In an increasing number of domains it has been demonstrated that deep learning models can be trained using relatively large batch sizes without sacrificing data efficiency. However the limits of this massive data parallelism seem to differ from domain to domain, ranging from batches of tens of thousands in ImageNet to batches of millions in RL agents that play the game Dota 2. To our knowledge there is limited conceptual understanding of why these limits to batch size differ or how we might choose the correct batch size in a new domain. In this paper, we demonstrate that a simple and easy-to-measure statistic called the gradient noise scale predicts the largest useful batch size across many domains and applications, including a number of supervised learning datasets (MNIST, SVHN, CIFAR-10, ImageNet, Billion Word), reinforcement learning domains (Atari and Dota), and even generative model training (autoencoders on SVHN). We find that the noise scale increases as the loss decreases over a training run and depends on the model size primarily through improved model performance. Our empirically-motivated theory also describes the tradeoff between compute-efficiency and time-efficiency, and provides a rough model of the benefits of adaptive batch-size training.


In this article a case study of the application of antineutrino safeguards to a real-world scenario, the North Korean nuclear crisis in 1994, is presented. Detection limits to a partial or full core discharge in 1989 based on actual IAEA safeguards access are derived and it is found that two independent methods would have yielded positive evidence for a second core with very high confidence. To generalize these results, detailed estimates for the sensitivity to the plutonium content of various types of reactors, including most types of plutonium production reactors, are presented, based on detailed reactor simulations. A key finding of this study is that a wide class of reactors with a thermal power of 0.1–1 gigawatt can be safeguarded achieving IAEA goals for quantitative sensitivity and timeliness with antineutrino detectors adjacent to the reactor building. Antineutrino reactor monitoring does not rely on the continuity of knowledge and provides information about core inventory and power status in a timely fashion. The necessary detection systems do not exist yet but are expected to become available within two to five years.


The objective of the present work was to study the effect of heat treatments in the microstructure, graphite nodules and mechanical properties of self-lubricating steels, to achieve this, self-lubricating steels (Fe + 0.45C + 4Ni + 1Mo %wt) and additions of 2 and 3 %wt SiC were fabricated. They were consequently heat treated in 3 different conditions: martempering at 180 °C and tempering at 530 °C and 300 °C respectively and austempering at 300 °C. Hardness, yield strength, tensile strength and work hardening behavior were studied in as-sintered and heat-treated samples. The microstructure was analyzed by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and microhardness. The transformation temperatures were determined using dilatometric tests. Results show that the presence of dissolved Si in the matrix due to SiC dissociation notably affects the morphology of the microstructure and transformation temperatures also affecting post heat treatment mechanical properties. The structure of graphite nodules produced by SiC dissociation is nott significantly affected by the heat treatments.


Participation has recently been subject to renewed attention and critique in the context of neoliberal urban governance. This is especially relevant in countries where decentralization and democratization in the context of neoliberalism have led to increased promotion of local-level participation. This article suggests that current critiques of participation's potential for democratic citizen engagement in a neoliberal context would benefit from further reflection on how participation is implemented in contexts, particularly the global South, where neoliberalism and democracy may be understood differently. Different 'cultures of engagement' in specific settings suggest that understandings and practices of participation draw on different traditions, including corporatism and self-help. This article seeks to add to the debate by exploring the socio-spatial consequences of participation structures in low-income neighbourhoods in a provincial Mexican city. Based on qualitative research in two low-income neighbourhoods in Xalapa, Mexico, it examines how the provisions of the local citizen-participation framework compare with residents' experiences of it. Formalized conceptions of participation, framed as involvement in service provision, interact with and shape residents' activities in developing their neighbourhoods. This has consequences for urban development there, including the reflection and reproduction of social and spatial marginalization.


In this paper the problem of recognition of patient's intent to move hand prosthesis is addressed. The proposed method is based on recognition of electromiographic (EMG) and mechanomiographic (MMG) biosignals using a multiclassifier system (MCS) working with dynamic ensemble selection (DES) scheme and original concept of competence function. The competence measure is based on relating the response of the classifier with the decision profile of a test object which is evaluated using K nearest objects from the validation set (static mode). Additionally, feedback information coming from bioprosthesis sensors on the correct/incorrect classification is applied to the adjustment of the combining mechanism during MCS operation through adaptive tuning competences of base classifiers depending on their decisions (dynamic mode). Experimental investigations using real data concerning the recognition of five types of grasping movements and computer-simulated procedure of generating feedback signals are performed. The performance of MCS with the proposed competence measure is experimentally compared against 5 state-of-art MCS's in static mode and furthermore the MCS system developed is evaluated with respect to the effectiveness of the procedure of tuning competence. The results obtained indicate that the modification of competence of base classifiers during the working phase essentially improves performance of the MCS system. The system developed achieved the highest classification accuracy demonstrating the potential of MCS with feedback signals from prosthesis sensors for the control of bioprosthetic hand.


Background— DNA delivery systems, which transport exogenous DNA to cells, have applications that include gene therapy, tissue engineering and medical devices. Although the cationic nonviral DNA carrier polyethyleneimine (PEI) has been widely studied, the molecular factors and pathways underlying PEI-mediated DNA transfer remain largely unknown, preventing the design of more efficient delivery systems. Methods— HEK 293 T cells were treated with polyplexes formed with PEI and pEGFPLuc encoding for green fluorescent protein (GFP). Transfected cells expressing GFP were flow-separated from treated, untransfected cells. Gene expression profiles were obtained using Affymetrix HG-U133 2.0 microarrays and differentially expressed genes were identified using R/ Bioconductor. Gene network analysis using EGAN (exploratory gene association network) bioinformatics tools was then used to find interaction among genes and enriched gene ontology (GO) terms related to transfection. Genes identified by this method were perturbed using pharmacologic activators or inhibitors to assess their effect on DNA transfer. Results— Microarray analysis comparing transfected cells to untransfected cells revealed 215 genes to be differentially expressed, with the majority enriched to GO processes including metabolism, response to stimulus, cell cycle, biological regulation and cellular component organization or biogenesis pathways. Gene network analysis revealed a coordinated induction of RAP1A , SCG5 , PGAP1 , ATF3 and NEB genes implicated in cell stress, cell cycle and cytoskeletal processes. Altering pathways with pharmacologic agents confirmed the potential role of RAP1A , SCG5 and ATF3 in transfection. Conclusions— Microarray and gene network analyses of the sorted, transfected cell population can identify potential mediators of transfection, providing a basis for the design of improved delivery systems.


Based on a survey of National Agency for School Evaluation, the peculiarities of gifted learners' upbringing are described. The type of the problems is determined by the conflict of needs. The article seeks 1) to bring out the features illustrating the conflicting interaction between gifted learners and their classmates as well as teachers; 2) to reveal the potential of the needs'conflict management at school. The investigation embrased 8395 pupils aged 11 to 19 years (5th–12th grades) from Lithuanian basic, secondary schools and gymnasia. Data based on the content analysis of the External School Evaluation Report were also used. According to data analysis, the interaction between gifted learners and their classmates sometimes becomes conflicting: about 26 procent of pupils claimed that there was sneering at good learners; 47 percent of respondents claimed that they were disturbed to learn during some lessons. These ag gressive treatments were more common for younger pupils and those from basic schools. It has also been established that sometimes there is a conflicting interaction between gifted pupils and teachers, because the teachers don't pay special attention to gifted pupils. About 35 percent of pupils said the teachers differentiated exercises for pupils of different abilities and paid more attention to gifted pupils. There were only a few schools among those 85 investigated, which had a school policy for their gifted learners. At these schools, there is a complex system consisting of defining the giftedness, identifying the gifted learners and supporting them. An effective school policy as regards able learners can manage conflicts between gifted learners and their classmates and teachers.


In Paper Cadavers, an inside account of the astonishing discovery and rescue of Guatemala's secret police archives, Kirsten Weld probes the politics of memory, the wages of the Cold War, and the stakes of historical knowledge production. After Guatemala's bloody thirty-six years of civil war (1960-1996), silence and impunity reigned. That is, until 2005, when human rights investigators stumbled on the archives of the country's National Police, which, at 75 million pages, proved to be the largest trove of secret state records ever found in Latin America. The unearthing of the archives renewed fierce debates about history, memory, and justice. In Paper Cadavers, Weld explores Guatemala's struggles to manage this avalanche of evidence of past war crimes, providing a firsthand look at how postwar justice activists worked to reconfigure terror archives into implements of social change. Tracing the history of the police files as they were transformed from weapons of counterinsurgency into tools for post-conflict reckoning, Weld sheds light on the country's fraught transition from war to an uneasy peace, reflecting on how societies forget and remember political violence.


The aim of this study is to examine physicians' attitude toward ACP in PCU in Japan. We conducted a questionnaire survey to responsible physicians who worked in 203 certified PCU in December 2010. We asked them to complete a questionnaire regarding their attitude toward, and practice of ACP. We used 15 items questionnaire adopted from previous research (Davidson K, JAMA 1989) to investigate physician's attitude toward ACP. The questionnaire was confirmed its content validity by conveniently sampled 10 palliative care specialists. Among 203 physicians contacted, 95 returned the questionnaire (response rate 47%). The percentage of physicians who practicing ACP discussion during admission in PCU regarding implementation of CPR, existing Advance Directives (ADs) and Power of Attorney of health care was 33%, 46% and 40 % respectively. Responses to attitude statements were similar to US study in 1987 except for following three statements; "In a catastrophic situation, I would have greater confidence in my treatment decisions if guided by an AD", "Widespread use of ADs could help contain medical expenditure" and "Widespread acceptance of ADs will lead to less aggressive treatment even of patients who do not have an AD" (34.4%, 31.4% and 28.6% of Japanese physicians answered agree or strongly agree V.S. 70.9%, 74.1% and 61.2% of US physicians). This study will clarify physicians' practice and attitude toward ACP in PCU in Japan, and provide evidence of the unique cultural diversity toward end-of-life care and ACP among Japanese.


