This thesis is mainly focused on (i) modeling of large-scale PV systems in order to study the factors that influence the capacity, efficiency, power quality and safety in connection with the power grid and (ii) proposing systemand circuit-level solutions and control strategies/techniques to improve the aforementioned factors. To that end, a model for PV array is developed to study the mismatch power loss in different PV array interconnection methods, especially during the partial shading condition. Further, a two-MPPT structure is proposed to reduce the mismatch power loss in centrally structured PV systems. Then, a single-stage VSC-based system is proposed to utilize the two-MPPT structure for better efficiency. The proposed system also doubles the DC-link voltage while respecting the safety standards, which in turn, increases the capacity and the efficiency of the central inverter. To further improve capacity and efficiency, a two-stage system is proposed in which the variable MPP voltage of smaller sub-arrays are regulated, by dedicated DC-DC boost converters, at the inverter DC-side terminals. This lets the inverter use the full DC voltage permissible rating and reduces the ohmic loss in DC and AC wirings and in the transformer. The system employs a three-level NPC inverter which generates output with better power quality, facilitates the adoption of two-MPPT structure, and permits utilizing low-voltage (half-rated) switches. The system also promotes the modular/distributed structure which improves the efficiency under partial shading and enables the possibility of utilizing PV modules of different types, ratings, and alignments. Finally, a mitigation technique is proposed in the inverter and grid-interface structures to prevent formation of damaging temporary overvoltages, which sometimes are produced in power systems by distributed generations including PV. The technique utilizes a fourleg inverter connected to a grid through a Y/YG isolation transformer. The effectiveness of the proposed techniques and control strategies are demonstrated through time-domain simulation studies conducted in the PSCAD/EMTDC software environment.


The purpose of this study was to apply net present value (NPV) modelling to evaluate the financial attractiveness and business risk of different categories of biosimilars. Challenges and opportunities of biosimilars are compared with those of standard small molecule generics. Minimum peak sales levels are required to create financial value were determined in order to derive recommendations for the selection of commercially rewarding biosimilar development candidates.


Abstract Agricultural production systems demand techniques that allow reducing uncertainty in decision-making. A factor that adds uncertainty in agricultural systems is altitude since it influences the nutrient uptake by plants. This work aimed to evaluate the influence of two altitudinal gradients (2569 and 1487 m.a.s.l.) and two fertilizers: an organo-mineral fertilizer (composted poultry manure mixed with inorganic fertilizer) and mineral fertilizer (control) on the nutrient uptake and biomass production in commercial stevia crops. The effect of altitude and fertilizers was evaluated after 60 days, under greenhouse conditions, assessing macro and micronutrient levels in the plant leaves (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, manganese, zinc, iron, and boron) and biomass production. The results of this work showed the effect of altitude (2569 m.a.s.l.) and organo-mineral fertilization on crop productivity and yield. The application of the organo-mineral fertilizer decreased the differences of nutrient uptake between the altitudinal gradients and provided both better nutrient uptake levels, mainly of N (79%), Ca (115%), and Mg (162%), and increased biomass production (49%), than mineral fertilization at both experimental sites. Likewise, the organo-mineral fertilizer enhanced the soils' cation exchange capacity, increased nutrient availability, and minimizing the risks of contamination by nutrient leaching. An important conclusion of this work is that stevia plants grown at different altitudes differ in nutrient uptake (mostly nitrogen 79%); therefore, fertilizer dosing must be adjusted to crop altitude, especially for mineral fertilizers. Thus, fertilizer design should consider not only the plant nutrition requirements but also its environmental conditions.


The prostate-specific antigen, known as PSA, is a glycoprotein that is secreted in the prostatic epithelial cells and is expressed both in benign and malignant cells. It is used as a marker of the prostate cancer but has some limitations as false positives since other diseases can increase PSA levels too. The solution to this reliability problem can be found in the PSA glycosylation. Studies have shown that in cancer, the composition and connectivity of the sugar chain change as well as the presence of fucose is reduced. Studying this changes can lead to the development of more efficient markers to distinguish cases of prostate cancer from other diseases such as benign prostatic hyperplasia.
In the work presented a PSA modeling has been made as well as a computational simulation of different glycoforms generated. The original structure of the protein has been obtained from the PDB (3QUM) and has been modified to obtain three different glycoforms. The first glycoform (G1) has been deglycosylated while the other two glycoforms (G2 and G3) have been glycosylated with a biantennary glycosylation. The difference between the two biantennary glycoforms is in the presence or absence of fucose.
To perform the computational simulation of the proteins, classical molecular mechanics has been used as well as the molecular dynamics. After completing the dynamics, an analysis of the rmsd, to study the convergence of the simulations, and the hydrogen bonds, to observe the relevant interactions for protein stability, has been made. The hydrogen bonds distances have also been analyzed.
The time of the three simulations that have been made is comprised between 38 and 57 ns. In the elapsed time, the simulations have not converged and proteins have not achieved the most stable conformation. Concerning the hydrogen bonds analysis, two interactions have been found in the glycoform with fucose that are stronger that the observed in the glycoform without fucose. Finally, the analysis of the hydrogen bonds distances has showed that the G2 and G3 suffer a conformational change toward the end of the simulation


In the multiview video plus depth (MVD) coding format, both texture and depth views are jointly compressed to represent the 3-D video content. The MVD format enables synthesis of virtual views through depth-image-based rendering; hence, distortion in the texture and depth views affects the quality of the synthesized virtual views. Bit allocation between texture and depth views has been studied with some promising results. However, to the best of our knowledge, most of the existing bit-allocation methods attempt to allocate a fixed amount of total bit rate between texture and depth views; that is, to select appropriate pair of quantization parameters for texture and depth views to maximize the synthesized view quality subject to a fixed total bit rate. In this paper we propose a scalable bit-allocation scheme, where a single ordering of texture and depth packets is derived and used to obtain optimal bit allocation between texture and depth views for any total target rates. In the proposed scheme, both texture and depth views are encoded using the quality scalable coding method; that is, medium grain scalable (MGS) coding of the Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extension of the Advanced Video Coding (H.264/AVC) standard. For varying target total bit rates, optimal bit truncation points for both texture and depth views can be obtained using the proposed scheme. Moreover, we propose to order the enhancement layer packets of the H.264/SVC MGS encoded depth view according to their contribution to the reduction of the synthesized view distortion. On one hand, this improves the depth view packet ordering when considered the rate-distortion performance of synthesized views, which is demonstrated by the experimental results. On the other hand, the information obtained in this step is used to facilitate optimal bit allocation between texture and depth views. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scalable bit-allocation scheme for texture and depth views.


We propose an interactive sculpting system for seamlessly editing pre-computed animations of liquid, without the need for any resimulation. The input is a sequence of meshes without correspondences representing the liquid surface over time. Our method enables the efficient selection of consistent space-time parts of this animation, such as moving waves or droplets, which we call space-time features. Once selected, a feature can be copied, edited, or duplicated and then pasted back anywhere in space and time in the same or in another liquid animation sequence. Our method circumvents tedious user interactions by automatically computing the spatial and temporal ranges of the selected feature. We also provide space-time shape editing tools for non-uniform scaling, rotation, trajectory changes, and temporal editing to locally speed up or slow down motion. Using our tools, the user can edit and progressively refine any input simulation result, possibly using a library of pre-computed space-time features extracted from other animations. In contrast to the trial-and-error loop usually required to edit animation results through the tuning of indirect simulation parameters, our method gives the user full control over the edited space-time behaviors.


Natural history exhibitions have changed considerably over recent decades concurring with a rise of a general movement of aestheticization in the Western culture. This usually results from an attempt to make the exhibitions more appealing to provide the public numerous ways of enjoying themselves, but they are also used to communicate information, especially of an ethical and affective kind. In this paper I will consider the effects of a particular kind of aestheticization, namely artification, of these kinds of exhibitions. Artification, i.e., the process of regarding non-art objects as art, appears to be in conflict with the science-based purposes of these exhibitions. Is this truly so? Does science and the viewer's understanding of scientific knowledge change when science is presented and experienced as art or as art-like or as something aesthetic? I will approach this question phenomenologically by pondering my own experience in the Natural History Museum in Helsinki and the relation of aesthetics, science and art on that basis. Instead of trying to define how art-like the exhibit in question as a whole is, I will concentrate on certain characters the exhibit has that are perhaps more readily associated with artistic: uniqueness and presence, and how through these concepts we may gain a look into the interrelation between art and science.


Mathematical models are a theoretical tool used to understand ecological processes. In this thesis we create mathematical frameworks to describe and evaluate four ecological systems. In the first case study we extend a host-pathogen framework to include a maternal effect which increases the disease resistance of offspring when the maternal environment is poor. Maternal effects impacting life-history traits have been shown to increase the propensity for population cycles. Our contrasting results show maternal effects acting on disease resistance stabilise host-pathogen systems. The second case study examines the impact infection may have on population estimates using Capture-Mark-Recapture (CMR) studies. We show that the estimates using the statistical Program Capture are accurate when capture rates are infection dependent. The final two case studies use spatial, individual-based, stochastic models to simulate disease spread and the colonisation of the Eurasian red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) on real-life landscapes. Using novel techniques we highlight the role habitat connectivity has on the dispersal routes which influence the spread of disease and re-population dynamics. Moreover the inclusion of seasonality shows that squirrel population dynamics are driven by the multi-year signal of resources.


