In 1960, JCR Licklider forecast three phases: human-computer interaction, human-computer symbiosis, and ultra-intelligent machines. Human-computer symbiosis or what we call "integration" is already well under way. This SIG will discuss how the CHI community should think about the paradigm shift from interaction to integration as designers, practitioners, researchers, and as a society.


Several distinct yet overlapping literatures have contributed to understanding the trajectories of gender nonconforming children. However, these often fail to adequately distinguish the experiences of those who share similar experiences of childhood gender nonconformity, but come to self-identify in various ways. To address this gap, transgender identifying youth were matched with non-transgender identifying youth of similar levels of childhood gender nonconformity (N=20, ages 19 to 23, 75% racial/ethnic minority), and developmental semi-structured interviews were conducted. Qualitative data analysis was guided by an ecological framework, which identified the characteristics of the youth's self-understandings (identity, physical self, self presentation, interests/activities, attractions/behavior) and the settings (e.g., school, family, community centers, media) that they interactively negotiated throughout development. Focus on the self codes revealed multiple related, distinct, and interactive dimensions of gender and sexuality, which also changed over time. These dimensions will be discussed, along with the similarities and differences found across birth sex (male, female) and current gender identity (transgender, primarily non-transgender). Overall, results highlight the complexity and diversity of experience within the transgender umbrella. They also reinforce the importance of youth's exposure to a range of ways of making meaning of one's gender and sexual orientation related experiences, and support a move away from disorder based models of gender variance to those that focus on the supportiveness of the context.


This research analysed the reliability of an assisted-GPS mobile phone in tracking several flight parameters during a typical flight. The reliability was assessed against that of a GPS-based remote tracking device of common use in aviation. The results suggest that the reliability of both devices is similar, which may prove advantageous to those pilots with lesser resources or less interested on a dedicated tracking device.


This is a personal review of various issues related to massive photometric and astrometric searches. A complete inventory of variable stars down to almost any magnitude limit will improve our understanding of the stellar evolution and the galactic structure. A search for detached eclipsing binaries will improve the distance scale, the value of the Hubble constant, and the age of the oldest stars. A search for supernovae will help the determination of cosmological parameters Omega and Lambda. A search for microlensing events will provide insight into the stellar mass function, dark matter, and may lead to a discovery of earth-mass planets.


This paper uses a randomized field experiment to identify the spillover effects of increased formal savings-use on non-farm business activity and production decisions of non-savers in villages. A panel analysis of 2,006 households in Central Malawi shows that a randomly assigned formal savings encouragement exogenously increases adoption of high-liquidity formal savings accounts in village communities. This increases receipts of cash assistance by non-saving households in the middle wealth-stratum, who may be on the margins for deciding to operate a non-farm business, or start growing cash crops or high-yielding crop varieties (HYVs). The hypothesized channel of effects is that expanded formal savings-use increases liquidity and decreases transaction costs, lowers the cost of making transfers, and thus increases receipts of cash aid even by non-saving households. Increased cash assistance is then linked among these households to increased probability of operating a non-farm enterprise or switching to HYVs or cash crops. This may result from a perception of increased security, which causes households to be more willing to take on higher-risk, higher-reward production activities. To date, little is known about how microfinance affects pre-existing informal insurance practices, and whether the production choices among those who utilize informal practices change as safety nets based on inter-household transfers strengthen or weaken when financial markets expand. This paper helps fill that gap.


This paper examines the relationship between media and civil society in the UK and Ireland in relation to news content and ownership. We suggest a number of ways in which civil society associations can play a role in ensuring a healthy diversity of viewpoints and arenas for dissent in the media. We propose a form of tax incentive in the case of local mergers, or joint operations, that increase relations with civil society in order to facilitate and maintain levels of news coverage in the public interest. Reliance solely on fully commercial enterprises for the delivery of news and current affairs journalism – that purports to be for the public good and in the public interest – has not proved satisfactory.


"Beauty"--the book, born out of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum's 2015 Triennial of the same name, curated by Andrea Lipps and Ellen Lupton--showcases some of the most exciting and provocative design created around the globe during the past three years. These pages aim not to emphasize the hidden beauty in the everyday--a beloved teapot or favorite shoe--but to locate transformational beauty in contemporary design that is exuberant, ethereal, atmospheric, experiential, exceptional or sublime. Sixty-two designers represent a vast range of disciplines from architecture, fashion, digital, graphic, and product design, to interiors, hair, nail and lighting design. The objects featured cause us to take pause, catch our breath and get lost in our pursuit to understand or explain them. Designed by the innovative Kimberly Varella, the book is itself a tactile, fluid and provocative interpretation of beauty. Varella's design provides unexpected points of entry, playing with the concepts of beauty by using reflective surfaces, hot pink thread weaving pages together and a "heart" of the book, from which all else flows. Ethereal, Intricate, Extravagant, Transformative, Transgressive, Elemental and Emergent Beauty are the seven themes. Each section includes the individual designers in conversation with the curators about her or his process and beauty's differing forms, punctuated by rich galleries of their work, generating the ultimate feast for the senses.