Recent studies indicate that zinc activates p70 S6 kinase (p70(S6k)) by a mechanism involving phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI 3-kinase) and Akt (protein kinase B). Here it is shown that phenanthroline, a zinc and heavy metal chelator, inhibited both amino acid- and insulin-stimulated phosphorylation of p70(S6k). Both amino acid and insulin activations of p70(S6k) involve a rapamycin-sensitive step that involves the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR, also known as FRAP and RAFT). However, in contrast to insulin, amino acids activate p70(S6k) by an unknown PI 3-kinase- and Akt-independent mechanism. Thus the effects of chelator on amino acid activation of p70(S6k) were surprising. For this reason, we tested the hypothesis that zinc directly regulates mTOR activity, independently of PI 3-kinase activation. In support of this, basal and amino acid stimulation of p70(S6k) phosphorylation was increased by zinc addition to the incubation media. Furthermore, the protein kinase activities of mTOR immunoprecipitated from rat brain lysates were stimulated two- to fivefold by 10-300 microM Zn2+ in the presence of an excess of either Mn2+ or Mg2+, whereas incubation with 1,10-phenanthroline had no effect. These findings indicate that Zn2+ regulates, but is not absolutely required for, mTOR protein kinase activity. Zinc also stimulated a recombinant human form of mTOR. The stimulatory effects of Zn2+ were maximal at approximately 100 microM but decreased and became inhibitory at higher physiologically irrelevant concentrations. Micromolar concentrations of other divalent cations, Ca2+, Fe2+, and Mn2+, had no effect on the protein kinase activity of mTOR in the presence of excess Mg2+. Our results and the results of others suggest that zinc acts at multiple steps in amino acid- and insulin cell-signaling pathways, including mTOR, and that the additive effects of Zn2+ on these steps may thereby promote insulin and nutritional signaling.


This issue of Science's STKE features research into the pathophysiology of cancer cells. The featured articles describe how malignancy may arise due to the subversion of normal cellular functions, the signaling pathways involved, and new approaches to cancer therapy that involve the exploitation of oncogenic changes. The research presented provides an optimistic outlook for translating new understanding of cell signaling into novel therapies.


This paper demonstrates our Web Service based N-Version model, WS-FTM (Web Service-Fault Tolerance Mechanism), which applies this well proven technique to the domain of Web Services to increase system dependability. WS-FTM achieves transparent usage of replicated Web Services by use of a modified stub. The stub is created using tools included in WS-FTM. Our initial implementation includes a simple consensus voter that allows generic result comparison. Finally we show, through the use of a non-trivial example, that WS-FTM can be used to increase the reliability of a Web Service system.


By the year 2016 every member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has to comply with its agreement on the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS or the Agreement). This implies that each country party to this multilateral trade agreement is obliged to institutionalize the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) into its national framework. Developed country members have few, if any, changes to make to their legislations in order to become TRIPS compliant. Most developing country members, however, would have to make significant changes in their system to accommodate this harmonized IPR protection regime. This thesis attempts to examine how developing countries are affected by the TRIPS implementation. In particular, I examine whether compliance with the Agreement facilitates developing countries' exposure to foreign technologies. For the first paper, I build an index that captures fifty-three developing countries' compliance with TRIPS by consulting their Trade Policy Review and TRIPS Council review reports, cross-referencing them to their national legislations. I find that most developing countries take advantage of the transition period flexibility offered by the Agreement and that these implementation efforts are relatively independent from their income levels. In addition, countries that are party to regional trade agreements that specify TRIPS protection tend to be compliant earlier than the rest. In the second paper, I apply the TRIPS index to three channels of accessing foreign technology: trade, foreign direct investment (FDI) and licensing activities. I find that countries' compliance with the Agreement has positive impact on FDI in flows, some on inward licensing activities but none on imports. I then argue that actual enforcement of the in-book TRIPS compliance is important in facilitating access to foreign technologies and include an enforcement index. This enforcement proxy is not to be confused with the statutory enforcements mandated by TRIPS itself. When enforcement of the TRIPS compliance is taken into consideration, I observe that on average TRIPS implementation and its enforcement facilitate access to the foreign technologies for developing countries, depending on their level of imitative abilities. The last paper delves further and investigates how local firms are affected by the strengthened IPR protection in using foreign technologies. Using a unique database from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor on entrepreneurship, I examine how TRIPS implementation affects local entrepreneurs' exploitation of those technologies. I find significant and adverse effects of the IPR reform, which varies according to industrial sectors and categories. The results suggest that stronger IPR protection, via TRIPS implementation, raises the cost of using the foreign technology for entrepreneurs in developing countries.


Introduction IN LATIN AMERICA, THE PROCESS OF CONCENTRATING WEALTH WITH WEALTH AND poverty with poverty began 500 years ago, but it has dramatically accelerated in the last 25 years under neoliberal policies. Latin American countries that followed the free-market prescription and inserted themselves fully into the global economy in the expectation that freedom and democracy would ensue found such promises to be chimera fabricated by the preachers of market liberalization. Real freedom under neoliberalism is enjoyed only by capital. Large sectors of society are denied basic human rights and dignity, while local elites allied with transnational companies have grown stronger, as has the determination to eliminate all remaining barriers to capital's search for resources, cheap labor, and markets. As millions are born, live, and die in the wreckage left by neoliberalism's plunder, the elite version of democracy counsels the hungry to patiently wait for wealth to trickle-down to them. Such democracy offers citizens the freedom to choose whether to spend their income on clean water, medicine, or food, to sell their dignity, or to become an "internal enemy." The promise of democracy by those seeking to maintain their unchallenged privileges translates into increased repression and violence against those who stand up for social justice and the protection of life. The neoliberal model is based on the assertion that poverty is best alleviated by opening societies to market-based competition, since an unregulated free market promotes economic growth and a democratic and just development process. Most Latin American countries have adopted this model and have experienced it for over two decades. Much evidence now suggests that this economic system produces poverty, aggravates existing poverty and inequality, impedes social development by turning human rights into commodities, and destroys sustainable livelihoods by granting corporations unprecedented rights and freedoms (Hristov, 2004). Fantu Cheru, an independent expert on the effects of structural adjustment policies (SAPs) on human rights, concluded that SAPs--a primary component of the neoliberal agenda--represent a political project of social transformation at the global level that aims to make the world safe for multinational corporations (MNCs). These policies reduce the role of the state in national development, erode the social welfare of the poor, and deny their economic, social, and cultural rights (Singh, 1999). Since it is unresponsive to the needs of the majority, the continued existence of neoliberalism requires a political counterpart capable of suppressing opposition to it. "The modern army of financial capital and corrupt governments advances in the only way it is capable of: destroying" (EZLN, 1998a: 12). This explains the emergence of war not between countries, but within them, waged by states against the poor (the majority of their populations). The weapons in such wars go beyond hunger to include military dimensions. This article illustrates the coexistence of neoliberalism, militarization, violence, and repression in Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico since 1990. To a large extent, these three countries represent the relationship between economic, political, and military trends in the rest of Latin America. Their common characteristics are governments that are "economic vassals of the U.S." (Petras et al., 2004), "empire-centered" (neoliberal) policies that have greatly impoverished the working majority in each country, and a rich natural resource base (particularly oil). They also have social movements that have demonstrated long-term viability, increasing repression and violence directed by those with economic and political power and sanctioned by the state, and an increasing U.S. military presence. The following analysis is not a series of case studies, but illustrates local expressions of global processes that conceal class struggle and the pursuit of imperial interests. …


In this study, an outsourcer evaluation and management system is developed for a manufacturing company by use of Fuzzy goal programming (FGP). A first phase of the methodology evaluation criteria for outsources and the objectives of the company are determined. Considering the fuzziness in the decision data, linguistic variables that can be expressed in generalized fuzzy number are used. The propose approach is utilized from fuzzy sets, Analytic Network Process (ANP), fuzzy TOPSIS and Preference Ranking Organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE) approaches. Evaluation criteria for this problem are weighted by Fuzzy ANP approach then in the Fuzzy TOPSIS and Fuzzy PROMETHEE approaches. At the second phase the FGP model developed selects the most appropriate outsourcers suitable to be strategic partners with the company and simultaneously allocates the quantities to be ordered to them. At the end, gives the computational results.


By engineering the interface between the intermediate photoactive layer and the cathode aluminum (Al) electrode, through the introduction of ultra-thin layers of various materials, in a standard
bulk heterojunction (BHJ) polymer solar cell (PSC) fabricated of regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene)(rr-P3HT) and phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM), the power conversion efficiency (PCE) has
been effectively improved. The devices fabricated using individual single interlayer of bathocuproine (BCP), lithium fluoride (LiF) and Buckminster fullerene C60 have shown optimal efficiencies of ∼2.40%, ∼3.21% and ∼1.92% respectively. Further improvement of the photovoltaic efficiency was achieved by introducing a composite bilayer made of LiF in combination with BCP as well as with C60 at the BHJ/cathode interface. The best results were obtained by interposing a 9 nm of C60 interlayer in combination with a 0.9 nm
thick LiF layer, with the PCE of the PV cells being effectively increased up to 3.94% which represents an improvement of 23% as compared to the standard device with LiF interlayer alone. The photocurrent density (Jsc) versus voltage (V ) characteristic curves shows that the increase of the efficiency is essentially
due to an increase in Jsc. Moreover, all the sets of devices fabricated using various interlayers over a certain range of thickness exhibit an optimum PCE that is inversely proportional to the series resistance of the PV cells. We presume that interposing a C60/LiF layer at the interface could repair the poor contact at
the electron acceptor/cathode interface and improve the charge career extraction from the BHJ.