Introduction: Currently, type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is treated with insulin and a high carbohydrate diet. In literature, there are studies indicating that low carbohydrate diets may be beneficial in reducing hypoglycemic episodes as well as the need for insulin. Previously, we reported a case of a 19-year-old T1DM patient who was successfully treated with a modified version of the ketogenic diet we refer to as the Paleolithic ketogenic diet. Case Report: A nineyear-old child with T1DM who initially was on an insulin regime with high carbohydrate diet then was put on the Paleolithic ketogenic diet. Following dietary shift glucose levels normalized and he was able to discontinue insulin. No hypoglycemic episodes occurred on the diet and several other benefits were achieved including improved physical fitness, reduction of upper respiratory tract infections and eczema. Currently, he is on the diet for 19 months. Conclusion: Adopting the Paleolithic ketogenic diet ensured normoglycemia without the use of


Titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2-NPs) and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) have been used in various industrial and household products. Due to their small size they may be able to penetrate into the body and interfere with cell function and biological structure, which raises serious concerns regarding the possible adverse health effects on human beings from inhalation exposure to TiO2-NPs and MWCNTs. To evaluate the toxicological effects of TiO2-NPs and MWCNTs on the respiratory system, intranasal exposure of TiO2-NPs and MWCNTs in mice was performed. The release of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), total protein content, and pro-inflammatory cytokines (tumour necrosis factor-alpha and interleukin-6) into the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of mice was measured at 24 h post-intranasal instillation. The ICR (Institute for Cancer Research) mouse strain was used as a model. A significant induction of LDH was found in ICR mice treated with TiO2-NPs and MWCNTs at a concentration of 500 µg (kg bw)−1. However, a higher degree of induction was detected in mice treated with TiO2-NPs than the ones that were treated with MWCNTs. In contrast, MWCNTs at the same concentration had more effect on the release of protein content and pro-inflammatory cytokines. The results in this work also suggest that the toxic effects of both TiO2-NPs and MWCNTs on the respiratory tract depend on their concentration. A higher concentration of both particles mostly induced the production of inflammatory signals.


Rhododendron cultivation has a long history in northern Italy where a wide selection of varieties and hybrids are grown. In the fall of 2002, a previously unknown disease was observed on Azalea japonica cv. Palestrina in several commercial farms in the Province of Verbania. Leaves showed irregular necrotic areas that were 1 mm in diameter. Lesions were dark brown to black and were surrounded by a chlorotic halo. Eventually, lesions coalesced, forming large irregular spots. Heavily infected leaves fell prematurely, resulting in severe defoliation. On the infected leaves, acervuli were present from which cylindrical tapered conidia measuring 4.8 to 7.2 × 11.0 to 22.8 μm at one end were released. Fifty conidia per isolate were measured. Fungus identified as Colletotrichum acutatum was consistently recovered from infected leaves, disinfested in 1% NaOCl for 1 min, and plated on potato dextrose agar amended with 100 mg/l of streptomycin sulfate. Pathogenicity of three fungal isolates was confirmed by inoculating healthy A. japonica (cvs. Palestrina and Snow) plants grown in plastic pots (18-cm diameter, 3 liters). Plants (five per treatment) were sprayed with a conidial suspension (1 × 106 conidia per ml) of the three isolates of C. acutatum. Noninoculated plants served as a control. Inoculated and control plants were covered with plastic bags to maintain high relative humidity conditions. All plants were maintained in growth chambers at 20 ± 1°C (12 h per day of fluorescent light). Six days after the artificial inoculation, plants developed typical symptoms on the leaves. C. acutatum was consistently reisolated from infected plants. The pathogenicity test was carried out twice. Sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer region of the rDNA and a portion of the β-tubulin gene were performed, and the obtained sequences were compared with those available in GenBank. Identification of the fungus as C. acutatum, therefore was confirmed. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the presence of C. acutatum on A. japonica in Italy. Although observed presently only in a few nurseries, the disease has the potential to spread, becoming more relevant in an area where rhododendron cultivation is economically important. Anthracnose on rhododendron has already been described in several countries (1,2). References: (1) D. F. Farr et al. Fungi on Plants and Plant Products in the United States. The American Phytopathological Society, St Paul, MN, 1989. (2) O. Vinnere et al. Mycol. Res. 106:60, 2002.


In Santa Barbara's Legacy: An Environmental History of Huancavelica, Peru, Nicholas A. Robins presents the first comprehensive environmental history of a mercury producing region in Latin America, and one of the world's most mercury contaminated urban areas.


20 Abstract. Crushing traumas are produced by high-energy traumatic agents and are thus characterized by severe and complex injuries, affecting all the structures of the involved limb. Vascular, bone or nerve injuries may occur, but the main characteristic of crushing is "rhabdomyolysis"destruction of the skeletal muscles. If not treated before irreversible changes appear, the necrotic muscle will endanger not only the vitality of the limb, but also the life of the patient, due to systemic toxaemia. A complex interdisciplinary approach is thus necessary in order to insure the survival and recovery of the patient. Research has been done regarding objective monitoring criteria able to guide the treatment. Certain biochemical markers have been described as useful and the authors evaluate their clinical significance in patients with crushing trauma in a Level I Trauma Centre. The results of this retrospective study support the data presented in the literature regarding the correlation between the outcome of these patients and their biochemical profile.


Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge, Third Edition is an outstanding student resource and guide to the history of healthcare informatics, current issues, basic informatics concepts, and health information management applications. This comprehensive text includes the building blocks of informatics through complicated topics such as data mining, bioinformatics, and system development. The content is enhanced through its grounding in the Foundation of Knowledge Model. The Third Edition has been expanded to include informatics coverage for all levels of nursing practice from a Bachelor's Degree through a DNP degree. As a result, a new chapter on Data Mining as a Research Tool and The Art of Caring in Technology Laden Environments were added to the text. Updates to the Third Edition Include: Research briefs presented in text box format encourage the reader to access current research Informatics related content for the Essentials of Master's Education and QSEN Competencies Enhanced Education section including Smart phone use in Education, enhanced mentoring and simulated documentation Cutting-edge innovations, nursing aspects of meaningful use, patient safety, wearable technology, cloud computing, smart devices, and social media


The article proceeds in three main parts. First, it discusses the general case law surrounding customer preferences for a particular gender, looking at the enactment and development of the BFOQ defense, particularly in the context of customer preferences. It argues that the courts' general rejection of the customer preference rationale for BFOQs was entirely appropriate, given that these preferences typically reflected malignant gender biases most often, chauvinistic attitudes that result in female subordination. Second, the article examines the rise of the privacy BFOQ. It argues that the courts were correct in recognizing the privacy BFOQ, given the qualitatively different nature of the customer preferences at issue in these cases. It acknowledges that the critical commentary regarding the privacy BFOQ is largely negative, but suggests that these commentators tend to incorrectly assume that customer preferences for same-gender healthcare necessarily derive from unconscious prejudices about "appropriate" gender roles and women's sexual vulnerability. In making this argument, the article highlights the reasons that actual patients of female OB-GYNS have given for preferring same-gender gynecological care. Moreover, the article argues that courts have not gone far enough in recognizing BFOQs in the healthcare context. In so doing, it identifies cases in which courts explicitly refused to find a gender BFOQ despite the considerable gender-related therapeutic interests implicated by the employment position in question, simply because of their belief that only bodily privacy interests could justify a BFOQ. The article suggests that the privacy BFOQ should be broadened, based on the three criteria described above, to cover a wider range of cases. The article's final section turns to the specific issues surrounding the male OB-GYN. It analyzes how a discrimination lawsuit brought by a male OB-GYN would likely be addressed under the current doctrine, and then evaluates how the case would be considered under the reformulated BFOQ.


Author(s): Perrett, D I; Harris, M H; Mistlin, A J; Hietanen, J K; Benson, P J; Bevan, R; Thomas, S; Oram, M W; Ortega, J; Brierly, K | Abstract: In the superior temporal sulcus (STS) of the macaque brain there are populations of cells which respond selectively to faces. Studies of these cells reveal that they are very sensitive to the direction of eye gaze and posture of the head of other subjects. It is argued that one function of the cells is to enable analysis of where other individuals are directing their attention. Given this selectivity for complex socially relevant stimuli it is surprising that the STS contains cells that respond to touch anywhere on the body or to any movement seen in the visual environment. We have investigated these tactile and motion sensitive cells to determine their behavioural significance. In the awake, behaving monkey we found that the critical dimension for polymodal coding is whether or not the sensations are expected. Tactile stimulation out of sight cannot be predicted and elicits neuronal responses. By contrast, when the monkey can see and, therefore, predict impending contact, or when the monkey touches a familiar surface in a predictable location, cell responses are reduced or abolished. In an analogous way some cells are unresponsive to the sight of the monkey's own limbs moving but respond to the sight of other moving stimuli. Since unpredictable sensations are often caused by other animals, the STS area appears well suited to defining sensory stimuli that are important in social or predator/prey interactions.


The contribution discusses how Niviaq Korneliussen's novel Homo sapienne (2014) presents
new orientations both concerning the theme within the novel, as well as within the Greenlandic
literary field. The novel questions what constitutes Greenlandic identity by exploring the
experience of someone who falls outside heteronormative structures and struggles with the
individual experience of identity. Korneliussen presents different experiences of queerness in
an urban environment in Greenland today. Throughout its history under Danish rule,
Greenlandic identity and its literature have long developed through an exploration of the
colonial and postcolonial aspects of its relationship to Denmark. Korneliussen shows how the
relationship between Greenland and Denmark, although still part of the history of Greenland,
is no longer a primary element in local processes of identity formation that are given centre
stage in contemporary Greenlandic literature. The topics discussed in the novel, as well as its
textual elements, which also incorporate contemporary forms of communication such as text
messages and Facebook posts, generated a lot of debate in both the Greenlandic and Danish
media, especially with regard to the list that explains what it actually means to be a Greenlander.
The novel shows how by focusing inwards on Greenlandic identity and by refusing to take a
self-pitying stance, Greenlandic literature is opened up to a broader literary field, claiming a
spot for Greenlandic literature in its own right. The discussion of Korneliussen's novel in the
national and international literary field has established her as a new pioneering voice, revealing
new orientations within Greenlandic literature and its position within the Nordic literary field.


