Abstract. Nutrient loads carried by large rivers and discharged into the continental shelf and coastal waters are vital to support primary production. Our knowledge of tropical river systems is still fragmented with very few seasonal studies available for Southeast Asia for example, despite estimates that these systems are among the hotspots globally for nutrient yields. The Rajang river, the longest river in Malaysia, is a tropical peat-draining river which passes through peat-domes in the estuary and has mass discharge of organic matter into the South China Sea. Three sampling campaigns (August 2016, March 2017 and September 2017) were undertaken along ~ 300 km of the Rajang river to study both spatial and seasonal distribution of nutrients and its fate in the coastal region. The analyses for nutrients encompass both inorganic (i.e Nitrate, NO3−, Nitrite, NO2−, Ammonium, NH4+, Phosphate, PO4− (DIP) and Silicate, dSi) as well as organic (Dissolved organic nitrate, DON and Dissolved organic phosphate, DOP) fractions. It was found that DIP concentration was not seasonally influenced but was spatially different along the salinity gradient whereas DOP was both seasonally and spatially different. Both DIP and DOP exhibited non-conservative behaviour in the mixing. DIP was subjected to 57.78 % removal whereas DOP was subjected to 44.07 % addition along the salinity gradient towards the South China Sea. The bulk of the dissolved phosphate is from DOP (73.84 %), in which both DIP and DOP may have contributed to the phytoplankton biomass. Spearman's correlations show that there was a switch in preference for DOP as compared to DIP depending on the concentrations of DIP or DOP due to seasonality. The main limitation in the Rajang River was assumed to be DIP based on the Redfield ratio. During the dry season, the NO3-N : DIP ratios were lower, which were ideal conditions for phytoplankton proliferation while in the wet season, the increased NO3-N : DIP ratios led to lower phytoplankton biomass. Overall, the Rajang River exports 0.12 t DIP mth−1 into the South China Sea which is relatively low as compared to other major peat-draining rivers in the world. At the current pace of deforestation and the projected intensification of rainfall in the region, this finding provides an important baseline of the inventory of DIP into the South China Sea. Our results also show that local variations are important to consider for future models and that the assumption/generalization of SEA as a nutrient hotspot might not hold true for all regions and requires further investigations.


ABSTRACT By comparing photos of portraits of the faces of Renaissance courtesans to photos of attractive contemporary women's faces this study estimates the importance of sociocultural factors in the personal perception of faces. Physical attractiveness is an important causal factor in choosing a sex partner, so the difference between averaged attractiveness judgments, a focus of attractiveness research, and individual attractiveness judgment, most relevant to choosing a sex partner, is important. Except for modesty and faithfulness, 13 normally attractive contemporary models were rated much more positively by college student participants (N = 189) than were eight celebrated Renaissance courtesans, both in attractiveness (contemporary stimuli 63%; Renaissance courtesans 31%) and in personality traits. All of the Renaissance courtesan trait ratings showed more variability than the contemporary stimuli. This study supports the view that once a relatively low baseline level of biological attractiveness is surpassed, latent and explicit sociocultural factors, culturally relative gender role appearance expectations, culturally relative aesthetic judgment factors, individual differences, and interpersonal dynamics are major determining factors of judgments of pretty and/or beautiful showing large subcultural and cultural individual differences. Pretty and beautiful may be discrete concepts, with beautiful strongly culturally determined. These data suggest that sociocultural and subcultural factors are important determiners of attractiveness.


Increasingly, fire managers are using natural ignitions in conjunction with prescribed burns to restore and maintain fire-adapted ecosystems. Increased fuel loading from fire suppression and increasing drought indices associated with climate change, however, may cause natural ignitions to burn with greater intensity and severity. Managers must weigh risk factors versus benefits before allowing a lightning ignition to burn under these conditions. During the severe drought of 2011, the Ouachita National Forest had more lightning ignitions than any year in recorded history. While most were fully suppressed, one lightning ignition occurred in a particularly remote and rugged location that made suppression difficult and unsafe. Managers decided to use "less than full suppression" techniques and allowed this fire to burn within a designated containment area (~700 ha). Given the drought conditions, there was concern that significant overstory mortality would occur. We installed 32 randomly placed 10-m-radius circular plots directly after the fire in three community types: hardwood forest, pine-oak forest, and pine plantation. We identified and measured all trees =2.5 cm diameter at breast height (dbh) and determined scorch height and percentage, char height, and live or dead status. Plots were remeasured 1 and 2 years postburn to determine mortality. Overstory (>15.0 cm dbh) and midstory (=15.0 cm dbh) stem densities were reduced significantly 1 year postburn by 5 and 64 percent respectively, but not significantly between 1 year postburn and 2 years postburn. The long-term outlook for the Southern Region includes hotter and drier conditions. This study provides resource managers with information on tree mortality following a lightning ignition during a drought in the High Peak area of the southeastern United States, and will allow more informed decisions to be made on the necessity of suppressing wildfires versus using them to restore and maintain forest structure and composition.


The objective of this project is to design and develop an Intelligent Event Identification System, or ISEIS, which will be a prototype for routine event identification of small explosions and earthquakes and to serve as a tool for discrimination research. The first part of this study gives an overview of the system design and the results of a preliminary evaluation of the system on events in Scandinavia and the Soviet Union. The system was designed to be highly modular to allow the easy incorporation of new discriminants and/or discrimination processes. Because the main objective of the system is the identification of small events, most of the initial ISEIS prototype discriminants utilize regional seismic data recorded by the regional arrays, NORESS and ARCESS. However, ISEIS can easily process other regional array data (e.g., from GERESS and FINESA), as well as data from three-component single stations, as more of this data becomes available. The second part of this study is entitled Intelligent Event Identification System: User's Manual, and gives a detailed description of all the processing interfaces of ISEIS. The third part of this study is entitled Intelligent Event Identification System: Software Maintenance Manual, which describes the ISEIS software from the programmer'smore » perspective and provides information for maintenance and modification of the software modules in the system.« less


The Role of Case-Hardening in the Development and Preservation of Narrow, Vertical-Walled Canyons in Adršpach-Teplice, Czech Republic Shawn A. Wiggins Department of Geological Sciences, BYU Master of Science The geomorphology at Adršpach-Teplice, Czech Republic is dominated by verticalwalled, fracture-controlled features including slot canyons, gorges and pillars. Surfaces of canyon walls in Adršpach are case-hardened and more resistant to erosion than the bulk of the sandstone, which appears to be fundamental to the formation and preservation of canyons. Core and whole rock samples from Adršpach-Teplice were analyzed in thin section, including SEM analysis with cathodo luminescence. XRF and XRD analyses indicated that silica case-hardened surfaces are chemically and mineralogically similar to the rock interior, while iron case-hardened surfaces have an increase in iron present at the surface as the mineral goethite. Permeability analysis indicates a decrease in porosity in case-hardened surfaces. The rock at Adršpach-Teplice is poorly cemented yet has the strength to maintain vertical faces because of a locked sand structure, which was formed by pressure solution. Fracture faces contain disaggregation and cataclastic bands that reduce porosity and increase strength. Case-hardening exists on fracture faces and other surfaces as either silica or iron. Silica case-hardening is ubiquitous in the area and consists of a slight increase in abundance of silica overgrowths and sometimes an increase in clay content. It can form on fresh surfaces in as little as five years, creating what is essentially a self-repairing material. Iron case-hardening is composed of goethite, is much less prevalent than silica case-hardening, and does not appear to be actively depositing. Lichens, fungi, and other biological material are present on case-hardened surfaces and may add to the strength of the material. The internal structure of the rock lends the strength to form and maintain the features seen at Adršpach-Teplice, while case-hardening helps to protect them from erosion.


Extracted from text ... 14 October 2005 Moneyweb's PERSONAL FINANCE
BANKING
By STEVEN JONES
Fantastic plastic
Credit cards are a cheap, convenient method of payment -
if used properly.
ANY discussion around credit
cards tends to place the participants
into two firm camps. The
"pro" camp speaks of cheap banking,
interest-free periods, and
instant credit. The "anti" camp
refers to anecdotes of people who
have been financially crippled by
credit card debt.
Who is telling the truth?
Paradoxically, both camps are correct.
Credit cards need to be used
correctly in order to obtain the
maximum benefit. If misused,
they can drag you into financial ..


This article reports on a mixed methods study of Liberian refugee women at the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana. The study examined the role and impact of social capital on the women's well-being. Three types of social capital - bonding, bridging, and linking - were examined. The study's findings revealed that although the women had some bonding social capital, they possessed very little bridging social capital, and linking social capital was non-existent. These findings suggest that the refugee women may benefit from national and international policies and programs that seek to both strengthen existing and create new sources of social capital for refugee women.


Individual beliefs about technology use have been shown to have a profound impact on subsequent behaviors toward information technology (IT). This research note builds upon and extends prior research examining factors that influence key individual beliefs about technology use. It is argued that individuals form beliefs about their use of information technologies within a broad milieu of influences emanating from the individual, institutional, and social contexts in which they interact with IT. We examine the simultaneous effects of these three sets of influences on beliefs about usefulness and ease of use in the context of a contemporary technology targeted at autonomous knowledge workers. Our findings suggest that beliefs about technology use can be influenced by top management commitment to new technology and the individual factors of personal innovativeness and self-efficacy. Surprisingly, social influences from multiple sources exhibited no significant effects. Theoretical and practical implications are offered.


