Context. The system of fourplanets discovered around the intermediate-mass star HR8799 offers a unique opportunity to test planet formation theories at large orbital radii and to probe the physics and chemistry at play in the atmospheres of self-luminous young (~30 Myr) planets. We recently obtained new photometry of the four planets and low-resolution (R ~ 30) spectra of HR8799 d and e with the SPHERE instrument (Paper III).

Aims. In this paper (Paper IV), we aim to use these spectra and available photometry to determine how they compare to known objects, what the planet physical properties are, and how their atmospheres work.

Methods. We compare the available spectra, photometry, and spectral energy distribution (SED) of the planets to field dwarfs and young companions. In addition, we use the extinction from corundum, silicate (enstatite and forsterite), or iron grains likely to form in the atmosphere of the planets to try to better understand empirically the peculiarity of their spectrophotometric properties. To conclude, we use three sets of atmospheric models (BT-SETTL14, Cloud-AE60, Exo-REM) to determine which ingredients are critically needed in the models to represent the SED of the objects, and to constrain their atmospheric parameters (T_(eff), log g, M/H).

Results. We find that HR8799d and e properties are well reproduced by those of L6-L8 dusty dwarfs discovered in the field, among which some are candidate members of young nearby associations. No known object reproduces well the properties of planets b and c. Nevertheless, we find that the spectra and WISE photometry of peculiar and/or young early-T dwarfs reddened by submicron grains made of corundum, iron, enstatite, or forsterite successfully reproduce the SED of these planets. Our analysis confirms that only the Exo-REM models with thick clouds fit (within 2σ) the whole set of spectrophotometric datapoints available for HR8799 d and e for T_(eff) = 1200 K, log g in the range 3.0−4.5, and M/H = +0.5. The models still fail to reproduce the SED of HR8799c and b. The determination of the metallicity, log g, and cloud thickness are degenerate.

Conclusions. Our empirical analysis and atmospheric modelling show that an enhanced content in dust and decreased CIA of H_2 is certainly responsible for the deviation of the properties of the planet with respect to field dwarfs. The analysis suggests in addition that HR8799c and b have later spectral types than the two other planets, and therefore could both have lower masses.


Designing Photo Absorbing Materials by Cation Substitutions for Photovoltaics Merid Legesse1, Heesoo Park1, Fedwa El Mellouhi1, Sergey N Rashkeev1, Sabre Kais1, 2, 3, Fahhad H Alharbi1, 3 1Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar. 2Department of Chemistry and Physics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 46323, USA. 3College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com. Recently, significant research efforts have focused on some emerging solar cell technologies such as dye-sensitized solar cells, perovskite photovoltaics, etc. However, these technologies face many challenges. In this talk, we will present a new family of light absorbing materials so-called pyroxene silicates. These materials are abundantly present in the earth crust however, bandgaps of naturally formed pyroxene silicates such as NaAlSi2O6 are quite high (∼5 eV). Therefore, it is important to find a way to reduce bandgaps below 3 eV to make them usable for optoelectronic applications [1, 2, 3]. Using first-principles calculations we investigated the possibility of band structure engineering of pyroxene silicates with chemical formula A+1B+3Si2O6 by proper cation substitution (A+ = Na, NH4+, PH4+, SH3+, CH3NH3+, CH3PH3+, CH3SH2+ and B3+ = Al3+ Ga3+, In3+, Tl3+). We found that appropriate substitutions of both A+ and B3+ cations can reduce the bandgaps of these materials to as low as 1.31 eV. In this talk, we will also discuss in details how the bandgap in this class of materials is affected and thermodynamic stabilities. We would like to thank Qatar National Research Foundation (QNRF) for the support (Grant No. NPRP 7-317-1-055. References (1) A.A.B. Baloch, S.P. Aly, M.I. Hossain, F. El-Mellouhi, N. Tabet, and F.H. Alharbi, Sci. Rep. 7, 11984 (2017). (2) F. El Mellouhi, A. Akande, C. Motta, S.N. Rashkeev, G. Berdiyorov, M.E.A. Madjet, A. Marzouk, E.T. Bentria, S. Sanvito, S. Kais, and F.H. Alharbi, ChemSusChem 10 1931 (2017). (3) F.H. Alharbi, S.N. Rashkeev, F. El-Mellouhi, H. P. Luthi, N. Tabet, S. Kais, npj Comput. Mater 1, 15003 (2015).


A common metric in games of imperfect information is exploitability, i.e. the performance of a policy against the worst-case opponent. This metric has many nice properties, but is intractable to compute in large games as it requires a full search of the game tree to calculate a best response to the given policy. We introduce a new metric, approximate exploitability, that calculates an analogous metric to exploitability using an approximate best response. This method scales to large games with tractable belief spaces. We focus only on the two-player, zero-sum case. Additionally, we provide empirical results for a specific instance of the method, demonstrating that it can effectively exploit agents in large games. We demonstrate that our method converges to exploitability in the tabular setting and the function approximation setting for small games, and demonstrate that it can consistently find exploits for weak policies in large games, showing results on Chess, Go, Heads-up No Limit Texas Hold'em, and other games.


Abstract. This paper proposes a system for monitoring of condition and surface of roads in developing countries like India. This system will be used by government agencies to monitor municipal activities like road laying and planning. The system utilizes a database created by geo-citizens or government workers as an input. The heavy machinery in existing systems is not an optimized solution to this problem. Some existing systems use GPS and accelerometer data for determining such artifacts. So, it is evident that there is a need for a system that generates robust, frequent and accountable geo-tagged data. We propose a new collaborative model for such a purpose by fusion of data from multiple sensors hosted on smart-phones of several active geo-citizens. The system focuses mainly on volunteered geographic information, in which users can use their respective smart-phones to collect the data required and upload it for further analysis. The server side of the system infuses this data into a PostGIS database and displays the road condition on a near real-time basis over a WebGIS. The strength of a good visualization in imparting insight to decision-makers is widely recognized. We advance the paper by assessing procured road data and displaying it in an easy to understand format. In addition to visualization, the WebGIS component also provides for timeline analysis of changes in road conditions, which may help in the improved management of road infrastructure.


Location-based spatial queries (LBSQs) refer to spatial queries whose answers rely on the location of the inquirer. Efficient processing of LBSQs is of critical importance with the ever-increasing deployment and use of mobile technologies. We show that LBSQs have certain unique characteristics that traditional spatial query processing in centralized databases does not address. For example, a significant challenge is presented by wireless broadcasting environments, which have excellent scalability but often exhibit high-latency database access. In this paper, we present a novel query processing technique that, while maintaining high scalability and accuracy, manages to reduce the latency considerably in answering location-based spatial queries. Our approach is based on peer-topeer sharing, which enables us to process queries without delay at a mobile host by using query results cached in its neighboring mobile peers. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach through a probabilistic analysis, and we illustrate the appeal of our technique through extensive simulation results.


Plankton are sensitive indicators of change and, at the base of marine food webs, they underpin important ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and fisheries production. In the UK and the Northeast Atlantic region, change in plankton functional groups, or 'lifeforms', constructed based on biological traits, is the formally accepted policy indicator used to assess Good Environmental Status (GES) for pelagic habitats under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD: 2008/56/EC). To identify changes in UK pelagic habitats, plankton lifeforms, were used from diverse UK data sets collected by different methods, including plankton sampling by nets, water bottles, integrating tube samplers, and the Continuous Plankton Recorder. A Plankton Index approach was used to identify change in plankton lifeforms. This is the first time that the pelagic plankton community has been assessed on a UK-wide scale and forms the foundation of the UK's 2020 MSFD Assessment for pelagic habitat biodiversity and food webs. This approach revealed that some of the plankton lifeforms used in the assessment displayed spatially-variable changes during the past decade. Assessing plankton community change using a common indicator at the UK scale for the first time is a significant step towards evaluating GES for European seas. Determining GES for pelagic habitats, however, is a challenging process, with additional work required to interpret the assessment results and to identify causation of the changes observed.


The flange on an outboard main-wheel half (aluminum alloy 2014-T6 forging) on a commercial aircraft fractured during takeoff. The failure was discovered later during a routine enroute check. The flange section that broke away was recovered at the airfield from which the plane took off and was thus available for examination. Failure occurred after 37 landings (about 298 roll km, or 185 roll miles). Examination of the fracture surfaces revealed that a forging defect was present in the wall of the wheel half. The anodized coating showed distinct twin-parallel and end-grain patterns between which the fracture occurred. The periphery of the defect was the site of several small fatigue cracks that eventually progressed through the remaining wall. Rapid fatigue then progressed circumferentially. Metallographic examination using Keller's reagent showed that the microstructure was normal for aluminum alloy 2014-T6 and the hardness surpassed the minimum hardness required for aluminum alloy 2014-T6. An abrupt change in the direction of grain flow across the fracture plane indicated that the wall had buckled during forging. This evidence supported the conclusion that the wheel half failed in the flange by fatigue as the result of a rather large subsurface forging defect. No recommendations were made.


