The main objective of the study is to evaluate the response reduction factor of RC frames. We know that the actual earthquake force is considerably higher than what the structures are designed for. The structures can't be designed for the actual value of earthquake intensity as the cost of construction will be too high. The actual intensity of earthquake is reduced by a factor called response reduction factor R. The value of R depends on ductility factor, strength factor, structural redundancy and damping. The concept of R factor is based on the observations that well detailed seismic framing systems can sustain large inelastic deformation without collapse and have excess of lateral strength over design strength. Here the nonlinear static analysis is conducted on regular and irregular RC frames considering OMRF and SMRF to calculate the response reduction factor and the codal provisions for the same is critically evaluated. The devastating potential of an earthquake can have major consequences on infrastructures and lifelines. In the past few years, the earthquake engineering community has been reassessing its procedures, in the wake of devastating earthquakes which have caused extensive damage, loss of life and property. These procedures involve assessment of seismic force demands on the structure and then developing design procedures for the structure to withstand the applied actions Seismic design follows the same procedure, except for the fact that inelastic deformations may be utilized to absorb certain levels of energy leading to reduction in the forces for which structures are designed. This leads to the creation of the Response Modification Factor (R factor); the all-important parameter that accounts for over-strength, energy absorption and dissipation as well as structural capacity to redistribute forces from inelastic highly stressed regions to other less stressed locations in the structure. This factor is unique and different for different type of structures and materials used. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the response reduction factor of a RC frame designed and detailed as per Indian standards IS 456, IS 1893 and IS 13920.The codal provisions for the same will be critically evaluated. Moreover parametric studies will be done on both regular and irregular buildings and finally a comparison of R value between OMRF and SMRF is also done. II. DEFINITION OF R FACTOR AND ITS COMPONENTS During an earthquake, the structures may experience certain inelasticity, the R factor defines the levels of inelasticity. The R factor is allowed to reflect a structures capability of dissipating energy via inelastic behavior. The statically determinate structures response to stress will be linear until yielding takes place. But the behavioral change in structure from elastic to inelastic occurs as the yielding prevails and linear elastic structural analysis can no longer be applied. The seismic energy exerted by the structure is too high which makes the cost of designing a structure based on elastic spectrum too high. To reduce the seismic loads, IS 1893 introduces a "response reduction factor" R. So in order to obtain the exact response, it is recommended to perform Nonlinear analysis. In actual speaking R factor is a measure of over strength and redundancy. It may be defined as a function of various parameters of the structural system, such as strength, ductility, damping and redundancy. It is given by : R = RsRμRR Rξ


Advances in genomic technology have expanded the number of tests for which individuals can obtain additional risk estimates about their susceptibilities to disease. Genomic information that predicts disease risk is relevant to insurers because the amount that policyholders pay for insurance coverage is determined by assessing their level of disease risk. Without access to genomic information, insurers are concerned that individuals may purchase more insurance at unadjusted premiums, leading to adverse selection. However, not all genomic information is useful from an insurance viewpoint, and the complexity of interpreting genetic variants, coupled with the possibility of incidental findings, raises ethical issues with using applicants' genomic testing results. Moreover, some people are reluctant to undergo genetic testing or participate in genomic research because of the fear that they may have difficulty in obtaining insurance after disclosing their genomic results to insurers. As genomic testing becomes more prevalent, there are concerns that sections of the population will be denied insurance because of their genetic profile. The question of what governments should do about this is one that has been debated in many countries.

Key Concepts

Insurers request genetic test results from applicants to enable them to make an accurate assessment of their health risks in the underwriting process. However, patients and the public fear that they may have difficulty in obtaining insurance after disclosing their genomic results to insurers.
Not all genetic tests are useful for insurance underwriting; this will depend on the clinical validity and utility of the test, the nature and penetrance of the disease and the availability of treatment or management strategies.
Use of genomic data for insurance underwriting also raises ethical concerns due to the complexity of interpreting genomic variants and the possibility of discovering incidental findings from genomic data.
The public's fear of genetic discrimination by insurers appears to have consequences for public health and genetic research programme initiatives.
Moratoria or legislation to prohibit the use of genetic test results by insurers has been adopted by many countries to prevent insurance discrimination.
However, other ways to regulate the use of genetic tests in insurance include human rights or privacy-based approaches.

Keywords:

genetic information;
genomic technology;
insurance;
discrimination;
ethics;
public policy


Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is one of the most aggressive human tumors with a poor prognosis. Current standard treatment includes chemotherapy with the DNA-alkylating agent temozolomide concomitant with surgical resection and/or irradiation. However, a number of cases are resistant to temozolomide-induced DNA damage due to elevated expression of the DNA repair enzyme O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT). Here, we show that upregulation of both MGMT and STAT3 was accompanied with acquisition of temozolomide resistance in the GBM cell line U87. Inactivation of STAT3 by inhibitor or short hairpin RNA (shRNA) downregulated MGMT expression in GBM cell lines. MGMT upregulation was not observed by the treatment of interleukin (IL)-6 which is a strong activator of STAT3. Contrarily, forced expressed MGMT could be downregulated by STAT3 inhibitor which was partially rescued by the proteasome inhibitor, MG132, suggesting the STAT3-mediated posttranscriptional regulation of the protein levels of MGMT. Immunohistochemical analysis of 44 malignant glioma specimens showed significant positive correlation between expression levels of MGMT and phosphorylated STAT3 (p-STAT3; P < 0.001, r = 0.58). Importantly, the levels of both MGMT and p-STAT3 were increased in the recurrence compared with the primary lesion in paired identical tumors of 12 cases. Finally, we showed that STAT3 inhibitor or STAT3 knockdown potentiated temozolomide efficacy in temozolomide-resistant GBM cell lines. Therefore, STAT3 inhibitor might be one of the candidate reagents for combination therapy with temozolomide for patients with temozolomide-resistant GBM. Mol Cancer Ther; 11(6); 1289–99. ©2012 AACR.


The e-Learning enables the creation of a new place for teaching and learning, where students who resides in difficult locations and/or who works for long hours are able to study mediated by technology. To do this, the students needs to have a high commitment, autonomy and dedication to their studies. According to MEC, 20% of the new students on the superior education of Brazil are from e -Learning courses and this kind of education has grown 50% each year. However, due to the high dependence of a fixed infrastructure to enable the use of internet technologies, several cities of Brazil has found dificulties to offer e-Learning courses. In contrast, according to data from ANATEL, about 99.99% of the Brazilian territory is reached by mobile companys through mobile phones. In this context, rises the concept of m-learning (mobile learning), which lets us to bring the whole environment of e-Learning for mobile devices such as Palms, Tablets, and especially cell phones. Thus, this article aims to report researchs in the area of m-Learning to find and explore their potential as well as modeling and developing an e-Learning environment mediated by mobile phones. With such environment we intent to integrate the current IFPE's virtual learning environment enabling new ways to reach and technologies for teaching and learning for students of IFPE.


Graph algorithms are becoming increasingly important for biology, transportation, business intelligence, and a wide range of commercial workloads. Most graph algorithms stress to the limit various architectural aspects of conventional machines. The memory access patterns are irregular, with little spatial locality and data reuse. The amount of computation per loaded byte is very small, typically involving bit manipulation; pointer-chasing is often the norm. Likewise, the generated network traffic comprises small packets that are sent to random destinations at a very high messaging rate. With our recent winning Graph 500 submissions in November 2010, June 2011, and November 2011, we have demonstrated the versatility of the IBM Blue Gene® family of supercomputers and the possibility of using them to parallelize demanding data-intensive applications. In this paper, we describe the algorithmic techniques that we used to map the Graph 500 breadth-first search (BFS) exploration on the IBM Blue Gene®/Q, achieving a performance of 254 billion traversed edges per second.


In September 2003, the Lidar Working Group (LWG) of the Network for Detection of Stratospheric Change (NDSC) initiated an extensive project to compare the ozone and temperature algorithms used within NDSC. This initiative, referred to later as Algorithm Intercomparison Initiative (A2I), uses simulated lidar signals to test and compare various parts of the ozone and temperature lidar algorithms. In addition to the fact that it meets the requirement of the NDSC protocols, this exercise allows the detailed assessment, by all the participants, of some of the sources and magnitudes of various uncertainties associated with the algorithms, and/or with the theoretical assumptions made in these algorithms. The outcome of the A2I is to try to find common grounds in the way ozone and temperature can be retrieved in order to reduce and possibly eradicate discrepancies due to algorithm issues alone. Specific issues such as homogenizing the choice of Rayleigh extinction cross-sections, ozone absorption cross-sections, a priori information, and the definition of the vertical resolutions are among the primary targets of the A2I outcome.


In this work, we investigate the problem of automatically inferring the lattice structure of near-regular textures (NRT) in real-world images. Our technique leverages the PatchMatch algorithm for finding k-nearest-neighbor (kNN) correspondences in an image. We use these kNNs to recover an initial estimate of the 2D wallpaper basis vectors, and seed vertices of the texture lattice. We iteratively expand this lattice by solving an MRF optimization problem. We show that we can discretize the space of good solutions for the MRF using the kNNs, allowing us to efficiently and accurately optimize the MRF energy function using the Particle Belief Propagation algorithm. We demonstrate our technique on a benchmark NRT dataset containing a wide range of images with geometric and photometric variations, and show that our method clearly outperforms the state of the art in terms of both texel detection rate and texel localization score.


Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections represent one leading cause of neurodevelopmental disorders. Recently, we reported on a rat model of CMV infection of the developing brain in utero, characterized by early and prominent infection and alteration of microglia—the brain-resident mononuclear phagocytes. Besides their canonical function against pathogens, microglia are also pivotal to brain development. Here we show that CMV infection of the rat fetal brain recapitulated key postnatal phenotypes of human congenital CMV including increased mortality, sensorimotor impairment reminiscent of cerebral palsy, hearing defects, and epileptic seizures. The possible influence of early microglia alteration on those phenotypes was then questioned by pharmacological targeting of microglia during pregnancy. One single administration of clodronate liposomes in the embryonic brains at the time of CMV injection to deplete microglia, and maternal feeding with doxycyxline throughout pregnancy to modify microglia in the litters' brains, were both associated with dramatic improvements of survival, body weight gain, sensorimotor development and with decreased risk of epileptic seizures. Improvement of microglia activation status did not persist postnatally after doxycycline discontinuation; also, active brain infection remained unchanged by doxycycline. Altogether our data indicate that early microglia alteration, rather than brain CMV load per se, is instrumental in influencing survival and the neurological outcomes of CMV-infected rats, and suggest that microglia might participate in the neurological outcome of congenital CMV in humans. Furthermore this study represents a first proof-of-principle for the design of microglia-targeted preventive strategies in the context of congenital CMV infection of the brain.


Bringing successful innovative products to the market is in many cases a balance between targeted innovation and the reuse of existing technology. If this integration fails designers also need to look for innovative solutions at the last minute to integrate new and old parts. To avoid this 'emergency' innovation, designers need to understand how different parts of a product are connected to each other and how changes to one component affect other components. This paper reports on a method to predict how change propagates through existing products to assess the risk of innovation. A product is represented as a square matrix and the pair wise dependencies between components are captured with likelihood and impact values, such that indirect risk can be calculated. Using various graphic representations of the structure of the product, designers can explore dependencies between components and avoid design choices that might force them to change highly connected parts.


Campbell and Bozorgnia (2006) compared their newly developed Next Generation Attenuation‐West1 project (NGA‐West1) ground‐motion prediction equation (GMPE) with a contemporary GMPE developed for the active crustal region of Europe and the Middle East. Based on that comparison, they proposed that their GMPE could be used to estimate ground motions in these regions. Later studies by a number of investigators confirmed this proposal for several of the NGA GMPEs using available pan‐European GMPEs and European strong‐motion data. In this study, I performed a detailed comparison of the NGA‐West2 GMPE of Campbell and Bozorgnia (2014) with three newly developed GMPEs for the pan‐European region. The comparisons were performed in terms of median predictions, standard deviations, and residual analyses with respect to the NGA‐West2 database used to develop the NGA‐West2 GMPE. These comparisons indicate that the scaling characteristics of all four GMPEs are generally comparable in terms of attenuation and linear site response but differ in terms of scaling with magnitude, source depth, style of faulting, and nonlinear site effects. These differences are not scientifically significant and are not found to be statistically significant for the pan‐European events of similar magnitude in the NGA‐West2 database. As a result, I propose that the GMPE of Campbell and Bozorgnia (2014) can be used to estimate ground motions from moderate‐to‐large‐magnitude earthquakes in pan‐Europe as a means of more reliably extending these estimates to large magnitudes and short distances of greater engineering interest and to include ground‐motion scaling features that are not currently included in pan‐European GMPEs.


In this brief essay I review the legacy of the NLRA for dispute resolution - which is a mixed legacy, for both employment and labor rights, as well as for other areas of human disputing. The processes which grew around labor rights, including collective bargaining, negotiation, arbitration, mediation, med-arb and other "impasse" breaking techniques are good developments, demonstrating that there are other forms of dispute resolution, rather than winner-take-all litigation, brute struggles of power within "unassisted" negotiation, or worse, violent conflict. Labor processes, beginning with collective bargaining and grievance arbitration that became hybridized and more complex, such as grievance mediation and med-arb, were important innovations that spawned a whole new field in dispute resolution - dispute system design. But, in what many regard as a distortion of using alternative processes to reduce the contentiousness of litigation, or to save costs, or to serve some other (usually, employers') interests, arbitration placed in mandatory, pre-dispute contracts of employment (and now all other kinds of contracts) and then interpreted to be the only form of dispute resolution available, is a controversial legacy which is hardly producing labor "peace." Indeed, the very goals of "collective" employment rights may be eroded as rulings from non-union individual employment matters (and commercial contracts more generally) are being "blended" with and eviscerating what were often intended to be collective rights. The legal processes that have developed around the separation of legal concepts and consciousness of "employment" (seen as individual rights) versus labor (seen as collective rights) is one of the major themes of this essay.In this examination of the NLRA's legacy it is important to recognize how much processes used to deal with labor-management relations have given us, but also how different processes for different purposes might be essential for producing not only labor peace, but labor justice. As I have argued about processes in general - process pluralism - process choice and variety may be essential for delivering some form of justice in different contexts. Labor relations might benefit from learning that lesson - one size will not fit all, including limited (under current law and practice) labor negotiation and bargaining strategies, "mandatory" commitment to grievance or employment arbitration in different contexts, whether contractual or statutory, and in my view, insufficient attention to mediation, for both collective and union-management, as well as individual, issues and disputes.


This research explores how consumer religiosity influences brand sensuality, brand experience and consumer hedonism and how that, in turn, affects the repurchase intention of consumers. Building on environmental psychology theory and the Stimulus-Organism-Response model, the study shows that sensorial stimuli from atmospheric surroundings have an effect on individuals' cognitive, affective and behavioural reactions which, consequently, determines whether individuals' approach or avoid that atmosphere. While extensive contributions in the past literature have shown the influence of sensorial cues on individuals' emotional and behavioural intentions, factors such as personality traits and cultural and socio-cultural influences, which affect individuals' reactions to sensorial cues and, in turn, affect their behavioural responses, have attracted very little attention.

The domain of this research had four key areas: (a) the various dimensions of brand sensuality (i.e. visual, audial, olfactory, haptic and social) are examined that can be used to influence consumers in the retail industry; (b) religiosity and its dimensions in the Turkish landscape are investigated; (c) the moderating effects of religiosity and consumer-perceived value on the relationships between sensorial cues (i.e. visual, audial, olfactory, haptic and social) and brand experience are examined; and (d) the relationship between the five brand sensuality elements and brand experience, consumer hedonism and repurchase intention are investigated. Drawing on the environmental psychology theory, to address the research questions, a mixed-method approach was utilised. In order to develop the research measurement scales, a thorough literature review was undertaken, followed by the qualitative study and then the quantitative study. The qualitative study was conducted to achieve an enhanced understanding of a research phenomenon that has drawn little attention so far. Moreover, during the qualitative study, the researcher identified possible new items from the respondents' comments. The validity of the measurement scales was examined through the interviews and the focus groups. The qualitative study was conducted before the quantitative study, so it could be utilised as the basis of the main study. The quantitative data drawn from 410 questionnaires was examined by adopting Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS), utilising IBM SPSS Amos 21.0.0 for the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to assess the measurement model and hypothesised structural model.

The main research contribution of this study is the construction of a model that explains the brand sensuality elements and the moderating effect of consumer religiosity and consumer-perceived value on the path of brand sensuality and brand experience, which lead consumers to have hedonic values and intention to repurchase. The results of this research show that audial, olfactory and haptic cues have a direct positive effect on the brand experience. The results additionally indicate that consumer religiosity moderates the relationships between olfactory cues and brand experience, and between social cues and brand experience. Additionally, the results indicate that consumer-perceived value moderates the relationship between haptic cues and brand experience and strengthens the relationship between haptic cues and brand experience. The SEM results also indicate that brand experience has a direct influence on hedonism and repurchase intention, while hedonism also influences repurchase intention.

Based on the results, there are a plethora of implications that this study holds for managers who want to implement sensorial strategies into their marketing efforts. First and foremost, this study addressed the research gap in the literature and answered the question of how the overall effect of sensorial cues can be enhanced, and to what extent individual differences influence the relationship between sensorial cues and experience. The result of this study considered critical since with the fast-paced environment of competitive marketplaces, firms are actively seeking to appeal to consumers' sensations in order to differentiate their offerings; brand sensuality is, therefore, gaining more and more importance since, once one or more senses has been evoked, it is difficult to eliminate them, thereby enabling a long-term brand experience. Therefore, this study provides an insight to policymakers, managers and brands on the impact of sensory marketing on consumer buying practices across cultures, including emerging economies.

Additionally, by investigating religiosity and consumer perceived value as individual related variables on brand experience and brand sensuality, the results have a substantial importance for managers, designers, decision-makers,
consultants, where they can blend sensorial inputs in the retail atmosphere by considering the influence of religiosity and consumer perceived value where it can provide a differentiation effect within this fiercely competitive environment.


