Objective- This study was done to give complete topographic information about the position of the lungs and trachea in European pond turtle using Computed Tomography (CT) and usual anatomic methods. Design- Experimental study Animals- 10 female, adult European pond turtles (Emys orbicularis) Procedures- All scans were obtained on a two detector scanner. In anatomical study eight turtles were dissected. Two other turtles were sectioned transversely. Results- Our results showed some differences in the tracheal length, position and bifurcation site with that of other species. Moreover the topography of the lungs is described in retracted and protruded neck in this article. Conclusion and Clinical Relevance- Most of vital systems, lungs and coelomic part of the trachea, are enclosed by the carapace and the plastron so it can not be examined customarily by clinicians. The noninvasive diagnostic imaging techniques provide detailed information concerning these organs. The general morphological features of the lower respiratory system of the European pond turtle were examined by CT images and macroscopically in this study. We found some important dissimilarities with


Economic Crisis Management: Policy, Practice, Outcomes and Prospects. Edited by Tran Van Hoa. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2002. Pp. 246. This book covers theoretical concepts and practices of Asian countries in coping with the 1997 financial crisis. It focuses mainly on assessment of macroeconomic policies implemented during and after the crisis. This edited volume consists of eleven chapters, of which six are country studies. The nine contributors are scholars from universities and agencies in Asia, Canada, and the United States. The introductory chapter provides an overview of the book. The impacts of the 1997 crisis on affected economies in Asia, Europe, and the United States are broadly explored in Chapter 2. Since annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth was used as the indicator, Singapore and Taiwan (as free-market economies) were concluded to equally suffer from the crisis as China and Vietnam (as transition economies). Nevertheless, the conclusion will be deviated if quarterly data were applied. Singapore faced two consecutive quarters of negative growth in 1998 while China and Taiwan were spared from the economic downturn. Together with a discussion on depreciation of exchange rate and the collapse of the stock market, the chapter will help readers have a better view of the financial crisis and its impact on the Asian economies and the rest of the world. The next two chapters examine economic theories and models related to the crisis management. In Chapter 3, the contributor proposes appropriate fiscal and monetary policies in coping with similar crises in different types of economy - developing countries, euro and noneuro European countries, and the United States. Interestingly, pros and cons of "bailing in" lenders are discussed and recommended to be a tool in dealing with the crisis. Chapter 4 starts with models of economic transition and constitutional rules in different countries. The contributors mentioned case studies of Russia and China as examples of economic reform with and without constitutional transition. Even though the chapter is rather long and full of various economic concepts, readers can gain from a rich collection of literature related to the issues. Especially, literature on models used to explain the crises in the Russian and Asian economies is worth reading. The next six chapters are devoted to individual country experience in coping with the crisis. In the chapter on Thailand, the contributors develop a small econometric model and conduct a number of policy simulations. Their findings show that implementing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) policy recommendations caused a decline in output, private capital stock, and aggregate demand of Thai economy. Instead, expansionary fiscal and monetary policies suggested by Radelet and Sachs (RS) were superior in handling the Thai crisis at the initial stage. However, the RS approach would cause larger depreciation of real exchange rate as well as higher vulnerability of bank and corporate sectors in the longer terms. As it is, this chapter contributes a literature on the Thai crisis in hindsight. The chapter on Korea begins with a comprehensive assessment on macroeconomic management in coping with the 1997 crisis. Discussion is given to structural reforms and progress in five key sectors - financial sector, corporate sector, labour market, public sector, and capital and foreign exchange markets. By highlighting internal and external obstacles, the contributors really grasp the challenges to the Korean economy in achieving a sustainable growth in the long term. The chapter is well written and directly sheds light on crisis management, outcomes, and prospects in Korea. …


Introduction: There has been increasing evidence of detrimental effects of cumulative positive fluid balance in critically ill patients. The postulated mechanism of harm is the development of interstitial oedema, with resultant increase morbidity and mortality. We aim to assess the impact of positive fluid balance within the first 48 hours on mortality in our local ICU population. Methods: This was a secondary analysis of a single centre, prospective observational study. All ICU patients more than 18 years were screened for inclusion in the study. Admission of less than 48 hours, post-elective surgery and ICU readmission were excluded. Cumulative fluid balance either as volume or percentage of body weight from admission was calculated over 6, 24 and 48 hour period from ICU admission. Results: A total of 143 patients were recruited, of these 33 died. There were higher cumulative fluid balances at 6, 24 and 48 hours in non-survivors compared to survivors. However, after adjusted for severity of illness, APACHE II Score, they were not predictive of mortality. Sensitivity analysis on sub-cohort of patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) showed only an actual 48-hour cumulative fluid balance was independently predictive of mortality (1.21 (1.03 to 1.42)). Conclusions: Cumulative fluid balance was not independently predictive of mortality in a heterogenous group of critically ill patients. However, in subcohort of patients with AKI, a 48-hour cumulative fluid balance was independently predictive of mortality. An additional tile is thus added to the mosaic of findings on the impact of fluid balance in a hetergenous group of critically ill patients, and in sub-cohort of AKI patients.


The focus of the study was to examine the impact of the recession on (1) community college funding, (2) community college student support services, and (3) on student enrollment. This study relied on data from document analysis and interview of community college personnel and students. The current crisis has resulted in a steep budget reduction to community colleges in North Carolina. The participants in the interview indicated that the crisis has resulted in severe cuts in student support services especially in the area of counseling and advising. Students reported that they are experiencing cuts in course offerings and the switch by some colleges to a four-day work week has impacted their ability to balance work and school. ********** The mission of North Carolina's Community College system is to provide 21st century accessible educational opportunities to citizens of the state and minimize barriers to post-secondary education. There are 58 community colleges that offer associate degrees, college transfer programs, job training, literacy programs, and basic adult education programs to all 100 counties in the state. Community colleges have been known to be the most cost-effective way to provide access for students to earn college degrees (Phelam, 2000). Grubb, Badway, Bell, and Castellano (2000) stated that community colleges are important in meeting the training demands of subbaccalaureate sector of the workforce. Grubb (1999) emphasized that community colleges are key to dealing with workforce shortages and job training. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the current economic crisis on North Carolina community colleges. Research Questions 1. What is the impact of the current economic crisis on community college funding in North Carolina? 2. What is the impact of the current economic crisis on community college student support services in North Carolina? 3. What is the impact of the current economic crisis on student enrollment in North Carolina community colleges? Participants The sampling flame for this study consist of forty-two community college personnel (25 teachers, 12 administrators, 5 support service personnel) and sixty-five students selected from eight community colleges across the State (Table 1).The majority of the community college personnel and students in the study were female (68.5%) and (60.1%) consecutively. The demographic data show that students ranged in ages from 21 years to 58 years of age. The students are also in community college for a variety of reasons that ranged from vocational education, leisure studies, to degree seeking. Instrument Multiple perspectives (Johnson & Christensen, 2004) were used to add insight and understanding on the impact of economic crisis on North Carolina community colleges. A qualitative survey instrument was developed and used for the study with interview protocol (Patton 1999). Procedures Data were collected from community college personnel, students, and documents were utilized. The participants completed 4 open-ended questions designed to elicit information on the impact of the current economic crisis on community college. Documents from the North Carolina Community College System were analyzed and the participants' responses were coded according to the themes that emerged. Analysis Research has shown that student enrollment often grow rapidly in severe economic crisis (Carnevale, 2000; Grub et. …


As the United States and the world become increasingly urbanized, cities are a key site for addressing the problem of climate change. However, urban climate change action is not simply about local officials making decisions within their cities. In major U.S. urban areas, "local" involves multiple layers of government, including county and metro-regional entities. Moreover, many of the cities taking action on climate change also participate in and shape networks of local governments based at state, regional, national, and international levels.This Article argues that multi-level climate change networks could be more effective by embracing this geography of local action and the pressing need to foster action by suburban cities. Most emissions take place in the suburban areas of metroregions, but these networks generally do not focus on the particular needs of different types of suburban cities. This Article provides a novel analysis of patterns of participation in climate change networks by cities in six major U.S. metropolitan regions — Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, New York, San Francisco, and the Twin Cities — as a basis for proposing practical strategies and areas for future research. It considers what types of cities participate in which networks and where stronger and weaker network interlinkages occur. The Article concludes that networks inadequately (1) differentiate by city and metroregional type and (2) coordinate resources and strategies. It suggests ways in which they could do so to maximize the number of cities participating in them and the participation level of those cities.


Existing cloud provisioning schemes allocate resources to batch processing systems at deployment time and only change this allocation at run-time due to unexpected events such as server failures.

We observe that MapReduce-like jobs are timemalleable, i.e., at runtime it is possible to dynamically vary the number of resources allocated to a job and, hence, its completion time.

In this paper, we propose a novel approach based on time-malleability to opportunistically update job resources in order to increase overall utilization and revenue. To set the right incentives for both providers and tenants, we introduce a novel pricing model that charges tenants according to job completion times. Using this model, we formulate an optimization problem for revenue maximization.

Preliminary results show that compared to today's practices our solution can increase revenue by up to 69.7% and can accept up to 57% more jobs.