The influence of private actors, such as non-profit organizations (NPOs) and firms, has been increasing in disaster governance. Previous literature has interrogated the responsibilities of states towards citizens in disasters, but the roles of private actors have been insufficiently challenged. The article politicizes the entangled relations between NPOs, states, and disaster-affected people. It proposes the Rawlsian division of moral labor as a useful, normative framework for interrogating the justice of disaster governance arrangements in which 'liberal' states are involved. Liberal states have two types of responsibilities in disasters: humanitarian and political. The humanitarian responsibilities imply provision of basic resources needed for the capacity to make autonomous choices (domestically and abroad), while the political responsibilities imply provision of the institutions needed for the liberal democratic citizenship (domestically). Through this analytical lens and building on the wealth of existing scholarship, we illustrate the disaster governance role of the American Red Cross in the United States (a 2005 hurricane) and in Haiti (the 2010 earthquake). Where, in Rawlsian terms, United States is interpreted as a 'liberal' society, Haiti is framed as a 'burdened' society. The article proposes five points to consider in analyzing disaster governance arrangements under neoliberal regimes, structured around the division of humanitarian and political responsibilities. The article illustrates how NPOS are instrumental in blurring the boundaries between humanitarian and political responsibilities. This might result ultimately in actual vulnerabilities remaining unaddressed. While the Rawlsian approach challenges the privatization and lack of coordination in disaster governance, it is limited in analyzing the political construction of 'burdened' societies.


The Philippines is suggested to be one of the world's main contributors to global marine plastic pollution. Several rivers in the Manila metropolitan area are assumed to be main pathways of land-based plastic waste into the ocean. However, these model estimates remain uncertain due to a lack of field data. The main goal of this study was therefore to collect field data on floating macroplastic flux and polymer category in three of Manila's main rivers: the Meycauayan, Tullahan and Pasig. We measured plastic flux, item polymer category, and flow velocity at two locations per river during an 11-day period. Each river was measured close to the river mouth, and several kilometer upstream. The results showed no significant difference between the plastic flux in upstream and downstream flow direction at the three river mouths. The Meycauayan and Pasig rivers did have significantly higher plastic flux at the river mouth compared to the upstream location. The observations suggest accumulation of macroplastics in the river mouths during periods of low freshwater discharge. In this case, instantaneous plastic flux is mainly determined by the tidal dynamics. It is hypothesized that plastics are temporarily retained in estuaries, and may be flushed out during neap tide or increased river discharge. Due to the retention capacity of the estuaries, net plastic export into the ocean could not be estimated. Future research is needed to further investigate the role of tidal dynamics on the transport and net export of riverine macroplastics.


We study numerically the role of mesoscale structures in the Ligurian Sea (NW Mediterranean Sea) as a possible factor affecting the spatial distribution of the chlorophyll spring bloom. We use the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) configured for the NW Mediterranean Sea (ROMS_NWMed) and satellite derived Altimetric, Sea Surface Temperature and Chlorophyll concentration data, for years 2009 and 2010. Comparison of model output with satellite and in situ data shows agreement between numerical results and observations. There is a significant interannual variability in concentration and distribution of chlorophyll in the basin during the two years of the study. The ROMS_NWMed simulation reveals the formation of a number of mesoscale eddies along the Northern rim Current characterized by a long lifetime and closed streamlines. A significant higher number of eddies is found during the chlorophyll-rich year 2010. The high number of eddies, due to the "eddy pumping mechanism", generate spatially and temporally localised fluxes of nutrient into the euphotic zone, thus contributing to the fertilization of the Ligurian Sea. Therefore, eddies in the Ligurian rim current can have important effects on the location of development of the main patch of chlorophyll spring bloom and consequently on the local ecosystem dynamics.


A description is given of a software-process maturity framework that has been developed to provide the US Department of Defense with a means to characterize the capabilities of software-development organizations. This software-development process-maturity model reasonably represents the actual ways in which software-development organizations improve. It provides a framework for assessing these organizations and identifying the priority areas for immediate improvement. It also helps identify those places where advanced technology can be most valuable in improving the software-development process. The framework can be used by any software organization to assess its own capabilities and identify the most important areas for improvement.<<ETX>>


Abstract Background and objectives: This mixed-methods study aimed to assess health-related quality of life in young adults with CHD following surgery in a low middle-income country, Pakistan. Despite the knowledge that geographic, cultural and socio-economic factors may shape the way health and illness is experienced and managed and consequently determine a person's health-related quality of life, few health-related quality of life studies are conducted in low middle-income countries. This deficit is pronounced in CHD, so there is little guidance for patient care. Methods: The study utilised concurrent, mixed methods. Adults with CHD (n = 59) completed health-related quality of life surveys (PedsQLTM 4.0 Generic Core Scale, PedsQLTM Cognitive Functioning Scale and PedsQLTM 3.0 Cardiac Module). Semi-structured interview data were collected from a nested sub-sample of 17 participants and analysed using qualitative content analysis, guided by the revised Wilson–Cleary model of health-related quality of life. Results: The lowest health-related quality of life domain was emotional with the mean score (71.61 ± 20.6), followed by physical (78.81 ± 21.18) and heart problem (79.41 ± 18.05). There was no statistical difference in general or cardiac-specific health-related quality of life between mild, moderate or complex CHD. Qualitative findings suggested low health-related quality of life arose from a reduced capacity to contribute to family life including family income and gender. A sense of reduced marriageability and fear of dependency were important socio-cultural considerations. Conclusions: CHD surgical patients in this low-income country experience poor health-related quality of life, and contributing factors differ to those reported for high-income countries. Socio-cultural understandings should underpin assessment, management and care-partnering with young adults with CHD following surgical correction.


This paper develops and applies a new approach to the estimation of the impact of economy-wide reforms on wage differentials using a new high-quality data set on wage differentials by schooling level for 18 Latin American countries for the period 1980-1998. The results indicate that reform overall has had a short-run disequalizing effect of expanding wage differentials, although this effect tends to fade away over time. This disequalizing effect is due to the strong impact of domestic financial market reform, capital account liberalization and tax reform. On the other hand, privatization contributed to narrowing wage differentials and trade openness had no effect on wage differentials. Technological progress, rather than trade flows, appears to be a channel through which reforms are affecting inequality. The paper also explores the effects of reforms on wage levels; tentative results suggest that reforms have had a positive effect on real average wages, but a negative effect on the wages of less-schooled workers.


Ethnohistoric sources suggest that the indigenous inhabitants of Andean South America saw both people and things as animated or enlivened by a common vital force (camaquen). In approaching the subject of camaquen archaeologically, I attempt to place objects and their materiality at the analytical centre, rather than the normally privileged ethnohistoric or ethnographic data, in order to see what new insights into the nature of Pre-Columbian ontologies might be gained from 'thinking through things'. In this, I follow recent theories premised on the idea that the traditional segregation of concepts and things may hinder understanding of alternative worlds. The study focuses specifically on the arrangements, relationality and referentiality between and among objects found in sacred and offering contexts dating to the Inca period.


Global patterns of human land use have shifted towards increasingly sprawled development intermixed with natural land cover, creating coupled human and natural systems. To understand how these patterns may affect the persistence of wildlife populations, I studied changes in American black bear (Ursus americanus) population density, dispersal, movement behavior, and conflicts with humans across a gradient of development in Connecticut. Forest fragmentation, and intermixture with housing promoted conflicts between bears and people. Median census tract household income was associated with spatial autocorrelation in reported conflict locations, illustrating the importance of accounting for social carrying capacity in managing human-wildlife conflict in intermixed ecosystems. Variation in bear densities were more associated with housing density than forest cover, or a measure of intermixture. Bear densities were elevated in exurban, relative to rural areas, and decreased above 18 houses/km suggesting urban tolerance, rather than adaptation, among the Connecticut population. Cohabitation with development can negatively impact wildlife populations, if population dynamics and evolutionary trajectories are detrimentally altered. Therefore, identifying changes in population dynamics and behavior in response to human development are important to wildlife conservation and management in intermixed ecosystems. To identify potentially maladaptive dynamics, I quantified changes in black bear dispersal, spatial genetic structure, and migration between differing levels of development. Increased housing density was associated with longer dispersal movements, and female philopatry was thus disrupted within more Michael John Evans – University of Connecticut, 2016 developed areas. Subpopulations occupying developed landscapes were not only sustained by local recruitment, but may serve as a source of female immigrants to surrounding areas. I estimated selection for anthropogenic landscape features by black bears to discern movement patterns indicative of perceived risk, or habituation. Bears increasingly avoided housing and highways with increased intensity of development, and females with cubs were more avoidant of housing, providing evidence of perceived risk. However, bears decreased avoidance of development during hyperphagia, and exhibited increases in selection for roads and highways from day to night, indicating behavioral plasticity in response to perceived risk. Individual behavior in response to anthropogenic landscape features was highly variable within the population, indicating the potential for changes in the population mean.


Noninvasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD) poses a promising solution for detecting genetic alterations in fetus genome. However, the inference of the maternal allele inheritance in monogenic autosomal recessive disease is still challenging. Here the Bayesian hierarchical model is proposed to deduce the allele inheritance basing on haplotype frequency. The Bayesian approach, which does not depend on the knowledge of fetus DNA proportion in maternal plasma, provides accurate estimations on both real and simulated data; moreover, it is most robust than current methods in analyzing noisy or even erroneous data.


