Star Formation Histories (SFHs) reveal physical processes that influence how galaxies form their stellar mass. We compare the SFHs of a sample of 36 nearby (D / 4 Mpc) dwarf galaxies from the ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury (ANGST), inferred from the Color Magnitude Diagrams (CMDs) of individually resolved stars in these galaxies, with those reconstructed by broad-band Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) fitting using the Dense Basis SED fitting code. When comparing individual SFHs, we introduce metrics for evaluating SFH reconstruction techniques. For both the SED and CMD methods, the median normalized SFH of galaxies in the sample shows a period of quiescence at lookback times of 3-6 Gyr followed by rejuvenated star formation over the past 3 Gyr that remains active until the present day. To determine if these represent special epochs of star formation in the D < 4 Mpc portion of the Local Volume, we break this ANGST dwarf galaxy sample into subsets based on specific star formation rate and spatial location. Modulo offsets between the methods of about 1 Gyr, all subsets show significant decreases and increases in their median normalized SFHs at the same epochs, and the majority of the individual galaxy SFHs are consistent with these trends. These results motivate further study of potential synchronized star formation quiescence and rejuvenation in the Local Volume as well as development of a hybrid method of SFH reconstruction that combines CMDs and SEDs, which have complementary systematics.


Previous research has suggested that citizen co-production of public services is more likely when the actions involved are easy and can be carried out individually rather than in groups. This article explores whether this holds in local areas of England and Wales. It asks which people are most likely to engage in individual and collective co-production and how people can be influenced to extend their co-production efforts by participating in more collective activities. Data were collected in five areas, using citizen panels organized by local authorities. The findings demonstrate that individual and collective co-production have rather different characteristics and correlates and highlight the importance of distinguishing between them for policy purposes. In particular, collective co-production is likely to be high in relation to any given issue when citizens have a strong sense that people can make a difference ('political self-efficacy'). 'Nudges' to encourage increased co-production had only a weak effect. Points for practitioners Much of the potential pay-off from co-production is likely to arise from group-based activities, so activating citizens to move from individual to collective co-production may be an important issue for policy. This article shows that there is major scope for activating more collective co-production, since the level of collective co-production in which people engage is not strongly predicted by their background and can be influenced by public policy variables. 'Nudges' may help to encourage more collective co-production but they may need to be quite strong to succeed.


Background: Fetal macrosomia is usually distressing to obstetricians and neonatologists. In the current study, involved mothers had poor social and medical circumstances, as they were migrated forcefully within the country borders due to war, from their original homeland to safer camps which had miserable situations. Objectives: To study rate, risk factors, and complications of macrosomia in people with low socio-economic living conditions and missed medical follow up. Methods: All internally displaced pregnant women who gave birth to neonates weighed ≥4000 g were involved in the study. All required history, examination, care, and investigations were practiced by the attending obstetrician and neonatologist. Cases of normal birth weight neonates from the same sample of internally moved mothers were considered as controls. Results: Fetal macrosomia rate was 15.77% (143 out of 907). Observed significant macrosomia risk factors were maternal age ≥30 years, multiparity, body mass index ≥30, previous or family history of macrosomia, gestational age >40 weeks, cesarean section, diabetes, and hypertension. Meconiumstained liquor, shoulder dystocia, uterine atony, and genital trauma, were major maternal complications, while main neonatal sequelae were Apgar score (>7) at first minute, birth asphyxia, admission to NICU, hypoglycemia, polycythemia, and respiratory distress. Conclusion: Higher rate and more frequently encountered risk factors of macrosomia than national and international figures found in our sample (of forcefully moved mothers) were probably related to poor living circumstances, and absence of regular medical follow up with antenatal care.


Despite frequent exposure to bushfires, cyclones and floods, remote Indigenous communities across northern Australia typically have little involvement in managing, mitigating or planning for such events. This scenario planning project explored how people in remote communities, through Indigenous ranger groups, can contribute effectively to the mitigation and delivery of emergency services. This research revealed the importance of developing effective partnerships between emergency management agencies and members of remote communities to integrate and assess the resources and services needed for responsible agencies in the Northern Territory. Using three remote communities as case studies, the potential engagement opportunities with ranger groups was explored to identify solutions to deliver efficient, cost-effective and culturally appropriate emergency services. A collaborative policy framework involving emergency services organisations and Indigenous communities is proposed to mitigate and manage incidents while meeting Indigenous cultural protocols. This recognises and takes advantage of community networks and knowledge of local socio-cultural and natural systems. This research offers practical insights into the delivery of cost-effective and improved emergency services to empower north Australian remote communities.


Since 2007 and the economic meltdown caused by the financial crisis, our societies have been evolving in different ways. New political movements have emerged in Southern Europe and new social movements in pursuit of common concerns are playing a more active role in our daily lives. In a parallel way, after the failure to predict the financial crisis, economist and social science researchers seek fresh thinking and new models that can better explain this new reality. Regulations are of critical importance in shaping the welfare of economies and society. Thus, core legal disciplines are exploring the effects of the financial crisis on social rights, labour market regulations, and civil, common law or international law, among others. With no doubt, the economic crisis has deeply impacted our economic, social, political and legal environment. During the last decade, researchers from a wide range of disciplines have been looking for solutions. Now it is time make a side stop on the way and to gather results. The 1rst International SBRLab Conference, Finding solutions for a post-crisis society, is organized by the Social and Business Research Lab (SBRLab), Universitat Rovira i Virgili. It is as an international and virtual meeting point of interdisciplinary research and researchers. The purpose of this international conference is to bring together researchers from management, economics, political, social and legal disciplines in order to present and discuss new trends in their respective fields.


High power second harmonic generation (SHG) in MgO-doped LiNbO3 waveguides is investigated using a three-dimensional (3D) coupled thermo-optical model. Simulations performed for a 1 111.6-nm fundamental laser show the influence of the absorptions and the thermally induced dephasing on the conversion efficiencies of the different waveguides. The onset of the thermally induced dephasing effect for each waveguide is also indicated. As a result of high light intensity in the waveguide, nonlinear absorptions are identified as the possible main factors in efficiency losses in specific cases.


Coupling coefficients calculation is known to be a critical issue in embedded Non-Volatile Memory (eNVM) compact modeling. In this paper we have implemented the charge balance method within the Brew's Charge Sheet Model equation, determining the floating gate potential of the cell and deriving the NVM coupling coefficients. The results have been compared with TCAD simulations and demonstrate that short channel effects, overlap capacitances and velocity saturation dominate over the intrinsic behavior of the cell in scaled devices. We have studied the transient behavior of the eNVM, reproducing the VTH shift due to charge injection and demonstrating the capability of our model to simulate the full electrical behavior of the device. Moreover we have included the charge balance equation in the VerilogA implementation of PSP MOSFET model and proved with SPICE simulations the suitability of our approach to compact modeling.


The spatial-temporal evolution of intracontinental faults and the forces that drive their style, orientation, and timing are central to understanding tectonic processes. Intracontinental NW-striking dextral faults in the Gabbs Valley–Gillis Ranges (hereafter referred to as the GVGR), Nevada, define a structural domain known as the eastern Central Walker Lane located east of the western margin of the North American plate. To consider how changes in boundary type along the western margin of the North American plate influenced both the initiation and continued dextral fault slip to the present day in the GVGR, we combine our new detailed geologic mapping, structural studies, and 40Ar/39Ar geochronology with published geologic maps to calculate early to middle Miocene dextral fault-slip rates. In the GVGR, Mesozoic basement is nonconformably overlain by a late Oligocene to Miocene sequence dominated by tuffs, lavas, and sedimentary rocks. These rocks are cut and offset by four primary NW-striking dextral faults, from east to west the Petrified Spring, Benton Spring, Gumdrop Hills, and Agai Pah Hills–Indian Head faults. A range of geologic markers, including tuff- and lava-filled paleovalleys, the southern extent of lava flows, and a normal fault, show average dextral offset magnitudes of 9.6 ± 1.1 km, 7.0 ± 1.7 km, 9.7 ± 1.0 km, and 4.9 ± 1.1 km across the four faults, respectively. Cumulative dextral offset across the GVGR is 31.2 ± 2.3 km. Initiation of slip along the Petrified Spring fault is tightly bracketed between 15.99 ± 0.05 Ma and 15.71 ± 0.03 Ma, whereas slip along the other faults initiated after 24.30 ± 0.05 Ma to 20.14 ± 0.26 Ma. Assuming that slip along all four faults initiated at the same time as the Petrified Spring fault yields calculated dextral fault-slip rates of 0.4 ± 0.1–0.6 ± 0.1 mm/yr, 0.4 ± 0.1–0.5 ± 0.1 mm/yr, 0.6 ± 0.1 mm/yr, and 0.3 ± 0.1 mm/yr on the four faults, respectively. Middle Miocene initiation of dextral fault slip across the GVGR overlaps with the onset of normal slip along range-bounding faults in the western Basin and Range to the north and the northern Eastern California shear zone to the south. Based on this spatial-temporal relationship, we propose that dextral fault slip across the GVGR defines a kinematic link or accommodation zone between the two regions of extension. At the time of initiation of dextral slip across the GVGR, the plate-boundary setting to the west was characterized by subduction of the Farallon plate beneath the North American plate. To account for the middle Miocene onset of extension across the Basin and Range and dextral slip in the GVGR, we hypothesize that middle Miocene trench retreat drove westward motion of the Sierra Nevada and behind it, crustal extension across the Basin and Range and NW-dextral shear within the GVGR. During the Pliocene, the plate boundary to the west changed to NW-dextral shear between the Pacific and North American plates, which drove continued dextral slip along the same faults within the GVGR because they were fortuitously aligned subparallel to plate boundary motion.