Objectives: To investigate the effect of three cycling cadences on a subsequent 3000 m track running performance in well trained triathletes. Methods: Nine triathletes completed a maximal cycling test, three cycle-run succession sessions (20 minutes of cycling + a 3000 m run) in random order, and one isolated run (3000 m). During the cycling bout of the cycle-run sessions, subjects had to maintain for 20 minutes one of the three cycling cadences corresponding to 60, 80, and 100 rpm. The metabolic intensity during these cycling bouts corresponded approximately to the cycling competition intensity of our subjects during a sprint triathlon (> 80% V̇o2max). Results: A significant effect of the prior cycling exercise was found on middle distance running performance without any cadence effect (625.7 (40.1), 630.0 (44.8), 637.7 (57.9), and 583.0 (28.3) seconds for the 60 rpm run, 80 rpm run, 100 rpm run, and isolated run respectively). However, during the first 500 m of the run, stride rate and running velocity were significantly higher after cycling at 80 or 100 rpm than at 60 rpm (p<0.05). Furthermore, the choice of 60 rpm was associated with a higher fraction of V̇o2max sustained during running compared with the other conditions (p<0.05). Conclusions: The results confirm the alteration in running performance completed after the cycling event compared with the isolated run. However, no significant effect of the cadence was observed within the range usually used by triathletes.


Introduction: Neonatal male circumcision is routinely carried out in most places in Nigeria, sub-Saharan Africa. The main reasons why parents bring their sons for circumcision are religious and cultural with a few medical indications like phimosis, paraphimosis and balanitis also being noted. Several techniques of this age long practice have been described and options range from the non-device to device techniques. Circumcision with the Gomco clamp (GC) is not yet as popular in this part of the world even though it has been reported to be safe. Aims and Objectives: To describe our experience and technique using the gomco clamp (GC) for neonatal male circumcision in our environment. Materials and Methods: A retrospective study of 63 newborn boys whose parents gave consent and who were assessed and found fit for circumcision from August 2015 to November 2015 was carried out. They all had circumcision by the same surgeon using gomco clamp at Garki hospital Abuja, Nigeria. Data obtained from patients' medical records included age, indication, size of gomco clamp and any procedure related complications. They were followed up at 6weeks in the surgical outpatient clinic and then 1year by telephone call to their parents. Results: The average age of the male neonates at circumcision was 10.8 +/- 4.38 days (range from 6 to 26 days) and median age 8days. The indications for circumcision were religion (43, 68%) and cultural (20, 32%). The only early procedure-related complications observed was mild bleeding in two (3.2%) boys and this succumbed to simple pressure. Long term complications included one (1.6%) each penile skin bridge following adhesions between the prepuce and glans and redundant foreskin which were corrected by free hand dorsal and ventral slit circumcision at 8months. Conclusion: Male circumcision can be performed at any age, but there are cost and safety benefits of doing this procedure during the neonatal period. Circumcision using the Gomco clamp (GC) is simple to learn.


Author(s): Page, Janie | Abstract: Small and medium commercial customers in California make up about 20-25percent of electric peak load in California. With the roll out of smart meters to this customer group, which enable granular measurement of electricity consumption, the investor-owned utilities will offer dynamic prices as default tariffs by the end of 2011. Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which successfully deployed Automated Demand Response (AutoDR) Programs to its large commercial and industrial customers, started investigating the same infrastructures application to the small and medium commercial customers. This project aims to identify available technologies suitable for automating demand response for small-medium commercial buildings; to validate the extent to which that technology does what it claims to be able to do; and determine the extent to which customers find the technology useful for DR purpose. Ten sites, enabled by eight vendors, participated in at least four test AutoDR events per site in the summer of 2010. The results showed that while existing technology can reliably receive OpenADR signals and translate them into pre-programmed response strategies, it is likely that better levels of load sheds could be obtained than what is reported here if better understanding of the building systems were developed and the DR response strategies had been carefully designed and optimized for each site.


School professionals, particularly school counsellors and school psychologists, require detailed knowledge of many important factors that contribute to the personal, academic, and vocational development of the students in their charge (e.g., psychosocial development, curricula developments, local community developments and initiatives, national and international policy developments). The amount of detail and knowledge required by school counsellors/psychologists is bewildering, even before consideration of the individual differences in those who require their help. A framework can provide school professionals with a parsimonious approach to organising, synthesising and understanding all the information that needs to be considered in relation to a child within a particular environment. The current article reviews and comments upon the usefulness of two such theoretical frameworks--Bronfenbrenner's ecological model (1979, 1989) and Spiel, Reimann, Wagner, and Schober's (2008) Bildung-Psychology approach--to an exploration and understanding of a common issue; namely, bully/victim problems among school pupils. It is argued that such ecological/systemic approaches could usefully inform the design and evaluation of future efforts to address school bullying and violence. By extension, we propose that the simplicity of such models is of great value to the school professional who seeks a framework that can guide them in their work. Language: en


The proliferation of electronic limit order books operating without dealers raises questions regarding the need for intermediaries with affirmative obligations to maintain markets. We develop a simple model of dealer participation and test it using a sample of less liquid firms that trade on the Paris Bourse. The results indicate that firms with designated dealers exhibit better market quality, and that younger firms, smaller firms, and less volatile firms choose a designated dealer. Around the announcement of dealer introduction, stocks experience an average cumulative abnormal return of nearly 5% that is positively correlated with improvements in liquidity. Overall, these findings emphasize the potential benefits of designing better market structures, even within electronic limit order books, and suggest that purely endogenous liquidity provision may not be optimal for all securities.


OBJECTIVES: Exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) from cigarettes poses a significant health risk to nonsmokers. Among youth, the home is the primary source of SHS. However, little is known about youth exposure to SHS in other nonpublic areas, particularly motor vehicles. METHODS: Data were obtained from the 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2009 waves of the National Youth Tobacco Survey, a nationally representative survey of US students in grades 6 to 12. Trends in SHS exposure in a car were assessed across survey years by school level, gender, and race/ethnicity by using binary logistic regression. RESULTS: From 2000 to 2009, the prevalence of SHS exposure in cars declined significantly among both nonsmokers (39.0%–22.8%; trend P < .001) and smokers (82.3%–75.3%; trend P < .001). Among nonsmokers, this decline occurred across all school level, gender, and race/ethnicity subgroups. CONCLUSIONS: SHS exposure in cars decreased significantly among US middle and high school students from 2000 to 2009. Nevertheless, in 2009, over one-fifth of nonsmoking students were exposed to SHS in cars. Jurisdictions should expand comprehensive smoke-free policies that prohibit smoking in worksites and public places to also prohibit smoking in motor vehicles occupied by youth.


Working memory is often described as a system for simultaneous storage and processing. Much research – and most measures of working-memory capacity – focus on the storage component only, that is, people's ability to recall or recognize items after short retention intervals. The mechanisms of processing information are studied in a separate research tradition, concerned with the selection and control of actions in simple choice situations, dual-task constellations, or task-switching setups. both research traditions investigate performance based on representations that are temporarily maintained in an active, highly accessible state, and constrained by capacity limits. In this article an integrated theoretical framework of declarative and procedural working memory is presented that relates the two domains of research to each other. Declarative working memory is proposed to hold representations available for processing (including recall and recognition), whereas procedural working memory holds representations that control processing (i. e., task sets, stimulus-response mappings, and executive control settings). The framework motivates two hypotheses: Declarative and procedural working memory have separate capacity limits, and they operate by analogous principles. The framework also suggests a new characterization of executive functions as the subset of processes governed by procedural working memory that has as its output a change in the conditions of operation of the working-memory system.


(I) DEFINITION A NOT uncommon complaint among sailors and others who have spent a considerable time in the hotter countries of the world is an enlargement of the glands in the groin, unconnected with any obvious venereal infection. In contrast to the obvious venereal bubD, which is secondary to active syphilis, gonorrhoea or soft sore (ulcus molle), this disease is frequently termed the " NonVenereal Bubo." A considerable literature is growing up on this subject under a variety of names, such as Climatic Bubo (Manson-Bahr, Hanschell et al.), Tropical Bubo (or adenitis) (Virgillo, etc.), Inguinal Lymphogranulomatosis (Nicholas and Favre et al.), Inguinal Poradenitis (De Bellard et al.), Inguinal Adenopathy (Lebeuf et al.), Pestis Minor (Cantlie et al.), Strumous Bubo, Granuloma Venereum (Clement). An attempt has been made here to study this disease from a clinical point of view, and to see in what respects the picture gained agrees with or differs from the experience of other observers; and, in the absence of any certain knowledge of the cause, to make the clinical study as detailed as possible in the hope that perchance some new aspect of the disease might emerge.


