Objective: To evaluate the
feasibility of S-1 and high-dose cisplatin short hydration regimens for
outpatients with unresectable metastatic gastric cancer. Methods: Data for
individual outpatients treated in our institution were retrospectively pooled
to assess the feasibility of an S-1 and highdose cisplatin short hydration
regimen (S-1: 80 to 120 mg on Days 1 to 21; cisplatin: 60 mg/m2 on Day 8, every 5 weeks), which
included 2250 ml of intravenous fluids and 1000 ml oral hydration. Ten
consecutive patients were treated with S-1 and high-dose cisplatin short
hydration for unresectable metastatic gastric cancer from July 2011 to May 2012
and were included in the analysis. Results: With a median of 3.5 medication
cycles, unscheduled admission occurred in two patients for 5 days each due to
paralytic ileus and cerebral infarction. Four patients required dose reduction,
in both S-1 and cisplatin in two patients, and in S-1 alone and cisplatin alone
in one patient each. Renal function transiently declined after administration
of cisplatin, but serum creatinine level and estimated glomerular filtration
rate were both improved by the time of the next administration. Conclusion:
This study suggests that an S-1 and high-dose cisplatin short hydration strategy
for outpatients with unresectable metastatic gastric cancer might be feasible.


Order and lattice theory provides convenient mathematical tools for pattern mining, in particular for condensed irredundant representations of pattern spaces and their efficient generation. Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) offers a generic framework, called pattern structures, to formalize many types of patterns, such as itemsets, intervals, graphs, and sequence sets. Moreover, FCA provides generic algorithms to generate irredundantly all closed patterns, the only condition being that the pattern space is a meet-semilattice. This does not always hold, e.g. for sequential and graph patterns. Here, we discuss pattern setups consisting of descriptions making just a partial order. Such a framework can be too broad, causing several problems, so we propose a new model, dubbed pattern multistructures, lying between pattern setups and pattern structures, which relies on multilattices. Finally, we consider some techniques, namely completions, transforming pattern setups to pattern structures using sets/antichains of patterns.


With the growing popularity of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) as a logic-based ontology language, as well as advancements in the language itself, the need for more sophisticated and up-to-date ontology engineering services increases as well. While, for instance, there is active focus on new reasoners and optimisations, other services fall short of advancing at the same rate (it suffices to compare the number of freely-available reasoners with ontology editors). In particular, very little is understood about how ontologies evolve over time, and how reasoners? performance varies as the input changes.Given the evolving nature of ontologies, detecting and presenting changes (via a so-called diff) between them is an essential engineering service, especially for version control systems or to support change analysis. In this thesis we address the diff problem for description logic (DL) based ontologies, specifically OWL 2 DL ontologies based on the SROIQ DL. The outcomes are novel algorithms employing both syntactic and semantic techniques to, firstly, detect axiom changes, and what terms had their meaning affected between ontologies, secondly, categorise their impact (for example, determining that an axiom is a stronger version of another), and finally, align changes appropriately, i.e., align source and target of axiom changes (so the stronger axiom with the weaker one, from our example), and axioms with the terms they affect.Subsequently, we present a theory of reasoner performance heterogeneity, based on field observations related to reasoner performance variability phenomena. Our hypothesis is that there exist two kinds of performance behaviour: an ontology/reasoner combination can be performance-homogeneous or performance-heterogeneous. Finally, we verify that performance-heterogeneous reasoner/ontology combinations contain small, performance-degrading sets of axioms, which we call hot spots. We devise a performance hot spot finding technique, and show that hot spots provide a promising basis for engineering efficient reasoners.


The most important source of renewable energy in Serbia represents biomass (60.3 %) with total potential of 3.405 million toe. Almost half of this amount (1.67 million toe) represents agricultural and industrial waste, with further negligible revalorization. Various investigations have demonstrated that agricultural byproducts have promising capacities to remove a variety of pollutants, which might increase the sustainability of their life cycle. This paper investigates the possible use of lignocellulosic waste material (LCW), originating from food industry as biosorbent for heavy metals, and later as a solid fuel. For this purpose we have used peach stone particles (PS) obtained by mechanical activation of this LCW as Cu(II) sorbent.  The physical and chemical characteristics of PS reveal its complex structure which was confirmed by SEM, and FTIR analysis.  PS behavior on pyrolysis process was studied by dynamic thermo gravimetric and derivate thermo gravimetric analysis. Results show that this lignocellulosic waste can be applied as sorbent and as a fuel. This approve that this agricultural waste can be a resource more than a waste and that it does not need to be disposed of in the costly and inefficient way, which is especially important in developing economies, like Serbian. Keywords: biomass, lignocellulosic waste, pollution prevention, sorption, fuel


Microfinance and micro credits are concepts that are used frequently when talking about poverty reducing actions. This paper is a case study of the poverty alleviation impacts of microfinance institutions and it contrasts the effects of Grameen Bank and Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) operating in Bangladesh. The case study examines the institutions' effects in the 21st century since most of the reports have compared the effects in the past not reflecting on future conditions. The questions at issue are if Grameen Bank and BRAC can affect the poverty status of its members in a positive way and if there is a positive effect, which of the approaches are the best to use? To analyse the non monetary dimension, concepts such as health and education have been used as indicators for poverty reduction and the monetary indicator used is income through employment. Simultaneously economic models and concepts have been considered throughout the paper. The findings of this case study implied that both institutions have positive effects on reducing poverty among its members, but BRAC has the broadest view seeing to all factors investigated and therefore its approach is the best to use. Nevertheless, as previous studies have implied, sustainability and cost-effectiveness within the microfinance programme is important for the long-run poverty reduction. Evaluating the economic performance of the two institutions Grameen Bank is more efficient in using its resources than BRAC, but Grameen Bank shows a decreasing rate of efficiency while BRAC is improving significantly. With this in consideration BRAC is still showing the best poverty reducing result for its members today, but if the organisation does not find a way to improve its economical performance its actions will not be sustainable in the long run.


Researchers have recently combined clinical and cognitive areas of research in order to investigate the role of cognitive factors in explaining how emotional disorders are developed and maintained. It is believed that biased cognitive processing of emotionally relevant information can greatly affect emotional responses and behaviour where insights into such cognitive processes can have invaluable clinical implications.The present thesis investigates the role of cognitive biases for information related to food and body appearance in individuals with eating disorders (ED) and those with non-clinically eating disorder-related concerns (NED). Are ED characterised by cognitive biases toward such information related to their specific concerns? Are such cognitive biases specific to clinical ED or present also in NED samples? Are cognitive biases operating at both conscious and unconscious levels of cognitive processing?The tasks used to pursue these questions were: the emotional Stroop task, an Internet version of the emotional Stroop, Jacoby's white noise paradigm and a recognition task. The influence of priming on the emotional Stroop task was also investigated in order to test whether the use of this task could be extended to more complex investigations than selective attention.Results provide support for that cognitive processing of information related to eating and body appearance is biased in individuals with ED. It is, however, unclear whether such biased processing is specific to clinical ED. Findings further suggest that cognitive biases occur primarily at unconscious levels of cognitive processing. Support was also obtained for that the emotional Stroop task is sensitive to priming where initial body perception may be one factor influencing cognitive responses toward negative self referent words following exposure to thin ideal images. Results further suggest that the emotional Stroop task successfully can be administered via the Internet where manipulating task delivery and response mode may increase the sensitivity of this task. Some of the advantages of administering the emotional Stroop task via Internet over traditional methods are access to more heterogeneous samples, more ecologically valid situations, reduced costs and minimisation of demand characteristics.


Three zaratite samples from Cape Ortegal (type locality, Spain), Texas, Lancaster County (Pennsylvania) and Heazlewood (Tasmania) were analyzed by electron-probe micro-analysis (EPMA), environmental scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive spectrometer (ESEM-EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential thermal analysis and thermogravimetry (DTA-TG), micro-Raman and Fourier-transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR). The empirical formulae calculated from EPMA exhibit different molar ratios (Ni/CO3, Ni/OH and H 2 O/Ni), showing that these three samples referred to as 'zaratite' are chemically distinct; they are actually close to either anhydrous zaratite (Ortegal), nullaginite (Tasmania) or gaspeite (Pennsylvania). The XRD patterns of the three samples only validate their low-crystallinity character with variable mineral inclusions. Raman and FTIR spectra confirm large similarities among the three samples, in line with the general chemical kinship of these nickel hydroxycarbonate (± hydrate) materials. Our data suggest that the natural nickel hydroxycarbonate materials, collectively referred to as 'zaratite' on the basis of colour, occurrence and poor crystallinity, are in fact so diverse in terms of Ni/C/H ratios that the 'zaratite' term should not deserve a species status and so remains highly questionable.