We review the theoretical background for obtaining both quantum defects and scattering phase shifts from time-dependent density functional theory. The quantum defect on the negative energy side of the spectrum and the phase shift on the positive energy side merge continuously at E = 0, allowing both to be found by the same method. We illustrate with simple one-dimensional examples: the spherical well and the delta well potential. As an example of a real system, we study in detail elastic electron scattering from the He ion. We show how the results are influenced by different approximations to the unknown components in (time-dependent) density functional theory: the ground state exchange-correlation potential and time-dependent kernel. We also revisit our previously obtained results for e-H scattering. Our results are remarkably accurate in many cases, but fail qualitatively in others.


Myocardial ischemia results in an increase in intracellular sodium concentration ([Na]i), which may lead to cellular injury via cellular swelling and calcium overload. Because protein kinase C (PKC) has been shown to reduce Na-K-ATPase activity, we postulated that pharmacological inhibition of PKC would directly increase Na-K-ATPase activity, reduce [Na]i during ischemia, and provide protection from ischemic injury. Isolated rat hearts were subjected to 30 min of global ischemia with and without the specific PKC inhibitor chelerythrine. Intracellular pH, ATP, and [Na]i were assessed using 31P and23Na NMR spectroscopy, whereas Na-K-ATPase and PKC activity were determined using biochemical assays. Na/H exchanger activity was determined using the ammonium prepulse technique under nonischemic conditions. Chelerythrine increased Na-K-ATPase activity (13.76 ± 0.89 vs. 10.89 ± 0.80 mg ADP ⋅ h-1 ⋅ mg protein-1; P = 0.01), reduced PKC activity in both the membrane and cytosolic fractions (39% and 28% of control, respectively), and reduced creatine kinase release on reperfusion (48 ± 5 IU/g dry wt vs. 689 ± 63 IU/g dry wt; P = 0.008). The rise in [Na]i during ischemia was significantly reduced in hearts treated with chelerythrine (peak [Na]i chelerythrine: 21.5 ± 1.2 mM; control: 31.9 ± 1.2 mM; P < 0.0001), without an effect on either acidosis (nadir pH 6.16 ± 0.05 for chelerythrine vs. 6.08 ± 0.04 for control), the rate of ATP depletion or Na/H exchanger activity. These data support the hypothesis that pharmacological inhibition of PKC before ischemia induces cardioprotection by reducing intracellular sodium overload via an increase in Na-K-ATPase activity.


Abstract. Bromine in rainfall, cloud water, stream water and groundwater were measured in the upper River Severn catchments at Plynlimon in mid-Wales using two analytical procedures for bromide determination: a colorimetric method and, later, ion chromatography. Discrepancies between the methods indicated that the colorimetric method was measuring more than just bromide so it was "dissolved labile bromine" (DLBr) (Neal et al., 2007). This paper reports the variation in DLBr and bromide across the Plynlimon region and assesses the differences between these two measures. The average DLBr concentration in the streams ranges between 18.3 and 27.8 µg l−1 compared with a rainfall average concentration of 15.6 µg l−1. The corresponding bromide concentrations in the streams are 13.8–18.6 µg l−1 and 13.2 µg l−1 in rainfall. For cloud water, throughfall and stemflow, DLBr concentrations are an order of magnitude higher than in rainfall and the concentrations are strongly correlated with chloride. Average values of bromide in rainfall and cloud water are similar to those of DLBr and are strongly correlated with chloride: unfortunately, no bromide measurements were taken in throughfall and stemflow. These results indicate that marine aerosol inputs are high and that the DLBr in these inputs is dominated by bromide. For cloud water, DLBr was correlated with dissolved organic carbon (DOC) as well as with chloride; hence, there may well be an organic-associated component. Within the streams draining the forested areas, DLBr increases with time as DOC increases. DLBr concentrations in the streams are correlated with DOC in most cases and, to a lesser degree, with chloride. However, for bromide there is no correlation with DOC, but a weak correlation with chloride remains and the gradient is higher than for the DLBr case. Increasing concentrations of both DLBr and DOC may well reflect the wetting up of the catchments as transpiration diminshes as the trees age as well as through felling. In groundwater, only DLBr has been measured, and its concentration is similar to that for the streams. However, in the groundwater zone, DLBr is poorly correlated with DOC concentrations, in which DOC is largely converted to CO2. Atmospheric input–stream output flux estimates indicate a net uptake of bromide by the catchment of around 30%, matched by a corresponding release of DOC-associated bromine.


Information Technology (IT) can provide Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with competitive advantage, effective management, and improved business performance. Decision making is an integral process of achieving a successful IT investment. SME owner-managers are usually the key IT decision makers despite the fact that they often do not possess sufficient IT skills. This study examines how SME managers search and prioritise information that guides their IT decisions. This study adopted a qualitative research method and conducted interviews with eleven SME owner-managers in Nigeria and South Africa to understand the process of IT investment based on the information available to the decision-makers. Owner-managers of small manufacturing, servicing, and retail companies were the participants of this study. Thematic data analysis technique was employed to analyse the data collected in this study. The findings of this study revealed that SME owner-managers face specific challenges like insufficient information to guide IT choice, limited resources when making IT decisions and lack of formalised approach to the decision-making process. The finding in this study provides an insight into strategies to formalise SME owner-managers' IT decision-making process. This study concludes that, the formalisation of information searching process for IT choices in SMEs is crucial to achieving better IT investments.


This work proposes a new research direction to address the lack of structures in traditional n-gram models. It is based on a weakly supervised dependency parser that can model speech syntax without relying on any annotated training corpus. La- beled data is replaced by a few hand-crafted rules that encode basic syntactic knowledge. Bayesian inference then samples the rules, disambiguating and combining them to create complex tree structures that maximize a discriminative model's posterior on a target unlabeled corpus. This posterior encodes sparse se- lectional preferences between a head word and its dependents. The model is evaluated on English and Czech newspaper texts, and is then validated on French broadcast news transcriptions.


The statistics about work-related diseases influence greatly the setting of prevention priorities. It is consequently of prime importance that these statistics correctly mirror the reality. This paper summarizes the results of studies which show that the real prevalence of work-related diseases is probably two to three times greater than generally admitted; therefore, it seems very important to improve the quality of diagnosis and of data collection.


The Pentecostal movement, especially in its early days, has been accused of anti-intellectualism and a lack of a developed theological tradition, and justifiably so. However, although Pentecostals make negative remariks about "theology" they define it in a specific manner that allows them at the same time to take seriously their own theological enterprise. It is argued here that in order to understand their viewpoint it is necessary to take into consideration the movement's theological principles in order to understand its view of "theology". Pentecostal theology's seeming anti-intellectualism must be understood in a historic sense as the movement's reaction to what they perceive to be the danger of "theology" that represents creedalism and formalism, while Spirit baptism and the resultant life guided by the Spirit is explained in terms of the development of the believer's spiritual dimension that may at times stand in contrast to intellectual capabilities. Its restorationist motive requires the Pentecostal movement to return to the experience and power of the earliest Church, driven by its apocalyptic-eschatological expectation of the imminent second coming of Christ. It is necessary that Pentecostalism's stance on "theology" as well as its own theological principles be understood in order to understand its angle on its own theological enterprises. It bases its theology on experiences of God's reality, described in the terms provided by biblical narratives and leading to a spirituality that occupies the affections as well as the minds of its practitioners. Although their theology has traditional elements that it shares with other traditions, Pentecostalism's spirituality requires that its theology should be based on first-hand experiences with God, while at the same time it defines some doctrines in another manner due to the Spirit meeting the fellowship of believers


Online experimentation with volunteers relies on participants' non-financial motivations to complete a study, such as to altruistically support science or to compare oneself to others. Researchers rely on these motivations to attract study participants and often use incentives, like performance comparisons, to encourage participation. Often, these study incentives are advertised using a slogan (e.g., "What is your thinking style?''). Research on framing effects suggests that advertisement slogans attract people with varying demographics and motivations. Could the slogan advertisements for studies risk attracting only specific users? To investigate the existence of potential sample biases, we measured how different slogan frames affected which participants self-selected into studies. We found that slogan frames impact recruitment significantly; changing the slogan frame from a 'supporting science' frame to a 'comparing oneself to others' frame lead to a 9% increase in recruitment for some studies. Additionally, slogans framed as learning more about oneself attract participants significantly more motivated by boredom compared to other slogan frames. We discuss design implications for using frames to improve recruitment and mitigate sources of sample bias in online research with volunteers.