In this paper a novel conceptual data warehouse (DW) data model, the Conceptual Data Vault (C-DV) Model is presented. The C-DV extends logical and physical Data Vault (DV) Models, to enable conceptual modeling of source data worthy of preserving in a DW staging area as a System of Records. The advantages of DV model, namely flexibility of evolving DW structure using only additions to the model, and high performance of prompt loading, are now extended with a model appropriate during conceptual data discovery and/or analysis phase. Specifically we provided formalization for the C-DV Model as a platform independent conceptual DW model using meta-modeling, as well as defined a patterns based mappings from source data (conceptual entity relationship) models into the C-DV model.


Convolutional neural networks (CNN) are increasingly used in many areas of computer vision. They are particularly attractive because of their ability to "absorb" great quantities of labeled data through millions of parameters. However, as model sizes increase, so do the storage and memory requirements of the classifiers, hindering many applications such as image and speech recognition on mobile phones and other devices. In this paper, we present a novel net- work architecture, Frequency-Sensitive Hashed Nets (FreshNets), which exploits inherent redundancy in both convolutional layers and fully-connected layers of a deep learning model, leading to dramatic savings in memory and storage consumption. Based on the key observation that the weights of learned convolutional filters are typically smooth and low-frequency, we first convert filter weights to the frequency domain with a discrete cosine transform (DCT) and use a low-cost hash function to randomly group frequency parameters into hash buckets. All parameters assigned the same hash bucket share a single value learned with standard back-propagation. To further reduce model size, we allocate fewer hash buckets to high-frequency components, which are generally less important. We evaluate FreshNets on eight data sets, and show that it leads to better compressed performance than several relevant baselines.


Apart from its known impact to variations in the Earth's length-of-day (LOD) variations, the role of long-period tidal forcing cycles in geophysical behaviours has remained elusive. To explore this further, tidal forcing is considered as a causative mechanisms to the following cyclic processes: El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO), and the Chandler wobble. Annualized impulse reponse formulations and nonlinear solutions to Navier-Stokes-based Laplace's Tidal Equations are required to make the connection to the observed patterns as the underlying periods are not strictly commensurate in relation to harmonics of the tidal cycles. If equatorial climate phenomena such as QBO and ENSO can be explained as deterministic processes then the behavior that may be predictable. This paper suggests that QBO, ENSO, and the Chandler wobble may share a common origin of lunar and solar tidal forcing, but with differences arising due to global symmetry considerations. Through analytical approximations of nonlinear fluid dynamics and detailed time-series analysis, matching quantitative models of these behaviors can be shown.


Nurse Navigator Role Description and Processes for Best Outcomes Among At-Risk Patients by Judean LeRoy MSN, Otterbein University, 2011 BSN, Ohio University, 2007 Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Nursing Practice Walden University February 2018 Abstract The nurse navigator role developed in the 1990s to support African American female oncology patients' access to services. Successful in oncology, the role has expanded to support patients with diabetes, heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A unique cost-effective opportunity exists for nurse navigators to fill the gap in transitional care, between the acute care setting and home, for chronically ill and other at-risk patients who are often readmitted within 30 days for treatment of the same disease. The purpose of the project was to refine the job description of the nurse navigators in a Midwestern acute care hospital. The Rosswurm and Larrabee model for evidence-based practice change supported the work. The key research question involved identifying the tasks, knowledge areas, and skills necessary for inclusion in a hospital-wide nurse navigator job description, to promote best outcomes for chronically ill and at-risk patients. Using the Oncology Nurse Navigator Role Delineation Study as the starting point, the project applied a qualitative design in reviewing the 13 nurse navigator job descriptions. The percent of nurse navigator job descriptions containing the job expectations from the delineation study was calculated and additional expectations were identified from the hospital job descriptions and the literature to create a new standardized job descriptionThe nurse navigator role developed in the 1990s to support African American female oncology patients' access to services. Successful in oncology, the role has expanded to support patients with diabetes, heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A unique cost-effective opportunity exists for nurse navigators to fill the gap in transitional care, between the acute care setting and home, for chronically ill and other at-risk patients who are often readmitted within 30 days for treatment of the same disease. The purpose of the project was to refine the job description of the nurse navigators in a Midwestern acute care hospital. The Rosswurm and Larrabee model for evidence-based practice change supported the work. The key research question involved identifying the tasks, knowledge areas, and skills necessary for inclusion in a hospital-wide nurse navigator job description, to promote best outcomes for chronically ill and at-risk patients. Using the Oncology Nurse Navigator Role Delineation Study as the starting point, the project applied a qualitative design in reviewing the 13 nurse navigator job descriptions. The percent of nurse navigator job descriptions containing the job expectations from the delineation study was calculated and additional expectations were identified from the hospital job descriptions and the literature to create a new standardized job description containing 3 categories of job expectations: tasks, knowledge areas, and skills. Positive social change may result from nurse navigator role clarity in the hospital by decreasing service duplication, improving care collaboration, and ensuring role accountability. Nurse Navigator Role Description and Processes for Best Outcomes Among At-Risk Patients by Judean LeRoy MSN, Otterbein University, 2011 BSN, Ohio University, 2007 Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Nursing Practice Walden University February 2018 Dedication This page is dedicated to God who provided the insight and means to make this possible as well as those leaders in the nursing profession who have been instrumental with making this part of my journey possible. Acknowledgments I wish to thank my husband and family for their unrelenting support during this journey. I would also like to thank Dr. Sue Bell for all her expertise, time, and encouragement throughout this project. She has taught me a great deal throughout this entire process. Finally, I wish to thank my preceptor Abby Nguyen and all the Walden University professors who were an iatrical part of this project.


The type theoretic framework for natural language semantics laid out by Montague (1973) forms the cornerstone of formal semantics. Hamblin (1973) proposed an extension of Montague's basic framework, referred to as alternative semantics. In this framework, the meaning of a sentence is not taken to be a single proposition, but rather a set of propositions—a set of alternatives. While this allows for a more fine-grained view on meaning, which has led to improved analyses of a wide range of linguistic phenomena, it also faces a number of problems. We focus here on two of these, in our view the most fundamental ones. The first has to do with how meanings are composed, i.e., with the type-theoretic operations of function application and abstraction; the second has to do with how meanings are compared, i.e., the notion of entailment. Our aim is to reconcile what we take to be the essence of Hamblin's proposal with the solid type-theoretic foundations of Montague grammar, in such a way that the observed problems evaporate. Our proposal builds on insights from recent work on inquisitive semantics (Ciardelli et al., 2013), and it also further advances this line of work, specifying how the inquisitive meaning of a sentence, as well as the set of alternatives that it introduces, may be built up compositionally.


The largest credit or liquidity program created by the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis was the mortgagebacked securities (MBS) purchase program. In this paper, we examine the quantitative impact of this program on mortgage interest rate spreads. This is more difficult than frequently perceived because of simultaneous changes in prepayment risk and default risk. Our empirical results attribute a sizable portion of the decline in mortgage rates to such risks and a relatively small and uncertain portion to the program. For specifications where the existence or announcement of the program appears to have lowered spreads, we find no separate effect of the stock of MBS purchased by the Federal Reserve.


Abstract Coaching has attracted much attention from health professionals interested in collaborative, person-centred approaches to motivating behaviour change. Whilst initial research supports the efficacy of coaching in health contexts, more theoretical and empirical work is needed. Based on recent work demonstrating the important role that mindfulness plays in self-regulation, it was hypothesised that the efficacy of health coaching could be enhanced through the inclusion of Mindfulness Training (MT). To test this, 45 adult were randomly assigned to three health programmes for eight weeks. Using a crossover design, two groups received an alternative delivery of MT and cognitive-behavioural, solution-focused (CB-SF) coaching, whilst the third group participated in a series of health education seminars. Results showed that goal attainment was significantly greater in the facilitative/coaching format than the educative/directive format. No significant differences were found for goal attainment between the two MT/CB-SF conditions suggesting that the delivery sequence had little bearing on outcomes. After reviewing the results, the implications for health professionals are discussed.


The trafficking of proteins within eukaryotic cells is achieved by the capture of cargo and targeting molecules into vesicles that bud from a donor membrane and deliver their contents to a receiving compartment. This process is bidirectional and may involve multiple organelles within a cell. Distinct coat proteins mediate each budding event, serving both to shape the transport vesicle and to select by direct or indirect interaction the desired set of cargo molecules. Secretion, which has been viewed as a default pathway, may require sorting and packaging signals on transported molecules to ensure their rapid delivery to the cell surface.


Methane production by intestinal methanogenic Archaea and their community structure were compared among phylogenetic lineages of millipedes. Tropical and temperate millipedes of 35 species and 17 families were investigated. Species that emitted methane were mostly in the juliform orders Julida, Spirobolida, and Spirostreptida. The irregular phylogenetic distribution of methane production correlated with the presence of the methanogen-specific mcrA gene. The study brings the first detailed survey of methanogens' diversity in the digestive tract of millipedes. Sequences related to Methanosarcinales, Methanobacteriales, Methanomicrobiales and some unclassified Archaea were detected using molecular profiling (DGGE). The differences in substrate preferences of the main lineages of methanogenic Archaea found in different millipede orders indicate that the composition of methanogen communities may reflect the differences in available substrates for methanogenesis or the presence of symbiotic protozoa in the digestive tract. We conclude that differences in methane production in the millipede gut reflect differences in the activity and proliferation of intestinal methanogens rather than an absolute inability of some millipede taxa to host methanogens. This inference was supported by the general presence of methanogenic activity in millipede faecal pellets and the presence of the 16S rRNA gene of methanogens in all tested taxa in the two main groups of millipedes, the Helminthophora and the Pentazonia.