"China is both a tantalising opportunity and a terrifying threat"--Moeletsi Mbeki (1)) ABSTRACT This article explores China's international role with reference to Africa in order to answer the question whether China can, in fact, be considered an emerging hegemon that is using, as Western states have done in the past, Africa in order to promote its own position. The concept hegemon/hegemony is discussed briefly in order to provide a framework for analysis. China's relations with Africa are considered, focusing on economic, political and security issues (though the distinction between political and security issues is sometimes vague). These relations are then evaluated with reference to the nature and role of a hegemon. It is concluded that there is not sufficient evidence for perceiving China's role in Africa as that of an emerging hegemon. 1. INTRODUCTION The spectacular rise of China as (what is often claimed to be) a superpower in the contemporary international system is regularly the subject of much debate and attention, especially in the press and popular journals. The International Relations community, though, seems to find it rather difficult to characterise the role of China in international affairs. International Relations theories about the international power structure have traditionally dealt with Western powers, including Japan as a kind of 'honorary' Western economic power, but with apparently little provision for the emergence of a superpower from the Global South. (2)) Scholarly contributions on China's rise as an 'incipient superpower' (3)) tend to focus on its economic 'giantism', its modernising security establishment, its energy policies and needs and, to some extent, its impact on the global natural environment in an age of climate change and environmental degradation. (4)) When it comes to China's relations with Africa, international views, especially in the United States (US), whether scholarly or journalistic, seem to regard China as a 'bad influence', potentially undermining "years of international efforts to link aid to better governance" (5)) and as propping up "dangerous regimes, producing a new cycle of unsustainable debt, and damaging anti-poverty efforts across the region". (6)) Mearsheimer recently analysed China's rise, and its concomitant impact on the international system, on the basis of hegemony. He defined the country's rise as 'unpeaceful', due to the potential for "intense security competition" with the US that might result in "considerable potential for war". (7)) Alden also uses the concept 'hegemony' when dealing with China (in this case China's engagement with Africa), pointing out that China has an "overriding concern with American hegemony" and presents its own emergence as (at the very least) a great power as a 'peaceful rise'. (8)) Both scholars use the term 'hegemony', yet the one views China's rise as 'unpeaceful' (Mearsheimer) and the other (Alden) as peaceful. Apart from Mearsheimer and Alden's work, though, and despite the bulk of publications over the past decade charting China's rise and more specifically its role in and policy towards Africa, little effort has been expended in the International Relations scholarly community to explain China's role in the international system. Although some scholars use the concept 'hegemon' when referring to China's rise, hegemonic stability theory, as Evans and Newnham point out, is exclusively concerned with "relations within the advanced industrial countries" and not with the North-South divide. (9)) Nor does it make provision for the rise of a Global South power to hegemonic status, despite China's greater power status which it has enjoyed at least since the early 1970s when it became a permanent member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council. This article explores China's international role with reference to Africa in order to answer the question whether China can, in fact, be considered an emerging hegemon that is using, as Western states have done in the past, Africa in order to promote its own position. …


The NBA is widely known as the least competitively balanced professional sports league in North America. Past literature has shown that as competitive balance declines, so does fan interest and revenues for both individual teams and the league as a whole. In 2003, the NBA implemented a luxury tax,a penalty mechanism that taxes teams who spend above the salary cap, in order to improve competitive balance. Using luxury tax and league level production data from the 1998 to 2016 NBA seasons, and a model that estimates competitive balance, this paper investigates whether the implementation of the luxury tax in 2003 positively affected competitive balance in the NBA. The results indicate that competitive balance significantly improved from 2003 to 2012 compared to the seasons prior to the implementation of the luxury tax. Additionally, I find that the more teams pay in luxury tax, the worse competitive balance becomes, suggesting that as teams stockpile more talent, the league becomes competitively imbalanced as a result.


Spontaneous pattern formation, the appearance of inhomogeneities that are not directly imposed by external forces, can be an important but overlooked factor in the origin and maintenance of genetic diversity in populations, and in parapatric speciation. Using agent-based simulation models with multilocus genetics, we show that such patterns form in spatially distributed populations with local mating neighborhoods. Under these conditions, disruptive selection induces spontaneous pattern formation and coarsening in the spatial distribution of genotypes, and thus increases the persistence of genetic diversity. The lateral motion of hybrid zones between different genotypes of similar fitness is affected by their topological shape. Hence, the shape of these boundaries plays a crucial role in determining the rate of genetic variation and the long time behavior of the population. These patterns also interact with boundary and internal obstacles of habitat structure, so that diversity persists the longest in habitats with the most irregular geographical features. Localized obstacles contribute to the maintenance of genetic diversity even if they do not preclude interbreeding, by inhibiting the movement of hybrid zones between areas dominated by different genotypes. Our results imply that the most effective size of such obstacles for maintaining diversity is about the same as the radius of a local deme. These results are relevant to spatial ecology and conservation ∗ To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: email@example.com Hiroki Sayama, Les Kaufman and Yaneer Bar-Yam 2 biology, in which both genetic diversity and the size and shape of population reserves have great import for the long-term survival of species in the wild. They also imply significant coupling of population level and ecological properties to evolutionary dynamics. The persistence and amount of diversity, the relationship of diversity to evolutionary change, and the survival of types is controlled by the genetically undetermined spatial distribution of types and the structure of the habitat.


Studies on information retrieval for children are not yet
common. As young children possess a limited vocabulary
and limited intellectual power, they may experience more
difficulty in fulfilling their information need than adults.
This paper presents an image retrieval user interface that
is specifically designed for children. The interface uses relevance feedback and has been evaluated by letting children
perform different search tasks. The tasks were performed
using two interfaces; a more traditional interface - acting as a control interface - and the relevance feedback interface.
One of the remarkable results of this study is that children
did not favor relevance feedback controls over traditional
navigational controls.


The purpose of this work is to develop a solution method for examining interactions of human beta2-Glycoprotein I (b2gpI) with antibodies and natural ligands under nondenaturing conditions. In the approach, a physiological pH was applied because our intention was to study the interactions between b2gpI and antibodies and the protein must thus be kept in its native state. Preliminary experiments have shown that the recovery of the protein, when analyzed in an uncoated capillary, is poor. At physiological pH the protein is positively charged and most likely it was adsorbed at the negatively charged capillary wall in these experiments. Therefore dimethylacrylamide (DMA) coated capillaries1 are used and analyses could be performed with acceptable recovery. Interaction studies are performed simply by adding the antibody or ligand to the running buffer. The method showed good repeatability and efficiency


Mobile devices are constrained in terms of computational power, battery lifetime and memory sizes. Software development for mobile devices is further complicated by application complexity and heterogeneous hardware platforms.Virtual Machines (VMs) abstract from the underlying hardware, but their use with embedded devices can only be justified if the interpretive overhead is kept to a minimum.In this paper we argue that efficient byte code execution is feasible on mobile devices. We adapt a VM for the Cprogramming language for ARM-based mobile phone platforms.Our VM utilizes latest interpreter technologies to achieve high performance. It offers mixed-mode execution,i.e., code is either executed on the VM or on the CPU, to combine the advantages of VM-based hardware abstraction with the speed of machine-code.We conduct extensive experiments with the MiBench embedded benchmark suite to evaluate VM-performance and the effectiveness of interpreter optimizations on an ARMbasedmobile phone platform. Our interpreter consumes just 10.55KB of code and 0.9KB of data. For all surveyed applications, we achieve a slowdown of less than a factor of 23 over binary code execution, which makes our VM aviable option for byte code execution on mobile devices.


The present status of germinal center (GC) research is revisited using in silico simulations based on recent lymphocyte motility data in mice. The generally adopted view of several rounds of somatic hypermutations and positive selection is analyzed with special emphasis on the spatial organization of the GC reaction. We claim that the development of dark zones is not necessary for successful GC reactions to develop. We find that a recirculation of positively selected centrocytes to the dark zone is rather unlikely. Instead we propose a scenario that combines a multiple-step mutation and selection concept with a "one-way" GC in the sense of cell migration.


Tile-based online mapping systems have replaced traditional Web GIS systems, because of their improved speed and usability. The trend towards tile-base systems was started by Internet services companies, such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. They have been followed by the traditional GIS community, government organizations and open source development communities, because tile based systems yield faster and work stronger with 3-D mapping tools. Tile-Based Geospatial Information Systems: Principles and Practice presents a detailed examination of the principles of tile-based systems. Topics include discussions of projections, coordinate systems, image processing, data basing and indexing requirements and web access. Attention is devoted to understanding and development of algorithms needed to make tile-based systems functional and efficient. In addition to the theoretical examination of the topic, this book includes detailed practical content helpful to those charged with implementation of tile-based systems. Case studies are provided in the last 2 chapters of this book. Tile-Based Geospatial Information Systems: Principles and Practice is designed for a professional audience composed of researchers, practitioners and government workers, focusing on geographic information systems and internet technologies and image processing techniques related to GIS. This book is also suitable for advanced-level students in computer science and geography as a secondary text or reference book.


For many years the World Health Organization (WHO) has provided the global direction and leadership that has helped to shape the way we view health promotion today. The future role of the WHO is now uncertain and the lack of global leadership for health promotion and identification of who will provide the future direction are issues that need to be addressed. The crucial question posed in this commentary is: Where are the individuals and organisations that will provide the global leadership and vision for health promotion in the future? We need named champions for the future leadership of health promotion practice – people and organisations who offer a leadership style that will maintain its global profile, be representative across sectors and have the ability to maintain its political efficacy. The two key health promotion approaches, top-down and bottom-up, do not always share the same goals, and they demand different styles of leadership. This is an important consideration in our goal to find champions who can work with both approaches and understand how to accommodate them as a part of the future direction of health promotion. This commentary raises key questions to stimulate discussion and action towards addressing the lack of global leadership in health promotion. It discusses some of the key players, leadership characteristics and the contradictions in style that are inherent in achieving a goal of charismatic global champions.