Engineering projects on the continental shelf off Sydney, Australia, have stimulated investigation into the sediment transport system of the shelf. Investigation activities associated with these projects have included: definition of sea bed morphology, sediment distribution and bedform characteristics; monitoring of steady and wave induced currents; wind data collection; suspended sediment sampling; bottom camera sediment movement investigations and analytical studies of sediment reaction to sea bed forcing functions. Sea bed velocity exceedence relationships for both wave oscillations and steady currents have been determined at depths of 24 m, 60 m and 80 m. Thresholds of sediment movement have been defined. Relative sediment transport computations have been undertaken and studies of suspended sediment concentration profiles are in progress so that absolute transport rates can be determined. The prevailing conditions, which include a mainly south bound current, are seldom sufficient to induce entrainment of shelf sediments. Transport events mainly result from major storms in the Tasman Sea which produce both high energy waves and north bound currents. Although these events are rare and short lived, the combined wave and current shear produced at the sea bed during the events gives rise to entrainment conditions which result in their dominance of the shelf sediment transport system.


Digital motion analysis in freestyle snowboarding requires a stable trick detection and accurate classification. Freestyle snowboarding contains several trick categories that all have to be recognized for an application in training sessions or competitions. While previous work already addressed the classification of specific tricks or turns, there is no known method that contains a full pipeline for detection and classification of tricks from multiple categories. In this paper, we suggest a classification pipeline containing the detection, categorization and classification of tricks of two major freestyle trick categories. We evaluated our algorithm based on data from two different acquisitions with a total number of eleven athletes and 275 trick events. Tricks of both categories were categorized with recall results of 96.6% and 97.4%. The classification of the tricks was evaluated to an accuracy of 90.3 % for the first and 93.3% for the second category.


With the continuous process of urbanization in many cities around the globe, construction works are increasingly interrupting traffic flow in urban roads. At construction sites, usually traffic control personnel are employed to instruct the traffic flow at the times obstruction. Employing manual labour flagmen for traffic control is costly and can potentially expose the workers to safety hazards. Alternative attempts such as using remotely controlled signs or timers are not ideal; the former still requires human input and the latter does not optimize traffic control based on traffic density. To tackle this problem, we propose a fully automated traffic controller solution that uses visual sensors and machine vision technology. This system can replace the human traffic controllers during lane closures on the event of a construction. The implementation of this system eliminates the requirement for conventional traffic controllers, reducing the overall health and safety risks to workers and drivers. Our solution can result in substantial cost savings by replacing the traffic controllers. In addition, with manual labour, traffic control performance can be affected by weather conditions or fatigue from long hour shifts. Thus, our solution can lead to improved road safety and robustness of traffic flow as well.


Sexual segregation is a common phenomenon observed during the interaction between children in different cultures and social groups. The present work studied sexual segregation under an ethological view aiming to understand the role of situational variables over the regulation of that behavior during play interactions. A group of 8-9 years old children from the Scout movement of Colatina/ES, Brazil, had their behaviors registered in a video cassette. Due to the possible changes in the numbers of participants during data collecting period (among 9 and 18), the analysis focused on the expressed behaviors in different contexts. The results showed that boys had a more agitated behavior pattern than girls. Girls showed up calmer during the contact between themselves and more agitated in some interactions with boys. Despite the differences, many kinds of contexts in which a closer contact between boys and girls, such as maintenance of non-agonistic interactions between both, were observed. Situational variables are discussed in the analysis of different behavioral categories, showing the importance of play style in the determination of sexual segregation.


Background
Aortic Balloon Occlusion or Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta (REBOA) for hemorrhage control during endovascular aortic repair (EVAR) is a technique that has been used for decades for ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysms (rAAA). This usually requires bilateral femoral access, however, when only single-sided vascular access can be obtained this complicates the procedure if these techniques are to be used. We present two cases of single-sided vascular access, recently performed at our institution, using simultaneous REBOA and aortic stent-graft placement during EVAR in rAAA.

Methods and Results
This is a description of two clinical cases where REBOA and EVAR were performed through single-sided vascular access for the treatment of rAAA at Örebro University Hospital between March 2018 and June 2018.

Conclusion
This case report demonstrates that despite the limitation of single-sided access, an aortic stent-graft can be placed for treatment of a rAAA during continuous aortic occlusion with REBOA, facilitated by using a multidisciplinary EVTM team approach.


Optical networks are expected to provide a unified platform for a diverse set of emerging applications (three-dimensional TV, digital cinema, e-health, grid computing, etc). The service differentiation will be an essential feature of these networks. Considering the fact that users have different levels of patience for different network applications, referred to as set-up delay tolerance, it will be one of the key parameters for service differentiation. Service differentiation based on set-up delay tolerance will not only enable network users to select an appropriate service class (SC) in compliance with their requirements, but will also provide an opportunity to optimize the network resource provisioning by exploiting this information, resulting in an improvement in the overall performance. Improvement in network performance can be further enhanced by exploiting the connection holding-time awareness. However, when multiple classes of service with different set-up delay tolerances are competing for network resources, the connection requests belonging to SCs with higher set-up delay tolerance have better chances to grab the resources and leave less room for the others, resulting in degradation in the blocking performance of less patient customers. This study proposes different scheduling strategies for promoting the requests belonging to smaller set-up delay tolerance SCs, such as giving priority, reserving some fraction of available resources, and augmenting the research space by providing some extra paths. Extensive simulation results show that 1) priority in the rescheduling queue is not always sufficient for eradicating the degradation effect of high delay tolerant SCs on the provisioning rate of the most stringent SC, and 2) by utilizing the proposed strategies, resource efficiency and overall network blocking performance improve significantly in all SCs.


X-ray diffraction from a synchrotron source was employed in an attempt to identify the crystal structures in zirconia ceramics produced by the sol-gel method. The particles of chemically precipitated zirconia, after calcination below 600 °C, are very fine, and have a diffracting particle size in the range of 7-15 nm. As the tetragonal and cubic structures of zirconia have similar lattice parameters, it is difficult to distinguish between the two. The tetragonal structure can be identified only by the characteristic splittings of the Bragg profiles from the "c" index planes. However, these split Bragg peaks from the tetragonal phase in zirconia overlap with one another due to particle size broadening. In order to distinguish between the tetragonal and cubic structures of zirconia, three samples were studied using synchrotron radiation source. The results indicated that a sample containing 13 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia possessed the cubic structure with a _0 = 0.51420 ± 0.00012 nm. A sample containing 6.5 mol% yttria stabilized zirconia was found to consist of a cubic phase with a _0 = 0.51430 ± 0.00008 nm. Finally, a sample which was precipitated from a pH 13.5 solution was observed to have the tetragonal structure with a _0 = 0.51441 ± 0.00085 nm and c _0 = 0.51902 ± 0.00086.


This paper describes a general mechanism for the qualitative interpretation of simple arithmetic relations. This mechanism is useful for the understanding and reasoning about domains that can be modeled by systems of simple arithmetic equations. Our representation attempts to model the underlying arithmetic in its complete detail. Reasoning from these forms provides the completeness and consistency that cannot be always guaranteed by a pure production-rule based system. We describe an experimental architecture for Equation Reasoning (ER), and illustrate its applicability using examples from the financial domain.


Seeking informative projecting directions has been an important task in utilizing sliced Wasserstein distance in applications. However, finding these directions usually requires an iterative optimization procedure over the space of projecting directions, which is computationally expensive. Moreover, the computational issue is even more severe in deep learning applications, where computing the distance between two mini-batch probability measures is repeated several times. This nested loop has been one of the main challenges that prevent the usage of sliced Wasserstein distances based on good projections in practice. To address this challenge, we propose to utilize the learning-to-optimize technique or amortized optimization to predict the informative direction of any given two mini-batch probability measures. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that bridges amortized optimization and sliced Wasserstein generative models. In particular, we derive linear amortized models, generalized linear amortized models, and non-linear amortized models which are corresponding to three types of novel mini-batch losses, named amortized sliced Wasserstein. We demonstrate the favorable performance of the proposed sliced losses in deep generative modeling on standard benchmark datasets.


The socio-economic divide that characterise the South African society two decades into the new dispensation have not been adequately averted or addressed and, this state of affair has been so glaring within the mining industry. This can arguably be attributed to the infamous migrant labour system, degrading single-hostel system, division of labour along racial lines and discriminatory compensation system. The involvement and role of labour unions has also come under some intense scrutiny as a vehicle of influencing policy direction on mining operations and their social responsibility on communities surrounding their area of operations. In the efforts of redeeming their chequered history, mining companies have embraced some aspects of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on the one hand, and on the other, the state (through the Department of Mineral Resources), in consultations with all other stakeholders made a commitment through Mining Charter, to alleviate the injustices of the past. This paper provides an assessment of the progress thus far made in pursuit of responsible business practices. Firstly; the notion of CSR as a discourse and its understanding within the mining industry will be explored, Secondly; a brief overview of the historical and policy context of the South African socioeconomic background. Thirdly; reflections on the mining charter as a framework for responsible business within the mining industry. Lastly; an analysis of the progress achieved and concluding remarks.