This chapter addresses a key question in relation to the popularity of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other forms of collaborative online learning: why it is that learners collaborate with one another at all rather than simply identifying and pursuing their own individual goals? To answer this question, the chapter draws extensively on sociality theory, which predicates that human beings are actually selected for their capacity to feel empathy, show altruism, exercise reciprocity and fairness, as well as for their aptitude for cooperating with others. The evidence to suggest that these traits are to be found in today's online learners is offered in the form of a case study drawn from an 8-week MOOC in open translation practices (the OT12 MOOC) organized by members of the Department of Languages at The Open University, UK, from October to December 2012. Taking as its starting point Cormier's (2010) framework of the five steps to success in a MOOC (orient, declare, network, cluster, focus), we focus on the transition between the stages of networking and clustering. Our study is based on a content analysis of forum postings by participants in the OT12 MOOC.
We begin by detailing the key features of MOOCs, as identified by Cormier (2010), Lane (2012) and others, considering in particular Cormier's account of the network-based connectivist MOOC. Next comes a description of the OT12 MOOC, which falls into this category. This is followed by a brief outline of sociality theory. Finally we present our methodology and data drawn from the OT12 which illustrates the significant role played by human sociality in the formation of online communities, whether their raison d'etre is volunteer translation or collaborative learning.


The most important property for accurate mechanical time bases is isochronism: the independence of period from oscillation amplitude. This paper develops a new concept in isochronism adjustment for flexure-based watch oscillators. Flexure pivot oscillators, which would advantageously replace the traditional balance wheel-spiral spring oscillator used in mechanical watches due to their significantly lower friction, exhibit nonlinear elastic properties that introduce an isochronism defect. Rather than minimizing this defect, we are interested in controlling it to compensate for external defects such as the one introduced by escapements. We show that this can be done by deriving a formula that expresses the change of frequency of the oscillator with amplitude, i.e., isochronism defect, caused by elastic nonlinearity. To adjust the isochronism, we present a new method that takes advantage of the second-order parasitic motion of flexures and embody it in a new architecture we call the co-RCC flexure pivot oscillator. In this realization, the isochronism defect of the oscillator is controlled by adjusting the stiffness of parallel flexures before fabrication through their length Lp, which has no effect on any other crucial property, including nominal frequency. We show that this method is also compatible with post-fabrication tuning by laser ablation. The advantage of our design is that isochronism tuning is an intrinsic part of the oscillator, whereas previous isochronism correctors were mechanisms added to the oscillator. The results of our previous research are also implemented in this mechanism to achieve gravity insensitivity, which is an essential property for mechanical watch time bases. We derive analytical models for the isochronism and gravity sensitivity of the oscillator and validate them by finite element simulation. We give an example of dimensioning this oscillator to reach typical practical watch specifications and show that we can tune the isochronism defect with a resolution of 1 s/day within an operating range of 10% of amplitude. We present a mock-up of the oscillator serving as a preliminary proof-of-concept.


Insects as pests destroy annually an estimated 18–20% of the crop production worldwide. Caterpillars, the larval stage of moths, are the major pests of agricultural products owing to their voracious feeding habits. In the past few decades, the potent methods of insect control, such as insecticides and Bt toxins, have been constrained as a result of health hazards, environmental issues, and development of resistance, after their prolonged application. Thus, there is need to find alternative options to improve plant protection strategies. Recently, RNA interference (RNAi), the post-transcriptional gene-silencing mechanism, has emerged as one of such a novel, sustainable, and environment friendly approaches for insect management and crop protection. RNAi technology relies on selection of a vital insect pest target gene and its expression as a double stranded RNA or stem-loop RNA molecule, which is recognized by the host RNAi machinery and processed into small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) or microRNAs (miRNAs). The siRNA/miRNA along with the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) binds to the complimentary mRNA and induce gene silencing at post-transcriptional level. With effective target-gene selection and transgenic plants expressing these precursor RNA molecules, insect pests of various crops have been efficiently managed. In this chapter, we discuss the basic mechanism of RNAi and its application in controlling lepidopteran pests of important crop plants.


»Simulierte Demokratie und pseudo-transformative politische Führung in Ungarn«. This paper investigates current Hungarian political developments with the conceptual tools provided by elite and leadership studies. It develops an argument about the institutionalization of simulated democracy, which applies to social situations when democratic institutions exist but where their consolidation is hampered by the norm breaching behaviour of elites and other social groups. The article investigates the responsibility of leaders and elites in two sections. First, the failure of the Hungarian elite settlement is described. Second, the working of simulated democracy is examined with special emphasis on elites' and leaders' behaviour in connection to media law, the new Constitution and other current institutional developments. In the conclusion the authors make an attempt to connect elite and leadership issues to institutional developments and highlight some normative consequences.


For almost eight decades, between 1914 and 1983, a single focused and
cohesive government strategy drove Tasmania's economic development. Known to all
Tasmanians as 'hydro-industrialisation', the strategy was powerful and effective:
energy-intensive private manufacturing industry would be attracted to Tasmania by an
abundance of low-cost electricity, which would come in turn from harnessing
Tasmania's endowment of water, through government-built dams and power stations.
It worked. By building a sophisticated manufacturing sector, the strategy
transformed Tasmania from an isolated backwater, with an economy consisting mostly
of subsistence farmers alongside a few wealthy landholders, into a confident, outwardlooking,
and capable industrial community.
But in 1983, when the era of public-private cooperation that created this
transformation was closed by the High Court's decision to terminate the Franklin Dam
project, Tasmania lost its development mainspring. For 25 years, our state has lacked a
vision to replace hydro-industrialisation. Since 1983, repeated battles over specific
projects, usually with environmental concerns at their centre, have punctuated efforts
to find a new direction. None has produced the new vision Tasmania needs.
The strategy outlined here offers a perspective that can.


A 19 year old female presented with spontaneous intra-oral bleeding of two days duration. The patient reported that she was, until recently, in good general health and also that she had an uncomplicated parturition three years ago. She recently started noticing blood in her stools and felt increasingly lethargic. There was no history of trauma or intra-oral intervention that may have initiated the bleeding.
The clinical examination revealed marked pallor of the facial skin and multiple small petechiae were seen on both of her forearms. The intra-oral examination identified marked halitosis and multiple haemorrhagic lesions with a variable appearance, being plaque-like on the lip, nodular on the tongue and fungating and exophytic on the palate and in the retromolar regions. Even delicate manipulation of the tissues produced profuse bleeding (Figures 1-3).


We are incredibly fortunate to live in a time of accessible information and rampant knowledge transfer. However, a double-edged sword exists with the extensive scope and breadth of content that is available and which requires keen skills to cull the valid from invalid. Consequently, it is our obligation and responsibility to hone and refine our skills as instructors, subject matter experts, and course developers in this arena. More specifically, we need to further develop our skills for utilizing technology to support effective and efficient strategies for learning resource management, creation and curating. This article addresses three primary strategies that leverage your learners, colleagues, networks, and tools to assist in this process and save significant time. In particular, the article explores strategies for empowering learners as co-creators of content, for utilizing networks to curate and customize existing resources, and explores tools to help consolidate and organize resources. This article offers practical application and specific tools to save time, customize your learning resources, and tame the beast of information overload.


The study of natural carbon dioxide reservoirs provides fundamental insight into processes involved in carbon capture and storage. However, the calculations of process rates such as dissolution of CO2 into formation water remain uncertain due to indirectly determined ages of the CO2 influx. The proposed ages for the Bravo Dome gas field in New Mexico, USA, vary from 56 ka to 1.5 Ma. Here we demonstrate that residence times can be estimated from simple modeling of noble gas and stable isotope diffusion profiles from the gas-water contact through the gas column. The Bravo Dome gas field shows a gradient in noble gas concentrations and isotopic ratios from east to west across the 70-km-wide field. A mantle-like end member with a 3He/4He (R/RA) ratio of up to 4.7 is found in the west in contrast to a groundwater end member with high concentrations of air- and crustal-derived noble gases in the east. The air- and crustal-derived noble gases decrease gradually toward the west. Stable isotope compositions (C and O) also vary across the field. Diffusion modeling of He, Ne, Ar, Kr, Xe, and δ13C data yield residence times for the CO2 between 14.1 ± 0.2 ka and 16.9 +1.1/–0.5 ka. This is far less than the previous estimates of 1.2–1.5 Ma based on apatite (U-Th)/He thermochronology, leading to a dissolution rate of 29,900 +11,800/–10,700 t/a to 35,900 ± 12,300 t/a, implying that 28% of the total emplaced CO2 dissolved. This new method can be applied to a wide variety of gas fields with variation in the concentration of groundwater-derived noble gases and allow a better assessment of the time scale of other diffusive fluid-fluid interactions.