The Little Red Schoolbook (1969) was one of the most well-travelled media products for children from '68 aimed at children, and it was certainly the most notorious. Over the course of a few years (1970–2) it was translated and published in Belgium, Finland, France, Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, it also circulated freely in Austria and Luxembourg, and reached beyond Europe to countries including Australia, Japan and Mexico. It led to an obscenity trial in Great Britain, nearly toppled the Australian government, and caused a global publishing scandal. This essay therefore looks at the Scandinavian children's '68 in its international context, via a transnational, comparative analysis of the reception of the LRSB, in order to examine how '68 counterculture and ideas of childhood clashed and converged in the West around 1970. It asks: what can the publishing history of the LRSB tell us about the distinctive features of children's media in Scandinavia at this time?


As the first global carbon fund, the World Bank's Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) aims to catalyze the market for project-based greenhouse gas emission reductions while promoting sustainable development and offering a learning-by-doing opportunity to its stakeholders. Since the inception in 1999, the PCF has engaged in a dialogue with China to get it to sign up as a host country, because the World Bank and other international and bilateral donors expect great potential of the clean development mechanism (CDM) in China and feel the significant need for building CDM capacity in China to enable it to gain more insight into the CDM and increase its capacity to initiate and undertake CDM projects. This paper first discusses why China had hesitated to sign up as a host country of PCF projects until September 2003. Then the paper explains what has led China to endorse the PCF projects. The paper ends with discussions on the implications of the PCF's offering prices for the emerging global carbon market.


Approximately 6400 children and adolescents lose a parent in the Netherlands and even more children are confronted with other types of loss such as the death of a close friend or grandparent. The death of a loved one is one of the most devastating events that can occur in children's and adolescents' lives. There is growing recognition of a syndrome that children can develop post loss, referred to as Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD). This dissertation project had three aims: (I) to increase our understanding of the phenomenology and correlates of PGD, (II) to enhance knowledge on the role of negative thinking in the development of PGD in children and (III) to develop an intervention for children who suffer from loss and to examine its feasibility an potential efficacy. Three studies were conducted to investigate the first aim. First we developed the Inventory of Prolonged Grief for Children (IPG-C) and the Inventory of Prolonged Grief for Adolescents (IPG-A). Findings suggest that both inventories have good internal consistency, stability and concurrent validity. Both can be used for the assessment of PGD in children and adolescents who suffer from loss and also for treatment studies among bereaved children. In a second study we found that PGD, depression and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are distinct constructs in children who suffer from bereavement. Our third study suggested that avoidance symptoms of bereavement-related PTSD may better be conceived as two separate clusters of effortful avoidance and symptoms of emotional numbing. Beside those main findings we found that correlations between children's ratings and parent-ratings on grief related feelings are moderate. This indicates that it is important that children report about their own grief instead of solely relying on their parents' observations of the suffering following a loss. In order to understand why some children cope with loss more easily than others (our second aim), it is also important to study the role of negative thinking among bereaved children. However, no measure was available. To fill this gap, we developed the Grief Cognition Questionnaire for Children (GCQ-C). Findings suggest that it is a reliable and valid tool to examine negative grief related cognitions in children and adolescents. Despite the fact that some children suffer from grief related problems and that there is a growing recognition of PGD, hardly any effective treatments are available. We therefore developed Grief-Help, a cognitive behavioural treatment that consists of nine (weekly) sessions for the child and five separate (two-weekly) sessions for their parent(s). We tested Grief-Help in two separate pilot studies. Based on those studies the treatment appears promising enough to warrant evaluation in a controlled trial. Such a multicentre Randomised Controlled Trial therefore is currently being conducted in the Netherlands.


We consider an optimal consumption and pollution problem that has two important features. Environmental damages due to economic activities may be irreversible and the level at which the degradation becomes irreversible is unknown. Particular attention is paid to the situation where agents are relatively impatient and/or do not care a lot about the environment and/or Nature regenerates at low rate. We show that the optimal policy of the uncertain problem drives the economy in the long run toward a steady state while, when ignoring irreversibility, the economy follows a balanced growth path accompanied by a perpetual decrease in environmental quality and consumption, both asymptotically converging toward zero. Therefore, accounting for the risk of irreversibility induces more conservative decisions regarding consumption and polluting emissions. In general, however, we cannot rule out situations where the economy will optimally follow an irreversible path and consequently, will also be left, in the long run, with an irreversibly degraded environment.


White light was temporally modulated and subjects gave magnitude estimations of the apparent depth of modulation. Three stimulus parameters were varied: level of time-average luminance, amplitude of modulation, and frequency of modulation. At the lowest luminances, apparent depth of modulation decreased monotonically as modulation frequency increased toward fusion. At the higher luminances, only large amplitudes of modulation produced monotonic functions relating apparent depth of modulation to frequency; smaller amplitudes of modulation produced nonmonotonic functions with maxima in the region of 5–10 Hz. Derived contours relating modulation amplitude to frequency for constant apparent depth of modulation generally resemble functions relating modulation amplitude to frequency for threshold.


ABSTRACT The European Central Bank's (ECB) role as a political actor during the euro crisis raised concerns about its independence and insufficient accountability. Against this backdrop, the article investigates how and why the ECB reacted to demands for more accountability during and following the crisis. To this end, we revisit the independence-accountability nexus, adding three qualifications to the conventional wisdom that independence and accountability do not go together. First, recurring to the governor's dilemma, we argue that a delegation relationship characterized by a high level of independence favours competence over controllability. Second, we open the black box of accountability by investigating the extent to which the ECB made the strategic choice to improve selected accountability dimensions. Third, against the commonsensical view that ECB accountability mechanisms are underdeveloped, this piece shows that certain accountability dimensions have been continuously improved to defend independence. The findings contribute to the literature on accountability and the causes and consequences of delegating power to supranational institutions.


Idioms, conceived as fixed multi-word expressions that conceptually encode non-compositional meaning, are linguistic units that raise a number of questions relevant in the study of language and mind (e.g., whether they are stored in the lexicon or in memory, whether they have internal or external syntax similar to other expressions of the language, whether their conventional use is parallel to their non-compositional meaning, whether they are processed in similar ways to regular compositional expressions of the language, etc.). Idioms show some similarities and differences with other sorts of formulaic expressions, the main types of idioms that have been characterized in the linguistic literature, and the dimensions on which idiomaticity lies. Syntactically, idioms manifest a set of syntactic properties, as well as a number of constraints that account for their internal and external structure. Semantically, idioms present an interesting behavior with respect to a set of semantic properties that account for their meaning (i.e., conventionality, compositionality, and transparency, as well as aspectuality, referentiality, thematic roles, etc.). The study of idioms has been approached from lexicographic and computational, as well as from psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic perspectives.


BACKGROUND--Inhaled glucocorticoid therapy has systemic effects including hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) suppression. The optimal test for detecting these effects has not been defined. METHODS--Timed urine collections and 09.00 hour plasma cortisol levels were obtained from 12 normal volunteers receiving inhaled placebo, beclomethasone (BDP) 800 or 2000 micrograms/day. The 24 hour urine samples were collected as follows: first hour after waking (hour 1), the next two hours after waking (hours 2 and 3), remainder of day, and overnight, with results expressed as urine cortisol/creatinine (UCC) ratios and as hourly cortisol output in the timed collections. Twenty four hour urinary cortisol excretion was also calculated. Medication was blinded and given in random order with a washout period of at least 11 days between each treatment arm. RESULTS--None of the UCC ratios changed with BDP 800 micrograms/day. UCC ratios at hour 1, hour 2 and 3, and overnight, and 24 hour urinary free cortisol excretion were reduced after BDP 2000 micrograms/day, whilst remainder of day UCC ratio and the plasma cortisol level did not change significantly. Cortisol output showed similar changes. In a follow up study BDP 1400 micrograms/day also reduced UCC ratios for the first two hours after waking. CONCLUSIONS--UCC ratios are as sensitive as the more cumbersome 24 hour urinary free cortisol excretion, and more sensitive than single morning plasma cortisol measurements, in detecting the effects of inhaled beclomethasone on the HPA axis.


Inducing governmental organizations to do the right thing is the central problem of public administration. If Congress or another principal wants a federal executive agency to pay attention to a value that constrains or conflicts with the agency's overall mission — that additional value is here labeled, generically, "Goodness" — the principal often creates a subsidiary agency office — an "Office of Goodness." Both policymakers and scholars should care about how and when Offices of Goodness work. Yet while Offices of Goodness are frequently established in federal agencies, they are nearly invisible in scholarship. And the resulting knowledge gap is currently particularly problematic, because President Obama has just proposed a new Office of Goodness, within the National Security Agency, to increase oversight of surveillance activities. An Office of Goodness's success is far from guaranteed; to actually increase Goodness in its agency, its staff must skillfully use a highly constrained toolkit, and they must avoid the twin shoals of impotence or capture/assimilation. This Article analyzes the relevant dynamics. The Article begins by describing a paradigmatic Office of Goodness, the Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and the details of four controversies — information-sharing relating to the Occupy movement; laptop border searches; Border Patrol's Spanish-language assistance for police; and data retention by the National Counterterrorism Center. These examples ground the more general discussion that follows, which is also informed by both theory and other case studies. The Article canvasses tools available to an Office of Goodness — inclusion in working groups; clearance authority; advice-giving; training and technical assistance; program review; complaint investigation; outreach; document generation; and congressional reporting. It then explains why Office influence and commitment are continually threatened, and argues that both depend crucially on external reinforcement, from Congress, the White House, non-governmental organizations, the courts, or other agencies. Office of Goodness efficacy should not be taken for granted. Unless the goal is purely cosmetic, each Office's tools must be carefully prepared, and its influence and commitment purposefully produced and maintained. By focusing inside federal agencies and on personnel who offer advice rather than run agency operations, the Article adds to both the "structure and process" strand of positive political theory and research into public administration and bureaucratic theory. Its ambition is to raise the salience of the Office of Goodness strategy, placing it more prominently on the menu of "internal separation of powers" devices for further analysis and assessment.