Superior vena cava syndrome results from obstruction of flow through the vessel either by external compression or thrombosis. External compression by intrathoracic neoplasms is the most common etiology. Thrombosis of the vessel most often occurs in the setting of indwelling catheters or pacemakers. The diagnosis is suggested by the clinical manifestations of facial and upper extremity swelling, dyspnea, and cough. It is confirmed by CT scan showing the development of collateral flow around the lesion. In this report, we present a patient who developed superior vena cava thrombosis after undergoing a short period of central venous catheterization and a Whipple procedure for adenocarcinoma of the ampulla of Vater. The endothelial damage caused by the catheter, the low-flow state induced by the large fluid shifts during the operation, and the hypercoagulable state induced by malignancy fulfill Virchow's triad for venous thrombosis. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of superior vena cava syndrome after the Whipple procedure with symptoms appearing after a shorter period of catheterization than previously reported in the adult literature.


This paper explores the impact of antiquity on capitalism through the finance-growth nexus. We define antiquity as the length of established statehood (i.e., state history) and agricultural years. We argue that extractive institutions and deeply entrenched interest groups may prevail in societies with ancient roots. The paper offers an in-depth analysis of one particular channel through which extractive institutions may impair economic growth: the finance-growth channel. We propose that in countries with ancient statehood, the financial sector might be captured by powerful economic and political elites leading to a distorted finance-growth relationship. We build a model in which the equilibrium relationship between companies and banks depends on the entrenchment of the economic elites and the length of established statehood. To validate our argument empirically, we run panel-threshold regressions on a global sample between 1970 and 2014. The regression results are supportive and show that financial development - measured by the outstanding amount of credit - is negative for growth in states with ancient institutional origins, while it is positive in relatively younger ones.


When a mantle plume with elevated temperature underlies an oceanic spreading centre it
affects the generation of oceanic crust by creating thicker crust. We map the variation in
crustal thickness and seismic velocity along three long-offset seismic profiles acquired over
oceanic crust generated shortly after continental breakup in the North Atlantic: a 212-kmlong
flowline from the Faroes rifted continental margin across crust of 51–42 Ma age, where
oceanic spreading developed close to the inferred centre of the Iceland mantle plume; a 256 km
flowline extending from the Hatton rifted continental margin across crust of 52–40 Ma age,
about 800 km south of the presumed centre of the mantle plume; and a 99 km strike line over
oceanic crust formed at 43 Ma in the Iceland Basin off the Hatton continental margin. The
crustal velocity structure along each profile is constrained by multichannel seismic reflection
data, which is used primarily to map the sediments, and by densely spaced ocean-bottom
seismometers, which recorded wide-angle reflections and refractions to offsets of more than
100 km. Over 56 000 crustal diving wave and Moho wide-angle reflection arrivals were used in
joint crustal refraction and reflection tomographic inversions. Quantitative error analysis shows
that the seismic velocity of the crust is mostly constrained to within 0.1 km s−1 and the depth
of the Moho to within ±250 m. We interpret the crustal thickness and velocity changes along
the profiles as caused primarily by changes in the mantle temperature at the time of crustal
formation. If all the oceanic crustal thickness variations are ascribed to mantle temperature
changes, we infer that as mature seafloor spreading developed following continental breakup,
the mantle cooled by ca. 75 ◦C over a 10 Myr period, although it still remained hotter than
the global average of normal oceanic crust. The crust formed close to Iceland is at all times
thicker than that formed further away, which we interpret as reflecting higher temperatures
close to the centre of the thermal anomaly created by the mantle plume. Currently at the
Reykjanes Ridge, south of Iceland, we interpret thicker than normal oceanic crust as being
caused by the presence of hotter mantle, modulated by thickness variations of 1.5–2.0 km
which are attributed to temporal variations in the mantle plume temperature of about 25 ◦C
on a 3–6 Myr timescale. A 1.5 km increase in thickness of oceanic crust generated between
48 and 45 Ma on the Faroes line is similar in magnitude and duration to those occurring on
the present day Reykjanes Ridge, which we suggest is due to a temperature pulse of ∼25 ◦C.
Gravity lineations in the northern North Atlantic suggest that the oceanic crust has exhibited
small thickness fluctuations of similar size throughout its history, interpreted as due to small
fluctuations in the temperature of the Iceland mantle plume.


Limitations of paper-based records are influencing a transition across the globe towards Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and in general electronic health (eHealth). However, despite the well documented benefits of eHealth, adoption particularly in developing countries remains a great challenge. Lessons learned from widespread implementation efforts can be used to encourage and inform the use of eHealth. This study evaluates the most current literature to establish the extent to which electronic health has been adopted in developing countries. The study has shown various determinants of electronic health adoption which will help countries particularly the developing ones come up with necessary interventions to accelerate the adoption. As part of future work, more studies need to be done, firstly to confirm the effect of the mentioned determinants in this paper in each developing country, secondly to find out other determinants of eHealth adoption and thirdly to show how developing countries' cooperation on eHealth strategies can affect the journey towards eHealth adoption by these countries.


Abstract The influence of surface roughness in a rail/wheel contact has been a concern for railway owners since the introduction of 'rail grinding' as a maintenance strategy. Presently, there are no well-defined guidelines regarding the surface topographies of ground rails and re-turned wheels. There is thus a need to establish scientific guidelines regarding the surface topographies for the rails and wheels in order to minimize grinding costs/time and to improve rail/wheel performance. This study is aimed at investigating the influence of surface topographies of wheels and rails on running-in behaviour, wear, friction, and the resultant surface damage through experimental simulation in the laboratory. A two-disc rolling/sliding test machine has been used in this experimental work. Two different roughness values were produced on both the rail and wheel test specimens. A design of experiment approach has been used to conduct experiments and to analyse the results. The results show that the surface roughness values of the specimens in some material pairs do influence wear, friction, and resulting surface damage.


Abstract Patterns of diversity and distribution of bryophytes were surveyed across three different forest types: secondary montane forest and tree plantations of Cupressus lusitanica and of Pinus patula, in the Andean Central Cordillera of Colombia. A stratified sample design was employed to distribute 40 transects (50 × 40 m each) across forest types, each one conforming to a minimum of ten randomly selected plots of 1 m2. One-Way ANOVA and rarefaction curves were employed to analyze species richness. Species richness was weighted by the total number of plots surveyed in each transect with a minimum of 10 plots with bryophytes present. Detrended Correspondence Analysis (DCA) was used to analyze the patterns of distribution of bryophyte species among forest types. Correlation analyses were employed to test the influence of environmental and spatial factors for species richness and distribution. A total of 151 species were recorded. Weighted species richness was higher in secondary montane forests and cypress plantations than in pine plantations. Bryophyte abundances differed among forest types, with the highest level recored for the cypress plantations. The DCA showed a high floristic similarity among forest types. Soil pH, slope and light availability were the principle factors explaining bryophyte distribution, which support habitat specialization as the main mechanism addressing species distribution within forest types. At a mesoscale level, however, a continuous dispersal of propagules among forest types was considered the main mechanism determining the regional pattern of bryophyte distribution.


In this letter, we propose an approach for merging three-dimensional maps represented as pose graphs of point clouds. Our method can effectively deal with typical distortions affecting simultaneous localization and mapping-generated maps. Traditional map merging techniques that use a single rigid body transformation to relate the reference frames of different maps. Instead, our approach achieves more accurate results by eliminating the inconsistencies resulting from distortions affecting the inputs, and can succeed in those situations where traditional approaches fail for substantial deformations. The core idea behind our solution is to localize the robot in a reference map by using the data from another map as observations. We validated our approach on publicly available datasets, and provide quantitative results that confirm its effectiveness on challenging instances of the merging problem.


BACKGROUND
While being obese in mid-life is associated with an increased risk of dementia and cognitive decline in late-life, being obese in late-life is shown to be associated with a lower risk of these outcomes in some studies. This phenomenon is known as the "obesity paradox", but the underlying reasons and potential sex difference have not been well understood.

OBJECTIVE
To investigate the association between cognition and waist circumference (WC), an alternative measure of body fat which can be measured easier than body mass index (BMI), among older adults in each generation of late-life for men and women separately.

METHODS
Three hundred thirty-five participants were used in the current study who were identified by random sampling of residents aged 65-74, 75-84, and 85 + years in Takashima County, Shiga Prefecture, Japan during 2005-2006. Associations between WC and domain-specific cognitive functions measured by 12 neuropsychological tests were examined using multivariable linear regression models with covariates: age, education, and hypertension.

RESULTS
Larger WC was associated with better attention/working memory among 65-74-year old women and with better learning/acquisition among 65-74-year-old men, while larger WC was associated with worse learning/acquisition, memory, attention/working memory, and language/fluency among 75-84-year old men.

CONCLUSION
We found age and sex differences in the association between WC and domain-specific cognitive functions. Among older old men (age 75-84) larger WC had negative effects on various domains including memory, attention, language, and executive functions, while we did not find any negative effects of larger WC on cognition among women in any age groups.