The 3G/LTE wireless interface is a significant contributor to battery drain on mobile devices. A large portion of the energy is consumed by unnecessarily keeping the mobile device's radio in its "Active" mode even when there is no traffic. This paper describes the design of methods to reduce this portion of energy consumption by learning the traffic patterns and predicting when a burst of traffic will start or end. We develop a technique to determine when to change the radio's state from Active to Idle, and another to change the radio's state from Idle to Active. In evaluating the methods on real usage data from 9 users over 28 total days on four different carriers, we find that the energy savings range between 51% and 66% across the carriers for 3G, and is 67% on the Verizon LTE network. When allowing for delays of a few seconds (acceptable for background applications), the energy savings increase to between 62% and 75% for 3G, and 71% for LTE. The increased delays reduce the number of state switches to be the same as in current networks with existing inactivity timers.


The following dialogue evolved in February 2007 from a series of email exchanges with Professor McGann. I was curious about the importance of Manfred in McGann's work and what his most recent thoughts were about Byron's devilishly enigmatic play. I had earlier queried McGann about the significance of Manfred and together we published our dialogue as the epilogue to Byron and Romanticism,1 but I wanted to push McGann to see exactly what he had in mind for staging Byron's notoriously unstageable play. Byron, we recall, said he had 'a horror of the stage'.2 As my conversation with McGann continued, I began to see how and why he wants to bring Manfred, and its author, out of the closet-drama and on to the stage. JS In the time I've known you (roughly twenty years) you seem to have kept going back to Manfred, for one reason or another. What is so alluring about this work? What unfinished business do you have with it, and how is your current project in Stratford (Canada) related to the magnetic pull of Manfred? JM You've lighted on a question you may come to regret - because I have a lot to say here. Yes, Manfred is for me the central Byronic text - as it was, I might point out, for the entire nineteenth century, even in England, which took such a fright from Byron and ran away from him until very recently. Swinburne, who had very harsh (and, I might add, just) things to say about Byron's verse skills - always excepting Don Juan - once wrote that Byron's forte lay in his 'sincerity and strength'.3 This seems to me right, at least in my understanding of Swinburne's comment. I translate him to mean that Byron's writing is like Yeats's Cuchulain fighting the sea. Until he takes up with Don Juan, his work is an assault on the impossible. He makes a drama of wanting to know things that cannot be known and saying things that cannot be said. Even knowing the impossibilities, or discovering them, he presses on. The first two cantos of Childe Harold lay down the pattern. They are an extraordinary, even a preposterous, failure - starting with the prosodic choice of the Spenserian stanza, a choice made in sheer technical ignorance of its resources. Carrying on with it forces him to fight with it, maim it - 'spoil' it, as Paul West long ago taught us to see.4 And out of the event comes Byron's first great success, his first great failure. (I might add, out of it comes as well a renewal of the verse form's technical possibilities.) 'Bloody but unbowed', we might say. But that idea scarcely gets at the situation and the textual event. Through his work, Byron's famous defiance emerges as at once sincere and hypocritical, his strength something that will persist to fall short. The consequence is a philosophic mind that settles for nothing except what is always 'beyond the fitting medium of desire' (CHP, III, 42). Manfred comes on this scene to square Byron's account with this poetry of failure. Without Manfred, Don Juan could not have been written. Don Juan is Byron's masterpiece of the poetry of the impossible because with it he makes impossibility look so easy, so natural. 'In play, there are two pleasures for your choosing / The one is winning, and the other losing' (Don Juan, XIV, 12) - Don Juan is an extended gloss on Manfred's last prophetic words: 'Old man, 'tis not so difficult to die' (III, iv, 151). I began studying Byron in 1963. By 1967 I had come to a very vague sense of what was entailed in Byron's sincerity and strength. Only with many more years of work did I find ways to talk about it that seemed, at least, not perfectly incompetent. 1967 was crucial because that year I and some friends at the University of Chicago founded an experimental theatre company - Cain's Company. Our purpose was to stage works that were regarded as unplayable (in a theatrical sense). We were much influenced by Living Theatre, by Artaud, by Stanislavsky, by Stein, by Brecht. The company was named after our first production, Byron's Cain. …


Reference and type strains of well-known bacteria have been a cornerstone of microbiology research for decades. The sharing of well-characterised isolates among laboratories has parallelised research efforts and enhanced the reproducibility of experiments, leading to a wealth of knowledge about trait variation in different species and the underlying genetics. Campylobacter jejuni strain NCTC 11168, deposited at the National Collection of Type Cultures in 1977, has been adopted widely as a reference strain by researchers worldwide and was the first Campylobacter for which the complete genome was published (in 2000). In this study, we collected 23 C. jejuni NCTC 11168 reference isolates from laboratories across the UK and compared variation in simple laboratory phenotypes with genetic variation in sequenced genomes. Putatively identical isolates identified previously to have aberrant phenotypes varied by up to 281 SNPs (in 15 genes) compared to the most recent reference strain. Isolates also display considerable phenotype variation in motility, morphology, growth at 37°C, invasion of chicken and human cell lines and susceptibility to ampicillin. This study provides evidence of ongoing evolutionary change among C. jejuni isolates as they are cultured in different laboratories and highlights the need for careful consideration of genetic variation within laboratory reference strains. Impact statement In this paper, we comment on the changing role of laboratory reference strains. While the model organism allows basic comparison within and among laboratories, it is important to remember the effect even small differences in isolate genomes can have on the validity and reproducibility of experimental work. We quantify differences in 23 reference Campylobacter genomes and compare them with observable differences in common laboratory phenotypes. Data summary Short read data are archived on the NCBI SRA associated with BioProject accession PRJNA517467 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA517467). All assembled genomes are also available on FigShare (doi: 10.6084/m9.figshare.7849268). Phylogeny visualised on microreact: https://microreact.org/project/NCTC11168. Repositories Short read data are archived on the NCBI SRA repository, associated with BioProject accession PRJNA517467 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA517467; Table S1). The authors confirm all supporting data, code and protocols have been provided within the article or through supplementary data files.


Title of dissertation: DECOHERENCE AND DYNAMICAL DECOUPLING IN SOLID-STATE SPIN QUBITS Wayne Martin Witzel Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Dissertation directed by: Professor Sankar Das Sarma Department of Physics This dissertation is a study of the decoherence of a solid-state spin qubit, either that of a localized electron spin or a donor nucleus, caused by a nuclear spin bath relevant to semiconductor quantum computer architectures. In the presence of an external magnetic field and at low temperatures, the dominant decoherence mechanism is the spectral diffusion of the qubit spin resonance frequency due to the temporally fluctuating random magnetic field associated with the dipolar interaction induced flip-flops of nuclear spin pairs. The qubit spin dephasing due to this random magnetic field depends intricately on the quantum dynamics of the nuclear spin bath, making the coupled decoherence problem difficult to solve. We provide a formally exact solution of this non-Markovian quantum decoherence problem which numerically calculates accurate spin decoherence at short times, of particular relevance in solid-state spin quantum computer architectures. A quantum cluster expansion method is motivated, developed, and tested for the spectral diffusion problem. The method is applicable to any ideal pulse sequence applied to the qubit. Dynamical decoupling sequences, which aim to prolong qubit coherence, are analyzed. In particular, concatenated dynamical decoupling sequences are shown to prolong not only the coherence time over the entire sequence but also the length of time between pulses necessary to maintain coherence. This is shown to result from successive low-order cancellations in applicable perturbative expansions with each level of concatenation. Each cancellation, however, will require the inclusion, in the cluster expansion, of increasingly large clusters to obtain the lowest-order results. These larger clusters in the lowest order often dominate decoherence and therefore invalidate, as being overly optimistic, the pair approximation as a means to study the effect of concatenated dynamical decoupling. We present numerical results from our cluster expansion technique for echoes of single (Hahn), concatenated, and periodic pulse sequences using realistic models of a localized electron in phosphorus doped Si and in a GaAs quantum dot and of a P donor nucleus in Si or GaAs. In the Si:P electron spin decoherence problem, we consider, along with spectral diffusion, the effects of anisotropic hyperfine (AHF) interactions and suggest a technique to suppress electron spin echo envelope modulations (ESEEM), an additional source of decoherence resulting from the AHF interactions. Our calculations for the Si:P Hahn echoes, including the effects of both anisotropic hyperfine interactions and spectral diffusion, are in excellent agreement with experimental results. Our calculations of concatenated pulse sequence echoes offer important predictions for the effectiveness of a promising strategy to preserve qubit coherence in semiconductor quantum computer architectures. Decoherence and Dynamical Decoupling in Solid-State Spin Qubits


Language for academic purposes is an important concept, not always recognised and developed within the education system. The ability to use language for learning can be diff icult for individuals who are educated in a second language. They are required to master complex concepts in a language they are still acquiring. We aimed to discover how secondary school learners performed on an aspect of academic language: complex sentence comprehension. A group of 464 adolescent participants' performance on the grammatical understanding subtest of the Test of Adolescent Language was analysed in relation to their status as first or second language English learners, their grade, gender, literacy experiences, preferred modality of learning, and other factors deemed to influence language acquisition in modern society. The results indicated that the majority of learners achieved within the average range. There were significant differences between the male and female participants and the junior phase ESL males achieved the lowest scores. It was concluded that it may take 8–9 years of formal schooling for some individuals to acquire the requisite academic language proficiency, particularly if they are learning in their second language. This has important implications for the teaching and assessment of second language learners.