We report the fabrication of a novel type of artificial small diameter blood vessels, termed biomimetic tissue-engineered blood vessels (bTEBV), with a modular composition. They are composed of a hydrogel scaffold consisting of two negatively charged natural polymers, alginate and a modified chitosan, N,O-carboxymethyl chitosan (N,O-CMC). Into this biologically inert scaffold two biofunctionally active biopolymers are embedded, inorganic polyphosphate (polyP) and silica, as well as gelatin which exposes the cell recognition signal, Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD). These materials can be hardened by exposure to Ca2+ through formation of Ca2+ bridges between the polyanions, alginate, N,O-CMC, and polyP (alginate-Ca2+-N,O-CMC-polyP). The bTEBV are formed by pressing the hydrogel through an extruder into a hardening solution, containing Ca2+. In this universal scaffold of the bTEBV biomaterial, polycations such as poly(l-Lys), poly(d-Lys) or a His/Gly-tagged RGD peptide (three RGD units) were incorporated, which promote the adhesion of endothelial cells to the vessel surface. The mechanical properties of the biopolymer material (alginate-Ca2+-N,O-CMC-polyP-silica) revealed a hardness (elastic modulus) of 475 kPa even after a short incubation period in CaCl2 solution. The material of the artificial vascular grafts (bTEBVs with an outer size 6 mm and 1.8 mm, and an inner diameter 4 mm and 0.8 mm, respectively) turned out to be durable in 4-week pulsatile flow experiments at an alternating pressure between 25 and 100 mbar (18.7 and 75.0 mm Hg). The burst pressure of the larger (smaller) vessels was 850 mbar (145 mbar). Incorporation of polycationic poly(l-Lys), poly(d-Lys), and especially the His/Gly-tagged RGD peptide, markedly increased the adhesion of human, umbilical vein/vascular endothelial cells, EA.HY926 cells, to the surface of the hydrogel. No significant effect of the polyP samples on the clotting of human plasma is measured. We propose that the metabolically degradable polymeric scaffold bTEBV is a promising biomaterial for future prosthetic vascular grafts.


After several decades of improvement, water quality in the United States is getting worse, and the problem is primarily caused by run-off from non-point sources, such as farms and urban development. These non-point sources have never had regulatory mandates in the Clean Water Act, and have proven very difficult to control. With little likelihood of comprehensive statutory changes, the EPA and the states that administer the Clean Water Act have looked to other regulatory means to address this problem. One of the most prominent has been the use of markets in pollution (particularly for nutrient pollution from run-off) to provide incentives for control. In short, the agencies and the regulated private sector have latched on to the possibility of highly regulated sources (such as industrial emitters) paying largely unregulated sources (such as agricultural lands) to reduce run-off into the nation's water bodies. In theory, this is consistent with the regulatory push towards efficiency and using markets as rational arbiters of pollution control. While this theory has been used on many small scales over the last 15 years, recently the EPA and many states have announced a reliance on it at a very large scale in order to reverse water pollution decline, particularly in large water bodies with dead zones, like the Chesapeake Bay. While I believe these markets could work in theory at this scale, I do not believe the administrative agencies have addressed problems with doing so. Because of the similarity in problems concerning environmental integrity and efficiency between non-point agricultural runoff and biological offsets in a carbon trading system, I believe that much of the analysis of addressing these offsets from a series of legislative proposals could provide a regulatory template for dealing with non-point source agricultural pollution. This article proposes such a regulatory template based on these ideas.


Using molecular techniques and bioinformatics tools, we studied the vector-host interactions and the molecular epidemiology of West Nile virus (WNV) in western Iran. Mosquitoes were collected during 2017 and 2018. DNA typing assays were used to study vector-host interactions. Mosquitoes were screened by RT-PCR for the genomes of five virus families. WNV-positive samples were fully sequenced and evolutionary tree and molecular architecture were constructed by Geneious software and SWISS-MODEL workspace, respectively. A total of 5028 mosquito specimens were collected and identified. The most prevalent species was Culex (Cx.) pipiens complex (57.3%). Analysis of the blood-feeding preferences of blood-fed mosquitoes revealed six mammalian and one bird species as hosts. One mosquito pool containing non-blood-fed Cx. theileri and one blood-fed Culex pipiens pipiens (Cpp.) biotype pipiens were positive for WNV. A phylogram indicated that the obtained WNV sequences belonged to lineage 2, subclade 2 g. Several amino acid substitutions suspected as virulence markers were observed in the Iranian WNV strains. The three-dimensional structural homology model of the E-protein identified hot spot domains known to facilitate virus invasion and neurotropism. The recent detection of WNV lineage 2 in mosquitoes from several regions of Iran in consecutive years suggests that the virus is established in the country.


Family Matters – Essays of Families, Firms and Funding in the Philippines 1850–2014 is a study of family business groups in the Philippines. It consists of an introductory essay and four separate papers. The introductory essay frames the thesis in the vast literature on family firms and family business groups in emerging economies, discusses sources and methodology, and provides an overview of Philippine economic history to give the overarching economic context to the separate papers. The first paper deals with the role of institutions in understanding the dominance and prevalence of family business groups in the Philippines. The literature posits that weak institutions can help explain the predominance of family business groups in emerging economies. This paper takes a historical perspective to examine whether that explanation holds over time, examining the development of core property rights and core economic institutions over time and how family firms have responded. The second paper studies funding options in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and whether the rapidly growing financial system was driven from above or below. The paper examines the impact it had on the explicit goal of stimulating investment and growth in the early twentieth century and what that meant for family firms. The third paper studies capital market developments since the Asian crisis and in particular the growth of the corporate bond market in the Philippines; how this development and how it affected family business groups. The fourth paper deals with governance and management capabilities and examines professionalization of family firms over time to seek to answer the question of longevity. Management literature provides studies and models for family firms but these are fairly recent whereas the family firms that have been in business for several generations have found ways to manage for the long term. The paper analyses what three select groups have done in terms of professionalization and management.


This study aimed to validate the Child's and Parent's Questionnaire about Teeth Appearance and to evaluate concerns relative to fluorosis among 213 pairs of parents and 12-year-old children from two regions of Brazil. Reliability was assessed by Cronbach's alpha and intraclass correlation coefficient, and construct and criterion validity by Spearman's correlations. Student t-test was used to compare the two regions and to assess parent/child agreement. Internal consistency was acceptable, and test-retest reliability was moderate to excellent. Perception of moderate to severe fluorosis and clinical data were significantly correlated, as were perception of fluorosis and subjects' concerns. Although parents from Rafael Arruda, Ceara State, showed a higher perception of fluorosis, parental concern was greater in Piracicaba, Sao Paulo State. Parents were more worried and dissatisfied with their children's dental appearance than the children themselves. This version of the questionnaire proved to be valid and reliable for assessing children's and parents' perceptions of dental fluorosis.


In this book, the foremost expert on the Italian political system takes a lively look at the apparent chaos-and surprising success-of Italian democracy. "A lively, literate look at Italy-a view from the outside that is really a view from the inside." -Umberto Eco "I find Mr. LaPalombara's paradoxes exhilarating, and I admire his courage in plunging into the treacherous waters of 'national character'." -H. Stuart Hughes, New York Times Book Review


Object detection and tracking is a crucial task as a basis for advanced driver assistance and automation systems. For this purpose a fusion system at object level is proposed, which allows high availability and reliability, since a high independence of the sensors can be reached. In order to deal with common challenges of object detection and tracking, such as maneuvering vehicles, data outliers, partial observability and split and merge effects, a series of novel strategies have been developed. These include the adaptive noise modeling, the definition of an object logical reference, the partial observability modeling, the multiple association of observations, and strategies to duplicate and unify object hypotheses. The proposed fusion system has been prototypically implemented based on a camera and a laser scanner. Furthermore, it has been tested with both simulated and real data. The test results show a win in data quality and robustness, with which an improvement of driver assistance and automation systems can be reached.


Real-time visual feedback is an important capability that many robotic systems must possess if these systems are to operate successfully in dynamically varying and imprecisely calibrated environments. An eye-in-hand system is a common technique for providing camera motion to increase the working region of a visual sensor. Although eye-in-hand robotic systems have been well-studied, several deficiencies in proposed systems make them inadequate for actual use. Typically, the systems fail if manipulators pass through singularities or joint limits. Objects being tracked can be lost if the objects become defocused, occluded, or if features on the objects lie outside the field of view of the camera. In this paper, a technique is introduced for integrating a visual tracking strategy with dynamically determined sensor placement criteria. This allows the system to automatically determine, in real-time, proper camera motion for tracking objects successfully while accounting for the undesirable, but often unavoidable, characteristics of camera-lens and manipulator systems. The sensor placement criteria considered include focus, field-of-view spatial resolution, manipulator configuration, and a newly introduced measure called resolvability. Experimental results are presented.<<ETX>>


Europe's pensions landscape has changed dramatically since the 1990s. This paper tries to assess better the impact of these changes using a broad social sustainability framework. Pension wealth estimates for a variety of hypothetical cases are used to assess the ability of systems to alleviate poverty and maintain living standards, while setting out how reforms could change future costs and relative entitlements for different generations. By focusing on all prospective transfers rather than those at retirement and by looking into the interaction between entitlements and labour participation, this approach provides additional insights into the impact of reforms. Our estimates suggest that generosity has fallen significantly, but remains strong in many countries. However, moves to link benefits to contributions have raised adequacy concerns for certain groups and strengthened the need for longer careers. Although reforms have helped address fiscal challenges, in many countries pressures remain strong and further reforms are likely.