Sustainability on construction sites and its impacts on the environment have become increasingly relevant. Large quantities of materials, water and energy, among other resources of various types and origins, are consumed on construction sites during the production activities and by the temporary facilities. This paper aims at presenting a set of criteria for the adoption of sustainable management practices on construction sites aiming at mitigating environmental impacts produced during the construction phase. An in-depth case study was carried out on the new building of the Construction Chamber for the state of Bahia, Brazil. Different environmental impacts for each construction activity specific to the construction site were studied and an economic feasibility study of each solution was performed, followed by the implementation of these practices. Monitoring data was collected through checklists, indicators and periodic project management meetings. Participant observation and document analysis were also used as sources of evidence. The main findings refer to the identification of solutions, main difficulties in adopting such solutions, the development of indicators for monitoring low environmental impact on construction sites, as well as a set of recommendations for the deployment of sustainable practices on construction sites.


Much current discourse around policing in the UK stresses the need for a partnership between the police and public and, in particular, the need for the police to be responsive to the concerns of local communities. It is argued that appearing responsive to local needs, and showing a willingness to consult the public in the process of decision making, is likely to increase support for the police. Despite this, detailed analysis of the public's preferences for policing remains relatively sparse. This thesis uses data from the 2003-04 Metropolitan Police's Public Attitude Survey (PAS) to consider whether survey data can provide a useful indication of a respondent's preferences, and how these preferences may vary depending on the characteristics of respondents and the boroughs in which they live. This thesis argues that rather than simply considering some overall measure of the level of policing individuals would like to see, or investigating attitudes towards different functions of the police individually, a more interesting and complete view of preferences for policing can be developed by looking at the mix of policing that individuals best believe will meet their needs. Additionally, it will be shown that differences in respondents' preferences can be related to both the characteristics of individuals and the nature of the boroughs in which they live. It will be suggested that some of these relationships provide evidence that respondents favour a mix of policing they believe will protect them from perceived threats and reflect their perception of the police's role within society. In addition, this thesis provides an example of how the techniques of Factor Analysis and Latent Class Analysis can provide greater insight into the data collected in large scale surveys. It is suggested that responses provided to different questions are often related and may represent a more general underlying attitude held by the respondent. It is also argued that using techniques which can handle multilevel data will provide greater explanatory depth by suggesting how a respondent's attitude may be influenced by the context in which they live. The analysis presented offers new insights into the public's priorities for policing and demonstrates the worth of the statistical methods employed. However it is, to some extent, limited by the form of the questions within the PAS dataset and by the lack of information about the thought process underlying a respondent's answers. These concerns will be discussed, along with suggestions for future research.


Social Media Networks (SMNs) are collaborative tools used in an increasing rate in many business and industrial environments. These are often used in parallel with dedicated Collaborative Technologies (CTs) which are specifically designed to handle dedicated tasks. Within this research project the specific area of supply chain management is the focus of investigation. Two case studies where CTs are already extensively employed have been conducted to evaluate the scope of SMN usage and to confirm the particular benefits provided and to identify limitations. The overall purpose being to provide guidelines on joint CT/SMN deployment in developing supply chains. The application of SMNs to supply chain operations is fundamental to addressing the emerging need for increased P2P (peer-to-peer) type communication. This type of communication is between individuals and is typified by increased relationship type interaction. This is in contrast to traditional B2B (business-to-business) communication which is typically conducted on a transactional basis especially where it is confined by the characteristics of dedicated CTs. SMNs can be applied in supply chain networks to deal with unexpected circumstances or problem solving, capture market demands and customer feedback, and in general provide a medium to react to unplanned events. Crucially, they provide a platform where the issues can be addressed on a P2P basis in the absence of confrontational, transactional type interactions. The case studies reported in this paper concern EU based companies, one being a major national aluminium profile extruder, the second being a bottling plant for a global soft drinks manufacturer. In both cases the application of CTs to their supply chains is well established. However whilst both companies could readily identify the strengths of their CT systems (information and data sharing, data storage and retrieval) they could also identify limitations. These limitations included the lack of real time interaction at a P2P level and, interestingly, the lack of a common language used between different CT systems in B2B communication. Overall, the comments of the case study companies was that the SMN provided valuable adjuncts to existing CT systems, but that the SMNs were not integrated with the CT systems. There was a strongly perceived need for a better understanding of the contrasting and complementary capabilities of CTs and SMNs so that in future fully integrated systems could be implemented. Future work in this area will focus on the development of guidelines and procedures for achieving such complementarity in international collaborative supply chains.


This essay examines the work of Chinese artist Yang Fudong, who often uses moving images in his art. It notes that not only has he always been interested in the gestural, but also that he has become increasingly drawn to gestural cinema. It argues that Yang Fudong's output is a prime example of a new gestural cinema, and that this new gestural cinema is encouraged by the political economy of working on the transnational art scene, or the "artscape." It goes on to ask how Yang Fudong has been able to deploy this new gestural cinema to his own artistic ends. Noting the debates about whether the gestural is an alternative and even redemptive language or whether it is the excess that stands beyond meaning, the essay argues that Yang's art exercises the tension between the two potential understandings to produce his own unique effects. In Yang's gestural cinema, the promise of meaning and narrative coherence is repeatedly invoked, and associated with the appearance of numerous figures of the modern, young, and educated individual. Yet, this promise is always frustrated, creating a structure that moves us from gesture as a way of conveying embodied experience to thinking about what meanings might attach to the gestures without imposing any particular conclusion on the spectator. This ambiguity is ethical insofar as it demands our cogitation rather than our judgment.


Due to the unencrypted structure of civil GPS signals, the timing information supplied to the PMUs in the power grid is vulnerable to spoofing attacks. We propose our GPS time authentication algorithm using a network of widely dispersed static receivers and their known positions. Without requiring the knowledge of the exact P(Y) code sequences, we cross-check for the presence of these encrypted codes across the receivers to detect spoofing attacks. First, we perform pair-wise cross-correlation of the conditioned quadrature-phase, carrier wiped-off incoming signal across the receivers. Later, we utilize position-information aiding to estimate the expected time offset between the received P(Y) codes at different receivers. Thereafter, we authenticate each receiver by analyzing the weighted summation of the pair-wise cross-correlation peak offset and magnitude across the receivers and their common satellites. To validate our networked spoofing detection algorithm, we utilize four GPS receivers located in Idaho, Illinois, Colorado and Ohio. Under the presence of simulated spoofing attacks, namely signal-level spoofing and a record-and-replay attack, we demonstrate that our networked approach successfully detects these spoofing events with high probability.


We describe a compound parabolic concentrator (CPC)-based probe for enhanced signal collection in the spectroscopy of biological tissues. Theoretical considerations governing signal enhancement compared with conventional collection methods are given. A ray-tracing program was used to analyze the throughput of CPC's with shape deviations and surface imperfections. A modified CPC shape with 99% throughput was discovered. A 4.4-mm-long CPC was manufactured and incorporated into an optical fiber-based near-infrared Raman spectrometer system. For human tissue samples, light collection was enhanced by a factor of 7 compared with collection with 0.29-NA optical fibers.


Manell, H. 2019. Impaired Glucose Tolerance in Childhood Obesity. Contribution of Glucagon, GLP-1 and Inflammation. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1560. 49 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-513-0618-6. In the wake of increased obesity prevalence, impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) in childhood and adolescence is increasingly common. Given the negative impacts these conditions have on health over time, understanding the pathophysiology in those affected early in life is important. Both the proglucagon-derived peptides and low-grade inflammation have been implicated in the development of obesity-related complications. The aim of this thesis was to study across the glucose tolerance spectrum in children and adolescents with obesity 1) proglucagon-derived peptides glucagon, GLP-1 and glicentin, 2) dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) and its degradation of GLP-1 and 3) novel inflammatory markers. To this end, children and adolescents of the Uppsala Longitudinal Study of Childhood Obesity were studied. Children and adolescents with obesity had higher fasting plasma glucagon concentrations than lean controls. In particular visceral adiposity, hyperinsulinemia, triglycerides and free fatty acids (FFAs) were associated with high plasma glucagon concentrations. In isolated islets elevated FFAs caused hypersecretion of glucagon. In children and adolescents with IGT or T2D, fasting plasma glucagon was further elevated and the GLP-1 and glicentin response to an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was decreased. In T2D plasma glucagon increased during the first 15 minutes of OGTT. Plasma DPP-4 concentrations were elevated in obesity and associated with lower proportion of intact GLP-1 but not with IGT. Several pro-inflammatory markers were elevated in children and adolescents with obesity but not further elevated in IGT or T2D with the exception of low plasma Tumor necrosis factor-related weak inducer of apoptosis (TWEAK) levels, which were associated with IGT, hyperinsulinemia and hyperglucagonemia. High plasma hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) concentration was associated with increased risk of further weight gain in children and adolescents with obesity. In conclusion, elevated glucagon concentration at fasting, a hyperglucagonemic response to OGTT and reduced GLP-1 and glicentin are characteristics of IGT and T2D development in childhood obesity reflecting altered usage of the proglucagon gene. DPP-4 concentrations are elevated in childhood obesity but not associated with IGT. Reduced circulating TWEAK was identified as a novel marker of IGT early in life. Children with obesity and high HGF are less likely to respond well to lifestyle intervention.