Since 2005, India has introduced a series of progressive social acts that legislate a right to various socioeconomic entitlements. These range from information, work, and education to forest conservation, food, and public service. Three features distinguish these acts: the explicit use of rights-based claims; the design of innovative governance mechanisms that seek to enhance the transparency, responsiveness, and accountability of the state; and the role played by social activists and activist judges in spearheading these pieces of legislation with the help of progressive party politicians. This paper analyzes a key slow-burning stimulus of India's new rights-based welfare paradigm: the socially activist turn of its Supreme Court. I address two main questions. First, what explains the rise of progressive socioeconomic jurisprudence in India in the late 1970s? Following the prevailing scholarly consensus, I analyze the role of antecedent conditions and particular causal mechanisms to explain high judicial activism in India: deepening political fragmentation, endogenous judicial change, and the strategic political retreat of elected representatives. None of these factors can fully explain the timing, sequence, and focus of the social activist turn of the Indian Supreme Court in the late 1970s, however, which owed much to the rise of popular social formations during these years and their proliferation in the 1980s. Thus the complex interaction effects of several causal factors, whose weight has differed over time, provides a more convincing explanation. Second, what have been the achievements and failures of high judicial activism in India regarding socioeconomic rights? As many scholars persuasively demonstrate, its direct impact has been limited, while its pro-poor posture has been inconsistent. However, by focusing excessively on direct material consequences in the short-run, these studies discount the powerful long-term ramifications, many of which are symbolic and indirect, of the Indian Supreme Court's earlier progressive turn.


This chapter looks at democracy. The term 'democracy' refers very generally to a method of group decision making that is characterized by a kind of equality among the participants at an essential stage. To evaluate the arguments of democratic theorists, we must decide on the merits of the different principles, and conceptions, of humanity and society from which they proceed. We can evaluate democracy along at least two different dimensions: instrumentally, by reference to the outcomes of using it compared with other methods of political decision making; or intrinsically, by reference to qualities that are inherent in the method — for example, whether there is something inherently fair about making democratic decisions about matters on which people disagree. A vexing problem of democracy is whether ordinary citizens are up to the task of governing a large society. The chapter then offers some solutions for the problem of democratic citizenship.


Introduction Our classical heritage can be found today in a variety of elements which constitute the fabric of popular culture. Several recent films are noteworthy for their obvious use of classical themes and subjects while literary examples often rely on classical illusions in a more subtle manner. One of the more striking and easily observed means of acknowledging a tradition can be found in architecture, taking the viewer back to the Greek and Roman world, back even to the world of the ancient Egyptians. Revivals of classical designs in American architecture can certainly be found from the Colonial period onward, with places like Thomas Jefferson's home in Monticello or Union Station in Washington, DC. The focus in this study, however, is upon a more recent resurgence in the use of classical motifs, a resurgence which borders on the whimsy due to its location rather than to any overt attempts to be particularly fanciful. The use of the term culture in connection with Las Vegas, Nevada, might seem to some an oxymoron but there is probably no better place to seek popular culture than to look to that oasis in the Mojave desert and to consider in some detail what elements of antiquity await the unsuspecting tourist. Las Vegas itself emerged in the mid-19th century as a stop on the stage mail route between Salt Lake City and San Diego. A spring here refreshed travelers weary from crossing the Mojave Desert. The name means "the meadows" and these did, indeed, provide a stark contrast to the barren landscape. Later, the city grew because of the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake City Railroad. Now, of course, the city is famous for gambling but that did not come into Nevada until 1931 as a response to provide some form of entertainment for workers during the construction of Hoover Dam (Paher 157). While Las Vegas is renown today for its fabulous hotels and casinos, the first hotel is recognized to have been a modest thirty-room canvas-- topped structure built in 1905 to house those coming to bid on a land auction (Paher 79). The newer luxury hotels often have over 3,000 rooms each. For the New Year's Eve celebration of the year 2000, the town was able to boast a capacity of 120.000 rooms. The concept of a western frontier town changed in 1946 when Bugsy Siegel built the Flamingo Hotel as a fashionable, sophisticated resort hotel. Other resort hotels followed, still often with the western or frontier theme, such as the Desert Inn. However, the change was underway which would alter this five-mile stretch of mostly barren desert, turning it into the Las Vegas Strip. To some, this has become "the neon Valhalla" (Sehlinger 2). When we consider the classical heritage used in the post modern atmosphere of Las Vegas, we have to face a completely different interpretation of architecture. This is, to be sure, due to Las Vegas itself with its fantasy-world backdrop. A sense of historic style is present but completely lacking is a sense of historic space (Venturi and Brown 75). Juxtapositions abound: of ancient Egyptian motifs and medieval castles; of sedate classical statues and glittering signs advertising equally glittering casinos. An equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius outside Caesars Palace points to the Barbary Coast casino, not only across the street but across a chasm of time and imagination. Although this study concentrates upon the elements of ancient and classical art, we must take a moment to acknowledge three other noteworthy casinos. The Monte Carlo, for instance, which opened in 1996, is modeled after the Place du Casino in Monte Carlo, Monaco. It is a resort in the Belle Epoque style, designed by J. L. Charles Garnier who also designed the Paris Opera House. As one author has stated, "If the Monte Carlo fails as a resort, the building will be a perfect place to relocate the Nevada State Capitol" (Sehlinger 109). The casino Paris treats visitors to a 50-story half scale version of the Eiffel Tower, a glimpse of the Paris Opera House, Louvre, Arc du Triomphe, and Hotel de Ville. …


This article builds on the intellectual legacy of Jan Tinbergen by extending his analysis on welfare and security into a framework involving strategic interaction. I first incorporate welfare and security in terms of interstate tensions into a single utility or payoff function. An uncertain world is characterized by states that are more peaceful, and others where nations are more hostile to each other. Both conflictual and peaceful outcomes lie along a spectrum of hostility short of war. The strategies adopted by the two countries, which promote peace, can be complements or substitutes. This means that they can go up or down in response to increases in the strategies of its rival. I demonstrate that non-cooperative behaviour between nations is Pareto inferior to cooperative behaviour, because the latter is associated with more actions and efforts to promote peace. Cooperative behaviour is akin to Tinbergen's notion of world government. Non-cooperative behaviour by states also leads to moral hazard, and there can be free-riding in joint peaceful behaviour by some nations, particularly when the strategies of the countries are substitutes. The model is extended to aggressive international behaviour, including that mandated by populist plebiscites or election victories, as well as an outline of individual behaviour driven by identity-based politics.


In the following paper we present results of the analysis of NOAA active region 7968, which was the target of a coordinated observing campaign involving the instruments aboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), Yohkoh, and ground-based observatories (Bialk ´ Pic du Midi, and Huairou). This active region was relatively short-lived, and thus provides a rare example of a region observed continuously from its birth to its decay phase. We have extrapolated the SOHO Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) longitudinal magnetograms, and have compared the results of the modeled field with loops observed over a wide range of temperatures (10 5 -310 6 K). We find that, throughout the interval of disk passage, the global magnetic structure of the active region corresponds to a nearly potential-field configura- tion. Magnetic field shear is only seen in isolated patches along the polarity inversion line and is associated with the emergence of parasitic polarity regions. Several small GOES (B-class) X-ray flares and surge-like ejections were observed during the lifetime of the active region. We interpret both the heating of the active region loops and the flaring in terms of magnetic reconnection. In our scenario, the flares are assumed to be due to reconnection between the pre-existing field and newly emerging twisted flux tubes (as indicated by observed changes in the transverse field and inferred twisting motions of the plasma); while the heating of the plasma in quasi-static active region loops is assumed to be due to a relaxation process of the magnetic configuration. These loops appear anchored at places where the photospheric field is highly fragmented, creating a very complex connectivity pattern. This fact, together with the continual photospheric motions, provides the favorable condi- tions for current sheet formation and release of magnetic energy.


Slow uncertain reperfusion in Acute Ischemic Stroke (AIS) by intravenous thrombolysis has prompted search for alternative therapies. Pressure/flow disturbances from rapid compressions (20 – 24 Hz) of a clotted flow tube remote from thrombosis site have shown to assist reflow. Carotid Vibro-Compression (VC), a potentially risky maneuver, may therefore enhance AIS reperfusion but verification is needed that vibro-compressions would transmit flow disturbances to the cerebral arteries. From a pool of 15 volunteers (mean age 48) carotid compressions (5 to 8 Hz, < = ~1 cm) (n =11) and vibration (30 Hz ~ 1 mm) (n = 10) were independently and together implemented with ipsilateral and contralateral Doppler flow monitoring of an intra-cranial artery. Doppler pulses from compressions were immediately demonstrated in all vessels (26 / 26) under all conditions. Pulses from vibration were observable in a majority of vessels (22 / 25), but signals were often challenging to obtain. Mean intra-cranial flow velocities trended to increase during compressions (46.1 ± 6 .4 cm/s vs. 44.0 ± 4.9 cm/s), but the difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.06). Carotid VC reliably transmits flow pulses to the cerebral vasculature, however vibration requires biofeedback to ensure device positioning. Carotid VC appears feasible for animal testing, but safety remains a major question.


Over the last several decades, policymakers and stakeholders in the European Union (EU) have put considerable effort into increasing the adoption of organic farming, with the overall objective of its sustainable development. However, the growth of the organic sector has come with many challenges that jeopardize its sustainability. The question then is how to move organic farming in Europe forward and at the same time capitalize on its potential contribution to sustainability? Organic farming in the EU is a highly complex and dynamic food system and as such this question cannot be answered in isolation using a one-dimensional mind-set and tools of the past. In this paper, we use three system archetypes—Limits to Growth, Shifting the Burden and Eroding Goals—to sharpen our ability: (1) to analyze and anticipate difficulties in the development of organic farming in the EU under the current policy measures; and (2) to find effective ways to address these difficulties. A system archetype consists of a generic system structure that leads to unintended behavior over time and effective strategies for changing the structure into one that generates desirable behavior. The analysis reveals that in order to move forward, policymakers and stakeholders should reemphasize fundamental solutions rather than quick fixes that often generate unintended consequences. Specifically, Limits to Growth shows us that the leverage for moving organic farming out of the niche does not necessarily lie in increasing subsidies that push engines of growth, but rather in anticipating and managing its limits arising from, for instance, market dynamics or intrinsic environmental motivation. In turn, Shifting the Burden brings to attention how easily and unnoticeably the EU's organic farming system can become dependent on third countries thereby undermining its own sustainability. Finally, Eroding Goals highlights that is it important to continuously improve regulatory standards based on an external frame of reference, as otherwise organic farming in the EU will continue on its trajectory towards conventionalization.