This study was conducted in 2005 at the University of Arizona Maricopa Agricultural Center. The objective was to compare the performance of various PPO inhibitors [Aim (carfentrazone-ethyl), ET (pyraflufen-ethyl), Blizzard (fluthiacet-methyl) and Resource(flumiclorac)] as stand-alone defoliation treatments either as a single or sequential application, or tank mixed with Ginstar or CottonQuik. Plots were arranged in a randomized, complete block design with four replicates. Each plot was composed of four, 40 inch rows that measured 25 feet long. Delta and Pine variety DP 449BR was planted on 12 April 2005. Treatments included: Ginstar @ 6 oz/A, Ginstar @ 8 oz/A, Aim @ 1 oz/A, ET @ 1.5 oz/A, Resource @ 8 oz/A and Blizzard @ 0.5 oz/A, Aim followed by Aim, ET followed by ET, Blizzard followed by Blizzard, Resource followed by Resource, Ginstar @ 6 oz/A plus Aim, Ginstar plus ET, Ginstar plus Resource, Ginstar plus Blizzard, CottonQuik at 32 oz/A plus Aim, CottonQuik plus ET, CottonQuik plus Resource, and CottonQuik plus Blizzard. All treatments receiving a PPO inhibitor also contained a Crop Oil Concentrate at 1% v/v. None of the PPO inhibitors applied as a single application performed as well as Ginstar at either the 6 oz/A or 8 oz/A rates. At 14 days after treatment (DAT), both Aim and Blizzard achieved 74% defoliation, Resource 69% and ET 60%. For sequential applications at 14 DAT, Aim at 1.5 oz/A followed eight days later by a second application of Aim performed as well as the standalone applications of Ginstar at 6 oz/A and 8 oz/A. Two applications of Blizzard at 0.5 oz/A eight days apart defoliated as well as Ginstar at 6 oz/A. Tank mixing any of the four PPO inhibitors with Ginstar did not improve defoliation over Ginstar alone, at either rate nor did defoliation rates decrease as a result of the mixes. A mixture of Aim + CottonQuik (75%) defoliated as well as a standalone treatment of Ginstar (82%).


Multicultural group work is an element of pedagogy which presents rich opportunities for helping students function more effectively within the intercultural contexts of their worlds. Drawing on theories of cosmopolitanism and the 'capability approach', this action research project aims to evaluate and enhance the role of multicultural group working to promote not only academic learning, but simultaneously to act as a platform upon which students can explore and develop more cosmopolitan-aware professional and personal selves. Semi-structured interviews with 17 pharmacy undergraduates identified four main themes which helped to explain the benefits of learning in diverse groups, which provided opportunity for students to integrate their subject knowledge with greater understanding of others and their situations, and a re-evaluation of their own knowledge and perspectives. Based on findings, changes will be implemented in the first year of the course, with follow-up evaluation to inform further review and potential changes throughout the course.


This thesis applies a structural feminist political economy analysis to explain the uneven outcomes from gender interventions promoting gender-equitable distribution of state resources, protection from gender-based violence, and women's economic empowerment in post-conflict Timor-Leste. Scholars of the "local turn" in peacebuilding, which arose in response to peacebuilding's failures in creating sustainable peace, have argued local cultures and institutions were more legitimate, authentic, and sustainable sites to build peace than international models. In contrast, I identify the emergence and continuity of an elite class coalition dominating the state, which relies upon a highly gendered allocation of resources and a concomitant shoring up of exploitative militarised and patriarchal gender relations. Hence, I argue the outcomes from gender interventions in post-conflict Timor-Leste have been shaped by the actions and interests of a dominant coalition of rural and Dili-based social forces, all members of the Liurai-Dato (King-Noble) class. I use qualitative data and extensive fieldwork to show how members of the Liurai-Dato class depend on gender and kinship for legitimacy, wealth, and continuity, which have mitigated against gender just outcomes for gender interventions.

Not only did the interventions take place in this setting of elite dominance, peacebuilders made concessions to elites and violent men in order to keep the peace, a tendency amplified by local turn approaches. These approaches to security have reinforced the valorisation of armed masculinity, associated most strongly with the dominant class, which have in turn justified the unequal distribution of state petroleum resources. As well, gender relations construct social relations through kinship, accumulation through brideprice, and the political economy of domestic violence, rendering legal and political reforms ineffective. Lastly, peacebuilding programs sought to use microfinance to empower women and grow the economy, but its main beneficiaries were the Liurai-Dato class, repeating patterns of accumulation and rule-through-debt established during Indonesian-era microfinance.


Conflicting theories exist describing how symmetrical vergence responses, the inward or outward turning of the eyes, are mediated. Classical theories describe vergence control as mediated by visual feedback. Extensive experimental evidence indicates that two distinct control components comprise the vergence response, and a recent theory supports the concept that one of these components is not visually guided. Occasionally, saccadic eye movements will respond to a single step stimulus with two closely spaced saccades, a behavior that is indicative of its switching control structure. If a portion of the vergence response is controlled in a manner analogous to saccades, then occasional double fast dynamic components might be expected. During this study, eye movements were recorded in response to symmetrical vergence stimuli of 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 degrees steps. The left and right eye movements were subtracted to yield a net vergence response, and only convergent responses were investigated. Double fast dynamic components associated with high-velocity movements were observed in all four subjects studied. In double high-velocity component responses, the average peak velocity of both fast dynamic movements was always considerably less than the average peak velocity found when the response to the same stimulus was made with only a single component. Response amplitudes of single and double movements showed that if the primary component of a double response did not reach >/=80% of the stimulus amplitude, a secondary component would be generated to aid the movement. Plots of peak velocity as a function of response amplitude for both double and single movements followed the main sequence for vergence eye movements demonstrating that the first-order dynamic characteristics of all high-velocity components were the same. The time at which maximum velocity occurred (relative to stimulus onset) was also the same for both single component responses and the first component of double responses. The similarity in dynamics and timing implies that the high-velocity components were processed by the same controller mechanism. The existence of double high-velocity movements is indicative of an internal, switching mechanism similar to that found in saccades and is difficult to explain with theories that rely on visual feedback control alone.


Previous research has shown conflicting results regarding the effect of distractor eccentricity on selective attention. The present study examines the relationship between a distractor's retinal location and participants' response latencies to a target while holding constant the distribution of attention. In three experiments, the participants searched for a target among several distractors. The retinal location of the critical distractor was manipulated so that it was at either a central or a peripheral location. The results show that all else being equal, an incompatible distractor causes more interference at a peripheral location than at a central location. This distractor eccentricity effect suggests that the visual system can overcome the default bias in the distribution of attention that favors a central stimulus.


Several categories of medical expenditures are not covered by Medicare, including prescription drugs, most nursing home stays, and extended hospital visits. Out-of-pocket costs for these items can be substantial, and what's more, they are likely to be concentrated at the end of life. At the same time, it is well documented that poverty is 3-4 times more common among widows than among similarly aged married women. This study examines the potential link between these two phenomena, asking the question: to what extent do out-of-pocket health care costs of a dying spouse affect the financial position of the survivor? We find that out-of-pocket medical spending increases substantially just prior to death, and that these expenditures are large relative to income for a large share of elderly couples. Simulations investigate the extent to which expansions in insurance coverage to include nursing home care or prescription drug coverage could improve the financial well-being of the surviving spouse.


Objective The diagnosis of partial androgen insensitivity syndrome (PAIS) should be reserved for infants with a pathogenic androgen receptor gene (AR) mutation. However, only about 20% of infants with a clinical phenotype akin to PAIS have an AR mutation. We aimed to identify clinical features associated with the presence of an AR mutation. Methods The external masculinisation score (EMS; normal=12), birth weight (BW), gestational age and BW SD score (BW-SDS) of 164 infants with a 'PAIS-like' phenotype were analysed in the Cambridge Disorders of Sex Development (DSD) Database, of whom 128 (78%) had no AR mutation ('AR mutation-negative') and 36 (22%) had an AR mutation ('AR mutation-positive'). Results The EMS was similar in AR mutation-negative and AR mutation-positive infants (median, IQR: 5.0, 3.0 to 6.0 vs 4.8, 3.0 to 6.0; p=0.33). AR mutation-negative infants had lower BW (2.33, 1.38 to 3.20 vs 3.18, 2.87 to 3.61 kg; p<0.001), lower gestational age (37.0, 34.0 to 40.0 vs 40.0, 39.0 to 40.0 weeks; p<0.001), and lower BW-SDS (−1.31, −2.33 to −0.46 vs −0.57, −1.19 to 0.33; p=0.001) compared to AR mutation-positive infants. More AR mutation-negative infants (47/128; 37%) than AR mutation-positive infants (2/36; 6%) had BW-SDS <−2 (p<0.001). Conclusions The severity of genital anomalies in this large cohort of infants with a 'PAIS-like' phenotype did not differentiate their AR status. Almost all the infants born small-for-gestational-age do not have an AR mutation. A category of 'XY DSD and fetal growth restriction, as yet unexplained' should be recognised.


Quantum Fourier transform (QFT) is a key ingredient of many quantum algorithms. In typical applications such as phase estimation, a considerable number of ancilla qubits and gates are used to form a Hilbert space large enough for high-precision results. Qubit recycling reduces the number of ancilla qubits to one, but it is only applicable to semi-classical QFT and requires repeated measurements and feedforward within the coherence time of the qubits. In this work, we explore a novel approach based on resonators that forms a high-dimensional Hilbert space for the realization of QFT. By employing the perfect state-transfer method, we map an unknown multi-qubit state to a single resonator, and obtain the QFT state in the second oscillator through cross-Kerr interaction and projective measurement. A quantitive analysis shows that our method allows for high-dimensional and fully-quantum QFT employing the state-of-the-art superconducting quantum circuits. This paves the way for implementing various QFT related quantum algorithms.