Randomized testing is an effective method for testing software units. The thoroughness of randomized unit testing varies widely according to the settings of certain parameters, such as the relative frequencies with which methods are called. In this paper, we describe Nighthawk, a system which uses a genetic algorithm (GA) to find parameters for randomized unit testing that optimize test coverage. Designing GAs is somewhat of a black art. We therefore use a feature subset selection (FSS) tool to assess the size and content of the representations within the GA. Using that tool, we can reduce the size of the representation substantially while still achieving most of the coverage found using the full representation. Our reduced GA achieves almost the same results as the full system, but in only 10 percent of the time. These results suggest that FSS could significantly optimize metaheuristic search-based software engineering tools.


The industrial development leads to a consumption of natural resources and an increase of environmental impacts. The protection of human well-being and ecosystem are essential to obtain sustainable products. In this scenario, the reduction of environmental impact required for food productions collides with the population increase. A key aspect is the increase of the productivity and the reduction of the greenhouse gases emissions to allow continuity to the industrial development respecting the environmental system. The "Legume Genetic Resources as a tool for the development of innovative and sustainable food Technological system" (LeGeReTe) project is focused on the environmental impact of food products considering in particular legumebased food, which could represent an alternative to the traditional food. The object of the study is the comparison between the environmental impact of the legume-based burger production chain and of the traditional meat burger production chain. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method was applied to assess the environmental sustainability of the analysed case studies. A "from cradle to grave" approach was used, therefore agricultural phase, industrial process and domestic preparation were considered. The functional unit considered is 1 burger (100 g of product). The results of the environmental impact analysis for both the burger typologies showed that the agricultural phase is the most impacting one for most of the impact categories. Analysing the two food chains, the industrial process of legume-based burger provides the higher environmental impact respect to the meat burger. Moreover, the impact assessment of meat burger production chain, for most of the impact categories, reaches a value of 3-4 times greater than a legumes-based burger. Finally, with the aim of considering nutritional aspects to compare the impact values, a quantity of 15 g of protein (corresponding to the protein content of a meat burger of 100 g) was considered as a nutritional functional unit. To reach the same protein content for the meat burger, it's necessary an intake of two legumebased burgers. Nevertheless, doubling the environmental damages of legume-based burger, the environmental impact related to meat burger remains higher.


Some professions require students to take an examination at the conclusion of their college work, either graduate or undergraduate, before they can be licensed to practice in their chosen field.


Hierarchical models provide a flexible way of modeling complex behavior. However, the complicated interdependencies among the parameters in the hierarchy make training such models difficult. MCMC methods have been widely used for this purpose, but can often only approximate the necessary distributions. Acceptance-rejection sampling allows for perfect simulation from these often unnormalized distributions by drawing from another distribution over the same support. The efficacy of acceptance-rejection sampling is explored through application to a small dataset which has been widely used for evaluating different methods for inference on hierarchical models. A particular algorithm is developed to draw variates from the posterior distribution. The algorithm is both verified and validated, and then finally applied to the given data, with comparisons to the results of different methods.


ABSTRACT Feminists can organise! But what happens when informal collectives and movements face pressures to formalise and become non-governmental organisations (NGOs)? This is a common dilemma faced by feminists and other social justice activists as their organisations grow and they seek to extend and expand their impact, often seeking outside funding. As activists become professionalised 'employees' accountable to the organisation rather than their constituencies, as agendas shift in response to donors, a myriad of complex challenges manifest, which have been referred to by critics as 'the NGOisation of resistance'. This article is written by two South African intersectional feminist activists who have worked with many organisations in the social justice field. We draw on principles of feminist organising that we identified in our work to consider how social justice organisations can retain, or recover, their core values and purpose within their organisations. The reconnection between purpose and experience is necessary to create organisational cultures that embody social justice in the everyday experience of the organisation. This is essential if we are to recognise and practice social justice as both an internal and external experience, ensuring the legitimacy of our organisations. Drawing on principles historically used in feminist organising, such as 'the personal is political' and intersectionality, as well as institutional theory's concept of experiential surfacing, we begin to grapple with the complexity of creating just organisations in an unjust world.


We here use five rounds of Afrobarometer data covering more than 100,000 individuals over the 2004–2016 period to explore the link between individual self‐reported measures of living conditions and access to four basic needs. We not only consider own access to these needs, but also various indices of their deprivation, satisfaction and inequality. We find some evidence of comparisons to those who are better off and to those who are worse off, in terms of access to basic needs, in the evaluation of current living conditions. Overall, however, subjective living conditions are mostly absolute in African countries. There is notable heterogeneity by level of development, with the effect of lack of access to basic needs being more pronounced in poorer countries. Equally, comparisons to the better off are associated with better living conditions in poorer countries, suggesting the existence of a tunnel effect: this latter disappears with economic development.


Sexual harassment by males has been reported from several live-bearing fishes (Poeciliidae) and has been shown to inflict costs on females. For example, poeciliid females have reduced feeding opportunities when accompanied by a male because females dedicate attention to avoiding male copulation attempts. Poeciliid species differ considerably in male mating behavior, such as the presence or absence of courtship. Courting males display in front of the females, but males attempting to sneak-copulate approach females from behind, that is, in the blind portion of their visual field, and force copulations, which can be viewed as a male persistence trait. We predicted that poeciliid females need to be more vigilant in the presence of noncourting males, and costs of harassment by noncourting males might be stronger. In a comparative approach we examined the costs of male sexual harassment for females as reduced feeding time in 9 species of live-bearing fishes, including courting (Poecilia latipinna, Poecilia reticulata, Xiphophorus cortezi, Xiphophorus variatus) and noncourting species (Poecilia mexicana [surface- and cave-dwelling form], Poecilia orri, Gambusia affinis, Gambusia geiseri, Heterandria formosa). In all species examined except for the cave form of P. mexicana, focal females spent significantly less time feeding in the presence of a male than when together with another female. The time females spent feeding was found to significantly decline with increasing male mating activity (sum of all sexual behaviors), but there was no support for the idea that females would spend more time feeding in the presence of courting males compared with noncourting ones. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.


Teacher work samples are one tool for helping teacher candidates learn to systematically connect their actions to the learning of each student. To connect teaching and learning effectively, candidates must understand well the teaching and learning context. To deepen candidates' abilities to analyze the teaching and learning context and plan for working most effectively within it, candidates engaged in ethnographic analysis of their mentor teachers' classroom cultures. Using digital video technology, video ethnographies were produced to illustrate salient qualities of classroom culture including routines of action, shared beliefs and values, and patterns of interaction and engagement. Through stimulated recall sessions, preservice teachers described learning a great deal about research methods, classroom culture, and how to more effectively participate in these cultures to facilitate student learning. Vignettes and classroom anecdotes illustrate research results.


Globally, water resources for cities are under increasing stress. Two main stressors are climate change and population growth, but evaluating their relative impact is difficult, especially because of the complex topology of water supply. This is especially true in the tropical Andes, which is a region with strong climatic gradients and topographical limits to water resources. This paper presents an evaluation of both stressors on water resources in a geospatial framework to identify gradients in water availability that may lead to conflicts over water use. We focus on four major cities in, or receiving water from, the tropical Andes. A multimodel data set of 19 climate models is used as input for a regional water balance model. Per capita water availability is evaluated along topographic gradients for the present and for future scenarios of population growth and climate change. In all cases, the median projection of climate change suggests a relatively limited impact on water availability, but uncertainties are large. Despite these uncertainties, we find that the expected demographic changes are very likely to outpace the impact of climate change on water availability and should therefore be the priority for local policy making. However, distinctive geospatial patterns characterize the supply systems of the studied cities, highlighting the need to analyze the topology of water supply within an ecosystem services context. Our approach is flexible enough to be extended to other regions, stressors and water resources topologies.


Researches using margin based comparison loss demonstrate the effectiveness of penalizing the distance between face feature and their corresponding class centers. Despite their popularity and excellent performance, they do not explicitly encourage the generic embedding learning for an open set recognition problem. In this paper, we analyse margin based softmax loss in probability view. With this perspective, we propose two general principles: 1) monotonic decreasing and 2) margin probability penalty, for designing new margin loss functions. Unlike methods optimized with single comparison metric, we provide a new perspective to treat open set face recognition as a problem of information transmission. And the generalization capability for face embedding is gained with more clean information. An auto-encoder architecture called Linear-Auto-TS-Encoder(LATSE) is proposed to corroborate this finding. Extensive experiments on several benchmarks demonstrate that LATSE help face embedding to gain more generalization capability and it boosted the single model performance with open training dataset to more than $99\%$ on MegaFace test.