A generic, facile, and waterborne strategy is introduced to fabricate flexible, low‐cost nanocomposite films with room‐temperature phosphorescence (RTP) by incorporating waterborne RTP polymers into self‐assembled bioinspired polymer/nanoclay nanocomposites. The excellent oxygen barrier of the lamellar nanoclay structure suppresses the quenching effect from ambient oxygen (kq) and broadens the choice of polymer matrices towards lower glass transition temperature (Tg), while providing better mechanical properties and processability. Moreover, the oxygen permeation and diffusion inside the films can be fine‐tuned by varying the polymer/nanoclay ratio, enabling programmable retention times of the RTP signals, which is exploited for transient information storage and anti‐counterfeiting materials. Additionally, anti‐interception materials are showcased by tracing the interception‐induced oxygen history that interferes with the preset self‐erasing time. Merging bioinspired nanocomposite design with RTP materials contributes to overcoming the inherent limitations of molecular design of organic RTP compounds, and allows programmable temporal features to be added into RTP materials by controlled mesostructures. This will assist in paving the way for practical applications of RTP materials as novel anti‐counterfeiting materials.


In this paper, we apply the self-attention from the state-of-the-art Transformer in Attention Is All You Need for the first time to a data-driven operator learning problem related to partial differential equations. An effort is put together to explain the heuristics of, and to improve the efficacy of the attention mechanism. By employing the operator approximation theory in Hilbert spaces, it is demonstrated for the first time that the softmax normalization in the scaled dot-product attention is sufficient but not necessary. Without softmax, the approximation capacity of a linearized Transformer variant can be proved to be comparable to a Petrov-Galerkin projection layer-wise, and the estimate is independent with respect to the sequence length. A new layer normalization scheme mimicking the Petrov-Galerkin projection is proposed to allow a scaling to propagate through attention layers, which helps the model achieve remarkable accuracy in operator learning tasks with unnormalized data. Finally, we present three operator learning experiments, including the viscid Burgers' equation, an interface Darcy flow, and an inverse interface coefficient identification problem. The newly proposed simple attention-based operator learner, Galerkin Transformer, shows significant improvements in both training cost and evaluation accuracy over its softmax-normalized counterparts.


Abstract. Comparison of single-forcing varieties of 20th century historical experiments in a subset of models from the Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) reveals that South Asian summer monsoon rainfall increases towards the present day in Greenhouse Gas (GHG)-only experiments with respect to pre-industrial levels, while it decreases in anthropogenic aerosol-only experiments. Comparison of these single-forcing experiments with the all-forcings historical experiment suggests aerosol emissions have dominated South Asian monsoon rainfall trends in recent decades, especially during the 1950s to 1970s. The variations in South Asian monsoon rainfall in these experiments follows approximately the time evolution of inter-hemispheric temperature gradient over the same period, suggesting a contribution from the large-scale background state relating to the asymmetric distribution of aerosol emissions about the equator. By examining the 24 available all-forcings historical experiments, we show that models including aerosol indirect effects dominate the negative rainfall trend. Indeed, models including only the direct radiative effect of aerosol show an increase in monsoon rainfall, consistent with the dominance of increasing greenhouse gas emissions and planetary warming on monsoon rainfall in those models. For South Asia, reduced rainfall in the models with indirect effects is related to decreased evaporation at the land surface rather than from anomalies in horizontal moisture flux, suggesting the impact of indirect effects on local aerosol emissions. This is confirmed by examination of aerosol loading and cloud droplet number trends over the South Asia region. Thus, while remote aerosols and their asymmetric distribution about the equator play a role in setting the inter-hemispheric temperature distribution on which the South Asian monsoon, as one of the global monsoons, operates, the addition of indirect aerosol effects acting on very local aerosol emissions also plays a role in declining monsoon rainfall. The disparity between the response of monsoon rainfall to increasing aerosol emissions in models containing direct aerosol effects only and those also containing indirect effects needs to be urgently investigated since the suggested future decline in Asian anthropogenic aerosol emissions inherent to the representative concentration pathways (RCPs) used for future climate projection may turn out to be optimistic. In addition, both groups of models show declining rainfall over China, also relating to local aerosol mechanisms. We hypothesize that aerosol emissions over China are large enough, in the CMIP5 models, to cause declining monsoon rainfall even in the absence of indirect aerosol effects. The same is not true for India.


Since its establishment in 1946 as the international body intended to manage whaling, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has expanded its areas of interest to ensure the wider conservation of whales. Several key conservation topics have been taken forward under its auspices including climate change, chemical and noise pollution, marine debris and whale watching. Work on each of these topics at the IWC has grown substantially since the 1990s and remains ongoing. Important developments were the establishment of the Standing Working Group on Environmental Concerns in 1996 and the IWC's Conservation Committee in 2003. Trying to address this diverse set of issues is obviously a challenge but will be necessary if the long term conservation of cetaceans is to be achieved. Through research, workshops, resolutions and collaboration with other organisations, the IWC has advanced both the understanding of the various issues and the means to manage them with increasing effectiveness. The IWC is likely to remain on the forefront of continuing efforts to address these, and other, conservation concerns and ensure the continued viability of cetacean populations around the globe.


Periarticular soft tissue rheumatic complaints include localised disorders of tendons, ligaments, muscles, fascia, and joint capsules. Such complaints account for up to 59% of new patient referrals to a rheumatology practice1 and up to 15% of consultations in primary care.2 Tendon lesions (tendinopathies) represent a large proportion of these complaints and are often the most difficult to treat. Their high incidence of chronicity and recurrence 3 4 result in appreciable morbidity and loss of productivity, representing a major socioeconomic burden.5

Corticosteroid injections are one of the most commonly used treatments for chronic tendon lesions.1 Despite their popularity, the rationale for use of corticosteroid injections is contentious, the evidence for benefit is lacking, and they have potential adverse effects. This article describes the nature of tendon lesions, the basis for the use of local corticosteroids, and current evidence for beneficial and adverse effects.

#### Summary points

Tendon lesions are a varied group of common complaints

Various treatments are available

There is no good evidence to support the use of local corticosteroid injections in chronic tendon lesions

The lack of evidence is due to a true lack of effect or a lack of good trials

Accuracy of diagnosis and injection are important.

I searched the Cochrane Library, Medline, and Embase to identify studies of common pathological findings in tendinopathies and treatment with corticosteroids. I also looked for good systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials, and good randomised controlled trials published since the search date of identified reviews, relating to the evidence for effect, guidelines for use, and potential adverse effects of corticosteroid injections in tendinopathies. When no systematic review was available, I used data from individual randomised controlled trials, applying Sackett et al's quality criteria.6

Tendons are collagenous structures with additional tenocytes, water, and other matrix components. Tendons are surrounded …


Semiconductors, which are ferromagnetic at room temperature (RTFM), are strived after as potential multifunctional materials. For ZnO, RTFM has been achieved by heavy doping with 3d transition metals. However, neither the conditions for nor the origin of the magnetism is as yet understood. Here, by implanting ZnO at temperatures of 300–800K with dilute, radioactive Mn+57 ions, decaying to the Fe57m Mossbauer state, we show that, most likely, Fe atoms, located on Zn sites in a high-spin Fe3+ state at ⩽600K with large magnetic moments, are in a magnetically ordered atomic surrounding with ordering temperatures ⪢600K. The formation/annealing of the ordering is proposed to occur/disappear on an atomic scale upon the association/dissociation of complexes of Mn∕Fe probe atoms with the (mobile) Zn vacancies that are created in the implantation process. These results challenge present concepts to model (ferro)magnetic ordering in 3d-metal doped oxides and suggest this role of vacancies in the magnetism to be a ra...