This paper by Yu et al. describes a new algorithm to better represent soil phosphorus sorption dynamics in a terrestrial biosphere model – QUINCY. The authors proposed the use of a double-surface Langmuir isotherm to better capture the non-linear relationships between solution P and labile P pools in the soil. They performed a review on both published data and model assumptions on P sorption. They then compared their simulation against data at a range of P availability sites, performed sensitivity on


Pulmonary fibrosis is the clinico-pathological outcome of excessive lung extracellular matrix accumulation. Although it may complicate a variety of lung diseases, the circumstances that lead to the development of pulmonary fibrosis remain poorly understood. In particular, many regulatory events controlling the inception and progression of pulmonary fibrosis remain unclear. Neutrophil elastase is a potent serine proteinase historically associated with alveolar destruction in pulmonary emphysema. However, elevated levels of neutrophil elastase have been reported in fibrotic lung disease, and pharmacological inhibition of its activity in animal models is associated with attenuated fibrotic lung damage. These observations have led to the hypothesis that excessive neutrophil elastase activity may be important to the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis. In the present studies, the potential to ameliorate pulmonary fibrosis was investigated by subjecting neutrophil elastase null (NE7) mice to bleomycin treatment. Instillation of 0.05U bleomycin into these animals failed to increase lung collagen content or to induce the formation of fibrotic lung lesions. This protective effect lasted for at least 60 days following bleomycin administration. Neutrophil elastase deficiency itself was not associated with reduced severity of bleomycin-induced early lung injury or lung neutrophil influx. However, quantities of active transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-p) were significantly decreased in the lungs of bleomycin- treated NE7 mice. This finding correlated with increased lung tissue reserves of activatable TGF- P which indicates an abnormality at the level of stored latent TGF-p. The initial section of this dissertation will detail the phenotypic characteristics of bleomycin- treated neutrophil elastase null mice. Temporal changes in collagen accumulation, lung histology and indices of lung injury will be presented in subsequent chapters. The final section will contain a thorough analysis of TGF-p production, localisation and activation in the lungs of bleomycin- treated NE7" mice. Here, the hitherto unreported observation that pulmonary TGF-p activation is inhibited in vivo in the absence of neutrophil elastase will be presented. In light of these data, a novel proteolytic role for neutrophil elastase in generating active TGF-P within the repairing lung extracellular matrix will be discussed. These findings support the hypothesis that neutrophil elastase increases TGF-P activity in the repairing lung by mobilising preformed latent TGF-p stored in the extracellular matrix. Conversion of this pool of activatable TGF-P allows an augmented fibrotic response to be focused at sites of lung connective tissue repair.


The purpose of this research is to explore the impact of the social unconscious on organizational learning in Kazakhstan. Organizational learning is presented as a social process, and interpreted as happening in the interplay between social and unconscious emotions and organizational power relations (Vince and Gabriel, 2011; Vince, 2001). Psychodynamic theory is used to study organizational learning. This approach supports an analysis of the interplay between unconscious emotions and power relations that affect organizational learning processes. The study pinpoints how individuals in organizations are bound to organizational power relations, which both define the learning possibilities of its members, and, at the same time, reproduce those power relations. I focus on the unconscious elements of the reproduction of power relations that harbour and steer individual and collective relations (Frosh, 2001). Particular attention is paid to how power relations, which are influenced by the social unconscious (Weinberg, 2007) regulate individuals' inner worlds and underlie their social interactions. The empirical part of the thesis presents the fieldwork in five organisations where semi-structured interviews were carried out using elements of photo-elicitation, with records kept in my reflexive diary notes. The work is grounded in my empirical data, and designed to address the research questions by iterative movement between the captured data and the theoretical framework. The research contributes to scholarship pertaining to emotion, politics and organizational learning with the key contribution being the insights gained from probing the role of individuals and their emotions in their efforts to learn in post-Soviet organizations. Elements of the old (Soviet) regime linger in the new organizations that form Kazakhstan's free market economy and the tension between these regimes provides an environment that is rich both in emotion and power/politics. This offers an opportunity to shed light on the interplay between emotion as well as power during individual and organizational attempts to learn. More specifically, emotions and organizational power relations are discussed through five aspects of the social unconscious identified from the empirical data. Subsequently, four sets of emotions pertaining to the five aspects are refined from these findings and discussed in terms of the impact that emotions have on learning processes.


ABSTRACT A hypothesis of phylogenetic relationships is presented for the African catfish family Mochokidae based on a maximum parsimony analysis of 93 morphological characters in 41 ingroup and 19 outgroup taxa. The analysis reveals that the Mochokidae are a monophyletic group and that Mochokus Joannis (1835), Mochokiella Howes (1980), Acanthocleithron Nichols and Griscom (1917) and Microsynodontis Boulenger (1903) are monophyletic and valid as distinct genera within the family. Synodontis Cuvier (1816) must include Hemisynodontis membranacea and Brachysynodontis batensoda to be monophyletic, which are reassigned to Synodontis herein. Chiloglanis Peters (1868) is rendered paraphyletic by nested placement of Atopochilus Sauvage (1879), Euchilichthys Boulenger (1900) and Atopodontus Friel and Vigliotta (2008), a new genus described separately in this volume. Euchilichthys is rendered paraphyletic by nested placement of Atopochilus savorgnani. The monophyly of Atopochilus could not be tested because only one species was available for study. Atopodontus is monophyletic and valid as a distinct genus. Well-supported suprageneric clades within the family include a new tribe, the Atopochilini, with Atopodontus as the sister group to a clade composed of Atopochilus and Euchilichthys. A clade composed of all suckermouthed species, the redefined subfamily Chiloglanidinae, includes tribe Atopochilini nested within Chiloglanis. Taxonomic issues related to paraphyly of Chiloglanis and Euchilichthys require further research on a greater number of taxa before being addressed. Subfamily Chiloglanidinae forms a polytomy with Synodontis and Microsynodontis. Acanthocleithron, followed by Mochokiella and then Mochokus are recovered as consecutive sister groups to that polytomy. A list of synapomorphies is provided for each major clade recovered, but most clades are left unnamed at this point. A number of the well-supported clades are characterized by changes in the oral jaws and mouth, apparently a key theme in mochokid evolution. Finally, the analysis suggests that the sister group of the Mochokidae is a clade composed of the South American Doradidae plus Auchenipteridae, though support for the relationship is low. Synapomorphies supporting the recovered sister group relationship and possible synapomorphies supporting alternative sister group relationships to the Malapteruridae and Amphiliidae are provided. New taxon: Atopochilini Vigliotta


INTRODUCTION: This retrospective analysis was performed to examine the outcome of patients with histiologically confirmed ependymomas of the brain or spinal cord who received post operative radiotherapy. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Patients with histologically confirmed ependymoma who were treated at our institute from Jan 2008 - July 2013 were evaluated retrospectively. Survival was compared by age, location of tumor, KPS and extent of using cox regression analysis. RESULTS: A total of 43 patients were analyzed of which 33 had intra cranial tumors and 10 had primary spinal ependymomas. Among the intra cranial tumors, 18 were supra tentorial and 15 were located in the posterior fossa. The series consisted of 23 males and 20 females in the age range of four to 62 years. Using the WHO classification, 23 patients had grade II and 20 patients had grade III ependymomas. Gross total resection was done in 20 patients (46.5%) and the resection was subtotal in 23 (53.5%) patients. All patients received post operative radiotherapy with doses ranging from 40 - 60 Gy. Thirty three patients with intracranial tumors received focal radiotherapy to the brain, nine patients received local radiotherapy to spinal lesion and one patient received craniospinal radiotherapy. On multivariate analysis, age, KPS, location and grade did not show correlation with survival. Only the extent of surgical resection was found to be significant variable. Patients with gross total resection had a median survival of 81 months and patients with subtotal resection had a median survival of 5 months (p= 0.006). CONCLUSION: This study highlights the importance of extent of surgical resection in the clinical outcome in patients with ependymomas.


A Thesis Submitted to The Board of Postgraduate Studies, Kwame
Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Master of
Science in Water Supply and Environmental Sanitation, 2004


A-Train platforms offer the possibility of measuring the same physical parameters using active and passive instruments, to improve our understanding of geophysical processes in the Earth system. In this letter, a new calibration approach is developed using active [Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) lidar and CloudSat radar] and passive [Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System (AMSR-E)] instruments. The parameters of an existing oceanic surface model are first adjusted to give consistent sea surface scattering properties for CALIPSO and CloudSat observations. Revisiting the lidar/radar data analysis procedure using this model, as well as sea surface wind speed, the temperature and water vapor products of the microwave radiometer (AMSR-E) allowed one to refine the calibration factors for both lidar and radar observations in a coherent approach. This study also improves other applications such as the retrieval of atmospheric attenuation from aerosols at optical wavelengths.


Primary chondrosarcoma is a rare malignant tumor. The five types of chondrosarcomas are: central, peripheral, mesenchymal, differentiated and clear cell. The classic chondrosarcomas are central (arising within a bone) or peripheral (arising from the surface of a bone). We describe a patient with central chondrosarcoma of the humerus who underwent surgery and only two weeks later presented with multiple metastases of the lung and small pulmonary tumor embolisms mimicking bilateral pneumonic infiltrates. Therefore, such a fulminant course of central chondrosarcoma, which is not described so far, must be taken into consideration during the treatment of patients with primary chondrosarcoma.


Realizing that most of the studies on local governments in Turkey take institutionalized municipal councils for granted, this thesis suggests some empirical insights into democratization of local politics. The literature on democratization seems to go beyond the classic definition of institutionalization provided by Samuel P. Huntington. Today, the term "democratic institutionalization" is widely used to refer to a proper legislative and executive conduct in politics. It is often emphasized that democratization requires the construction and institutionalization of local democratic organizations, procedures and norms that are founded on responsive and accountable principles. In this sense, the concept does have considerable implications for the actual and perceived roles of political actors, and certain practices which ultimately shape the nature of political decision making processes. In order to make an empirical analysis of the level of institutionalization in local politics, the council profile in Sakarya metropolitan district municipalities are investigated in this study. The data collected through questionnaires including questions on the level of experience in and knowledge of political decision making processes among councilors, their political party affiliations, their perceptions of responsiveness and accountability, and their contacts with different local groups. The data have been analyzed basically with reference to seniority, autonomy and representation in municipal councils. The findings reveal a low level of institutionalization in municipal politics within the scope of this research.


