Transcription factor Nkx2.5 is frequently mutated in congenital heart disease, but the mechanisms by which Nkx2.5 regulates heart development are poorly understood. By generating comprehensive DNA methylome maps from zebrafish embryonic hearts in nxk2.5 mutants and siblings, we discovered that Nkx2.5 regulates DNA methylation patterns during cardiac morphogenesis. We identified hundreds of Nkx-dependent heart-specific Differentially Methylated Regions (nhDMRs). A majority of the nhDMRs were hypomethylated in nkx2.5−/- hearts, correlating with changes in the mutant transcriptome, suggesting Nkx2.5 functions largely as a repressor. Distinct Nkx DNA-binding motifs were significantly enriched in subclasses of nhDMRs. Furthermore, nhDMRs were significantly associated with histone H3K4me1 and H3K27ac post-translational modifications, suggesting Nkx2.5 regulates gene expression by differential methylation of cis-regulatory elements. Using transgenics, we validated several nhDMRs with enhancer activities in the heart. We propose a novel role of Nkx2.5 mediated DNA methylation is integral in activating and repressing Nkx2.5 target genes during heart development.


A positive self-concept is associated with a number of outcomes including school adjustment, academic attainment and mental health. Literature suggests individual differences in self-concept derive from children's relationships with significant others such as parents and teachers. A systematic review of the literature exploring the relationship between teacher-child relationships and children's self-concept found some associations, however, this was not always consistently found. Furthermore, a number of methodological limitations in the studies were noted. Implications for future research were reported and included using multi-faceted measures of self-concept and teacher-child relationships, as well as controlling for the effect of other social relationships (e.g. parents). To address some of these limitations, this empirical paper examines whether teacher relationships (as characterised by closeness and conflict) are associated with children's global, academic, behavioural and social self-concept, and whether teacher relationships may buffer children who are less securely attached to their caregivers against negative outcomes, such as low self-concept. 163 children (aged 7-11 years) and their class teachers participated. Questionnaires measured child reports of the teacher relationship, attachment security to their caregiver and self-concept as well as teacher reports of teacher relationship quality. Results found that although there was no evidence for a moderating effect of teacher relationships, attachment security was related to children's global, academic, behavioural and social self-concept and positive teacher relationships further contributed to children's behavioural and academic self-concept. Teacher relationships were found not to contribute to children's global or social self-concept. Implications for future research and educational psychology practice are discussed.


Speech recognition accuracy can be improved by the removal of noise. However, errors in the estimated signal components can also obscure the recognition. This paper presents a framework of wavelet-based techniques to harness the automatic speech recognition performance in the presence of background noise. The proposed robust speech recognition system is realized by implementing speech enhancement preprocessing, feature extraction, and a hybrid speech recognizer in the time-frequency space. A perceptual wavelet filterbank using a fixed base to imitate the human perceptual modus of speech is developed to capture the most discriminative information in the time-frequency plane. To minimize the mismatch between the training and testing conditions of the classifier, a Bayesian scheme is applied in a wavelet domain to separate the speech and noise components in the proposed iterative speech enhancement algorithm. The nonphonetic information is discarded while the more critical speech features are extracted and represented by the wavelet coefficients. The denoised wavelet features are fed to the hybrid classifier founded on a hidden Markov model (HMM). The intrinsic limitation of the HMM is overcome by augmenting it with a wavelet support vector machine. This hybrid and hierarchical design paradigm improves the recognition performance by combining the advantages of different methods into an integral system. The continuous digit speech recognition experiments conducted with the proposed framework show promising results. It significantly improves the recognition performance at a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) without causing a poorer performance at a high SNR.


This paper considers how environmental problems affect economic growth. In order to explain the relationship between the economy and the environment, we impose the law of mass conservation and its corollary, the mass balance principle, and consider pollution from both production and consumption sectors. Utilising a model which incorporates the material balance principle on endogenous growth theory, we obtain the following results: where environmental problems are not serious, optimal economic growth rates at a steady state rise as these problems become more severe - however, there is a threshold for the degree of their seriousness, beyond which the relationship is reversed, i.e., environmental problems lower optimal economic growth rates; a similar relationship is found between the economic growth rates at social optimum and at a laissez-faire competitive equilibrium. The optimal growth rate is higher (lower) than the equilibrium growth rate if the degree of seriousness of environmental problems is below (above) a threshold.


The initial intent of this paper is to present a measurement model of the economic impact of an individual small business institute (SB!), with  the ultimate intent being the develop ment and use of a standard model throughout the United States. A standard model would allow the analysis of collected data from many SB!s in order to encourage a review of the ef fectiveness as well as eff iciency of the SB! program in areas such as research  applications, management analysis, and program/agency comparisons (36, 40). This economic impact model involves impact  evaluation,  defined by Patton as: These evaluations are aimed at determining porgram results and effects, especially for the purposes of making major decisions ab6ut program continuation, expan sion, reduction,  and funding (31). In constructing the economic impact model, the needs of the model to satisf y information requirements of diverse groups such as SB! directors, SB! clients, and government funding agencies was the paramount concern. Therefore, the development of the economic impact model was guided by the following quotation from Connolly, Conlon, and Deutsch: We argue that an answer to the question "How well is X performing?" is inevitably contingent on whom one is asking. That is, the evaluative criteria required to transform a descriptive into an evaluative statement flow from the individuals or groups to whom we are referring as "constituencies"...(10). In the economic impact model to be presented, the paramount constituency are the SB! clients; the secondary constituency consists of outside reviewers who fund the SB! program as well as SB! directors. The ordering in terms of importance of thse constituencies guided the selection of economic criteria for inclusion in this model.


As the hunt For Osama bin Laden began to focus on the now infamous compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the CIA desperately sought confirmation that he was there. The agency came up with an idea: hire a local doctor to conduct a fake vaccination campaign, which it hoped could lead to obtaining blood samples from bin Laden's grandchildren that could be analyzed for a DNA match to bin Laden. One could dismiss the campaign as just another imaginative tactic used by the CIA in the search; the fact that it involved a population health ruse could be of no more significance than had the CIA hired agents to sell lottery tickets door to door in the neighborhood. But the selection of a vaccination campaign may not have been mere happenstance, just another case example of the increasing use of a health intervention to advance a specific national security objective. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A clue to such thinking emerged after the United Kingdom's Guardian revealed the ruse. After at first refusing to comment, a senior administration official told United Press International that it had been intended as "an actual vaccination campaign conducted by real medical professionals." The statement was only half true. Medical workers were recruited to organize and conduct a vaccination initiative to provide real vaccines for hepatitis B, but the campaign nevertheless was fraudulent from the start as it failed to follow standard immunization procedure, which requires a follow up vaccine that was never administered. Health and Diplomacy The relationship among health, national security, and foreign policy has recently gained attention from scholars as well as diplomats. The most obvious use of diplomacy in the health context has been to prevent cross-border infectious disease transmission, and to protect economic interests of domestic corporations in connection with health products. Since the SARS epidemic, diplomatic efforts have strengthened international and regional cooperation to limit transmission of infectious diseases through the World Health Organization's international health regulations (WHO). The negotiations addressed traditional areas of state concern, especially whether outbreak reporting would continue to be constrained by state sovereignty or rather would yield to a more global approach to information dissemination. This past year, further agreements were reached at the World Health Assembly to address sticky issues about sample sharing and access of poor countries to vaccines. Other contentious subjects of international health negotiations include the marketing of tobacco, and the effort to reconcile patent rights of manufacturers of drugs for HIV/AIDS and other diseases predominant in poor countries with the legitimate demand for affordable life-saving drugs. In other circumstances, diplomacy has been invoked not to resolve disputes pitting economic interests against health, but simply to advance health, both for its own sake and to promote the emergence of well-governed states that can serve the needs of their populations. In 2009, the National Intelligence Council issued a report on Global Health as a Security Issue, arguing that chronic, non-communicable diseases, neglected tropical diseases, maternal and child mortality, malnutrition, sanitation and access to clean water, and availability of basic healthcare were significant to US national security. In Nigeria, for example, diplomatic tools were invoked to overcome politically-inspired resistance to a polio vaccination program. An effective health system contributes to long-term economic growth and, arguably, political stability. In all these cases, health is seen as an independent good, and diplomacy is used to promote it or reconcile it against other interests. But there is another variation on health diplomacy where health benefits are not the primary focus. Health interventions are used as a means of accomplishing other national objectives. …


Thesis (M.P.P.)--Georgetown University, 2009.; Includes bibliographical
 references. The effective design and delivery of a program of microfinance is difficult under
 any circumstance. However, in conflicted-affected societies the task of these institutions
 that seek to provide financial stability to its most impoverished members the task is
 complicated manifold. Thus, the central question motivating this analysis is: How does
 microfinance affect refugee livelihoods? The analysis is also motivated, in part, because of a
 relative lack of thorough and rigorous empirical research on this topic. The analysis will
 look at a case study of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2001. This paper conducts rigorous
 statistical analysis of the LSMS World Bank dataset to answer the two questions: First, what
 factors does access to microcredit depend on? And second, will access to microcredit impact
 the poverty of refugee and displaced populations?; The analysis shows that IDPs/refugees are
 statistically less likely to get loans than non-IDPs/refugees. Thus, from a policy perspective
 it is important to focus attention on these population groups which are most affected, and
 least able to pull themselves out of poverty. While the results do not definitively evidence a
 positive impact of loan-taking behavior on the consumption levels of IDP/refugee households,
 they do not, at the same time, definitively rule out that possibility. Beyond any doubt, the
 paper does certainly make enough of a quantitative case that any arbitrary ruling out of
 microfinance as a tool for the reconstruction and development of IDP/refugee livelihoods is
 premature and myopic.