Title of dissertation: STATISTICAL MODELING OF WAVE CHAOTIC TRANSPORT AND TUNNELING Ming-Jer Lee, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Dissertation directed by: Professor Edward Ott Professor Thomas Antonsen Department of Physics This thesis treats two general problem areas in the field of wave chaos. The first problem area that we address concerns short wavelength tunneling from a classically confined region in which the classical orbits are chaotic. We develop a quantitative theory for the statistics of energy level splittings for symmetric chaotic wells separated by a tunneling barrier. Our theory is based on the random plane wave hypothesis. While the fluctuation statistics are very different for chaotic and non-chaotic well dynamics, we show that the mean splittings of differently shaped wells, including integrable and chaotic wells, are the same if their well areas and barrier parameters are the same. We also consider the case of tunneling from a single well into a region with outgoing quantum waves. Our second problem area concerns the statistical properties of the impedance matrix (related to the scattering matrix) describing the input/output properties of waves in cavities in which ray trajectories that are regular and chaotic coexist (i.e., 'mixed' systems). The impedance can be written as a summation over eigenmodes where the eigenmodes can typically be classified as either regular or chaotic. By appropriate characterizations of regular and chaotic contributions, we obtain statistical predictions for the impedance. We then test these predictions by comparison with numerical calculations for a specific cavity shape, obtaining good agreement. STATISTICAL MODELING OF WAVE CHAOTIC TRANSPORT AND TUNNELING


Software transactional memory (STM) is a promising technique for controlling concurrency in modern multi-processor architectures. STM aims to be more scalable than explicit coarse-grained locking and easier to use than fine-grained locking. However, STM implementations have yet to demonstrate that their runtime overheads are acceptable. To date, empiric evaluations of these implementations have suffered from the lack of realistic benchmarks. Measuring performance of an STM in an overly simplified setting can be at best uninformative and at worst misleading as it may steer researchers to try to optimize irrelevant aspects of their implementations.
 This paper presents STMBench7: a candidate benchmark for evaluating STM implementations. The underlying data structure consists of a set of graphs and indexes intended to be suggestive of many complex applications, e.g., CAD/CAM. A collection of operations is supported to model a wide range of workloads and concurrency patterns. Companion locking strategies serve as a baseline for STM performance comparisons. STMBench7 strives for simplicity. Users may choose a workload, number of threads, benchmark length, as well as the possibility of structure modification and the nature of traversals of shared data structures. We illustrate the use of STMBench7 with an evaluation of a well-known software transactional memory implementation.


Bacteria modify death domain proteins with GlcNAcylation to compromise apoptotic and inflammatory responses. Death domains were named because they are found in proteins that participate in cell death pathways, such as apoptosis. Various extracellular ligands trigger signaling pathways involving proteins with death domains, including the tumor necrosis factor receptor (TNFR) and the receptor Fas, along with their respective adaptor proteins TRADD and FADD. Both Li et al. and Pearson et al. identified a mechanism by which enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) limited cell death of infected cells. The virulence protein NleB acted as an N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) transferase for specific arginine residues in death domains in TRADD, FADD, TNFR1, and the kinase RIPK1. However, death domains of other adaptors, such as MyD88, that lack the conserved arginine were not GlcNAcylated. When the targeted Arg in TRADD was mutated or GlcNAcylated (by coexpression of the catalytically active NleB but not the catalytically inactive mutant), TRADD failed to oligomerize, activate NF-κB (nuclear factor κB) signaling, or mediate apoptosis in response to TNFR ligands. Experiments with either cells infected with wild-type or NleB-deficient bacteria or cells transfected with NleB or mutant versions that lacked catalytic activity showed that arginine GlcNAcylation was mediated by this type III effector protein. In vitro catalytic assays verified that NleB directly modified TRADD. Li et al. reported that gut colonization of mice by Citrobacter rodentium was reduced if the bacteria lacked NleB compared with colonization by wild-type bacteria. Pearson et al. also found reduced activation of caspase-8, an effector caspase in apoptosis, in the guts of mice infected with wild-type C. rodentium compared with that in mice infected with the NleB-deficient strain. Pearson et al. also examined infection in Fas-deficient mice and found that these mice developed diarrhea when infected with either the wild-type or NleB-deficient bacteria and had more severe tissue damage than infected wild-type mice. These results may be clinically relevant because some forms of colitis are associated with FasL polymorphisms. Thus, these two reports identify a previously unknown posttranslational modification—Arg GlcNAcylation—and also reveal the importance of specific Arg residues in mediating death domain oligomerization and initiation of downstream signaling in infected epithelial cells. S. Li, L. Zhang, Q. Yao, L. Li, N. Dong, J. Rong, W. Gao, X. Ding, L. Sun, X. Chen, S. Chen, F. Shao, Pathogen blocks host death receptor signalling by arginine GlcNAcylation of death domains. Nature 501, 242–246 (2013). [PubMed] J. S. Pearson, C. Goigha, S. Y. Ong, C. L. Kennedy, M. Kelly, K. S. Robinson, T. W. F. Lung, A. Mansell, P. Riedmaier, C. V. L. Oates, A. Zaid, S. Mühlen, V. F. Crepin, O. Marches, C.-S. Ang, N. A. Williamson, L. A. O'Reilly, A. Bankovacki, U. Nachbur, G. Infusini, A. I. Webb, J. Silke, A. Strasser, G. Frankel, E. L. Hartland, A type III effector antagonizes death receptor signalling during bacterial gut infection. Nature 501, 247–251 (2013). [PubMed]


The process of self-actualization and self-esteem, especially self-confidence and self-image of the main character in the novel The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot. This novel tells about Mia Thermopolis, the freshman student at Albert Einstein High School. Like many other teens, Mia has a problem in self-confidence because of her body posture that she thinks does not meet the standard in general. Mia is often labeled as a freak in her school. Her life problem is getting more complicated when she knows that she is a princess from a small country in Europe. Mia's problem is a picture of teenage problems in general, the lack of self-confidence and the bad self-image. But Mia learns to solve all of her life problems in a mature way and wish that she can reach her self-actualization.
In this research, the writer uses descriptive research as the method of collecting the data. As for the method of analyzing the data, the writer uses structural method by understanding the novel, the character of Mia Thermopolis. Data collection technique uses qualitative technique with taking note cards in finding relevant data to the subject of analysis. In data analysis technique, the writer uses technique by interpreting data.
The results of this research are: 1) Mia's self-actualization process at the end of the novel only reach the self-esteem phase. Mia is not yet fully reach her self-actualization, she often still being selfish and mostly still being emotional. 2) Mia's self-confidence at the end of the novel is increase, Mia can accept her own self and flaws. 3) Mia's self-image at the end of the novel changed. Mia learns that what is important is not the appearance but the personality inside an individual.
As closing, even though this novel looks light where the story is only about teenager's life problem in general, but there are a lot of lessons that can be applied in the daily life. Maybe not every girl can be a princess in one night, but the lessons about how can we be confidence are a lot in this novel.


Numerous auto-scaling strategies have been proposed in the past few years for improving various Quality of Service (QoS) indicators of cloud applications, for example, response time and throughput, by adapting the amount of resources assigned to the application to meet the workload demand. However, the evaluation of a proposed auto-scaler is usually achieved through experiments under specific conditions and seldom includes extensive testing to account for uncertainties in the workloads and unexpected behaviors of the system. These tests by no means can provide guarantees about the behavior of the system in general conditions. In this article, we present a Performance Evaluation framework for Auto-Scaling (PEAS) strategies in the presence of uncertainties. The evaluation is formulated as a chance constrained optimization problem, which is solved using scenario theory. The adoption of such a technique allows one to give probabilistic guarantees of the obtainable performance. Six different auto-scaling strategies have been selected from the literature for extensive test evaluation and compared using the proposed framework. We build a discrete event simulator and parameterize it based on real experiments. Using the simulator, each auto-scaler's performance is evaluated using 796 distinct real workload traces from projects hosted on the Wikimedia foundations' servers, and their performance is compared using PEAS. The evaluation is carried out using different performance metrics, highlighting the flexibility of the framework, while providing probabilistic bounds on the evaluation and the performance of the algorithms. Our results highlight the problem of generalizing the conclusions of the original published studies and show that based on the evaluation criteria, a controller can be shown to be better than other controllers.


Located beyond the southern limit of glaciation in Britain, the upland granitic terrain of Dartmoor, south-west England, has been exposed to long intervals of intense periglacial activity during the Pleistocene. This region has been significant in debates about appropriate models of long-term landscape change, most notably two-phase versus single-phase models of landform evolution, and the development of tors. However, given the previous lack of quantitative techniques capable of constraining denudation and specific process rates, and thereby testing developmental models for these features, there remains much uncertainty in the interpretation of the classic landforms of the region. This study measures concentrations of the cosmogenic nuclide 10Be produced in-situ in quartz within the upper few metres of the Earth surface. These reflect the history of near-surface exposure to cosmic radiation of sampled material, and allow for the interpretation of exposure age and/or erosion rates of the land surface. This research utilises these cosmogenic nuclide values to evaluate geomorphological processes and investigate key aspects of landform development. These include the formation of tors in non-glaciated regions, the development of regolith and boulderfields under periglacial conditions, and the derivation of catchment-averaged denudation rates. This study provides the first quantitative measurement of erosion on tor surfaces in Dartmoor, with typical rates of 14-45 mm ka-1. These are relatively high and comparable to other components of the landscape. In addition, there is no clear relationship of cosmogenic nuclide concentration to tor dimensions. It is shown that the tors are dynamic landforms and simple, two-stage development is an inappropriate model. Catchment-averaged denudation rates are derived and these long-term rates of 20-94 mm ka-1 are significantly higher than modern, short-term values. Finally, downslope transport in a palaeo-periglacial blockslope is investigated using 10Be concentrations. This variety of landforms and scale of investigation facilitates an integrated approach to the understanding of catchment-scale erosional dynamics. In addition, the complex nature of landform development that is evident in the area provides challenges to the application of in-situ cosmogenic nuclides and highlights both the potential and limitations of the technique.


