Low-cost, high-capacity processes for the conversion of biomass into fuels and chemicals are essential for expanding the utilization of carbon neutral processes, reducing dependency on fossil fuel resources, and increasing rural income. The quality of bio-oils can be improved by the partial or total elimination of the oxygenated functionalities present. Two main deoxygenation methods have been studied for this purpose. The first comprises bio-oil cracking over solid acid catalysts at atmospheric pressure, resulting in simultaneous dehydrationdecarboxylation. The other utilizes typical hydrotreating conditions, high hydrogen pressures in combination with conventional catalysts, for the hydrogenation of unsaturated groups and hydrogenation-hydrocracking of large molecules. Although hydrotreating is extremely effective, technoeconomic analyses reveal its economics to be unfavorable for the production of the fuel-type products it affords. If renewable hydrogen is readily available, then this may not be such a disadvantage; however, this approach is unsuited for the distributed stabilization/upgrading of pyrolysis oil. Hydroprocessing of vegetable oils allows easy transformation of fatty acid triglycerides into hydrocarbons. In this study is represented a new process for the production of hydrogenated bio-oils starting with "waste" of petroleum processing (sulfur) to get hydrogen, using concentrated solar energy, for hydrogenation of bio-oils.


Coherent free-space optical communication employing M-ary phase-shift keying is investigated for space-time coded multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems over Gamma-Gamma turbulence channels. The proposed space-time coded system offers an efficient utilization of coherent free-space optical channel capacity by exploiting the degree of freedom at both the transmitter and receiver ends. Such a system design is particularly suitable for turbulence channels. Novel closed-form error rate expressions are presented for the proposed MIMO system using a series expansion approach. In addition, asymptotic symbol-error rate and truncation error analyses are performed. It is shown that our proposed system is a viable solution for coherent optical MIMO applications and achieves the full diversity benefits of MIMO links. Numerical results further demonstrate the high accuracy of the derived error rate solutions.


Eco-design presents an integrated approach to develop products with as small environmental footprint as possible taking a life-cycle perspective. However, still, the vast majority of manufacturing companies do not use eco-design, or at least they do not use it in their marketing. Taking a company perspective, this report tries to understand why. Its ambition has been to identify and explain the incentives companies have for implementing eco-design practices in their product development. Ultimately, the report is trying to answer the question on how authorities can use these incentives to better support eco-design. The findings presented in the report are based on interviews with Nordic manufacturing companies, experts in the field and a literature survey. Conclusions are followed by general recommendations on how to stimulate the use of eco-design in companies.


One of the objectives of teaching and learning information and communication technology subject in primary schools is to enable pupils to have abilities to use information technology tools, including computers. This article is based on the study which sought to investigate the extent to which primary school pupils in Tanzania were able to use computers after attending Information and Communication Technology lessons. The specific objectives of the study were four, including: To examine pupils' abilities to start a computer; to use a Microsoft Office Word program; to find information from the internet; and to shut down a computer. The study employed a quantitative research approach in which a case study research design was adopted. A total of 120 pupils from six primary schools in Morogoro Municipality were involved. The data were mainly collected through performance tasks in which the pupils demonstrated their abilities in using computers. The percentages of pupils who were able and those who were unable to perform tasks related to computer use were computed using computer software, Statistical Package for Social Sciences. The main findings were as follows: First, most of the pupils who were involved in this study did not have problems in starting a computer as more than 95% of the pupils were able to start a computer. Secondly, the majority of pupils had basic skills needed to use a Microsoft Office Word program. Third, more than half of pupils exhibited basic skills for finding information from the internet and a significant proportion of pupils did not have the skills. Lastly, more than 90% of pupils who were involved in this study were able to shut down a computer. These findings imply that the interactions among pupils, between pupils and teachers and between pupils and information and communication technology materials were effective. In light of these findings, it is recommended that the government should provide all primary schools with computers to enable all pupils in the country develop computer skills which are essential in improving their academic performance.


Knowledge
of
the
fetal
Kell
genotype
in
pregnancies
of
sensitized
women
with
anti-K
is
of
great
value
to
determine
if
the
fetus
is
at
risk
of
haemolytic
anaemia
and
allows
a
better
management
of
such,
otherwise,
high‐risk
pregnancies.
Several
non-invasive
approaches
for
fetal
Kell
genotyping
have
been
developed
ages
earlier
than
20
weeks.
The
next-generation
sequencing
(NGS)
Technology
offers
unprecedented
possibilities
of
massive
parallel
analysis
of
gene-targets
amplified
sequences
from
maternal
plasma
cell-free
(cf)
DNA.
Initial
proof
of
concept
studies
have
shown
promising
results.
Objectives:
1)
To
design
a
NGS
approach
for
the
fetal
Kell
genotype
analysis
in
plasma
cfDNA
and
2)
To
evaluate
its
sensitivity
and
the
reliability
of
the
fetus
in
a
validation
study
with
a
panel
of
clinical
samples
from
sensitized
pregnant
women.
Materials
and
Methods:
A
total
of
17
plasma
samples
from
pregnant
women
with
anti‐K
have
been
prospectively
collected
during
the
past
three
years.
Cell‐free
DNA
has
been
extracted
from
2
ml
of
these
plasma
samples
as
well
as
from
artificial
chimeric
mixtures
of
plasma
from
individuals
with
known
genotype
(major
KEL2/2,
minor
KEL1/2)
using
the
QIAsymphony
extractor.
A
125b
bp
KEL
gene
fragment
encompassing
the
KEL1/2
SNP
has
been
amplified
using
gene-specific
primers
with
NGS
suitable
adaptors.
The
resulting
amplification
products
have
been
pooled
with
other
amplicons
and
sequenced
in
a
MiSeq
Desktop
Sequencer.
The
NGS
pipeline
output
paired
sequence
files
have
been
used
as
input
for
the
analysis
with
CLC
Genomics
Workbench
software. Results:
Initial
tests
were
performed
with
plasma
DNA
from
the
artificial
chimeric
mixtures,
having
a
1
to
20%
minor
component
represented.
Parallel
amplification
of
the
AMEL
gene
and
the
SRY
locus
has
been
optimized
as
well
to
include
a
fetal
sex
marker.
Optimal
amplicon
size
and
input
plasma
DNA
have
been
assessed
with
a
restricted
panel
of
clinical
samples
representing
the
real
scenario
of
application.
Conclusion:
This
NGS
method
for
non-invasive
fetal
Kell
genotyping
has
shown
specific
and
sensitive
detection
of
the
fetal
KEL1
allele
in
clinical
samples
of
sensitized
pregnant
women.
It
is
also
compatible
with
the
simultaneous
sequence
analysis
of
multiple
amplicons
from
different
loci.
In
this
sense,
further
developments
may
include
other
loci
of
blood
group
polymorphisms,
potentially
involved
in
haemolytic
disease
of
the
newborn


Daily level exercise in CRT patients results in a shorter optimal programmed AV delay
and shorter intrinsic AV interval compared to the resting state. The optimal programmed
VV delay and intrinsic VV intervals are not significantly affected and ventricular
dyssynchrony shows heterogeneous responses to exercise. Optimal programming of
the AV delay is more crucial during exercise than at rest.


Customer retention is an important element of banking strategy in today's increasingly competitive environment. Bank management must identify and improve upon factors that can limit customer defection. These include employee performance and professionalism, willingness to solve problems, friendliness, level of knowledge, communication skills, and selling skills, among others. Furthermore, customer defection can also be reduced through adjustments in a bank's rates, policies and branch locations (Leeds, 1992). Clearly, there are compelling arguments for bank management to carefully consider the factors that might increase customer retention rates. Several studies have emphasised the significance of customer retention in the banking industry (see Dawkins and Reichheld, 1990; Marple and Zimmerman, 1999; Page et al., 1996; Fisher, 2001). However, there has been little effort to investigate factors that might lead to customer retention. Most of the published research has focused on the impact of individual constructs, without attempting to link them in a model to further explore or explain retention. If retention criteria are not well managed, customers might still leave their banks, no matter how hard bankers try to retain them. This paper examines the impact of several retention-relevant constructs that influence consumers' decisions to stay with or leave their banks in New Zealand. These constructs were rated by customers as having strong effects on loyalty to their banks. Demographic characteristics (i.e. age, gender, educational level and income) were also assessed for their contribution to intentions of staying with or finding alternative banks. Results suggest that the most important constructs were customer satisfaction, followed by corporate image and switching barriers. There was also evidence that customers' age groups and level of education contributed to explaining respondents' propensity to stay with their current banks. JEL Classification: G20, M30


Analyzing the nucleus of desertification called Inhamuns, located in the state of Ceará - Brazil, it is observed that the relief represented by its orography, behaves as one of the influencing factors of such process. In this article, we seek to understand the role of the relief conditioning the desertification process, based on the analyzis between relief, climate and anthropic influence. For this, a detailed mapping of relief compartmentalization was carried out, the orography was related to the spatialization of centenary rainfall data and to the aridity index represented by 32 years of data, and the degradation levels were verified, between 1991 and 2017, in the main portions of interest. With the results it is verified that, the climate, when interacting with the relief, configures different characteristics on the windward and leeward sides, seen identifications of lower total rainfall and greater aridity in the desertified portion to leeward; anthropic action is present in areas inside and outside the desertification core, with growth in line shapes throughout the study area, given the priority use and occupation, in sectors close to water bodies and river plains; the relief compartments represented by sertaneja depressions 01 and 02 and residual massifs, showed an increase in environmental degradation; the primary factor in which there are fluctuations in your data, between desertified and non-desertified areas, given the presence of relief, it's the climatic. In view of this, it is understandable that, the configuration of the deserted core of Inhamuns, is the result of anthropic action on the effect of the semi-arid climate, downwind of a relief, over the years.