In radio network performance evaluations it is of interest to use simulation environments that represent realistic networks. In this paper two widely used simulation environments are benchmarked against live network path gain measurements. Some parameter adjustments are done to fit the simulation environments to the measured path gain and cell isolation statistics. The need to modify base station antenna model parameters to match the intra-site cell isolation in real networks is identified and elaborated. In particular an increase of maximum attenuation to 35dB, introduction of mechanical tilt and reduction of vertical beam width are needed. In addition some adjustments are done to better represent the assumed traffic distribution with 80% indoor users and expected propagation losses resulting in a path gain level on par with the measured network.


Last year, as part of a project to revise the ABA Criminal Justice Standards for Prosecution and Defense Functions, the ABA Criminal Justice Section initiated round-table discussions with prosecutors, criminal defense lawyers, and academics throughout the United States. The Standards under review provide aspirational guidance for all criminal law practitioners. This Article stems from the Criminal Justice Section's undertaking. It considers the wording, scope, and propriety of several of the proposed changes that address lawyer-witness communications. It begins with a discussion of the effects of cognitive bias on these communications and explains why carefully tailored standards may lessen the detrimental impact of those biases. Then, the Article examines in detail three challenging, yet common aspects of communications that the Standards seek to influence: (1) communicating with witnesses about their future communications with opposing counsel, (2) communicating warnings to witnesses, and (3) communicating with experts. Ultimately, the Article argues for clarity in the Standards to reduce the impact of unwanted cognitive bias to which we are all vulnerable.


We present an efficient method of reconstructing the parameters of the constrained MSSM from assumed future LHC data, applied both on their own right and in combination with the cosmological determination of the relic dark matter abundance. Focusing on the ATLAS SU3 benchmark point, we demonstrate that our simple Gaussian approximation can recover the values of its parameters remarkably well. We examine two popular noninformative priors and obtain very similar results, although when we use an informative, naturalness-motivated prior, we find some sizeable differences. We show that a further strong improvement in reconstructing the SU3 parameters can by achieved by applying additional information about the relic abundance at the level of WMAP accuracy, although the expected data from Planck will have only a very limited additional impact. Further external data may be required to break some remaining degeneracies. We argue that the method presented here is applicable to a wide class of low-energy effective supersymmetric models, as it does not require one to deal with purely experimental issues, e.g., detector performance, and has the additional advantages of computational efficiency. Furthermore, our approach allows one to distinguish the effect of the model's internal structure and of the external data on the final parameters constraints.


Clusters contain a group of related industries and other entities important in terms of competition and are geographic concentrations of interconnected companies and institutions belonging to a particular area. These include suppliers of specialized inputs such as components, machinery and services, and providers of specialized infrastructure. Clusters often extend downstream towards various distribution channels and customers and later to manufacturers of complementary products and the industries related by skills, technologies or common inputs. Finally, some clusters include governmental institutions and other entities - such as universities, standardizing agencies, think-tanks (ideas factories/ reflection groups), professional training providers and employers - providing specialized training, education, information, research and support.


The Atlantic goliath grouper is a critically endangered species that inhabits estuarine and reef environments and is threatened primarily by fishing activities and habitat destruction. Despite the urgent need for protection, its genetic conservation status remains unknown. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the gene flow among the populations of the species along the coast of Brazil based on the control region of the mitochondrial DNA. The results indicate low haplotype diversity (0.40-0.86) and very low nucleotide diversity (0.1-0.5%). They also show that the genetic diversity of the species varies considerably along the coast and that this finding may be especially important for the identification of priority areas for its conservation. The population analyses indicate a low but significant degree of genetic structuring (Φ ST =0.111), probably due to the occurrence of rare haplotypes at some locations, although the genetic differentiation between sites was not correlated with geographic distance (r=0.0501; p=0.7719), and the shared haplotypes indicate that gene flow occurs among all locations along the Brazilian coast. The results of the pairwise FST indicate a high degree of genetic differentiation between locations. The incipient population structuring detected in the present study is not related systematically to the geological or physical features of the Brazilian coast. The complex interaction of fluctuations in sea level, marine currents, and the reproductive characteristics of the species hampers the identification of the specific role of each of these processes in the gene flow dynamics of the population units of the Atlantic goliath grouper. The low overall levels of genetic diversity, the pairwise FST values and the significant population structuring among groups (Φ CT ) identified in the present study all reinforce the critically endangered status of the species and are inconsistent with the presence of a single, panmictic population of groupers on the Brazilian coast. The results of this study suggest that, though it may be incipient, the observed genetic structuring must be taken into account in order to prevent potential problems, such as outbreeding depression, in the management of wild stocks.


In this paper, we suggest that psychology as a science, and especially as a clinical practice, can develop new ways of thinking and working with clients by including critical, feminist, and norm-critical approaches. Ethical guidelines highlight that psychologists should respect the client's rights and dignity. New policies for evidence-based psychological practice also emphasize responsiveness to the sociocultural context, including the client's gender, gender identity, and sexuality. We initiate a discussion on how psychologists can consider the sociocultural context ethically by introducing norm-critical perspectives to our practice. Psychologists, as well as our clients, are affected by the social and cultural standards of the society in which we live. The goal of norm-critical approaches is to make societal norms and taken for granted psychological understandings explicit, and interrogate the effects these might have on people's lives. This includes investigating how norms make it (im)possible for people to live in accordance with their values. We suggest that the reflexive process required by psychologists should be extended to include reflexivity on different levels, at the workplace, among colleagues, and in collaboration with the client. Strategies such as queer listening as well as developing the skills already used in psychological treatment could facilitate such processes. (Less)


With the continuous decline in the price of second-generation (2G) high temperature superconducting (HTS) tapes, the 2G HTS cables are a promising candidate to significantly improve the electrical power transmission capacity and efficiency. In order to make the HTS cable competitive to its counterparts in the power market, much ongoing research work have made considerable contributions to the HTS cable design. In this thesis, the challenges of electrical issues of superconducting power cable using 2G HTS tapes have been addressed. The specific contributions of the thesis include: the influence of anisotropic characteristics of 2G HTS is investigated in order to increase critical current of HTS cable; For improvement of transmission efficiency and safety, the homogenization of HTS cable current distribution is achieved considering the influence of contact resistances and HTS layer inductances; AC loss of HTS cable is obtained through experimental measurement for cooling system design; and the impact of HTS cable on power grids is analysed for safe integration of HTS cable into grids. This thesis starts with a literature review of superconductivity and developments of 2G HTS cable. Following the literature review is the critical current investigation of HTS cable considering the anisotropy of 2G HTS tape. 2G HTS tapes were placed in a highly uniform electromagnetic field and the in-field critical currents were measured with various magnitudes and orientations of the magnetic field. The anisotropic characteristics of 2G HTS tape were determined by non-linear curve fitting using measured in-field critical currents and further implemented into the HTS cable finite element method (FEM) modelling. The modelling results indicate that the gap distances among the tapes in the HTS cable affect the critical current of the HTS cable due to the anisotropic characteristics. In order to investigate the critical current of HTS cable with respect to gap distances, an HTS cable circuit model with adjustable gap distances among the parallel placed HTS tapes was designed and built. Extensive experimental and FEM modelling were performed and the results indicate that the minimized gap distance among the neighboring HTS tapes can be beneficial to increase the overall cable critical current. With DC transporting current, the homogenization of current distribution of HTS cable is achieved by controlling the contact resistances. A 1.5 m long prototype HTS cable consisted of two HTS layers was fabricated and tested as a further investigation of the HTS cable circuit model. The magnitude of the contact resistance related to each HTS layer was measured to quantitatively calculate the current distribution. It is found that only a few micro-ohms difference of contract resistances can still cause severe imbalanced current distribution. The FEM modelling work was carried out to obtain the balanced current distribution by varying the contact resistances. With AC transporting current, the inductances of HTS layers in the cable also pose a significant influence on current distribution issues. An optimal algorithm was developed to achieve homogeneous current distribution by optimal design of the cable diameter, pitch angle and winding direction. Another short prototype cable wound with two HTS layers was built according to the optimal design and the current distribution was experimentally measured between the two layers. It is found out that the optimal algorithm is effective to homogenize the AC current distribution. A reliable AC loss measurement was carried out on the 1.5 m long prototype HTS cable in order to quantify the AC loss of the HTS cable for cooling system design. The experimental measurement method is based on the electrical four probe method adopting a compensation coil to cancel the large inductive component of the cable. The HTS cable with long geometry is easily influenced by the surrounding electromagnetic field so that the measured AC loss signal can be influenced. In order to overcome this problem, a symmetrical current return path was utilized in order to eliminate the electromagnetic interface surrounding the HTS cable. The AC loss measurement results are stable and low-noise for a set of AC frequencies, which proves the accuracy of the measurement technique. Finally, a new superconductor component in PSCAD/EMTDC (Power System Computer Aided Design/Electromagnetic Transients including DC) was developed in order to investigate the impact of the HTS cable integrated into the meshed power network. The superconductor component developed in PSCAS/EMTDC takes into account the heat exchange with the HTS cable cryogenic envelope and the detailed configuration of YBCO HTS tape so that HTS cable model is able to accurately predict the power flow, fault current level and grid losses of the power grid with HTS cables.