Abstract A new 237Np burning strategy in a supercritical CO2-cooled fast reactor core has been proposed: consuming 237Np as fuel and burnable poison to attain zero burnup reactivity loss. Addition of 237Np at content of 6.5 wt% in fuel engenders nearly zero burnup reactivity loss of 0.02% Δk/k during 10 yr. The burning rate of 237Np in the core is ~69 kg/yr, which is equivalent to the quantity produced in a year from about 20 light water reactors of equivalent electrical output. The zero burnup reactivity loss enables reduction of the control rod number to half that of a typical sodium-cooled mixed-oxide fuel MONJU core without added 237Np and no need for rod operation with fuel burning to compensate for the burnup reactivity loss. Void reactivity is 0.72% Δk/kk', which is three-fourths that of a typical Na-cooled core, although 237Np is added and the active core length is elongated to 1.2 m. The power density is reduced to ~20% of that in a Na-cooled core. The hot-spot temperature of cladding is below its maximum permissible temperature of 700°C.


Over the past fifty years, Wendell Berry has been arguing that our most pressing ecological and cultural need is a renewed formal intelligence. Such an intelligence does not look for big, one-size-fits-all solutions. Rather, it discerns and fosters patterns of health. When W. H. Auden famously declared that "poetry makes nothing happen," he was correct that poetry, like the other arts, doesn't coerce matter in the way that a tractor or an oil rig or a bomb does. Yet poetry is "a way of happening," its beauty shaping readers' imaginations to better perceive and understand formal patterns. Such formative work fosters the deep, lasting change needed to cultivate a more sustainable culture and economy. In particular, Berry's literary forms embody and cultivate virtues of renewal. Though our contemporary culture fears and shuns death, natural ecosystems provide a model in which death feeds new life and healthy human communities follow an analogous order. Cultures maintain such a sustainable order by practicing virtues of renewal, virtues that stand in sharp contrast to the techniques of control preferred by our industrial culture. Combining literary analysis with cultural criticism, this book argues that Berry's literary forms shape his readers to desire and practice these virtues of renewal. Poetry can't magically create a healthy economy, but Berry's poetry, essays, and fiction cultivate the kind of imaginative, virtuous people who can, as he puts it, "practice resurrection."


Magnetite nanoparticle, Fe3O4, polymer nanocomposites, mechanical properties, microstructure. In this paper, study the effects of magnetite nanomaterial Fe3O4 on the mechanical properties of epoxy. Dispersion of Fe3O4 nanoparticles in the epoxy resin was performed by ultrasonication. The samples of the nanocomposites were prepared using the casting method. The nanocomposites contain epoxy resins as a matrix material incorporated by different weight percentages of magnetite Fe3O4 that varies from 0wt.% to 15wt.% as a reinforcing material. The epoxy with the additive reinforcement materials Fe3O4 was slowly mixed in a sonication bath for 15 minutes, then the mixture poured into silicon molds. Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy FESEM and X-ray diffraction spectra XRD were used to characterize the morphological and structural properties of preparing samples and the distribution of Fe3O4 nanoparticles to the epoxy resin. Mechanical testing consists of tensile, hardness shore, and three-point flexural tests were performed on the samples at room temperature according to ASTM standards. The results showed that reinforcement by 15wt.% of Fe3O4 nanoparticles maximizes these mechanical properties of nanocomposites compared with pure epoxy except for the young modulus's preferred weight at 9 wt.%, this is due to aggregation of the additives nanomaterials in epoxy resin above 9 wt.%. How to cite this article: E. Q. Kaadhm, K. D. Salman and A. H. Reja, "Investigates The Effect of Magnetite (Fe3O4) Nanoparticles on Mechanical Properties of Epoxy Resin," Engineering and Technology Journal, Vol. 39, No. 06, pp. 986-995, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.30684/etj.v39i6.2063 Engineering and Technology Journal Vol. 39, (2021), No. 06, Pages 986-995 987


The Department of Old Testament at the Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, has been in existence since 1938 and this article is an attempt to highlight some aspects of its history. The article consists of two main sections. The first discusses the place of the Department in the world, in Africa and at the University. It is stated that the Department always moved with the times and re-invented itself in new contexts. It found a stronghold in the university context, addressed the problems of our times intellectually and consistently maintained international contacts. In the second section, the members of the Department are discussed individually. It will become clear that there is a strange mixture of synchrony and diachrony, of reading the text in its final form and of taking the historical context and growth seriously. Both approaches exist alongside each other and complement each other. It is concluded that the Department's future lies in its scholarly past – in the intellectual traditions in which it is embedded, and in its ability to adapt to new contexts without losing its total devotion to critical scholarship, the students and the church. Like human beings, a university department can also have a biography. It has a life entrenched in real experiences and is subjected to the same socio-political realities as people. This article briefly tells the life story of one such department, that of the Department of Old Testament at the University of Pretoria. It describes the Department's academic endeavours, and of the scholars who devoted their lives to the pursuit of Old Testament scholarship and the teaching of theological students from their first year to doctorate level. Over the years the Department had to adjust and re-adjust, but in the end it survived all kinds of pressures and established its place both here and abroad. One of the reasons for its endurance and survival has been the commitment of the members of the Department to cutting-edge research, sound scholarship and excellent teaching. This story is told here by focusing on the physical contexts in which the Department had to exist, and then on the scholars who made things happen.


On-rail competition is perhaps the most far-reaching form of deregulation of the railways, giving travellers several options on a single line. It aims to lower fairs and raise quality of service, thereby boosting demand and social welfare. Concerns have been raised, however, regarding if effective competition is possible on such a market, allowing two or more operators to be profitable and eliminating through incentives or regulation the purchase by one operator of the others' access rights, thus restoring monopoly. In addition, the effect of competition on total welfare is unclear. The issue of how to regulate the market and conduct capacity allocation in order to maximise welfare is also as yet unanswered. Addressing these issues, the present paper studies a duopoly market through simulations. It builds on the hypothesis that competition occurs between trains with close departure times. Results indicate that total welfare increases significantly when going from profit-maximising monopoly to competition, as consumers make large gains while operators' profits fall. The way the regulator allocates departure slots has significant importance for market outcomes, including prices, frequencies and total welfare. In particular, it is possible to improve welfare by regulating the succession of departures. If trading in access rights is allowed, a would-be monopolist has incentives to buy its competitors' slots for a price they would accept. A monopolist that uses high frequency of departures as a deterrence strategy against competition increases frequency a lot compared to the profit-maximising level. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of EWGT2016.


Bone dysplasias (osteochondrodysplasias) are a large group of conditions associated with short stature, skeletal disproportion, and radiographic abnormalities of skeletal elements. Nearly all are genetic in origin. We report a series of seven children with similar findings of chondrodysplasia and growth failure following early hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) for pediatric non‐oncologic disease: hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis or HLH (five children, three with biallelic HLH‐associated variants [in PRF1 and UNC13D] and one with HLH secondary to visceral Leishmaniasis), one child with severe combined immunodeficiency and one with Omenn syndrome (both children had biallelic RAG1 pathogenic variants). All children had normal growth and no sign of chondrodysplasia at birth and prior to their primary disease. After HSCT, all children developed growth failure, with standard deviation scores for height at or below −3. Radiographically, all children had changes in the spine, metaphyses and epiphyses, compatible with a spondyloepimetaphyseal dysplasia. Genomic sequencing failed to detect pathogenic variants in genes associated with osteochondrodysplasias. We propose that such chondrodysplasia with growth failure is a novel, rare, but clinically important complication following early HSCT for non‐oncologic pediatric diseases. The pathogenesis is unknown but could possibly involve loss or perturbation of the cartilage‐bone stem cell population.


Carbohydrates in P. coriacea leaves were analysed to determine if, when in artificial culture, they were unable to replenish their carbohydrate stores once the seed starch reserve was consumed. While no evidence was found to suggest that this was happening, other findings were made. Soluble carbohydrates determined m P. coriacea were sucrose, fructose, glucose, trehalose, myo-inositol and mannitol. However, mannitol was only found in in situ plants sampled in June. This may be due to high epiphyte coverage elevating plant stress and therefore mannitol levels. P. coriacea grown in tissue culture has soluble carbohydrate levels up to 20-fold higher than plants maintained in aquaria or grown in situ. The average concentration(± I.(J SE) of the soluble carbohydrates in P. coriacea in silu plants were: sucrose 2.54 (0.93) mg g" fwt, glucose 0.42 (0.06) mg g" fwt, fructose 0.70 (0.05) mg g·' !Wt, trehalose 0.40 (0.01) mg g·' IWt, myo-inositol 0.05 (0.00) mg g' fwt and mannitol 0.31 mg g-1 IWt. P. coriacea leaves generally had < 40 mg starch g· fwt. For the experiment duration there was no significant variation of starch levels except in seawater tissue culture seedlings sampled in August and September, where starch levels were higher. Between environments there was a significant difference in starch levels measured in June, August and September. In June and August the in situ plants had significantly higher starch levels than seawater tissue culture plants, but levels were significantly lower than the seawater tissue culture plants in September. For the analysis of soluble carbohydrates a chromatographic method was developed specifically for highly sensitive detection, plus simplicity for routine analysis. Method development compared a variety of methods used for the extraction, preparation and chromatographic analysis of soluble carbohydrates. An HPLC method iii employing a polyamine column, acetonitrile/water mobile phase and evaporative light scattering detection, was developed. While this method was simple and robust, detection limits were not low enough to allow analysis of sugars from limited seagrass material ofO.l g for each sample. A GC method was developed for the analysis of soluble carbohydrates in seagrasses maintained in an artificial culture. It consisted of an 80 %ethanol extraction at room temperature, derivatisation of carbohydrates with BSTF A and analysis on a BP1 column with FID detection. This method was simple, robust and sensitive for the analysis of plant soluble carbohydrates. This method only required 0.1 g of leaf for each sample. The detection limits were 90 J..lM Lfructose, 40 J..lM L' glucose and sucrose, and 20 J..lM 1' trehalose, mannitol and myo-inositol.