Money norms present a fundamental contradiction. Norms embody the social sphere, a system of internalized values, unwritten rules, and shared expectations that informally govern human behavior. Money, on the other hand, evokes the economic sphere of markets, prices, and incentives. Existing legal scholarship keeps the two spheres distinct. Money is assumed to operate as a medium of exchange or as a tool for altering the payoffs of different actions. When used to make good behavior less costly and undesirable behavior more costly, money functions to incentivize, sanction, and deter. Although a rich literature on the expressive function of law exists, legal scholars have generally confined money to the economic sphere of sanctions and subsidies. This Article attempts to bridge that gap. Money elicits a strong, visceral, and emotional reaction, triggering (and creating expectations of) selfishness, individualism, and self-reliance that is unaccounted for in current legal scholarship. Money norms not only insulate our moral values from market encroachment, but they also prescribe modes of behavior that encourage cooperation and counteract the impulse to act selfishly. The Article sets out a framework for understanding the interrelationship of money norms and the law in an effort to enhance the effectiveness of existing incentive structures. It suggests that legal efforts to influence money norms may be more successful in the context of morally ambiguous norms where noncompliance is both easier to rationalize and less likely to be socially condemned.


GIFTED STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF HIGH SCHOOL TRANSITION By Beverley R. Smith A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University, 2011 Director: Charol Shakeshaft, Ph.D. School of Education This study examined the perceptions of gifted middle school students who attended one of two middle school gifted service options as they transitioned into high school. Gifted middle school students from either a center-based gifted service option or a school-based gifted service option from middle schools in a suburban district in Central Virginia participated in the study. Participants who had completed three consecutive years within the gifted service option were purposively selected for the study. Students completed a pre-transition survey at the end of their eighth grade year and a posttransition survey early in their ninth grade year. The survey asked students to identify their high school program choice and provide a reason for their choice in order to establish high school program choice trends among the different gifted service options. The surveys also assessed the differences in the students' perceptions of the transition from middle school into the chosen high school as it pertains to academic, organizational, and social constructs of the high school program. Students from the center-based gifted program were more likely to choose to attend one of the regional Governor's schools, and chose to do so because of personal interest and the perception of academic rigor. The students from the school-based gifted service options were more likely to choose to attend one of the district's specialty centers, and chose to do so because of personal interest and parental encouragement. Prior to transitioning into high school, both the center-based gifted and the school based gifted students had high perceptions of the grades they earned. However, after transitioning into high school, only the center-based gifted students continued to have a high perception of grades earned. Prior to the transition into high school the center-based gifted students had higher perceptions of the academic, organizational, and social constructs. Differences were not found among the post-transition perceptions of the academic, organizational, and social constructs between the two gifted middle school groups; however, the extremely small sample size of the post-transition survey may have impacted these results.


With the significant development of digital communications and networking technologies there is need to protect the sensitive data such as digital audio signals images and videos from unauthorized access getting leak or misused. Cryptography plays a major role within the field of network security. There are many encryption techniques available currently to secure the data. Traditional encryption such as DES and many others perform poorly for multimedia data because of the large data size and high redundancy. Due to the random-like property and high sensitivity for initial values and control parameters hyperchaotic systems are usually proposed as a solution to data encryption. In this paper a study on security of audio data encryption based on a new six dimensional hyperchaotic system is presented. The experimental results on audio data encryption / decryption over open networks key sensitivity tests and statistical analysis show that the proposed cryptosystem have excellent encryption performance high sensitivity to the security keys and can be applied for secure real time encryption.


OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of a bovine albumin-derivatized glutaraldehyde (BA-DG) biopolymer sealant on leakage pressures of intestinal anastomoses in jejunal tissue collected from fresh canine cadavers and to evaluate changes in circumference and cross-sectional area of the anastomotic site resulting from sealant application. SAMPLE 24 jejunal anastomoses from 4 fresh canine cadavers. PROCEDURES Jejunal tissue specimens were collected, and adjacent segment anastomoses were created within 12 hours after euthanasia of each dog. The tissue constructs were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups in which sealant was or was not applied. The outer circumference of all anastomoses in the sealant group was measured before and after application of the sealant; the cross-sectional area at the anastomotic site was then calculated at each time point. Tissue constructs were pressure tested, and leakage pressure and site were recorded. All testing was completed within 24 hours after tissue collection. RESULTS Compared with preapplication findings, there were no significant changes in outer circumference or cross-sectional area at the anastomotic site after sealant application. Leakage pressures in the sealant group were significantly higher than those in the no-sealant group. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE The use of surgical sealant on fresh canine cadaver jejunal anastomoses resulted in significantly higher leakage pressure at the anastomotic site; no immediate tissue deformation of the outer circumference or cross-sectional area occurred after sealant application. Future in vivo investigations are warranted to evaluate the effects of this sealant and potential benefits for clinical patients undergoing enterectomy.


This paper introduces the Visual Inspection Tool (VIT) which supports researchers in the annotation of multimodal data as well as the processing and exploitation for learning purposes. While most of the existing Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA) solutions are tailor-made for specific learning tasks and sensors, the VIT addresses the data annotation for different types of learning tasks that can be captured with a customisable set of sensors in a flexible way. The VIT supports MMLA researchers in 1) triangulating multimodal data with video recordings; 2) segmenting the multimodal data into time-intervals and adding annotations to the time-intervals; 3) downloading the annotated dataset and using it for multimodal data analysis. The VIT is a crucial component that was so far missing in the available tools for MMLA research. By filling this gap we also identified an integrated workflow that characterises current MMLA research. We call this workflow the Multimodal Learning Analytics Pipeline, a toolkit for orchestration, the use and application of various MMLA tools.


Hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) active matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) displays are attractive given the potentially low manufacturing cost and ultimately low-temperature fabrication enabling using flexible substrates. Although the conventional two thin-film transistor (2-TFT) AMOLED voltage-programmed pixel circuit (VPPC) can provide high resolution and high yield, the 2-TFT VPPC is prone to image retention over time due to shift in the threshold voltage (VT-shift) of a-Si:H TFTs. This paper presents a new driving scheme that not only preserves the simplicity of the 2-TFT VPPC, but also demonstrates high uniformity. Experimental results indicate that the current drop in the new driving scheme is less than 11% after 15 days of operation whereas it is over 50% for the conventional driving scheme. Moreover, the new driving scheme is less sensitive to temperature variations due to an internal feedback mechanism. After a 70% change in the temperature, the current in the conventional driving scheme increases by as much as 300%. However, the current in the driving scheme presented here is approximately constant


Introduction Good interprofessional teamworking is essential for high quality, efficient and safe clinical care. Undergraduate interprofessional training has been advocated for many years to improve interprofessional working. However, few successful initiatives have been reported and even fewer have formally assessed their educational impact. Methods This was a prospective observational study of medical and midwifery students at a tertiary-level maternity unit. An interprofessional training module was developed and delivered by a multiprofessional faculty to medical and midwifery students, including short lectures, team-building exercises and practical simulation-based training for one obstetric (shoulder dystocia) and three generic emergencies (sepsis, haemorrhage, collapse). Outcome measures were interprofessional attitudes, assessed with a validated questionnaire (UWE Interprofessional Questionnaire) and clinical knowledge, measured with validated multiple-choice questions. Results Seventy-two students participated (34 medical, 38 midwifery). Following training median interprofessional attitude scores improved in all domains (p<0.0001), and more students responded in positive categories for communication and teamwork (69–89%, p=0.004), interprofessional interaction (3–16%, p=0.012) and interprofessional relationships (74–89%, p=0.006). Scores for knowledge improved following training for medical students (65.5% (61.8–70%) to 82.3% (79.1–84.5%) (median (IQR)) p<0.0001) and student midwives (70% (64.1–76.4%) to 81.8% (79.1–86.4%) p<0.0001), and in all subject areas (p<0.0001). Conclusions This training was associated with meaningful improvements in students' attitudes to teamwork, and knowledge acquisition. Integrating practical tasks and teamwork training, in authentic clinical settings, with matched numbers of medical and non-medical students can facilitate learning of both why and how to work together. This type of training could be adopted widely in undergraduate healthcare education.