Response time analysis is an essential task to verify the behavior of real-time systems. Several response time analysis methods have been proposed to address this challenge, particularly for real-time systems with different levels of complexity. Static analysis is a popular approach in this context, but its practical applicability is limited due to the high complexity of the industrial real-time systems, as well as many unpredictable runtime events in these systems. In this work-in-progress paper, we propose a simulation-based response time analysis approach using reinforcement learning to find the execution scenarios leading to the worst-case response time. The approach learns how to provide a practical estimation of the worst-case response time through simulating the program without performing static analysis. Our initial study suggests that the proposed approach could be applicable in the simulation environments of the industrial real-time control systems to provide a practical estimation of the execution scenarios leading to the worst-case response time.


Abstract New sedimentological, biostratigraphical and geochemical data recording the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE) are reported from a marginal marine succession in southern Beaujolais, France. The serpentinum and bifrons ammonite zones record black shales with high (1–10 wt%) total organic carbon contents (TOC) and dysoxia-tolerant benthic fauna typical of the 'Schistes Carton' facies well documented in contemporaneous nearby basins. The base of the serpentinum ammonite zone, however, differs from coeval strata of most adjacent basinal series in that it presents several massive storm beds particularly enriched in juvenile ammonites and the dysoxia-tolerant, miniaturized gastropod Coelodiscus. This storm-dominated interval records a marked negative 5‰ carbonate and organic carbon isotope excursion being time-equivalent with that recording storm- and mass flow-deposits in sections of the Lusitanian Basin, Portugal, pointing to the existence of a major tempestite/turbidite event over tropical areas during the T-OAE. Although several explanations remain possible at present, we favour climatically induced changes in platform morphology and storm activity as the main drivers of these sedimentological features. In addition, we show that recent weathering, most probably due to infiltration of O2-rich meteoric water, resulted in the preferential removal of 12C-enriched organic carbon, dramatic TOC loss and total destruction of the lamination of the black shale sequence over most of the studied exposure. These latter observations imply that extreme caution should be applied when interpreting the palaeoenvironmental significance of sediments lacking TOC enrichment and lamination from outcrops with limited surface exposures.


The context of this study was to examine factors contributing to significant workforce shortages in building trades in the United States. As it is, recruitment of qualified skilled trades workers is becoming increasingly difficult due to lack of a pipeline of prospective workers, and training programs. The study assumed a theoretical inquiry approach in order to address the following three main questions: 1) What is the scope of the workforce shortage in skilled and building trades in the US? 2) What factors are recognized as contributors to the building trades workforce shortage in the US? And, 3) What strategies can be implemented to reverse building trades workforce shortages in the US? Findings affirmed that the scope of workforce shortages in skilled and building (con- struction) trades in the US is very broad and the impact is rather deep. Factors con- tributing to the shortage include: declines in high school technical education programs, which have been replaced by career academies; misconception that higher education al- ways equal higher income, but the untold story is higher debt associated with pursuing higher education; and stricter immigration laws, which are forcing potential workers out of the US. The study concluded that in order to reverse currently declining workforce trends the following six strategies should be implemented: 1) Make it a national priority, thereby appropriating adequate resources to the effort. 2) Increase the number or women and African Americans in building trades. 3) Expand apprenticeship programs. An expan- sion of both government and corporate incentives are needed to stimulate an increase in apprenticeships. 4) Reintroduce building and skilled trades programs in secondary and postsecondary schools. Growth in the number of Career Academies, and participation in them has been encouraging, yet there are not enough of them to meet the need. 5) Re-examine guest-worker programs, which are currently cumbersome for employers to participate in, and do not allow for anywhere close to the number of workers needed to meet workforce needs. 6) Change marketing of building trades from menial to meaning- ful. Many young people simply do not know that they can make a comfortable living from a career in skilled trades. They have been taught that at least a bachelor's degree is needed in order to have a successful career. This narrative has to be revised in order to create a pipeline of prospective skilled trades employees for the future.


We study the consequences of interest-rate liberalization in a two-sector general equilibrium model of China. The model captures a key feature of China's distorted financial system: state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have greater incentive to expand production and easier access to credit than private firms. In this second-best environment, liberalizing interest rate controls improves capital allocations within each sector, but exacerbates misallocations across sectors. Under calibrated parameters, interest-rate liberalization may reduce aggregate productivity and welfare, unless other policy reforms are also implemented to alleviate SOEs' distorted incentives or improve private firms' credit access.


OBJECTIVES
To determine the natural history of abnormalities in liver function tests (LFTs), derive predictive algorithms for liver disease and identify the most cost-effective strategies for further investigation.

DATA SOURCES
MEDLINE database from 1966 to September 2006, EMBASE, CINAHL and the Cochrane Library.

METHODS
Population-based retrospective cohort study set in primary care in Tayside, Scotland, between 1989 and 2003. Participants were patients with no obvious signs of liver disease and registered with a general practitioner (GP). The study followed up those with an incident batch of LFTs in primary care to subsequent liver disease or mortality over a maximum of 15 years. The health technologies being assessed were primary care LFTs, viral and autoantibody tests, ultrasound and liver biopsy. Measures used were the epidemiology of liver disease in Tayside (ELDIT) database, time-to-event modelling, predictive algorithms derived using the Weibull survival model, decision analyses from an NHS perspective, cost-utility analyses, and one-way and two-way sensitivity analyses.

RESULTS
A total of 95,977 patients had 364,194 initial LFTs, with a median follow-up of 3.7 years. Of these, 21.7% had at least one abnormal liver function test (ALFT) and 1090 (1.14%) developed liver disease. Elevated transaminases were strongly associated with diagnosed liver disease, with hazard ratios (HRs) of 4.23 [95% CI (confidence interval) 3.55-5.04] for mild levels and 12.67 (95% CI 9.74-16.47) for severe levels versus normal. For gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT), these HRs were 2.54 (95% CI 2.17-2.96) and 13.44 (10.71-16.87) respectively. Low albumin was strongly associated with all cause mortality, with ratios of 2.65 (95% CI 2.47-2.85) for mild levels and 4.99 (95% CI 4.26-5.84) for severe levels. Sensitivity for predicting events over 5 years was low and specificity was high. Follow-up time was split into baseline to 3 months, 3 months to 1 year and over 1 year. All LFTs were predictive of liver disease, and high probability of liver disease was associated with being female, methadone use, alcohol dependency and deprivation. The shorter-term models had overall c-statistics of 0.85 and 0.72 for outcome of liver disease at 3 months and 1 year respectively, and 0.88 and 0.82 for all cause mortality at 3 months and 1 year respectively. Calibration was good for models predicting liver disease. Discrimination was low for models predicting events at over 1 year. In cost-utility analyses, retesting dominated referral as an option. However, using the predictive algorithms to identify the top percentile at high risk of liver disease, retesting had an incremental cost-utility ratio of 7588 pounds relative to referral.

CONCLUSIONS
GGT should be included in the batch of LFTs in primary care. If the patient in primary care has no obvious liver disease and a low or moderate risk of liver disease, retesting in primary care is the most cost-effective option. If the patient with ALFTs in primary care has a high risk of liver disease, retesting depends on the willingness to pay of the NHS. Cut-offs are arbitrary and in developing decision aids it is important to treat the LFT results as continuous variables.


Aim

To investigate the effect of biofeedback stress dysfunction training on the psychophysiological and neural activity of women with or without premenstrual syndrome (PMS).

Methods

The present study recruited thirty women (18~30 years old, 22 ± 2.19) and fifteen women belong to PMS group (23 ± 1 years old), while the left formed the non-PMS group (22 ± 2 years old). There were nine women in each group (22 ± 2 years old) took part in the stress dysfunctional biofeedback training, which strengthens the sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) of EEG (12-15Hz) and decreases the surface electromyogram (SEMG) which lasts for two weeks (five days each week), while the left six women in each group (23 ± 1 years old) didn't receive biofeedback training but they had to finish the pretest and posttest just like the training women did (in the luteal or follicular phases). The tests include two minutes frontal EEG asymmetry (eyes closed and open) task and emotional scales.

Results

The results showed that in the pretest, in the control group, compared with the women without training, the women with biofeedback training had higher scores on self-report of emotion, stronger electrodermal response (EDA) and higher heart rate (HR); compared with training women in the control group, the training women in the PMS group had higher negative affect. In addition, after the training, compared to healthy women, the women with PMS had higher EEG asymmetry scores which turned the negative score (bad coping and dysregulation) to the positive score (normal coping and regulation). Compared with the healthy women, after training, the PMS women had lower negative emotion.

Conclusion

These findings suggest that the biofeedback of stress dysregulation effectively improve the stress coping capacity of women with PMS and improve their negative emotion as well.


We construct several denotational semantics for communicating processes that incorporate assumptions of strong (process) fairness. Strong fairness is the guarantee that every process enabled infinitely often will make progress infinitely often. Modeling fairness compositionally requires care: generally speaking, the fair computations of a command cannot be defined only in terms of the fair computations of its component commands. For this reason, we introduce the notion of parameterized fairness, which generalizes fairness sufficiently to admit a compositional characterization. In each of these semantics, a command's meaning is simply the set of fair traces representing its fair computations; each fair trace records the steps made along a computation as well as additional information made explicit by the definition of parameterized fairness. Each semantics obtains full abstraction with respect to a natural notion of strongly fair program behavior: two terms are given identical meanings precisely when they exhibit the same behaviors in all program contexts.