Urban and landscape planners are becoming increasingly aware of the potential of light detection and ranging (lidar) technology to produce height and structural information over large geographic areas in both an economic and time-efficient fashion. In urban environments where the structural complexity is high, for example, lidar is seen as a critical and innovative dataset to improve the characterization of both vegetation and building attributes. Using a small-footprint, first- and last-return lidar dataset of Vancouver, Canada, we demonstrate the potential to derive a suite of attributes important for describing the interactions of the urban surface and atmosphere in weather forecasting, air pollution, and urban dispersion modelling. Two levels of attributes were defined. First, primary attributes such as building shape, size, and location and tree classification were calculated. Building extent and size were computed using an object-based approach based on connectivity and height rules. The classification of tree crown areas was derived from the location of last-return data, filtered to remove the incidence of last returns caused by the interaction of the lidar beam with building edges, and height rules. Validation showed that building areas derived from lidar compared well with aerial photography estimates (r2 = 0.96, p < 0.001, n = 98). The percentage difference between estimates was equal to 16% (n = 83) when buildings were discriminated from the surrounding features. However, the percentage difference between estimates increased to 35% (n = 98) when commission errors were considered, as lidar often overestimated building areas due to closely spaced buildings (gaps less than 1–2 m) not being separated. Similarly, the height and area of lidar-extracted trees were highly correlated with field-based measurements (r2 = 0.84 and 0.76, respectively, p < 0.001, n = 50). Once these primary attributes were derived, we demonstrate the extraction of a number of secondary attributes including building mean height, normalized building volume, building wall surface area, and interelement spacing. Of significance, this research has shown that lidar can provide spatially detailed estimates of urban structure and cover which characterize the aerodynamic and energetic properties of urban areas.


Non-autoregressive machine translation (NAT) has recently made great progress. However, most works to date have focused on standard translation tasks, even though some edit-based NAT models, such as the Levenshtein Transformer (LevT), seem well suited to translate with a Translation Memory (TM). This is the scenario considered here. We first analyze the vanilla LevT model and explain why it does not do well in this setting. We then propose a new variant, TM-LevT, and show how to effec-tively train this model. By modifying the data presentation and introducing an extra deletion operation, we obtain performance that are on par with an autoregressive approach, while reducing the decoding load. We also show that incorporating TMs during training dispenses to use knowledge distillation, a well-known trick used to mitigate the multimodality issue.


This essay is based on field research conducted in the summer of 2010 in the Philippines around the problematic of environmentalism, religion and citizenship. I argue that in order to understand the problematic of religion, environmentalism and citizenship in the Philippines one must study not places as such, but the representations and discourses – or place-frames – through which places are constituted and mobilized as sites for producing particular connectivities, relationships, embodied subjectivities and sensoria. As such, I contrast two Filipino place-frames: the first is the 'ancestral domain' while the second refers to the new gated, housing developments that are to be found in and around Manila – what I call a 'mobile disciplinary' place-frame. Both conjure spectral risks, imply ethically charged discourses of relatedness and connection and both also imply different sensoria of the body and its co-ordination, engagement and immersion in a world. Finally, I discuss the possibility of a 'green' citizenship in the Philippines in light of Beck's notion of the 'risk society'.


Natural learners rarely have access to perfectly labeled data { motivating the study of unsupervised learning in an attempt to assign labels. An alternative viewpoint, which avoids the issue of labels entirely , has as the learner's goal the discovery of an eeective metric with which similarity judgments can be made. We refer to this paradigm as metric learning. EEective classiication, for example, then becomes a consequence rather than the direct purpose of learning. Consider the following setting: a database made up of exactly one observation of each of many diierent objects. This paper shows that, under admittedly strong assumptions, there exists a natural prescription for metric learning in this data starved case. Our outlook is stochastic, and the metric we learn is represented by a joint probability density estimated from the observed data. We derive a closed-form expression for the value of this density starting from an explanation of the data as a Gaussian Mixture. Our framework places two known classiication techniques of statistical pattern recognition at opposite ends of a spectrum { and describes new intermediate possibilities. The notion of a stochastic equivalence predicate is introduced and striking diierences between its behavior and that of conventional metrics are illuminated. As a result one of the basic tenets of nearest-neighbor-based classiication is challenged.


Pairwise sequence alignment is perhaps the most fundamental bioinformatics operation. An optimal global alignment algorithm was described in 1970 by Needleman and Wunsch. In 1982 Gotoh presented an improved algorithm with lower time complexity. Gotoh's algorithm is frequently cited (1447 citations, Google Scholar, May 2015), taught and, most importantly, used as well as implemented. While implementing the algorithm, we discovered two mathematical mistakes in Gotoh's paper that induce sub-optimal sequence alignments. First, there are minor indexing mistakes in the dynamic programming algorithm which become apparent immediately when implementing the procedure. Hence, we report on these for the sake of completeness. Second, there is a more profound problem with the dynamic programming matrix initialization. This initialization issue can easily be missed and find its way into actual implementations. This error is also present in standard text books. Namely, the widely used books by Gusfield and Waterman. To obtain an initial estimate of the extent to which this error has been propagated, we scrutinized freely available undergraduate lecture slides. We found that 8 out of 31 lecture slides contained the mistake, while 16 out of 31 simply omit parts of the initialization, thus giving an incomplete description of the algorithm. Finally, by inspecting ten source codes and running respective tests, we found that five implementations were incorrect. Note that, not all bugs we identified are due to the mistake in Gotoh's paper. Three implementations rely on additional constraints that limit generality. Thus, only two out of ten yield correct results. We show that the error introduced by Gotoh is straightforward to resolve and provide a correct open-source reference implementation. We do believe though, that raising the awareness about these errors is critical, since the impact of incorrect pairwise sequence alignments that typically represent one of the very first stages in any bioinformatics data analysis pipeline can have a detrimental impact on downstream analyses such as multiple sequence alignment, orthology assignment, phylogenetic analyses, divergence time estimates, etc.


I present a novel drawing system for composing and rendering perspective scenes. The proposed approach uses a projective two-dimensional representation for primitives rather than a conventional three-dimensional description. This representation is based on points that lie on the surface of a unit sphere centered at the viewpoint. It allows drawings to be composed with the same ease as traditional illustrations, while providing many of the advantages of a three-dimensional model. I describe a range of user-interface tools and interaction techniques that give the drawing system its three-dimensional-like capabilities. The system provides vanishing point guides and perspective grids to aid in drawing freehand strokes and composing perspective scenes. The system also has tools for intuitive navigation of a virtual camera, as well as methods for manipulating drawn primitives so that they appear to undergo three-dimensional translations and rotations. The new representation also supports automatic shading of primitives using either realistic or non-photorealistic styles. My system supports drawing and shading of extrusion surfaces with automatic hidden surface removal and emphasized silhouettes. Casting shadows from an infinite light source is also possible with minimal user intervention. I describe a method for aligning a sketch drawn outside the system using its vanishing points, allowing the integration of computer sketching and freehand sketching on paper in an iterative manner. Photographs and scanned drawings are applied to drawing primitives using conventional texture-mapping techniques, thereby enriching drawings and providing another way of incorporating hand-drawn images. I demonstrate the system with a variety of drawings. Thesis Supervisor: Julie Dorsey Title: Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Architecture Thesis Supervisor: Leonard McMillan Title: Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering


Bluetooth is a pervasive wireless technology specified in an open standard. The standard defines Bluetooth Classic (BT) for high-throughput wireless services and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) very low-power ones. The standard also specifies security mechanisms, such as pairing, session establishment, and cross-transport key derivation (CTKD). CTKD enables devices to establish BT and BLE security keys by pairing just once. CTKD was introduced in 2014 with Bluetooth 4.2 to improve usability. However, the security implications of CTKD were not studied carefully. This work demonstrates that CTKD is a valuable and novel Bluetooth attack surface. It enables, among others, to exploit BT and BLE just by targeting one of the two (i.e., Bluetooth cross-transport exploitation). We present the design of the first cross-transport attacks on Bluetooth. Our attacks exploit issues that we identified in the specification of CTKD. For example, we find that CTKD enables an adversary to overwrite pairing keys across transports. We leverage these vulnerabilities to impersonate, machine-in-the-middle, and establish unintended sessions with any Bluetooth device supporting CTKD. Since the presented attacks blur the security boundary between BT and BLE, we name them BLUR attacks. We provide a low-cost implementation of the attacks and test it on a broad set of devices. In particular, we successfully attack 16 devices with 14 unique Bluetooth chips from popular vendors (e.g., Cypress, Intel, Qualcomm, CSR, Google, and Samsung), with Bluetooth standard versions of up to 5.2. We discuss why the countermeasures in the Bluetooth are not effective against our attacks, and we develop and evaluate practical and effective alternatives.


Although developing countries have established scores of new protected areas over the past three decades, they often amount to little more than ''paper parks'' that are chronically short of the financial, human, and technical resources needed for effective management. It is not clear whether and how severely under-resourced parks affect deforestation. In principle, they could either stem it by, for example, creating an expectation of future enforcement, or they could spur it by, for example, creating open access regimes. We examine the effect of Mexico's natural protected areas (NPAs) on deforestation from 1993 to 2000, a period when forest clearing was rampant and the vast majority of protected areas had negligible resources or management. We use high-resolution satellite data to measure deforestation and (covariate and propensity score) matching to control for NPAs' nonrandom siting and for spillovers. Our broad finding is that Mexico's paper parks had heterogeneous effects both inside and outside their borders. More specifically, at the national-level, we cannot reject the null hypothesis that NPAs had zero average effect on clearing inside their borders, nor can we reject a similar hypothesis for spillover clearing outside their borders. However, we can detect statistically and economically significant insideand outside-NPA effects for certain geographic regions. Moreover, these effects have different signs depending on the region. Finally, we find that NPAs with certain characteristics were more effective at stemming deforestation inside their borders, namely, those that were large, new, mixed use, and relatively well-funded. Taken together, these results suggest that paper parks have the potential to either reduce or exacerbate tropical deforestation and highlight the need for further research on the conditions that lead to each outcome. 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


A search was made for high index of refraction liquids suitable for immersion of ruby crystals in high-energy lasers. One liquid, SnCl2 · 2H2O in glycerin, is reported which can exactly match the index of ruby (1.76) and which, at the same time, is stable to the flash-lamp environment and transparent at the ruby pumping and lasing wavelengths. Another liquid, saturated aqueous SnCl2 · 2H2O, has a slightly lower index (1.60), but is more generally useful because of its low viscosity. Eight additional liquids with indices in the range from 1.43 to 1.54 are reported and tables are included which list the relevant properties of all of the liquids considered.