The theory of compressed sensing studies the problem of recovering a high dimensional sparse vector from its projections onto lower dimensional subspaces. The recently introduced framework of infinite-dimensional compressed sensing [1], to some extent generalizes these results to infinite-dimensional scenarios. In particular, it is shown that the continuous-time signals that have sparse representations in a known domain can be recovered from random samples in a different domain. The range M and the minimum number m of samples for perfect recovery are limited by a balancing property of the two bases. In this paper, by considering Fourier and Haar wavelet bases, we experimentally show that M can be optimally tuned to minimize the number of samples m that guarantee perfect recovery. This study does not have any parallel in the finite-dimensional CS.


On July 30, 1965, President Johnson flew to Independence, Missouri to sign the Medicare bill. The new statute included two related insurance programs to finance substantial portions of the hospital and physician expenses incurred by Americans over the age of sixty-five. Public attempts to improve American health standards have typically precipitated bitter debate, even as the issue has shifted from the professional and legal status of physicians to the availability of hospital care and public health programs. In The Politics of Medicare, Marmor helps the reader understand Medicare's origins, and he interprets the history of the program and explores what happened to Medicare politically as it turned from a legislative act in the mid-1960s to a major program of American government in the three decades since. This is a vibrant study of an important piece of legislation that asks and answers several questions: How could the American political system yield a policy that simultaneously appeased anti-governmental biases and used the federal government to provide a major entitlement? How was the American Medical Association legally overcome yet placated enough to participate in the program? And how did the Medicare law emerge so enlarged from earlier proposals that themselves had caused so much controversy?


Large-scale field experiments on tax compliance have been a thriving field of research in many regions of the world. However, Africa is still lagging behind, as administrative data from anonymised returns is available only in a handful of countries. To the best of our knowledge, there is as yet no published evidence of a tax field experiment from Africa. This paper reports the results of a pilot experiment in Rwanda that served as a stepping stone for a larger experimental study on tax compliance. In this pilot, we test the process of messaging taxpayers to encourage them to comply voluntarily, by providing information on sanctions. The results indicate that communication strategies that aim to inform taxpayers may be effective in increasing tax compliance. However, these results are only indicative. They will be complemented by further evidence from the larger field experiment, where we test different types of messages and delivery methods. Nonetheless, this paper provides some initial insight into the use of tax experiments in Africa, both in terms of initial evidence and lessons learned for future efforts in this field.


Optimizing cloud gaming experience is no easy task due to the complex tradeoff between gamer quality of experience (QoE) and provider net profit. We tackle the challenge and study an optimization problem to maximize the cloud gaming provider's total profit while achieving just-good-enough QoE. We conduct measurement studies to derive the QoE and performance models. We formulate and optimally solve the problem. The optimization problem has exponential running time, and we develop an efficient heuristic algorithm. We also present an alternative formulation and algorithms for closed cloud gaming services with dedicated infrastructures, where the profit is not a concern and overall gaming QoE needs to be maximized. We present a prototype system and testbed using off-the-shelf virtualization software, to demonstrate the practicality and efficiency of our algorithms. Our experience on realizing the testbed sheds some lights on how cloud gaming providers may build up their own profitable services. Last, we conduct extensive trace-driven simulations to evaluate our proposed algorithms. The simulation results show that the proposed heuristic algorithms: (i) produce close-to-optimal solutions, (ii) scale to large cloud gaming services with 20,000 servers and 40,000 gamers, and (iii) outperform the state-of-the-art placement heuristic, e.g., by up to 3.5 times in terms of net profits.


This thesis consists of three chapters of independent studies.
In Chapter 1, I develop a finite two-stage game model where consumers in
new export markets lack information about their own valuation for the quality of
a new product. The model is then used to examine firms' quality choices. With
asymmetric information, the need to establish a quality reputation may not be
sufficient to induce firms to choose high quality. The likelihood that a firm
will choose to export a high-quality product rather than a lower-quality variant
increases with the number of experienced consumers. However, it decreases
with the number of competing firms. A policy of subsidising exporters can
encourage firms to select high quality and promote consumer experience, and
thus establish an independently viable high-quality export market. Nevertheless,
this will only work if the subsidy is conditional on quality choice. That is, the
administrative monitoring of quality is required. Beside, the government may
temporarily limit the number of competing firms. If consumers in new export
markets possess information about their own valuation, it may be possible to
promote the transition to a viable high-quality export market by competition
policy alone.
In Chapter 2, I employ a simple take-it-or-leave-it bargaining game with
two-sided asymmetric information to reconcile the theoretical results with ob-
servation. With two-sided asymmetric information, the probability of bargaining
failure is positive. The likelihood that the domestic and foreign firm will collude
increases with the probability of a high-type foreign firm but decreases with
the bargaining power and concentration level of the domestic firm. The small
number of private settlements indicates the inefficient outcome of the bargain-
ing game with asymmetric information rather than evidence of the antidumping
measure being less misused as a collusive tool.
In Chapter 3, I examine the behaviour of firms after the implementation of
an FTA by paying attention to the impacts of rules of origin on preferential
trade
ows and economic activities within the FTA region. It is found that
a tightening of the rules of origin increases the volume of final goods import
from RoW but decreases the volume of intermediate goods and raw material
import from RoW, given the dominance of the final goods rules of origin effects.
However, if the intermediate goods rules of origin effects dominate, the volume
of intermediate goods import from RoW turns to increase, rather than decrease.
These imply that preferential trade
ows and economic activities among the
member countries of an FTA may increase or decrease when the rules of origin
are tightened. The findings, inter alia, suggest that the product-specific rules
of origin that impose the restrictive rules to final goods but the loose rules
to intermediate goods are more efficient in promoting preferential trade and
economic activities within the region and also inducing investments from outside.


The integration of students with disabilities has arisen in the discussion since the beginning of the 18th century making it an issue for international educational politics. The present paper reflects on the views about obstacles and facilitators of academic success faced by students with a variety of disabilities in Greek postsecondary education. Participants communicate their experiences through an electronic form with open ended questions. Their remarks are evaluated according to the method of Content Thematic Analysis and indicated that for the majority of the participants, attempts to fully engage and access knowledge within Higher Education has been confronted by a great lack of support in terms of environmental access, academic barriers, policy adaptations, discrimination and encouragement of independence.


Plants growing in arid regions often suffer from high shoot temperatures, low shoot water concentrations, low turgor pressures, and high salinity in the rhizosphere. To investigate which traits confer tolerance on plants in these areas a range of genotypes was studied. These included Local (an uncharacterized landrace grown in south western Pakistan), Soorab-96 and Awaran-2002 (both elite cultivars developed by ICARDA and commercially grown in Pakistan), and Optic (an elite European cultivar). Measurements on germination, growth, and yield suggested that landrace Local is significantly least affected by high salinity (p<0.05) compared with lines Soorab-96, Awaran-2002 and Optic. Further investigations on ion profiling established that landrace Local could maintain low Na+/K+ ratios. This appeared to arise from Local's ability to prevent Na+ accumulation in the roots and shoots by enhanced exclusion or efflux or both. Probably this unique characteristic of landrace Local helped in maintaining its photosynthetic efficiency, plant water status, and stomatal conductance, which resulted in its better performance and survival in high salinity. There was no evidence that high tissue solute concentrations, high proline levels or life cycle strategies played a role in salt stress tolerance. In addition, there was no evidence that osmotic stress was responsible for the observed suppression of growth in any of the genotypes. The main conclusion from this study is that for glycophytes (which do not complete a full life cycle above 100 mM NaCl; this includes all of the world's major crops), it is the ionic component of salinity stress that impairs growth processes and yield, not the osmotic component. Further research on salinity stress in crops should focus on understanding the processes that control ionic balance rather than osmoregulation. There is some evidence that long term exposure of plants in the preceding generations to moderately high salt concentrations (e.g. 100 mM NaCl) improves barley halotolerance in succeeding generations, i.e. halotolerance has a transgenerational, epigenetic basis, but there was also evidence that the improved halotolerance in the Local genotype was partly genetic.
In another series of experiments the importance of short periods of high leaf temperatures (Tleaf) on photosynthetic efficiency of barley genotypes Local, Optic, and Soorab-96 was investigated. In all three genotypes light saturated carbon dioxide assimilation rates (Asat) and the carboxylation coefficients (CO2, a measure of the efficiency of CO2 fixation) in the fourth fully expanded leaves were equally suppressed to approximately 20 % of their pre-treatment levels immediately after a short period of heat stress (Tleaf > 40.0 ± 0.5 °C for 20 minutes). Parallel measurements using a range of techniques confirmed that the suppression of Asat and CO2 was not attributable to changes in the light harvesting capacity (leaf absorptance and chla excitation spectra), maximum quantum efficiency of PSII (PSII, Fv/Fm), and to stomatal conductance (gs). It is unlikely that the suppression arose from damage to the electron transport chain¸ or to the capacity to develop or maintain non-photochemical quenching (NPQ, which is dependent on the transthylakoid pH), but these possibilities cannot be dismissed. LC-MS and enzymic analysis of leaf metabolite levels showed that the pools of metabolites feeding into RuBisCO are not affected by heat stress whilst those of the metabolites flowing away from RuBisCO were significantly depleted. The implication is that short periods of heat stress severely impairs RuBisCO, RuBisCO Activase, or processes close to the carboxylation step. Five days after heat stress Asat and CO2 had significantly recovered to approximately 40 % (p<0.05) of their pre-stress levels in landrace Local, but no significant recovery was observed in any of the elite lines including those distributed by ICARDA for arid land production. These findings provide evidence that thermal damage may play a significant role in yield suppressions in arid regions and that there is a genetic basis for thermotolerance in barley .


