at their work and are therefore called "chair-workers," such as cobblers and tailors . . . become bent, hump-backed, and hold their heads down like people looking for something on the ground; this is the effect of their sedentary life and the bent posture of the body as they sit and apply themselves all day to their tasks in the shops where they sew. . . . Since to do their work they are forced to stoop, the outermost vertebral ligaments are kept pulled apart and contract a callosity, so that it becomes impossible for them to return to the natural position. . . . These workers, then, suffer from general ill-health . . . caused by their sedentary life. . . . But it is not so true of many other sedentary workers, potters and weav-ers, for example, who exercise the arms and feet and in fact the whole body; this keeps them in better health because the impurities in the blood are more easily dispersed by such movements. All sedentary workers suffer from lumbago. . . . They should be advised to take physical exercise, at any rate on holidays. Let them make the best use they can of some one day, and so to some extent counteract the harm done by many days of sedentary life. . . .

Now there are two kinds of printers; some are almost constantly seated while they select the metal types from their boxes and set up the copy or sort and replace in the boxes types that are no longer needed. . . . Then there are the others whose work is at the press, and they stand all the time; using both hands they smear with ink the type that has been set up, for which they use a kind of tool made of soft leather and stuffed with hairs; one of them with the right hand moves the upper part of the press and presses hard on it, and thus on the instant there appears clearly printed on the paper. . . . They repeat the process again and again till they have made the required number of copies of the whole work. This is certainly a very ingenious device; I wish that the result were only to supply learned men with books and not fishmongers with paper to wrap up their mackerel. The first class of men, the compositors, are sentenced to the sedentary life and hence are exposed to the diseases that ensue therefrom; the second class, the pressmen, have to stand incessantly at work that is very fatiguing, for almost the whole body must be exerted in such a task; hence these workmen inevitably suffer from lassitude and intense fatigue, and when stricken in years are compelled to say farewell to that sort of work. Those who remain seated and work with their hands are threatened with another misfortune from having to keep the eyes continually fixed on those black letters, for they gradually contract weakness of vision, and when their eyes are not strong to begin with they are afflicted with dimness of sight, suffusions (bloodshot eyes) and other diseases of the eyes. . . .

Bakers . . . all become bow-legged. . . . Above a thick board or three-legged table they fasten a smooth block of wood of conical shape at the top of a three-legged frame in such a way that it can be rotated, then they place a great mass of dough underneath, drop down the wooden block from above and press with all the strength of their arms and with their knees as well, while someone keeps turning over the dough. Since the articulation of the knees is not very strong, their legs are bowed outwards. For this trouble there is no remedy, for even when they are young and strong they soon become bow-legged and in course of time, lame. . . .

In crowded cities, especially sea-ports like Venice . . . one sees a vast number of porters whose work is indispensable for loading and unloading merchandise from the cargo-ships. . . . All porters become in time round-shouldered, because the dorsal vertebral are constantly bent forward and become set in that position. For though they know none of the laws of mechanics, nature has taught them that it is easier to carry weights on the shoulders with the chest hollowed, than with the body erect. . . . I have noticed that at Venice and Ferrara these heavily laden men carry sacks of wheat and other weights, not as ours do on one shoulder, but on the neck and dorsal vertebrae, so that the weight may lie all along the carrier's back; they say that the load tires them less and they feel less pressure than if they carried it on one shoulder. . . .

Carpentering is a toilsome business and greatly fatigues the workers, but those who suffer most are the men who with a saw cut up trees into boards. This kind of work is very tiring. . . . Those too who work at the lathe, especially when the wood is box, olive, or turpentine tree or the like, find their task very fatiguing; for they are obliged to put an incessant strain on the hands and arms in order to control the chisel and with it by degrees shave off the right amount according to the design of the work; the right foot is always at work to keep the wood that is to be shaped turning round and round; moreover they must keep the eyes fixed on the work, and from that rotary motion of the wood the eyes contract some injury, since it stimulates the spirits and humors to a vertiginous sort of motion. . . . For carpenters I have no precautions to suggest except this: They should be moderate and not overwork. . . .