Physics invites the idea that space contains energy whose gravitational effect approximates that of Einstein's cosmological constant, Λ; nowadays the concept is termed dark energy or quintessence. Physics also suggests the dark energy could be dynamical, allowing the arguably appealing picture that the dark energy density is evolving to its natural value, zero, and is small now because the expanding universe is old. This alleviates the classical problem of the curious energy scale of order a millielectronvolt associated with a constant Λ. Dark energy may have been detected by recent advances in the cosmological tests. The tests establish a good scientific case for the context, in the relativistic Friedmann-Lemâıtre model, including the gravitational inverse square law applied to the scales of cosmology. We have well-checked evidence that the mean mass density is not much more than one quarter of the critical Einstein-de Sitter value. The case for detection of dark energy is serious but not yet as convincing; we await more checks that may come out of work in progress. Planned observations might be capable of detecting evolution of the dark energy density; a positive result would be a considerable stimulus to attempts to understand the microphysics of dark energy. This review presents the basic physics and astronomy of the subject, reviews the history of ideas, assesses the state of the observational evidence, and comments on recent developments in the search for a fundamental theory.


The new Second Edition includes discussions of: The consumer revolution that has brought China's major urban areas to the forefront of the developed world and created a new middle class An expanding private sector that has become the major generator of new employment in the overall economy as the state sector has shed jobs The increase in foreign direct investment which has set China on track to becoming the manufacturing center of the world. An enormous population migration from rural to urban areas and from the interior to the coast that is becoming one of the most massive movements of people in human history, and its significant impact on the environment The unprecedented integration into the international economic system as China has joined virtually every major multilateral regime The reactions of the top and the bottom of the political system to these recent developments and the continuing struggles between the government's large bureaucratic structures and sporadic popular political movements.


The paper considers and analyses Russian and foreign practices of organization of licencing activities in the field of nuclear energy use. On the basis of the analysis, recommendations are made on reduction of term of NPP licensing. The problem of reduction of NPP construction time limits is an actual one for the State Atomic Energy Corporation "Rosatom", because on 20.09.2008 the Government of the Russian Federation approved the Program of activities of the State Atomic Energy Corporation "Rosatom" for a long-term period (2009–2015), according to which it is planned to construct, at least, 10 nuclear power plant units. In order to fulfil that program, it is necessary to optimize current time limits and schedules of NPP construction taking into account international practices. Licensing of the activities in the area of nuclear energy use plays a critical role in that process.


Whereas in western countries breastfeeding is an uncontroversial, purely personal issue, in most parts of the world mother and baby form part of a network of interpersonal relations with its own rules and expectations. In this study, the author examines the cultural and social context of breastfeeding among the Gogo women of the Cigongwe's village in Tanzania, as part of the Paediatric Programme of Doctors with Africa, based in Padua. The focus is on mothers' behaviour and post partum taboos as key elements in Gogo understanding of the vicissitudes of the breast feeding process. This nutritional period is subject to many different events both physical and social that may upset the natural and intense link between mother and child. Any violation of cultural norms, particularly those dealing with sexual behaviour, marriage and reproduction, can, in the eyes of the Gogo, put at risk the correct development of an infant with serious consequences both for the baby's health as well as for the woman's image as mother and wife. Mara Mabilia teaches at the Intercultural Studies Master's Programme as well as Cultural Anthropology with a sub-field in Cooperation and Development at the Faculty of Education, both at University of Padua. She also lectures in other Postgraduate programmes (University of Brescia and University of Rome). She prepares doctors who serve as volunteers in Africa at C.U.A.M.M. Doctors with Africa - International College for Health Cooperation in Developing Countries, Padua.


This study presents two techniques of structuration of type UV-LIGA (Lithographie, Galvanisierung und Abformung) based on the use of two thick photoresists which are a dry film resist called Riston® from DuPont and the new SU-8 negative-working resist from IBM. The relating processes to the structuration of these photoresists and some applications are presented too. The minimal resolution of the Riston® films has been found to be 30 µm for lines and trenches, and 40 µm for isolated holes in a 50 µm-thick film. A technique for the structuration of multilevel superimposed cavities has been set up. The verticality of the sidewalls (85.5°deg. to 87.5°deg) has been measured on film thicknesses between 25 and 100 µm. The SU-8 process has been studied and is presented. Some optical and mechanical properties have been analysed. We have determined a coefficient of light attenuation of 5.18 [db/mm] at 365 nm, a coefficient of thermal expansion of 52 [ppm/°C] and a biaxial modulus of 5.18 GPa. The verticality of the walls depends on the exposure energy and has been found to be higher than 89°deg. Layers from 750 nm to 2 mm can be exposed in one time, which seems to be the state-of-the art for a UV-photoresist to our knowledge. A specific process for the electroforming in multi-level superimposed cavities has been developed. With an adequate dosage of a leveling agent (coumarin) in the electrolytic Watt bath of nickel, a change in the growth rate of the high and the low level of the mold has been demonstrated. This rate is harmonised to obtain a flat deposition on the top surface of the formed structure. The UV-LIGA techniques developed in this thesis have found applications in the field of the-micromechanics. A flexible gearwheel, whose teeth are bound to the center via three integrated spring, and a multilevel gear system are the main realizations obtained by electroforming. These two structures have been used in a mechanism with a special watch mechanism and in a microreducer based on an electrostatic rotary micromotor. We have experimented with success the plastic injection of a gear system having 1.4 mm in height and 3 mm in diameter. Its mold has been electroformed on a master in SU-8. Theses microparts have demonstrated their functionality and have been mounted in commercialy-available-low-cost watches. All the process step of the LIGA technique have been established. The main advantages of this fabrication method are a better control of the tolerances and an improvement of the rugosity (against the wire electrodischarge machining technology). This technique is also cheaper and easier to start than X-LIGA.


Transforming growth factor-&agr; (TGF&agr;) is thought to be involved in the regulation of endometrial cells. We investigated Tgfa mRNA expression, and the effects of TGF&agr; on DNA-synthesis and gene expression of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), IGF binding protein-3 (IGFBP3) and IGF1 receptor in the mouse endometrial cells, because IGF1 is involved in estrogen-induced growth of endometrial cells. We also investigated the role of TGF&agr; on matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) expression, as MMPs are involved both in tissue remodeling during cell proliferation and in enhancement of IGF1 signaling through the degradation of IGFBP3. Tgfa mRNA expression was detected in endometrial luminal and glandular epithelial cells, and stromal cells. Tgfa mRNA signals did not appear to change in endometrial luminal epithelial cells, but signals in glandular epithelial cells were higher at diestrus 1, 2 and proestrus, and the number of stromal cells showing strong signals appeared to increase at diestrus 1 and 2. Endometrial epithelial and stromal cells were treated with estradiol-17&bgr; (E2) or progesterone (P4). E2 or P4 stimulated Tgfa mRNA expression in stromal cells. TGF&agr; stimulated DNA synthesis in endometrial epithelial and stromal cells, while E2 and P4 stimulated DNA synthesis in stromal cells. In stromal cells, TGF&agr;, at as low as 1 ng/ml, decreased Igfbp3 and Mmp9 mRNA levels, while high dose (10 ng/ml) of TGF&agr; decreased Igf1 mRNA level and increased Mmp3 mRNA level. These results imply that TGF&agr; stimulates proliferation of endometrial stromal cells through multiple mechanisms, including its regulation of Igfbp3 and Mmp3 transcription.


The East Tenda Shear Zone (ETSZ) is the major Alpine tectonic boundary marking the overthrusting of the ocean‐derived Schistes Lustrés nappe onto the Variscan crystalline basement of Corsica. New structural, mineralogical, and geochemical investigations along a transect ranging from the Variscan basement to the contact with the Schistes Lustrés are used to construct a rheological model for the ETSZ during its polyphase deformation history. The progressive transformation of the isotropic granitoid protolith into gneisses, shear zones, and, locally, phyllonites is described. The textural/mineralogical change suggests a concurrent increasing metasomatism associated with structurally controlled fluid flow. The effect of such textural/mineralogical evolution on the bulk rheology of the ETSZ is estimated. Rheological flow laws are obtained using an averaging procedure based on the integration of single‐phase rheological behavior. The flow laws are used to infer strain rates and construct strength envelopes for each structural domain during progressive deformation, which highlight the relative rheological differences of the main textural components of the ETSZ and the variations in their brittle/ductile transition depths. Two competing processes are inferred. On the one hand, the combined effects of the feldspar‐to‐mica reaction and the development of a strong planar fabric induce weakening and strain localization along shear zones. On the other hand, fluid channeling along these shear zones enhances alkali feldspar neoblastesis, inducing strain hardening. Among the possible consequences of such feedback processes between strain localization and fluid‐rock interaction are episodes of rheological transitions from ductile to brittle behavior during the polyphase tectonic evolution of the ETSZ.