Investigation of novel condition monitoring systems for diesel engines has received much recent attention due to the increasing demands placed upon engine components and the limitations of conventional techniques. This thesis documents experimental research conducted to assess the monitoring capabilities of Acoustic Emission (AE) analysis. In particular it focuses on the possibility of monitoring the piston ring-pack and cylinder liner interface, a critical engine sub-system for which there are currently few practical monitoring options. A series of experiments were performed on large, two-stroke and small, four-stroke diesel engines. Tests under normal operating conditions developed a detailed understanding of typical AE generation in terms of both the source mechanisms and the characteristics of the resulting activity. This was supplemented by specific tests to investigate possible AE generation at the ring-pack/liner interface. For instance, for the small engines measures were taken to remove known AE sources in order to accentuate any activity originating at the interface whilst for the large engines the interfacial conditions were purposely deteriorated through the removal of the lubricating oil supply to one cylinder. Interpretation of the results was based mainly upon comparisons with published work encompassing both the expected ring-pack behaviour and AE generation from tribological processes. This provided a strong indication that the source of the ringpack/liner AE activity was the boundary frictional losses. The ability to monitor this process may be of significant benefit to engine operators as it enhances the diagnostic information currently available and may be incorporated into predictive maintenance strategies. A further diagnostic technique considered was the possibility of using AE parameters combined with information of crankshaft speed fluctuations to evaluate engine balance and identify underperforming cylinders.


Interactions of bound electrons with an electromagnetic wave mix the electronic states and contribute terms to the wave functions linear in the propagation constant k of the light. These terms contribute O(k2) to the dielectric tensor ∊ij, with a resulting birefringence in an Oh crystal when k is not parallel to a three-or fourfold axis. By substitution of the dielectric tensor with its k dependence into Maxwell's equations, the three possible polarization E directions for each k and the corresponding propagation velocities can be predicted. Retardation of approximately transverse waves in a crystal with small anisotropy is a maximum along 〈110〉 and zero along 〈100〉 and 〈111〉. Retardation is also small for k directions lying on the shorter segment of a great circle of the unit sphere connecting a given pair of three- and fourfold axes. An investigation is also made of directions of maximum and minimum retardation in an Oh cube when anisotropy is not small. All of these results serve to correct analyses of earlier authors who assumed polarization directions appropriate only to a uniaxial crystal.


DOMINE is a database of known and predicted protein domain interactions compiled from a variety of sources. The database contains domain-domain interactions observed in PDB entries, and those that were predicted by eight different computational approaches. DOMINE contains a total of 20 513 unique domain-domain interactions among 4036 Pfam domains, out of which 4349 are inferred from PDB entries and 17 781 were predicted by at least one computational approach. This database will serve as a valuable resource to those working in the field of protein and domain interactions. DOMINE may not only serve as a reference to experimentalists who test for new protein and domain interactions, but also offers a consolidated dataset for analysis by bioinformaticians who seek to test ideas regarding the underlying factors that control the topological structure of interaction networks. DOMINE is freely available at http://domine.utdallas.edu.


Abstract We present the updated glaciological mass balance (MB) of Chhota Shigri Glacier, the longest continuous annual MB record in the Hindu-Kush Karakoram Himalaya (HKH) region. Additionally, 4 years of seasonal MBs are presented and analyzed using the data acquired at an automatic weather station (AWS-M) installed in 2009 on a lateral moraine (4863ma.s.l.). The glaciological MB series since 2002 is first recalculated using an updated glacier hypsometry and then validated against geodetic MB derived from satellite stereo-imagery between 2005 (SPOT5) and 2014 (Pléiades). Chhota Shigri Glacier lost mass between 2002 and 2014 with a cumulative glaciological MB of –6.72mw.e. corresponding to a mean annual glacier-wide MB (Ba) of –0.56mw.e. a–1. Equilibrium-line altitude (ELA0) for the steady-state condition is calculated as ~4950ma.s.l., corresponding to an accumulation–area ratio (AAR0) of ~61%. Analysis of seasonal MBs between 2009 and 2013 with air temperature from AWS-M and precipitation from the nearest meteorological station at Bhuntar (1050ma.s.l.) suggests that the summer monsoon is the key season driving the interannual variability of Ba for this glacier. The intensity of summer snowfall events controls the Ba evolution via controlling summer glacier-wide MB (Bs).


Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. Abstract Background: Effort-reward imbalance (ERI) is an established conceptualisation of work stress.


The development objectives of the Transmission Grid Strengthening Project for Georgia are to provide reliable power transmission to the southwestern part of the grid, upgrade electricity exchange systems, and provide economically efficient, environmentally, and socially sustainable electricity sector planning. Some of the negative impacts and mitigation measures include: (1) for agricultural lands - cash compensation at full replacement cost at current market value without deduction of depreciation value and transaction fees or replacement land of same value of land lost and at location acceptable to project affected people (PAPs) where feasible; (2) easement agreement will include a lump sum easement fee payable to the owner. Such fee to be established by an independent valuation experts; (3) PAPs will receive compensation and replacement value for the house and will be provided with resettlement assistance to ensure that the family relocates in a new house with access to services and security of tenure; (4) compensation at full replacement cost for lost structures, in addition of compensation for loss of land; (5) reconstruction of the lost structure or reestablishment of agricultural lands in consultation with community and restoration of their functions; and (6) cash indemnity of net income for months of business stoppage.


How well do children navigate the ocean of information that is available online? The enormous variety of Web-based resources represents both opportunities and challenges for Internet-savvy kids, offering extraordinary potential for learning and social connection but little guidance on assessing the reliability of online information. This book reports on the first large-scale survey to examine children's online information-seeking strategies and their beliefs about the credibility of that information. This Web-based survey of 2,747 children, ages 11 to 18 (and their parents), confirms children's heavy reliance on the Internet. They are concerned about the credibility of online information, but 89 percent believe that "some" to "a lot" of it is believable; and, choosing among several options, they rate the Internet as the most believable information source for entertainment, commercial products, and schoolwork (more credible than books for papers or projects). Most have more faith information found on Wikipedia more than they say others should; and they consider an article on the Web site of Encyclopedia Britannica more believable than the identical article found on Wikipedia. Other findings show that children are appropriately skeptical of trusting strangers they meet online, but not skeptical enough about entertainment and health information found online. Older kids are more rigorous in their assessment of online information than younger ones; younger children are less analytical and more likely to be fooled.


Significance In the largest study to date of autistic traits, we test 10 predictions from the Empathizing–Systemizing (E-S) theory of sex differences and the Extreme Male Brain (EMB) theory of autism. We confirmed that typical females on average are more empathic, typical males on average are more systems-oriented, and autistic people on average show a "masculinized" profile. The strengths of the study are the inclusion of a replication sample and the use of big data. These two theories can be considered to have strong support. We demonstrate that D-scores (difference between E and S) account for 19 times the variance in autistic traits than do other demographic variables, including sex, underscoring the importance of brain types in autism. The Empathizing–Systemizing (E-S) theory of typical sex differences suggests that individuals may be classified based on empathy and systemizing. An extension of the E-S theory, the Extreme Male Brain (EMB) theory suggests that autistic people on average have a shift towards a more masculinized brain along the E-S dimensions. Both theories have been investigated in small sample sizes, limiting their generalizability. Here we leverage two large datasets (discovery n = 671,606, including 36,648 autistic individuals primarily; and validation n = 14,354, including 226 autistic individuals) to investigate 10 predictions of the E-S and the EMB theories. In the discovery dataset, typical females on average showed higher scores on short forms of the Empathy Quotient (EQ) and Sensory Perception Quotient (SPQ), and typical males on average showed higher scores on short forms of the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and Systemizing Quotient (SQ). Typical sex differences in these measures were attenuated in autistic individuals. Analysis of "brain types" revealed that typical females on average were more likely to be Type E (EQ > SQ) or Extreme Type E and that typical males on average were more likely to be Type S (SQ > EQ) or Extreme Type S. In both datasets, autistic individuals, regardless of their reported sex, on average were "masculinized." Finally, we demonstrate that D-scores (difference between EQ and SQ) account for 19 times more of the variance in autistic traits (43%) than do other demographic variables including sex. Our results provide robust evidence in support of both the E-S and EMB theories.


The exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is widely used to reduce NOx emissions in diesel engines. However an excessive EGR rate in the cylinders leads to reduction of NOx and increment of particulate matter (PM) or misfire. In order to overcome this problem, the EGR mass flow rate should be controlled precisely. To control the EGR mass flow rate accurately, the EGR mass flow rate should be estimated correctly. This paper presents a physics based model of Variable Geometry Turbocharged diesel engine to estimate EGR mass flow rate. The diesel engine model includes subsystems of intake manifold model, exhaust manifold model, variable geometry turbocharger model, effective area for EGR valve model and exhaust gas temperature model. Models of the individual subsystem are implemented in MATLABTM/SIMULINKTM environment. These models are coupled together to form overall model for EGR mass flow rate estimation for variable geometry turbocharged diesel engine. Experimental data available from testing is used for simulation. Most of model is based on fundamental laws of physics and hence generic. The overall model has five inputs i.e. engine speed, fuel supply rate, intake manifold temperature, percentage VGT opening and EGR valve opening. The output of model is EGR mass flow rate and EGR ratio. Typical step input is provided to the engine model to study effects on output variables. The model is simulated for transient engine operating condition by sudden increasing or decreasing engine speed at different loading conditions. The estimated EGR mass flow rate and EGR ratio are found to be in acceptable range.


"This report, as part of an annual series on minimum wages, summarises the key developments during 2019 and early 2020 around the EU initiative on fair wages and puts the national debates on setting the rates for 2020 and beyond in this context. The report features how minimum wages were set and the role of social partners. It discusses developments in statutory minimum wages and presents data on minimum wage rates in collective agreements related to 10 low-paid jobs for countries without statutory minimum wages."


Do the prevailing unusually and persistently low real interest rates reflect a decline in the natural rate of interest as commonly thought? We argue that this is only part of the story. The critical role of financial factors in influencing medium-term economic fluctuations must also be taken into account. Doing so for the United States yields estimates of the natural rate that are higher and, at least since 2000, decline by less. As a result, policy rates have been persistently and systematically below this measure. Moreover, we find that monetary policy, through the financial cycle, has a long-lasting impact on output and, by implication, on real interest rates. Therefore, a narrative that attributes the decline in real rates primarily to an exogenous fall in the natural rate is incomplete. The influence of monetary and financial factors should not be ignored. Exploiting these results, an illustrative counterfactual experiment suggests that a monetary policy rule that takes financial developments systematically into account during both good and bad times could help dampen the financial cycle, leading to higher output even in the long run.


The present study intended to evaluate the quality of the service provided by the Midcentral Health and Massey University Concussion Clinic. In doing so, the study first considered the nature of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and concussion injury and rehabilitation and investigated different methods of measuring quality and weighed up the pros and cons of each method to chose the most appropriate method for this setting. As a result, the present study surveyed service satisfaction at the Concussion Clinic. A standardised measure (the Service Satisfaction Survey 30) was chosen to counter previous methodological problems common to other studies of satisfaction. The main objective of this study was to provide feedback to the Concussion Clinic regarding satisfaction with aspects of their services and to simultaneously investigate relationships with satisfaction. On a whole, participants were generally satisfied with the Concussion Clinic service; conversely some aspects of the service that could be improved were identified. However caution has to be taken in analysing the results especially when inferring results to the whole population, due to this low response rate (twenty of the seventy-nine clients surveyed returned the survey). The second objective of the study was to evaluate the use of this method of evaluation, and the measure chosen, with this type of service. The measure chosen (the Service Satisfaction Scale -30) proved inappropriate for this service setting due to the length and irrelevant questions. Moreover the use of client satisfaction as a method to evaluate this service, even though it provided some data on satisfaction with services, also may not be justified for the reason that the clients were generally only seen once and the nature of outcome in this setting was unclear. This study demonstrated the need for more research in the area of service satisfaction in the health arena, in particular this type of setting; suggestions for this research are included in this study.


Recent research has helped clarify the role of cadmium (Cd) in various pathological states. We have demonstrated Cd involvement in pancreatic cancer, as well as the bioaccumulation of Cd in the pancreas. Bioaccumulation and increased toxicity suggest that Cd may also be involved in other pancreas-mediated diseases, like diabetes. Cd falls into the category of "hyperglycemic" metals, i.e., metals that increase blood glucose levels, which could be due to increased gluconeogenesis, damage to β-cells leading to reduced insulin production, or insulin resistance at target tissue resulting in a lack of glucose uptake. This review addresses the current evidence for the role of Cd, leading to insulin resistance from human, animal, and in vitro studies. Available data have shown that Cd may affect normal insulin function through multiple pathways. There is evidence that Cd exposure results in the perturbation of the enzymes and modulatory proteins involved in insulin signal transduction at the target tissue and mutations of the insulin receptor. Cd, through well-described mechanisms of oxidative stress, inflammation, and mitochondrial damage, may also alter insulin production in β-cells. More work is necessary to elucidate the mechanisms associated with Cd-mediated insulin resistance.


Java's pluggable type systems provide valuable compile-time guarantees, but annotating the program with pluggable types can be a significant burden on programmers. Checker Framework Inference, a framework that aims to provide a constraint-based type inference for pluggable types, can generate type constraints over the occurrence of type qualifier of expressions according to type rules. However, there is no efficient approach to solve type constraints generated by Checker Framework Inference. This thesis presents a system called Type Constraint Solver that can solve the type constraint by encoding the constraint as a Max-SAT problem and in the LogiQL language. The system takes advantage of existing Max-SAT solvers and LogicBlox to solve the corresponding forms, and gets the concrete pluggable type qualifiers for program expressions. Type Constraint Solver provides options to separate constraints into groups and solve them in parallel. It also has extendability that can be easily extended with custom encoding logic. We developed a pluggable type system called Dataflow Type System on top of Checker Framework Inference to verify the functionality of Type Constraint Solver. The type system and its inference can perform data-flow analysis by inferring all possible run-time Java types of return types, parameters, fields, and variables at compile time. We applied Checker Framework Inference to six real-world applications of up to 39kLOC with Dataflow Type System and OsTrusted Type system resulting approximately 58,000 type constraints. We used our tool to solve these type constraints and analyzed the experimentation statistics. We manually examined the inference result and found that Type Constraint Solver is able to automatically infer the expected type qualifiers for benchmarks. Inferring the largest application with fastest inference options took about 10 seconds on average, and approximately 23,000 type qualifiers were inferred. These results suggest that our system can efficiently give correct solution for type constraints.


Abstract A new mineral species, terrywallaceite, ideally AgPb(Sb,Bi)3S6, has been found in Mina Herminia, Julcani Mining District, Huancavelica, Peru. It is associated with tetrahedrite, gustavite, barite, and pyrite. Terrywallaceite crystals are lath-shaped, metallic-black, with striations parallel to the elongated direction (the c axis). The mineral is opaque with black streak and metallic luster. It is brittle and has a Mohs hardness of ~4; cleavage is good on {010} and no parting was observed. Twinning is pervasive on (100). The calculated density is 6.005 g/cm3. Optically, terrywallaceite is grayish white in polished thin section, with weak bireflectance, weak pleochroism (white to pale gray), and weak anisotropy (gray with bluish tint to bluish black in air). An electron microprobe analysis yielded an empirical formula, based on 6 (S+As) apfu, Ag1.02Pb0.87(Sb1.53Bi1.47)Σ=3.00(S5.94As0.06)Σ=6.00. Terrywallaceite is a member of the lillianite group and isostructural with P21/c gustavite. Its unit-cell parameters are a = 6.9764(4), b = 19.3507(10), c = 8.3870(4) Å, b = 107.519(2)°, and V = 1079.7(1) Å3. The structure of terrywallaceite contains six symmetrically-nonequivalent S sites and five cation sites [Ag, Pb, M1 (=0.82Bi + 0.18Sb), M2 (=0.60Bi + 0.40Sb), and M3 (=0.95Sb + 0.05Bi)]. The pronounced preference of Sb for the M3 site over M2 and M1 in terrywallaceite is consistent with the site occupancy data reported for Sb-bearing gustavite, and suggests an alternative ideal formula for terrywallaceite of AgPb(Sb,Bi)(Bi,Sb)2S6, instead of AgPb(Sb,Bi)3S6


Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet is "one of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation" (Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times). Salon praised her for writing that is "always flawlessly beautiful, reaching for an experience that precedes language itself." The Village Voice added, "If Kurt Vonnegut were still alive, he would be extremely jealous." This stunning new novel presents Susan Lindley, a woman adrift after her husband's death and the dissolution of her family. Embarking on a new phase in her life after inheriting her uncle's sprawling mansion and its vast collection of taxidermy, Susan decides to restore the neglected, moth-eaten animal mounts, tending to "the fur and feathers, the beaks, the bones and shimmering tails." Meanwhile an equally derelict human menagerie-including an unfaithful husband and a chorus of eccentric old women-joins her in residence. In a setting both wondrous and absurd, Susan defends her legacy from freeloading relatives and explores the mansion's unknown spaces. Funny and heartbreaking, Magnificence explores evolution and extinction, children and parenthood, loss and revelation. The result is the rapturous final act to the critically acclaimed cycle of novels that began with How the Dead Dream.


We search for optimum growth conditions to realize flat Bi 2 ?> Te 3 ?> layers on InP(111)B by hot wall epitaxy. The substrate provides a relatively small lattice mismatch, and so (0001)-oriented layers grow semicoherently. The temperature window for the growth is found to be narrow due to the nonzero lattice mismatch and rapid re-evaporation of Bi 2 ?> Te 3 ?> . The crystalline qualities evaluated by means of x-ray diffraction reveal deteriorations when the substrate temperature deviates from the optimum not only to low temperatures but also to high temperatures. For high substrate temperatures, the Bi composition increases as Te is partially lost by sublimation. We show, in addition, that the exposure of the Bi 2 ?> Te 3 ?> flux at even higher temperatures results in anisotropic etching of the substrates due, presumably, to the Bi substitution by the In atoms from the substrates. By growing Bi 2 ?> Te 3 ?> layers on InP(001), we demonstrate that the bond anisotropy on the substrate surface gives rise to a reduction in the in-plane epitaxial alignment symmetry.