1. On constant high (200 mmol)- and low (10 mmol)-sodium diets, thirty-one patients with idiopathic oedema have been compared with six non-oedematous control subjects while upright from 08.00 to 20.00 hours for 3 days and while recumbent all day for 2 days. 2. The cumulative weight rise in the upright posture and fall in recumbency were 'normal' in five patients ('non-orthostatic oedema') and excessive in twenty-six ('orthostatic oedema'). 3. Leg volume showed a cumulative rise during the upright period, which was excessive in the orthostatic oedema patients only. 4. When the orthostatic oedema patients were in the upright posture, fifteen retained sodium excessively ('orthostatic sodium retainers'), while eleven retained 'normal' amounts of sodium ('orthostatic water retainers'). 5. The 'orthostatic sodium retainers' experienced excessive acute orthostatic falls in inulin and para-aminohippurate (PAH) clearances. Half of them showed excessive aldosterone excretion and secretion rates and excessive potassium excretion in the upright posture on the 200 mmol of sodium diet. Plamsa volume fell excessively after 1 h in the upright posture in these patients. None of these changes was significant or consistent in the other patients with oedema. 6. Plasma renin activity and plasma protein and albumin concentrations were 'normal' in all patients in all circumstances. 7. Idiopathic oedema is a group of disorders each associated with: (I) orthostatic fall in filtered sodium often with orthostatic hyperaldosteronism and consequent orthostatic sodium retention; (II) orthostatic water retention possibly related to orthostatic hypervasopressinism and occasionally associated with occult heart failure; or (III) non-orthostatic factors.


Bile salt-stimulated lipase (BSSL) is a glycosylated protein present in milk at a concentration of 100-200 mg/L. It is an enzyme important for fat digestion in the newborn infant. The protein backbone contains one possible site for N-glyeosylation and several sites for 0-glyeosylation. The glycosylation of BSSL may be important for protection against proteolytic degradation and/or secretion of BSSL. The oligosaeeharides bound to BSSL may also, together with other protein-bound oligosacchatides and free oligosaecharides in milk, play an important role in the defense against pathogenic microorganisms. Human milk contains approximately 5-20 g/L of free milk oligosacchatides, and more than 100 different structures have been identified. There are individual differences in the content of milk oligosaeeharides depending on Lewis and seeretor status.Milk samples were collected from healthy donors at different times during lactation. BSSL was purified from the milk of five donors. Structural characterization of BSSL glyeosylation was performed by high-performance anionexchange chromatography (HP AEC), Bio-Gel P-4 chromatography, lectin affinity chromatography, gas chromatography coupled to mass-spectrometry (MS) and mattix assisted laser desorption-ionization time-of-flight MS. Certain carbohydrate epitopes were detected by monoclonal antibodies and lectins. Some of the methods above were used in combination with ptior derivatization, desialylation or digestion with different exo- and endoglycosidases. Thirteen major free oligosaccharides were quantified in milk from five individuals. Free milk oligosacchatides were purified by P4-Gel chromatography and analyzed by HPAEC.HP AEC coupled to pulsed amperometric detection is extensively used for analysis and quantification of oligosaccharides. Separation is achieved using highly alkaline conditions that lead to ionization of some of the hydroxyl groups, which can then interact with the anion-exchange matrix. The effect of colunm temperature was examined in a range of 13 to 40 oC. A large variation in retention times was found depending on small differences in colunm temperature. Moreover, individual oligosaccharides did not show the same temperature dependence. By use of different column temperatures, HP AEC could be optimized for analysis of milk oligosaccharides.BSSL was found to contain approximately one N-linked and nine O-linked oligosaccharides. The 0-glycans were stmcturally heterogeneous and contained· fucose and/or sialic acid. Each 0-glycan contained an average of eight monosaccharide units. The major N-linked oligosaccharides on human BSSL were mono-sialylated biantennary complex type structures with or without one, two or three fucose residues.Recombinant human BSSL expressed in CHO and C-127 cells were analyzed and found to be differently glycosylated than native BSSL. In contrast to native BSSL, recombinant BSSL did not contain fucose. On BSSL expressed in C-127 cells, the O-glycans were shorter and more extensively sialylated than O-glycans on native BSSL. The majority of N-linked oligosaccharides on recombinant BSSL had the same core structure (biantennary complex type) as native BSSL.Glycosylation of BSSL changed during lactation. BSSL had a higher carbohydrate and sialic acid content in the first lactation month. There was also a shift from preferentially α2-6 to α2-3 linked sialic acid on the protein-bound oligosaccharides during lactation. This shift was also found for free sialylated milk oligosaccharides, and suggests a change in the activity of certain sialyltransferases during lactation.A gradual increase in the expression of the fucosylated carbohydrate epitope Lewis x (Gals1-4[Fucal-3]GlcNAc-) was found on BSSL during the whole lactation period. This was reflected in a higher relative amount of fucosylated N-linked oligosaccharides present on BSSL later in lactation. A similar increase in fucosylation was indicated by analysis of free milk oligosaccharides. One of the major milk oligosaccharides, 3-fucosyllactose (3-FL), also increased in concentration during lactation. However, lacto-N-fucopentaose (LNFIII), the only free milk oligosaccharide containing the Lewis x epitope, showed a constant concentration. This finding does not exclude the possibility that the same fucosyltransferase is involved in the synthesis of Lewis x on BSSL, 3-FL and LNFIII. The precursor of LNFIII, lacto-N-neotetraose (LNnT) showed a marked decrease during lactation, which may explain the different pattem found for LNFIIl. The increase of 3-FL and Lewis x on BSSL was found for all individuals. The other free oligosaccharides studied decreased during lactation, except for lacto-N-fucopentaose li (LNFII), lacto-di-fucotetraose (LDFT) and 3-sialyllactose (3-SL), which showed constant concentrations.Total fucosyltransferase activity decreased during lactation in milk from both secretors and non-secretors. The specific α1-3 fucosyl transferase activity toward lactose also decreased during lactation, which indicated that fucosyltransferase activity in milk does not reflect the activity in the mammary epithelial cells.In conclusion, there are changes in glycosylation during lactation, which involves both protein-bound and free milk oligosaccharides. The different patterns for individual oligosaccharides indicate both down and up regulation of certain glycosyltransferases in the mammary gland during lactation. The importance of these changes for the infant's adaptation to the environment remains to be elucidated.


ABSTRACT The number of missing women in the population of Pakistan in 2015 amounted to approximately 4.4 million. The age distribution of this male surplus (i.e. in the 40+ population) suggests that the collective exposure of selected birth cohorts to deleterious events (i.e. conflicts and natural disasters) may have precipitated a surge in female vis-a-vis male mortality. To analyse this, this paper first collects gender and age disaggregated (wherever possible) mortality statistics arising from conflicts and natural disasters that have occurred throughout the history of Pakistan (since independence) and evaluates their impact on the sex ratios (male/female) of the population by age. Subsequently, it analyses the historical sex ratio pathway by age to assess how these events may have caused deviations from the pathway. The analysis reveals that conflicts and natural disasters (independently or in the aggregate) have had no impact on the missing women phenomenon in Pakistan and hence cannot explain the surplus of men in the country. Nevertheless, it points to the severity and persistence of the missing women phenomenon in Pakistan, especially among the elderly (60+) population. It also indicates the likely endurance of the phenomenon in future cohorts of elderly population in the country.


We described sociodemographics and expenditures of black bass (Micropterus spp.) anglers participating in eight different tournament types on Lake Guntersville, Alabama, in 2013. We estimated 9035 anglers fished in 259 tournaments. Most anglers were middleto older-age Caucasian males with an annual household income of over US$75,000, and who had participated in tournaments for over 15 years. Travel distance, expenditures, non-Caucasian participants, residence location, number of times fishing on Lake Guntersville, entry fees, and club membership all differed among tournament types. Anglers spent $4.5 million (average of about $500 per tournament per angler) that generated $208,000 in state and local tax revenue over a one-year period. However, expenditures varied over an order of magnitude among different tournament types. Discrimination of unique tournament types was an important variable in understanding the complex sociodemographic and economic aspects of competitive black bass tournaments. This information can be used to promote local economic benefits of competitive fishing. For example, large open, semi-professional and professional tournaments, which attracted large proportions of out-of-state anglers and associated overnight trips, resulted in the greatest local economic impact, and should be the events local tourism bureaus and Chambers of Commerce focus on to attract tournaments to the area. Also, approaches to encourage minorities, younger anglers, and women to participate in tournaments could be pursued to increase participation, hence economic impact.


Contrary to the previous political regime of the Slovak state (1939–1945), official policy had significantly changed in the renewed Czechoslovakia after the end of World War II, but anti-Jewish sentiments and even their brachial demonstrations somewhat framed the everyday reality of Jewish survivors who were returning to their homes from liberated concentration camps or hiding places. Their attempts to reintegrate into the society where they had used to live regularly came across intolerance, hatred and social exclusion, further strengthened by classical anti-Semitic stereotypes and prejudices. Desired capitulation of Nazi Germany and its satellites resulted also in the end of systematic Jewish extermination, but it did not automatically lead to a peaceful everyday life. This paper focuses on the social dynamics between Slovak majority society and the decimated Jewish minority in the first post-World War II years and analyses some crucial factors, particular motivations and circumstances of the selected acts of collective anti-Jewish violence in Slovakia. Moreover, the typological diversity of the specific collective atrocities will be discussed.