Resource agency concerns over the dredging practices in the Savannah Harbor prompted the USACE Savannah District (CESAS) to commission a comprehensive study to evaluate environmental effects. CESAS is currently citing findings and recommendations in the final report in their permitting effort for existing and future maintenance dredging activities that involve agitation dredging and open water disposal. The comprehensive Scope of Work (SOW) developed was a collaborative effort between CESAS, reviewing agencies, and Applied Technology and Management (ATM) technical staff. The data collection study design required three distinct simultaneous efforts: water chemistry sampling, in situ water quality profiling, and monitoring the dredged material discharge plume. This last effort utilized acoustic doppler technology. SEDIVIEW, an acoustic doppler post-processing software package, was employed to quantify total suspended solids (TSS) concentrations from the acoustic backscatter signal. Total recoverable chemistry (TRC) samples were collected both upgradient and downgradient of the dredged material discharge to quantify the concentrations of selected constituents released to the water column as a result of the dredging activity. In situ profiles were also performed upgradient and downgradient to measure changes to water quality (especially, dissolved oxygen) resulting from the dredging activity. All data were analyzed and presented in the final report. Effects to aquatic resources resulting from changes to suspended sediment concentrations, water chemistry, and water quality were also evaluated. The fate of the suspended material was also modeled using SSFATE, a program developed for the USACE by Applied Science Associates, Inc.


Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) is a popular approach to boosting the ability of Recurrent Neural Networks to store longer term temporal information. The capacity of an LSTM network can be increased by widening and adding layers. However, usually the former introduces additional parameters, while the latter increases the runtime. As an alternative we propose the Tensorized LSTM in which the hidden states are represented by tensors and updated via a cross-layer convolution. By increasing the tensor size, the network can be widened efficiently without additional parameters since the parameters are shared across different locations in the tensor; by delaying the output, the network can be deepened implicitly with little additional runtime since deep computations for each timestep are merged into temporal computations of the sequence. Experiments conducted on five challenging sequence learning tasks show the potential of the proposed model.


Using a semistructured discussion guide, the authors conducted 15 interviews with physically active older black women living in the eastern U.S. to examine what contributed to their physical activity initiation and maintenance. They used thematic analysis to organize content and constant-comparison methods to compare themes between participants. Participants initiated physical activity when a cue to action, such as weight gain or a medical issue, triggered a perceived need to exercise. When participants initiated physical activity, they experienced immediate unexpected benefits such as improved energy. They reported continuing activity because of these initial benefits. After continued physical activity over time, participants experienced the health benefits they originally hoped to achieve. Most participants also mentioned continuing physical activity because it is "me time." All participants reported needing to modify their physical activity routine at some point. Having a regular, yet adaptable, routine and planning skills helped participants maintain physical activity. These findings contribute to the refinement of theory and might be useful for professionals promoting physical activity among older black women.


It is true that international institutions do not command the primary loyalty among the peoples of the world that would allow them the opportunity to legislate in favor of social justice. They do, however, command strong political backing from the most important political actors in world politics – namely, states. In addition, virtually all international organizations integrate nongovernmental organizations into their deliberative processes. Present globalization trends are increasing economic disparities between and within countries, but most regimes do provide poorer states with special provisions that can be used to protect their economic interests. Also, some have clearly benefited from economic openness. In the long term, it will be surprising if states do not address the problem of growing economic gaps through international regimes, although the likely adequacy of their responses is open to question.


Generally, data mining (sometimes called data or knowledge discovery) is the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into useful information information that can be used to increase revenue, cuts costs, or both. Data mining software is one of a number of analytical tools for analyzing data. It allows users to analyze data from many different dimensions or angles, categorize it, and summarize the relationships identified. Technically, data mining is the process of finding correlations or patterns among dozens of fields in large relational databases.


The paper follows two main objectives: to understand consumers' perception and image of fishery products and to identify communication levers in order to improve the perceived image of fishery products. Orientations in terms of communication are product-focused and aim at enhancing the reputation of products, consequently with impact on product consumption. The present research is focused on the fishery products, regardless of their presentation – fresh, frozen or processed. This paper conducted a questionnaire survey of Romanian consumers' perception toward fishery products. The empirical study with brands indicated that consumers are different awareness to domestic and foreign safety fish products. National fishery products got more attention from the consumers. Foreign fishery products had higher perceptive price, but Romanian fishery products acquired higher safety perceptive value, and got a better rank in the preference list and in the purchase intention of the consumers.


Background: Despite the extensive use of social media, its role in supporting women living with and beyond breast cancer (LwBBC), across the survivorship trajectory, remains underexplored. Existing research has tended to focus on single or dual platform use and utilised secondary data, principally from Facebook and Twitter. In contrast, this study sought to ensure women's experiences of use took centre stage by adopting a qualitative approach to explore social media use across the survivorship trajectory.
Aims:
The aims of this thesis were to: a) explore how women LwBBC use social media; b) examine how women use social media as communicative resources in relation to LwBBC; and c) make sense of how women use social media to support their psychosocial health.

Methods:
Twenty-one women (age range 27-64) participated in semi-structured interviews. Twelve participated in a photo-elicitation study using pre-existing photographs to explore social support. Nine participated in a photo-production study in which they took photographs (n=157) to represent how they communicate their experiences of LwBBC to others. A bricolaged approach to data analysis using thematic, polytextual and voice centred methodological approaches ensured women's voices were brought to the fore within the analysis process.

Findings:
Social media use is integral to many, but not all, women's daily lives and considered by women an appropriate space to explore their own experiences. Women describe using multiple social media platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and WhatsApp concurrently. The use of multiple platforms simultaneously to satisfy psychosocial needs demonstrates use to be more fluid and dynamic than the current literature suggests. Through listening to women's voices, and using photographs to visualise voices, three key themes came to the fore: (i) finding relevant, timely and appropriate support; (ii) navigating disrupted identities; and (iii) (re)gaining a sense of control. Analysis shows these themes to be entangled, interconnected, and dynamic with women's use shifting across time. Women describe social media use as both empowering but also as dislocating.

Conclusions:
This is the first in depth qualitative study that takes an overview of women's engagement across social media platforms to support their experiences of LwBBC. It demonstrates significant digital labour by women through use of social media to support their physical, emotional, and (anti) social experiences of LwBBC. It indicates naturally occurring networked communities as important contributors to the ongoing psychosocial support women need at different stages of LwBBC. Social media enables women to (re) gain a sense of control and can reduce need to draw on health service provision. Knowledge of women's use can provide insight and guidance for healthcare professionals (HCPs), producers of online content, moderators of social media communities and other women LwBBC.


BACKGROUND
The Education Committee of the American Society for Veterinary Clinical Pathology (ASVCP) identified a need for improved structure and guidance in training residents in clinical pathology. To begin to meet this need, guidelines for training in clinical chemistry were published in 2003.

OBJECTIVE
The goal of this report is to define learning objectives and competencies in hematology, including coagulation and immunohematology.

METHODS
These guidelines were developed and written with the input of ASVCP Education Committee members and peer experts.

RESULTS
The primary objectives of training in hematology are: 1) to accrue a thorough, extensive, and relevant knowledge base of the types, principles, and properties of hematology tests and concepts of pathophysiology in animals; 2) to develop abilities to reason, think critically, communicate effectively, and exercise judgment in hematologic data interpretation and investigative problem-solving; and 3) to acquire technical and statistical skills important in hematology and laboratory operations. We also provide options and ideas for training activities and identify hematology resources useful for clinical pathology faculty and staff, training program coordinators, and residents.

CONCLUSIONS
The guidelines define expected competencies that will help ensure proficiency, leadership, and the advancement of knowledge in veterinary hematology and provide a useful framework for didactic and clinical activities in resident-training programs. The learning objectives can readily be adapted to institutional and individual needs, interests, goals, and resources.


The virtuous cycle between technology and economic development can be attributed to innovation supported by vigorous R&D investment. The Japanese management system has encompassed the system of "Invisible investment" which controls younger workers' wages keeping lower than the level of the marginal productivity and appropriates this difference toward an investment in the future, and this investment has played not a few role to stimulate the uncertainty investment including R&D investment. While Japan's "Invisible investment" system has similarity with the Stock Option System as both depends on the employee's own contribution, it is unique sophistication system as manager of the firm has a sole authority to decide the objective investment. However, under a new paradigm in the 1990s, corresponding to the bursting bubble economy along with low or negative economic growth and an aging trends, the firm lost the incentive to R&D investment brought by the foregoing system. A recent trend in decreasing R&D investment is considered due to these foregoing mentioned. Based on the calculations of "Invisible investment" and the position of R&D investment in the cost of capital in Japan's manufacturing industry, this paper attempts to demonstrate this hypothetical view focusing on the comparison between the performance of Japanese economy before 1990s and after 1990s. Intensive analysis demonstrated that the system of "Invisible investment" has stimulated the growth of the firm through the following mechanism: "Wage restraint of young age --> retained profit increase --> investment increase --> Growth of the firm --> Comparatively high wages at middle and advanced age." However, as recent paradigm change including low or negative economic growth and an aging trends emerges, it is clear that the firm lost the incentive to the R&D expenditure brought by the foregoing system, and it becomes important to construct a system which enable to shift from an increase in investment to an increase in system efficiency in the future.


Studies of traffic dynamics rely either on macro-scopic models considering the traffic as a fluid, or on micro-scopic models of drivers' behavior. The connection between the microscopic and macroscopic scales is often done via empirical relationships such as the fundamental diagram for macroscopic models, relating traffic flow or average velocity and traffic density. In this paper, we consider a microscopic model consisting of a large number of rational, utility-maximizing drivers interacting on a single road. We then use the theory of Mean Field Games (MFG) to deduce a macroscopic model of traffic density emerging from these interactions. We show how to determine a microscopic utility function for the drivers compatible with standard empirical macroscopic fundamental diagrams. In addition to connecting the microscopic and macroscopic models analytically rather than empirically, our approach can offer additional flexibility to model drivers at the macroscopic level, using a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation coupled with the standard conservation law for the vehicles.