There is a large and growing body of evidence that learner-centered education is more effective in terms of learning outcomes; it is also more satisfying for the learner. In a learner-centered course, the focus is on a partnership between the teacher and learner with shared responsibility for learning. The learner-centered approach fits well with the characteristics of "millennial" generation students, who are team-oriented, value continuous learning and seek frequent feedback. Learnercentered education has been recommended as a viable approach for information systems education for at least a decade, but applying these principles may be especially important today. Because learner-centered education matches well with the preferences of today's students, it is possible that applying learner-centered principles to IS courses can help address our enrollment problems. The purposes of this workshop are to introduce the concepts of learner-centered education, to illustrate how learner-centered concepts can be applied to information systems courses, and to help participants understand how they can employ learner-centered education in their courses. In addition, a methodology for developing learning activities will be presented and applied. The workshop will be highly interactive, and will use the principles of leaner-centered education. Participants will receive a link to workshop materials and additional resources.


Economic and political developments in Greece have been at the forefront of the international mass media coverage of the European financial and economic crises. Contrary to fashionable interpretations of the malaise, our findings suggest that the main causes of the many 'crises' hitting the country are social and political, rather than economic or financial. Employing the 'institutional theory of generalised trust', we examine the roots of the current crises in political corruption, confidence in institutions and interpersonal trust. Data show that, for nearly two decades, Greece has consistently ranked last in Europe on almost all indicators for trust, confidence and corruption. The analysis pinpoints civic pathogenies that require immediate action. We suggest a number of policy measures that provide a starting point for further developing more concrete public policy solutions on how citizens' trust and Greek civil society can be strengthened in order to obtain lasting societal, political and economic improvements.


Individual students may be better suited to learning in a particular way, using distinctive modes for thinking, relating and creating. The notion of students having particular learning styles has implications for teaching strategies. Because preferred modes of input and output vary from one individual to another, it is critical that teachers use a range of teaching strategies to effectively meet the needs of individual learners. Sound health instruction should incorporate a variety of teaching methods intended to complement the learning styles of children. This should lead to young learners who are both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated to inquire, infer, and interpret; to think reflectively, critically and creatively; and in the final analysis to make use of the knowledge and skills they have gained by becoming effective decisionmakers.


The inability to attain or maintain a penile erection sufficient for sexual intercourse is a common problem experienced by a third of men over the age of 40 years. Erectile dysfunction (ED) is a debilitating disease which can have profound psychological effects on personal relationships and the social well-being of the affected individual. The diagnosis and evaluation of sexual dysfunction has been well described, and several validated algorithms are available to quantify the classification and severity. The International Index of Erectile Function and the Sexual Health Inventory for Men questionnaires are commonly used in the initial assessment of ED. Several risk factors have been linked to the pathophysiology of ED. Endothelial damage has been the focus of many recent studies. An evaluation of cardiovascular status, in addition to the administration of questionnaires to men with ED, might reduce mortality and improve sexual quality of life.


In ginseng, minor ginsenosides were more effective pharmacological properties than major ginsenosides. Therefore, finding bacteria that can convert major ginsenosides has been paying attention. Ginsenoside Rb1 is one of major ginsenosides of ginseng and its biotransformation produces pharmacologically active compounds such as compound K. In this study, the isolation of bacterial strains from Vietnamese ginseng cultivated soil was carried out with the objective of evaluating their hydrolytic capacity for use in biotransformation of ginsenosides Rb1. In the screening of β-glucosidase producing bacteria, seven isolates exhibited black color zones on R2A agar medium containing esculine. Among seven isolates, strain E3 showed the highest ability biotransformation of ginsenosides Rb1 in Luria-Bertani broth. Therefore, strain E3 was selected for further research. Biotransformation of Rb1 was observed by using thin layer chromatography (TLC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with ginsenoside standards for comparison. We determined the optimal conditions for biotransformation of ginsenoside Rb1 into the compound K of crude enzymes of strain E3 were at 30°C, pH 7,0 and 3 days. Ginsenoside Rb1 was converted into compound K via ginsenoside Rd and F2. The analyses of 16S rRNA gene and phylogenetic tree indicated that strain E3 was closely related to Paenibacillus terrigena with 99,4% identity and formed a discrete cluster with type strain Paenibacillus terrigena A35T with high bootstrap support (99%), supporting strain E3 belonging to the species Paenibacillus terrigena. Physiological characteristics also supported strain E3 belonging to the genus Peanibacillus. This is the first report of biotransformation of ginsenosides using bacterial strains isolated from Vietnamese ginseng cultivated soil in Vietnam. Based on our the obtained results, strain E3 could be applied for the preparation of ginsenoside compound K for use in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.


The distinction we make between five different senses is a universal one. Rather than speaking of generically perceiving something, we talk of perceiving in one of five determinate ways: we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste things. In distinguishing determinate ways of perceiving things what are we distinguishing between? What, in other words, is a sense modality? An answer to this question must tell us what constitutes a sense modality and so needs to do more than simply describe differences in virtue of which we can distinguish the perceptions of different senses. There are many such differences – the different perceptions involve different sense organs, sensitivity to different kinds of stimuli, the perception of different properties, and they involve different kinds of experiences – but which, if any, of these differences are the differences that really matter?


Many commonly used groundwater sampling techniques and procedures have resulted from methods developed for water supply investigations. These methods have persisted, even though the monitoring goals may have changed from water supply development to contaminant source and plume delineation. Unfortunately, the use of these methods can result in an incorrect understanding of the contaminant concentrations and system geochemistry, often overestimating or underestimating the true values or the extent of a plume.


The photobleaching properties of a 3D memory material based on pyrylium salts are studied. It is shown that under ultrashort pulsed irradiation photobleaching occurs through two diverse mechanisms. One is major and causes fast bleaching, whereas the other is minor and causes slow bleaching. Furthermore, it is proved that both mechanisms are three- or more-photon processes. This fact gives the capability of significantly increasing data storage density.


The most common disinfectants for water treatment are based on chlorine and
 its compounds. Practically, water treatments with chlorine compounds have no
 alternative, since they provide, in comparison to other effective processes
 such as ozonization or ultraviolet irradiation, high residual disinfection
 capacity. Unfortunately, all of chlorine-based compounds for disinfection
 tend to degrade during storage, thus reducing the concentration of active
 chlorine. Apart from degradation, additional problems are transportation,
 storage and handling of such hazardous compounds. Nowadays, a lot of
 attention is paid to the development of electrochemical devices for in situ
 production of chlorine dioxide or sodium hypochlorite as efficient
 disinfectants for water treatment. The most important part of such a device
 is the electrochemical reactor. Electrochemical reactor uses external source
 of direct current in order to produce disinfectants in electrochemical
 reactions occurring at the electrodes. Construction of an electrochemical
 device for water treatment is based on evaluation of optimal conditions for
 electrochemical reactions during continues production of disinfectants. The
 aim of this study was to develop a low-cost electrochemical device for the
 production of disinfectant, active chlorine, at the place of its usage, based
 on newly developed technical solutions and newest commercial components. The
 projected electrochemical device was constructed and mounted, and its
 operation was investigated. Investigations involved both functionality of
 individual components and device in general. The major goal of these
 investigations was to achieve maximal efficiency in extreme condition of
 elevated room temperature and humidity with a novel device construction
 involving coaxial heat exchanger at the solution inlet. Room operation of the
 proposed device was investigated when relative humidity was set to 90% and
 the ambient temperature of 38°C. The obtained results in such extreme
 operation conditions reveled that it was possible to obtain required
 concentration of 0.85% of active chlorine with maximal temperature of outlet
 electrolyte of 35.3°C, which is within the limits of optimal temperatures.
 [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 172046]


A robust adaptive fuzzy-neural control scheme for nonlinear dynamical systems is proposed to attenuate the effects caused by unmodeled dynamics, disturbance and modeling errors. A composite update law, which has a generalized form combining the projection algorithm modification and the switching-/spl sigma/ adaptive law, is used to tune the adjustable parameters for preventing parameter drift and confining states of the system into the specified regions. Moreover, a fuzzy variable structure control method is incorporated into the control law so that the derived controller is robust with respect to unmodeled dynamics, disturbances and modeling errors. Compared with previous control schemes for nonlinear systems, the magnitude of the control input by using the proposed approach is much smaller, which is a significant advantage in designing controllers for practical applications. To demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed method, several examples are illustrated in the paper.