Paleomagnetic data from recent Pleistocene to recent deep sea sediments from the continental rise of eastern North America exhibit a cyclical inclination shallowing, up to 30° with respect to the geocentric axial dipole value. This shallowing is strongly correlated with a ratio of anhysteretic remanent magnetization (ARM) anisotropy determined from a four position ARM anisotropy method. It is therefore proving that inclination variations in these cores are not due to paleosecular variation but in part to a bias in the remanence recording processes linked to depositional anisotropy. This study suggests that ARM anisotropy could provide a method to identify and correct for inclination shallowing in natural sediments.


Avian Reovirus (ARV) has gained worldwide importance because it is an emerging viral disease of the poultry industry. Mostly it is a disease of young broiler chicken but various studies showed that it can affect all ages of birds. Investigation on seroprevalence of ARV was performed in past, but data was found very less and therefore study was carried out on the states of India, where maximum poultry population exists. A sum of 450 serum samples was collected from Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, and Maharashtra. The overall prevalence of ARV was found to be 8.67%. ARV was found highly prevalent in Tamil Nadu (11.76%), whereas lower prevalence in Maharashtra (7.63%). The samples were categorized according to different age groups. Results showed the occurrence of Avian Reovirus infection 11.79% in birds aging 10-20 weeks.


Off-axis holograms recorded with a CCD camera are numerically reconstructed with a calculation of scalar diffraction in the Fresnel approximation. We show that the zero order of diffraction and the twin image can be digitally eliminated by means of filtering their associated spatial frequencies in the computed Fourier transform of the hologram. We show that this operation enhances the contrast of the reconstructed images and reduces the noise produced by parasitic reflections reaching the hologram plane with an incidence angle other than that of the object wave.


We present an assortment of results in graph theory. First, Tutte conjectured that every two-edgeconnected cubic graph with no Petersen graph minor is three-edge-colourable. This generalizes the four-colour theorem. Robertson et al. had previously shown that to prove Tutte's conjecture, it was enough to prove it for doublecross graphs. We provide a proof of the doublecross case. Seymour conjectured the following generalization of the four-colour theorem. Every d-regular planar graph can be d-edge-coloured, provided that for every odd-cardinality set X of vertices, there are at least d edges with exactly one end in X. Seymour's conjecture was previously known to be true for values of d ≤ 7. We provide a proof for the case d = 8. We then discuss upper bounds for the fractional chromatic number of graphs not containing large cliques. It has been conjectured that each graph with maximum degree at most ∆ and no complete subgraph of size ∆ has fractional chromatic number bounded below ∆ by at least a constant f(∆). We provide the currently best known bounds for f(∆), for 4 ≤ ∆ ≤ 103. We also give a general upper bound for the fractional chromatic number in terms of the sizes of cliques and maximum degrees in local areas of a graph. Next, we give a result that says, roughly, that a graph with sufficiently large treewidth contains many disjoint subgraphs with 'good' linkedness properties. A similar result was a key tool in a recent proof of a polynomial bound in the excluded grid theorem. Our theorem is a quantitative improvement with a new proof. Finally, we discuss the p-centre problem, a central NP-hard problem in graph clustering. Here we are given a graph and an integer p, and need to identify a set of p vertices, called centres, so that the maximum distance from a vertex to its closest centre (the p-radius) is minimized. We give a quasilinear time approximation algorithm to solve p-centres when the hyperbolicity of the graph is fixed, with a small additive error on the p-radius.


As of 2020, the world has an estimated 290 million ha of planted forests and this number is continuously increasing. Of these, 131 million ha are monospecific planted forests under intensive management. Although monospecific planted forests are important in providing timber, they harbor less biodiversity and are potentially more susceptible to disturbances than natural or diverse planted forests. Here, we point out the increasing scientific evidence for increased resilience and ecosystem service provision of functionally and species diverse planted forests (hereafter referred to as diverse planted forests) compared to monospecific ones. Furthermore, we propose five concrete steps to foster the adoption of diverse planted forests: (1) improve awareness of benefits and practical options of diverse planted forests among land‐owners, managers, and investors; (2) incentivize tree species diversity in public funding of afforestation and programs to diversify current maladapted planted forests of low diversity; (3) develop new wood‐based products that can be derived from many different tree species not yet in use; (4) invest in research to assess landscape benefits of diverse planted forests for functional connectivity and resilience to global‐change threats; and (5) improve the evidence base on diverse planted forests, in particular in currently under‐represented regions, where new options could be tested.


This study attempts to analyze and evaluate theories
and design principles for design and development of multimedia program for teaching and learning Arabic vocabulary. The researchers mentioned about the research tools, research samples and steps which are related to the design and development process. The study proposes the implementation of social constructivism theory proposed by Vygotsky (1978), theory of second language acquisition by Krashen (1984), theory of multimedia learning by Mayer (2001) and ADDIE instructional model by Dick & Carey (1990). Various subjects matter experts in teaching Arabic as a
second language and instructional design (ID) have participated in the study. The outcome from this research will later be used by the researcher in the design and development processes.


Stevia rebaudiana is a remarkable South American plant that has become widely used in certain parts of the world as a natural sweetening agent and dietary supplement. Purified extracts of S. rebaudiana have been used as sweeteners and flavor enhancers in the food industry in Japan for over a quarter of a century, and have been found to be up to 300 times sweeter than sucrose.This comprehensive volume provides reviews on the botany, ethnobotany, and chemical constituents of the genus Stevia and examines the chemical synthesis of such compounds as steviol and stevioside. The perceived safety of these compounds has become somewhat controversial in recent years, and a thorough consideration of the pharmacology and biological activity is provided. The final two chapters offer some insight into the various applications of S. rebaudiana extracts and stevioside in Japan and Korea, the two countries with the most extensive use of these food additives at present.Containing numerous up to date references, the book will appeal to a wide segment of the scientific community at all levels, especially those in the fields of natural products, pharmacy, pharmacognosy, plant science, agriculture and the food and beverages industry.


This thesis describes work undertaken to improve the early diagnosis of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), using existing clinical and research tools. Twenty-one cases referred to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and St. Mary's Hospital, London with suspected vCJD completed participation in the study. Fifteen cases were confirmed with definite or probable vCJD and six were given alternative diagnoses. These six cases with alternative diagnoses formed a control group. Further controls were recruited from patients referred with sporadic and familial forms of prion disease. A neuropsychiatry questionnaire comprising a battery of standardised tests was formulated. Of those with definite or probable vCJD, 86% exhibited anxiety, 93% irritability, 64% agitation and 79% displayed evidence of severe depressive symptoms. Fifty seven percent experienced simple delusions, most commonly of theft and suspicion and 36% described misidentifications (mean 8 months from illness onset). Behavioural change was common to all cases, 79% with aggression, 71% emotional lability and 79% sleep problems. Comprehensive neuropsychology assessments from those with vCJD were compared with sporadic and familial cases. Moderate to severe intellectual decline is characteristic of vCJD and impairment affects all cognitive domains. Only a minority of the vCJD cases presented with perceptual impairment compared with 50% of sporadic and familial cases. The proportion of cases with nominal impairment in the familial disease group was significantly lower than in the variant and sporadic groups. Serial volumetric MR imaging was only possible in a subgroup of cases with familial CJD. The annual mean rate of whole brain atrophy was 2.05% compared to 0.25% in normal controls. Single voxel proton magnetic spectroscopy performed in three cases with vCJD showed a 2.5 fold (150%) increase in the mean myo-inositol concentration and 50% reduction in N-acetylaspartate in the pulvinar region. Similar changes were seen in the caudate nucleus where no signal change was detected on T2 weighted images. The key to early diagnosis still relies on a high index of suspicion for vCJD and early referral to the appropriate specialist services. First hand experience of the problems faced by patients prompted a second, parallel project to be undertaken. A survey was conducted of all UK consultant neurologists and old age psychiatrists to assess current practices in the diagnosis and management of young people with dementia. It was concluded that young people may be under investigated if managed solely by an old age psychiatrist and may not receive adequate follow up services if managed solely by a neurologist.


Considerable research interest has recently focused on the development of both transgenic and traditional breeding methods to increase total and individual carotenoid composition in sweet potatoes. Unfortunately little information is available on the influence of the environment on carotenoid profile stability in sweet potatoes especially growing seasons and storage. Therefore the aim of this study is to explore the composition and concentration of carotenoids in orange sweet potato tubers to enable their future enhancement through genetic manipulation over different growing seasons and storage time. Our findings revealed that orange sweet potato tubers contained I±-carotene and I²-carotene in the first and second season, whereas in the third season only lutein and zeaxanthin were detected. Analysis of carotenoid profiles of the orange sweet potato tubers grown in three different seasons showed that the growing season had a major effect on the carotenoid compounds stability. Besides growing seasons, the level of total and individual carotenoids in orange sweet potato tuber flesh are strongly influenced and affected by storage conditions. The storage of tubers over 6 months period of time appears to have distinct effects on carotenoid content and composition. Results showed that storage from 1 to 6 months resulted in the accumulation of zeaxanthin and I²-carotene with a concomitant decreased of lutein, I±-carotene and total carotenoid content.