A detailed knowledge of the local geological-geotechnical setting is a basic starting point to establish the hazard exposure of an area (in particular, urban areas), characterized by high geological variability (GIAMMARINARO et alii, 2000). In fact the local stratigraphical geometries and the trend of the most relevant quantities, controlling soil strength and deformability, affect the trend of a number of meaningful hazard factors. To build a realistic geological-geotechnical model with a high spatial resolution, it is necessary to use reliable datasets, possibly managed in a GIS environment, able both to display data in their mutual spatial relationships and to check more easily the consistency of the data. In this work a detailed analysis of soil properties in the southern sector of Palermo has been carried out, with the help of City-GIS (GIAMMARINARO & MAIORANA, 2001b; GIAMMARINARO & MAIORANA, 2001c), a GIS application developed at the Department of Geology and Geodesy of Palermo University, dedicated to natural hazard evaluation in urban areas. City-GIS is equipped with tools and research keys to easily carry out specific analysis aimed at the process of natural hazard assessment. The great quantity of data in this sector and their management through City-GIS have made it possible to outline, in detail and with a high resolution: a) the geometry and the thickness of Quaternary deposits, overlying the bedrock; b) the geology of the first 50 metres of subsoil, that mainly control hazard processes such as site effects. Among the reasons that led us to study this sector of the city, there are the very high damage level and human response recorded in this area during the September 2002 earthquake (GIAMMARINARO et alii, 2003a, GIAMMARINARO et alii, 2005). The Palermo southern sector is a recent urbanization area where reinforced concrete structures predominate. This area is characterized by a great vulnerability because of the presence of strategic structures of the city such as a regional hospital, industries, some monuments, a meaningful service network and relevant transport structures such as railways and the motorways. The study has been carried out along different lines: a) ground survey, aimed at identifying the vulnerable elements in the area; b) geological survey aimed at producing a surface geological map; c) modelling of geometry and thickness of the first 50 metres of subsoil; d) geotechnical characterization of the lithotypes of the recognized successions. For each lithotype the variability fields of thickness and S-wave velocity have also been evaluated also from the relationships linking the geotechnical parameters obtained from direct measurements on soil samples. The analysis we carried out allows us to state that the study area (excluding that affected by the Oreto river alluvial deposits) can be described with a single geological succession model. However the lithotypes of the recognized succession exhibit great variability in thickness in the area. In detail: in the north-eastern sector of the investigated area, small thickness (<15 m) of calcarenitic deposits overlie major thicknesses (up to 80 m) of silty clayey sands, while in the south-weastern sector calcarenitic deposits are at least 30 meters thick. The locally expected values of the acoustic impedance contrast and of the V S30 (S wave velocity in the first 30 meters) have been evaluated and two portions of the area, potentially affected by site effects have been recognized. In one of them, site effects are to be ascribed to acoustic impedance contrast, while in the other one, to a low value (<180 m/s) of V S30 . The process of recognition of these two areas has been made possible by an extensive use of the reliable stratigraphical-geotechnical dataset built up for Palermo urban area and by the tools equipped by City-GIS.


Aging of population, and increasing life expectancy result in an increasing number of patients with dementia. This symptom can be a part of a completely curable disease of the central nervous system (e.g, neuroinflammation), or a disease currently considered irreversible (e.g, Alzheimer's disease, AD). In the latter case, several potentially successful treatment approaches are being tested now, demanding reasonable standards of pre-mortem diagnosis. Cerebrospinal fluid and serum analysis (CSF/serum analysis), whereas routinely performed in neuroinflammatory diseases, still requires standardization to be used as an aid to the clinically based diagnosis of AD. Several AD-related CSF parameters (total tau, phosphorylated forms of tau, Aβ peptides, ApoE genotype, p97, etc.) tested separately or in a combination provide sensitivity and specificity in the range of 85%, the figure commonly expected from a good diagnostic tool. In this review, recently published reports regarding progress in neurochemical pre-mortem diagnosis of dementias are discussed with a focus on an early and differential diagnosis of AD. Novel perspectives offered by recently introduced technologies, e.g, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) and surface enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF MS) are briefly discussed.


Abstract. The middle- and upper-atmospheric energy budget is largely dominated by reactions involving atomic oxygen (O). Modeling of these processes requires detailed knowledge about the distribution of this oxygen species. Understanding the mutual contributions of atomic oxygen and wave motions to the atmospheric heating is the main goal of the rocket project WADIS (WAve propagation and DISsipation in the middle atmosphere). It includes, amongst others, our instruments for the measurement of atomic oxygen that have both been developed with the aim of resolving density variations on small vertical scales along the trajectory. In this paper the instrument based on catalytic effects (PHLUX: Pyrometric Heat Flux Experiment) is introduced briefly. The experiment employing solid electrolyte sensors (FIPEX: Flux φ(Phi) Probe Experiment) is presented in detail. These sensors were laboratory calibrated using a microwave plasma as a source of atomic oxygen in combination with mass spectrometer reference measurements. The spectrometer was in turn calibrated for O with a method based on methane. In order to get insight into the horizontal variability, the rocket payload had instrument decks at both ends. Each housed several sensor heads measuring during both the up- and downleg of the trajectory. The WADIS project comprises two rocket flights during different geophysical conditions. Results from WADIS-1 are presented, which was successfully launched in June 2013 from the Andoya Space Center, Norway. FIPEX data were sampled at 100 Hz and yield atomic oxygen density profiles with a vertical resolution better than 9 m. This allows density variations to be studied on very small spatial scales. Numerical simulations of the flow field around the rocket were done at several points of the trajectory to assess the influence of aerodynamic effects on the measurement results. Density profiles peak at 3 × 1010 cm−3 at altitudes of 93.6 and 96 km for the up- and downleg, respectively.


BACKGROUND
Limited evidence supports Nigella sativa's role as an effective complementary and alternative medicine and the anti-inflammatory effects of Nigella sativa on patients with allergic rhinitis.

OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of topical application of Nigella sativa oil and oral acetaminophen on pain in the elderly with knee osteoarthritis residing in a parents' home in Sabzevar.

METHODS
This study is done as a crossover clinical trial. After obtaining written consent of elderly patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, they were randomly divided into two groups. In step 1, in group 1, 1 cc of Nigella sativa oil was applied on the knee joint every 8 hours for 3 weeks; for the second group, every 8 hours for 3 weeks, patients were given 1 tablet of 325 mg acetaminophen. After a period of 1 month without medication to wash out each group, in step 2, each treatment group received the drug interaction in the same way as above. Pain was determined using a visual scale (VAS) before and after the first and second stages. Treatment response was defined as a decrease in pain scores over 1.5. Data analysis was performed with an R software mixed model.

RESULTS
This study was done on 40 elderly patients: 18 (45%) men and 22 (55%) women. Their mean year and weight were 75.66±8.9 years and 69.67±14.33 kg, respectively. Study results showed that topical application of Nigella sativa oil and oral acetaminophen reduced pain in elderly with knee osteoarthritis; after using Nigella sativa oil, the reduction of pain was higher (p=0.01).

CONCLUSION
The results of this study showed that topical application of Nigella sativa oil was effective in reducing pain in patients with knee osteoarthritis; therefore, it is recommended as a safe supplement for these elderly.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
The trial was registered at TCTR (http://www.clinicaltrials.in.th/) with the ID: TCTR20160125003.

FUNDING
This study was approved and supported by the Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences.


We present a new approach to the source separation problem in the case of multiple speech signals. The method is based on the use of automatic lipreading, the objective is to extract an acoustic speech signal from other acoustic signals by exploiting its coherence with the speaker′s lip movements. We consider the case of an additive stationary mixture of decorrelated sources, with no further assumptions on independence or non-Gaussian character. Firstly, we present a theoretical framework showing that it is indeed possible to separate a source when some of its spectral characteristics are provided to the system. Then we address the case of audio-visual sources. We show how, if a statistical model of the joint probability of visual and spectral audio input is learnt to quantify the audio-visual coherence, separation can be achieved by maximizing this probability. Finally, we present a number of separation results on a corpus of vowel-plosive-vowel sequences uttered by a single speaker, embedded in a mixture of other voices. We show that separation can be quite good for mixtures of 2, 3, and 5 sources. These results, while very preliminary, are encouraging, and are discussed in respect to their potential complementarity with traditional pure audio separation or enhancement techniques.


Distracted driving is known to be the leading cause of motor vehicle accidents. With the increase in the number of IoT devices available within vehicles, there exists an abundance of data for monitoring driver behavior. However, designing a system around this goal presents two key challenges - how to concurrently collect data spanning multiple IoT devices, and how to jointly analyze this multimodal input. To that end, we present a unified data collection and analysis framework, DarNet, capable of detecting and classifying distracted driving behavior. DarNet consists of two primary components: a data collection system and an analytics engine. Our system takes advantage of advances in machine learning (ML) to classify driving behavior based on input sensor data. In our system implementation, we collect image data from an inward facing camera, and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) data from a mobile device, both located within the vehicle. Using deep learning techniques, we show that DarNet achieves a Top-1 classification percentage of 87.02% on our collected dataset, significantly outperforming our baseline model of 73.88%. Additionally, we address the privacy concerns associated with collecting image data by presenting an alternative framework designed to operate on down-sampled data which produces a Top-1 classification percentage of 80.00%.