Energy consumption of communication networks is growing very fast due to the rapidly increasing traffic demand. Consequently, design of green communication networks gained a lot of attention. In this paper we focus on optical Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) networks, able to support this growing traffic demand. Several energy-aware routing and wavelength assignment (EA-RWA) techniques have been proposed for WDM networks in order to minimize their operational cost. These techniques aim at minimizing the number of active links by packing the traffic as much as possible, thus avoiding the use of lightly loaded links. As a result, EA-RWA techniques may lead to longer routes and to a high utilization on some specific links. This has a detrimental effect on the signal quality of the optical connections, i.e., lightpaths. In this study we quantify the impact of power consumption minimization on the optical signal quality. and address this problem by proposing a combined impairment and energy-aware RWA (IEA-RWA) approach. Towards this goal we developed a complete mathematical model that incorporates both linear and non-linear physical impairments together with an energy efficiency objective. The IEA-RWA problem is formulized as a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model where both energy efficiency and signal quality considerations are jointly optimized. By comparing the proposed IEA-RWA approach with existing RWA (IA-RWA and EA-RWA) schemes, we demonstrate that our solution allows for a reduction of energy consumption close to the one obtained by EA-RWA approaches, while still guaranteeing a sufficient level of the optical signal quality.


Service-Oriented Computing is a computing paradigm that utilizes services as fundamental elements to support rapid, low-cost development of distributed applications in heterogeneous environments. In Service-Oriented Computing, a service is defined as an independent and autonomous piece of functionality which can be described, published, discovered and used in a uniform way. SENSORIA Reference Modeling Language is developed in the IST-FET integrated project. It provides a formal abstraction for services at the business level.

Hybrid systems arise in embedded control when components that perform discrete changes are coupled with components that perform continuous processes. Normally, the discrete changes can be modeled by finite-state machines and the continuous processes can be modeled by differential equations. In an abstract point of view, hybrid systems are mixtures of continuous dynamics and discrete events. Hybrid systems are studied in different research areas. In the computer science area, a hybrid system is modeled as a discrete computer program interacting with an analog environment.

In this thesis, we inject continuous time execution into Service-Oriented Computing by giving a formal abstraction for hybrid systems at the business level in a Service-Oriented point of view, and develop a method for formal verifications. In order to achieve the first part of this goal, we make a hybrid extension of Service-Oriented Doubly Labeled Transition Systems, named with Service-Oriented Hybrid Doubly Labeled Transition Systems, make an extension of the SENSORIA Reference Modeling Language and interpret it over Service-Oriented Hybrid Doubly Labeled Transition Systems. To achieve the second part of this goal, we adopt Temporal Dynamic Logic formulas and a set of sequent calculus rules for verifying the formulas, and develop a method for transforming the SENSORIA Reference Modeling Language specification of a certain service module into the respective Temporal Dynamic Logic formulas that could be verified. Moreover, we provide a case study of a simplified small part of the European Train Control System which is specified and verified with the approach introduced above.

We also provide an approach of implementing the case study model with the IBM Websphere Process Server, which is a comprehensive Service-Oriented Architecture integration platform and provides support for the Service Component Architecture programming model. In order to realize this approach, we also provide functions that map models specified with the SENSORIA Reference Modeling Language to Websphere Process Server applications.


We consider the design of an inexpensive system for acquiring material models for computer graphics rendering applications in animation, games and conceptual design. To be useful in these applications a system must be able to model a rich range of appearances in a computationally tractable form. The range of appearance of interest in computer graphics includes materials that have spatially varying properties, directionality, small-scale geometric structure, and subsurface scattering. To be computationally tractable, material models for graphics must be compact, editable, and efficient to numerically evaluate for ray tracing importance sampling. To construct appropriate models for a range of interesting materials, we take the approach of separating out directly and indirectly scattered light using high spatial frequency patterns introduced by Nayar et al. in 2006. To acquire the data at low cost, we use a set of Raspberry Pi computers and cameras clamped to miniature projectors. We explore techniques to separate out surface and subsurface indirect lighting. This separation would allow the fitting of simple, and so tractable, analytical models to features of the appearance model. The goal of the system is to provide models for physically accurate renderings that are visually equivalent to viewing the original physical materials.


Employment of natural light of sun in building for lightening is one of the fundamental bases of the building construction. However, owing to some constraints, the direct access to the sun light is impossible. In this paper, a solar daylighting system using a Fresnel lens and plastic optical fibers (POFs) is presented. A novel solution for preventing the POFs from overheating damage without using optical filter, cold or hot mirrors is proposed using a simple water cooling system. In addition, a solar tracker with maximum degree of accuracy of 0.1 is utilized to concentrate the light on the bundle. Using this system, 18 watt heat power is absorbed by water and the maximum efficiency of 2.8% is achieved for light illumination.


CT of the head is the most requested examination in CT scan. However, the routine use of external shielding in CT imaging appears to be limited. It is because of concern that
the application of external lead shielding may result in increased internal scatter and consequently lead to an increased dose to the radiosensitive organs (Palmer, 2008). The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of different thickness of lead shielding in computed tomography (CT) examination of the head. This research is an experimental study using an anthropomorphic Rando phantom to imitate the patient. Different thickness of thyroid shield was applied which are 0.0 mm Pb, 0.5 mm Pb, 1.0 mm Pb and 1.5 mm Pb to protect thyroid gland from scattered radiation. Four thermoluminescent
detector (TLD) chips were placed at surface of thyroid gland and 1 cm depth within thyroid tissue upon slice 10 and slice 11 of phantom. The Rando phantom was placed on the Siemens Somatom Definition Flash Dual Source 128-slice CT scanner table and a CT head protocol was performed. Then TLDs were read to measure the surface dose and absorbed dose of thyroid gland using different thickness of lead shield. The data collected was analysed to measure the significant different radiation dose with various different thickness of lead shielding using statistical one way ANOVA. This study provides evidence that the effectiveness of lead shielding varied with their thickness respectively corresponding to thyroid dose due to scattered radiation. The highest dose reduction was
achieved by 1.5 mm Pb thickness which is 57.48% at the surface, 55.77% at 1 cm depth within thyroid tissue, followed by 1.0mmPb result in 56.69% at surface, 50% at 1 cm depth. The lowest dose reduction was achieved with 0.5 mm Pb is 52.76% at surface, 41.35% at 1 cm depth within thyroid tissue. This research suggested the application of
thyroid shielding gives advantage especially to the paediatric patient and patients that require repetition CT examination because long term illness. This research has proven that reducing radiation dose to the patient because of scattered radiation by increasing the thickness of lead shielding can further decrase dose to radiosensitive organ outside the scanning area. As a result, the risks of inducing cancer will also be decreased.


In the case in question, the European Court of Human Rights dealt with the boundaries of the right to inform in relation to use of secret tools of recording by journalists to conduct interviews on matters of public interest. In particular, the facts involved three videos secretly filmed involving a Greek politician. These videos were broadcasted on TV by the applicant which, then, was sanctioned by the Greek authorities. Regarding the first video, the Court ruled that the Greek Courts had violated the applicant, as broadcaster, freedom of expression by imposing sanctions for having secretly filmed video of a politician in a gambling arcade. However, the Court held that there had been no violation in respect of the two other videos filmed secretly on private premises. In its reasoning, the ECtHR observed that the Greek authorities had not considered that the first video was not recorded on private premises and, consequently, the interference with the official's privacy rights under art. 8 ECHR was, therefore, significantly less serious than the interference related to the other two videos where the Greek courts ruled in favour of the right to privacy of the politician, taking into account, in particular, the modalities exploited to obtain information together with the journalistic duties and obligations of the broadcaster.


This study investigates Chinese analysts' original opinions and forecast performance in their qualitative research reports. We find that Chinese analysts possess certain analytical capacity, but that their opinions are seldom original. Specifically, we find that Chinese analysts tend to use more evidential accounting information and sophisticated financial analysis methods when making "negative" conclusions for specific company performance. But we do not find any significant differences in the type of information and the financial analysis method used when they analyze "failure" versus "non-failure" companies. For the forecast performance, our results show that Chinese analysts' qualitative report conclusions have significantly positive correlations with a company's next year's EPS and core operating revenue growth. I. Introduction This paper investigates the qualitative research reports made by Chinese financial analysts in two aspects - original opinions and forecast performance; these are two measures for an analyst's analytical capacity. An original opinion means analysts can have their own views, rather than simply following others. They can point out questions and find hidden troubles in "good" companies, or explore potentialities in "bad" companies. These kinds of original views are the main distinction between analysts and ordinary investors. China established the Shanghai Stock Exchange in December 1990 and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in July 1991. It has approximately a total of 1,400 firms listed in these two stock exchanges. Therefore, the Chinese financial analyst profession is still in the early development stage. The objective of this exploratory study is to investigate Chinese financial analysts' original opinions and forecast performance in their qualitative research reports. Western analysts usually provide concrete data for the next period of expected EPS or accounting earnings. But Chinese analysts seldom make such kind of predictions (Hu et al., 2003). Therefore, it is difficult to investigate Chinese analysts' forecasts and their performance directly. In this paper, we use articles on Chinese newspapers as sources of data for archives study and adopt analysts' qualitative report conclusions as a proxy for the forecast performance to study the analytical capacity and behavior of Chinese financial analysts. This use of alternative data sources is a major contribution of our work to the literature. Generally speaking, analysts' performance is measured by their forecast accuracy; stock picks ability, quality of research reports or customer service. While in theoretical research such measures as forecast accuracy (Clement, 1999), frequency to overperform consensus forecasts (Butler and Saraoglu, 1999) and profitability of stock recommendation (Womack, 1996) are frequently used. The data in these literatures are mostly from I/B/E/S. However we cannot obtain these kinds of data directly in China for a large sample because it only includes about 10% of listing company data. In addition to public financial data from Chinese listed companies, our other data are collected by hand mainly from analysts' research reports. We gather the information that analysts often pay attention to, analysis methods that analysts use and conclusions they make, etc. To test whether Chinese analysts have their original opinions, we develop several hypotheses, such as whether they would analyze companies according to their characteristics, and whether they would come to their conclusions independently from auditors' opinions. Then, we synthesize all of the above-mentioned results and judge whether Chinese analysts have original opinions. Finally, we use multivariate regressions to analyze the association of analysts' conclusions and firms' actual financial performance one year later to observe their forecast performance. In this exploratory study, we find that Chinese analysts possess certain analytical capacity, but that their opinions are seldom original, because we do not find significant differences among using different financial analysis methods and collecting different types of information for "failure" versus "non-failure" companies. …