The question of hospitality and of the welcoming of otherness is central to the thought of Emmanuel Levinas. In his Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida highlights the primordial role of the concept of hospitality in the philosophy of Levinas and goes as far as to call Levinas's Totality and Infinity "an immense treatise of hospitality.1 And indeed, numerous commentators have discussed this dimension of hospitality in the thought of Levinas.2 Few, however, have explored the exilic structure particular to that hospitality and that welcoming. And although many commentators have explored dimensions of exile in Levinas' philosophy-pertaining to his biography,3 his style,4 his vocabulary5-none has, to my knowledge, attempted to show the centrality of the concept of exile in the totality of Levinas's work, as well as the fundamental role this concept plays in articulating the structure of the hospitality of otherness. It is my thesis, however, that the philosophy of hospitality worked out in Levinas' thought is intimately connected to exile. While the theme of hospitality permeates the work of Levinas, it is articulated, at every step, in relation to the concept of exile. My goal in this essay will be to show this centrality of the concept of exile in Levinas, as well as how this concept illuminates the Levinassian thematic of hospitality. We can distinguish two main trends in Levinas' treatment of exile. The first deals with the exile of the face with regard to the world of objects constituted by the self. According to Levinas, the face of the other is not another object in the world which the self can comprehend and dispose of at will. On the contrary, the face escapes all attempts by the self to grasp or objectify it, thus remaining exiled from its world. But this exile raises a number of questions. Must not the face be at some point be grasped as an object if a relationship with it is to be possible? If the face escapes all attempts on the part of the self to constitute it into an object of the world, if the face refuses to be encountered within the world of the self, how is an approach of the face to ever take place? An approach to the face is possible, according to Levinas, only at the price of a profound transformation of the structures of the self. The self must itself experience exile - a de-centering, a de-positing of itself as center of the universe-if an encounter with the exilic dimension of the other is to be possible. The approach to the face is thus itself structured as an exile, as a movement of the self outside of itself, outside of its situation as origin and foundation, into the realm of otherness. This is the second sense of exile in Levinas's work. But this exile also raises a number of questions. How can one account for this sudden shift in the structures of the self-of a self understood as the origin of the world to a self exiled, torn from its own world towards the other? What provokes this exile? And what's more, how can such an exile lead to hospitality? It is difficult to see how an exiled self, torn from its world, could become a source of hospitality. It is these two problems that I want to address in this article: How is a hospitality of the exiled face possible and how can an exiled self offer such a hospitality? In both cases, the condition of exile seems to be the very antithesis of hospitality. It is difficult to see how the face which resolutely remains exiled with regards the structures of the self could ever lend itself to hospitality. It is also difficult to see how a self, itself exiled, could ever be capable of hospitality. In this essay I shall first deal with the problem posed by the exile of the face and after that with the problem posed by the exile of the self in an attempt to show how, ultimately, exile constitutes the very structure of hospitality of the face. The Exile of the Face The exile of the face is described by Levinas in a key passage in Totality and Infinity which reads as follows: The epiphany of the face qua face opens humanity. …


The extreme precision requirements in semiconductor manufacturing drive the need for an active vibration isolation system in a laser pattern generator. Optimization has been performed and evaluated in a model using a high level programming tool [1]. The areas of optimization were 1) Decoupling strategies for decentralized control and 2) Improved feed forward control. Only a limited description of the model itself is given here. More about the model is presented in [2] and [3].


Simona Bevern addresses the questions what and why political parties communicate in the time between elections, focusing on the dynamic rise and fall of policy issues. Despite the central role of political parties and the alleged importance of communication, only few scholars have taken a closer look at the content and dynamics of parties' communication in routine times of politics. In this study, interactions between parties' communication, their party competitors, the legislative agenda and public opinion are studied in Germany for the years 2004–2009, making use of a novel data set and quantitative methods. The study was submitted as Dissertation at the University of Mannheim in 2013.


In this dissertation, the relationships between structure-mechanical properties-deformation mechanisms in face-centered cubic (FCC) and body-centered cubic (BCC) metallic nanowires have been studied using in situ TEM nanomechanical testing.

It is well known that smaller is stronger and the widely-observed size effect is believed to arise from dislocation interactions inside nanocrystals. However, the interaction mechanisms in small-volume nanocrystals remain unexplored. Here, it was found that surface-nucleated dislocations can strongly interact inside the confined volume of Au nanowires, which led to a new type of dislocation-originated stacking fault tetrahedra (SFT), at variance to the widely-believed vacancy-originated SFT. The atomic-scale processes of nucleation, migration and annihilation of dislocation-originated SFT were revealed, shedding new light onto the strain hardening and size effect in small-volume materials.

Although nanoscale twinning is an effective mean to enhance the strength of metals, twin-size effect on the deformation and failure of nanotwinned metals remains largely unexplored, especially at the minimum twin size. Here, a new type of size effect in nanotwinned Au nanowires is presented. As twin size reaches the angstrom-scale, Au nanowires exhibit a remarkable ductile-to-brittle transition that is governed by the heterogeneous-to-homogeneous dislocation nucleation transition. Quantitative measurements show that approaching such a nanotwin size limit gives rise to the ultra-high strength in Au nanowires, close to the ideal strength limit of perfect Au.

Twinning is a fundamental deformation mode that competes against dislocation slip in crystals. At the nanoscale, higher stresses are required for plastic deformation than that in bulk, which favors twinning over dislocation slip. Indeed, deformation twinning has been well-documented in FCC nanocrystals. However, it remains unexplored in BCC nanostructures. Here, it shows that twinning is the dominant deformation mode in BCC-tungsten nanocrystals. A competition between twinning and dislocation slip occurs when changing the loading orientations, attributed to the defect growth controlled plasticity in BCC nanocrystals. Several important commonalities and differences in FCC and BCC nanocrystals deforming at nanoscale are further proposed.

The results from this dissertation advance fundamental understanding of plastic deformation in a broad class of metals and alloys, and are of technological importance for degradation control and future design of ultra-strength nanomaterials.


Research over the last 50 years have been remarkably consistent when it comes to addressing education inequality: background factors like family and socioeconomics matter to school success. Yet policies remain narrowly focused on school-based reforms like testing, standards, and charter schools due in large part to the American public's limited understanding of education and inequality. I argue that scholars, as the experts, are ultimately responsible for changing how policymakers and the public think about these issues—a duty they have yet to embrace. In this connection, the use of framing can help education researchers broaden attitudes and stimulate political will. Drawing mainly from disciplines outside education, this article explores the potential of framing as a communication tool for education scholars. Specifically, I examine how it has been used in science, political, and marketing communication to broaden public opinion. I also offer ways to frame the issue of education inequality to help the public, including decision makers and influencers, conceive of solutions and opportunities beyond the status quo.


This publication presents a subject that is, unfortunately, as significant today as it was two years ago. Sadly, this continuing relevance seems to confirm the views of the German radical pacifist Kurt Tucholsky, who stated in response to the atrocities and sufferings of WWI: "But men never ever learnt from history, and they will not do so in the future. Hic Rhodus!" Recent events in Iraq, the Middle East, East Timor or the Democratic Republic of Congo, and possible links regarding issues of terrorism, raise the question what criminological and victimological research offers in assisting to break vicious spirals of ignorance of gross human rights violations and the immense human sufferings in the context of armed conflicts and terrorism. The answer to this question still remains open. Yet, this publication confirms the substantial willingness to 'learn' from the past by critically reviewing large-scale victimisation arising out of protracted conflicts in order to better understanding the necessary prerequisites for enduring peace-making in post-conflict societies and to anticipate and suggest approaches to healing victimising effects.


This paper analyzes the inflation targeting policy in emerging economies. More specifically, the development of this work aims to study the conduct, effectiveness and performance of this monetary policy strategy in a context of instability. Taking into account the financial collapse of 2008 and 2009 that has produced the worst global recession since the 1930s. We are developing an econometric approach based on the estimation of the efficiency frontier: variability of inflation - variability of output, which allows us to deduce measures of economic performance and measures of the efficiency of monetary policy. Our results show a significant difference within the macroeconomic performance in a global economic environment characterized by an international financial crisis. We show that these differences are generally due to the choice of this monetary policy strategy.


Dissertation submitted to the Department of Business Administration Ashesi University College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration, April 2010


Aggregation of streamed data is key to the expansion of the Internet of Things. This paper addresses the problem of designing a topology for reliably aggregating data flows from many devices arriving at a datacenter. Reliability here means ensuring operation without data loss. We seek a frugal solution that prevents wasteful resource consumption (over-provisioning). This problem is salient when building an aggregation service out of components (here aggregation nodes) that exhibit hard constraints on the amount of information they can handle per unit of time. We first formalize the problem and provide an analysis of the relation between monitored devices (plus information they send), and the operations performed at aggregation nodes, in terms of data rates. Building on this rate analysis, we devise a novel algorithm, which we call CSA, that basically outputs an aggregation topology capable of handling those incoming data rates, preventing thereby empirical trial-and-error design. We analyze the algorithm, before validating it on the Amazon Kinesis platform, using a device dataset from a European telco operator.


This paper critically examines moot court as a pedagogic tool to introduce law students to judicial processes. The purpose is to evaluate whether mooting, as a non-mandatory part of legal education in India, is successful in creating a cadre of competent and creative lawyers in the Bar. There are two inquiries which inform this endeavour—first, the normative structure of moot courts and the inherent limitations of it; second, the experiential flaws of mooting in the Indian context. Since mooting reinforces the rigours of adversarialism in the Indian legal education and subsequently in the judicial working, this aspect is queried to demonstrate the difficulties in embracing the moot court paradigm uncritically. Whilst a lot of Western literature has been helpful in theorising on the structure and purposes of moot courts, there are suitable connections and comparisons made with the pan-Asian approach and the Indian counterpart. Though the theoretical and functional limitations of mooting are explored particularly in the Indian perspective, the lessons can be instructive in other contexts as well—especially those jurisdictions which battle to create a system of practical legal education through mooting which is both enriching for law students and at the same time, worthwhile by itself.