Enhancing students' critical thinking capabilities stands as the top goal of undergraduate education, according to faculty from many universities. We assessed the change in critical thinking skills with a sample of 176 students enrolled at either the University of Colorado Boulder (UCB) or Colorado College (CC) by employing the Critical-thinking Assessment Test (CAT) developed with collaboration and support from the National Science Foundation. Students' critical thinking progress was compared by assaying skills during the first and last weeks of the term in classes that expressly emphasized: (1) critical thinking, or (2) civic engagement, or (3) where, according to the class instructors, neither was a point of major emphasis. CAT scores improved significantly for students at both institutions, in different categories of class types, and over the dramatically different lengths of terms (3.5 weeks at CC vs 15 weeks at UCB). Our research contributes to an understanding of changes in critical thinking as part of the undergraduate experience. We demonstrate that the CAT instrument can be an effective tool for assessing critical thinking skills across very different institutions of higher education.


People in the local areas varyingly but usually are willing to keep their cultural distinction from other cultures in further geographical areas. National collective identity is a broad title for personality of each nation which identifies that nation from others. Identity is a matter of change through the time and there are different types of identities. Globalization introduces new cultural aspects to the local ones some of them altering the local identity. In other words there is a challenge between cultural globalization and local identities. There are three main policies toward globalization: selection, adaptation and rejection. Each society decides which policy or a particular combination of these policies to be applied in it. Iranian national identity in last 150 years had great cultural challenges moving among three main cultural spheres: Persian, Islamic and modern. There were different social movements the last one Islamic revolution because of these challenges. This paper reviewing the contemporary history of Iran will conclude the on going policy which is standing on Persian aspects and moving on a continuum between two points of adaptation and selection of modern parts with the main tendency toward selection or glocalization. The means of decision making for them is Islamic ideology.


Middle-Upper Permian conodont biostratigraphy was examined in a major carbonate section and two auxilliary carbonate sections at Maoershan, Hubei, South China. We recognized ten conodont zones across the Guadalupian-Lopingian boundary (GLB) in these sections consisting of the Jinogondolella shannoni Zone, J. altudaensis Zone, J. xuanhanensis Zone, J. granti Zone, Clarkina postbitteri hongshuiensis Zone, C. postbitteri postbitteri Zone, C. dukouensis Zone, C. asymmetrica Zone, C. guangyuanensis Zone, and C transcaucasica Zone in ascending order. This succession corresponds well with the Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) of the GLB at Penglaitan Section, Guangxi, South China. The present biostratigraphic work on Maoershan sections certainly confirmed the conodont zonations through the GLB at the GSSP and also testified the correctness of the GLB demarcation in Maoershan sections. The transition from Jinogondolella-dominated faunas in Guadalupian to Clarkina-dominated faunas in the Lopingian is recognized in Clarkina postbitteri hongshuiensis zone where there is an overlap of Clarkina and Jinogondolella species.


Dynamic high resolution data on human population distribution is of great importance for a wide spectrum of activities and real-life applications, but is too difficult and expensive to obtain directly. Therefore, generating fine-scaled population distributions from coarse population data is of great significance. However, there are three major challenges: 1) the complexity in spatial relations between high and low resolution population; 2) the dependence of population distributions on other external information; 3) the difficulty in retrieving temporal distribution patterns. In this paper, we first propose the idea to generate dynamic population distributions in full-time series, then we design dynamic population mapping via deep neural network(DeepDPM), a model that describes both spatial and temporal patterns using coarse data and point of interest information. In DeepDPM, we utilize super-resolution convolutional neural network(SRCNN) based model to directly map coarse data into higher resolution data, and a timeembedded long short-term memory model to effectively capture the periodicity nature to smooth the finer-scaled results from the previous static SRCNN model. We perform extensive experiments on a real-life mobile dataset collected from Shanghai. Our results demonstrate that DeepDPM outperforms previous state-of-the-art methods and a suite of frequent data-mining approaches. Moreover, DeepDPM breaks through the limitation from previous works in time dimension so that dynamic predictions in all-day time slots can be obtained.


Syn-eruptive crystallisation can drastically increase magma viscosity, with profound implications for conduit dynamics, lava emplacement and volcanic hazards. There is growing evidence that crystallisation is not only cooling-driven, but can also occur almost isothermally during decompression-induced degassing on ascent from depth. Here we review field and experimental evidence for degassing-driven crystallisation in a range of magma compositions. We then present new results showing, for the first time, experimental evidence for this process in basaltic magma. Our experiments use simultaneous thermogravimetric analysis and differential scanning calorimetry coupled with mass spectrometry (TGA-DSC-MS) to monitor degassing patterns and thermal events during heating and cooling of porphyritic basaltic samples from Mt. Etna, Italy. The partly degassed samples, which contained 0.39–0.81 wt.% total volatiles in the glass fraction, were subjected to two cycles of heating from ambient to 1250 °C. On the first heating, TGA data show that 30–60% of the total volatiles degassed slowly at < 1050 °C, and that the degassing rate increased rapidly above this temperature. DSC data indicate that this rapid increase in the degassing rate was closely followed (≤ 3.4 min) by a strongly exothermic event, which is interpreted as crystallisation. Enthalpies measured for this event suggest that up to 35% of the sample crystallises, a value supported by petrographic observations of samples quenched after the event. As neither degassing nor crystallisation was observed at high temperature during the second heating cycle we infer that the events on first heating constitute degassing-driven crystallisation. The rapidity and magnitude of the crystallisation response to degassing indicates that this process may strongly affect the rheology of basaltic magma in shallow conduits and lava flows, and thus influence the hazards posed by basaltic volcanism.


This is a study of the social and economic characteristics of the people living around the southern end of the Korup National Park, an area of 125,000 ha of tropical rainforest in Cameroon's Southwest Province. It seeks to clarify how the use of forest resources relates to people's livelihood strategies. One of the main aims and underlying themes of this thesis is to show that the inhabitants of the Korup forest area are not isolated groups of socially homogeneous forest-dwelling people. Instead they largely consist of cosmopolitan and dynamic people with contrasting livelihood strategies, who form an integral part of the regional economy. The first part of the thesis sets the context by highlighting the historical, geographical, political and institutional features of the Korup forest area, which have important implications for forest use. It describes the range of settlements that I chose as my primary research sites and which I consider to be representative of the major variations in forest conditions and market access found in the southern Korup forest area. Within these settlements I selected a smaller sample of individuals and households for more detailed study, and each sample was chosen to include men and women of different ethnic backgrounds, marital statuses, and age brackets. In the chapters that follow I provide a detailed analysis of the economy of the Korup forest area. In the last part of the thesis, I describe the experience of the Korup Project, an internationally funded programme which aims to conserve and develop the Korup National Park. I evaluate the Korup Project experience against the findings of my study regarding rural livelihoods and economic and socio-political realities of everyday life in the Korup forest area.


Forests play a pivotal role in timber production, maintenance and development of biodiversity and in carbon sequestration and storage in the context of the Kyoto Protocol. Policy makers and forest experts therefore require reliable information on forest extent, type and change for management, planning and modeling purposes. It is becoming increasingly clear that such forest information is frequently inconsistent and unharmonised between countries and continents. This paper presents a forest information portal that has been developed in line with the GEOSS and INSPIRE frameworks. The web portal provides access to forest resource data at a variety of spatial scales, from global through to regional and local, as well as providing analytical capabilities for monitoring and validating forest change. The system also allows for the utilisation of forest data and processing services within other thematic areas. The web portal has been developed using open standards to facilitate accessibility, interoperability and data transfer.


Abstract—It has been suggested that decision making depends on sensitive feelings associated with cognitive processing rather than cognitive processing alone. From human lesions, we know the medial anterior inferior-ventral prefrontal cortex processes the sensitivity associated with cognitive processing, it being essentially responsible for decision making. In this fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Image) study 15 subjects were analyzed using moral dilemmas as probes to investigate the neural basis for painful-emotional sensitivity associated with decision making. We found that a network comprising the posterior and anterior cingulate and the medial anterior prefrontal cortex was significantly and specifically activated by painful moral dilemmas, but not by non-painful dilemmas. These findings provide new evidence that the cingulate and medial anterior prefrontal are involved in processing painful emotional sensibility, in particular, when decision making takes place. We speculate that decision making has a cognitive component processed by cognitive brain areas and a sensitivity component processed by emotional brain areas. The structures activated suggest that decision making depends on painful emotional feeling processing rather than cognitive processing when painful feeling processing happens.


This paper presents an approach to portfolio selection using fuzzy decision theory. The approach is such that a given target rate of return is achieved for an assumed market scenario. If the assumed market scenario turns out to be incorrect, the portfolio is guaranteed to secure a given minimum rate of return. The methodology is useful in the management of assets against given liabilities or in forming structured portfolios that guarantee a minimum rate of return.