The site of today's Civic Center in Downtown Los Angeles evolved gradually over the course of over 150 years before being dramatically transformed in the early to mid 20th century. Understanding how this area evolved and was redeveloped can help guide efforts to restore physical and historical continuity throughout the area. Specifically, this historical understanding can assist in identifying key opportunity sites within the area, such as Civic Center South, and in setting urban design goals for new development. Research for this thesis included an analysis of the area's historic development and a review of its current conditions. The historical analysis examined how the study area initially developed and how it was subsequently transformed through redevelopment. The review of current conditions examined recent and proposed development in and around the Civic Center South site and recent policies and regulations that are guiding new development within Downtown Los Angeles. This study ultimately provides an overview of the historic development context of the north end of Downtown Los Angeles as well as a review of the developments and regulations influencing development within that area today.


Large volumes of inventory data are collected and analyzed with the idea of developing resource management schemes for the future. Unless this inventory information is easily accessible, is of the type needed to make management decisions in accordance with current policy, and has a readily available updating system, the entire management plan often becomes a seldom, if ever, used document. This study deals with the application of several inventory collection and display techniques to assist in making rapid and accurate resource management decisions on a continuing basis. The objective of the study is to develop a comprehensive forest resource management plan for the U.S. Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers Philpott Reservoir Complex located on the Piedmont geomorphic province near Bassett, Virginia. Specifically the management plan is focused on increasing the value of the lands primarily for recreation and wildlife with the inclusion of other compatible uses where appropriate. A healty and vigorous forest system is required in order to withstand the stresses imposed by man and nature. Therefore, a forest complex capable of supporting the planned recreation, wildlife, scenic attractiveness and other project uses must be maintained so as to yield the maximum social benefit and insure the ecologic integrity of the system.


After returning from a trip to Brunei, Anthony Burgess, initially believing he has only a year to live, begins to write - novels, film scripts, television series, articles. It is the life of a man desperate to earn a living through the written word. He finds at first that writing brings little success, and later that success, and the obligations it brings, interfere with his writing - especially of fiction. There were vast Hollywood projects destined never to be made, novels the critics snarled at, journalism that scandalised the morally scrupulous. There is the eclat of A Clockwork Orange (and the consequent calls for Burgess to comment on violent atrocities), the huge success - after a long barren period - of Earthly Powers. There is a terrifying first marriage, his description of which is both painful and funny. His second marriage - and the discovery that he has a four-year-old son - changes his life dramatically, and he and Liana escape to the Mediterranean, for an increasingly European life. With this marriage comes the triumphant rebirth of sex, creative energy and travel - to America, to Australia and all over Europe.


Axisymmetric non-isothermal spreading/dewetting of droplets on a substrate is studied, wherein the surface tension is a function of temperature, resulting in Marangoni stresses. A lubrication theory is first extended to determine the drop shape for spreading/dewetting limited by slip. It is demonstrated that an apparent angle inferred from a fitted spherical cap shape does not relate to the contact-line speed as it would under isothermal conditions. Also, a power law for the thermocapillary spreading rate versus time is derived. Results obtained with direct numerical simulations (DNS), using a slip length down to $O(10^{-4})$ times the drop diameter, confirm predictions from lubrication theory. The DNS results further show that the behaviour predicted by the lubrication theory – that a cold wall promotes spreading, and a hot wall promotes dewetting – is reversed at sufficiently large contact angles and/or viscosity of the surrounding fluid. This behaviour is summarized in a phase diagram, and a simple model that supports this finding is presented. Although the key results are found to be robust when accounting for heat conduction in the substrate, a critical thickness of the substrate is identified above which wall conduction significantly modifies wetting behaviour.


This research is intended to show how far the teacher-factor is a determiner in the learning and studying of history in secondary schools. Fourteen secondary schools in and around Sungai Petani in Kuala Muda District are chosen for this research. A total of 92 respondents
consisting of history teachers are involved in this research. The return has shown a significant relationship between the teacher-factor and the students interest in learning and studying history. Demographic factors such as length of teaching experience of the teacher, the teachers innovativeness in his profession, his attitude and teaching
methodology indicate a significant relationship with regards to the students interest in studying and learning the subject. On the other hand , other factors such as the teachers background in relation to his age, sex, school grade and class organisation have not shown any
significant relationship with the students enthusiasm for the subject. The data obtained has been analysed using the SPSS programme. Generally, there is a marked significance shown between the methodology factor applied by the teacher and his experience in teaching the subject with the students interest for history. This research
has achieved it goals and objectives. Its importance to the school and the Education Department is that it hopes to find an approach that will assist to motivate the history teacher and consequently produce excellent students of history simultaneously discarding the
assumption history being a 'dead subject'. Furthermore, this research is able to provide guideline to the history teacher to evaluate his strengths and weaknesses in teaching the subject and improve himself professionally to help realise the National Education Vision.


Background : Automobile repair shop is a place where workers are exposed to harmful chemicals and toxic substances. Objective : To study the occurrence of obstructive and restrictive pulmonary impairment among automobile garage workers. Methods : A cross sectional study involving 151 automobile garage workers from 14 randomly selected garages of urban Kolkata. The study variables were Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second (FEV 1 ), Forced Vital Capacity (FVC), Peak Expiratory Flow Rate (PE FR), age, smoking habit, duration of work, type of work, and respiratory symptoms. The study was analysed using Regression equations, and Chi-square test. Results : All the workers were male. Obstructive impairment was seen in 25.83% of the workers whereas restrictive impairment was seen in 21.19% of the workers. Mixed obstructive and restrictive impairment was seen in 10.6% of the workers. The frequency of obstructive impairment was higher in older workers. In the age group of less than 20 years, 13.6% of the workers had obstructive impairment while 42.86% of workers above 40 years of age had obstructive impairment. Obstructive impairment was more frequently observed in battery repair workers (58.33%) and spray painters (37.5%) while 16.67% of the body repair workers and 30.19% of the engine mechanics had obstructive impairment. Obstructive impairment was more frequently observed in smokers (53.1 %) as compared to ex-smokers (33.3%) and non-smokers (6.4%). Obstructive impairment was more frequently observed in workers who had been working for a longer duration. Conclusion: Nearly 36.4% of the automobile garage workers had some form of pulmonary function impairment; obstructive and/or restrictive. The use of personal protective equipment, worker education, and discontinuation of the use of paints containing toxic pigments are recommended.


The relative contributions from potential sediment sources to the suspended load of the Wildcat Slough, a headwater tributary in central Illinois, are estimated as a proxy for understanding sediment and nutrient transport in low gradient, intensively managed watersheds. Sediment and nutrient fluxes from agricultural areas to rivers have led to nitrate (NO3) concentrations that exceed US Environmental Protection Agency water quality standards and phosphorus (P) concentrations that promote algal growth, decreasing water quality across the state of Illinois. This study assesses contributions to the sediment load as a function of land use and channel morphology in Wildcat Slough, a low gradient, intensively managed 61.3 km2 (23.67 mi2) watershed in the Upper Sangamon River Basin of central Illinois, United States. Land use is dominated by row crop agriculture. Potential sediment sources include row crop fields, forest, floodplains, river banks, pastures, and grasslands. The majority of the stream is constrained within a deep, channelized ditch fed by tile drains. However, in the lowermost reaches, Wildcat Slough freely meanders and has established fluvial features including point bars and cut banks. A suite of tracers (delta carbon 13 [δ13C], phosphorus [P], magnesium [Mg], manganese [Mn], and carbon [C]) differ significantly between the potential sediment sources. An unmixing model uses the concentrations of the tracers in source samples and in suspended sediment collected during high discharge events to estimate the relative contribution from each source to the suspended load. The majority of suspended sediment was sourced from channel banks (40% to 65%) and forest (35% to 55%) with very little derived from the agricultural uplands (10% or less). The lack of sediment from uplands signifies a disconnect between the uplands and the channel, reflecting the low relief of the uplands and the dominance of tile drains in routing water to the channel. These findings suggest that efforts to limit the sediment-born nutrient load should focus on near-channel areas in meandering reaches. Best practices in similar landscapes may include installation of a buffer between meandering channel reaches and fertilized land, or limiting fertilizer application near channel banks, to diminish the inputs to the nutrient load via natural channel migration.


When George W. Bush won the White House, he was the first incumbent Republican governor elected president since William McKinley in 1896. William McKinley was the last of the Civil War veterans to reach the White House. Known widely as the Major, in honor of his military rank, he rose through Congress to head the crucial Ways and Means Committee where, in the early 1890s, he passed a strong and popular tariff bill. That success caught the eye of Marcus Hanna, a Cleveland industrialist with a passion for politics and an ambition to help make and elect a president. Democrats complained that McKinley was a mere puppet of the wealthy Hanna, but historians generally believe they were a well-matched team of two strong-willed men. With Hanna's help, McKinley was elected governor of Ohio in 1892. In 1896 McKinley swept away all rivals to win the presidential nomination on the first ballot. Faced in the general election by the well-respected and highly toured orator William Jennings Bryan, Republicans adopted their "Front Porch Campaign." Thousands of citizens from across the country were brought to McKinley's home in Canton for a handshake and a few words. Hanna arranged for this USD3-5 million campaign to be paid for by big business, with oil baron John D. Rockefeller writing the largest check. McKinley's military service and his support among veterans were significant factors in his campaign. He became the first presidential candidate in a generation to win a majority of the popular vote. McKinley was a popular president. Pushed reluctantly into the Spanish-American War, McKinley was instrumental in starting America on the path to becoming a global power. He was reelected by a landslide, and in 1901, after delivering a speech at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, he was assassinated by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. McKinley's vice president. Theodore Roosevelt became the nation's 26th president. H. Wayne Morgan's extensively revised and expanded edition of McKinley and His America will prove to be a welcome resource to historians and scholars.