Nowadays women sit to weave, but in such a posture that they somehow look as though they were standing. This kind of work is certainly very fatiguing, for the whole body is tasked, both hands, arms, feet, and back, so that every part of the body at once shares in the work. . . . Now an occupation so fatiguing naturally has its drawbacks, especially for women, for if pregnant they easily miscarry and expel the fetus prematurely and in consequence incur many ailments later on. It follows that women weavers, I mean those who are engaged wholly in this occupation, ought to be particularly healthy and robust, otherwise they break down from overwork and as they get on in years are compelled to abandon this trade. . . . Therefore in work so taxing moderation would be the best safeguard against these maladies, for men and women alike; for the common maxim "Nothing to excess" is one that I excessively approve.

Editors' Note
In March 2001, with the support of President George W. Bush, the US Congress voted to undo the nation's landmark ergonomics standard, passed just a few months earlier in November 2000. Congressional votes on repeal were split mainly along party lines, with the votes against the standard running 66 (Republican) to 44 (Democrat) in the Senate and 223 (R) to 206 (D) in the House of Representatives.

The repealed Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard addressed one of the longest-ignored occupational threats to American workers. Each year, more than 1.8 million US workers report musculoskeletal disorders such as carpal tunnel syndrome and back injuries; in 600|000 cases, the disorders are serious enough that workers take time off from work, costing industry an estimated $9 billion a year in sick days and decreased productivity.

The OSHA standard was supported by public health and labor advocates and was the result of more than 10 years of work and a year of hearings and public comment. It would have required employers to create programs to inform workers about musculoskeletal disorders and their symptoms; to encourage reporting; and, if a serious incident were reported, evaluate the workplace and take action to address the risks. The standard had consistently come under fire from business groups, who claimed it would be too costly to enact.

This extract from the writings of Bernardino Ramazzini (1633–1714) reminds us that, however current the battles over OSHA's ergonomic standard may be, these types of occupational hazards were recognized by astute public health and medical observers long ago.

Elizabeth Fee, PhD

Theodore M. Brown, PhD

Contributing Editors


In Honor of Angela Harris: Finding Breathing Space, Embracing the Contradictions, and "Education Work," serves as a tribute to Angela Harris. This essay explores Harris' concept of education work, the work that people of color in predominantly white settings must do to maintain their own integrity and to help their white colleagues to build inclusive communities. Part I explores this idea of education work and suggests that whites need to undertake part of the load of this work. Education work by whites provides an opportunity to create allies and to work across racial lines. Part II addresses the idea of incorporating mindfulness into legal education. Again, Harris has been a pioneer in this area through her scholarship on reframing legal education. The essay includes breathing exercises in the yoga tradition and concludes with a recipe for chocolate chip cake, recognizing Harris' and my love of chocolate.


Abstract. Cloud microphysical and macrophysical properties are critical for understanding the role of clouds in climate. These properties are commonly retrieved from ground-based and satellite-based infrared remote sensing instruments. However, retrieval uncertainties are difficult to quantify without a standard for comparison. This is particularly true over the polar regions, where surface-based data for a cloud climatology are sparse, yet clouds represent a major source of uncertainty in weather and climate models. We describe a synthetic high-spectral-resolution infrared data set that is designed to facilitate validation and development of cloud retrieval algorithms for surface- and satellite-based remote sensing instruments. Since the data set is calculated using pre-defined cloudy atmospheres, the properties of the cloud and atmospheric state are known a priori. The atmospheric state used for the simulations is drawn from radiosonde measurements made at the North Slope of Alaska (NSA) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) site at Barrow, Alaska (71.325° N, 156.615° W), a location that is generally representative of the western Arctic. The cloud properties for each simulation are selected from statistical distributions derived from past field measurements. Upwelling (at 60 km) and downwelling (at the surface) infrared spectra are simulated for 260 cloudy cases from 50 to 3000 cm−1 (3.3 to 200 µm) at monochromatic (line-by-line) resolution at a spacing of  ∼  0.01 cm−1 using the Line-by-line Radiative Transfer Model (LBLRTM) and the discrete-ordinate-method radiative transfer code (DISORT). These spectra are freely available for interested researchers from the NSF Arctic Data Center data repository ( doi:10.5065/D61J97TT ).