Australia's education system endeavours to provide an environment in which students can learn in a safe and comfortable manner, free of fear of verbal or physical abuse. However, for many schools, the ability to create this safe environment has been undermined by a recent rise in society-wide intercultural tensions that inevitably permeate the school boundary. Empirical data from a national project about racism among Australian youth provides evidence that these intercultural tensions are generating an unsettling level of verbal, and in some cases, physical abuse in Australian secondary schools. These project findings inform the discussion presented in this paper that schools, as sites of intercultural relations, reflect wider societal attitudes. Nevertheless, this paper also contends that schools as microcosms of social realities have the potential to change social attitudes gradually, including those about diversity, culture and race. To do so, schools need to be supported by teacher education programs which explore the ways in which issues of race, culture and diversity can be incorporated in the content choice in school curriculum. This will influence positively the way in which graduating teachers approach diversity and inter-cultural tensions within their own classrooms and the wider school.


Statistical approaches used for gene mapping can be divided into two types: linkage and association analysis. This dissertation work addresses statistical methods in both areas.In the area of linkage analysis, I consider the problem of QTL (Quantitative Trait Locus) linkage analysis. Linkage analysis requires family data, and if the families are selected according to phenotype or if the trait of interest has a non-Gaussian distribution, standard analysis methods may be inappropriate. The score statistic, derived by taking the first derivative of the likelihood with respect to the linkage parameter, maintains the power of likelihood-based methods and with the use of an empirical variance estimator is robust against non-normal traits and selected samples. I investigate a number of empirical variance estimators that can be used for general pedigrees and evaluate the effects of different variance estimators and trait parameter estimates on the power of the score statistic.In the area of association analysis, I consider the question of what is the best model for a simple genome-scan analysis of a case-control study. In a case-control genome-wide association study, hundreds of thousands of SNPs are genotyped and statistical analysis usually starts with 1 or 2 df chi-squared test or logistic regression model. Power comparisons among subsets of these methods have been done but none of these papers have comprehensively tackled the question of which method is best for univariate scanning in a genome scan. I compare different test procedures and regression models for case-control studies starting from single-locus analysis followed by scanning with covariates and then genome-wide analysis. Based on the simulation results, I offer guidelines for choosing robust test procedures or regression models for testing the genetic effect.The methods proposed here can be used to improve the efficiency of gene mapping studies. This will lead to quicker and more reliable discoveries of genetic risk factors for many different diseases with great public health importance, which should in turn lead to improved prevention and treatment strategies.


This study addresses the limitations and restrictions of approaches to classroom management that are promoted in one particular textbook that is used in Teacher Education faculties in Canada. It contributes to building an understanding of the role of textbooks in endorsing certain truth and knowledge claims about childhood and classroom management. The thesis is informed theoretically by Foucault (1977-1982), Gee (2001) and poststructuralists such as Weedon (1999). Through undertaking a discourse analysis informed by the work of Gee and Foucault, I conduct a single case study of one particular textbook to highlight the particular role of educational psychology as 'a regime of truth' in defining and legitimating what is to count as an effective approach to classroom management. My own autoethnographic accounts as a classroom teacher are also used and weaved throughout the analysis and serve to challenge the normative claims about classroom management made in the textbook. The implications of introducing preservice education students to only one 'regime of truth' concerning classroom management in terms of elaborating more socially just pedagogies are outlined. I recommend increasing access to discourse of classroom management, specifically pedagogy that position the child as 'political agent' with voice and potential to contribute to the management of their own education. This thesis is a part of a larger attempt to achieve equity and social justice education in which the dignities of children are respected and their voices are heard.


Recently, network on chip (NoC) architectures are being proposed for implementing multi-core systems for realtime multi-media applications. The communication traffic of those systems will be a mix of guaranteed throughput (GT) and best effort (BE) traffic. GT traffic not only lead to under-utilization of communication links and routers, but also leads to degradation of QoS parameters for BE traffic. We propose a dynamic routing scheme for reducing jitter in the latency of BE traffic affected by the GT traffic. Our results from modeling and simulation indicate that a significant improvement in jitter can be achieved.


The notion that a patient has the right to maintain the confidentiality of information disclosed in the course of a therapeutic relationship with a health practitioner has been entrenched in Western civilisation for thousands of years. For the first time, however, we have begun to witness an erosion of this entitlement, especially in Australia in recent years. The Australian Federal Parliament has created a system of co-linked national electronic health records that, by virtue of new technology, permits government bodies and myriad other third parties to access and disseminate individuals' health information both lawfully and without authority, almost invariably in the absence of patients' knowledge and consent. Commonwealth legislation has also facilitated the substitution of patients' traditional right to confidentiality of their health information with a much broader and less clearly defined right to "personal privacy". This chapter examines how these changes have led to a fundamental upheaval of longstanding understandings about the protection of information communicated and learned in the once secluded space of the consulting room.


Stellar feedback in Galactic bulges plays an essential role in shaping the evolution of galaxies. To quantify this role and facilitate comparisons with X-ray observations, we conduct three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations with the adaptive mesh refinement code, FLASH, to investigate the physical properties of hot gas inside a Galactic bulge, similar to that of our Galaxy or M 31. We assume that the dynamical and thermal properties of the hot gas are dominated by mechanical energy input from supernovae (SNe), primarily type Ia, and mass injection from evolved stars as well as iron enrichment from SNe. We study the bulge-wide outflow as well as the SN heating on scales down to ~4 pc. An embedding scheme that is devised to plant individual supernova remnant (SNR) seeds allows examining, for the first time, the effect of sporadic SNe on the density, temperature and iron ejecta distribution of the hot gas as well as the resultant X-ray morphology and spectrum. We find that the SNe produce a bulge wind with highly filamentary density structures and patchy ejecta. Compared with a one-dimensional (1D) spherical wind model, the non-uniformity of simulated gas density, temperature and metallicity substantially alters the spectral shape and increases the diffuse X-ray luminosity. The differential emission measure as a function of temperature of the simulated gas exhibits a lognormal distribution, with a peak value much lower than that of the corresponding 1D model. The X-ray luminosity depends sensitively on the mass-loss rate from evolved stars. The bulk of the X-ray emission comes from the relatively low-temperature and low-abundance gas shells associated with SN blastwaves. SN ejecta are not well mixed with the ambient medium, at least in the bulge region. These results, at least partly, account for the apparent lack of evidence for iron enrichment in the soft X-ray-emitting gas in Galactic bulges and intermediate-mass elliptical galaxies. The bulge wind helps to explain the 'missing' stellar feedback in such galaxies. But the resultant diffuse emission is more than one order of magnitude less than that observed in the Galactic and M 31 bulges, indicating that gas in these bulges is in a subsonic outflow state probably due to additional mass loading to the hot gas and/or due to energy input rate that is substantially lower than the current estimate.


Microscopic deformation analysis has been performed using digital image correlation and artificial neural networks (ANNs). Cross-correlations of small image regions before and after deformation contain a peak, the position of which indicates the displacement to pixel accuracy. Subpixel resolution has been achieved here by nonintegral pixel shifting and by training ANNs to estimate the fractional part of the displacement. Results from displaced and thermally stressed microelectronic devices indicate these techniques can achieve comparable accuracies to other subpixel techniques and that the use of ANNs can facilitate very fast analysis without knowledge of the analytical form of the image correlation function.


This thesis is a theoretical study of photo-induced ferro-magnetism in Dilute Magnetic Semiconductors. When light is incident on these systems, electrons and holes are created across the band gap. These particles interact with the impurity magnetic moments and mediate ferro-magnetism when temperature is lowered. This is a situation similar to the famous Rabi problem of a two state system coupled to time-dependent oscillating electric field. Ours is a multi-state system with electrons and holes coupled to an oscillating electric field. This is a generalization of the Rabi problem which shows also a phase transition from para to ferromagnetic state. We first study some model one and two state systems. We show by performing appropriate unitary transformations, it is possible to eliminate the time from the time-dependent Hamiltonians and get the eigen energies. Since our system of electrons and holes in contact with the photon bath is in a steady state, we calculate the free energy of the system. We study the problem of phase transition in two different ways , one by constructing Bogoliubov-Valatin quasi particles and the other by BCS wave function approach as in the low-temperature superconducting phenomenon. This also establishes that BCS and BV approaches are equivalent mean-field methods. We calculate magnetization of the system in a self-consistent mean-field way. The magnetization and thereby the critical temperature is dependent on the photon energy incident on the system. By increasing the light coupling to the particles the transition temperature increases. Also by increasing the frequency of the light, the transition temperature is increased. Since more and more of the electrons and holes are created, these carriers mediate more with the magnetic moments and flip their moments into the ferro-magnetic state. It is also found that even when light energy is below the band-gap there is still magnetization and a ferro-magnetic state is still possible. It is interesting to find a linear dependence of critical temperature T c on the coupling J.


Three-dimensional (3D) pose estimation of a rigid object by only one camera has a vital role in visual servoing systems, and extended Kalman filter (EKF) is vastly used for this task in an unstructured environment. In this study, the stability of the EKF-based 3D pose estimators is analysed in detail. The most challenging issue of the state-of-the-art EKF-based 3D pose estimators is the possibility of its divergence because of the measurement and model noises. By analysing the stability of conventional EKF-based pose estimators a composite technique is proposed to guarantee the stability of the procedure. In the proposed technique, the non-linear-uncertain estimation problem is decomposed into a non-linear-certain observation in addition to a linear-uncertain estimation problem. The first part is handled using the extended Kalman observer and the second part is accomplished by a simple Kalman filter. Finally, some experimental and simulation results are given in order to verify the robustness of the method and compare the performance of the proposed method in noisy and uncertain environment to the conventional techniques.