The purpose of this article was to survey the views of external examiners and moderators regarding written English at the National University of Lesotho (NUL), Lesotho College of Education (LCE/NTCC) and other education institutions in the country. This has been motivated by the general concern that the standard of English in Lesotho is very low. The paper first presents a background to English as the international and global language and the second official language as well as the medium of instruction in Lesotho. It further discusses the meaning of proficiency in English and the rationale for teaching and learning English as well as using English as the medium of education. The authors then specifically present examples of poor performance in English at the NUL, LCE (NTTC), COSC, LJC and primary schools as seen through the eyes of examiners, moderators and researchers. Most importantly, the article proposes ways and means of how written English can be improved in Lesotho's educational institutions. First, there has to be a drastic change of attitudes towards English. It should be considered positively as a global language that is here to stay. Secondly, all that whose responsibility is to teach English and through English should always strive to create communicative atmospheres for the students of English. Thirdly, the educational institutions should introduce and use consistently the concept and practice of language and learning across the curriculum (LLAC). That is, every teacher should be conscious of the position of English in the education system and, therefore, make every effort to help improve English. Finally, the article proposes that another strategy to improve performance in English writing skill is to establish a close cooperation and liaison between and among departments of English at the NUL, LCE, and Language and Social Education Department in the Faculty of Education at NUL. The article concludes by indicating that these are the challenges that face every English language teacher and teacher educator specifically and the entire teaching profession generally.


Introduction: Today, many countries, regardless of developed or developing, are trying to promote decentralization. According to Manor, as his quoting of Nickson's argument, decentralization stems from the necessity to strengthen local governments as proxy of civil society to fill the yawning gap between the state and civil society (Manor [1999]: 30). With the end to the Cold War following the collapse of the Soviet Union rendering the cause of the "leadership of the central government to counter communism" meaningless, Manor points out, it has become increasingly difficult to respond flexibly to changes in society under the centralized system. Then, what benefits can be expected from the effectuation of decentralization? Litvack-Ahmad-Bird cited the four points: attainment of allocative efficiency in the face of different local preferences for local public goods; improvement to government competitiveness; realization of good governance; and enhancement of the legitimacy and sustainability of heterogeneous national states (Litvack, Ahmad & Bird [1998]: 5). They all contribute to reducing the economic and social costs of a central government unable to respond to changes in society and enhancing the efficiency of state administration through the delegation of authority to local governments. Why did Indonesia have a go at decentralization? As Maryanov recognizes, reasons for the implementation of decentralization in Indonesia have never been explicitly presented (Maryanov [1958]: 17). But there was strong momentum toward building a democratic state in Indonesia at the time of independence, and as indicated by provisions of Article 18 of the 1945 Constitution, there was the tendency in Indonesia from the beginning to debate decentralization in association with democratization. That said debate about democratization was fairly abstract and the main points are to ease the tensions, quiet the complaints, satisfy the political forces and thus stabilize the process of government (Maryanov [1958]: 26-27). What triggered decentralization in Indonesia in earnest, of course, was the collapse of the Soeharto regime in May 1998. The Soeharto regime, regarded as the epitome of the centralization of power, became incapable of effectively dealing with problems in administration of the state and development administration. Besides, the post-Soeharto era of "reform (reformasi)" demanded the complete wipeout of the Soeharto image. In contraposition to the centralization of power was decentralization. The Soeharto regime that ruled Indonesia for 32 years was established in 1966 under the banner of "anti-communism." The end of the Cold War structure in the late 1980s undermined the legitimate reason the centralization of power to counter communism claimed by the Soeharto regime. The factor for decentralization cited by Manor is applicable here. Decentralization can be interpreted to mean not only the reversal of the centralized system of government due to its inability to respond to changes in society, as Manor points out, but also the participation of local governments in the process of the nation state building through the more positive transfer of power (democratic decentralization) and in the coordinated pursuit with the central government for a new shape of the state. However, it is also true that a variety of problems are gushing out in the process of implementing decentralization in Indonesia. This paper discusses the relationship between decentralization and the formation of the nation state with the awareness of the problems and issues described above. Section 1 retraces the history of decentralization by examining laws and regulations for local administration and how they were actually implemented or not. Section 2 focuses on the relationships among the central government, local governments, foreign companies and other actors in the play over the distribution of profits from exploitation of natural resources, and examines the process of the ulterior motives of these actors and the amplification of mistrust spawning intense conflicts that, in extreme cases, grew into separation and independence movements. Section 3 considers the merits and demerits at this stage of decentralization implemented since 2001 and shed light on the significance of decentralization in terms of the nation state building. Finally, Section 4 attempts to review decentralization as the "opportunity to learn by doing" for the central and local governments in the process of the nation state building. In the context of decentralization in Indonesia, deconcentration (dekonsentrasi), decentralization (desentralisasi) and support assignments (tugas pembantuan; medebewind, a Dutch word, was used previously) are defined as follows. Dekonsentrasi means that when the central government puts a local office of its own, or an outpost agency, in charge of implementing its service without delegating the administrative authority over this particular service. The outpost agency carries out the services as instructed by the central government. A head of a local government, when acting for the central government, gets involved in the process of dekonsentrasi. Desentralisasi, meanwhile, occurs when the central government cedes the administrative authority over a particular service to local governments. Under desentralisasi, local governments can undertake the particular service at their own discretion, and the central government, after the delegation of authority, cannot interfere with how local governments handle that service. Tugas pembantuan occur when the central government makes local governments or villages, or local governments make villages, undertake a particular service. In this case, the central government, or local governments, provides funding, equipment and materials necessary, and officials of local governments and villages undertake the service under the supervision and guidance of the central or local governments. Tugas pembantuan are maintained until local governments and villages become capable of undertaking that particular service on their own.


Psyche and the Literary Muses focuses on the psychology of literature from an empirical point of view, rather than the more typical psychoanalytic position, and concentrates on literary content rather than readers or writers. The book centers on the author's quantitative studies of brief literary and quasi-literary forms, ranging from titles of short stories and names of literary characters to cliches and quotations from literary sources, in demonstrating their contribution to the topics of learning, perception, thinking, emotions, creativity, and especially person perception and aging. More broadly, Psyche bears on literary studies, art, and psychology in general, as well as interdisciplinarity. This book deepens the understanding and appreciation of literature for scholars, academics and the general reader.


Richard Frimpong Oppong challenges the view that effective economic integration in Africa is hindered by purely socio-economic, political and infrastructural problems. Inspired by the comparative experiences of other regional economic communities and imbued with insights from constitutional, public and private international law, it argues that even if the socio-economic, political and infrastructural challenges were to disappear, the state of existing laws would hinder any progress. Using a relational framework as the fulcrum of analyses, it demonstrates that in Africa's economic integration processes, community-state, inter-state and inter-community legal relations have neither been carefully thought through nor situated on a solid legal framework, and that attempts made to provide legal framework have been incomplete and, sometimes, grounded on questionable assumptions. To overcome these problems and aid the economic integration agenda that is essential for Africa's long-term economic growth and development, concrete proposals for radical reforms to community and national laws are made


Multispectral excitation-resolved fluorescence tomography (MEFT) uses excitation light of different wavelengths to illuminate the fluorophores and obtains the reconstruction image frame which is fluorescence yield at each corresponding wavelength. For structures containing fluorophores of different concentrations, fluorescence yields show different variation trends with the excitation spectrum. In this study, principal component analysis (PCA) is used to analyze the MEFT reconstructed image frames. By taking advantage of the different variation trends of fluorescence yields, PCA can provide a set of principal components (PCs) in which structures containing different concentrations of fluorophores are shown separately. Simulations and experiments are both performed to test the performance of the proposed algorithm. The results suggest that the location and structure of fluorophores with different concentrations can be obtained and the contrast of fluorophores can be improved further by using this algorithm.


This thesis presents research into the properties and features of the complex sine- Gordon theory. The CSG theory is a dimensional integrable held theory that admits soliton solutions which carry a Noether charge due to the U(I) invariance of the theory. Integrable CSG defects and boundaries are constructed and interactions between solitons, defects and boundaries are analysed at the classical and quantum level. The introduction of defects into the theory is facilitated by a new Backlund transformation involving two parameters. Defect conditions, constructed so they maintain the integrability of the theory and found to be exactly the BT, are used to sew two CSG theories together. How solitons interact with the defect is investigated, in particular whether as in the SG theory solitons can be absorbed and emitted by the defect. The classical time-delay and phase-shift are calculated for soliton-defect and particle-defect scattering. Using the CSG defect to dress the Dirichlet boundary a new CSG boundary theory is produced. Its integrability is checked by the explicit construction of conserved charges. The various interactions between solitons and the boundary are analysed, compared and contrasted with the defect theory. Finally aspects of the quantum CSG boundary theory are examined, culminating in a conjecture for the quantum reflection matrix for a Q = -1-1 soliton reflecting from an unexcited boundary. Reflection and boundary bootstrap procedures are used to generate the general reflection matrix for any charged soliton reflecting from any excited boundary


In this article I provide a broad overview of resistance at the Cape under the Dutch East India Company (VOC) undertaken by the multiracial and multiethnic popular classes (low-ranking Company servants including soldiers and sailors, slaves and indigenous Khoesan labourers). I identify and examine some of the main forms of protest including: desertion and the creation of maroon communities; arson; threats against and assault of masters; and collective insurgency comprising rebellions, mutiny and strikes. Questioning established approaches in the literature which emphasise social divisions amongst the popular classes – including along racial and ethnic lines – as well as the limits and weakness of popular protest, this article demonstrates that the popular classes at the Cape developed a rich and varied tradition of "direct action". The discussion reveals that this was often overt and collective, and sometimes drew sections of the Cape's popular classes together across divisions. It was also informed by alternative conceptions of morality and justice.