The emerging field of SoTL is an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor which re - quires embracing a diverse range of research methods and disciplinary differences in world views. This diversity has caused a lack of coherence in its conceptuali- zation and communication, which can be confusing for new scholars. Ongoing debates in the community concern the use of theory and methodology, as well as definitional questions of what constitutes SoTL and the nature of its purpose. This article offers a framework for conceptualizing the field which attempts to broadly delineate the available learning theories underlying and methodologies appropriate to studying teaching and learning, while intending to be hospitable to a broad range of diverse disciplines. Further, the framework illustrates the tacit links between learning theories and methodologies, serving as a guide to po- tential approaches to SoTL work. The framework is illustrated with example SoTL studies. It is hoped that the framework will help ground future SoTL investigations in appropriate theories and methodologies, and build interdisciplinary commu- nication and understanding in the "trading zone" that is SoTL.


In this paper we study the economic effects of risk attitudes, time preferences, trust and reciprocity while we compare natives and second generation migrants. We analyze an inflow sample into unemployment in Germany, and find differences between the two groups mainly in terms of risk attitudes and positive reciprocity. Second generation migrants have a significantly higher willingness to take risks and they are less likely to have a low amount of positive reciprocity when compared to natives. We also find that these differences matter in terms of economic outcomes, and more specifically in terms of the employment probability about two months after unemployment entry. We observe a significantly lower employment probability for individuals with a high willingness to take risks. Some evidence suggests that this result is channeled through reservation wages and search intensity.


The Ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) is a standard algorithm in oceanography and meteorology, where it has got thousands of citations. It is in these communities appreciated since it scales much better with state dimension n than the standard Kalman filter (KF). In short, the EnKF propagates ensembles with N state realizations instead of mean values and covariance matrices and thereby avoids the computational and storage burden of working on n × n matrices. Perhaps surprising, very little attention has been devoted to the EnKF in the signal processing community. In an attempt to change this, we present the EnKF in a Kalman filtering context. Furthermore, its application to nonlinear problems is compared to sigma point Kalman ilters and the particle ilter, so as to reveal new insights and improvements for high-dimensional filtering algorithms in general. A simulation example shows the EnKF performance in a space debris tracking application.


Lipidic cubic phases provide a continuous three-dimensional bilayer matrix that facilitates nucleation and growth of bacteriorhodopsin microcrystals. The crystals diffract x-rays isotropically to 2.0 angstroms. The structure of this light-driven proton pump was solved at a resolution of 2.5 angstroms by molecular replacement, using previous results from electron crystallographic studies as a model. The earlier structure was generally confirmed, but several differences were found, including loop conformations and side chain residues. Eight water molecules are now identified experimentally in the proton pathway. These findings reveal the constituents of the proton translocation pathway in the ground state.


Methane (CH4) flux to the atmosphere was measured from gas vents and, for the first time, from soil microseepage at four quiescent mud volcanoes and one "everlasting fire" in eastern Azerbaijan. Mud volcanoes show different activity of venting craters, gryphons, and bubbling pools, with CH4 fluxes ranging from less than one to hundreds of tons per year. Microseepage CH4 flux is generally on the order of hundreds of milligrams per square meter per day, even far away from the active centers. The CH4 flux near the everlasting fires (on the order of 105 mg·m−2·d−1) represents the highest natural CH4 emission from soil ever measured. The specific CH4 flux to the atmosphere, between 102 and 103 t·km−2·yr−1, was similar to specific flux from other mud volcanoes in Europe. At least 1400 tons of CH4 per year are released from the investigated areas. It is conservatively estimated that all onshore mud volcanoes of Azerbaijan, during quiescent activity, may still emit ∼0.3–0.9 × 106 t of CH4 per year into the atmosphere. The new data fill a significant gap in the worldwide data set and confirm the importance of geologic sources of greenhouse CH4, although they are not yet considered in the climate-study budgets of atmospheric CH4 sources and sinks.


Diverse models have been proposed over the past years to explain the exhibiting behavior of memristors, the fourth fundamental circuit element. The models varied in complexity ranging from a description of physical mechanisms to a more generalized mathematical modeling. Nonetheless, stochasticity, a widespread observed phenomenon, has been immensely overlooked from the modeling perspective. This inherent variability within the operation of the memristor is a vital feature for the integration of this nonlinear device into the stochastic electronics realm of study. In this paper, experimentally observed innate stochasticity is modeled in a circuit compatible format. The model proposed is generic and could be incorporated into variants of threshold-based memristor models in which apparent variations in the output hysteresis convey the switching threshold shift. Further application as a noise injection alternative paves the way for novel approaches in the fields of neuromorphic engineering circuits design. On the other hand, extra caution needs to be paid to variability intolerant digital designs based on nondeterministic memristor logic.


This deliverable presents User Interface (UI) prototypes for a Trust Evaluation Function, which has the purpose of communicating reliable information about trustworthiness and assurance (that the stated privacy functionality is provided) of services sides to end users. For the design of this trust evaluation function, we have followed an interdisciplinary approach by investigating social factors for establishing reliable trust, technical and organizational means, as well as HCI (Human Computer Interaction) concepts for mediating evaluation results to the end users. Three iterations of mockups of trust evaluation function UIs that were produced and tested at Karlstad University's Ozlab are presented and discussed.


Over a two-year period, 945 adult Cape Weavers Ploceus capensis were mist-netted with a bias towards 632 male and 308 female birds. Blood smears presented avian haemosporidia in 58.79% of males and 61.90% of females, representing five species from three genera: one avian kinetoplastid haemoflagellate Trypanosoma everetti with 0.28% infection rate, Haemoproteus queleae (69.45%), Leucocytozoon bouffardi (23.91%), and Plasmodium species (5.76%). Double infections occurred in 40 birds (11.52%), with females having the greatest number. Differences in infection prevalence between sexes was correlated to time spent being active at the nest, with a marked reduction in female infection due to incubation within a tunnel-shaped nest providing protection from vectors. Commencement of the breeding season coincided with increased parasite prevalence in both sexes, correlating to energy expenditure on reproductive effort, resulting in reduced immunocompetence. Recorded seasonal spring relapse is synchronised with peak breeding season activity, when vector intensity and activity peak due to host population increases, and avian immunodefence systems are possibly compromised due to the stress of the reproductive cycle. No negative impacts were discerned on body mass or condition during this long-term study, which may be presented when parasitemia peaks over a number of days only, thereafter decreasing in intensity.


Atopic eczema is an incurable disorder of the skin. Sufferers are afflicted with hypersensitivity to environmental agents such as soaps (detergents), animal dander, pollen, specific foods and sometimes even water. Genetic mutations in atopic eczema compromise the development of the stratum corneum resulting in xerotic skin that is prone to cracking and increased permeability which leads to irritation due to the influx of exogenous material through the skin. The causes of atopic eczema are due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors and it is, therefore, a difficult disease to manage. Emollients and topical corticosteroids are the mainstay treatments for eczema. However, they do not treat the underlying cause of the flare-ups frequently seen in the condition; the damaged skin barrier. Defects in the skin barrier arise from premature desquamation of the stratum corneum. The main contributors to barrier breakdown are the up-regulation of skin proteases that are located in the skin. Since zinc is a known protease inhibitor, it would thus follow that a topical treatment for skin barrier repair should be developed. Therefore, the main objectives of this thesis are to successfully incorporate zinc into a formulation to develop a novel class of treatment for eczema and to assess the delivery of the element into the skin. In this thesis, methods to assess and characterise changes to skin barrier function and to extract and quantify zinc in the stratum corneum have been established. The development of two novel topically applied formulations containing zinc lactate as the active ingredient (1% w/w zinc lactate cream and a 2% w/v zinc lactate formulation) has been achieved and the uptake of zinc from the preparations in vitro determined. Further, the in vitro percutaneous penetration of zinc from three commercially available preparations has been investigated and compared to that recovered from the stratum corneum after passive diffusion with the novel zinc formulations. Additionally, in vivo uptake of zinc into human stratum corneum from Sudocremis ® reported. Scanning electron microscopy has revealed the distribution of zinc on the surface of skin treated with various formulations and has also allowed the efficiency of two cleaning procedures to be ascertained. The delivery of zinc from the novel topical formulation; 1% w/w zinc lactate cream, was more efficient than that the three commercial formulations and shows promise as a new approach to treat atopic eczema.


The thyroid hormone 3,3',5-triiodo-L-thyronine (T(3)) regulates growth, development, and differentiation processes in animals. These activities are mediated by the nuclear thyroid hormone receptors (TRs). Microarray analyses were performed previously to study the mechanism of regulation triggered by T(3) treatment in hepatoma cell lines. The results showed that spondin 2 was regulated positively by T(3). However, the underlying mechanism and the physiological role of T(3) in the regulation of spondin 2 are not clear. To verify the microarray results, spondin 2 was further investigated using semi-quantitative reverse transcription-PCR and western blotting. After 48 h of T(3) treatment in the HepG2-TR alpha 1#1 cell line, spondin 2 mRNA and protein levels increased by 3.9- to 5.7-fold. Similar results were observed in thyroidectomized rats. To localize the regulatory region in spondin 2, we performed serial deletions of the promoter and chromatin immunoprecipitation assays. The T(3) response element on the spondin 2 promoter was localized in the -1104/-1034 or -984/-925 regions. To explore the effect of spondin 2 on cellular function, spondin 2 knockdown cell lines were established from Huh7 cells. Knockdown cells had higher migration ability and invasiveness compared with control cells. Conversely, spondin 2 overexpression in J7 cells led to lower migration ability and invasiveness compared with control cells. Furthermore, this study demonstrated that spondin 2 overexpression in some types of hepatocellular carcinomas is TR dependent. Together, these experimental findings suggest that spondin 2, which is regulated by T(3), has an important role in cell invasion, cell migration, and tumor progression.