Raw clays from Mwea area, Kirinyaga County, in the Republic of Kenya have been analyzed for their major and minor chemical elements. The clays were analyzed after subjection to different heating temperatures, of between 100 and 550°C, cooling and washing them with mineral acids of different concentrations. The results of the study show that the major components of the raw clays, when expressed as the oxides are: silica (SiO2), 43.5 to 52%; alumina (Al2O3), 17 to 22%; iron (III) oxide (Fe2O3), 12 to 16%; titanium (IV) oxide (TiO2), 3.5 to 5.3%; Lime (CaO), 1 to 3%; magnesium oxide (MgO), 0.5 to 1.25%. Elements occurring in very small quantities in the range of 0.1 to 0.9%, again when expressed as oxides are, Na2O, 0.30 to 0.40%; K2O, 0.20 to 0.30%; MnO, 0,14 to 0.46%. It was found that when the raw clays were boiled with either H2SO4 or HCl of different concentrations, the level of iron was reduced to 7 to 5% Fe2O3, depending on the concentration of the mineral acid used. Thus, both 18 M H2SO4 and 11 M HCl were found to be the most effective in iron removal. Furthermore, iron-removal was more effective when clay had been heated to a temperature of 400 to 550°C with the effectiveness being higher, the higher the temperature to which clay had been heated. Thus, when clay was heated to 550°C, cooled and washed with 11 M HCl, it contained only 0.08% Fe2O3. Very similar results were obtained by using 18MH2SO4 instead of11 M HCl. Unfortunately; such a residue contained very little clay if any because, it had nearly 85% SiO2, and a mere 2.66% Al2O3. Mineral determination of the raw clays has shown that Mwea clays are predominantly montmorrillonites. In some sites such as Kandongu, the clays are highly contaminated with quartz. In addition, those elements which could be quantified, there were also elements which occur in only trace amounts and their presence was only shown on the X-ray diffraction spectra. These include copper, zinc, manganese, cobalt, nickel, zirconium, gallliumthallium, selenium, terullium, tantalum, thorium, silver and even gold. The acid-soluble aluminium compound in the raw clay was present as the mineral gibbsite, AlO.OH. There were two sites with relatively high levels of titanium (3.5-5% TiO2).The titanium in the two sites was present as the mineral ilmenite, FeTiO3 (Cumbiri) and the mineral anatase, TiO2 (Kiandegwa). Elemental analysis was carried out using atomic absorption spectrophotometry, X-ray fluorescence spectrophotometry and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) titrations. Within experimental error, the three methods gave very similar results.

 Key words: Clay, X-ray fluorescence, atomic absorption spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) titrations.


Marine tourism has become one of the fastest growing areas within the tourism industry. With the increased use of marine environments comes the need for informed planning and sustainable management as well as for the education and training of planners, managers and operators. Combining the disciplines of marine scientists and tourism researchers, this encyclopedia will bring together the terms, concepts and theories related to recreational and tourism activities in marine settings. Entries range from short definitions to medium and long articles. [Book Synopsis]


In Sweden's Air Emission Inventory submission 2005 to the UNFCCC, EU (Monitoring Mechanisms) and the CLRTAP, reported emissions from stationary combustion for the years 1990-2003 in CRF 1A2f (Construction) and CRF 1A4 (Other Sectors) - are based on energy statistics from Statistics Sweden.Questions have been raised whether current methodologies for fuel consumption estimates and methods for allocating different fuels on mobile and stationary combustion are in line with the IPCC guidelines.This study has aimed at exploring the background data, and identifying and documenting their sources and underlying models. Where time series inconsistencies have been identified, thorough investigations on reasons and consequences have been performed. Furthermore, background data has been traced back to its original sources in order to clearly distinguish stationary combustion from mobile combustion.Results show that biomass fuel time series for several sectors are inconsistently estimated. Models used to estimated biomass fuel consumption in the Service sector (both public and private) 1990-2000 are in need of revision. Furthermore, biomass fuel in holiday cottages (Residential sector) have not been estimated for the years 1990-2000.During the review process, it was discovered that historical activity data (before 2003) in the Inventory were not up-to-date for all years.Investigations carried out in this project show that methodologies used for separating activity data in mobile and stationary combustion are in line with the IPCC guidelines.


We propose a new orthonormal wavelet thresholding algorithm for denoising color images that are assumed to be corrupted by additive Gaussian white noise of known intercolor covariance matrix. The proposed wavelet denoiser consists of a linear expansion of thresholding (LET) functions, integrating both the interscale and intercolor dependencies. The linear parameters of the combination are then solved for by minimizing Stein's unbiased risk estimate (SURE), which is nothing but a robust unbiased estimate of the mean squared error (MSE) between the (unknown) noise-free data and the denoised one. Thanks to the quadratic form of this MSE estimate, the parameters optimization simply amounts to solve a linear system of equations. The experimentations we made over a wide range of noise levels and for a representative set of standard color images have shown that our algorithm yields even slightly better peak signal-to-noise ratios than most state-of-the-art wavelet thresholding procedures, even when the latters are executed in an undecimated wavelet representation.


In recent years the Norwegian Taxonomy Initiative started thorough investigations of poorly known organism groups. In this context, several marine inventories have rendered a number of marine invertebrate species new to science. Within the phylum Nemertea (ribbon worms) a characteristic hoplonemertean was encountered on two different occasions. We describe the new species Amphiporus rectangulus sp. nov. with a combination of histology and DNA data (COI). For the morphological description we use a previously proposed character matrix and, in a context given by the results, also provide a brief discussion on benefits and drawbacks with both methods. We argue that for small animals with soft bodies external characters can be more informative than hitherto expected.


Context. A significant fraction of small meteors are produced by iron meteoroids. Their origin and the interaction with the atmosphere have not been well explained up to now.
Aims. The goals of the study are to observe faint, slow, low altitude meteors, to identify candidates for iron meteoroids among them, to model their ablation and light curves, and to determine their properties.
Methods. Double station video observations were used for the determination of atmospheric trajectories, heliocentric orbits, light curves, and spectra of meteors. Meteors with iron spectra or of suspected iron composition based on beginning heights and light curves were modeled. The immediate removal of liquid iron from the surface as a cloud of droplets with Nukiyama–Tanasawa size distribution and their subsequent vaporization was assumed as the main ablation process on the basis of our previous work. The numerical model has only five parameters: meteoroid initial velocity v∞, zenith distance z, initial mass m∞, mean drop size Ddr, and luminous efficiency τ. The theoretical light curves were compared with the observed ones.
Results. The model is able to explain the majority of the selected light curves, and meteoroid parameters that are not directly observable – m∞, Ddr, and τ – are determined. Unlike in most meteor studies, the mass and luminous efficiency are determined independently. Luminous efficiency ranges from 0.08 to 5.8%; it weakly decreases with increasing initial meteoroid mass. No simple dependency on initial velocity was found. The mean size of iron drops depends on the meteoroid velocity. Slower meteoroids can produce drops with a wide range of mean sizes, whereas faster ones are better matched with larger drops with a smaller dispersion of sizes.


This paper presents a method that employs parametric surfaces as surface geometry representations at any stage of a computational process to compute self-supporting surfaces. This approach can be differentiated from existing relevant methods because such methods represent surfaces by a triangulated mesh surface or a network consisting of lines. The proposed method is based on the theory of Airy stress functions. Although some existing methods are also based on this theory, they apply its discrete version to discrete geometries. The proposed method simultaneously applies the theory to parametric surfaces directly and the discrete theory to the edges of parametric patches. The discontinuous boundary between continuous patches naturally corresponds to ribs seen in traditional vault masonry buildings. We use nonuniform rational B-spline surfaces in this study; however, the basic idea can be applied to other parametric surfaces. A variety of self-supporting surfaces obtained by the proposed computational scheme is presented.