Background The incidence of homicide-related death among individuals of college age in the United States population is estimated at 15.5/100 000. The incidence of homicide among National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletes is unknown. Aim To investigate the rate of homicide-related death in NCAA athletes and to identify associated risk factors. Methods The NCAA Resolutions list, NCAA catastrophic insurance claims, media reports, and published NCAA demographic data were used to identify student athlete deaths and total participant seasons from 2003–04 through 2012–13. Homicide-related deaths were analysed by sex, race, division, sport, method, location, and circumstance. Internet searches were used to gather case details. Results Forty-two cases of homicide-related death were identified from 4 242 519 individual participant seasons during the ten-year study period. The incidence of homicide-related death in NCAA athletes was 1.0/100 000. The incidence in males was 1.45/100 000 and in females was 0.4/100 000 (relative risk (RR) 2.9, p=0.01). The incidence in black athletes was 4.2/100 000 and in white athletes was 0.4/100 000 (RR 7.0, p<0.001). The highest sport-specific homicide-related death rate was in American football (3.7/100 000), with a RR of 4.4 (p=0.002) compared to all other sports. 88% of cases occurred off-campus. 38% of cases occurred at a social gathering, and 38% of cases occurred in a place of residence. 74% involved a fatal shooting. Conclusions Homicide-related deaths in NCAA athletes occur most commonly in males, black athletes, and American football players. Understanding the incidence, risk factors, and circumstances of homicide-related deaths in college athletes may assist NCAA institutions in developing preventative measures. Trial registration number University of Washington Human Subjects Application, HSD No. 42077.


Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) is the technology for automating software development and maintenance. This book, by one of the acknowledged experts on the subject, offers a very practical answer to the 25-year-old software crisis. Case technology is not at all that new, as it builds upon the structured techniques developed by Ed Yourdon, James Martin, Tom DeMarco and others in the 1970s. Many of the structured methodologies they fostered are enabled by CASE.


We have cultured islets from 21.5-day-old fetal rats for 1–7 days in RMP11640/10% fetal calf serum containing 2.8 or 11.1 mM glucose to evaluate the differential effects of age vis-à-vis glycemic stimulation on the maturation of selected components of stimulus-secretion coupling. After 1 day of culture in either media, acute stimulation with 3.0 mg/ml glucose during basal perifusion with 0.5 mg/ml glucose elicited only a small first phase of stimulated insulin secretion and no second phase. The acute exposure to 3.0 mg/ml glucose produced no change in the prevailing high rates of oxygen consumption (Q02) and caused only minor increments in phosphate efflux (i.e., peak values for phosphate flush of 126 ± 16% of baseline for islets that had been cultured in 11.1 mM glucose and 162 ± 30% for islets cultured in 2.8 mM glucose). After 7 days of culture in 11.1 mM glucose, acute stimulation with 3.0 mg/ml glucose increased QO2 (as in adult islets) and effected acute increases in the AT32P and GT32P content of prelabeled islets. The 3.0 mg/ml glucose also triggered phosphate flush to 599 ± 45% of baseline and elicited first as well as early second phases of stimulated insulin secretion that replicated the performance of adult islets. By contrast, after 7 days of culture in 2.8 mM glucose, similar acute exposures of fetal islets to 3.0 mg/ml glucose effected only a small first phase and a negligible second phase of stimulated insulin secretion despite the occurrence of the same increments in QO2 as after culture in 11.1 mM glucose, highly significant increases in AT32P and GT32P, and phosphate flushes that peaked at 306 ± 16% of basal values. Thus, the ontogeny of individual components of stimulus-secretion coupling may occur in asynchronous fashion and varyingly require glycemic stimulation in addition to aging per se. The capacities to augment efflux of orthophosphate, enhance respiration, and heighten nucleotide turnover in response to acute stimulation with glucose seem to mature in large measure in time-dependent fashion, whereas some chronic exposure to ambient glucose in excess of basal levels may be required to establish and/or maintain the other coupled components that underlie bi-phasic stimulated insulin release. However, we did not achieve full exocytotic maturation even after 7 days of culture with 11.1 mM glucose. When stimulatory perifusion of such islets was prolonged beyond 30 min, the adult-like second phase of stimulated insulin release began to diminish. The fall-off was not due to limitations in preformed islet stores of immunoreactive insulin and it was not prevented by supplementing the perifusates with secretory-enhancing amounts of theophylline. Our experiences indicate that controlled tissue culture of fetal islets may provide a useful approach for unmasking the relative interdependence and independence of individual steps in insulin stimulus-secretion coupling. They also underscore the multiplicity of potential sites through which arrest of functional maturation could result in faulty insulin release.


We report a measurement of CP violating asymmetries in B-0 ((B-0) over bar) -> (K+K-KS0) decays with a time-dependent Dalitz approach. This analysis is based on a data sample of 657 x 10(6) B (B) over bar pairs accumulated at the Y(4S) resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy e(+) e(-) collider. As the result of an unbinned maximum likelihood fit to the selected candidates, the mixing-induced and direct CP violation parameters phi(eff)(1) and A(CP) are obtained for B-0 -> phi(1020)K-S(0), B-0 -> f(0)(980)K-S(0), and other B-0 -> (K+K-KS0) decays. We find four solutions that describe the data. There are phi(eff)(1) (B-0 -> phi(1020)K-S(0)) = (32.2 +/- 9.0 +/- 2.6 +/- 1.4); phi(eff)(1)(B-0 -> phi(1020)K-S(0)) = 26.2 +/- 8.8 +/- 2.7 +/- 1.2); phi(eff)(1)(B-0 phi(1020)K-S(0)) = (27.3 +/- 8.6 +/- 2.8 +/- 1.3); and phi(eff)(1)(B-0 -> phi(1020)K-S(0)) = (24.3 +/- 8.0 +/- 2.9 +/- 5.2). The values for the CP violating phase in B-0 -> phi(1020)K-S(0) are similar, but other properties of the Dalitz plot are quite different for the four solutions. These four solutions have consistent phi(eff)(1) values for all three B-meson decay channels and none of them deviates significantly from the values measured in B -> (c (c) over bar )K-0 decays with the currently available statistics. In addition, we find no significant direct CP violation.


Many people can't talk due to speech problem like a dumb one or they have never heard the pronunciations of the word/symbol like a deaf one and that's why those people can't communicate with others who don't know the sign language. We have come up with a novel idea of a system that will convert the hand movements (Gestures) into the voice and display the message and allow the deaf and dumb to express them better. A sensor equipped glove needs to be worn on the hand and depending on the various gestures made by individual, the gesture will be interpreted to the corresponding voice and display message by the device. Further, that particular message can be transmitted as a voice or text to the doctor's phone as well as to the concerned person. For this we are using flex sensors, MEMS (Micro-Electro Mechanical System) accelerometer, microcontroller, speech IC, speakers, LCD display and GSM Module. Keywords— Accelerometer, Flex sensors, Gestures, GSM module, Microcontroller


We analyze the transport through a narrow ballistic superconductor–normal-metal–superconductor Josephson contact with nonideal transmission at the superconductor–normal-metal interfaces, e.g., due to insulating layers, effective mass steps, or band misfits (SIN interfaces). The electronic spectrum in the normal wire is determined through the combination of Andreev reflection and normal reflection at the SIN interfaces. Strong normal scattering at the SIN interfaces introduces electron- and holelike resonances in the normal region that show up in the quasiparticle spectrum. These resonances have strong implications for the critical supercurrent Ic that we find to be determined by the lowest quasiparticle level: tuning the potential μx0 to the points where electron- and holelike resonances cross, we find sharp peaks in Ic, resulting in a transistor effect. We compare the performance of this resonant Josephson-transistor with that of a superconducting single electron transistor.


Highway lane closures due to road reconstruction and the resulting work zones have been a major source of nonrecurring congestion on freeways. It is extremely important to calculate the safety and cost impacts of work zones: the use of new technologies that track drivers and vehicles make that possible. A multilayer feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) model is developed in this paper to estimate work zone delay by using the probe-vehicle data. The probe data include the travel speeds under normal and work zone conditions. Unlike previous models, the proposed model estimates temporal and spatial delays, which are applied to a real world case study in New Jersey. The work zone data (i.e., starting time, duration, length, and number of closed lanes) were collected on New Jersey freeways in 2014 together with actual probe-vehicle speeds. A comparative analysis was conducted; the results indicate that the ANN model outperforms the traditional deterministic queuing model in terms of the accuracy in estimating travel delays. The ANN model can be used to calculate contractor penalty in terms of cost overruns as well as incentivize a reward schedule in case of early work competition. The model can assist work zone planners in designing optimal start and end time of work zone as function of time of day. In assessing the performance of work zones, the model can assist transportation engineers to better develop and evaluate traffic mitigation and management plans.


Conflicts over rural land expropriation, which have intensified over the past decade in China, pose a significant threat to the country's social stability and the sustainability of its economic development. This article argues that such conflicts are inevitable under China's current political and legal system. After a brief introduction of the present situation in China and an overview of China's land regime, the article first analyzes reasons for the escalation of land conflicts, including the vague definition of public interest, the inadequate compensation, and the ambiguous nature of collective land ownership. It then argues that even the few existing rights of rural peasants under the present land regime are not adequately protected due to China's poor law enforcement. The article further elucidates that impunity with regard to illegal land grabbing is common in China for a variety of reasons that all have roots in the Communist Party's monopoly over Chinese society. With no fundamental reform to China's party politics, the article concludes, there will be no effective measure to prevent further conflicts over land in the near future.