Abstract. Wintertime convection in the North Atlantic Ocean is a key component of the global climate as it produces dense waters at high latitudes that flow equatorward as part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Recent work has highlighted the dominant role of the Irminger and Iceland basins in the production of North Atlantic Deep Water. Dense water formation in these basins is mainly explained by buoyancy forcing that transforms surface waters to the deep waters of the AMOC lower limb. Air-sea fluxes and the ocean surface density field are both key determinants of the buoyancy-driven transformation. We analyze these contributions to the transformation in order to better understand the connection between atmospheric forcing and the AMOC. More precisely, we study the impact of air-sea fluxes and the ocean surface density field on the transformation of subpolar mode water (SPMW) in the Iceland Basin, a water mass that "pre-conditions" dense water formation downstream. Analyses using 40 years of observations (1980–2019) reveal that the variance in SPMW transformation is mainly influenced by the variance in density at the ocean surface. This surface density is set by a combination of advection, wind-driven upwelling and surface fluxes, the latter explaining ~30 % of the variance in outcrop area as expressed by the surface area between the outcropped SPMW isopycnals. The key role of the surface density on SPMW transformation partly explains the unusually large SPMW transformation in winter 2014–2015 over the Iceland Basin.


We fabricated a 648 pixel, two-dimensional spatial light modulator (SLM) with a transmittance of more than 85% in the wavelength region from 260 to 1,100 nm. The phase modulation characteristics of the liquid-crystal SLM were clarified. Furthermore, the SLM enabled us to compensate for chirp of 270 fs UV pulses and chirp of 120 fs near-IR pulses so that the former and latter pulse durations, respectively, were shortened to 35 and 25 fs. This suggests that the SLM can be utilized, in the UV to near-IR region, for the generation of monocycle optical pulses, pulse shaping, and other applications.


A controller is proposed for the robust backstepping control of a class of nonlinear pure-feedback systems using fuzzy logic. The proposed control scheme utilizes fuzzy logic systems to learn the behavior of the unknown plant dynamics. Filtered signals are employed to circumvent algebraic loop problems encountered in the implementation of the usual controllers, and the approximation errors can be efficiently counteracted by employing smooth robust compensators. Most importantly, the uniform ultimate boundedness of all signals in the closed-loop system can be guaranteed, and a priori knowledge of the plant dynamics is no longer required. Furthermore, the proposed method can be used for adaptive control of a large class of single-input--single-output nonlinear systems in both strict-feedback and pure-feedback forms, and has great potential in many diverse applications. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated through three simulation examples, including one nonlinear pure-feedback and two nonlinear strict-feedback systems.


This letter compares several bounding cases for understanding the economic viability of capturing large quantities of anthropogenic CO2 from coal-fired power generators within the Electric Reliability Council of Texas electric grid and using it for pure CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the onshore coastal region of Texas along the Gulf of Mexico. All captured CO2 in excess of that needed for EOR is sequestered in saline formations at the same geographic locations as the oil reservoirs but at a different depth. We analyze the extraction of oil from the same set of ten reservoirs within 20- and five-year time frames to describe how the scale of the carbon dioxide capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) network changes to meet the rate of CO2 demand for oil recovery. Our analysis shows that there is a negative system-wide net present value (NPV) for all modeled scenarios. The system comes close to breakeven economics when capturing CO2 from three coal-fired power plants to produce oil via CO2-EOR over 20 years and assuming no CO2 emissions penalty. The NPV drops when we consider a larger network to produce oil more quickly (21 coal-fired generators with CO2 capture to produce 80% of the oil within five years). Upon applying a CO2 emissions penalty of 60$2009/tCO2 to fossil fuel emissions to ensure that coal-fired power plants with CO2 capture remain in baseload operation, the system economics drop significantly. We show near profitability for the cash flow of the EOR operations only; however, this situation requires relatively cheap electricity prices during operation.


A high positive correlation was found between e antigen (HBe Ag) and DNA polymerase in hemodialyzed patients with acute hepatitis B, chronic carriers of hepatitis B surface antigen undergoing hemodialysis, and patients with chronic hepatitis. In contrast, the correlation was poor in nonhemodialyzed patients with acute hepatitis. Among the patients with chronic hepatitis, HBe Ag and DNA polymerase were were found mostly in those with aggressive hepatitis and rarely in those with persistent hepatitis. This difference was significant (P less than 0.01) and suggests that the persistence of these antigens may be a factor in the progression of the disease. Our data also indicate that the development of antibodies to HBe Ag (anti-HBe) might be a sign of a favorable prognosis, since 50% of the patients with persistent hepatitis vs. 6% of the patients with aggressive hepatitis were anti-HBe-positive. Inhibitors of DNA polymerase, which are possibly antibodies, appeared regularly after acute hepatitis and were transient. Their presence may be associated with viral replication.


Venezuela is in a severe economic crisis. An October 2016 debt swap bought some time for the beleaguered state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), but there remains speculation about default by both PDVSA and the government. The fact that Venezuela's economy is heavily dependent on oil exports has led some observers to assume that, in the wake of a default, creditors could easily seize assets associated with natural resource exploitation. In this article, we explore some of the legal considerations that would govern such litigation. Our primary claim is that matters are not so simple. Even ignoring issues associated with sovereign immunity and bankruptcy law, we emphasize the doctrine of separate corporate personhood (i.e., the fiction that corporations are independent legal persons responsible for their own, and only their own, debts). We do not purport to predict the outcome of any disputes that might arise in the wake of a default. Instead, we use Venezuela as a case study, identifying the many ways in which the doctrine of separate corporate personhood may affect the relative rights and bargaining power of a sovereign debtor and its creditors.


This essay examines Rebecca Harding Davis's resistance to the Civil War discourse in the Atlantic Monthly in order to complicate the relation between nineteenth-century racism and sentimental fiction. While much revisionary work has been done on nineteenth-century women'sfiction and how it reinforced racial ideologies, the misleading question often asked is whether white women did or did not participate in the public arena of race. Yet this initial framing of the question denies the alternative possibility: that white women might have engaged in their own gendered forms of racial activity, or in a "female racism" (to use Vron Ware's term), that did not correspond to or act in complicity with a racism that is by default seen as public and masculine. By imagining her heroine as a "woman from the border" in Waiting for the Verdict (1868), Davis works to oppose and overturn a particular regional and gender-based inscription of whiteness that was being disseminated amid the war crises as an emergent New England-based national identity. In contrast, Davis creates a particular feminine and liminal version of white racial power, or a "miscegenated whiteness." But this fantasy of an imagined national community based on the "white mulatto" finally undoes itself in the novel's moments of narrative crises about a free and open female sexuality, and Davis'snovel seeks to restore the white female body to its "purity."


Reinforcement learning (RL) is a very suitable technique for robot learning, as it can learn in unknown environments and in real-time computation. The main difficulties in adapting classic RL algorithms to robotic systems are the generalization problem and the correct observation of the Markovian state. This paper attempts to solve the generalization problem by proposing the semi-online neural-Q/spl I.bar/learning algorithm (SONQL). The algorithm uses the classic Q/spl I.bar/learning technique with two modifications. First, a neural network (NN) approximates the Q/spl I.bar/function allowing the use of continuous states and actions. Second, a database of the most representative learning samples accelerates and stabilizes the convergence. The term semi-online is referred to the fact that the algorithm uses the current but also past learning samples. However, the algorithm is able to learn in real-time while the robot is interacting with the environment. The paper shows simulated results with the "mountain-car" benchmark and, also, real results with an underwater robot in a target following behavior.


Local governments have the power to influence the energy choices of their citizens. Many cities and towns have already encouraged energy efficiency measures. Even so, as demand for energy services continues to grow, the energy infrastructure that every city and town depends on will need to be expanded, upgraded or replaced. This provides the opportunity to increase the deployment of renewable energy technologies and decentralised energy systems, and hence gain the multi-benefits of increased energy security, climate change mitigation and sustainable development, but also the social benefits of reduced air pollution, such as improved health and employment.
Many combinations of policies have been employed to stimulate local renewable energy development. These policies include: local governance by authority; providing resources; enabling private actors; leading by example; allowing self-governance. Mega-city mayors, down to small-town officials, have successfully introduced such policies, although these vary with location, local resources and population. Cities, Towns and Renewable Energy – " Yes In My Front Yard " includes several case studies chosen to illustrate how enhanced deployment of renewable energy projects can result, regardless of a community's size or location.
The goals of this report are to inspire city stakeholders by showing how renewable energy systems can benefit citizens and businesses, assist national governments to better appreciate the role that local municipalities might play in meeting national and international objectives, and help accelerate the necessary transition to a sustainable energy future.