Most political scientists assume that American presidents are power-seeking political animals: they seek to optimize their chances of reelection, to pursue advantage against their personal rivals, and to see as much of their desired policy ends enacted, implemented, and funded. Presidents, like other, more "ordinary" political actors, are powerfully shaped by a self-aggrandizing decision-making calculus. As crucial--and often decisive--as the inclination to maximize one's power may be, presidential decision making is, nonetheless, shaped by other motives emanating from the responsibilities of the office. American presidents, whether they governed during the early national period, the Gilded Age, the Cold War, or post-9/11 America, faced circumstances that call upon them to act, not merely as self-interested political actors but as statesmen pressed to balance their self-aggrandizing aims with the perceived exigencies of governance. Presidents of the early national and antebellum years restrained their own policy visions in order to assuage sectional divisions in the polity; presidents confronting the ideological challenge of global communism adjusted their preferred domestic policy priorities to thwart the spread of foreign sympathies among discontented domestic groups; presidents facing fiscal or economic crisis have been pressed to pursue policy ends that undercut their popularity with their party or with the mass public as a whole. Presidents, in other words, restrain their inclination to maximize power in service of what they take to be the fundamental interests of the republic. What this balance entails hinges not merely on the nature of the threat to America's vital interests (whether real or perceived) but also on the structural conditions that surround the office of the president. The notion that power-maximizing behavior is restrained by governing exigencies, however, is not easily accommodated by existing analytical approaches to the study of the presidency. Scholars, at least since Richard Neustadt's seminal work (1990 [1960]), have treated the maximization of power as presidents' principal impetus for action. Neustadt suggested that when presidents maximize their power, they serve the public good, contrary to the assumptions encoded in the Constitution. His emphasis on power maximization is shared by leading scholars of various methodological persuasions. Indeed, behaviorialists (Edwards 1989; see also Edwards and Wayne 1983), historical institutionalists (Lowi 1985; Skowronek 1997), and rational choice scholars (Cameron 2000a; McCarty and Poole 1995) all begin or conclude with an assumption that presidents are driven by an overriding aim to secure their most preferred policy outcomes. Presidential decision making is, no doubt, profoundly shaped by self-aggrandizing aims. American presidents, however, have also exercised a measure of restraint in their efforts to maximize power. This article will make this case, focusing in particular on the presidents of the early national and antebellum periods (1789 to 1815 and 1815 to 1861, respectively). Building on B. Dan Wood's call to take "explanations that involve statesmanship and the interests of the nation at large as potential explanations for presidential behavior" more seriously (Wood 2009b, 811), I demonstrate below that these presidents balanced their self-interested preferences with what they took to be a responsibility to thwart separatist initiatives and preempt political violence between the political parties and the states. The task of steering the ship of state between the partisan extremes and preventing polarizing divisions from escalating into violence was a crucial impetus for action for the antebellum presidents. (1) Such acts of statesmanship often entailed a degree of restraint, calling upon presidents to curb their self-interested inclinations when they perceived that doing so would help preserve the union of the states. …


Quality assurance of herbal medicine is an important factor and basic requirement for herbal drug industry and other drug development organizations. Kutajastaka Kvatha Ghana Vati is one of the ancient, most commonly used Ayurvedic formulations which are made in combination of nine plant ingredients. Ayurvedic literature reveals that the formulation was used for the treatment of Daha (burning sensation), Raktatisara (Diarrhoea with blood), Sula (pain), Amadosa (products of impaired digestion and metabolism) and Sarvatisara (all types of diarrhoea). Due to the lack of quality standards, there are batch to batch variations. The present study was thus undertaken to develop standards for the quality control of the Vati . All the ingredients were procured locally; identified by a taxonomist and an Ayurvedacharya ; Vati was prepared in laboratory scale using GMP; and analyzed as per standard methods. All the samples were subjected to physico-chemical analysis, HPTLC finger printing, heavy metals analysis, and microbial load. The data obtained can be adopted for laying down the pharmacopoeial standards for Kutajastaka Kvatha Ghana Vati .


Protozoan parasites of the genus Leishmania are the causative agents of a complex of diseases referred to as leishmaniasis. Leishmania have a digenetic life cycle that involves a sand fly vector (promastigote stage) and a mammalian host (amastigote stage). The parasites reside within very different environmental niches in the two different hosts, and therefore must be able to adapt their energy metabolism to the available carbon and nitrogen sources.

Lipoic acid (LA) is a multifaceted molecule, and plays an important role as a water- and fat-soluble antioxidant. LA is also an essential cofactor of the alpha-ketoacid dehydrogenase complexes (alpha-KADHs) and of the glycine cleavage complex (GCC). The alpha-KADHs include the pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH), branched-chain alpha-ketoacid dehydrogenase (BCKDH) and alpha-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase (alpha-KGDH), each of which is integral to cellular energy metabolism. In some organisms, LA can be acquired through salvage and biosynthesis pathways, and yet others only encode enzymes that permit one of the two pathways. Lipoylation of the PDH has been demonstrated in a parasite related to Leishmania called Trypanosoma brucei; however there have not been any investigations into the enzymes involved in LA metabolism in either Leishmania or Trypanosoma brucei.

In silico analyses identified genes encoding for proteins involved in both LA biosynthesis and salvage (lipoic acid synthase (LIPA), octanoyl-[acyl carrier protein]: protein N-octanoyltransferase (LIPB) and lipoate protein ligase (LPLA), respectively), and it was predicted that all three proteins possess mitochondrial targeting peptides. Targeting of these proteins to the mitochondrion was verified by a green fluorescence protein (GFP) reporter system, and by subcellular pre-fractionation using digitonin followed by western blotting. Functionality of L. major putative LIPA, LIPB and LPLA genes was determined by showing that the genes complemented the no-growth phenotype of bacteria deficient in either lipA or lipB genes on minimal medium.

Bioinformatics analyses also showed that L. major possesses genes encoding all of the subunits comprising the different alpha-KADHs and the GCC, and the subunits were predicted to possess mitochondrial targeting peptides. Western blotting of promastigote protein with an antibody recognising protein-bound LA (alpha-LA antibody) identified four proteins, which based upon predicted molecular sizes, correspond to the lipoylated transacylase subunits of the three alpha-KADHs and the H-protein of the GCC. Interestingly, the lipoylation pattern changes throughout promastigote growth in vitro, with alpha-KGDH being lipoylated throughout promastigote life while PDH and BCKDH are not lipoylated and presumably not active in metacyclic promastigotes. These findings indicate that modification of alpha-KADHs and the GCC by lipoylation is a dynamic process, possibly reflecting adaptations in the parasite's energy metabolism during their developmental cycle.

Three approaches were taken to study the relative importance of the LA biosynthesis and salvage pathways in L. major promastigotes. First, LA analogues 8' bromooctanoic acid (8-BOA) and octanoic acid (OA) were tested for their effects on growth in L. major maintained in lipid-depleted medium. The IC50 for 8-BOA was relatively high when compared to that determined in other organisms, suggesting that LA biosynthesis can compensate for a decrease in LA salvage in medium deficient in LA. Second, attempts to replace either LIPA or LPLA genes with selectable markers were unsuccessful. LPLA could however, be knocked-out when an extra copy of the gene was introduced into the parasite's genome. These data suggest that both LA acquisition pathways might be essential for promastigote growth and development. Third, overexpression of C-terminal His-tagged versions of LIPB (LIPB-His), LPLA (LPLA-His) and a LPLA active site mutant, LPLAH118A (LPLAH118A-His), resulted in slow-growth phenotypes. Overexpression of LIPB-His and LPLAH118A-His resulted in lipoylation of the PDH and BCKDH in metacyclic promastigotes, which is not observed in wild-type metacyclic promastigotes. It is hypothesised that LA biosynthesis and salvage enzymes could have differential substrate-specificities in L. major.

A number of avenues require further investigation, including the mechanism that permits a relatively rapid turnover of lipoylated protein, and whether lipoylation patterns differ depending upon the carbon sources that are provided in the growth medium. Also, it will be interesting to determine whether LIPB and LPLA have intrinsic substrate-specificities, and whether this is sufficient to explain the fact that both LIPA and LPLA are essential in the promastigote stage in vitro.


The Philippines is clearly one of the principal "front-line" states with Southeast Asia's identification as the second front of the "global war on terror." Its participation in and strong support for this campaign was commended strongly in the international stage especially by the government of the United States. At the same time, however, this policy was received with mixed feelings within the country itself. There are strong and legitimate fears that the Philippine government's support for the United States places the stability of the country over the short- to medium-term in jeopardy. This is particularly important as the international campaign against terror has come at an inopportune time. The Philippines is currently facing multi-faceted challenges that the government is unable to address because it cannot mobilize the requisite economic and political resources. Terrorism is not the main cause of the persistent instability in the Philippines. The growth and persistence of terrorism in the country, in fact, is indicative of the weak Philippine state.