PURPOSE
To investigate the effect of disodium dihydrogen ethylenediamine tetraacetate dihydrate (EDTA) conditioning prior to the application of adhesive systems on the bond strength of resin composite to dentin.

METHODS
80 bovine teeth were ground with 600-grit SiC paper to obtain flat dentin surfaces. Half of the specimens were conditioned with 0.5 mol EDTA aqueous solution (pH 7.4) for 60 seconds, water-rinsed and air-dried, and the other half were used without any treatment. The specimens were randomly divided in four groups of 10 each. The dentin surfaces were treated with each of two "all-in-one" adhesive systems (One-up Bond F, OB; Reactmer Bond, RB), a self-etching priming system (Clearfil SE Bond, SE), and a total-etch one-bottle bonding system (Single Bond, SB). For SB, the adhesive was applied on EDTA-conditioned dentin without H3PO4 etching. Then a layer of resin composite was placed and light-cured for 40 seconds. The tensile bond strength was measured and the resin-dentin interface was observed using a scanning electron microscope.

RESULTS
The mean and standard deviation of tensile bond strength in MPa to ground dentin were 9.3+/-3.5/OB, 11.6+/-2.0/RB, 23.2+/-4.9/SE and 19.7+/-4.1/SB. Bond strengths to EDTA-conditioned dentin were 15.0+/-3.0/OB, 16.8+/-3.6/RB, 22.8+/-5.2/SE and 19.4+/-5.1/SB. Duncan's Multiple Range test revealed that the EDTA-conditioned dentin showed significantly higher tensile bond strength than the non-conditioned one for "all-in-one" adhesive systems (P < 0.05) but no significant difference was found for the self-etching priming and total-etch one-bottle bonding systems. At the resin-dentin interface, EDTA-conditioned specimens formed thicker hybrid layers than non-conditioned ones for all systems except for SB.


In this paper, we propose a novel maximum causal Tsallis entropy (MCTE) framework for imitation learning which can efficiently learn a sparse multi-modal policy distribution from demonstrations. We provide the full mathematical analysis of the proposed framework. First, the optimal solution of an MCTE problem is shown to be a sparsemax distribution, whose supporting set can be adjusted. The proposed method has advantages over a softmax distribution in that it can exclude unnecessary actions by assigning zero probability. Second, we prove that an MCTE problem is equivalent to robust Bayes estimation in the sense of the Brier score. Third, we propose a maximum causal Tsallis entropy imitation learning (MCTEIL) algorithm with a sparse mixture density network (sparse MDN) by modeling mixture weights using a sparsemax distribution. In particular, we show that the causal Tsallis entropy of an MDN encourages exploration and efficient mixture utilization while Boltzmann Gibbs entropy is less effective. We validate the proposed method in two simulation studies and MCTEIL outperforms existing imitation learning methods in terms of average returns and learning multi-modal policies.


Kinetic energy extraction devices for ocean and river flows are often located in the vicinity of the fluid free surface. This differs from wind turbines where the atmosphere may be considered to extend to infinity for the purposes of numerical modelling. As most kinetic energy extraction devices are based on lifting surfaces, a numerical model is sought which can model both lifting and free surface flows. One such model is the boundary element method which has been successfully applied to free surface problems and to lifting flows as well as the combined problem. This study seeks to develop a high order boundary element method that is capable of modelling unsteady lifting and free surface flows in three dimensions. Although high order formulations of boundary element methods are common for free surface problems, providing improved accuracy and computational time, their usage for lifting flows is less frequent. This may be due to the hypersingular boundary integral equation (HBIE) which must be solved in order to find the velocity of the vortex wakes behind lifting surfaces. In previous lifting flow studies using high order boundary element methods the wake velocities have been determined at the element centres and then interpolated to the collocation points. Not until the paper of Gray et al. (2004b) has a method been available for the direct solution of the HBIEs at the edges of three dimensional high order elements with C0 continuous interfaces. The solution employs a technique known as the Galerkin boundary element method. This study shows, for the first time, that the Galerkin boundary element method is applicable to the solution of the HBIE on the vortex wake of a lifting body. The application of the technique is then demonstrated as part of the numerical model developed herein. The model is based on the high order boundary element method developed by Xü (1992) for non-linear free surface flows. This formulation is extended to include steady uniform flow throughout the computational domain as well as the presence of lifting and non-lifting bodies. Several verification cases are implemented to test the accuracy of the model.


The case of Garcetti v. Ceballos, decided by the United States Supreme Court in 2006, established that a public employee's job related communications are not protected by the First Amendment. The Court also held that an employer has the right to impose disciplinary sanctions against that employee based on those job related communications. Although the Court specifically did not address how its decision would affect public university professors in the future, Garcetti has already alarmed academicians who believe in the concept of academic freedom. College professors, especially those who teach in research institutions, are now concerned that the Garcetti decision poses a serious threat to academic freedom. In academia, the perceived threat is that in the future, cases similar to Garcetti will lead to public university professors losing their First Amendment protection, and thus be subject to discipline for their on the job speech.


This study investigates the factors that influence the growth rate of firms in Nigeria with a sample of 94 publicly listed firms during the period 1994-2005. The theoretical/analytical framework rested on the optimal firm size growth theory. It offers the most practical approach. The empirical methodology combines descriptive/statistical with econometric analysis. The significant determinants of the firms' growth rates include the firms' previous growth rates, size, age, capital intensity, financial constraints, management efficiency, and the extent of vertical integration. However, the significance of these factors depends on how the growth of firm is defined and/or measured as well as the estimation methods.


Background Bronchiolitis is the most common reason for hospital admission in infants. High-flow oxygen therapy has emerged as a new treatment; however, the cost-effectiveness of using it as first-line therapy is unknown. Objective To compare the cost of providing high-flow therapy as a first-line therapy compared with rescue therapy after failure of standard oxygen in the management of bronchiolitis. Methods A within-trial economic evaluation from the health service perspective using data from a multicentre randomised controlled trial for hypoxic infants (≤12 months) admitted to hospital with bronchiolitis in Australia and New Zealand. Intervention costs, length of hospital and intensive care stay and associated costs were compared for infants who received first-line treatment with high-flow therapy (early high-flow, n=739) or for infants who received standard oxygen and optional rescue high-flow (rescue high-flow, n=733). Costs were applied using Australian costing sources and are reported in 2016–2017 AU$. Results The incremental cost to avoid one treatment failure was AU$1778 (95% credible interval (CrI) 207 to 7096). Mean cost of bronchiolitis treatment including intervention costs and costs associated with length of stay was AU$420 (95% CrI −176 to 1002) higher per infant in the early high-flow group compared with the rescue high-flow group. There was an 8% (95% CrI 7.5 to 8.6) likelihood of the early high-flow oxygen therapy being cost saving. Conclusions The use of high-flow oxygen as initial therapy for respiratory failure in infants with bronchiolitis is unlikely to be cost saving to the health system, compared with standard oxygen therapy with rescue high-flow.


This article which aimed at (1) describing religious pluralism as the context of "Bhinneka Tunggal Ika" (Unity in Diversity), (2) revealing prominent issues in politic of religious pluralism in Indonesia, and (3) analyzing prospect of political policy of religious pluralism in Indonesia, discusses some points of insights. First, religious pluralism is natural fact and socio-political consensus that be sociological basic of "Bhinneka Tunggal Ika" as national motto of Indonesia. Second, there are prominent issues linking to politic of religious freedom in Indonesia, namely: 1) inconsistence of governmental regulations against constitutional provisions on freedom of every citizen to follow any religion and worship according to his/her religion and faith, 2) strengthen of religious conservatism leading to violent extremism which shows ineffectiveness of state policies in preserving religious pluralism in Indonesia, and 3) politicking of religious identity and sentiment in electoral politics. Third, prospect of political policy on religious pluralism is functionally determined by working of three agenda; 1) formulation of regulation which is in line with basic norm of constitution, 2) abolition of discriminatory regulations in local level, and 3) formulation of national rule which intentionally prohibits politicking sentiment of ethnic, religion, race, and inter social group in electoral politics in Indonesia.


This review paper represent the fabrication procedure of making aluminium magnesium composite material by use powder moddulory method.in this method we make this composite materil by doing recinforcement process.composite material is less in weight,high in strength,or also less coastly.composites have many different properties like high thermal conductivity,haigh tensile strength.composite material is generally an mixture of two or more same or different metlas.we can use composite metal in different mechanical sector,because of there multipurpose uses. In composite material we can easily find two metlas properties in one metal. . The new material may be preferred for many reasons. Composite materials are generally used for buildings, bridges, and structures such as boat hulls, swimming pool panels, race car bodies, shower stalls, bathtubs, storage tanks, imitation granite and culture marble sinks and countertops. The most advanced examples perform routinely on spacecraft and aircraft in demanding environments. Surface metal matrix composites (MMCs) are a group of modern engineered materials where the surface of the material is modified by dispersing secondary phase in the form of particles or fibers and the core of the material experience no change in chemical composition and structure.