The divide between France and the United States on the balancing between freedom of expression and privacy rights was recently revived in reference to evolutions concerning the freedom of expression on the Internet. The recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) spurred a lot of controversy in the United States by recognizing a "right to be forgotten." The CJEU held that a person can request a search engine to remove from its results elements that concern them. Google interpreted the CJEU decision as obliging it to remove search results from its European sites only. Nevertheless, in June 2015 the French data protection authority, known by its French acronym, CNIL, ordered Google to remove links from its database entirely, across all locations. The CNIL adopted an expansive interpretation of the ruling which applies to all of Google's domains and not, as Google contends, only to the company's regional domains in Europe. Google has refused so far, and the dispute is likely to arrive to courts soon. If upheld, the French regulator's order would mean that Americans are prevented from having access to material that is legal in the U.S. This controversy stems from the consolidated status of the law in France, and more generally in Europe, that gives primacy to the protection of the right to privacy when it conflicts with the right to freedom of expression. The recent decision of the CJEU recognizing the right to be forgotten emphasizes an attitude, which already exists in the case law concerning press freedoms on the two sides of the Atlantic. This article analyzes the long history of the balancing between speech and the right to privacy in France and the U.S.A. It aims to show that there exists a deeply rooted divide that has long origins in the state of the law. The origins of the divide lie in the particular importance of freedom of expression in the U.S. constitutional order, which sees its abuses as acceptable. They also lie in the low valuation of informational privacy in the US. Although freedom of expression is a liberty that can be abused according to the dominant conception in the U.S., French law accepts limitations in order to protect other competing rights, like the right to privacy. This article presents the history of the protection of freedom of expression in France and in the U.S. as well as of the right to privacy to help understand the more recent controversies on these issues.


Leverage the power of CloudStack and learn to extend the CloudStack environment Overview Install, deploy, and manage a cloud service using CloudStack Step-by-step instructions on setting up and running the leading open source cloud platform CloudStack. Set up an IaaS cloud environment using CloudStack. In Detail Cloud computing is changing the way IT is delivered in enterprises around the world. The world's leading open source cloud computing platform, Cloudstack, helps you implement a cloud computing service in your enterprise or set up an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering for your customer. With "Apache Cloudstack Cloud Computing", learn the leading open source cloud computing platform in an easy step-by-step approach, from understanding the basics of setting up an infrastructure as a service cloud to actual deployment scenarios and extensibility features of CloudStack. "Apache Cloudstack Cloud Computing" will help you learn how to create, manage, and automate the provisioning, decommissioning, and other tasks of your IT infrastructure resources and manage your data centre(s). Add IT infrastructure resources like storage, network resources, and hosts to CloudStack to manage the entire data centre and logically segregate the resources to help better manage and provide policy-based user access to the cloud. Then the book will show you how to deploy the CloudStack environment in a highly available fashion and deploy your own IT resources, such as VMs, in a highly available scenario to prevent downtime and non-interrupted service. What you will learn from this book Learn about the technicalities behind the setting up of clouds and providing IT infrastructure as a service using the leading open source cloud platform, CloudStack. Take advantage and learn about the open source technology, CloudStack. Install, configure, and add resources to CloudStack and manage them. Configure different types of hypervisors and add hosts, storage, networks, and create a logical segregation of your data centre(s) to manage it (or them) easily. Learn about the various types of network configuration and how to provide network as a service in cloud with different types of networking service. Organize secure access in the cloud and learn about the importance of role-based access mechanisms in the cloud. Extend and troubleshoot CloudStack as well as optimizing the resource usage and thus reducing costs. Approach This book is packed with practical, hands-on illustrations for building and managing your CloudStack environment. Who this book is written for If you are a cloud architect, cloud administrator, virtualization administrator, cloud storage administrator, cloud computing professional, or technical evangelist who is looking to learn and leverage CloudStack, then this book is for you. You will learn how to set up a cloud service for your enterprise or for your customer.


The midsummer decline (MSD) of daphnids has been attributed to a range of factors related to either resource availability or predation. However, the relative magnitude and importance of each of these factors remained unknown. Therefore, we quantified simultaneously, but independently, both consumptive mortality due to predation and non-consumptive mortality of Daphnia galeata due to senescence, disease, food limitation as well as limiting physical or chemical factors between May and July 1998 in Bautzen Reservoir, Germany. These losses were balanced by the population gains by recruitment. The predation pressure exerted by age-0 fish, by older zooplanktivorous fish and by carnivorous zooplankton did not completely account for the observed mortality pattern of D. galeata that caused the MSD. Non-consumptive mortality in the field was calculated from recruitment patterns estimated from field samples and from age-specific survival probabilities of Daphnia offspring according to lifetable experiments. The results suggest a high non-consumptive mortality during the clear-water phase which is comparable to the magnitude of consumptive losses and may give a possible explanation for the remaining part of Daphnia mortality. By integrating all data concerning the initial abundance in early May as well as population gains and losses of daphnids, a balance sheet was drawn up for four years of investigation (1995-1998). The differences between the cumulated positive and negative book values corresponded well to the actually observed Daphnia abundance in Bautzen Reservoir at the transition period to an MSD of every year. Generally, the hypothesis is supported that an MSD should be expected if the period with bottom-up limitation during the clear-water phase overlaps strongly with top-down effects whereby in detail the following combination of conditions should be fulfilled: (i) a high biomass of age-0 percids in May/June, (ii) an early start of Daphnia consumption by carnivorous zooplankton, (iii) a quick increase in Daphnia density leading to the dominance of a peak cohort during the clear-water phase and (iv) a long lasting clear-water period characterized by reduced longevity and low recruitment of Daphnia. [KEYWORDS: AGE-0 PERCIDS; ROACH; CARNIVOROUS ZOOPLANKTON; POPULATION BUDGET; DAPHNIA; LONGEVITY]


We study the problem of falsifying reachability properties of real-time control software acting in a closed-loop with a given model of the plant dynamics. Our approach employs numerical techniques to simulate a plant model, which may be highly nonlinear and hybrid, in combination with symbolic simulation of the controller software. The state-space and input-space of the plant are systematically searched using a plant abstraction that is implicitly defined by ``quantization'' of the plant state, but never explicitly constructed. Simultaneously, the controller behaviors are explored using a symbolic execution of the control software. On-the-fly exploration of the overall closed-loop abstraction results in abstract counterexamples, which are used to refine the plant abstraction iteratively until a concrete violation is found. Empirical evaluation of our approach shows its promise in treating controller software that has precise, formal semantics, using an exact method such as symbolic execution, while using numerical simulations to produce abstractions of the underlying plant model that is often an approximation of the actual plant. We also discuss a preliminary comparison of our approach with techniques that are primarily simulation-based.


The conventional view of Rule 48(a) dismissals distinguishes between two types of motions to dismiss: (1) those where dismissal would benefit the defendant, and (2) those where dismissal might give the Government a tactical advantage against the defendant, perhaps because prosecutors seek to dismiss the case and then file new charges. In United States v. Flynn, the Department of Justice argues that Rule 48(a)'s "leave of court" requirement applies exclusively to the latter category of motions to dismiss; where the dismissal accrues to the benefit of the defendant, judicial meddling is unwarranted and improper. In support, the Government relies on forty-year-old dicta in the sole U.S. Supreme Court case interpreting Rule 48(a), Rinaldi v. United States. There, the Court stated that the "leave of court" language was added to Rule 48(a) "without explanation," but "apparently" this verbiage had as its "principal object . . . to protect a defendant against prosecutorial harassment."

But the Government's position—and the U.S. Supreme Court language upon which it is based—is simply wrong. In fact, the "principal object" of Rule 48(a)'s "leave of court" requirement was not to protect the interests of individual defendants, but rather to guard against dubious dismissals of criminal cases that would benefit powerful and well-connected defendants. In other words, it was drafted and enacted precisely to deal with the situation that has arisen in United States v. Flynn: its purpose was to empower the Judiciary to limit dismissal in cases where the district court suspects that some impropriety prompted the Executive's decision to abandon a case.

To be clear, there may be good reason for the district court to grant the Government's motion to dismiss in United States v. Flynn. But the fiction that Rule 48(a) exists solely, or even chiefly, to protect defendants against prosecutorial mischief should be abandoned. This brief Essay recounts Rule 48's forgotten history.


The objective of the present study was to determine the development of the smooth muscle of pulmonary arterioles through the relationship of the smooth muscle layer of pulmonary arteriole/arteriolar diameter (CM/DA). Ninety Cobb-Vantress chicks and 90 Ross chicks were used. Of these, 10 birds were weighed and slaughtered at 1 day of age, and the others were randomly distributed in a group raised at sea level (n=40) and a group raised at 3320 m above the sea level (n=40). Ten birds per group were weighed and slaughtered at 10, 20, 30 and 40 days of age. The CM/DA relation was calculated in lung slides stained with Mallory's phosphotungstic acid hematoxylin. Birds raised at sea level weighed more than those raised at high altitude (p<0.05), and chicks of the Ross line obtained higher body weight at sea level but lower at high altitude than those of the Cobb-Vantress line (p<0.05). The CM/DA relationship increased in all groups according to age (p<0.05), but the Cobb-Vantress line at sea level showed the higher CM/DA relationship from 20 days of age onwards (p<0.05).