The focus of this dissertation is the development and testing of a CALL tool which assists learners of German with the extensive reading of German texts of their choice. The application provides functionality that enables learners to acquire new vocabulary, analyse the meaning of complex word forms and to study a word's semantic and syntactic features with the help of corpora and online resources. It is also designed to enable instructors to create meaningful exercises to be used in classroom activities focusing on vocabulary acquisition and word formation rules. The detailed description of the software development and implementation is preceded by a review of the relevant literature in the areas of German morphology and word formation, second language acquisition and vocabulary acquisition in particular, studies on the benefits of extensive reading, the role of motivation in second language learning, CALL, and natural language processing technologies. The user study presented at the end of this dissertation shows how a first test group of learners was able to use the application for individual reading projects and presents the results of an evaluation of the sortware conducted by three German instructors assessing the affordances of the applications for students and potential applications for language instructors.


This dissertation project researched sudent mobility-school changes not due to customary promotion-and its educational correlates, for students and schools in Vermont. Student mobility research in other states has found that the majority of these students are disadvantaged youth from low-income families, and they lag behind their peers academically. Academic consequences of student mobility affect not only students, but also their schools since NCLBA implementation sanctions influence school enrollments by increasing student transfers. The need for information about rural student mobility during early NCLBA implementation is significant in predominantly rural Vermont. This was the first statewide study of outcomes of mobility for students and schools in a rural state. Three basic research questions were: (a) What is the incidence of mobility among Vermont students and schools? (b) What is the impact of mobility, i.e., how does the incidence of mobility vary according to educational correlates for students and schools? (c) What do multilevel analytical models reveal about variation in mobility from student and school perspectives that may be useful for educational policy and practice? To address these questions, the study analyzed data for Vermont public school students, grades 1 through 12, during school years 1999-2004. Data sources included: (a) the Vermont Department of Education Student Census and Demographic Update; (b) student New Standards Reference Examination English Language Arts and Mathematics tests, grades 4, 8, and 10; (c) Vermont School Report indicators, and (d) NCES-US Census public school location information. In-depth cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of mobility, performance, sociodemographic, and educational correlates revealed significant and disturbing relationships that merit policy and prevention follow-up programming. School-level mobility incidence indicated that while in-migration was 20% on average, over 30% of the schools experienced much higher rates, mirroring urban-based mobility incidence. Academically, mobile students performed 3-10 percentile ranks lower than their stable counterparts did across grade levels and content areas on standardized tests, for longitudinal cohorts as well as cross-sectional grade groups. Risk factor analyses revealed that mobile students, relative to their stable peers, were (a) more likely to participate in free or reduced lunch programs at school, (b) less likely to have a 504 plan in place, (c) more likely to have kept a writing portfolio for 0-1 years (versus 2-5 years), (d) more likely to have kept a mathematics portfolio 0-1 years (versus 2-5 years), and (e) more likely to not meet the standard on mathematics performance tests. Hierarchical generalized nonlinear modeling analyses indicated that between 8% and 32% of the variation in student mobility was attributable to school-level composition and resources. This project aimed to benefit the Vermont educational community in several ways. Analytical methodology will provide the framework for developing a longitudinal monitoring system with mobility incidence, impact, and relevant educational information. Information from analytical results will inform a case study during spring 2005 to address student mobility by raising public awareness of associated issues that affect not only the students and their families, but also classrooms, schools and communities.


This study examined the relationship between universaldiverse orientation (UDO), a relatively new concept associated with multicultural awareness that is related to the recognition and acceptance of both similarities and differences among people (Miville et al., 1999), and personality. Participants were one hundred and one college students who completed a measure of UDO, the MivilleGuzman Universality-Diversity Scale (M-GUDS; Miville et al., 1999), and a well-established measure of normal personality, the California Psychological Inventory (CPI; Gough, 1987). Researchers hypothesized that significant relationships would exist between UDO and healthy attributes of personality. Initial results supported this hypothesis; however, post hoc analyses indicated that the demographic variables age and education were also significantly correlated with UDO, and these appear to moderate the relationship between UDO personality. Practical applications and implications for future research are offered. Vontress (1988, 1996) suggested that via the confluence of five cultures (i.e., universal, ecological, national, regional, racioethnic), human development produces includes idiographic differences as well as communal traits that transcend individual differences. Vontress went on to propose that an awareness of and appreciation for the differences and commonalities between and among cultures is important for effective human interaction. Miville et al. (1999) put a finer point on this idea. They believe that attentiveness toward and acceptance of group differences is critical for those who work with diverse persons from a variety of socialcultural backgrounds. Influenced by this Vontress, Miville et al. introduced the universal-diverse orientation (UDO) as ―an attitude toward all other persons that is inclusive yet differentiating in that similarities and differences are both recognized and accepted; the shared experience of being human results in a sense of connectedness with people and is associated with a plurality or diversity of interactions with others‖ (p. 292). Miville et al. (1999) reported that UDO is theoretically associated with personality functioning and wellness. Initial evidence has surfaced to support this link. For example, preliminary data indicate that UDO is related to attentiveness and responsiveness to others, openness to new experiences, interest and commitment to social and cultural activities of diverse people, and the ability to appreciate the impact of one's own and others' diversity (Constantine, et al., 2001; Thompson, Brossart, Carlozzi, & Miville, 2002; Yeh & Arora, 2003). Further, Miville et al. (1999) reported links between UDO and personality variables such as attitudes towards gender, well-being, mental health, autonomy, independence, and empathy--features that seem to be central to effectiveness in social interaction, such as is needed among counselors. Additionally, the UDO was negatively related to ratings of homophobia and dogmatism. Later, Strauss and Connerley (2003) and Thompson et al. (2002) added to the investigation of this hypothesized link. Strauss and Connerley found that the personality variables agreeableness (selflessness, tolerance, helpfulness) and openness to experience were positively and significantly associated with UDO. Thompson et al. also reported that UDO was linked to openness to experience. Together, these studies provide initial support for the Miville et al personality and UDO hypotheses. However, these studies used narrowly defined personality variables. Therefore, additional research is needed to expand and develops the UDO literature base. Because the UDO provides a framework for understanding and appreciating the foundational similarities and differences central to effective multicultural counseling, additional research is needed to evaluate this important construct. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to build upon and extend the research investigating the theorized relationship between UDO and personality. Specifically, we will examine the relationship between UDO, as measured by the Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale (M-GUDS; Miville et al., 1999) and selected variables from a wellestablished measure of personality traits, the California Personality Inventory (Gough, 1996) in a sample of students enrolled in courses offered in two university departments: counseling and mental health services, and psychology. Methods Subjects Graduate and undergraduate students (N =104) from departments of counseling and mental health services, and psychology at a large, Midwestern public university were recruited to participate in this study. All participants were briefed, prior to obtaining consent, about the nature and purpose of the study and the instruments included. Upon providing written consent, participants anonymously completed a testing packet that included a demographic data sheet, the M-GUDS, and the CPI. The M-GUDS and CPI were presented alternatively to control for method variance. Three


A number of metabolites of 17β‐estradiol were tested for their estrogenic activity using the ER‐CALUX assay based on the increased expression of luciferase in exposed T47D breast cancer cells. E2β and estrone showed similar potencies in the test, whereas E2α was 100 times less active. Incubation of cells with estrone (0.35 μM) resulted in the formation of E2β, whereas the reverse reaction was observed for E2β. The resulting equilibrium may explain the similar estrogenic potency of estrone in the test. The synthetic 17‐hydroxy benzoate ester of E2β was 3 times less active than the parent compound. The 17‐hydroxy palmitate and oleate esters of E2β, were respectively 25 and 200 times less active than the parent compound. The 2‐hydroxy metabolites of E2β and estrone showed a 5,000 to 10,000 fold lower activity. The 4‐hydroxy metabolites were more potent than the 2‐hydroxy metabolites, showing only a 20–200 times lower activity. The 2‐ and 4‐methoxyesters of estrone were 700 times less active. It is concluded that the estrogenic potency of metabolites formed in cattle after treatment with E2β, like estrone, E2α and especially the esters of E2β, may be significant with respect to the potential risk of the use of estradiol for growth promotion in domestic animals in certain countries.