The proliferation of mobile devices equipped with communication technologies such as WiFi, 3G, and 4G, coupled with the exponential growth of online social networking, have increased the demand for social-context-aware systems. These systems leverage social information provided by users with contextual awareness, particularly location, to provide real-time personalized services. With Euromonitor International indicating a 37.7 % growth in mobile phone penetration in the past five years--ICTQatar recently reporting that each household owns 3.9 devices on average--Qatar is positioned as a strong candidate not only for the consumption of such services, but also for researching, building, and testing solutions related to context-aware system challenges. We address some of these challenges and propose pragmatic solutions. Our contributions fall into the following two categories: (i) We design and implement SCOUT, a context-aware, ubiquitous system that enables real-time mobile services by providing contextually relevant information. This information can either be generated reactively based on user request, or proactively created and disseminated to potentially interested users. Our SCOUT prototype consists of an android-based mobile client interfacing with facebook's API and a load-balancing profile-matching server that interacts with a localization engine. (ii) Since mobile users may not all experience reliable mobile-to-core connectivity due to contention, cost, or lack of connectivity, we therefore extend the reach of context-aware services to disconnected mobile users by proposing a novel communication paradigm that leverages opportunistic communication. We first send the intended information to the smallest subset of connected users deemed sufficient to reach the disconnected destinations. This subset then selectively forwards, based on social profiles, this information to nodes that are more likely to meet the destinations. Our evaluation, via simulation, shows that our algorithm achieves an improvement of 25% to 80% compared to current communication paradigms, while reducing overhead by as much as 50%. With SCOUT currently operational, and based on the simulation results, our ongoing work includes integrating our communication paradigm into the real system. We are also working on integrating real-time group recommender systems that identify groups based on user location coupled with social information to provide real-time contextual group recommendations.


Kita (1999) compares Japanese and English Enter/Exit verbs in spatial expressions, and argues that Japanese Enter/Exit verbs lack semantic encoding of motion. He claims that this runs counter to the view which considers motion and location to be primitives in the semantics of spatial expressions; instead, he proposes that discrete change of state should be included in the set of primitives. In this reply, I will first show that Kita's evidence does not support lack of motion in Japanese Enter/Exit verbs, but that instead these verbs do pattern with motion verbs in the language, where conflation of motion is not disputable. I finally demonstrate that Kita's claim about change of state may be well taken, but it should be put in a larger context of regular polysemy.


During the past decade, several studies have been published that investigated the social, emotional, and physical functioning of grandparents raising their grandchildren. Research suggests grandparents in these families experience high levels of stress and psychosocial difficulty. In addition, the available data suggest children raised by their grandparents often encounter behavioral, emotional, and academic problems at school. The problems they experience indicate these children require intervention assistance from psychologists, school counselors, and other school professionals. This paper provides a brief report of the phenomenon, particularly as it relates to the grandchildren's school-related functioning. Practical and theory-based interventions are described to improve the educational and developmental outcomes of these grandchildren. ********** During the past decade, several studies have been published that investigated the social, emotional, and physical functioning of grandparents raising their grandchildren (cf. Cox, 2003; Emick & Hayslip, 1999; Hayslip et al., 1998; Kropf & Burnette, 2003). Not until recently have scholars addressed the behaviors and school-related functioning of grandchildren in these families (cf. Harrison, Richman, & Vittimberga, 2000; Reynolds, Wright, & Beale, 2003). Grandparents who raise their grandchildren can provide a loving, familial home environment that is more positive than a foster care or other such governmental arrangement. Nonetheless, raising children is difficult for grandparents during what should be their golden years. Most grandparents do not bargain on having children to raise when they should be enjoying a time of peace and quiet. It seems that no matter how the grandchildren behave, they impact the well-being of their grandparents, for better or worse, simple because of their presence (Harrison et al, 2000). Grandparents who raise their grandchildren also significantly affect the educational functioning, developmental outcomes, and well-being of their grandchildren (Edwards, 2003; Harrison et al.). Few publications offer practical and theory-based interventions to help these families. In this article we review much of the available data and add to the database relative to these new family relationships. We focus on the social, emotional, behavioral, and school functioning of children raised by their grandparents. Practical, theory-based interventions are described to assist these families and improve the children's school-related functioning. An Alternate Family Structure The numbers of grandparents who become surrogate parents to their grandchildren are increasing substantially (Fuller-Thomson & Minkler, 2000). According to the United States Census Bureau (2001), approximately 5.6 million grandparents live in homes that include grandchildren younger than 18 years of age. Almost 6% of children in the United States live in households maintained by grandparents (Fuller-Thomson & Minkler). In many of these families, no biological parents are present. Nearly four million grandchildren have grandparents who serve as their primary caregivers. Almost one million of these grandparents have raised their grandchildren for five years or more. Children raised by their grandparents can be found among all religions, ethnicities, and socio-economic classes (Fuller-Thomson & Minkler). Nonetheless, some variation by ethnicity is evident with 13.5% of African American, 6.5% of Hispanic, and 4.1% of Caucasian American children living in such families (Fuller-Thomson & Minkler). Grandparents who assume the surrogate parenting role often do so as a result of the death of their adult children, their children's divorce, unemployment, and teenage premarital childbearing. Parental deaths as a result of violence and AIDS particularly contribute to the increase in these alternate families. …


Recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) injury is the most feared complication in thyroid surgery, resulting in a worse patients' quality of life, and is the most common cause of medical claim. Visualization of RLN before proceeding with dissection of the gland is considered the gold standard. In the last decade, intraoperative neuromonitoring (IONM) of RLN has progressively gained acceptance; nowadays, this method is widely spread, being routinely used in large workflow centers. IONM is helpful in the identification of RLN and allows to asses nerve functionality during and at the end of surgical procedure. In this chapter, IONM features, its advantages and limits, and its usefulness will be discussed.


This is the first anthology to bring together a selection of the most important contemporary philosophical essays on the nature and moral significance of self-respect. Representing a diversity of views, the essays illustrate the complexity of self-respect and explore its connections to such topics as personhood, dignity, rights, character, autonomy, integrity, identity, shame, justice, oppression and empowerment. The book demonstrates that self-respect is a formidable concern which goes to the very heart of both moral theory and moral life. Contributors: Bernard Boxill, Stephen L. Darwall, John Deigh, Robin S. Dillon, Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Aurel Kolnai, Stephen J. Massey, Diana T. Meyers, Michelle M. Moody-Adams, John Rawls, Gabriele Taylor, Elizabeth Telfer, Laurence L. Thomas.


We present a waved microchannel for continuous focusing of microparticles and cells using negative direct current (dc) dielectrophoresis. The waved channel is composed of consecutive s-shaped curved channels in series to generate an electric field gradient required for the dielectrophoretic effect. When particles move electrokinetically through the channel, the experienced negative dielectrophoretic forces alternate directions within two adjacent semicircular microchannels, leading to a focused continuous-flow stream along the channel centerline. Both the experimentally observed and numerically simulated results of the focusing performance are reported, which coincide acceptably in proportion to the specified dimensions (i.e. inlet and outlet of the waved channel). How the applied electric field, particle size and medium concentration affect the performance was studied by focusing polystyrene microparticles of varying sizes. As an application in the field of biology, the focusing of yeast cells in the waved mcirochannel was tested. This waved microchannel shows a great potential for microflow cytometry applications and is expected to be widely used before different processing steps in lab-on-a-chip devices with integrated functions.