In the last decade the number of mosques in the United States has considerably grown from 1209 to 1925. As shown by sociologist Akbar Ahmed, there is an important diversity among American mosques, in terms of size, ethnic background, theological teaching, proselytizing strategy. While most mosques and Islamic centres are built without encountering any opposition from local community, a few controversies have recently attracted a lot of media and public opinion attention. Rather than an exhaustive survey of all the mosque debates, this article analyses the most important specific type of arguments that were made by participants in such controversies. In particular, it examines the extent to which the relevance and the legitimacy of the liberal language of rights seems challenged by a growing part of the American public, that puts forward notions of appropriateness, sensitivity, and nationalism.


The Maximum k-plex Problem is an important combinatorial optimization problem with increasingly wide applications. In this paper, we propose a novel strategy, named Dynamic-threshold Configuration Checking (DCC), to reduce the cycling problem of local search. Due to the complicated neighborhood relations, all the previous local search algorithms for this problem spend a large amount of time in identifying feasible neighbors in each step. To further improve the performance on dense and challenging instances, we propose Double-attributes Incremental Neighborhood Updating (DINU) scheme which reduces the worst-case time complexity per iteration from O(|V|⋅ΔG) to O(k · Δ‾G). Based on DCC strategy and DINU scheme, we develop a local search algorithm named DCCplex. According to the experiment result, DCCplex shows promising result on DIMACS and BHOSLIB benchmark as well as real-world massive graphs. Especially, DCCplex updates the lower bound of the maximum k-plex for most dense and challenging instances.


We experimentally investigate an optimum scheme of coupling a collimated light from a Ti:sapphire laser source into a standard single-mode fiber (SMF). By adjusting the effective numerical aperture (NA) of coupling lens and eliminating the chromatic aberration, a coupling efficiency of around 70% is finally obtained. This result is close to the maximum value predicted by theoretical simulation. It is well demonstrated that high coupling efficiency between Ti:sapphire laser and SMF can also be obtained by optimizing certain parameters of a coupling lens, without employing any special optical components, or the specific fiber with complex structure.


Abstract Objective: The objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence and odds of fleet driver errors and potentially distracting behaviors just prior to rear-end versus angle crashes. Methods: Analysis of naturalistic driving videos among fleet services drivers for errors and potentially distracting behaviors occurring in the 6 s before crash impact. Categorical variables were examined using the Pearson's chi-square test, and continuous variables, such as eyes-off-road time, were compared using the Student's t-test. Multivariable logistic regression was used to estimate the odds of a driver error or potentially distracting behavior being present in the seconds before rear-end versus angle crashes. Results: Of the 229 crashes analyzed, 101 (44%) were rear-end and 128 (56%) were angle crashes. Driver age, gender, and presence of passengers did not differ significantly by crash type. Over 95% of rear-end crashes involved inadequate surveillance compared to only 52% of angle crashes (P < .0001). Almost 65% of rear-end crashes involved a potentially distracting driver behavior, whereas less than 40% of angle crashes involved these behaviors (P < .01). On average, drivers spent 4.4 s with their eyes off the road while operating or manipulating their cell phone. Drivers in rear-end crashes were at 3.06 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.73–5.44) times adjusted higher odds of being potentially distracted than those in angle crashes. Conclusions: Fleet driver driving errors and potentially distracting behaviors are frequent. This analysis provides data to inform safe driving interventions for fleet services drivers. Further research is needed in effective interventions to reduce the likelihood of drivers' distracting behaviors and errors that may potentially reducing crashes.