The interaction between tumor cells and dendritic cells (DC) is a critical event for both initiation and regulation of specific antitumor immune responses. Based on the unique ability to present tumor antigen to and stimulate clonal expansion of naive T cells, DC have been widely used to induce antitumor immunity in both preclinical animal models and human clinical trials. However, a growing body of clinical data and experimental evidence demonstrate that tumor exhibits a variety of inhibitory effects on the immune system and the DC system, in particular. It is well documented to date that tumor-derived factors influence DC generation, maturation, activity, and survival both in vitro and in vivo. Therefore, DC dysfunction in the tumor-bearing hosts could be largely responsible for the ability of tumor cells to escape from immune recognition or induce tumor specific tolerance. However, understanding the suppressive effect of tumor on the immune system, in particular on DC, and the protection of DC from tumor-induced dysfunction has not been studied. Therefore, the goals of this research project were (i) the understanding of DC immunobiology in the tumor microenvironment, revealing cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in tumor escape from immune recognition and elimination, (ii) the generation of novel antitumor vaccines which protect DC from tumor-mediated suppression, and (iii) the identification of primary mechanisms involved in vaccine-mediated antitumor immunity. The Tumor Necrosis Factor Ligand (TNFL) family is a group of cytokines, which through the interaction with corresponding receptors, regulate cell functions and activities. In this project we had examined three proteins which belong to the TNFL family: CD40L, RANKL, and 4-1BBL. Importantly, the receptors for these cytokines are found on activated DC. CD40L, RANKL and 4-1BBL were shown to influence DC activation and cytokine secretion. It also has been demonstrated that CD40L and 4-1BBL have a strong antitumor effect, whereas, the role of RANKL in antitumor immunity has not yet been examined. CD40L is a well studied cytokine, shown to play an important role in the development of both humoral and cell-mediated immunity. However, the mechanisms of action of all these three cytokines on immune effectors are not fully understood. Here, we have evaluated the ability of local adenoviral gene transfer of CD40L, RANKL and 4-1BBL to elicit an antitumor immune response to established tumors in mice. Adenoviruses encoding these genes (Ad-CD40L, Ad-RANKL and Ad-4-1BBL) were constructed and tested in murine MC38 colon and TS/A breast adenocarcinoma therapy models. Our results demonstrate that intratumoral administration of all three tested vectors resulted in a significant inhibition of MC38 and TS/A tumor growth when compared with control groups treated with either saline or control adenovirus. In addition, a single intratumoral injection of DC transduced with the adenoviral vectors also resulted in a significant inhibition of MC38 and TS/A tumor growth. Furthermore, treatment of TS/A tumors with DC transduced with Ad-CD40L induced a complete tumor rejection with the generation of a tumor-specific immune memory. Thus, these results demonstrate that DC genetically modified to express CD40L immunotherapy displays the strongest antitumor effect compare to Ad-CD40L or RANKL- and 4-1BBL-based therapeutic approaches. Next, we have observed that DC generated from tumor-bearing mice, in addition to expressing low levels of CD80 and CD86 and producing decreased amounts of IL-12, exhibit decreased expression of CD40 molecules. Moreover, we have detected that MC38 tumor suppressed CD40 expression on DC isolated from spleens of tumor bearers. These data suggest that tumors induce suppression of CD40 expression on DC, and, thus, result in dysfunction and inhibition of maturation of these cells. Subsequently, we have demonstrated that CD40L, in addition to generating a strong antitumor immunity, was able to protect DC from tumor-induced dysfunction. CD40L stimulates DC to express higher levels of co-stimulatory molecules, produce significantly higher levels of IL-12 protein, survive longer in cultures, efficiently stimulate T cells, induce high cytotoxic T lymphocyte activity, present tumor antigens to T cells more efficiently, and migrate to the lymphoid organs faster then control DC. We have shown that by up-regulating DC activity and function, CD40L rescues DC from tumor-induced suppression. In summary, our data demonstrate that CD40L-based immunotherapy is an effective approach for inducing antitumor immunity and rescuing DC from tumor-induced dysfunction. These results should guide the development of novel therapies for prevention of immunosuppression in cancer patients and design of novel effective immunotherapeutic strategies for cancer.


Abstract This article analyzes the relationship between the relative position of an ethnic group, as measured by its majority/minority status at a subnational level, and attitudes of its members toward immigrants of different origins. Based on the Russian case, it addresses the question whether the effects of in-group majority status within a region on attitudes toward the general category of immigrants hold regardless of out-group origin and, if not, what may drive this variation. Using data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey of the Higher School of Economics and Bayesian hierarchical structural equation modeling, the study demonstrates that the relative position of an ethnic in-group is of varying importance as a predictor of attitudes toward migrant groups of European versus non-European origin in Russia. A group's majority status within a region proved to play a role in predicting attitudes toward migrants originating from the "south" (encompassing North and South Caucasus; Central Asia; and China, Vietnam, and Korea) but not toward migrants coming from the "west" (Ukraine and Moldova). We draw on arguments related to the source and the level of threat induced by the out-groups, ethnic hierarchies, and group cues to explain this pattern of results.


The finite-element approach to the eigenmode analysis of a photonic bandgap cavity by use of an anisotropic perfectly matched layer absorbing boundary is presented. This method rigorously calculates the resonant frequency, the field pattern, and the quality factor of the resonant mode of a finite-sized cavity in free space. The validity of the approach is examined through its application to two-dimensional photonic bandgap cavities. Analyses of numerical error for the resonant frequencies and the quality factor of the cavities demonstrate the accuracy and reliability of our approach, which used nonuniform grids, higher-order elements, and the perfectly matched layer. Far-field patterns of the resonant modes were obtained by simple transformation. Because the perfectly matched layer can represent the real boundary condition well, cavities of any size and shape can be analyzed with the desired accuracy. © 1998 Optical Society of America [S0740-3224(98)00908-4] OCIS codes: 140.3410, 230.3670, 000.4430, 230.5750, 260.2110.


This paper presents WELLE, a web-based music environment for blind people, and describes its development, design, notation syntax and first experiences. WELLE is intended to serve as a collaborative, performative and educational tool to quickly create and record musical ideas. It is pattern-oriented, based on textual notation and focuses on accessibility, playful interaction and ease of use. WELLE was developed as part of the research project Tangible Signals and will also serve as a platform for the integration of upcoming new interfaces.


The habitus is a crucial concept in Bourdieus theory of taste. In this article, we assess the relations between cultural taste or participation and two measured elements of habitus: aesthetic dispositions and domain-specific knowledge. To his end, we have analyzed a sample of 2,500 Flemings in 2003-2004. Active culture lovers attach more significance to the form of cultural products than to their function and are more interested in serious societal issues such as science and politics, but also in lifestyle topics. The results further show that these indicators of elements of the habitus greatly increase the explanatory power of the models for predicting cultural taste and consumption while their addition to the models diminishes the impact of more general socioeconomic background characteristics.


An experimental RF energy harvesting system to harvest energy from cell towers is presented in this paper. An electromagnetically-coupled square microstrip antenna is designed and fabricated for deployment in the presented system. Antenna gain of 9.1dB and bandwidth from 877 MHz to 998 MHz is achieved. A Schottky diode-based single stage voltage doubler and six-stage voltage doubler has also been designed and fabricated for DC voltage generation. Measured results show that a voltage of 2.78V is obtained at a distance of 10m from the cell tower and a voltage of 0.87V is obtained at a distance of 50m.


Artikkel lähtub hüpoteesist, et mida tehnilisemaks muutub nüüdisaegne globaliseerunud kultuuriruum, seda teadusulmelisemaks muutub realism, mis püüab seda kultuuriruumi usutavalt peegeldada. Selle hüpoteesi taustal vaatleb artikkel nii poeetilisest kui ka kultuuriteoreetilisest aspektist realismi ja teadusulme otsustavat lähenemist nüüdisaegses žanrisüsteemis ning käsitleb sellest lähtuvalt küberpunkulme nüüdisaegset s(t)aatust realistliku praktikana. Artikkel määratleb ja sisustab teadusulmeta küberpungi mõiste ning vaatleb selle eri avaldumisvorme kirjanduses, filmis, teleseriaalides ja popkultuuri nähtustes.

My article follows the premise that as the contemporary late-capitalist cultural environment becomes increasingly technological, its literary realism, aspiring towards a plausible encompassing reflection of this environment, becomes increasingly science-fictional. In other words, technological development, together with an increasingly accelerating pace of change, has also brought about changes in the way we perceive the contemporary genre system, and specifically the relative positions of realism and science fiction therein.
From this perspective, the article focuses on the present fate of cyberpunk, a prominent subset of science fiction in the 80s and 90s, whose main topics of reflection were the influence of the emerging virtual technologies, the increasing technological supplementations to the body, and their impact to (post)modern subjectivity. The article fleshes out the historical emergence of a new generic phenomenon that Sherryl Vint has tentatively called non-SF cyberpunk, or, cyberpunk without science fiction. This new phenomenon can be characterized as a fully realist practice that nevertheless maintains the science-fictional "feel" of cyberpunk's earlier, classic incarnation. In my article, I exemplify the emergence of non-SF cyberpunk in various works of fiction, film, TV-series, and pop-cultural phenomena.
During the first years of the 21st century, history – or more precisely technological development – finally seemed to have caught up with cyberpunk. The various technological phenomena and processes the cyberpunk readers and watchers were used to while devouring fiction increasingly started to pop up in everyday reality. Virtual communication technologies, digital networking and the emerging social media platforms; advances in genetic engineering and increasingly common prosthetic supplementations to the body; the mediated intimacy of historical events and the eventual emergence of cyber-war; as well as the overall onslaught of the society of the spectacle and the virtualization of finance capital – all of these, in whatever particular shape or form they happened to take historically, became more evident, more strongly felt in quotidian late-capitalist reality. In a way, several of cyberpunk's central speculative elements seemed to have "bled" straight from fiction into the everyday.
More important than the manifold materializations of cyberpunk's particular thematic elements, though, was the sheer speed and intensity of overall techno-scientific developments that brought them about, and the corresponding over-accelerated pace of cultural change felt in common everyday life. All of a sudden, change, as the now well-known saying has it, seemed to have been the only constant of contemporary globalized existence. And this, in turn, posed some novel imaginative and representational problems to SF in general and cyberpunk (as its most immediately extrapolative sub-genre at the time) in particular. Since the specific tropes and thematic motifs that seem to have "bled from fiction into reality" are ones that feature most centrally in the repertoire of cyberpunk, it would be fair to claim that of all the subgenres of SF, cyberpunk is the one most directly involved in the current close feedback-loop between realism and SF.
I claim that cyberpunk has by now realized itself to such an extent that, to borrow a very attentive remark from Sherryl Vint, it would be more useful to see cyberpunk less as a subgenre of science fiction and more as part of the cultural milieu that informs our contemporary existence of technologically mediated reality. Vint develops this notion on Thomas Foster's claim that (probably sometime during the 80s and 90s) cyberpunk experienced a sea change into a more generalized cultural formation. Vint's "non-SF cyberpunk" is a generic concept for contemporary works that convey precisely this cultural formation.
My article develops this notion of non-SF cyberpunk a little bit further. It has two aims: (1) to demonstrate, on the basis of Gibson's prose in Blue Ant trilogy, that there is a solid common ground between the poetics of realism and SF which ultimately enables the emergence of non-SF cyberpunk; and (2) to map several more recent works of literature, film and TV that, each in their own specific way, can be read as non-SF cyberpunk.