Pathway between enclosure all on the right and the tower area, with pergola arching overhead; One of the two major convention and exhibition venues in Hong Kong, along with AsiaWorld-Expo. It is located in Wan Chai North, Hong Kong Island. Built along the Victoria Harbour, it is linked by covered walkways to nearby hotels and commercial buildings. The 1994-1997 expansion of the venue was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, in association with Wong & Ouyang (HK) Ltd. Larry Oltmanns led the design as the Design Partner with SOM. This was built on an artificial island and juts out towards the harbor. It served as the site of the Hong Kong handover ceremony, which signified the end of British colonial rule. HKCEC made a second expansion during 2006-2009. Upon completion, the HK$1.4 billion expansion added 19,400 sqm to the HKCEC, bringing the total exhibition space to nearly 83,000 sqm and total rentable function space to over 92,000 sqm. Source: Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (accessed 7/18/2013)


As an "index case" of Third-Wave democracies facing existential threat, Taiwan's elections entail important implications for study in comparative politics and international relations. In 2008, three important elections help define the course of Taiwan's democratic development and its relationship with China: the January legislative election, the March presidential election, and a controversial referendum on Taiwan's United Nations entry. This article employs game theory to analyze the impact of Taiwan's 2008 elections on cross-strait relations. It develops an "election game" by examining each principal player's preferences regarding each election. It analyzes Beijing's possible reaction to the potential outcomes, and then examines the actual election outcomes against the model and offers observations on the prospect of cross-strait relations. Overall, the model predicts that cross-strait relations after the 2008 elections will present a historic opportunity, which can be seized or squandered, depending on political leadership. Key words: China-Taiwan relations, Democracy - East Asia, East Asian politics Introduction: The Internal-External Nexus The year 2008 marks a turning point in Taiwan's democratic political development and cross-strait relations. A key reason for this prospect is the momentous elections that took place in Taiwan this year. On January 12, a parliamentary election was conducted under a new, mixed electoral system that selected candidates from single-member districts (SMDs) through the firstpast- the-post (FPTP) method and from lists nominated by political parties. Taking the so-called Duverger's Law (i.e., that a correlation exists between the plurality method and a two-party system) 1 at its face value and hoping to emulate other states that have adopted a mixed electoral system (e.g., Japan),2 many analysts hoped this new electoral system would contribute to a more healthy electoral competition between the two major centrist parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). They also hoped this new system would reduce the influence of fringe candidates and money politics that became somewhat common under the old system of single non-transferable vote (SNTV) in multi-member districts (MMDs). On March 22, 2008, the presidential election, featuring the KMT's and the DPP's former chairmen, decided whether Taiwan's voters wanted a leader who will solidify the "Taiwan identity" or one who promises to improve the economy and ease crossstrait relations. That the identity issue became a key issue in these elections,3 as it had been in recent years, was an important reason why Taiwan's elections entail implications for its external relations, particularly vis-a-vis China and the United States, and for regional stability.4 The electoral link between Taiwan's domestic politics and its external relations was further accentuated by the two referenda regarding the issue of Taiwan's entry into the United Nations that were conducted on the same day as the presidential election. The DPP-sponsored referendum called for the country's entry into the UN under the name "Taiwan." Not to be outdone by the DPP, the KMT sponsored a referendum calling for the country's return to the UN under flexible means. Various major powers opposed the DPP's UN referendum, most significantly the United States, Taiwan's chief security backer.5 Chinese officials expressed their concerns that crossstrait relations during the lead-up to the March 2008 presidential elections might enter a "high danger period." Passage of DPP's UN referendum would constitute a step toward a declaration of de jure independence of Taiwan.6 For China, such a declaration would be considered a "major incident" as defined in its Anti- Secession Law (ASL), and would call for a response using "non- peaceful means."7 The United States, while stating that it did not oppose Taiwan's holding referenda, tried hard but to no avail to dissuade the DPP government from conducting the most controversial UN referendum, and, failing that, to appeal directly to Taiwan voters. …


By using the strain smoothing technique proposed by Chen et al. (Comput. Mech. 2000; 25:137–156) for meshless methods in the context of the finite element method (FEM), Liu et al. (Comput. Mech. 2007; 39(6):859–877) developed the Smoothed FEM (SFEM). Although the SFEM is not yet well understood mathematically, numerical experiments point to potentially useful features of this particularly simple modification of the FEM. To date, the SFEM has only been investigated for bilinear and Wachspress approximations and is limited to linear reproducing conditions. The goal of this paper is to extend the strain smoothing to higher order elements and to investigate numerically in which condition strain smoothing is beneficial to accuracy and convergence of enriched finite element approximations. We focus on three widely used enrichment schemes, namely: (a) weak discontinuities; (b) strong discontinuities; (c) near‐tip linear elastic fracture mechanics functions. The main conclusion is that strain smoothing in enriched approximation is only beneficial when the enrichment functions are polynomial (cases (a) and (b)), but that non‐polynomial enrichment of type (c) lead to inferior methods compared to the standard enriched FEM (e.g. XFEM). Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) are a common occurrence in paediatrics. UTIs present in children as fever, anorexia, vomiting, lethargy and dysuria. Approximately 80% of the time, Escherichia coli is the causative bacteria in paediatrics, however, fungal UTI caused by Candida species can occur in premature infants. With an estimated 150 million UTIs occurring worldwide annually, this paper aims to establish the ideal management of urinary tract infections in paediatrics. Clinical signs and symptoms of UTI in paediatrics are dependent on age of the child. Neonates (0–27 days old) present with sepsis, vomiting, fever, and prolonged jaundice, while school aged children present with symptoms similar to adults such as dysuria and urgency. Diagnosis of a UTI can be done by using a urine dipstick or using the midstream clean catch method in toilet trained children, and using the transurethral catheterisation or suprapubic aspiration method for infants and young children. In the wake of antibiotic resistance, choosing the best anti-microbial agent for treatment is imperative. Whilst asymptomatic bacteriuria does not require antibiotic treatment, amoxicillin and clavulanic acid combination, cephalexin, cefixime and cefpodoxime are the preferred oral antibiotics, provided there are no known allergies. Ceftriaxone, ampicillin, cefotaxime and gentamycin are the recommended parenteral antibiotics, provided age, allergic status and renal function are considered prior to use. Careful consideration needs to be given before using prophylaxis in UTIs and should be reserved for extreme cases.


The Membrane Attack Complex/PerForin (MACPF) / (Cholesterol Dependent Cytolysin (CDC) superfamily encompasses two branches of pore forming proteins (PFPs). The CDC branch is a well-described family of pore forming toxins secreted by pathogenic Gram-positive bacteria. The MACPF branch includes effectors of the vertebrate immune system as well as fungal defence toxins and animal venoms. Both MACPF proteins and CDCs share the ability to form giant membrane embedded pores and a common evolutionary ancestry as they all possess the common MACPF/CDC fold that constitutes the pore forming component of the protein.
 As such, the common fold shared by CDCs and MACPF PFPs suggests these proteins use a common mechanism to perforate membranes. Structural and biophysical studies have contributed much to our understanding of the basic mechanism of CDC pore formation. In contrast, less is known about the MACPF branch of the family. Furthermore, the lack of sub-nanometer resolution structure of any MACPF/CDC pore limits our knowledge of the structural basis for pore formation.
 In order to address these problems, the CDC model of pore formation was first re- examined employing molecular modelling techniques to understand how the toxins change shape to form pores. The CDC pore transmembrane region was suggested to adopt a novel structure in order to span the membrane. In addition, cryo-Electron Microscopy (cryo-EM) guided modelling resulted in an improved model of the CDC pore consistent with new experimental data.
 In the second part of this thesis, a structural model of the MACPF immune effector C9 in the oligomeric form was built based on the cryo-EM maps determined by collaborators. These data permitted an improved understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying MAC assembly and MACPF pore formation.
 Collectively, the results presented in this thesis present a new understanding of the common pore forming mechanism utilised by important bacterial toxins and effectors of the vertebrate immune system. This study further highlights the variations of this common mechanism within both branches of the superfamily.


Where rankings, journal impact factors, citation scores and time-consuming peer review processes are increasingly viewed as a nightmare in the natural and social sciences, law still seems to be an oasis of peace and tranquility in certain countries. Nevertheless, this book reveals that law is a discipline in transition, moving from a national towards a transnational focus, from managerial laissez faire towards research programming and output financing, from monodisciplinarity to multidisciplinarity, from implicit quality standards toward more explicit attention for theory-building and methodological accountability. Experts from all over Europe in this volume show how these developments already have a serious impact on the way in which academic legal research is being evaluated throughout Europe. We argue that law has the advantage of lagging behind. Legal scholars can learn from the mistakes in other disciplines. We still have time to develop our own quality indicators, methodological standards and evaluation methods, but action is required.


This research presents a detailed study of the planktonic foraminiferal records of eleven sediment cores taken from a west-east transect in the Mediterranean Sea. Correlations are based on biostratigraphy, oxygen isotope stratigraphy and assisted by AMS 14C dating. This study assesses the potential to define a foraminiferal biostratigraphy of basin-wide validity. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used to determine variabilities in the planktonic foraminiferal records. The first principal component groups species on its positive and negative sides in such a way that this axis may be interpreted as an expression of SST variations. This interpretation is corroborated by its close similarity to oxygen isotope records. Mean PCA scores confirm previous observations that the temperature gradient in the eastern Mediterranean basin follows the same eastward increasing trend at glacial times as it does today. In contrast, the inferred sea surface temperatures (SST) from the western Mediterranean basin suggest a reversed gradient compared to the present. Preliminary results are discussed from the unprecedented high resolution marine records from two eastern Mediterranean cores. Based on PCA and planktonic foraminiferal ratios of warm, oligotrophic mixed layer species relative to cool, more eutrophic species, a series of cool episodes is observed throughout the Holocene. The cyclicity of these events is calculated at approximately 1300 years, a figure comparable with Holocene climate fluctuations recognised previously in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Greenland Ice Sheet. Micropalaeontological investigation of two western Mediterranean cores shows for the first time that abrupt cold spells, associated with Atlantic Heinrich-events, affected the Mediterranean Sea. Unusually high abundances of the subpolar species N. pachyderma (leftcoiling) in the Gulf of Lions reflect a thriving of a normally rare taxon in the western Mediterranean, in response to distinct, short term, episodes of favourable habitat development.


We present a novel method for predicting inflected word forms for generating morphologically rich languages in machine translation. We utilize a rich set of syntactic and morphological knowledge sources from both source and target sentences in a probabilistic model, and evaluate their contribution in generating Russian and Arabic sentences. Our results show that the proposed model substantially outperforms the commonly used baseline of a trigram target language model; in particular, the use of morphological and syntactic features leads to large gains in prediction accuracy. We also show that the proposed method is effective with a relatively small amount of data.