Aim: Olmesartan medoxomil is an angiotensin II antagonist used in the management of hypertension. Mucoadhesive buccal films offer an attractive route of administration for systemic drug delivery through jugular vein leading to high bioavailability and greater therapeutic efficacy. Materials and Methods: Different formulations were carried out using natural polymer such as almond gum along with synthetic polymers. Formulations of F1 to F8 buccal films were prepared by solvent casting method by employing hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) E50LV and almond gum alone, and in combination of HPMC E50LV and Eudragit RL100 and combination of HPMC E50LV and almond gum in different proportions. Results and Discussion: Buccal films were evaluated for their physicochemical characterization such as thickness, weight uniformity, folding endurance, drug content and surface pH, swelling index, percentage moisture loss, and uptake. Conclusion: Among all the formulations, F7 was found to be satisfactory and surface pH of all films was found to be neutral. The in vitro release in optimized formulation F7 was found to be 47.69% in 7 h, and drug release was found to be diffusion following first order as per kinetics (R2 = 0.9937). Stability studies were carried out with selected formulations of F7 and F8.


Knowledge concerning the cognition involved in perceiving and remembering faces has informed the design of at least two generations of facial compositing technology. These systems allow a witness to work with a computer (and a police operator) in order to construct an image of a perpetrator. Research conducted with systems currently in use has suggested that basing the construction process on the witness recalling and verbally describing the face can be problematic. To overcome these problems and make better use of witness cognition, the latest systems use a combination of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) facial synthesis and an array-based interface. The present paper describes a preliminary study conducted to determine whether the use of an array-based interface really does make appropriate use of witness cognition and what issues need to be considered in the design of emerging compositing technology.


In an intensely personal account the author provides a first-hand account of his experiences of the criminal justice system from the perspective of offender, victim and probation officer. Using these insights he reflects on crime and punishment, restoration and the role of the National Probation Service. He was born in prison. By age six he was stealing. On his own at 17 and on the streets, he lived a life of crime. What useful skills would such a man have? Turning his life around, he put himself through university then took his very unique perspective on life to the National Probation Service where for over a decade he worked as probation officer, guiding others off the path he was once on himself. As someone who has `been there', he offers us his views on crime and punishment and ponders the future of the criminal justice system and the role of the National Probation Service, the largely unsung hero in the forefront of public protection and the way offenders are rehabilitated.


Intestinal APCs are considered critical in maintaining the balance between the response against harmful pathogens and the induction of tolerance to commensal bacteria and food Ags. Recently, several studies indicated the presence of gut-specific APC subsets, which possess both macrophage and dendritic cell (DC) markers. These unique APC subsets play important roles in gut immunity, especially for immune regulation against commensal bacteria. Herein, we examined a unique macrophage subset, which coexpressed the macrophage (Mφ) marker CD14 and the DC marker CD209 in human intestinal lamina propria (LP). The LP Mφ subset in both normal control subjects or Crohn's disease (CD) patients induced proliferation of naive CD4+ T cells as well as monocyte-derived DCs, and it expressed retinoic acid synthetic enzyme retinaldehyde dehydrogenase 2 and retinol dehydrogenase 10, which induced expression of gut homing receptors on T cells in a retinoic acid-dependent manner. Moreover, the LP Mφ subset strongly evoked differentiation of Th1 cells and slightly induced Th17 cells in both normal control subjects and CD patients; the inducing potential was highest in CD patients. In CD patients, Th17, but not Th1, induction by the LP Mφ subset was enhanced in the presence of commensal bacteria Ags. This enhancement was not observed in normal control subjects. The Th17 induction by the LP Mφ subset was inhibited by neutralization of IL-6 and IL-1β, but it was enhanced by blockade of retinoic acid signaling. These observations highlight a role for LP Mφ in the enhanced Th1, and potentially in Th17 differentiation, at the inflammatory site of inflammatory bowel diseases.


Post-war economic transformation began in 1949, which saw the Philippine government putting restrictions on importation in response to the critical deterioration of balance of payments. The development which followed the import controls caused structural change in the economy shifting significant resources and incomes from the export sector to the industrial sector. This shift re-defined social class structure and produced an industrial entrepreneurial class and promoted the expansion of the urban middle class and working class, consequently diversifying the social background of the elites. As industrialization proceeded, nationalism shifted from the political to economic, calling for more control of the country's resources by its own people. Claro M. Recto, along with other bourgeois nationalists, believed that economic nationalism was the panacea for the social and economic problems. Economic issues became the agenda of the nationalist debate in the late 1950s until the 1960s creating a split, between the competing segments of the upper class – the primary exporter, the sugar industry and the manufactures. To address the situation, Magsaysay came up with a compromise and promoted both groups' interests during the ecomonic policy formulation in his administration. However, the Macapagal policy of encouraging foreign investment and decontrol, which was continued by Marcos, led to bankruptcy of manufacturing enterprises as they faced stiff competetion, mainly from US, which had more superior financing resources. And by declaring martial law, Marcos might have protected the foreign and interests conservative forces against the formation of a more diversified society that sought to radically redistribute resources and power.


We present an approach to Lagrangian fluid simulation with a new type of convolutional network. Our networks process sets of moving particles, which describe fluids in space and time. Unlike previous approaches, we do not build an explicit graph structure to connect the particles but use spatial convolutions as the main differentiable operation that relates particles to their neighbors. To this end we present a simple, novel, and effective extension of N-D convolutions to the continuous domain. We show that our network architecture can simulate different materials, generalizes to arbitrary collision geometries, and can be used for inverse problems. In addition, we demonstrate that our continuous convolutions outperform prior formulations in terms of accuracy and speed.


The emergence of the AIDS epidemic in New York ignited debates about the perceived centrality of 'promiscuity' in gay men. Prior to the epidemic, sexual adventure and numerous concurrent sexual partners were understood to be an essential characteristic of gay identity, however, with the presence of AIDS - immediately linked to sexual transmission - gay men's sexual behaviour and identity were fractured. This thesis offers an analysis of social constructions of promiscuity in New York's gay community, through the close reading of texts between 1981-1984. I focus on newspaper and magazine articles, epidemiological reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a safe-sex booklet by AIDS activists Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, and selected works by AIDS activist and literary figure Larry Kramer. What emerges in this thesis is an exploration of the discursive effects of power/knowledge in relation to gay men, medicine and disease, and sexual norms. The label 'promiscuity', despite its relative incoherence, is shown to be a powerful apparatus, circulating through metaphors of sinfulness, psychopathology, contagion, and the socially downtrodden. I argue that these metaphors of promiscuity exacerbated panic about AIDS, slowed down effective sociopolitical interventions for the epidemic, and treated those living and dying with AIDS as less than human.


This work addresses the gap in the current collective action literature exposed by the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) landscape by bringing together qualitative and quantitative studies from computational and social sciences. The book offers a rigorous and systematic investigation of both methodological and theoretical underpinnings and, thus, collectively promotes a symbiotic and synergistic advancement of the multiple interconnected disciplines in studying online collective actions. More specifically, the book is intended to illuminate several fundamental and powerful yet theoretically undeveloped and largely unexplored aspects of collective action in the participatory media (e.g., social media). Through in-depth exploration of relevant concepts, theories, methodologies, applications, and case studies, the reader will gain an advanced understanding of collective action with the advent of the new generation of ICTs enabled by social media and the Internet. The developed theories will be valuable and comprehensive references for those interested in examining the role of ICTs not only in collective action but also in decision and policy making, understanding the dynamics of interaction, collaboration, cooperation, communication, as well as information flow and propagation, and social network research for years to come. Further, the book also serves as an extensive repository of data sets and tools that can be used by researchers leading to a deeper and more fundamental understanding of the dynamics of the crowd in online collective actions.


Abstract. With the continued growth of confirmed cases of COVID-19, a highly infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2, there is an urgent need to find ways to help clinicians fight the virus by reducing the workload and speeding up the diagnosis of COVID-19. In this work, we propose an artificial intelligence solution "AI_COVID" which can help radiologists to know if the lungs are infected with the virus in just a few seconds.AI_COVID is based on a pre-trained DenseNet-121 model that detects subtle changes in the lungs and an SVM classifier that decides whether these changes are caused by COVID-19 or other diseases. AI_COVID is trained on thousands of frontal chest x-rays of people who have contracted COVID-19, healthy people, and people with viral or bacterial pneumonia. The experimental study is tested on 781 chest x-rays from two publicly available chest x-ray datasets COVID-19 radiography database and COVIDx Dataset. The performance results showed that our proposed model (DenseNet-121 + SVM) demonstrated high performance and yielded excellent results compared to the current methods in the literature, with a total accuracy of 99.74% and 98.85% for binary classification (COVID-19 vs. No COVID-19) and multi-class classification (COVID-19 vs. Normal vs. Pneumonia), respectively.