Evidence-based library and information practice (EBLIP) provides school librarians a systematic means of building, assessing, and revising a library program, thus demonstrating a school library program's worth to the larger school community. Through survey research collecting both qualitative and quantitative data, 111 public school librarians in Texas shared the extent to which they applied components of EBLIP to practice, the extent to which they shared EBLIP data and with whom, and the extent to which formal LIS education has supported their applications of EBLIP. Findings indicate the large majority of respondents engaged in some form of EBLIP, typically referencing professional journals, standards, and guidelines; informally collecting evidence from stakeholders; and writing mission statements. Few respondents, however, engaged in the complete process. With the intent of gaining, increasing, or securing something, respondents were most likely to share goals and data with administrators and teachers than with other stakeholders. Despite so few respondents' engaging in the complete process, approximately half expressed the belief that their LIS programs contributed to their understanding of EBLIP.


Internet of things (IoT) is shifting the healthcare delivery paradigm from in-person encounters between patients and providers to an «anytime, anywhere» model delivery. Connected health has become more profound than ever due to the availability of wireless wearable sensors, reliable communication protocols and storage infrastructures. Wearable sensors would offer various insights regarding the patient's health (electrocardiogram (ECG), electroencephalography (EEG), blood pressure, etc.) and their daily activities (hours slept, step counts, stress maps,) which can be used to provide a thorough diagnosis and alert healthcare providers to medical emergencies. Remote elderly monitoring system (REMS) is the most popular sector of connected health, due to the spread of chronic diseases amongst the older generation. Current REMS use low power sensors to continuously collect patient's records and feed them to a local computing unit in order to perform real-time processing and analysis. Afterward, the local processing unit, which acts as a gateway, feeds the data and the analysis report to a cloud server for further analysis. Finally, healthcare providers can then access the data, visualize it and provide the proper medical assistant if necessary. Nevertheless, the state-of-the-art IoT-based REMS still face some limitations in terms of high energy consumption due to raw data streaming. The high energy consumption decreases the sensor's lifespan immensely, hence, a severe degradation in the overall performance of the REMS platform. Therefore, sophisticated signal acquisition and analysis methods, such as compressed sensing (CS), should be incorporated. CS is an emerging sampling/compression theory, which guarantees that an N-length sparse signals can be recovered from M-length measurement vector (MllN) using efficient algorithms such as convex relaxation approaches and greedy algorithms. This work aims to enable two different scenarios for REMS by leveraging the concept of CS in order to reduce the number of samples transmitted form the sensors while maintaining a high quality of service. The first one is dedicated to abnormal heart beat detection, in which, ECG data from different patients is collected, transmitted and analysed to identify any type of arrhythmia or irregular abnormalities in the ECG. The second one aims to develop an automatic fall detection platform in order to detect falls occurrence, their strength, their direction in order to raise alert and provide prompt assistance and adequate medical treatment. In both applications, CS is explored to reduce the number of transmitted samples form the sensors, hence, increase the sensors lifespan. In addition, the identification and the detection is enabled by means of machine learning and pattern recognition algorithms. In order to quantify the performance of the system, subspace pursuit (SP) has been adopted as recovery algorithm. Whereas for data identification and classification, K-nearest neighbour (KNN), E-nearest neighbour (ENN), decision tree (BDT) and committee machine (CM) have been adopted.


As a part of our ongoing research in the exploration of novel antimicrobial agents, we report herein novel synthesis of hybrid molecules 4-methyl-7-(2-oxo-2-(5-(substitutedthio)-1,3,4oxadiazol-2-yl)ethoxy)-2H-chromen-2-ones and 4-substitutedbenzylidene-3-methyl-1-(2-((4methyl-2-oxo-2H-chromen-7-yl)oxy)acetyl)-1H-pyrazol-5(4H)-ones by combining coumarin ring with 1,3,4-oxadiazole and pyrazole scaffolds respectively. All the synthesized compounds have been characterized by chemical analysis, IR, H NMR, C NMR and mass spectroscopy. All the compounds have been evaluated for their in vitro antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and fungi Aspergillus niger using serial broth dilution method. All the synthesized compounds displayed antimicrobial activity. Among all the compounds 7c and 7d have been emerged as highly potent molecules with 75 μg/mL potency.


This thesis considers Quaker social reform activism in England from 1780 – 1870 and explores the underlying motivations of those involved. An industrialising British society had given rise to major economic and social changes, resulting in rising poverty and crime. This in turn led to an interest by the middle and upper classes, of which Quakers were members, in reforming the morals of society and ensuring the transmission of middle-class values to create a civil society. The extent to which Quakers were involved with this moral reformation is explored, along with examining how integral their religious doctrine was to their involvement. Quaker humanitarianism is also considered in order to show that Quaker reform activism was informed not only by their theology, but also by their overriding concern with the welfare of all human beings. A growing interest in the well-being of others began to emerge in the early nineteenth century and Quakers were at the forefront of this growing humanitarianism. Quakers also held a strong belief in the primacy of the individual, with everyone being considered of equal worth. This notion of equality informed Quaker actions and led to the incorporation of very early human rights principles into their activism. The areas of reform investigated in this thesis for Quaker motivations are education, capital punishment and prison reform, poor relief, the abolition of slavery, and the treatment of Indigenous peoples in British colonies.

The historiography of nineteenth-century social reform movements has mostly neglected the Quaker contribution in this area and this thesis adds Quakers back onto the historical stage as subjects in their own right. The primary sources accessed for this thesis include reports and minutes from Quaker committees and organisations, along with interdenominational organisations that had a high percentage of Quaker membership. One Quaker journal in particular has also been utilised as another means of exploring Quaker thoughts and actions, as well as personal Quaker diaries and letters. These sources indicate that Quakers were integral and influential participants in reform activism, and not merely peripheral players as argued by some historians.

This thesis argues that Quakers were not a homogenous group, but a group with divergent beliefs and practices that played out in different ways. This thesis also argues that the notions of moral reform and humanitarianism/human rights in the nineteenth century were not rigid concepts, but were interchangeable depending on time, place, and context. Quakers took up the rhetoric of the middle-classes in relation to moral reform, but their actions also indicate that the human rights of others were often an overriding concern. This thesis positions Quakers as early human rights activists who fought for the rights of all individuals, underpinned by their religious understandings of the equality of all human beings.


The purpose of this documentary analysis was to examine trends in research published in Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly (APAQ) over a 10-yr span. A total of 181 research articles published from 2004 to 2013 were coded and analyzed using the following categories: first-author country affiliation, theoretical framework, intervention, research methods, disability categories, and topical focus. Results indicate high frequencies of nonintervention and group-design studies, as well as a low frequency of studies that describe a theoretical or conceptual framework. Trends in disability of participants and topical focus reflect current interests of researchers publishing in APAQ. While some scholars have suggested that changes in research on adapted physical activity would occur, the results of this analysis suggest that many of these categories remain largely unchanged for research published in APAQ. This study calls attention to similarities between the results of the current analysis and previous ones


This review has been prepared by Ege University, a partner of the CREAM Project, on the basis of data and information relevant to Turkish fisheries. To this end, data belonging to a total of 31 information sources produced from 19 fisheries studies were collected, investigated, and analysed. The data are heterogeneous and were obtained from scientific studies, national and international fisheries projects, regulations, management tools, and information on marine protected areas and no-take zones, all of which may be relevant to the ecosystem approach to Turkish fisheries. Analysis of these data shows that few studies have potential to serve the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF) management in Turkey. In other words, there is a lot to be done in order to organize current fishing, aquaculture and other costal activities for EAF management, for which transition is targeted in Turkey's 10th five-year development programme. This review aims to present results of scientific research, decisions taken, applied enforcements, and a summary of presently used technical measures from the EAF perspective for sustainable fisheries. It also puts forward suggestions on strategies needed for transition to targeted EAF management in Turkey.


In the past decade, health issues have become more prominent in foreign policies of countries. (1-6) Health challenges now feature in national security strategies, appear regularly on the agenda of meetings of leading economic powers, affect the bilateral and regional political relationships between developed and developing countries, and influence strategies for United Nations reform. Although health has long been a foreign policy concern, such prominence is historically unprecedented. The transformation in the relationship between health and foreign policy has resulted both from specific events and more general trends in world politics. The worsening of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, threats from emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (e.g. SARS, avian influenza), fears about bioterrorism, and controversies involving trade and health (e.g. TRIPS and access to medicines) have forced foreign-policy-makers to grapple with issues and principles of public health. Globalization has also rendered foreign policy more relevant to health because the line between domestic and foreign impact has been blurred or obliterated, forcing countries to engage in foreign policy action across a greater range of health issues. Developed and developing countries now find health increasingly important to the fulfilment of the governance functions traditionally served by foreign policy--security, national economic well-being, political and economic development of other nations, and the protection of human dignity. This reality produces the need for countries to pursue health as a foreign policy concern in its fullest sense. The development of health as foreign policy contrasts with health's historical place in foreign policy as a "mere humanitarian" endeavour subordinate to the national interests of survival, security, power, and influence. The new relationship between health and foreign policy has significant implications for both policy areas. There has been a recent attempt to explore seriously what health as foreign policy means. These early efforts sense the impact of each policy area on the other. For example, the proliferation of efforts to conceptualize health threats as security challenges brings a classical concern of foreign policy to bear on public health nationally and globally. While this link between security and public health has raised the political profile of certain diseases, it has also worried some people who work on health policy because the security lens does not arise from, or produce, a commitment to "health for all." At the same time, the need for foreign policy that addresses health seriously has forced policy-makers to confront the realities of an epidemio-logically interdependent world and the complexities of the global cooperation needed to protect and promote public health. Health concerns seriously affect and inform how countries perceive and formulate their national interests for foreign policy purposes. Ministries of health and public health experts outside government need to become increasingly skilled at shaping health's new status in foreign policy. The growing links between health and the various aspects of foreign policy require recommendations and suggestions of possible policy directions and identification of appropriate opportunities and instruments to promote public health in this new policy environment. …