With the development of E-commerce and the coming of information age, Chinese manufacturing industry has been faced with vast opportunities and challenges. How to realize comprehensive information is enterprises' pursuit. The primary task is to establish reasonable and efficient management information system. Through the analysis of the principle and architecture of PDM and the roles of E- commerce in the development, the paper offers E-commerce system structure and work flow based on PDM, which is helpful to resolve the corresponding problems appearing in E-commerce system integration. Index Terms—E-commerce, PDM, integration


High-resolution planktonic foraminiferal analysis of three Brazos River sections indicates a nearly continuous Cretaceous/Tertiary [K/T] boundary sedimentary record second only to the world's most complete record at El Kef, Tunisia. Species extinctions occur over an extended period of time and with two major extinction episodes. The first extinction episode with 46% of the species extinct occurs at and just below [10–15 cm] a short hiatus at the base of a sandy shell hash and clay-sand unit which was interpreted by Bourgeois et al. [1988] to represent a tsunami bed generated by the K/T boundary bolide impact. The top of this tsunami bed is about 17–20 cm below the K/T boundary as defined by the first appearance of Tertiary planktonic foraminifera. The second extinction phase with 45% of the species extinct occurs 25 cm above the K/T boundary [Zone P0/P1a boundary]. Of the remaining seven surviving Cretaceous species, six gradually disappear during planktonic foraminiferal Subzones P1a and basal P1b. No species extinctions or major faunal assemblage changes are directly associated with the K/T boundary. Iridium distribution is ambiguous, with one peak in the upper part of the tsunami bed and a second peak at the micropaleontologically defined K/T boundary. Relative abundances of dominant species are stable through the Late Maastrichtian, and only minor abundance changes coincide with the first extinction episode or the K/T boundary. The first major faunal change in the dominant species group coincides with the second extinction episode and leads to decline and eventual extinction of this group in Subzone P1a. Species disappearing at the two extinction episodes [46% and 45%] constitute only a small percentage [8% and 5%] of the individuals of the total planktonic foraminiferal population. This suggests that weakened species with low numbers of individuals and sensitive to relatively minor environmental changes were primarily affected by these extinction episodes. Magnetostratigraphy indicates that the first extinction phase began about 310,000 years before the K/T boundary, and the second extinction phase occurred 50,000 years after the K/T boundary. This stepped pattern of species extinctions suggests a progressively stressed ecosystem in continental shelf settings which may be related to an observed sea level regression and global cooling. The hypothesis of a global catastrophic mass extinction at the K/T boundary caused by a large extraterrestrial impact is not supported by the Brazos River planktonic foraminiferal data.


Objectives
Progression-free survival of first-line targeted therapy greatly influences the survival of patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. We evaluated whether post-treatment inflammatory markers and lactate dehydrogenase levels had impacts on progression-free survival prediction in addition to those of conventional predictors.

Methods
Two hundred and fifteen patients whose tumors were clear cell type and in whom first-line targeted therapies could be continued for >1 month were evaluated. Pretreatment clinical factors, pathological factors and laboratory data 1 month after targeted therapy initiation-including inflammatory markers (neutrophil count, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and C-reactive protein) and lactate dehydrogenase-were reviewed. To identify progression-free survival predictors, multivariate analyses were done.

Results
The 1-year progression-free survival rate was 47%. Female gender, Karnofsky performance status <80%, time from diagnosis to systemic treatment <12 months, pretreatment C-reactive protein >3.0 mg/dl and post-treatment neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio >3.0 were independent predictors for progression-free survival. In contrast, neither C-reactive protein increase nor neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio increase after targeted therapy initiation were independent predictors. Pretreatment lactate dehydrogenase, post-treatment lactate dehydrogenase and lactate dehydrogenase decline were not independent predictors. When all patients were stratified by these independent factors into three groups (0 risk vs. 1 or 2 risks vs. 3 or more risks), there were significant differences in progression-free survival rates between the groups (P < 0.0001). Furthermore, there were also significant differences in overall survival rates between the groups (P < 0.0001).

Conclusions
Integration of post-treatment neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio value with pretreatment factors may lead to the establishment of effective predictive model for disease progression in patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma who received first-line targeted therapies.


A dynamic mechanical model of the human larynx and vocal tract has been developed to investigate its acoustic and fluid dynamic behaviour during sustained vowel production. The model comprises a cylindrical duct, open at one end, with a controlled air flow introduced at the other. The flow entering the duct is modulated by the periodic opening and closing of pair of electro-mechanically driven shutters. Far field measurements of the radiated pressure have shown that the model generates sound which has a spectral distribution that corresponds, at low frequencies, to that of an open vowel. However the spectral amplitudes were somewhat lower than voiced speech sounds normally generated at the same low rate. The addition of an orifice plate to reduce the duct exit area was found to increase the level of the radiated sound and to modify the spectral distribution somewhat. The flow distribution throughout the model duct has been measured using hot wire anemometry. The velocity distribution measured in the model was found to correspond to that measured in the oral cavity of four live subjects. Calibrate pressure measurements at the duct wall have been used define the associated pressure field within the duct. The pressure distribution found within the model corresponded to that measured in vivo by other researchers. The velocity within the duct was shown to be associated with contributions from three separate velocity fields, the rotational acoustic particle velocity and a rotational velocity field due to vortex development at the exit to the shutters. It was shown that the rotational velocity disturbance convected along the duct at approximately the local mean flow velocity. Comparison of prediction with measurement of the radiated sound fields showed that the presence of a rotational velocity field at the duct exit made a significant contribution to the radiated sound pressure level. A discussion is included as to whether acoustic sources, associated with the rotational flow, exists at area discontinuities in the vocal tract in addition to the generally accepted acoustic source due to fluctuating mass flow at the glottal exit. The influence of the Rotheberg Mask on the flow and acoustic behaviour of the model was investigated in some detail. Measurements show that the velocity field was almost unaltered, but the fluctuating pressure amplitudes were greatly reduced. Corresponding reductions were found in the radiated acoustic power with further reductions apparently due to the suppression of the rotational flow sources by the mask.


The author presents a study of Bibliothèque National de France MS Latin 11269, a manuscript that he argues was associated with the court of Leonello d'Este and which represents an attempt to "fix" or "canonize" a vernacular work on a practical subject in erudite Latin poetry. The author reviews the life of Fiore dei Liberi and Leonello d'Este and discusses the author's intentions in writing, how the manuscript shows clear signs of Estense associations, and examines the manuscript both in light of its codicological context and in light of humanist activity at the Estense court. He also presents the evidence for the book having been in the Estense library. Finally, he examines the place of the manuscript in the context of the later Italian tradition of fencing books. A complete concordance is presented in the appendix.


The application of rural land-use planning is seen by many in developing countries as a panacea for minimising land-use conflicts and for increasing the productivity of natural resources in African rangelands. However, this assumption has not been thoroughly tested in the context of wildlife corridors in African rangelands. The focus of the research work for this thesis was to evaluate both "conventional" and "participatory" approaches to land-use planning in an African rangeland setting, and to assess the impact of these land-use plans in mitigating conflict and enhancing conservation of important wildlife migratory routes. Nine villages were selected for study in Northeastern Tanzanian rangelands, within the Tarangire-Manyara, Greater Serengeti and MkomaziTsavo ecosystems.

Several methods were used to provide an indication of the performance of the plans, against their stated objectives of minimising land-use conflict and conserving wildlife migratory routes. Eight hundred and fifty two households, 13 "expert witnesses" and 4 representatives of planning agencies were interviewed. Several field assessment visits and focus group discussions were also carried out. Review and analysis was conducted on archive data, land-use plans technical reports and general management plans for neighbouring Parks.

The results of the research presented in this thesis revealed five major findings: (1) involvement of land-use stakeholders in land use preparation was low; (2) different types of conflicts and encroachments increased after the plans were implemented; (3) Park management failed to involve adjacent villages in the preparation and implementation of Park GMPs; (4) the amount of conflict around villages where plans were in place was comparable to that around villages with no plans, suggesting that the plans made no difference to conflict; (5) overall, both participatory and conventional plans failed to achieve their objectives of mitigating conflicts and enhancing conservation of wildlife corridors and dispersal areas.

The major causes of weakness and failure of the plans to achieve their desired objectives were: (l) insufficient participation oflocal communities in the planning process; (2) lack of robust of robust, transparent and accountable implementation strategies for the plans; (3) inadequately qualified rural planners; (4) lack of a comprehensive vision - "holistic approach" - to the planning process. Taking these findings into account, the author has made recommendations for an improved Buffer Zone Land-use Planning framework (BUZLUP) that could contribute to progress in mitigating conflicts and enhancing both conservation and development in Northeastern Tanzania.

It is concluded, however, that high quality plans in themselves cannot ensure the successful establishment and maintenance of effective wildlife corridors. In addition to improved planning strategies such as the proposed BUZLUP framework, other broader socio-economic issues need to be addressed, including strengthened conservation education, better protection for rural people's natural resources and support for their livelihoods, equitable benefit sharing from conservation and tourism activities, and more devolution of decision-making powers to the grass-roots level in communities neighbouring conservation areas.


COLLABORATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF A SMALL BUSINESS EMERGENCY PLANNING MODEL by Arthur Henry Hendela Small businesses, which are defined by the US Small Business Administration as entities with less than 500 employees, suffer interruptions from diverse risks such as financial events, legal situations, or severe storms exemplified by Hurricane Sandy. Proper preparations can help lessen the length of the interruption and put employees and owners back to work. Large corporations generally have large budgets available for planning, business continuity, and disaster recovery. Small businesses must decide which risks are the most important and how best to mitigate those risks using minimal resources. This research uses a series of surveys followed by mathematical modeling to help discover risk factors, mitigating actions, and the highest return scenarios as a basis for a low-cost business continuity/disaster recovery plan. The surveys use a Delphi study format in order to rank a base list of risks and mitigating actions and to supplement those lists with ones added by the participants. Survey results are analyzed and presented back to the group for a second round of ranking and supplementing the risk/action categories. After two rounds of surveys the data is presented to an expert panel to investigate how the risks interrelate. Quantifying the interrelationships is the basis for the Cross Impact Analysis model that is able to show the relative impact of one event upon another. Once the impacts are known, a series of high valued scenarios are developed using Interpretive Structural Modeling. These high valued scenarios can be used by the small businesses as a basis for a business continuity/disaster recovery plan. COLLABORATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF A SMALL BUSINESS EMERGENCY PLANNING MODEL by Arthur Henry Hendela A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of New Jersey Institute of Technology in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Information Systems Department of Information Systems


This paper describes searches for the pair production of first or second generation scalar leptoquarks using 35 pb(-1) of proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at root s = 7 TeV. Leptoquarks are searched in events with two oppositely-charged muons or electrons and at least two jets, and in events with one muon or electron, missing transverse momentum and at least two jets. After event selection, the observed yields are consistent with the predicted backgrounds. Leptoquark production is excluded at the 95% CL for masses M-LQ < 376 (319) GeV and M-LQ < 422 (362) GeV for first and second generation scalar leptoquarks, respectively, when assuming the branching fraction of a leptoquark to a charged lepton is equal to 1.0 (0.5).


Results of a pilot public opinion survey regarding privacy and secondary uses of medical data are presented. Data was gathered using a self administered household survey. The setting for the survey was regional New South Wales and Darwin, Australia. 482 surveys were distributed in randomly chosen residential blocks. The main outcome measures included respondent views regarding concern for personal privacy and support for secondary uses of medical data for utilitarian purposes. 165 surveys were returned giving a 34.2% response rate. Aspects of the Restricted Access Limited Control theory of privacy were explored via the survey. Results indicate the value of further research to give insight into operationalising RALC to support secondary uses of medical data for health research.


Fraud has expanded in frequency as e-commerce has become a dominant part of business strategy and found widespread use. Previous research in the Information Systems domain has focused on how the adoption of technology influences behavioral decisions, and previous research in the accounting domain has typically explored why people choose to commit fraud. However, a holistic model of how technology influences a person's decision to commit a criminal act, such as fraud, is underrepresented. This manuscript explores how the characteristics of the technologies being used to facilitate e-commerce transactions affect the complex cognitive and social processes that result in fraud. The fraud triangle is a useful and widely supported representation of the elements necessary for a perpetrator to engage in fraud: a perceived pressure that motivates action, a perceived opportunity to successfully deceive another individual, and the ability to rationalize an act of fraud. By combining extant research in the fields of accounting and information systems, this manuscript incorporates the fraud triangle into a behavioral model that can be used to measure how the capabilities of the technologies being used to facilitate online transactions influence a person's decision-making processes and, ultimately, their choices related to fraudulent behaviors.


Circuit camouflaging is a recently proposed defense mechanism to protect digital integrated circuits (ICs) from reverse engineering attacks by using camouflaged gates, i.e., logic gates whose functionality cannot be precisely determined by the attacker. Recent work appears to establish that an attacker requires time that is exponential in the number of camouflaged gates to reverse engineer a circuit, if the gates that are camouflaged are chosen using a procedure proposed in that work. Consequently, it appears to be the case that even by camouflaging a relatively small number of gates in the circuit, the attacker is forced to undertake several thousands of years of work. In this paper, we refute such claims. With an underlying complexity-theoretic mindset, we show that the same benchmark circuits with the camouflaged gates chosen the same way as prior work, we can decamouflage the circuit in minutes, and not years. As part of constructing our attack, we provide a precise characterization of two problems that the attacker seeks to solve to carry out his attack, and their computational complexity. A composition of solvers for the two problems is our attack procedure. We show that the two problems are co-NP-complete and NP-complete respectively, and our reduction to boolean satisfiability (SAT) and the use of off-the-shelf SAT solvers results in a highly effective attack. We also propose a new notion that we call a discriminating set of input patterns, that soundly captures the attacker's difficulty. Our extensive empirical studies reveal that the discriminating sets of inputs for realistic circuits are surprising small, thereby providing an explanation for the effectiveness of our attack. We provide additional insights by comparing the procedure of choosing gates to be camouflaged proposed in prior work to simply choosing them randomly. After presenting the results from our attack, we provide insights into the fundamental effectiveness of IC camouflaging. Our work serves as a strong caution to designers of ICs that seek security through IC camouflaging.


The differential multiply subtractive Kramers-Kronig (DMSKK) method is utilized for deriving the optical spectral response of a 1D scattering medium. The technique is based on the multiply subtractive Kramers-Kronig technique, where the phase spectrum is reconstructed from the amplitude spectrum in a finite spectral range with the aid of one or more phase-anchoring values. We employ a new phase-anchoring technique in the DMSKK method to partially mitigate the finite-range effects. This method incorporates spectral ballistic imaging to anchor the phase difference (instead of the phase directly) at one or more reference wavelengths. The simplicity of phase derivative measurements and its utilization in the DMSKK method are emphasized by a simple experiment.


Sugar cane bagasse is one of the largest fuels used for electricity generation in Brazil and its usage has continuously increased to supply the energy demand. This paper presents emission inventory based on power plants burning sugar cane bagasse. The inventory involves the spatial distribution and the estimated flows for the following major pollutants: nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate material (PM), carbon dioxide (CO2) and total organic carbon (TOC). A total of 384 power plants were inventoried, representing a generated power of 9.9 GW, about 26% of the energy produced by thermal power plants sector. The plants are concentrated in two main poles: one of them in S?o Paulo State and nearby areas and the other one in coast of Brazilian Northeast. The limits proposed by the AP-42 Regulations of the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) for the emission factors were applied. Additional emission factors identified in the scientific literature were also included in the analysis in order to assess the uncertainties associated to the estimative. The estimated emissions showed values in the range 16.0 - 20.5 Gg?year?1 for NOx, 18.0 - 267.0 Gg?year?1 for MP and 20.5 - 26.7 Tg?year?1 for CO2. The contribution of TOC showed a minor contribution around 10 - 20 Mg?year?1. PM showed to be the most representative pollutant emitted by the thermal plants burning sugar cane bagasse, but with a large range of uncertainty. There is a high level of uncertainty associated to the preparation of cane as well as the use of collectors to control particulate emissions. The adequate control over all stages could reduce the bagasse ash content in 90% or more.


ABSTRACT Hippopotamus lemerlei Grandidier, 1868 and Hippopotamus madagascariensis Guldberg, 1883 (Mammalia, Hippopotamidae): craniodental anatomy and systematic revision. Since the 1900s, the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle of Toulouse has housed about 300 subfossil specimens of dwarf endemic hippopotamuses of Madagascar (Galliéni collection), neither described, nor determined so far. Thirteen cranial specimens, of which five complete skulls, two crania, a mandible and five fragments were described and measured. A comparative study of these specimens with those from the Natural History Museum, London, and from the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris was undertaken, complemented by the analysis of a relatively complex and disputed literature. This study allowed referring six skulls to Hippopotamus madagascariensis Guldberg, 1883 and one to H. lemerlei Grandidier, 1868. We propose six new differential diagnostic characters for these species (external sagittal crest larger, shorter, and flatter in H. lemerlei; possible presence of a fontanelle instead of mastoid foramens in H. lemerlei; zygomatic arch more robust in H. madagascariensis; facial constriction longer in H. lemerlei; orbits more rostrally oriented in H. lemerlei, more laterally in H. madagascariensis; occipital condyles more axial in H. lemerlei and more caudo-ventral in H. madagascariensis in lateral view). Individual variation, sex- and/or age-dependent, is marked; besides, thorough examination of 20 'diagnostic' cranial characters on the available sample shows that these characters are not unambiguously differential. Configuration of the orbit and relative length of the face are the most diagnostic features. Observed cranio-mandibular lesions are either traumatic (wounds: intra-specific struggles) or bucco-dental (dental wear/ deletion, parodontolysis). These two species were probably sympatric, but occupying distinct niches.


In Natural Language Understanding (NLU), to facilitate Cross-Lingual Transfer Learning (CLTL), especially CLTL between distant languages, we integrate CLTL with Machine Translation (MT), and thereby propose a novel CLTL model named Translation Aided Language Learner (TALL). TALL is constructed as a standard transformer, where the encoder is a pre-trained multilingual language model. The training of TALL includes an MT-oriented pre-training and an NLU-oriented fine-tuning. To make use of unannotated data, we implement the recently proposed Unsupervised Machine Translation (UMT) technique in the MToriented pre-training of TALL. The experimental results show that the application of UMT enables TALL to consistently achieve better CLTL performance than our baseline model, which is the pre-trained multilingual language model serving as the encoder of TALL, without using more annotated data, and the performance gain is relatively prominent in the case of distant languages.


The Smart Stadium for Smarter Living project provides an end-to-end testbed for IoT innovation through a collaboration between Croke Park Stadium in Dublin, Ireland and Dublin City University, Intel and Microsoft. This enables practical evaluations of IoT solutions in a controlled environment that is small enough to conduct trials but large enough to prove and challenge the technologies. An evaluation of sound monitoring capabilities during the 2016 sporting finals was used to test the capture, transfer, storage and analysis of decibel level sound monitoring. The purpose of the evaluation was to use existing sound level microphones to measure crowd response to pre-determined events for display on big screens at half-time and to test the end-to-end performance of the testbed. While this is not the specific original purpose of the sound level microphones, it provided a useful test case and produced engaging content for the project. Analysis of the data streams showed significant packet loss during the events and further investigations were conducted to understand where and how this loss occurred. This paper describes the smart stadium testbed configuration using Intel gateways linking with the Azure cloud platform and analyses the performance of the system during the sound monitoring evaluation.