How do information technology capabilities contribute to firm performance? This study develops a conceptual model linking IT-enabled information management capability with three important organizational capabilities (customer management capability, process management capability, and performance management capability). We argue that these three capabilities mediate the relationship between information management capability and firm performance. We use a rare archival data set from a conglomerate business group that had adopted a model of performance excellence for organizational transformation based on the Baldrige criteria. This data set contains actual scores from high quality assessments of firms and intraorganizational units of the conglomerate, and hence provides unobtrusive measures of the key constructs to validate our conceptual model.

We find that information management capability plays an important role in developing other firm capabilities for customer management, process management, and performance management. In turn, these capabilities favorably influence customer, financial, human resources, and organizational effectiveness measures of firm performance. Among key managerial implications, senior leaders must focus on creating necessary conditions for developing IT infrastructure and information management capability because they play a foundational role in building other capabilities for improved firm performance. The Baldrige model also needs some changes to more explicitly acknowledge the role and importance of information management capability so that senior leaders know where to begin in their journey toward business excellence.


The decline of the standard of English in Malaysia may be deeply rooted in the preparedness of trainee teachers upon enrolling in a TESL course to study grammar extensively and explicitly. This study investigates perceptions of Prior Grammar Learning (PGL) and Current Grammar Learning (CGL) among 43 Asasi TESL students in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM). The teaching and learning of grammar in universities for Pre/Asasi TESL courses is often a 14-week course of study and often, the treatment towards this subject is slightly different from the CLT approach in schools. This may lead to some challenges to Asasi TESL students as they are now required to recognize and analyze grammatical rules and learn grammar in an explicified manner. This study looks into the students' perceptions of the different requirements required of them as grammar students. The instrument used in this study is a 64 item questionnaire that looked at the students perceptions of learner anxiety, preparedness and metalinguistic knowledge and other aspects. This study
reveals that out of 30 paired-sample items, 16 items showed significant changes in perceptions. These included differences in the subjects' perceptions of their ability to
formulate and analyze rules. There were also significant shifts in the enjoyment and ease in learning grammar factors. All these findings revealed that there should be
improvements made to the learning and teaching of grammar to better address the challenges faced by the Asasi TESL students.


The present study describes an experimental investigation into narrow impingement cooling channels with divergent geometries. The following analysis aims to clarify the influence that this particular form factor exerts on the heat transfer distribution, as well as on the traverse crossflow of the cooling passages. The research is based on the outcome of a numerical heat transfer optimization algorithm which indicates that divergent cooling channels present favourable heat transfer traits. Based on this remark, three impingement channels are investigated experimentally – two of them have divergent geometries and one has a rectangular (uniform) geometry. Heat transfer coefficients are resolved for those channels using a variation of the transient liquid crystal measurement technique, based on a triple layer of thermochromic liquid crystals. The experiments verify that divergent channels present crossflow with reduced momentum, and more equable jet velocity. These two factors lead to a more homogeneous spatial heat transfer distribution across the channels' endplates.


ABSTRACT A recent contribution to the ongoing debate concerning the concept of usability and its measures proposed that usability reached a dead end – i.e. a construct unable to provide stable results and to unify scientific knowledge. Extensive commentaries rejected the conclusion that researchers need to look for alternative constructs to measure the quality of interaction. Nevertheless, several practitioners involved in this international debate asked for a constructive way to move forward the usability practice. In fact, two key issues of the usability field were identified in this debate: (i) knowledge fragmentation in the scientific community, and (ii) the unstable relationship among the usability metrics. We recognise both the importance and impact of these key issues, although, in line with others, we may not agree with the conclusion that the usability is a dead end. Under the light of the international debate, this work discusses the strengths and weaknesses of usability construct and its application. Our discussion focuses on identifying alternative explanations to the issues and to suggest mitigation strategies, which may be considered the starting point to move forward the usability field. However, scientific community actions will be needed to implement these mitigation strategies and to harmonise the usability practice.


Our increasingly globalized world is driven by shared knowledge, and nowhere is that knowledge more important than in education. Now more than ever, there is a demand for technology that will assist in the spread of knowledge through customized, self-paced, and on-demand learning.The Handbook of Research on Innovative Technology Integration in Higher Education provides an international perspective on the need for information and communication technology in education and training. Highlighting the use of technology in both formal and informal learning, this book is an essential reference for academics, corporate leaders, government agencies, profit and non-profit organizations, policymakers, or anyone interested in the use of technology to educate and share information.


This paper may be considered as a continuation of "Some Instruments of Agricultural Policies in a General Equilibrium Framework". In that paper, national governments were assumed to introduce tariffs and quota on international trade and possibly even a stock policy, for two purposes: (1) in order to keep the balance of trade of certain commodities within desired bounds, or (2) in order to reach a certain desired domestic price level. Both producers and consumers were assumed to take all prices as given and the governments to take the world market prices as given.

Neither of these papers deals with the specific goals which would determine these desired levels for domestic variables. A later paper will discuss possible optimum (tariff) strategies, but to do this in a relevant way, one first needs more information about the actual goals of the different societies and governments. Actually, this paper will not reach the subject of government policies. It should be considered a preparation for the discussion of imperfect competition between nations. In other words, the government of a country, especially of a large one, may try to influence variables other than domestic variables by means of tariffs, quota, etc. It may, for example, try to influence world market prices.

But in order to maintain a connection with economic theory, and in order to understand the basic features of oligopoly, this paper shall discuss only the interaction between producer and consumer, without governmental influence.


In the 19th century Melanesians were pejoratively labelled black by European maritime explorers (mela = black; nesia = islands). Emerging scholarship on the Black Pacific focuses on historical and contemporary identifications and articulations between Oceanian and African diasporic peoples, cultures and politics based upon shared Otherness to colonial occupiers. This essay contributes to such scholarship by presenting a perspective from Melanesia with a focus on music, a popular form of countercolonial expression. It examines in two broad phases person-to-person and person-to-text encounters with Atlantic-based notions of Black Power and négritude. The Pacific War serves as a dividing line and turning point, during and following which such encounters began to intensify. The discussion links these African diasporic intellectual traditions/discourses/epistemologies with that of indigènitude, that is, performed global expressions of Indigenousness, through allusions to Black transnationalism and the ways both movements address the "inferiority confusion" that arose from experiences of colonisation. It demonstrates how in the last 35 years in particular, Melanesians have worked to invert the demeaning intention of their colonial racial construction and, in the process, have helped to create what may now be thought of as the Black Pacific.


Background: Measuring disability in population-based surveys is imperative to support the meaningful inclusion of persons with disabilities in their societies. Disability is a complex bio-psycho-social phenomenon incorporating dysfunctioning in any of three interlinked levels (impairments in body function or structure, activity limitations or participation restrictions), resulting from the interaction between a health condition and contextual factors. There is little consensus on how to measure different components of disability in population-based surveys, or how these components inter-relate. A comprehensive population-based methodology is needed to be able to assess the prevalence and lived experience of disability, incorporating the three levels at which dysfunctioning occurs. Study Aim: To develop and undertake a comprehensive population-based survey methodology of disability in two settings and i) use this to explore the inter-relationship between tools measuring different components of disability ii) assess the prevalence and iii) lived experience of disability, including predictors of inclusion. Methods: A scoping review of the literature was undertaken to inform the development of an all-age population-based survey of disability. Population-based surveys (n=4080) of disability incorporating measures of impairment (vision, hearing, musculoskeletal, depression), activity limitation (Washington Group Extended Set) and participation restrictions (SINTEF participation module) were undertaken in one district each of Cameroon (North West Region, 2013) and India (Telangana State, 2014). A nested case-control study of people with and without disabilities was undertaken, to identify predictors of inclusion (e.g. access to health and rehabilitation, education, livelihoods). Key Findings: Overall disability prevalence was 12.2% (India) and 10.5% (Cameroon). Approximately 40% of people in each setting who screened positive for a clinical impairment did not report a functional limitation. A self-reported functional limitation tool followed by clinical screening of all those who report any level of difficulty would identify 94% of persons with disabilities in Cameroon and 95% in India, meeting the study criteria. Persons with disabilities in both settings experienced unequal opportunities. Children with disabilities were at least ten times less likely to be enrolled in education than children without disabilities; whilst adults with disabilities were five times less likely to be working than adults without disabilities, and between twice (Cameroon) and three times (India) more likely to have experienced a significant health problem in the past year. Conclusion: This study provides a suggested way forward for the measurement of disability in population-based surveys that would support the meaningful inclusion of persons with disabilities in their societies.