The declining number of religious vocations joining Catholic seminaries in Italy has encouraged some dioceses to hire migrant religious workers to compensate for the lack of clergy available for parish work. Although initially approached as a temporary solution, an unforeseen consequence of this policy has been the emergence of congenial relationships between migrant priests and Italian parishioners, who often describe their bond as deeply spiritual. This article examines the experiences of Sri Lankan priests who work in Italy, highlighting the distinct emphasis that they place on reaching out to the communities that they work with. Through fieldwork conducted in Sri Lanka and Italy, I analyse how South Asian priests use concepts such as devotion and sincerity to explain how their approach to the priesthood makes a 'solemn' difference that is celebrated by local parishioners. With an explicit focus on pastoral work, this form of Asian Catholicism emphasises the importance of bodily comportment, ceremonial poise and ritual dignity, capturing the yearnings of Catholic laities avid for devotional celebrations capable of re-connecting them to the spiritually meaningful aspects of their faith. My work draws lines of connection between the historical, theological and pedagogical underpinnings of Sri Lankan Catholicism and the affective responses that South Asian priests elicit in Europe.


Posters are found in public places all over the world. They are usually visually striking, designed to attract the attention of passers-by and entice them to purchase a particular product or service, make them aware of a political viewpoint, or attend a specific event. This remarkable study is an overview of posters throughout history, as well as a representative survey of mass culture from the time of the French Revolution to 2000. Over 450 posters are reproduced here, 250 in full color, selected for both their historical import and their beauty. Author Max Gallo's informative text recapitulates the social and political currents of the day and places each poster in its historical context. The book also includes an essay on the development of poster art by art critic Carlo Arturo Quintavelle.


A few decades ago a dominant view in the developing world was that growth problems in developing countries could be best understood in terms of the international environment. Today no one seriously questions the influence of external conditions on growth. But most economists would also emphasize structural conditions within developing countries as key determinants of the large differences in the rates of per capita income growth among such countries. An examination of the economywide policy reforms that took place in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) during the 1980s and 1990s is particularly relevant to an understanding of these determinants. Though it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss economic growth theories and assess the successes and failures of the economic reforms in the region, the discussion will focus on some of the significant linkages among growth, policy, and poverty.


Eukaryotic DNA must undergo high levels of compaction with a complex topology to package the entire genome into the relatively small nucleus. Exquisitely controlled, local de-compaction of the DNA is also essential for fundamental cellular processes such as DNA replication and transcription. An understanding of the biological and structural nature of these processes is central to unravelling how cellular life is regulated. The primary level of compaction involves the double stranded DNA wrapping around a core of histone proteins, two each of the H2A/H2B and H3/H4 dimers, to form the nucleosome core particle. Multiple factors are involved in controlling the assembly and disassembly of the nucleosome core particle including proteins such as the histone chaperones. NAP1 is one such protein which is involved in many cellular functions including histone shuttling, cell cycle control, transcriptional regulation, histone variant exchange and facilitating nucleosome sliding.
Following the purification of the Xenopus laevis (x) NAP and histones, H2A/H2B and H3/H4, characterisation of xNAP and the associated xNAP·Histone complexes was undertaken. Data obtained from analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC) and size exclusion chromatography with multi-angle laser light scattering (SEC-MALLS) indicated that xNAP formed a stable dimer in solution. In physiologically relevant conditions the xNAP dimer further oligomerised into multiple high-order species. Utilising analytical size exclusion in combination with gel electrophoresis, the binding stoichiometry of one xNAP dimer to one histone dimer was identified. These stoichiometric units (xNAP₂·H2A/H2B and xNAP₂·H3/H4) were also found to oligomerise into multiple large mega-Dalton complexes, as identified by SEC-MALLS and AUC sedimentation velocity experiments. AUC sedimentation equilibrium and small angle scattering data revealed that the predominant species formed was an oblate decamer with a maximum dimension of approximately 250 A, consistent with electron microscopy images.
All of the data obtained from the complementary techniques employed are supportive of the idea that the stoichiometric sub-units oligomerise into pentameric or hexameric complexes, which in turn self-associate into decamer or dodecamer assemblies respectively. It is likely that this NAP·Histone oligomerisation is dependent upon multiple factors such as the phosphorylation state of NAP, post translational modifications of the histones and the binding of several non-histone protein binding partners. The oligomerisation state of NAP may form the basis of a mechanism which alters the localisation and function of NAP within the cell.


Oracle Application Express is an easy-to-use application development environment built on the Oracle technology stack. There are two aspects of that previous sentence that you may find jarringthat Oracle, a company widely known for its database technology, has an application development environment, and that Oracle, a company thought of as delivering high-end, enterprise-ready technology, has anything that is easy to use. But, as this book will show, the introductory statement is completely accurate. Oracle Application Express, commonly known as Oracle APEX or simply APEX, does benefit from the long-established enterprise-class robustness that is the hallmark of Oracle technology. The applications you build will be able to support hundreds of users and many terabytes of data, scalability far beyond even the imagination of most other development environments. And Oracle APEX, with its declarative, wizard-driven methodology, is truly easy to use. In the course of the few hundred pages of this book, you will not only learn about how to use APEX, you will create a usable order entry system. The fast learning curve presented in these pages is a consequence of many years of development and refinement of the APEX product, which began life almost a decade ago within Oracle. By the end of this volume, you will know enough to create your own applications, as well as having the knowledge and understanding of Oracle APEX and the world of Oracle technology to explore further refinements on your own. Best of all, you can use APEX with absolutely no costeither in a hosted environment, as suggested in Chapter 1, or with a free version of the Oracle database. Welcome to the world of Oracle Application Express! This book is aimed at a particular group of usersthose who are not familiar with Oracle Application Express. The book assumes that you have a basic knowledge of application development, the type you could get from playing around with a personal database such as Access. In fact, this book was written with an Access developer in mindan Access developer looking to step up to a more scalable and reliable environment, with reduced maintenance overhead and greater integration between application systems. This book covers the use of Oracle Application Express. Although the book is based on the 3.5 version, you can use the book with older versions as well. However, since the book will use a hosted version of Oracle Application Express, and since both the Oracle database that support the product and the product itself are available as free downloads from http://otn.oracle.com, you should be able to use the latest version easily. This book is structured to give the reader a gradual introduction to the essentials of development with Oracle Application Express. The book contains the following: Welcome to Oracle!This contains an overview of Oracle Application Express, as well as instructions on how to set up a hosted development environment for performing the exercises used in the book. Jumpstart Oracle Application ExpressYou will leap into creating applications with Oracle Application Express and finish a simple application by the end of this. Extending Your Oracle APEX ApplicationThis will introduce you to the options in Oracle APEX that let you ensure that your users will enter correct data while using your application. Validation, Calculation, Navigation, and ListsThis continues the exploration of the aspects of APEX that help you to ensure that data used in your application is correct. Additionally, this covers basic navigation options for your application. Reporting and ChartingThis covers the powerful and flexible reports you can create with Oracle APEX, and introduces you to the graphical capabilities of APEX reporting. Components Working TogetherThis extends your work with charts, showing how you can create charts that link to a more detailed view of the data they represent. You will also learn how to create a calendar page with links to the data shown as part of the calendar, and how to add images taken from the underlying database to an Oracle APEX report. Customizing User InterfacesThis explores advanced options for customizing user interfaces, on individual pages as well as across your entire APEX application. PL/SQLThis introduces you to PL/SQL, the underlying language used to implement your APEX application, and demonstrates how to use the power of PL/SQL to extend the logic in your application. SecurityThis covers how security is implemented for your APEX environment. Deployment and AdministrationThis covers the options you have for deploying an APEX application to another environment and walks you through one of those options. Additionally, this introduces you to the administrative functionality you can use to monitor and manage your APEX applications. Packaged ApplicationsThis gives an overview of packaged applications available for Oracle Application Express, with a more detailed look at a select few. MigrationThis describes how to migrate applications from Microsoft Access to Oracle Application Express.


Improving tourism quality to increase regional income and welfare of the citizens is the responsibility of regional government. And Islamic bonds or so-called sukuk could be one source of funding infrastructure provision.This study attempts to identify the potential of sukuk in Bekasi District using Financial Capability Index (FCI), Maximum Loan Index (MLI) and Financial Accountability Index (FAI) based on financial statements of Bekasi District.This is a descriptive research with quantitative approach for mapping the potential of sukuk of Bekasi District. A result of this study was to determine the potential issuance of sukuk in Bekasi to improve the quality of tourism. The benefits can be earned by Bekasi District Government and especially to their citizen.