A common phenomenon in social life is that some individuals help others and a few even risk their lives to benefit others, as in the case of those who helped Jews escape persecution in Nazi Europe. A few scholars single out motivations as the prime explanation of these rescue activities, yet concede that material opportunities, information, and other situational factors might have played a role. Their work, however, stops short of offering an account of the nature and importance of these factors. In this article, we focus on the importance of opportunities and situational factors, with specific reference to the rescue of Jews from persecution during World War II. Following a secondary analysis of data on those who did and did not rescue Jews during the Nazi occupation of Europe, we show that a direct request for help substantially increased the likelihood of being rescued. We also explore the other side of the situation, namely whom were the Jews likely to ask for help? Jews were likely to ask people they knew and people they trusted to act as mediators. Finally, we show that few of those who were asked to help did not help. This finding suggests the existence of a selection mechanism: rescuers signalled their disposition to help and were subsequently asked. We conclude that opportunities and situational factors are crucial in accounting for the observed acts of helping.


In this poster we describe the use of Joe Penhall's play 'Landscape with Weapon' as a resource to teach ethics to students and practitioners in technology. 'Landscape with Weapon' is a play in three acts that revolve around issues confronting an engineer who works in the weapons industry. The play raises a number of broad questions concerning intellectual property rights, duty and responsibility in professional conduct, amongst other ethical issues. Crucially, however, although the play raises 'big' questions concerning technological development, it is in the portrayal of relationships between individual characters each with their own personal ethical stance, and it is in the development of these relationships through conversations and outbursts that vital ethical questions arise.

Although it is not always clearly recognised, it is in the everyday, routine conversations and dealings of people that ethical questions are refined, developed and, on occasion, answered. Accordingly, such dialogues influence action and guide conduct. Rather than focussing on the formulation of theory, a play can demonstrate how ethical stances fare when placed alongside one another. Also, a play encourages the audience to empathise with characters thus inviting the audience to examine their own ethical positions through their reactions to the dialogue, gesture and action set out in the play script. In short, a suitable play such as 'Landscape with Weapon' can function as an allegory representing issues and questions of relevance to an audience of practitioners in a variety of areas of technology development.

This poster uses 'Landscape with Weapon' as an example of one amongst several plays and dialogues used as resources for teaching ethics in the Unit 'Introducing Ethics in Information and Computer Sciences' (working title), currently under development with the support of a grant from the HEA Subject Centre for ICS. The Unit, a self-contained multi-media course, will be made available, for re-use and re-purposing under a Creative Commons License, on the LabSpace (http://labspace.open.ac.uk), the experimentation site of the Open University open content initiative OpenLearn (http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn).


Background: Tuberculosis (TB) remains a burden to Sri Lanka, where the incidence of the disease
has been increasing over the past decade. The lack of early and accurate detection of the disease
has been the main obstacle to its control. Microscopy or the culturing of mycobacteria from clinical
samples is the most commonly used TB diagnostic tools in Sri Lanka. All these methods have
their own limitations. Alternative diagnostic methods are therefore of high importance. Objectives:
In this study, an attempt was made to validate loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP),
which specifically amplifies a DNA sequence very rapidly at a low cost with limited resources. Methods:
Crude DNA extractions of fifty culture isolates prepared from sputum samples, which were
collected from patients with suspected TB extracts, were subjected to three separate LAMP assays.
One assay was specific for 16S ribosomal RNA (16S rRNA) gene in genus Mycobacterium, and could
detect the bacteria up to the genus level. The other two contained MTB specific primers targeting
rimM or gyrB gene sequences in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), which enabled detection up to
the species level. The sensitivity and specificity of the LAMP assays in the identification of mycobacteria
or MTB were compared to microscopy and culture techniques. Results: Forty three out of
the 47 Mycobacterium cultures were Mycobacterium-positive for LAMP assays with universal primers
indicating a sensitivity of 92% in identifying Mycobacterium genus. However, thirteen out of
14 culture negatives were also positive with LAMP assays, which showed a specificity of only 7% in
identifying MTB. The results suggested a high percentage of false positives by LAMP assays as
compared to culture. Based on the colour changing of ZYBR Green dye and gel electrophoresis of the LAMP-amplified product, the detection of a non-specific amplification, even in the absence of
target DNA, was recurrently observed. The result was the same even after following strict safety
operations and laboratory practices to avoid the possibility of a cross-over contamination of MTB.
Interestingly, this nonspecific DNA amplicon did not respond to digestion with BsaI restriction
enzyme, suggesting that the false positives are not due to the presence of MTB. Conclusion: Under
the tested conditions, the specificity of the LAMP method to identify MTB is low as compared to
culture technique. Further investigations into optimizing the LAMP assay technique are required
before it can be used, in its simple form, to diagnose TB in local clinical settings.


Extracellular stimulation of neurons is an important tool in investigating the function of the nervous system. Optical techniques, based on voltage- and calcium-sensitive dyes or photouncaging, along with multi-photon fluorescent microscopy have proven very successful in imaging activity in slices and in vivo. However, studies have been limited by the ability to stimulate different regions of tissue with enough spatial resolution and throughput. Traditional stimulation is accomplished with passive multielectrode arrays (MEAs) or bipolar electrodes. In both cases, a relatively small number of stimulation sites with coarse spatial resolution are possible. While there has been recent work on the development of CMOS chips for extracellular recordings of cultured neurons or slices on planar electrodes, the focus of this work is on stimulation and achieving stable electrical interfaces between acute slices and a high-density active CMOS MEA. As brain slices preserve many synaptic connections, they are ideal preparations to study neuronal microcircuits in vitro. Active stimulation technologies should enable detailed "reverse engineering" of neural circuitry.


Dance encourages independence, initiative and self-esteem and contributes to a substantial enrichment in the teaching-learning process and in the acquisition of cognitive, psychomotor and socio-emotional skills.  In this study, 55 students, both genders and various ethnic groups, with ages from 6 to 11 years old were observed. Movement games, Hip Hop and Modern jazz and Portuguese/ international dances were taught. Evaluations were made at the beginning and at the end of 2009/2010 school year. We identified that at the socio-emotional level, there was a significant development of autonomy, cooperation and acceptance of criticism. We were able to verify that there were an improvement in physical activities and acquisition of the concept of space. With respect to body work, there was an increase in balance as well as an improvement in postural alignment. As a part of its goal, school should promote the process of socialization and autonomy. We considered that throughout this project, the school achieved these objectives as well as the feeling of respect for others. Thus, it is extremely important for the articulation of basic education with the various artistic expressions.

 Key words: Dance, autonomy, cooperation, primary school.


Corporate governance reforms are increasingly common in public sector organisations. Despite the scope of recent and ongoing public sector change, the processes used to adopt and operate public sector corporate governance reform are not clearly documented. In some cases there is evidence of reform failure. This study sought to identify and describe the variables associated with corporate governance
change in Australian state government departments, particularly the factors that impact on the adoption and operation of reform. Concepts associated with scientific management (rational/technocratic influences) and organisational culture (political/cultural influences), and
their impact on change, were combined to produce a framework that was tested in two phases. Phase one focused on the collection of qualitative data relating to corporate governance reform in the Victorian Department of Human Services. The second phase involved the collection of quantitative data from chief executives and senior executives in all Australian state government departments. The qualitative data collected in phase one was used to
validate the conceptual framework which was then further tested using quantitative methods during phase two.
Phase one and two findings were consistent with the conceptual model. In particular, a factor analysis of phase two results identified the adoption of change being influenced by leadership capability; external improvement drivers; internal improvement drivers; organisational
politics; the capacity of an organisation to interpret knowledge; and changes in an organisation's operating environment. The operation of reform was influenced by continuity of leadership; actions taken to embed change and build supportive attitudes to change; management of organisational politics; and the capacity of an organisation to understand change. The immediate implication of this research is the definition of a new model to manage corporate governance change. The rational/scientific and political/cultural factors identified by this project provide an integrated approach that can be drawn upon by change actors. It acknowledges the significance of the rational/scientific and political/cultural factors that come into play during corporate governance reform. This study has filled a gap relating to how public sector organisations go about making
corporate governance changes and provides customised and practical recommendations for future corporate governance reforms in Australian state government departments. These
include giving priority to corporate governance reform training (the research found that only around one in two senior officers had been trained in corporate governance reform) and further strengthening organisational leadership (leadership was identified as a critical factor at
both the adoption and operation stages of corporate governance reform). This research provides new insight into understanding corporate governance change in an Australian public sector context and provides a model to more effectively manage future reform.