South Uist in the Outer Hebrides has some of the best preserved archaeological remains within Britain and even further afield. Three distinct ecological zones - grassland machair plain, peaty blackland and mountains - each bear the imprint of human occupation over many millennia. The machair strip, long uninhabited, is filled with hundreds of settlement mounds, occupied from the Beaker period 4,000 years ago until a few centuries ago. The blacklands bear the traces of past farming practices as well as the remains of medieval settlements, more recent blackhouses and lochs containing duns, brochs and crannogs. In the hills lie the upstanding remains of shielings, Iron Age wheelhouses and Neolithic chambered tombs. The results of large-scale excavations of Bronze Age houses (Cladh Hallan), an Iron Age broch (Dun Vulan), Viking settlements (Bornais and Cille Pheadair) and post-medieval blackhouses (Airigh Mhuillin), combined with extensive surveys and small-scale excavations that have identified hundreds of new sites, are being brought together in a series of volumes to provide an invaluable record and assessment of South Uist's archaeology covering the last 6,000 years. The large set-piece excavations are to be published in separate monographs. The results of the surveys and small-scale excavations are presented here.


Today, many formal analysis tools are not only used to provide certainty but are also used to debug software systems - a role that has traditional been reserved for testing tools. We are interested in exploring the complementary relationship as well as tradeoffs between testing and formal analysis with respect to debugging and more specifically bug detection. In this paper we present an approach to the assessment of testing and formal analysis tools using metrics to measure the quantity and efficiency of each technique at finding bugs. We also present an assessment framework that has been constructed to allow for symmetrical comparison and evaluation of tests versus properties. We are currently beginning to conduct experiments and this paper presents a discussion of possible outcomes of our proposed empirical study.


Unpublished project report produced as part of the Wastewater Agriculture and Sanitation For Poverty Alleviation in Asia (WASPA Asia).WASPA Asia Project Report 9


Despite recognition of the centrality of nationalism for International Relations, there has been comparatively little research from the perspective of this discipline on the way national identities are transformed through time, and on the effect these changes can have in relations among states. Thus the focus of this work on the transformation of Mexican identity in the context of the relation between Mexico and the United States after the end of the Cold War and within the framework of economic integration through NAFTA. The main argument throughout this work is that the meaning of national identity is made through an interaction with the Other, interpreted by means of two sets of discourses: on the one hand, there are those discourses on ethnicity, religion and language that seek to construct a unity out of the people inhabiting a given territory, mainly by pointing out how they are different from those outside territorial boundaries. And on the other, there are the discourses on world politics, which reify the national state as the legitimate political unit of allegiance and construct 'classificatory frameworks' and narratives which shape their interactions. Given the historical link between cinema and national identity, contending representations of the national identity put forward in recent films, both from Hollywood and from Mexico, are analysed to trace the way this process has been forged discursively in the Mexican case, and to assess the degree to which alternative narratives have become successful or failed to hegemonise a new meaning for the national identity.


Probabilistic topic models are a popular tool for the unsupervised analysis of text, providing both a predictive model of future text and a latent topic representation of the corpus. Practitioners typically assume that the latent space is semantically meaningful. It is used to check models, summarize the corpus, and guide exploration of its contents. However, whether the latent space is interpretable is in need of quantitative evaluation. In this paper, we present new quantitative methods for measuring semantic meaning in inferred topics. We back these measures with large-scale user studies, showing that they capture aspects of the model that are undetected by previous measures of model quality based on held-out likelihood. Surprisingly, topic models which perform better on held-out likelihood may infer less semantically meaningful topics.


In this work we report on the 2-mum laser emission of LiLuF4 crystals doped with thulium trivalent ions (Tm:LLF) at different doping density up to 16%. We will present our results regarding growth, absorption and emission spectroscopy, Judd-Ofelt analysis and room temperature diode pumping laser experiments as a function of the dopant density. The best result is 56% of slope efficiency, with a maximum output power of 280 mW. The emission wavelength ranges between 1985 and 2038 nm, exploiting the vibronic emission of Tm in LLF.