This dissertation studies the effects of social interactions in two different areas of empirical microeconomics. The first chapter focuses on the effects of decentralized provision of public goods by a variety of state and nongovernmental agencies in developing countries. In particular, I find evidence of strategic interactions between neighboring communities in the provision of water in rural Tanzania: communities simultaneously free ride on, and receive positive spillovers from, each other's investments in public goods. In order to disentangle these two effects, I model the maintenance of pumps as a network game between neighboring communities, and estimate the model using geo-coded data. Decentralized provision of public goods is costly in this setting, and I estimate that greater coordination between organizations installing water pumps would increase pump functionality rates, and result in modest improvements in school attendance and child survival rates. The second chapter, which is co-authored, is methodological, and analyzes the evaluation of programs and policies in the presence of strategic interactions. We show that reduced form estimates of the direct effects and spillover effects of treatment are biased in settings where there are strategic interactions between the individuals affected by the program, even if researchers have valid instruments for individual treatment and neighbors' treatment. We develop a two-step procedure to test for and correct this bias. The first step tests for strategic interactions, by estimating a simple regression of individual treatment on neighbors' treatment. The second step uses a simple model to identify the structural parameters and estimate the true effects of treatment. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Economics First Advisor Camilo Garcia-Jimeno


English Language Learners' Perspectives of the Communicative Language Approach by Colonda Barnes-Hawkins MA, Regent University, 2005 BA, North Carolina Central University, 1994 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Walden University June 2016 Abstract The communicative language approach (CLA) dominates pedagogical practice in second language acquisition classrooms in the US. However, this approach does not emphasize independent pronunciation instruction, leaving learners to improve pronunciation on their own. This study explored the perspectives of English language learners (ELLs) being instructed via the CLA regarding the effectiveness of the CLA in providing intelligible pronunciation skills. The intelligibility principle of language served as the theoretical foundation underlying this study guided by research questions addressing how well the CLA met ELLs' pronunciation intelligibility needs and their perspectives on receiving independent pronunciation instruction to meet these needs. Using qualitative case study methods, the research questions were addressed through an analysis of interviews of 10 community college ELL adult volunteers who received instruction using the CLA as current or former students in the intensive English program, had linguistic skill levels ranging from beginner to advanced, and were graduates of U.S. schools. A typological analysis model was followed where the data were organized by themes, patterns, and identified relationships. Participants reported wanting to improve their pronunciation and that their pronunciation had improved with the CLA instructional strategies. Although all participants desired to receive some independent instruction in pronunciation, their preferred instructional modes differed. It is recommended that ELLs' perspectives be heard and that English as a Second Language educators instruct with the CLA while also providing explicit pronunciation instruction. The results of this study indicating student satisfaction with the CLA may elicit positive social change within the ELL community by providing a voice to ELLs.The communicative language approach (CLA) dominates pedagogical practice in second language acquisition classrooms in the US. However, this approach does not emphasize independent pronunciation instruction, leaving learners to improve pronunciation on their own. This study explored the perspectives of English language learners (ELLs) being instructed via the CLA regarding the effectiveness of the CLA in providing intelligible pronunciation skills. The intelligibility principle of language served as the theoretical foundation underlying this study guided by research questions addressing how well the CLA met ELLs' pronunciation intelligibility needs and their perspectives on receiving independent pronunciation instruction to meet these needs. Using qualitative case study methods, the research questions were addressed through an analysis of interviews of 10 community college ELL adult volunteers who received instruction using the CLA as current or former students in the intensive English program, had linguistic skill levels ranging from beginner to advanced, and were graduates of U.S. schools. A typological analysis model was followed where the data were organized by themes, patterns, and identified relationships. Participants reported wanting to improve their pronunciation and that their pronunciation had improved with the CLA instructional strategies. Although all participants desired to receive some independent instruction in pronunciation, their preferred instructional modes differed. It is recommended that ELLs' perspectives be heard and that English as a Second Language educators instruct with the CLA while also providing explicit pronunciation instruction. The results of this study indicating student satisfaction with the CLA may elicit positive social change within the ELL community by providing a voice to ELLs. English Language Learners' Perspectives of the Communicative Language Approach by Colonda Barnes-Hawkins MA, Regent University, 2005 BA, North Carolina Central University, 1994 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Walden University June 2016


Inositol pyrophosphates are relatively poorly understood, highly phosphorylated members of the inositol polyphosphate family. Two studies describe related advances in signaling involving inositol pyrophosphates. Mulugu et al. purified an inositol pyrophosphate synthase from yeast, called Vip1. Lee et al. purified a molecule that regulates the yeast Pho80-Pho85-Pho81 complex, a protein complex containing a cyclin, a cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK), and a CDK inhibitor. The active molecule turned out to be myo-D-inositol heptakisphosphate (IP7), which is synthesized through the kinase activity of Vip1. S. Mulugu, W. Bai, P. C. Fridy, R. J. Bastidas, J. C. Otto, D. E. Dollins, T. A. Haystead, A. A. Ribeiro, J. D. York, A conserved family of enzymes that phosphorylate inositol hexakisphosphate. Science 316, 106-109 (2007). [Abstract] [Full Text] Y.-S. Lee, S. Mulugu, J. D. York, E. K. O'Shea, Regulation of a cyclin-CDK-CDK inhibitor complex by inositol pyrophosphates. Science 316,109-112 (2007). [Abstract] [Full Text]


This study examines factors that determine the attitudes of learners toward a blended e-learning system (BELS) using data collected by questionnaire from a sample of 396 students involved in a BELS environment in Vietnam. A theoretical model is derived from previous studies and is analyzed and developed using structural equation modeling techniques. Several theoretical findings from previous studies are confirmed but there are new findings concerned with important indirect effects on the learner's attitude caused by (a) the extent to which the BELS provides flexible access to instructional/assessment media (System Functionality); (b) the individual's ability to use language as a studying tool (Language Capability); and (c) the extent of the interactions among students and faculty (Interaction). Each of these indirect effects operates by directly increasing the individual's belief that using the BELS is easy (Perceived Ease of Use) which in turn produces an improved attitude towards the BELS. Also, System Functionality has an important indirect effect on the learner's attitude to the BELS by increasing the learner's perceptions that the information and the manner in which it is presented in the BELS are appropriate (Content Feature), which then produces a definite improvement in the learner's attitude to the BELS. Based on the theoretical findings, a hierarchy of practical objectives and associated actions are suggested for improving the learner's attitude toward the BELS. These practical implications are expected to be of interest to education professionals and BELS developers and the actions relate directly or indirectly to (a) increasing the extent of the interactions among students and faculty; (b) increasing the individual's perception that the BELS is easy to use; (c) improving the learner's language skills; (d) ensuring that the BELS provides flexible access to instructional/assessment media; and (e) ensuring the appropriateness of the information and its presentation in the BELS.


PRIVACY-PRESERVING COMPUTATION AND ROBUST WATERMARKING TECHNIQUES FOR HEALTHCARE DATA Sinem Sav M.S. in Computer Engineering Advisor: Erman Ayday July 2018 Health and genomic data is sensitive in terms of carrying private information about individuals. One can infer inherited/genetic disorders, their occurrence probabilities, information about race, and kinship by analyzing an individual's genomic data. Furthermore, health data which is mostly collected by hospitals or other health institutions carries private information about individuals including the diseases they have at present or indicators of future diseases/disorders. While protecting such data, it is important to show that its utility is preserved and maximized since the data is used in researches. Regarding these facts, homomorphic encryption-based scheme (using Paillier cryptosystem) for the protection of health data and a novel watermarking scheme based on belief propagation algorithm for the genomic data is proposed in this work. Homomorphic encryption is used for the health data to show the ability of performing mathematical operations on the encrypted data without decrypting it with a real-life use-case. We show its practicality with the correctness and performance results. In the second part of this thesis, a watermarking scheme for genomic data is proposed to overcome the liability issues due to unauthorized sharing by service providers (SPs). Robust-watermarking techniques ensure the detection of malicious parties with a high probability and we show the probabilistic limits of this detection with different experimental setups and evaluation metrics. Lastly, this scheme guarantees the following with a high probability: (i) the utility is preserved, (ii) it is robust against single or colluding SP attacks, and (iii) watermark addition is compatible with the nature of the data as the proposed method considers auxiliary information that a malicious SP may use in order to remove/modify watermarked points before leaking the data.


The chemical exfoliation characteristics of phlogopite samples taken from Sivas - Yildizeli-Karakoc (Turkey) ore were investigated. H2SO4, HCl, HNO3, H3PO4 and H2O2 solutions at varying concentrations were tested for chemical exfoliation and the best reagent for this purpose was determined to be hydrogen peroxide. In the exfoliation tests performed, hydrogen peroxide concentration, temperature and reaction time were observed to be important parameters, with solid/liquid ratio being of minor importance. The exfoliation characteristics of the material increased with increases in hydrogen peroxide concentration and depending on the reaction time (1-30 hours) a maximum value of a 49-fold increase in swelling was obtained in 30% hydrogen peroxide solution at room temperature with a change of the density from 2.75 g/cm3 to 0.37 g/cm3. Although maximum swelling was reached in 30 hours at room temperature in 30% hydrogen peroxide solution, the reaction time was lowered to 70 minutes by an increase in temperature to 60°C. Above 60°C the material started to decompose into fine particles, with complete loss of its characteristics above 80°C. The experimental results were interpreted mathematically and a regression model was proposed to calculate the swelling ratio for any hydrogen peroxide concentration and reaction time at room temperature.


Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) helps researchers understand how cognitive skills and strategies make it possible for people to act effectively and get things done. CTA can yield information people need -- employers faced with personnel issues, market researchers who want to understand the thought processes of consumers, trainers and others who design instructional systems, health care professionals who want to apply lessons learned from errors and accidents, systems analysts developing user specifications, and many other professionals. CTA can show what makes the workplace work -- and what keeps it from working as well as it might. Working Minds is a true handbook, offering a set of tools for doing CTA: methods for collecting data about cognitive processes and events, analyzing them, and communicating them effectively. It covers both the "why" and the "how" of CTA methods, providing examples, guidance, and stories from the authors' own experiences as CTA practitioners. Because effective use of CTA depends on some conceptual grounding in cognitive theory and research -- on knowing what a cognitive perspective can offer -- the book also offers an overview of current research on cognition. The book provides detailed guidance for planning and carrying out CTA, with chapters on capturing knowledge and capturing the way people reason. It discusses studying cognition in real-world settings and the challenges of rapidly changing technology. And it describes key issues in applying CTA findings in a variety of fields. Working Minds makes the methodology of CTA accessible and the skills involved attainable.