Browsing by overabundant herds of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) can cause signifi cant economic damage to agricultural crops and landscape plantings. In many instances, for both commercial growers and homeowners, commercially available repellents may be an appealing alternative to physical exclusion and lethal control of animals. We tested 10 different commercially-available repellents (Chew-Not®, Deer Off®, Deer-Away® Big Game Repellent, Plantskydd®, Bobbex®, Liquid Fence®, Deer Solution®, Hinder®, Repellex® systemic tablets, and coyote urine) on yews (Taxus cuspidata Densiformis) at 2 different locations in Connecticut. The study included both positive (fence) and negative (no treatment) controls. We planted yews in 2 blocks at each location in the spring of 2006; each block had 12 groups of 6 yews. We randomly assigned one of the 12 treatments to each group of yews within each block. We applied repellents based on manufacturers' label recommendations for the 2006 and 2007 growing seasons and recorded application costs. We derived a protection index based on plant size and dry needle weights at the end of the 2007 growing season. In general, repellents that required more frequent application performed better. Bobbex® ranked highest, but was the most expensive repellent treatment. Hinder® performed nearly as well at a fraction of the cost. Yews protected by Repellex®, Deer Solution®, coyote urine, and Plantskydd® were the same size as unprotected controls at both sites and did not have signifi cantly more needles. No repellents prevented 100% of browse damage. The choice of repellent usage is a trade-off among effectiveness, cost, ability to follow recommended reapplication interval, and plant to be protected.


Background: Some children with severe learning difficulties fail to begin word recognition. For these children there is a need for an effective and appropriate pedagogy. However, conflicting advice can be found regarding this derived from teaching approaches that are not based on a shared understanding of how reading develops or the skills that the non-reader needs to master. Purpose: In this research, three techniques for teaching word recognition in this context are described and compared: (1) the handle technique, (2) morphing method and (3) word alone. It also discusses whether it is appropriate for such small-scale research to influence pedagogy. Programme description: The handle technique uses an abstract mnemonic cue used to teach word recognition, and previous research indicates it is more successful than the presentation of words alone. The morphing method transforms a word into a photographic picture and a previous study suggested that it might also be more effective that presenting words alone. Sample: Six children between 11 and 13 years of age were selected. The criterion for selection was being unable to recognise any words from the British Ability Scales Reading Test. All the children attended a school for children with severe learning difficulties. Design and methods: A three-condition related design was used. The order in which the conditions were presented was counterbalanced and each child was taught 12 words, four words in each experimental condition. The children encountered each of the three methods and overall each word was taught via each method. Within conditions (teaching methods), the presentation of words was randomised. The number of words that the children could read (without cues) before each session was recorded, following the presentation of the uncued words in a random order. The difference in the number of words recognised between the three conditions was considered using a non-parametric statistical analysis. Results: The results suggest that the handle approach might be a more effective method of teaching word recognition. Conclusion: Research in this area is necessarily small in scale. However, it is ongoing and cumulative, and can give insights into potentially beneficial changes in classroom practice.


According to microsoft's website: Microsoft 2007 Office sharePoint Server is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides IT professionals and developers with the platform and tools they need for server administration, application extensibility, and interoperability.


It's not easy to detect the defects in fillet weldment which is widely used in various building structures and power plants just with nondestructive inspection due to its complex geometrical shape and difficult access. But it's easy to detect the cracks on the surface or just below the surface of fillet weldment heel part if surface SH-wave, among ultrasonic wave modes, is applied. The traditional ultrasound inspection using surface SH-wave is usually a contact method using piezoelectric transducer, so it's not suitable for a field application because the reliability of inspection varies depending on field environments such as couplant, contact pressure and pre-process, etc. Therefore, the necessity for non-contact ultrasound inspection is increasing. This study proposes non-contact ultrasound inspection method using EMAT (electro-magnetic acoustic transducer), and presented non-contact ultrasound inspection method for fillet weldment through experimental verification.


This article provides an overview of the Bank of Canada's new economic model, the Quarterly Projection Model (QPM), which has been under development at the Bank since 1989. The model has two roles. It is used to make economic projections, which are conducted quarterly and form an important basis for discussions of monetary policy between staff and senior management. QPM is also a research tool: it was developed to analyse important changes to the economy or macroeconomic policies which require a deeper understanding of long-term economic forces. The model pays particular attention to factors shaping long-term equilibrium, such as stocks of wealth, capital, government debt and net foreign assets. Various sources of dynamics, including the adjustment of forward-looking expectations, operate to determine the transition path to equilibrium and the consistency of expectations. The article discusses the history of QPM and earlier economic models at the Bank, and provides a simple overview of how the model works.


In this paper, we analyse and compare two architectures providing an all-IP based connectivity and mobility for mobile devices over heterogeneous access technologies: Evolved Packet System (EPS) as specified by 3GPP and Secure Mobile Architecture (SMA), a standardization effort by The Open Group (TOG). We briefly present each architecture and qualitatively evaluate their advantages and disadvantages in terms of security, mobility, and support for location-based policy enforcement and security zoning. While SMA is capable of providing simultaneous multihoming, cryptographic identity-based packet tracking and ready support for location-based security zoning and policy control, EPS enables legal interception of user traffic and protection of user/host privacy by default.


Over the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, household debt grew strongly in response to lower nominal interest rates and innovation in the financial system. Since the mid 2000s, the pace of growth in borrowing has slowed significantly. Using household-level data, this article confirms that this slowing has occurred across all age groups. Following the global downturn and the decline in interest rates over 2008/09, there was also a sharp increase in the number of households reporting that they were ahead of schedule in their home loan repayments or paying off their credit card balance each month.


This paper studies the exponential stabilization problem for discrete-time switched linear systems based on a control-Lyapunov function approach. A number of versions of converse control-Lyapunov function theorems are proved and their connections to the switched LQR problem are derived. It is shown that the system is exponentially stabilizable if and only if there exists a finite integer N such that the N -horizon value function of the switched LQR problem is a control-Lyapunov function. An efficient algorithm is also proposed which is guaranteed to yield a control-Lyapunov function and a stabilizing strategy whenever the system is exponentially stabilizable.


A running controversy, which pops up periodically from province to province and school system to school system, centres on the possibility (or impossibility) of relating teachers' salaries to quality of performance. We have not heard the end of it, by far; for it seems clear that, with teachers constituting a steadily growing proportion of Canada's work force (one in forty-two as of 1959, one in thirty-five as of 1964), the time will come when it will not be possible for the level of salaries to rise nearly high enough to attract and retain truly outstanding teachers. Indeed, we lose many such teachers now; as exceptionally good teachers they are promoted out of teaching and into administration, for our salary schedules do provide differentials for increased responsibility. Yet, what more vital responsibility is there in a school than the direct responsibility of the teacher to help youngsters learn?


Dealers in over-the-counter financial markets provide liquidity to customers on a principal basis and manage the risk position that arises out of this activity in one of two ways. They may internalise a customer's trade by warehousing the risk in anticipation of future offsetting flow, or they can externalise the trade by hedging it out in the open market. It is often argued that internalisation underlies much of the liquidity provision in the currency markets, particularly in the electronic spot segment, and that it can deliver significant benefits in terms of depth and consistency of liquidity, reduced spreads, and a diminished market footprint. However, for many market participants, the internalisation process can be somewhat opaque, data on it are scarcely available, and even the largest and most sophisticated customers in the market often do not appreciate or measure the impact that internalisation has on their execution costs and liquidity access. This paper formulates a simple model of internalisation and uses queuing theory to provide important insights into its mechanics and properties. We derive closed form expressions for the internalisation horizon and demonstrate—using data from the Bank of International Settlement's triennial FX survey—that a representative tier 1 dealer takes on average several minutes to complete the internalisation of a customer's trade in the most liquid currencies, increasing to tens of minutes for emerging markets. Next, we analyse the costs of internalisation and show that they are lower for dealers that are willing to hold more risk and for those that face more price-sensitive traders. The key message of the paper is that a customer's transaction costs and liquidity access are determined both by their own trading decisions as well as the dealer's risk management approach. A customer should not only identify the externalisers but also distinguish between passive and aggressive internalisers, and select those that provide liquidity compatible with their execution objectives.


In humans, the process of development of collateral vessels with hepatopetal flow around the portal vein in order to bypass an obstruction is called "cavernous transformation of the portal vein." The purpose of this retrospective, cross-sectional, multicentric study was to describe presumed cavernous transformation of the portal vein in small animals with portal vein obstruction using ultrasound and multidetector-row computed tomography (MDCT). Databases from three different institutions were searched for patients with an imaging diagnosis of cavernous transformation of the portal vein secondary to portal vein obstruction of any cause. Images were retrieved and reanalyzed. With MDCT-angiography, two main portoportal collateral pathways were identified: short tortuous portoportal veins around/inside the thrombus and long portoportal collaterals bypassing the site of portal obstruction. Three subtypes of the long collaterals, often coexisting, were identified. Branches of the hepatic artery where involved in collateral circulation in nine cases. Concomitant acquired portosystemic shunts were identified in six patients. With ultrasound, cavernous transformation of the portal vein was suspected in three dogs and one cat based on visualization of multiple and tortuous vascular structures corresponding to periportal collaterals. In conclusion, the current study provided descriptive MDCT and ultrasonographic characteristics of presumed cavernous transformation of the portal vein in a sample of small animals. Cavernous transformation of the portal vein could occur as a single condition or could be concurrent with acquired portosystemic shunts.