An increasing need for accurate predictions of tunnelling-induced ground movements and potential damage to structures has produced a number of publications over the past 30 years. Few, however, have addressed the problem of tunnelling in ground consisting of more than one soil layer or the associated subsurface movements. The aim of the research was to investigate ground movements in two-layer ground conditions, specifically movements above tunnels driven in clay overlain by coarse grained materials. The principal methods of investigation were geotechnical centrifuge model testing and finite element analysis using the 3-Surface Kinematic Hardening (3-SKH) model, an elasto-plastic soil model implemented in the finite element program CRISP at City University, London. Both methods use effective stress path modelling to produce soil behaviour representative of prototype situations. Twenty-eight plane strain centrifuge model tests are reported in which the tunnel was represented by a SOmm diameter cylindrical cavity supported by compressed air pressure. The tunnel cavity was located within a layer of overconsolidated kaolin clay and in most cases the clay had an overlying layer of coarse grained material. The main variables in the tests were: the type of overlying strata; the thicknesses of the two strata; and the position of the water table. Tests were conducted at an acceleration of 1 OOg when the cavity then represented a Sm diameter tunnel with a maximum depth to tunnel axis of 22.Sm at prototype scale. After effective stress equilibrium was achieved, ground movements were generated by reducing the tunnel support pressure at a rate which produced essentially undrained behaviour in the clay. Transducers were used to measure pore pressures in the clay near the tunnel and displacements at the ground surface and at the clay/sand interface. Subsurface movements in the clay were obtained from images from a CCD camera, mounted on the centrifuge swing to view the front of the model in-flight, using a new digital image processing system developed at City University to track targets in the vertical face of the clay. Stress path triaxial tests were performed on some of the sands used in the centrifuge experiments, to determine stiffness properties for analysis of centrifuge test results and input for numerical analyses. Values of shear stiffness at very small strains, G'max, were determine dusing the bender element technique. Finite element analyses were conducted at centrifuge model scale with carefully simulated model stress histories. Some were direct simulations of physical model tests and were fully evaluated by comparison with centrifuge test data. Numerical predictions could be used with confidence, therefore, within the known limitations of the analyses. As well as evaluating the numerical model, the main points of investigation were the effects of: modelling conditions such as boundary proximity and stress history; the constitutive model used for the sand: the stiffness and depth of the upper strata on the movements in the clay. The results are applicable to predicting ground movements in the plane perpendicular to single, long tunnels, and the most important findings of the research are as follows. i) Both surface and subsurface settlement troughs are well represented by Gaussian distributions, except within a vertical distance of approximately O.5D of the tunnel cro\\ n when considerably steeper settlement profiles should be anticipated. ii) The form of the settlement profiles is constant until the tunnel begins to collapse (V-20%). iii)The equations of Mair et al (1993) adequately describe the distributioll of vertical movements with depth for tunnels in clay-only soil profiles, although, near a "free" ground surface the distribution of movements may be considerably wider (also see (i) above). iv) F or tunnels in clay with an overlying layer of different material the ratio of the shear stiffnesses at the interface between the materials should be taken into account. v) For undrained (constant volume) conditions, horizontal displacements may be inferred from the vertical displacements as the vectors of movement focus on the point where the tangent to the distribution of i \vith depth intersects the vertical tunnel axis.


This thesis discusses mathematical optimization techniques for waveform design in cognitive radars. These techniques have been designed with an increasing level of sophistication, starting from a bistatic model (i.e. two transmitters and a single receiver) and ending with a cognitive network (i.e. multiple transmitting and multiple receiving radars). The environment under investigation always features strong signal-dependent clutter and noise. All algorithms are based on an iterative waveform-filter optimization. The waveform optimization is based on convex optimization techniques and the exploitation of initial radar waveforms characterized by desired auto and cross-correlation properties. Finally, robust optimization techniques are introduced to account for the assumptions made by cognitive radars on certain second order statistics such as the covariance matrix of the clutter.

More specifically, initial optimization techniques were proposed for the case of bistatic radars. By maximizing the signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) under certain constraints on the transmitted signals, it was possible to iteratively optimize both the orthogonal transmission waveforms and the receiver filter. Subsequently, the above work was extended to a convex optimization framework for a waveform design technique for bistatic radars where both radars transmit and receive to detect targets. The method exploited prior knowledge of the environment to maximize the accumulated target return signal power while keeping the disturbance power to unity at both radar receivers.

The thesis further proposes convex optimization based waveform designs for multiple input multiple output (MIMO) based cognitive radars. All radars within the system are able to both transmit and receive signals for detecting targets. The proposed model investigated two complementary optimization techniques. The first one aims at optimizing the signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) of a specific radar while keeping the SINR of the remaining radars at desired levels. The second approach optimizes the SINR of all radars using a max-min optimization criterion.

To account for possible mismatches between actual parameters and estimated ones, this thesis includes robust optimization techniques. Initially, the multistatic, signal-dependent model was tested against existing worst-case and probabilistic methods. These methods appeared to be over conservative and generic for the considered signal-dependent clutter scenario. Therefore a new approach was derived where uncertainty was assumed directly on the radar cross-section and Doppler parameters of the clutters. Approximations based on Taylor series were invoked to make the optimization problem convex and {subsequently} determine robust waveforms with specific SINR outage constraints.

Finally, this thesis introduces robust optimization techniques for through-the-wall radars. These are also cognitive but rely on different optimization techniques than the ones previously discussed. By noticing the similarities between the minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) problem and the matched-illumination one, this thesis introduces robust optimization techniques that consider uncertainty on environment-related parameters.

Various performance analyses demonstrate the effectiveness of all the above algorithms in providing a significant increase in SINR in an environment affected by very strong clutter and noise.


The family of methods collectively known as classifier chains has become a popular approach to multi-label learning problems. This approach involves chaining together off-the-shelf binary classifiers in a directed structure, such that individual label predictions become features for other classifiers. Such methods have proved flexible and effective and have obtained state-of-the-art empirical performance across many datasets and multi-label evaluation metrics. This performance led to further studies of the underlying mechanism and efficacy, and investigation into how it could be improved. In the recent decade, numerous studies have explored the theoretical underpinnings of classifier chains, and many improvements have been made to the training and inference procedures, such that this method remains among the best options for multi-label learning. Given this past and ongoing interest, which covers a broad range of applications and research themes, the goal of this work is to provide a review of classifier chains, a survey of the techniques and extensions provided in the literature, as well as perspectives for this approach in the domain of multi-label classification in the future. We conclude positively, with a number of recommendations for researchers and practitioners, as well as outlining key issues for future research.


The theoretical threat of malware inside the BIOS or UEFI of a computer has been known for almost a decade. It has been demonstrated multiple times that exploiting the System Management Mode (SMM), an operating mode implemented in the x86 architecture and executed with high privileges, is an extremely powerful method for implanting persistent malware on computer systems. However, previous BIOS/UEFI malware concepts described in the literature often focused on proof-of-concept implementations and did not have the goal of demonstrating the full range of threats stemming from SMM malware. In this paper, we present LONGKIT, a novel framework for BIOS/UEFI malware in the SMM. LONGKIT is universal in nature, meaning it is fully written in position-independent assembly and thus also runs on other BIOS/UEFI implementations with minimal modifications. The framework fully supports the 64-bit Intel architecture and is memory-layout aware, enabling targeted interaction with the operating system's kernel. With LONGKIT we are able to demonstrate the full potential of malicious code in the SMM and provide researchers of novel SMM malware detection strategies with an easily adaptable rootkit to help evaluate their methods.


Background: Inherited BRCA1 and BRCA2 (BRCA1/2) mutations confer elevated breast cancer risk. Knowledge of factors that can improve breast cancer risk assessment in BRCA1/2 mutation carriers may improve personalized cancer prevention strategies. Methods: A cohort of 5,546 BRCA1 and 2,865 BRCA2 mutation carriers was used to evaluate risk of breast cancer associated with BARD1 Cys557Ser. In a second nonindependent cohort of 1,537 of BRCA1 and 839 BRCA2 mutation carriers, BARD1 haplotypes were also evaluated. Results: The BARD1 Cys557Ser variant was not significantly associated with risk of breast cancer from single SNP analysis, with a pooled effect estimate of 0.90 (95% CI: 0.71–1.15) in BRCA1 carriers and 0.87 (95% CI: 0.59–1.29) in BRCA2 carriers. Further analysis of haplotypes at BARD1 also revealed no evidence that additional common genetic variation not captured by Cys557Ser was associated with breast cancer risk. Conclusion: Evidence to date does not support a role for BARD1 variation, including the Cy557Ser variant, as a modifier of risk in BRCA1/2 mutation carriers. Impact: Interactors of BRCA1/2 have been implicated as modifiers of BRCA1/2-associated cancer risk. Our finding that BARD1 does not contribute to this risk modification may focus research on other genes that do modify BRCA1/2-associated cancer risk. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 20(5); 1032–8. ©2011 AACR.


Fashion and apparel sales have always been an interesting aspect of study due to the immense number of controllable and uncontrollable variables that contributes to the total sales. In order to develop a sound predictive model for forecasting apparel sales a lot of factors can be incorporated to enhance the results and minimize the forecast error. This paper will present a Time Series Forecasting model of US Apparel and accessories sales for the winter season. This model is generated to shed the light on the unexpected loss incurred by retailers for the winter season of 2015 by incorporating weather variation as an influencer on the sales. This paper is also going to discuss some important managerial approaches which empower firms to deal better with unforeseen variabilities.