Introduction: Rabies is one of the most important infectious diseases and animal bites are increasing in Iran. Due to the significance of the subject, the current study was designed and conducted with the aim of determining Animal bite status and its contributors in Aq-Qala district, Golestan province, Iran.
Materials and methods: This is a data-based study with descriptive approach carried out in Aq-Qala from Feb/March 2010 to Feb/March 2011. 1025 cases of animal bites registered in rabies treatment center of Aq-Qala city were selected using census method. Data were collected using a reliable and valid Checklist. Data were entered into SPSS18 software and analyzed through descriptive statistics.
Results: 74.7% of studied cases were male. Their mean age was 25.7±17.8 years. Most bites occurred among adolescents and students (21.6%). Most bites occurred on foot and mainly in rural areas (81.5%). 40 %of bites occurred from 12 a.m. to 6 p.m. Most cases of animal bite were by dogs (94.4%). The injuries were superficial in 90.1% of cases. The animal bites occurred in 78.2% of cases on clothes. Most bites occurred in spring, in June. The incidence rate of animal bites was 854 cases per 100000 people.
Conclusion: Due to the high prevalence of animal bites in males, adolescent, students, rural areas and in spring, we recommended appropriate intervention, especially educational intervention in men, adolescent, students, rural area and in spring to decrease the prevalence of animal bites.


The birth of electroacoustic music is associated with an era of creativity which is now firmly embedded in the past. As the years advance so the opportunities for evaluating the pioneering years of the medium become increasingly remote. Few can now claim first-hand experience of working with the technologies that shaped and influenced the evolution of the early repertory, and many commentators are content to see them consigned to the museum. Others are less sure, having become aware of a number of features that appear to have no parallels in the modern all-digital domain. This article is predicated on the proposition that the functional characteristics of the equipment available during the formative years materially influenced the ways in which composers developed their compositional aesthetic. By studying the characteristics of the resulting interactions, important clues emerge as to the true nature of this engagement. Central to this study is the nature of the techné involved in these processes of creativity, and the significance of this is evaluated in the context of establishing a case for further research in this area. Particular attention is paid to the role of the tape recorder in this context, in particular its influence on the development of spatialisation techniques.


The genomic extinction of Yellowstone cutthroat trout (Oncorynchus clarki bouvieri) has occurred throughout many parts of its historic range because of displacement and introgression with introduced rainbow trout (O. mykiss). However, fluvial cutthroat trout still retain their genetic integrity while co-existing with rainbow trout in the Yellowstone River drainage, Montana. I assessed whether spatial or temporal reproductive isolation, or both, occurs between these taxa. Time and place of spawning was determined by radio-telemetry of a total of 164 trout (98 cutthroat, 37 rainbow, and 29 cutthroat x rainbow hybrids) over three spawning seasons, from 2001 to 2003. Fish were telemetered in four areas of a 140-km segment of the mainstem Yellowstone River. Of the 164 radio-tagged fish, 73 (44 cutthroat trout, 15 rainbow trout, and 14 hybrids) were assumed to have spawned. Fifty-five (75.3%) of 73 radio-tagged fish that spawned used 16 tributaries, 17 (23.3%) used 7 river side channels, and 1 (1.4%) used the main channel of the Yellowstone River. The majority of fish that spawned (62%) used five spawning areas. These were used by 79% (N = 11) of hybrids, 61% (N = 27) of cutthroat trout, and 47% (N = 7) of rainbow trout that spawned. Spawning-area and spawning-reach overlap index values were high among all taxa. In contrast, mean migration and spawning dates of rainbow trout and hybrids were 5 to 9 weeks earlier than of cutthroat trout. Rainbow trout and hybrids began migrating and spawning in April and May when Yellowstone River discharges were lower and water temperatures were colder than discharges and temperatures during cutthroat trout migration and spawning in June and July. Spawningperiod overlap index values between rainbow trout and hybrids versus cutthroat trout were typically less than half the spatial overlap index values. Therefore, difference in time of spawning is likely the predominant mechanism eliciting reproductive isolation. Management actions focused on later spawning cutthroat trout in tributaries may enhance temporal reproductive isolation from rainbow trout and hybrids.


The protection and conservation of the ocean warrant increased attention from the global community. Several disturbing issues pose a threat to the marine environment and its wellbeing (Von Heland, Clifton & Olsson 2014, pp. 4470--96), among them marine environmental pollution and degradation of marine biodiversity—two well-known challenges that must be overcome. Combined, they are striking challenges to the marine environment. Moreover, most troubling is that they are caused by an overwhelming level of human activities (von Heland, Clifton & Olsson 2014), which are sometimes transboundary, and whose consequences will become more severe and complicated if not properly curbed. Thus, it is common knowledge that these activities require comprehensive policies, laws, and principles to manage them effectively. Linked to these solutions is the need for responsibilities, cooperation and commitments at local, national, regional and international levels. Altogether, the actions required for the protection of ocean from human activities in responsible ways become a necessity rather than an option. However, despite the challenges becoming more acute, and use of the ocean less sustainable and more harmful, a durable solution to reverse these impacts is unlikely.
Considering these issues, this chapter lays the foundation for subsequent chapters by describing why and how ocean-related issues should be addressed responsibly, immediately, and systematically, and how and why ocean pollution and threats to marine biodiversity are challenges to overcome. The exploration in this chapter guides the discussion in the subsequent chapters, which critically examine the current legal and institutional frameworks governing different issues of marine environmental protection and conservation.


We studied survival and cause-specific mortality of radio-marked capercaillie Tetrao urogallus females relative to habitat type in northern Sweden during 2000-2004. Our high-mountain area (1,600 km2) consisted of the alpine transition zone from Norway spruce Picea abies-dominated forest, mountain birch Betula pubescens and alpine heath. Our low-mountain areas consisted of two forest areas (300 and 160 km2) dominated by Scots pine Pinus sylvestris and characterised by more intensive forestry than the first-mentioned area. Predation was the most common cause of mortality in both the high-mountain (70%) and low-mountain (90%) areas. We attributed 10% of mortality in both areas to hunting. Collisions with cars and power lines were only documented in the high-mountain area. A Cox-proportional regression model stratified by year suggested that hazard was lower for yearlings and birds using low-mountain areas, but these estimates were associated with large uncertainties. Pooling all individuals showed an average annual survival probability of 0.68 (0.62-0.75; 95% CI), with no tendency for hazard to vary among seasons. Because survival of females was comparable to those reported in other studies and the harvest mortality was low, we suggest that the capercaillie population in the Swedish high-mountain region does not need any changes in the present management strategy.


In higher-order motion stimuli, the direction of object motion does not follow the direction of luminance change. Such stimuli could be generated by the wing movements of a flying butterfly and further complicated by its motion in and out of shadows. Human subjects readily perceive the direction of higher-order motion, although this stands in stark contrast to prevailing motion vision models. Flies and humans compute motion in similar ways, and because flies behaviorally track bars containing higher-order motion cues, they become an attractive model system for investigating the neurophysiology underlying higher-order motion sensitivity. We here use intracellular electrophysiology of motion-vision–sensitive neurons in the hoverfly lobula plate to quantify responses to stimuli containing higher-order motion. We show that motion sensitivity can be broken down into two separate streams, directionally coding for elementary motion and figure motion, respectively, and that responses to Fourier and theta motion can be predicted from these. The sensitivity is affected both by the stimulus' time course and by the neuron's underlying receptive field. Responses to preferred-direction theta motion are sexually dimorphic and particularly robust along the visual midline.


Background During transendothelial migration, leukocytes use adhesion molecules, such as ICAM-1, to adhere to the endothelium. ICAM-1 is a dynamic molecule that is localized in the apical membrane of the endothelium and clusters upon binding to leukocytes. However, not much is known about the regulation of ICAM-1 clustering and whether membrane dynamics are linked to the ability of ICAM-1 to cluster and bind leukocyte integrins. Therefore, we studied the dynamics of endothelial ICAM-1 under non-clustered and clustered conditions. Principal Findings Detailed scanning electron and fluorescent microscopy showed that the apical surface of endothelial cells constitutively forms small filopodia-like protrusions that are positive for ICAM-1 and freely move within the lateral plane of the membrane. Clustering of ICAM-1, using anti-ICAM-1 antibody-coated beads, efficiently and rapidly recruits ICAM-1. Using fluorescence recovery after photo-bleaching (FRAP), we found that clustering increased the immobile fraction of ICAM-1, compared to non-clustered ICAM-1. This shift required the intracellular portion of ICAM-1. Moreover, biochemical assays showed that ICAM-1 clustering recruited beta-actin and filamin. Cytochalasin B, which interferes with actin polymerization, delayed the clustering of ICAM-1. In addition, we could show that cytochalasin B decreased the immobile fraction of clustered ICAM-1-GFP, but had no effect on non-clustered ICAM-1. Also, the motor protein myosin-II is recruited to ICAM-1 adhesion sites and its inhibition increased the immobile fraction of both non-clustered and clustered ICAM-1. Finally, blocking Rac1 activation, the formation of lipid rafts, myosin-II activity or actin polymerization, but not Src, reduced the adhesive function of ICAM-1, tested under physiological flow conditions. Conclusions Together, these findings indicate that ICAM-1 clustering is regulated in an inside-out fashion through the actin cytoskeleton. Overall, these data indicate that signaling events within the endothelium are required for efficient ICAM-1-mediated leukocyte adhesion.