Ring networks made of fiber-ribbon point-to-point links are proposed. The first network is a control-channel based network in which one fiber in each link joins with others to form a control-channel ring. This ring improves performance of the network by sending medium access control information immediately before the data transmissions. High throughputs can be achieved in the network due to pipelining, i.e., sev- eral packets can travel through the network simultaneously but in differ- ent segments of the ring. The network can meet tough performance demands in, e.g., massively parallel signal processing systems, which is shown by example. Also, real-time demands can be met using slot re- serving. The network, called CC-FPR (control-channel based fiber- ribbon pipeline ring), can be built today using off-the-shelf fiber optic components. The increasingly good price/performance ratio for fiber- ribbon links indicates a high potential for the success of the proposed kind of networks; a prototype is currently under development. The sec- ond network is similar to first except that it divides the network into two subnetworks, one for packet-switched traffic and one for circuit-switched traffic. When the main data flow in the network does not change rapidly, this is a good choice for a simple but powerful network. © 1998 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. (S0091-3286(98)00312-2)


Useful methods for growth curve fitting, body-size composition analysis, and estimation of population size in fish stocks are presented. These methods are statistically based on the maximum likelihood method and the likelihood ratio test. Mathematical explanation of the standard Richards growth formula with seasonal change, the generalized reproduction model, and the Awaya method for estimating implicit function models are given. Mathematical proofs of the iteration method, called the Hasselblad method, or the EM algorithm for estimating the mixture of normal distributions, and the Marquardt method for general optimization are shown. For population size estimation, the Petersen method for mark–recapture experiments, the quadrat method, and the DeLury removal method are discussed. These are based on the binomial distribution and the classical Bayesian statistical methods which are also discussed. Mathematical proofs of the sum formulae of the binomial and hyper-geometric distributions are given. The virtual population analysis using mortality rates, the Leslie matrix model, and the linear programming for discrete fishing models are also explained. All the methods stated here can be easily carried out using spread-sheet software.


This article takes a close look at a year in the U.S. Treasury securities market and tries to explain the sharpest price changes. The authors attribute each of the twenty-five largest price shocks during August of 1993 to August 1994 period to a just-released macro-economic announcement. They also measure the bond market's average reaction to various announcements and the reactions to surprise in the announcements headline numbers. The strongest responses are found to come from the employment, producer price index, and fed funds target rate announcements. Significant responses to U.S. Treasury security auctions results are documented for the first time.


The National Weather Service (NWS) changed the criterion for severe hail from 0.75 in (1.9 cm) to 1.00 in (2.5 cm) on 5 January 2010. Many techniques have been developed for forecasting severe hail, such as examining echo tops of various reflectivity values, Vertically Integrated Liquid (VIL) Density, and using reflectivity echo (dBZ) heights relative to the -20°C level. However, hail forecasting techniques using these examples are all based on the legacy 0.75 in severe hail criterion. In an attempt to better warn for 1.00 in hail, 384 hail reports were examined from the NWS Albany County Warning Area (CWA) between 2005-2010. This study examined values for: the reflectivity echo height at various dBZ thresholds (50, 55, 60 and 65 dBZ), gridded and cell-based VIL, Storm Echo Top (ET), VIL Density and several other parameters at a storm-scale level. This study also calculated mean and median values for each parameter in connection with the new severe hail criterion, which would be potentially useful to a warning forecaster in an operational setting. For example, storms producing severe hail, on average, had reflectivity echo tops of 3.6-5.1 kilofeet (kft) higher than non-severe storms. Other parameters detailed in this paper can also be used in conjunction with each other to give warning meteorologists confidence of the existence of severe hail within a thunderstorm.


The repeated community-wide reuse of test sets in popular benchmark problems raises doubts about the credibility of reported test-error rates. Verifying whether a learned model is overfitted to a test set is challenging as independent test sets drawn from the same data distribution are usually unavailable, while other test sets may introduce a distribution shift. We propose a new hypothesis test that uses only the original test data to detect overfitting. It utilizes a new unbiased error estimate that is based on adversarial examples generated from the test data and importance weighting. Overfitting is detected if this error estimate is sufficiently different from the original test error rate. We develop a specialized variant of our test for multiclass image classification, and apply it to testing overfitting of recent models to the popular ImageNet benchmark. Our method correctly indicates overfitting of the trained model to the training set, but is not able to detect any overfitting to the test set, in line with other recent work on this topic.


A clear understanding of regional water supply and demand trend is crucial for proper water resources planning and management in water-deficient areas, especially for Northwest China. In this study, three hybrid stochastic models (Markov chain model, Unbiased Grey-Markov model and Markov model based on quadratic programming) were developed separately for predicating the available water resources, water demand, and water utilization structure in Urumqi. The novelty of this study arises from the following aspects: (1) compared with other models, the developed models would provide ideal forecasting results with small samples and poor information; (2) this study synthetically took into account water supply and demand, water utilization structure trend; (3) the prediction results were expressed as interval values for reducing the forecasting risk when carrying out water resources system planning and operational decisions. Analysis of water supply and demand in Urumqi under different reuse ratios was also conducted based on the forecasting results. The results would help managers and policy-makers to have a clear understanding of regional water supply and demand trend as well as the water utilization structure in the future.


Pose uncertainty estimation of calibrated cameras is a common task in the field of computer vision and uses location uncertainties of image features. For spherical cameras, those uncertainties cannot be optimally described using conventional latitude-longitude representation. Increasing distortions close to the poles of the spherical coordinate system prevent a suitable description through Gaussians. To overcome this limitation, we present a consistent location uncertainty representation for spherical image features: Our approach is based on normal vectors in Cartesian space and applicable to any kind of camera with convex projection surfaces, such as catadioptric and spherical systems. We compare its performance against latitude-longitude representation by estimating camera pose uncertainties through first order error propagation in a weighted least squares pose estimation scenario. Our experiments on synthetic and real data show that the proposed approach delivers consistent results outperforming conventional latitude-longitude representation.


Freshwater resources are very limited and because of the power plants, the water consumption in industry is even more than municipal. The cooling systems is a very important part of water consumption and in the past studies, it has been neglected. The analysis of cooling systems shows that, evaporative air conditioners will consume high rate of water directly and that for a house with area of 140 m is about 40 m/month, that is about 10% of the total annual water use in typical households in an arid climate. The high power usage in compression air conditioner will also consume high water withdrawal indirectly and up to 102 m/month in once-through cooling system. The results of the research show that the evaporated water in evaporative air conditioners is from the municipal network and since it is being evaporated, the impact is much higher than the urban water consumption that can be collected by wastewater systems. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the previous methods to achieve the goals of sustainable development.


2,5-Dimethoxy-4-substituted phenylisopropylamines and phenethylamines are 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin) (5-HT)2A/2C agonists. The former are partial to full agonists, whereas the latter are partial to weak agonists. However, most data come from studies analyzing phospholipase C (PLC)-mediated responses, although additional effectors [e.g., phospholipase A2 (PLA2)] are associated with these receptors. We compared two homologous series of phenylisopropylamines and phenethylamines measuring both PLA2 and PLC responses in Chinese hamster ovary-K1 cells expressing human 5-HT2A or 5-HT2C receptors. In addition, we assayed both groups of compounds as head shake inducers in rats. At the 5-HT2C receptor, most compounds were partial agonists for both pathways. Relative efficacy of some phenylisopropylamines was higher for both responses compared with their phenethylamine counterparts, whereas for others, no differences were found. At the 5-HT2A receptor, most compounds behaved as partial agonists, but unlike findings at 5-HT2C receptors, all phenylisopropylamines were more efficacious than their phenethylamine counterparts. 2,5-Dimethoxyphenylisopropylamine activated only the PLC pathway at both receptor subtypes, 2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine was selective for PLC at the 5-HT2C receptor, and 2,5-dimethoxy-4-nitrophenethylamine was PLA2-specific at the 5-HT2A receptor. For both receptors, the rank order of efficacy of compounds differed depending upon which response was measured. The phenylisopropylamines were strong head shake inducers, whereas their phenethylamine congeners were not, in agreement with in vitro results and the involvement of 5-HT2A receptors in the head shake response. Our results support the concept of functional selectivity and indicate that subtle changes in ligand structure can result in significant differences in the cellular signaling profile.


In order to minimize the health risks to agricultural workers, and consumers of wastewater
irrigated produce, the World Health Organisation has developed guidelines for the safe use of
wastewater in agriculture. This study sought to test the appropriateness of the current
Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment model and the multiple-barrier approach advocated
by the WHO guidelines.
Over a one year period, over 500 produce and ready-to-eat salad samples were collected from
fields, markets, and kitchens in Accra, Ghana, and over 300 soil and irrigation water samples
were collected. All samples were analysed for E. coli, human adenovirus and norovirus using
standard microbiological procedures. In addition, almost 700 participants including farmers,
food vendors, and consumers were interviewed and observed to assess critical exposures
associated with the transmission of faecal pathogens.
The results showed that irrigation water was significantly more contaminated than farm soil,
though exposure to soil was found to pose the key risk to farmers due to hand-to-mouth
events. Over 80% of produce samples were found contaminated with E. coli, with street food
salad being the most contaminated (4.23 Log E. coli/g), and that consumption of salads did
not meet health standards. Risk factors identified for produce contamination included farm
soil contamination, wastewater use for irrigation, poor hygiene, and operating with a hygiene
permit. Awareness of the source of irrigation water was low, but despite the high awareness
of health risk, consumers did not prioritize health indicators when buying produce from
vendors. Similarly, farmers' awareness of health risk did not influence their adoption of safer
farm practices. The study recommends the promotion of interventions that would result in
more direct benefits to producers and vendors, together with hygiene education and
inspection, hygiene certification and enforcement of food safety byelaws in order to increase
the uptake of the multi-barrier approach.