BACKGROUND:Children undergoing cardiac surgery are frequently exposed to red blood cell (RBC) transfusions mainly in the case of hemorrhage or low oxygen transport. However, in this population, RBCs are sometimes added to the cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) priming solution to maintain a predefined hematocrit on bypass. In this study, we investigated the impact of RBCs added to the CPB on severe postoperative morbidity or mortality. METHODS:This retrospective cohort study was conducted between 2006 and 2012 in a tertiary care level, children's hospital. Children receiving red cells only to prime the CPB (CPB transfusion) were compared with those receiving no RBCs during their entire hospital stay. The primary outcome was severe postoperative morbidity or mortality. Studied secondary outcomes were neurologic deficit, infection, length of mechanical ventilation, pediatric intensive care unit and hospital length of stay, and mortality. Both groups were compared with propensity score analysis where patients were matched via a genetic matching algorithm. In all analyses, applying a Bonferroni correction, a P value <.05/8 = .00625, was considered statistically significant. RESULTS:Among the 854 patients retained for this study, 439 (51.4%) received no RBC transfusion during their entire hospital stay and 415 (49.6%) received a CPB transfusion. Thirty-five (8.0%) patients in the no-transfusion group and 110 (26.5%) patients in the CPB transfusion group developed severe postoperative morbidity or died. This difference was statistically significant using univariate analysis (P < .001). Propensity score analysis showed that 79 (19.55%) patients developed severe postoperative morbidity or died in the no-transfusion group compared with 103 (25.50%) patients in the CPB transfusion group (P = .043). The relative risk and its Bonferroni-corrected confidence interval was 0.77 (0.53–1.10). All secondary outcomes were not significantly different between both groups, except the number of patients who developed infections (P < .001). CONCLUSIONS:In the condition of our study, adding RBCs to the CPB priming to maintain a predefined hematocrit does not seem to impact markedly severe postoperative morbidity or mortality in children undergoing cardiac surgery. Only the risk of infection was increased in the CPB transfusion group. Further studies are warranted to better understand the complex interaction among severity of illness, anemia, RBCs transfusion, and outcome in children undergoing cardiac surgery.


Unmanned sensors are rapidly becoming the de facto means of achieving situational awareness — the ability to make sense of, and predict what is happening in an environment — in disaster management, military reconnaissance, space exploration, and climate research. In these domains, and many others besides, their use reduces the need for exposing humans to hostile, impassable or polluted environments. Whilst these sensors are currently often pre-programmed or remotely controlled by human operators, there is a clear trend toward making these sensors fully autonomous, thus enabling them to make decisions without human intervention. Full autonomy has two clear benefits over pre-programming and human remote control. First, in contrast to sensors with pre-programmed motion paths, autonomous sensors are better able to adapt to their environment, and react to a priori unknown external events or hardware failure. Second, autonomous sensors can operate in large teams that would otherwise be too complex to control by human operators. The key benefit of this is that a team of cheap, small sensors can achieve through cooperation the same results as individual large, expensive sensors — with more flexibility and robustness. In light of the importance of autonomy and cooperation, we adopt an agent-based perspective on the operation of the sensors. Within this view, each sensor becomes an information gathering agent. As a team, these agents can then direct their collective activity towards collecting information from their environment with the aim of providing accurate and up-to-date situational awareness. Against this background, the central problem we address in this thesis is that of achieving accurate situational awareness through the coordination of multiple information gathering agents. To achieve general and principled solutions to this problem, we formulate a generic problem definition, which captures the essential properties of dynamic environments. Specific instantiations of this generic problem span a broad spectrum of concrete application domains, of which we study three canonical examples: monitoring environmental phenomena, wide area surveillance, and search and patrol. The main contributions of this thesis are decentralised coordination algorithms that solve this general problem with additional constraints and requirements, and can be grouped into two categories. The first category pertains to decentralised coordination of fixed information gathering agents. For these agents, we study the application of decentralised coordination during two distinct phases of the agents' life cycle: deployment and operation. For the former, we develop an efficient algorithm for maximising the quality of situational awareness, while simultaneously constructing a reliable communication network between the agents. Specifically, we present a novel approach to the NP-hard problem of frequency allocation, which deactivates certain agents such that the problem can be provably solved in polynomial time. For the latter, we address the challenge of coordinating these agents under the additional assumption that their control parameters are continuous. In so doing, we develop two extensions to the max-sum message passing algorithm for decentralised welfare maximisation, which constitute the first two algorithms for distributed constraint optimisation problems (DCOPs) with continuous variables—CPLF-MS (for linear utility functions) and HCMS (for non-linear utility functions). The second category relates to decentralised coordination of mobile information gathering agents whose motion is constrained by their environment. For these agents, we develop algorithms with a receding planning horizon, and a non-myopic planning horizon. The former is based on the max-sum algorithm, thus ensuring an efficient and scalable solution, and constitutes the first online agent-based algorithm for the domains of pursuit-evasion, patrolling and monitoring environmental phenomena. The second uses sequential decision making techniques for the offline computation of patrols — infinitely long paths designed to continuously monitor a dynamic environment — which are subsequently improved on at runtime through decentralised coordination. For both topics, the algorithms are designed to satisfy our design requirements of quality of situational awareness, adaptiveness (the ability to respond to a priori unknown events), robustness (the ability to degrade gracefully), autonomy (the ability of agents to make decisions without the intervention of a centralised controller), modularity (the ability to support heterogeneous agents) and performance guarantees (the ability to give a lower bound on the quality of the achieved situational awareness). When taken together, the contributions presented in this thesis represent an advance in the state of the art of decentralised coordination of information gathering agents, and a step towards achieving autonomous control of unmanned sensors.


ABSTRACT. Through use of interspecific hybridization, and in some cases followed by polyploidization, cassava cultivars combining various desirable characteristics have been developed in Brazil. These range from high protein content and increased essential amino acids to tolerance to drought. Some cultivars have highly apomictic behavior. Others show tolerance to bacterial diseases and insect pests. Selection from crosses with indigenous cultivars has led to obtaining varieties with high beta carotene content and excellent palatability. Periclinal chimeras were successfully synthesized and gave very high productivity. Ten outstanding genotypes resulting from this ongoing selection and breeding program are part of the University of Brasilia living Manihot collection and are reviewed here.


The present work aims to analyze the changes in the insti-tutional environments, European and National, due to European con-sumers' requirements regarding the quality of products, about the Na-tional Beef Agro-Industrial System. The results indicate that despite the rise on requirements from European consumers, which has changed the institutional environment of the block, with consequent changes in the Brazilian institutional environment, there has been little impact on the governing procedures of transactions of SAG of domestic beef. Regarding the relationship between beef export slaughterhouse industry and beef suppliers, it was verified that there are no establishments of agreements for the transactions, that this fact can be explained through the creation of reliable commitments between the parts, as for the paying and deli-very of cattle, and also by the lack of enforcement on traceability on the part of the European Union and the Brazilian government (which reduce the peculiarity of the assets of the raw material). As for the relationship between the slaughterhouse and its consumers of the domestic market, a reliable commitment prevails between the two parties, being the transac-tions conducted through the market. Regarding the relationship between the export slaughterhouse and the European market, the rise on the pe-culiarity of assets leads to the establishment of agreements as a way to reduce the costs of transactions.


We report the observation of photon antibunching from a single, self-assembled InGaAs quantum dot (QD) at temperatures up to 135 K. The second-order intensity correlation, g(2)(0), is less than 0.260 plusmn 0.024 for temperatures up to 100 K. At 120 K, g(2) (0) increases to about 0.471, which is slightly less than the second-order intensity correlation expected from two independent single emitters. In addition, we characterize the performance of a superconducting single photon detector (SSPD) based on a nanopatterned niobium nitride wire that exhibits 68 plusmn 3-ps timing jitter and less than 100-Hz dark count rate with a detection efficiency (DE) of up to 2% at 902 nm. This detector is used to measure spontaneous emission lifetimes of semiconductor quantum wells (QWs) emitting light at wavelengths of 935 and 1245 nm. The sensitivity to wavelengths longer than 1 mum and the Gaussian temporal response of this superconducting detector present clear advantages over the conventional detector technologies. We also use this detector to characterize the emission from a single InGaAs QD embedded in a micropillar cavity, measuring a spontaneous emission lifetime of 370 ps and a g(2)(0) of 0.24 plusmn 0.03


Detailed information, both quantitative and observational, on the course of vegetation succession in various human‐disturbed habitats in Central Europe was used to construct an expert system named SUCCESS. Using the system, it is possible to predict tentatively the sequence of seral stages and dominant species exchange in successional seres initiated on bare ground and lasting up to 50 years. Simple information on geographical position, type of substratum, relief, moisture, nutrient content, character of surrounding vegetation, and size of the disturbed area is taken into consideration to predict site‐specific succession in the particular habitats. The expert system is supposed to help landscape managers, nature conservationists, and environmental impact assessment experts in decision‐making procedures to take into account the development of vegetation in man‐made sites. Moreover, it also summarizes scientific information on the pattern of vegetation change in human‐disturbed habitats in the geographical area considered.