The hydration of ions in nanoscale hydrated clusters is ubiquitous and essential in many physical and chemical processes. Here we show that the hydrolysis reaction is strongly affected by relative humidity. The hydrolysis of CO32- with n = 1-8 water molecules is investigated using an ab initio method. For n = 1-5 water molecules, all the reactants follow a stepwise pathway to the transition state. For n = 6-8 water molecules, all the reactants undergo a direct proton transfer to the transition state with overall lower activation free energy. The activation free energy of the reaction is dramatically reduced from 10.4 to 2.4 kcal mol-1 as the number of water molecules increases from 1 to 6. Meanwhile, the degree of hydrolysis of CO32- is significantly increased compared to the bulk water solution scenario. Incomplete hydration shells facilitate the hydrolysis of CO32- with few water molecules to be not only thermodynamically favorable but also kinetically favorable. We showed that the chemical kinetics is not likely to constrain the speed of CO2 air capture driven by the humidity-swing. Instead, the pore-diffusion of ions is expected to be the time-limiting step in the humidity driven CO2 air capture. The effect of humidity on the speed of CO2 air capture was studied by conducting a CO2 absorption experiment using IER with a high ratio of CO32- to H2O molecules. Our result is able to provide valuable insights into designing efficient CO2 air-capture sorbents.


This volume embodies a problem-driven and theoretically informed approach to bridging frontier research in urban economics and urban/regional planning. The authors focus on the interface between these two subdisciplines that have historically had an uneasy relationship. Although economists were among the early contributors to the literature on urban planning, many economists have been dismissive of a discipline whose leading scholars frequently favor regulations over market institutions, equity over efficiency, and normative prescriptions over positive analysis. Planners, meanwhile, even as they draw upon economic principles, often view the work of economists as abstract, not sensitive to institutional contexts, and communicated in a formal language spoken by few with decision making authority. Not surprisingly, papers in the leading economic journals rarely cite clearly pertinent papers in planning journals, and vice versa. Despite the historical divergence in perspectives and methods, urban economics and urban planning share an intense interest in many topic areas: the nature of cities, the prosperity of urban economies, the efficient provision of urban services, efficient systems of transportation, and the proper allocation of land between urban and environmental uses. In bridging this gap, the book highlights the best scholarship in planning and economics that address the most pressing urban problems of our day and stimulates further dialog between scholars in urban planning and urban economics. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/oso/public/content/oho_economics/9780195380620/toc.html


Simpson's fossil-record inspired model of 'adaptive zones' proposes that evolution is dominated by small fluctuations within adaptive zones, occasionally punctuated by larger shifts between zones. This model can help explain why the process of population divergence often results in weak or moderate reproductive isolation (RI), rather than strong RI and distinct species. Applied to the speciation process, the adaptive zones hypothesis makes two inter-related predictions: (i) large shifts between zones are relatively rare, (ii) when large shifts do occur they generate stronger RI than shifts within zones. Here, we use ecological, phylogenetic and behavioural data to test these predictions in Timema stick insects. We show that host use in Timema is dominated by moderate shifts within the systematic divisions of flowering plants and conifers, with only a few extreme shifts between these divisions. However, when extreme shifts occur, they generate greater RI than do more moderate shifts. Our results support the adaptive zones model, and suggest that the net contribution of ecological shifts to diversification is dependent on both their magnitude and frequency. We discuss the generality of our findings in the light of emerging evidence from diverse taxa that the evolution of RI is not always the only factor determining the origin of species diversity. This article is part of the theme issue 'Towards the completion of speciation: the evolution of reproductive isolation beyond the first barriers'.


Most of the small ruminant flocks on the Balkan Peninsula are bred on pasture. Thus the animals are endangered to graze treated alfalfa, without observing quarantine. The instability of the pyrethroid insecticides in rumen alkaline pH of the sheep is the reason for its absorption as early as in the upper part of the digestive tract and hence a better-expressed subtoxicosis appeared. Following the technological instruction given by the producer of the insecticide, the alfalfa field plots were treated with Supersect 10 EC. After seven days quarantine, the alfalfa was mowed, dried and added to the ration of the tested animals. After 20 days feeding of the animals, a decrease in the amount of the total lipids was established, without any changes of the blood glucose and total protein values. As regards the enzymatic profile of sheep fed on alfalfa treated with Supersect 10 EC, a significant increase of the activities of ASAT, LDH, MAO and ChE was reported. Based on the data obtained, we could conclude that when sheep was fed on alfalfa treated with Supersect 10 EC, a strong change in the enzymatic profile was observed. There were not significant changes in hepatocyte according to De Rites but the metabolic strain in the organism was suppressed as compared to that of the control animals.


In this paper, we implement the improved Adomian's polynomials introduced by Abassy in 2010 with an extension to solve numerically the non-linear initial value problems of fractional dierential equations (FDEs). This proposed extension is called extended Adomian's polynomials. An adaption of the convergence analysis which was introduced by Hosseini and Nasabzadeh in 2006 is formulated to be used to prove that these polynomials accelerate the convergence rate of the series solution comparing with the standard Adomian's polynomials. Also, we use the so called improved Adomian decomposition method (IADM) as a special case of the proposed method where the fractional derivative = 1. A comparison is made between IADM and ADM for some examples to illustrate the eciency of the proposed treatment for non-linear initial


This paper reviews the existing theoretical and empirical literature addressing the benefits of low inflation. The ultimate goal is to arrive at a set of benefits in which a monetary authority can have genuine confidence. I argue that the current state of economic research—both empirical and theoretical—provides little basis for believing in significant observable benefits of low inflation such as an increase in the growth rate of real GDP. Moreover, what observable benefits do exist are unlikely to justify a policy of disinflation, even if the transitional costs of disinflation are quite moderate. I conclude that defending a policy of moderate disinflation requires more attention to be paid to the benefits of low inflation that are unobservable in familiar aggregate data. This naturally poses some policy challenges to central banks contemplating a disinflation.


To ensure successful compliance with information security (InfoSec) policy and standards, organisations must harmonise their InfoSec training programmes with the national culture of the local workforce. A successful InfoSec policy must demonstrate the value of security, not just the requirement for security. We conducted a quantitative study of 177 professionals across 35 national cultures to investigate whether national culture influences InfoSec training and best practices using Hofstede's six cultural dimensions. Our findings indicate that training programmes should more directly address the variances in perception of InfoSec across cultures. These training programmes should also reflect the significance of the organisation's InfoSec policies in the context of the local employee, while maintaining unified corporate governance. By increasing training comprehension, organisations can reduce security incidents resulting from unintentional policy violations and, in turn, avoid costly remediation efforts.


Sinkholes are a well-known, but poorly studied, aspect of karst environments. In 2015, the Hoosier National Forest in southern Indiana, USA, commissioned a study of sinkhole habitats to assess their ecological role. The ecosystems of 26 sinkholes were evaluated to determine if sinkhole floor biological communities and species richness were a function of the surrounding plant community. Each sinkhole was sampled four times for five target groups of invertebrates at intervals of approximately three months, for a total of 104 visits. The sampling resulted in finding 140 taxa, including 31 land snails, 14 millipedes, 3 terrestrial isopods, 83 spiders and 9 pseudoscorpions. Of exceptional note were at least 12 new state records and a probable new species of pseudoscorpion. Several of these species appear to be endemic to sinkhole habitats. A link was confirmed between species richness and the surrounding plant community, specifically that the highest biodiversity was found in sinkholes surrounded by native deciduous forest, followed by native glades. Sinkholes in fields from which deciduous forest had been removed possessed markedly decreased species diversity, as did non-native plantings of pines. Sinkhole habitats had a significantly higher species richness than adjacent non-sinkhole control sites. Moreover, the arthropod communities that were found in each sinkhole within each plant community type were different from each other and the surrounding non-sinkhole areas. These data suggest that sinkholes are more than just depressions in epigean landscapes, but possess unique invertebrate communities linked to the surrounding plant community.


We previously (VSS 2014) reported EEG and behavioral data (response frequencies) supporting the hypothesis that that perceptual learning can be obtained with multiple features and that learning involves the development of non-independence at perceptual and decisional levels. This is consistent with evidence suggesting that multiple levels of processing and representation may be involved in perceptual learning. The present study explores these notions using EEG and response times (RTs), testing the hypothesis that learning of multi-feature patterns results in processing that is non-independent and parallel, as would be expected if the stimuli were learned as integral objects. Stimuli contained contrast-defined features, extracted from the 1865 drawing of the Cheshire Cat in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Participants began by performing a detection task implemented as a double-factorial paradigm (DFP), in which stimuli contained 0, 1, or 2 targets, at two levels of contrast, and were instructed to give a positive response if they judged the stimulus to have either 1 or 2 targets. They then practiced with all possible stimuli for 10-15 days, using an adaptive staircase procedure to track thresholds. Finally, they again performed the DFP detection task with stimuli presented at threshold and the two initial levels of contrast. EEG data were collected during both pre- and post-practice performance of the CID. Analysis of the RT data, at both the level of the mean and the distribution, suggested that the stimuli were initially processed serially, with practice resulting in a transition to dependent parallel processing and modulations of amplitudes of early ERP features, pre- and post-stimulus spectral power, and reductions in post-stimulus g-band power, selective to frontal electrodes. These results are consistent with the idea that perceptual learning of multi-feature patterns produces shifts in fundamental characteristics of processing consistent with the learning of an integral object. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.