The United States and Canada enjoy the benefits of the world's largest bilateral trading relationship. The United States accounts for about eighty percent of Canada's total foreign trade, and Canada accounts for more than twenty percent of the goods and services trade of the United States. The two-way trade amounts to well over U.S.$1 billion per day. For the most part this trade flows smoothly and frictions concerning it rarely arise. However, United States-Canada trade is plagued by recurrent disputes within natural resource industries--the most important and persistent of these disputes is that concerning trade in softwood lumber. The intractability of this dispute is rooted in differences in ownership and management of natural resources in the United States and Canada, which in turn are reflections of different attitudes toward the role of the state in the two countries. Because these differences are unlikely to change within the foreseeable future, a permanent solution to the softwood lumber dispute is unlikely. The greatest hope for resolution is continued integration of the United States and Canadian softwood lumber industries. However, whether even increased integration of the industries can resolve the dispute is uncertain so long as differences in ownership and management of natural resources in the two countries persist. I. BACKGROUND Softwood lumber trade between the United States and Canada has been a matter of some contention from the time that the Canadian Constitution gave provinces the rights to forest resources in 1867. (1) While arguments on both sides have taken on increased sophistication during the past quarter-century, the dispute is rooted in the longstanding structural differences in the Canadian and United States forestry industries. Some historical perspective reveals that attempts to restrict softwood lumber imports into the United States are nothing new. For a brief period of time in the mid-nineteenth century free trade in softwood lumber between the United States and Canada existed by virtue of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 which "provided for the free entrance into either country of natural products and unmanufactured raw material from the other." (Lower, 1938) However, the United States abrogated the Reciprocity Treaty in 1866 and imposed a twenty percent tariff on Canadian lumber, which was countered by a Canadian export tax of one dollar per thousand feet on pine logs (later increased to two dollars). (Lower, 1938) In 1890 the United States reduced its tariff by one-half in return for Canada's removing its export tax on logs which were desired as inputs by the United States lumber industry. For a brief period from 1894 to 1897, free trade again prevailed between the United States and Canada in lumber products. However, with the Dingley Tariff of 1897 the United States lumber industry succeeded in having a $2 per thousand board feet import tariff on lumber reimposed. (Lower, 1938) Early in the twentieth century the United States proposed another reciprocity treaty providing for free trade in natural resource products, but this time Canada rejected the proposal. In the Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act of 1913, despite pressures for continued protection by the domestic lumber industry, the United States Congress removed the tariff from softwood lumber. (Braudo and Trebilcock, 2002) This situation did not last for long, however. The Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922 established an average tariff rate on "Wood and manufactures" at 7.97 percent. (Taussig, 1931) The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 placed a specific tariff of $1 per thousand board feet on softwood lumber. (2) This act was amended in 1932 to raise the rate to almost twenty-five percent ad valorem equivalent, with severe economic impact on the Canadian industry. The tariff was reduced by about one-half by a trade pact agreed in 1935. (Reed, 2001) Subsequent trade negotiations reduced the tariff further so that by the 1950s the rate of protection was relatively low. …


Acceptance of risk and uncertainty is both an ancient cultural capacity and a very necessary current one for our collective uncertain futures. Considering ecological and social histories through a lens that accentuates adaptation and capacity rather than pathology reveals different landscapes of hope for human societies and all the other beings with whom we share the planet. The continuity of older, more environmentally and socially benign relationships between people, animals and landscapes hold potential for responding to unfolding uncertainty. Many predictions of Earth futures are deeply negative. Having the capacity to move beyond the limitations of rationality may be key to embracing positive uncertainty. Learning from cultures where change is normalized and acknowledged might help us move beyond ideas of grief and loss for old ways of life, and an obsession with control, to a cultural disposition towards attentiveness, care and respect.


Global food system is failing to deliver adequate quantities of healthy, nutritionally balanced food, especially to the resource-poor underprivileged people leading to micronutrient malnutrition. The malnutrition of minerals (Fe, Zn) and vitamin A are major food-related primary health problem among populations of the developing world including India where there is a heavy dependence on cereal-based diets and limited access to meat, fruits and vegetables. Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) alone is significant from the public health point of view resulting in over 330,000 child deaths every year, and about 57% of preschoolers and their mothers having subclinical VAD leading to increased morbidity and risk of mortality. While therapeutic supplementation of vitamin A is currently being addressed through sponsored nutrition programmes, they are not sufficient in covering the affected populations.
Biofortification of important crop plants through biotechnological applications is a cost-effective and sustainable solution for alleviating VAD. Genetic engineering is the obvious alternative to enhance the β-carotene levels in crop plants. The development of the 'golden rice' proved that, it is possible to redirect a complete biosynthetic pathway of carotenoids by genetic engineering of multiple genes encoding key enzymes of the pathway. Recently, there have been several reports on the development of transgenic crops for enhanced levels provitamin A content in crops like maize, tomato, cassava, potato and mustered. At ICRISAT, transgenic events of groundnut and pigeonpea carrying either a single maize phytoene synthase 1 (psy1) gene or both psy1 and tomato β-lycopene cyclase (β-lyc) have been developed through Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation. Preliminary results showed a significant increase in the total carotenoids and β-carotene levels in the transgenic events. Provitamin A enrichment of these crops could have a significant impact on the nourishment and nutrient interactions by playing a major role in the bioavailability and metabolic efficiency in the affected populations


We study non-collaborative dialogs, where two agents have a conflict of interest but must strategically communicate to reach an agreement (e.g., negotiation). This setting poses new challenges for modeling dialog history because the dialog's outcome relies not only on the semantic intent, but also on tactics that convey the intent. We propose to model both semantic and tactic history using finite state transducers (FSTs). Unlike RNN, FSTs can explicitly represent dialog history through all the states traversed, facilitating interpretability of dialog structure. We train FSTs on a set of strategies and tactics used in negotiation dialogs. The trained FSTs show plausible tactic structure and can be generalized to other non-collaborative domains (e.g., persuasion). We evaluate the FSTs by incorporating them in an automated negotiating system that attempts to sell products and a persuasion system that persuades people to donate to a charity. Experiments show that explicitly modeling both semantic and tactic history is an effective way to improve both dialog policy planning and generation performance.


Strupac, fornenst, trappy, scriss, kippy, snool, flying axehandles, from across - these and hundreds of other fascinating and colourful words and phrases give the English language as it has been spoken in Canada's smallest province a flavour all its own. With the Dictionary of Prince Edward Island English, T.K. Pratt makes a major scholarly contribution to the growing list of regional dictionaries that enable us to discover the rich heritage of the language as spoken throughout North America; at the same time it offers a splendid general introduction to the historical and sociological life of the island. There are approximately 1000 entries of non-standard or dialect words, past and present. The notes deal with usage, pronunciation, alternate forms and spellings, and stylistic and regional labels. Entries include definitions, supportive quotations from P.E.I. sources, editorial notes about various subtleties, and dictionary notes which provide links to some thirty-five other dictionaries. Pratt's introduction defines the criteria for inclusion of words, explains his research methods, and outlines the layout of entries. The end matter includes a bibliography and an important sociolinguistic essay, 'The Dictionary in Profile,' which places the work in the broader context of Prince Edward Island speech. Its range and depth of coverage make this an essential work not only for those concerned with P.E.I. and Maritimes studies, but for all those interested in the regional usage of English.


This paper explores various architectural images and uses them as analogies with which to explore critically computer-based information systems development. These images include approaches, roles and practices, how they relate to the client, to other professions and trades and the built environment. These images, particularly those relating to participative and adaptive development, will be used to propose parallel emergent forms of computer-based information systems development practices and disciplinary relationships that have the potential to address the inconsistent performance of information systems and a record that includes some notable failures. As well as providing guidance to the IS profession and practice, the paper discusses implications for our teaching and the discipline of information systems in general.


Abstract. A numerical study of mountain waves in the Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere (UTLS) is presented for two Intensive Observational Periods (IOPs) of the Terrain-induced Rotor Experiment (T-REX). The simulations use the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and a microscale model that is driven by the finest WRF nest. During IOP8, the simulation results reveal presence of perturbations with short wavelengths in zones of strong vertical wind shear in the UTLS that cause a reversal of momentum fluxes. The spectral properties of these perturbations and the attendant vertical profiles of heat and momentum fluxes show strong divergence near the tropopause indicating that they are generated by shear instability along shear lines locally induced by the primary mountain wave originating from the lower troposphere. This is further confirmed by results of an idealized simulation initialized with the temperature and wind profiles obtained from the microscale model. For IOP6, we analyze distributions of O3 and CO observed in aircraft measurements. They show small scale fluctuations with amplitudes and phases that vary along the path of the flight. Detailed comparisons between these fluctuations and the observed vertical velocity show that the behavior of these short fluctuations is due not only to the vertical motion, but also to the local mean vertical gradients where the waves evolve, which are modulated by larger variations. The microscale model simulation results show favorable agreement with in situ radiosonde and aircraft observations. The high vertical resolution offered by the microscale model is found to be critical for resolution of smaller scale processes such as formation of inversion layer associated with trapped lee waves in the troposphere, and propagating mountain waves in the lower stratosphere.


[1] A snowfall retrieval algorithm based on Bayes' theorem is developed using high-frequency microwave satellite data. In this algorithm, observational data from both airborne and surface-based radars are used to construct an a priori database of snowfall profiles. These profiles are then used as input to a forward radiative transfer model to obtain brightness temperatures at high microwave frequencies. In the radiative transfer calculations, two size distributions for snowflakes and ten observed atmospheric sounding profiles are used with snowfall profiles from observations. In addition, the scattering properties of the snowflakes are calculated on the basis of realistic nonspherical shapes using discrete dipole approximation. The algorithm is first verified by airborne microwave and radar observations and then applied to the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B (AMSU-B) satellite data. The retrieved snowfall rates using AMSU-B data from three snowfall cases in the vicinity of Japan show reasonable agreement with surface radar observations with correlation coefficients of about 0.8, 0.6, and 0.96 for the three cases, respectively. The comparison results also suggest the algorithm performs better for dry and heavy snow cases, but is less accurate for wet and weak snow cases.