Audio segmentation, in general, is the task of segmenting a continuous audio stream in terms of acoustically homogenous regions, where the rule of homogeneity depends on the task. This thesis aims at developing and investigating efficient, robust and unsupervised techniques for three important tasks related to audio segmentation, namely speech/music segmentation, speaker change detection and speaker clustering. The speech/music segmentation technique proposed in this thesis is based on the functioning of a HMM/ANN hybrid ASR system where an MLP estimates the posterior probabilities of different phonemes. These probabilities exhibit a particular pattern when the input is a speech signal. This pattern is captured in the form of feature vectors, which are then integrated in a HMM framework. The technique thus segments the audio data in terms of {\it recognizable} and {\it non-recognizable} segments. The efficiency of the proposed technique is demonstrated by a number of experiments conducted on broadcast news data exhibiting real-life scenarios (different speech and music styles, overlapping speech and music, non-speech sounds other than music, etc.). A novel distance metric is proposed in this thesis for the purpose of finding speaker segment boundaries (speaker change detection). The proposed metric can be seen as special case of Log Likelihood Ratio (LLR) or Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), where the number of parameters in the two models (or hypotheses) is forced to be equal. However, the advantage of the proposed metric over LLR, BIC and other metric based approaches is that it achieves comparable performance without requiring an adjustable threshold/penalty term, hence also eliminating the need for a development dataset. Speaker clustering is the task of unsupervised classification of the audio data in terms of speakers. For this purpose, a novel HMM based agglomerative clustering algorithm is proposed where, starting from a large number of clusters, {\it closest} clusters are merged in an iterative process. A novel merging criterion is proposed for this purpose, which does not require an adjustable threshold value and hence the stopping criterion is also automatically met when there are no more clusters left for merging. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated with various experiments on broadcast news data and it is shown that the proposed criterion outperforms the use of LLR, when LLR is used with an optimal threshold value. These tasks obviously play an important role in the pre-processing stages of ASR. For example, correctly identifying {\it non-recognizable} segments in the audio stream and excluding them from recognition saves computation time in ASR and results in more meaningful transcriptions. Moreover, researchers have clearly shown the positive impact of further clustering of identified speech segments in terms of speakers (speaker clustering) on the transcription accuracy. However, we note that this processing has various other interesting and practical applications. For example, this provides characteristic information about the data (metadata), which is useful for the indexing of audio documents. One such application is investigated in this thesis which extracts this metadata and combines it with the ASR output, resulting in Rich Transcription (RT) which is much easier to understand for an end-user. In a further application, speaker clustering was combined with precise location information available in scenarios like smart meeting rooms to segment the meeting recordings jointly in terms of speakers and their locations in a meeting room. This is useful for automatic meeting summarization as it enables answering of questions like ``who is speaking and where''. This could be used to access, for example, a specific presentation made by a particular speaker or all the speech segments belonging to a particular speaker.


The phase degradation of an optical wave front distorted by turbulence in the propagation medium may be corrected in a piecewise-linear fashion by using an array of small circular mirrors. An option in the correction scheme is to compensate for overall tilt separately. We have evaluated power spectra and variances of the piston and tilt motions of the mirror segments as well as the motion of the overall tilt corrector. The form of the spectra for any propagation medium is an aperture integral of the product of the phase-difference power spectrum, describing the medium, and a generalized transfer function, representing the aperture and its segments. In the case of low-power atmospheric propagation, the necessary propagation results are linear in turbulence strength; hence the path may be sectioned into a large number of thin slices. A set of standard curves is found to represent a generalized slice, and the differential contributions may be summed to represent any propagation path. The standard curves, further modeled in terms of power-law dependencies, are practical for use on a desk calculator.


Although interactive, direct manipulation applications are known to be difficult to design and implement, the toolkits with which they are built generally do not contain any particular support for debugging. The Amulet toolkit contains a comprehensive collection of monitoring and debugging tools, including an interactive ''Inspector.'' These tools are provided in a machine-independent way in C++ without using hooks into the compiler, symbol tables or the runtime stack. Some of these capabilities are based on wellknown techniques, but others are innovations that have never been provided before. Based on our experience with writing and debugging interactive applications, we have provided tools to address the most common and difficult programming bugs. The capabilities include: viewing values of objects as they change; breaking into the debugger when values change; viewing the inheritance and grouping hierarchies of objects; feedback for why objects are not visible or not interactive; tracing of constraint dependencies; and various techniques to search for objects. In addition, programmers can edit the values displayed in the Inspector, supporting rapid prototyping without requiring a C++ interpreter. These features make debugging interactive applications written using Amulet is substantially easier than with other toolkits.


We investigate properties of earthquake stress drops in simulations of evolving seismicity and stress field on a heterogeneous fault. The model consists of an inherently discrete strike-slip fault surrounded by a 3D elastic half-space. We consider various spatial distributions of frictional properties and analyze results generated by 150–300 model years. In all cases, the self-organized heterogeneous initial stress distributions at the times of earthquake failure lead to stress drops that are systematically lower than those predicted for a homogeneous process. In particular, the large system-sized events have stress drops that are consistently ∼25% of predictions based on the average fault strength. The type and amount of assumed spatial heterogeneity on the fault affect the stress-drop statistics of small earthquakes ( M L <5) more than those of the larger events. This produces a decrease in the range of stress drops as the earthquake magnitudes increase. The results can resolve the discrepancy between traditional estimates of stress drops and seismological observations. The general tendency for low stress drops of large events provides a rationale for reducing the statistical estimates of potential ground motion associated with large earthquakes.


Many nations of the world are experi- encing rapid aging and simultaneously seeing low fertility rates. The com- mon challenge they face is how to sustain an ade- quate workforce to main- tain economic growth, especially in light of the growing retirement and healthcare needs of an aging society. Various countries use pronatal policies, such as child allowances and family subsidies, to encourage women to have more children, with modest effect. Instead, increasing the working popula- tion through recruitment of foreign workers and immigration has been recognized as the most viable policy option- albeit one that has proven to be problematic, both politically and culturally. Asian countries in particular have unique cultures and traditions. Most of Asia has seen a significant decline in fertility and mortal- ity rates. As an Asian country that maintains one of the lowest total fertility rates (1.08 in 2006) in the world (Korea National Statistical Office, 2007), South Korea can provide an important example of how an aging society utilizes and addresses immigrants in general and foreign workers specifically. In particular, South Korea represents a good case of the tensions that con- front most aging societies that must reconcile economic and demo- graphic imperatives for immigration with deeply ingrained desires to main- tain their unique cultures. This article examines the situation in South Korea, and parallels in Italy and Japan, as a way of under- standing how other countries can address the nexus of aging, diversity, and immigration. SETTING THE STAGE South Korea's demographic transition has been defined by a rapid decline in fertility rates and a gradual decrease in mortality rates. From a high total fertility rate of five to six children per woman during the early 1950s, following the Korean War, the country's rate has dropped to a little over one child per woman today. Combined with improvements in public health and hygiene (which lowered the death rate from about 35 per 100,000 in 1910 to 17 in 1950 to 1955), life expectancy at birth extended from 23 years in 1905 to 1910 to about 50 years in 1950 to 1955 (Phang, 2005). Add into that the aging of the eight million South Koreans born in the baby boom generation of the 1950s, and the population of South Korea now finds itself rapidly aging. The proportion of the population over age 65 was about 8 percent in 2007, but it is estimated that the portion will grow to 10.7 percent by 2020, to 22.5 percent by 2030, and to 34.4 percent by 2050 (Kwon, 2008). As it did during its fertility transition in the second half of the twentieth century, South Korean society will continue to face issues of a completely developed country- that is, a growing aging population and a decreasing labor force (Phang, 2005). How will South Korea address the policy questions that arise from this demographic phenomenon. NEW SOCIAL CHALLENGES The change in South Korea's population has created a wide array of social challenges related to the decreasing labor force and increasing elder population. Among these are increased instability of incomes and the generational tension conoerning expansion of social services and government spending (Korea Development Institute et al., 2005). What is more, the impact of population changes on the economy and industry in South Korea now are all the more striking because Korea achieved its economic growth over a relatively short period of time, through its use of human resources (Kim, 2000). The economically "productive" portion of the South Korean population (defined as those ages 16 to 64) was more than 50 percent of the total during the early stages of economic development in the 1960s and began to increase during the early 1970s, reaching more than 70 percent in 2000. As noted above, this increase was possible because of the high fertility rate from 1950 to 1960 that produced the large baby boom generation and also because that generation's successive offspring cohorts were correspondingly large in number, even though the total fertility rate had already begun to drop by the time they reached their own reproductive years. …


The advent of next generation sequencing technology has generated massive amounts of biological data at unprecendented rates. Comparative genomics applications often require compute-intensive tools for subsequent analysis of high throughput data. Although cloud computing infrastructure plays an important role in this respect, the pressure from such computationally expensive tasks can be further alleviated using efficient data partitioning and work ow fusion. Here, we implement a work ow-based model for parallelizing the data-intensive tasks of genome alignment and variant calling with BWA and GATK's HaplotypeCaller. We explore three different approaches of partitioning data, granularity-based, individual-based, and alignment-based, and how each affect the run time. We observe granularity-based partitioning for BWA and alignment-based partitioning for HaplotypeCaller to be the optimal choices for the pipeline. We further discuss the methods and impact of work ow fusion on performance by considering different levels of fusion and how it affects our results. We identify the various open problems encountered, such as understanding the extent of parallelism, using heterogenous environments without a shared file system, and determining the granularity of inputs, and provide insights into addressing them. Finally, we report significant performance improvements, from 12 days to under 2 hours while running the BWA-GATK pipeline using partitioning and fusion.