The control of lipid domain formation in biological membranes has received limited consideration. This mechanism is quantitatively investigated using Monte Carlo computer simulations of a simple model system. Monte Carlo simulations are performed on a simple model system composed of phosphatidylecholine (PC), phosphatidylserine (PS), and cholesterol (Chol). Domain formation induced by binding of the phospholipid binding proteins, annexin A5 (A5) and the C2 protein motif is investigated. Simulations for models containing PC/PS lipids indicate that the addition of A5 does not induce lipid domain formation while binding of C2 greatly induces lipid domain formation. The addition of Chol to PC/PS systems was found to induce lipid demixing in the absence and presence of A5 and further enhance the ability of C2 to form PS domains. Incorporation of a preferential protein-protein interaction to PC/PS and PC/PS/Chol systems was found to further increase lipid demixing for all compositions.
Lipid domain formation is also investigated experimentally using fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) in 1-Palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC)/ sphingomyelin from porcine brain (BSM)/ Cholesterol (Chol) model systems. Studies have shown that these model systems contain lipid domains. The dependence of lipid domain size upon the addition of the transmembrane region of the linker for activation of T-cells (LAT), a protein believed to associate with lipid rafts, is investigated. When incorporated, LAT was found to insert into both the liquid-ordered (Lo) and liquid-disordered (Ld) regions indicating no lipid specificity. FRET between an acceptor/donor pair shown to not be affected by addition of LAT in POPC/BSM/Chol mixtures indicating that the presence of LAT does not affect the size of lipid domains.


Abstract African Media Studies which is marginalized in the Global North academy lacks not only representation from African students/scholars but is also under-theorized. Employing a decolonial approach, this article presents a critical analysis of African Media Studies from the perspective of a recent PhD graduate and early career scholar. Using what I call an African feminist autoethnography framework, I draw on my experiences as an African graduate student in the Global North to demonstrate the erasure of African Media Studies in curricula and highlight the challenges faced by African students and scholars within this field. I argue that to understand the challenges mitigating the growth of African Studies scholarship produced by Africans, it is imperative to understand the lived experience of Africans in the academy and pay attention to how these experiences can guide us toward a path of decolonizing African Media Studies. The article also highlights the importance of drawing on indigenous African knowledge systems to build theories that best suit our research on African media. It also draws attention to the importance of transdisciplinarity to the growth of the field and provides alternative ways to rethink the position and growth of African Media Studies in the global academy.


Northern Cameroon is a vast geographical region made up of a population with diverse customs, religion and migration process. The entire population is made up of paleo-nigritics, neo-Sudanese and pastoral nomads who practice activities such as complex historical events and cultural diversity has made the customary system of land tenure to vary both in their ancient aspects as well as contemporary manifestations. Therefore, based on verbal assertion and written data, this article examines the methods of land access as well as the traditional and modern land tenure system. For the population of Northern Cameroon and elsewhere, land represents a natural resource of prime importance. Access to land and its control constitutes a major economic challenge and it is equally a source of diverse conflicts. The system of land ownership has been influenced by external unforeseen events. From the pre-colonial period to the so called post colonial period, access to land and land ownership vary between the conservation of a traditional system which land owners are trying to preserve and the weight of modernity which has economic implications.


This study investigates the quality of direct probability judgments and quantile estimates with a focus on calibration and consistency. The two response modes use different measures of miscalibration, so it is difficult to directly compare their relative (in)accuracy. We employed a more refined within-subject design in which decision makers (DMs) used both response modes to make judgments about a random sample of stocks accompanied by identical information to facilitate comparison between the two judgment methods. DMs judged the probabilities that the stocks will reach a certain threshold, provided lower and upper bounds of these forecasts, and estimated median, 50%, 70%, and 90% confidence intervals of their future prices. We found that the judgments were internally consistent and coherent, but in most cases they were slightly miscalibrated. We used several new methods of analysis that allow for more precise and reliable comparison between the two response modes. We inferred point probability estimates for the target events from the confidence intervals and analyzed them by the same methods applied to binary judgments. Interestingly, when we quantified miscalibration in identical fashion for both methods we did not find evidence of differential levels of miscalibration for the probability judgments and the confidence intervals. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results.


Many ion channels consist of a pore-forming subunit along with other associated subunits and regulatory proteins that can modulate localization of the channel, its stability, and many aspects of channel conductance. These interactions are usually considered in terms of effects of the auxiliary subunits on the activity of the pore-forming subunit, but Jin et al. point out that reciprocal effects are potentially important in these protein-protein interactions. The hSlo (human slowpoke) large-conductance Ca2+-dependent K channels contribute to action potential repolarization in neurons and modulate neurotransmitter release. The pore-forming α subunit of these channels is regulated by a family of β subunits. Jin et al. show that the β4 subunit expressed in HEK 293 cells is multiply glycosylated and that full glycosylation can be observed only when the α subunit is also expressed. Glycosylation of the β4 subunit in turn modulates its effect on the α subunit. One action of the β4 subunit is to protect the channel from inhibition by iberiotoxin. But this effect is lost when the β4 subunit is fully glycosylated. Although it remains to be established whether there are physiological repercussions of the changes revealed by monitoring toxin sensitivity, the authors note that it may be important to consider such two-way communication between subunits to fully understand mechanisms that regulate channel conductance. P. Jin, T. M. Weiger, I. B. Levitan, Reciprocal modulation between the α and β4 subunits of hSlo calcium-dependent potassium channels. J. Biol. Chem. 277, 43724-43729 (2002). [Abstract] [Full Text]


During development, GABA/glycinergic responses switch from depolarizing to hyperpolarizing due to the gradual decrease in chloride equilibrium potential (ECl) to a more negative value than the resting membrane potential. Depolarizing GABA/glycinergic responses and the developmental switch to hyperpolarization are believed to play a key role in neuronal circuit development, yet a clear demonstration of how and to what degree they are important has not been investigated. In my dissertation studies, I investigated the functional significance of the developmental switch to hyperpolarizing GABA/glycinergic responses in circuit development. To this end, I compared synaptic strength in a brain slice preparation containing the intact topographic pathway of GABA/glycinergic projections from the Medial Nucleus of Trapezoid Body (MNTB) to the lateral superior olive (LSO) between wild type (WT) and KCC2-knockdown (KD) mice. In KCC2-KD mice, the developmental switch to GABA/glycinergic hyperpolarization was prevented due to reduced expression of the potassium chloride co-transporter 2 (KCC2) (KCC2-KD mice). I found that the GABA/glycinergic MNTB to LSO synapses in KCC2-KD mice undergo normal refinement through strengthening and elimination during development. Furthermore, the glutamatergic cochlear nucleus (CN) inputs to LSO neurons maintained their normal strength even when depolarizing MNTB synaptic inputs were strengthened, resulting in an abnormally high amount of depolarization. Based on these results, I concluded that the hyperpolarizing switch of GABA/glycinergic responses is not a necessary condition for the refinement of inhibitory synapses during development. Furthermore, homeostatic regulation of excitability in LSO neurons seemed to be impaired, due to the normal strengthening of depolarizing MNTB synapses together with the unaltered CN synaptic strength in KCC2-KD mice. In addition, my results suggest that GABA/glycinergic synapses can regulate their synaptic strength independently of ECl, emphasizing the importance of chloride homeostasis when investigating the strength of inhibition.However, the strength of the CN inputs to the MNTB, the calyx of Held, was reduced in MNTB neurons in KCC2-KD mice at hearing onset, suggesting that the developmental switch to hyperpolarizing GABA/glycine responses is necessary to maintain the normal strength of the calyx of Held synapse. I discuss possible mechanisms of the reduced strength of calyx of Held synapses in the absence of hyperpolarizing GABA/glycinergic responses. Finally, in immature cortical neuronal cells in vitro, I demonstrated that KCC2 overexpression is sufficient to terminate the GABAergic excitatory period earlier than normal development. Based on these results, I generated KCC2OVER mice in which KCC2 can be overexpressed in a temporally regulated, neuronal-specific manner (Appendix) in vivo. Overexpression of KCC2 both in vitro and in vivo will help us to understand the role of excitatory (or depolarizing) GABA and glycine responses in neuronal circuit development.


The development of aerial stem rot of potato was quantified in relation to soil type, previous crop, and atmospheric temperature in the Columbia Basin. Incidence of bacterial stem rot was assessed for several weeks beginning before row closure in 18 commercial potato fields and once at the estimated peak of disease development in 38 fields over 4 years. Aerial stem rot was first observed between 25 to 36 days following row closure for 78% of the fields assessed multiple times per season. Slopes of disease progress curves initially increased very rapidly. The partial slope estimate for mean daily maximum temperature indicated an increase of disease with an increase of mean daily maximum temperature (P < 0.0001). Estimates of partial slopes for soil type (sandy loam versus silt loam) and previous crop (sweet or field corn versus other) were significant at P < 0.001 and P = 0.046, respectively, suggesting that cultivation of potato in sandy loam-type soils or following sweet or field corn as a previous crop increases the probability of aerial stem rot. Incidence of bacterial stem rot was significantly reduced in the sections of fields treated with famoxadone plus mancozeb and famoxadone plus mancozeb plus copper hydroxide mixtures.


Political scientists use experiments to test the predictions of game-theoretic models. In a typical experiment, each subject makes choices that determine her own earnings and the earnings of other subjects, with payments corresponding to the utility payoffs of a theoretical game. But social preferences distort the correspondence between a subject's cash earnings and her subjective utility, and since social preferences vary, anonymously matched subjects cannot know their opponents' preferences between outcomes, turning many laboratory tasks into games of incomplete information. We reduce the distortion of social preferences by pitting subjects against algorithmic agents ("Nashbots"). Across 11 experimental tasks, subjects facing human opponents played rationally only 36% of the time, but those facing algorithmic agents did so 60% of the time. We conclude that experimentalists have underestimated the economic rationality of laboratory subjects by designing tasks that are poor analogies to the games they purport to test.