The marketisation of the educational sector continues to shape educational provision,
policy and practice on a worldwide scale (Apple, 2001; Ball, 2008; Giroux, 2004),
ostensibly providing 'freedom' through the conflation of consumer 'choice' and 'equality
of opportunity' via the invisible hand of the market. The assumption that competitive
markets will produce better schools and outcomes for their students veils the extent to
which a large proportion of the world's population are positioned as marginal actors,
unable to 'compete' or 'choose' as equals, as they engage on a significantly uneven playing
field (Mills & McGregor, 2014; Reay, 2012). Historical and global (cf. Fielding & Moss,
2011; Neill, 1990; Wrigley et al., 2012) examples of democratic alternatives to the
traditional institution of 'the school' have provided rich evidence of the radical possibilities
for social change in the form of case studies and academic critique. However, the absence
of a cohesive platform which allows a multiplicity of voices and diverse contexts to
collaborate together and develop a more effective voice, risks positioning these more
radical models at the fringe of educational reform. This represents a significant challenge
for extending democracy within educational contexts. The co-operative movement
represents a possible solution to this, especially in terms of developing its capacity to create
a powerful alliance of partners which can reorient the means and ends of public education
towards social justice. Indeed, in just six years co-operative schools have come to represent
the third largest grouping within the English public education system (Munn, 2013) and in
January 2014, there were just over 700 schools in the UK which have committed to
adopting co-operative values (self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity,
solidarity, openness and honesty, social responsibility and caring for others) within the
very heart of their school's ethos (Shaw, forthcoming, 2015).
Although the first English co-operative trust school opened in 2008, sustained
analysis of this model has not been undertaken to date. Therefore, this research
project attempts to offer the beginnings of a critical conversation that considers the
possibilities and challenges that such a model of schooling might have to offer by
undertaking a systematic examination of the recent emergence of a 'co-operative'
model of public schooling from within the socio-historical context of decades of neoliberal
educational 'reforms'. This piece of research maps out how this model is variously conceived as a more ethical brand by some, and as a radical project which
creates the necessary conditions for democracy and social justice to flourish by
others. This research therefore, seeks to understand how tropes of "getting it" both
constitute and confuse readings of freedom and equality in education as nascent
understandings of co-operative school membership become slippery subjects of cooperative
school discourse. By undertaking a critical discursive analysis of claims that
co-operative school governance structures allow everyone to 'have a say', this thesis
develops a theoretical engagement and provocation of 'voice' in education as it
becomes increasingly troubled with and by attempts to answer the question, 'what is
a co-operative school?' and 'what can it do?' In order to answer these questions, data
drawn from critical ethnographic fieldwork undertaken at three co-operative trust
and academy schools during 2012-13 was considered alongside discourse analysis of
an emerging body of 'texts' that sought to inform and promote 'co-operation' in
school.
As a result of exploring the accounts of Others who offered a range of narratives that
reflect the 'making up' (Hacking, 1990) of the co-operative subject, these different
versions of events brought into view both the challenges and the possibilities that 'cooperative'
schools and their members face; as the values and principles of cooperation
are also shaped (but not necessarily determined) by claims made for
equality which reflect the messiness of everyday school life. Furthermore, this piece of
research highlighted the extent to which students' experiences of "getting it" (cooperative
schooling) troubled corresponding rights to be included in decision-making
processes as the conditions of co-operative school membership are intersected by
multiple axes of difference and inequality, both within educational discourse and in
wider society.
This research suggests that despite the promising emergence of a model of schooling
that places a collective approach to civil society at its core, historical asymmetries of
power and entrenched marketisation of educational provision and practice tended to
prevail. This severely limited the extent to which schools were able to create the
conditions of possibility for everyone to "get it" and 'have a say'. I thus argue that, in
order for co-operative schools to resist the neo-liberal appropriation of freedom through the lens of the 'rational' individual consumer of education, significant
restructuring of governance arrangements is required alongside considerable
advocacy work that addresses students' rights to be included and protected as full
members of the school community. This thesis closes with a number of observations
and recommendations that contribute to reinvigorating the debate about what cooperative
schooling can do, in addition to highlighting how this research project offers
further insight about the conceptual and methodological dilemmas that work to
shape the construction of children's agency and subjectivities as students are variously
positioned as heterogeneous subjects of co-operative education and educational
research.