This workshop will engage participants with insights from planning, teaching and participating in a postgraduate module on 'Supporting and Guiding Student Development' for university staff. The module involves participants across roles and disciplines in attempts to create a community of learning, practice and support. Various processes are being used but central to the approach is sharing personal narratives and reflections. These begin from macro and micro considerations of student support, address issues of practice and policy and engage with evaluation and change. During this workshop, members of this living community (module participants and tutors) give a flavour of their experiences and then invite, support and facilitate participants to consider their own student support narratives and how this relates to the characteristics of a useful community of support.


This paper summarises the outcome of formal discussions among scholars, former policymakers and senior officials of International Monetary Fund (IMF) member countries that took place in 2007–08 regarding the future of the IMF and how its responsiveness to member countries might be improved. It relates member countries' concerns about ownership and conditionality in IMF programmes; emphasizes the usefulness of IMF surveillance and considers its limitations; highlights opportunities for the IMF to better interact with regional financial organisations; and investigates how the IMF might address problems of representation and accountability. The concluding section summarises the policy recommendations arising from the consultations.


Metallic bowtie nanostructures (BNSs) and their surface plasmon resonance (SPR) properties in the UV/Vis region, for Al and Au materials, have been investigated by employing discrete dipole approximation method. A crucial aspect for these applications is how SPR in BNS is affected after approach with DNA molecule. Our results reveal that SPR in Au nanostructure is redshifted by the DNA present. Au-based BNS have sensitivities about 0.055 and 0.018 to the vertical and horizontal DNA molecules, respectively. But sensitivity of Al-based BNS is very smaller than the Au. Moreover, DNA passage and its vertical and horizontal nature through the gap can be determined by the proposed method. Results provide useful indications for future characterization and monitoring of DNA molecules via SPR properties of nanostructures, as well as for the development of biosensing, trapping and sequencing devices.


Value has been found in providing recognition and awards programs for excellent teachers. Research has also found a major lack of these programs in both the USA and in Australia. Teachers receiving recognition and awards for their teaching have praised recognition programs as providing motivation for them to continue high-level instruction. Motivational theories provide a solid foundation for these programs. Teacher educators should find 'recognition' as an important part of their curriculum in terms of teaching the research behind motivational theories. They can also encourage K-12 schools to provide recognition to the excellent teachers working with university teacher educators assisting student teachers. The concept of merit pay is being touted in both the USA and Australia but the research has found merit pay to be a non-motivator and it has not provided significant improvements in student learning outcomes in most programs that have provided it.


The purpose of the present study is to understand the overhang size effect of stacked die package on a chip. The deflection and stress in the chip as during wire bonding is evaluated using finite element model. It is considered that stresses in the part of top die over the spacer edge, and effect of the thickness on the chip is discussed. Also, this study provides stresses of the structure around a bond pad during bonding process. The stress of a top die is investigated for two types of spacer materials, silicon and resin spacer, respectively.


A nonlinear response analysis of a high-aspect-ratio wing aeroelastic model excited by gust loads is presented along with a companion wind-tunnel test program. For the wind-tunnel tests, a high-aspect-ratio wing aeroelastic experimental model with a slender body at the tip has been constructed, and a rotating slotted cylinder gust generator has been used to generate a gust excitation field. A LabVIEW 5.1 measurement and analysis system is used to measure the gust response, flutter boundary, and limit-cycle oscillation behavior. Structural equations of motion based on a nonlinear beam theory are combined with the ONERA aerodynamic stall model to study the effects of geometric structural nonlinearity and steady angle of attack on nonlinear gust response of high-aspect-ratio wings. Also a dynamic perturbation analysis about a nonlinear static equilibrium is used to determine the small perturbation flutter boundary. The fair to good quantitative agreement between theory and experiment demonstrates that the present analysis method has reasonable accuracy.


"Dual economy theory," and more generally theory and research on the relationship between segmented labor markets and economic inequality, has historically been treated as deviant in the study of labor economics. This paper shows that part of the problem lies in the analytical method and measurement of central concepts, and provides a remedy to this problem while progressing the research pioneered by Ishikawa and Dejima (1994) on the analysis of the dual economy in Japan. Labor markets in Japan can be interpreted as a probabilistic mixture of three elementary forms, each having a distinct wage structure. The most significant factor affecting the allocation of people to distinct labor markets is the distinction between regular and irregular employees. firm size, industry, and schooling also have a strong effect on allocation. Gender has no direct effect on allocation. One labor market comprising around 35% of employees is characterized by high average wage, 99% regular employment, and a greater representation of college graduates and employees of firms with 300 or more employees. It also has a larger wage return to human capital and less gender wage gap than average. However, it is also the labor market where gender inequality in the length of tenure is greatest. The second and largest labor market comprising around 60% of employees is characterized by relatively low average wage, 61% regular employment, and a larger representation by high school and junior college graduates and employees of medium-sized firms with 30-299 employees. This is the labor market where the gender wage gap is greatest and there is a large gender inequality in the rate of wage return to tenure. These first two labor markets have a greater gender wage gap at the time of employment among people with children compared to those without. The third labor market comprising only 5.5% of employees is characterized by 27% regular employment and an overrepresentation by middle-school graduates and employees of small firms with less than 30 employees. The labor market has the lowest average wage and employees have uniformly low wages except for managers and a small proportion of regular workers. No direct gender effect on wage exists in this labor market. However, a larger representation of women, particularly those with children, exists due to the larger proportion of irregular workers among women. These results indicate that a larger allocation of women in the two peripheral labor markets is an epiphenomenon caused by the exclusion of irregular workers from the core labor market, and do not support Doeringer and Piore's (1971) argument on the relative exclusion of minority workers from the core labor market. In Japan, gender wage gap is generated mainly within the core and peripheral labor markets, and only indirectly between the labor markets due to the larger representation of irregular workers among women. These results demonstrate the theoretical merit of considering the latent heterogeneity of wage structure in labor markets.


Increased demand for food security has made the he world blind about the utility and necessity of functional food security characterized with fooddiversity and adequacy of nutrients. Food diversity may have been the major factor causing adequacy of nutrients  in the Paleolithic diet 40,000 years ago. The increased prevalence of  cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and type 2 diabetes,  throughout the world, are closely linked to food security via westernized dietary patterns, physical inactivity, and rapid increase in the rate of obesity. The World Heart Federationand the World Health Organization are working hard to bring down the death rates due to CVDs, at least 25% by 2025.There is substantial evidence that increased intake of functional foods can bring about a significant decline in the epidemic of CVDs and type 2 diabetes, resulting in health promotion.It is possible that functional food security in conjunction with regular physical activity, can maintain the normal physiology and metabolism of our bodies, resulting into decline in CVDs and type 2 diabetes.


Colposcopic inspection of the vagina is a routine component of the safety assessment of intravaginal products. However, colposcopic findings occur frequently in healthy women, raising questions about their relevance to intravaginal product safety. Practical disadvantages limit the utility of colposcopy for evaluating menstrual tampons, among them the presence of background microtrauma, the inability to assess effects during menstruation, and, importantly, the question of whether post-hoc assessments are sufficiently sensitive to detect small inflammatory changes. The Behind-the-knee (BTK) test is an alternative for evaluating inflammatory and tissue dryness effects of physical articles by their repeated application to the popliteal fossa under an elastic bandage. It enables concurrent parallel comparisons of experimental and control articles over time and substantially increases the sensitivity of detecting small changes in tissue inflammation. With this protocol, uncompressed experimental and control tampons yielded comparable relative and absolute erythema scores (after overnight recovery) as did colposcopic assessment of the lower genital tract 3 to 48 hours after menstrual use. Scoring erythema in the BTK test immediately after product removal increased the level of visually discernible inflammation 6-fold. In a study of commercial menstrual pads, subclinical inflammation visualized with cross-polarized light correlated with the frequency of subjective reports of discomfort during the test and discriminated the relative tolerability of the two products determined by market surveillance, providing added confidence in the predictive value of the test. We believe the BTK test to be a valuable alternative to colposcopy for assessing inflammation and dryness associated with menstrual tampons.


An analytical solution is given to investigate the vibrations of a membrane under the effect of an incoming fluid flow perpendicular to it. The membrane is located at the stagnation point of the flow and is of finite width but infinite length. A rigid wall extends through the finite width of the membrane to infinity. The flow is considered to be a small perturbation on the two dimensional potential stagnation flow solution due to the vibrations of the membrane, and the membrane is modeled by the linear vibration equation. The resulting coupled problem is solved by a Galerkin procedure and the eigenvalue equation relating the membrane frequency to the other parameters is derived.


Extracted from text ... A
Human resources:
making inroads into the financial sector
6 Management Today September 2006
Lese Matlhape is human resources director of the Industrial
Development Corporation which is undergoing a major HR
restructuring to bring all the various departments in line with
one another.
"Any organisation which has the long term, sustainable success
as its primary goal, needs to ensure that all its functions and
business units work together towards that one goal."
That is the view expressed by Lese Matlhape, human resources
director of the Industrial Development Corporation, when he was
asked why his department was in the process of ..