Figured black walnut lumber is a specialty wood product that commands a high price for manufacturing fine furniture and interior paneling. Two common figured grain patterns occur in walnut; they are known as "fiddle-back" or "curly" grain, depending on the number of horizontal lines visible in the grain of the finished wood. The occurrence of figured walnut in nature is rare and unpredictable. Trees that have consistent figured patterns throughout the log are of exceptional value. Conversely, trees with partial or spotty figured patterns are considered defective and are reduced in value. Conventional breeding of seedlings, or cloning figured trees by grafting, are possible methods to propagate figured wood in walnut. The value of such material, however, will depend on figure being expressed predictably. For breeding to succeed, the trait of interest must be genetic and heritable. For clonal propagation to be effective, the trait must be reproduced true-totype. In this study, we evaluate the grain pattern of both grafted and seedling walnut from several highly figured wild selections. Logs from grafted trees of three clones propagated in the 1970s in Kansas were evaluated. Only one log from one clone showed some figure in its lumber. Ten-yearold seedlings from the figured walnut clone "Lamb" were grown and cut in Indiana and evaluated for figured grain, and none showed any sign of figured grain developing. Our conclusion is that figured grain in black walnut does not propagate true-to-type through grafting or by growing open-pollinated seed. Although evidence of some genetic control of figure was found, environmental and other factors appear to play a greater role.


The paper addresses the paradox that, although it is generally recognised among economists that minimum and fixed resale price maintenance can have both positive and negative effects on consumer welfare, the current approach under EC competition law can still be characterised as a de facto per se prohibition. It is argued that excluding minimum and fixed resale price maintenance from the category of hardcore restrictions is undesirable, because this would substantially increase regulation costs. The current regime is moreover satisfactory because it leaves sufficient room to argue that a specific agreement entailing RPM should not be considered an infringement of competition law.


Lyme disease is the most prevalent vector-borne disease in United States and is caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi. The disease is transmitted from an infected Ixodes scapularis tick to a mammalian host. B. burgdorferi is a highly motile organism and motility is provided by flagella that are enclosed by the outer membrane and thus are called periplasmic flagella. Chemotaxis, the cellular movement in response to a chemical gradient in external environments, empowers bacteria to approach and remain in beneficial environments or escape from noxious ones by modulating their swimming behaviors. Both motility and chemotaxis are reported to be crucial for migration of B. burgdorferi from the tick to the mammalian host, and persistent infection of mice. However, the knowledge of how the spirochete achieves complex swimming is limited. Moreover, the roles of most of the B. burgdorferi putative chemotaxis proteins are still elusive. B. burgdorferi contains multiple copies of chemotaxis genes (two cheA, three cheW, three cheY, two cheB, two cheR, cheX, and cheD), which make its chemotaxis system more complex than other chemotactic bacteria. In the first project of this dissertation, we determined the role of a putative chemotaxis gene cheD. Our experimental evidence indicates that CheD enhances chemotaxis CheX phosphatase activity, and modulated its infectivity in the mammalian hosts. Although CheD is important for infection in mice, it is not required for acquisition or transmission of spirochetes during mouse-tick-mouse infection cycle experiments. However, it has an effect on the survivability of spirochetes in the arthropod vectors. This is the first report of the role of cheD in the host tissue colonization in any pathogenic bacterium. Delineating the role of cheD in B. burgdorferi will provide insights into not only the chemotaxis pathway of this spirochete, but also its asymmetric swimming and infectious life cycle of the spirochete. Chemotaxis signal transduction systems control bacterial motility. Aside from the chemotaxis pathway, the architectural structure of the flagellar apparatus is also intimately intertwined with motility and the morphology of B. burgdorferi. Unlike other externally flagellated bacteria, spirochetes possess periplasmic flagella with a unique structural component called the collar. This unique component is located in the periplasmic space and is linked to the flagellar basal body. However, there are no reports regarding the gene(s) encoding for the collar or its function in any bacterium. In the second project of this dissertation, we have identified for the first time a gene, flbB, in any spirochete, and defined its function in motility, cell morphology, periplasmic flagella orientation, and assembly of other flagellar structures. We also demonstrated the mechanism shown as to how the organism tilts their periplasmic flagella toward the cell pole.


Abstract The evolution of scutes in thyreophoran dinosaurs, based on Scutellosaurus, Scelidosaurus, Stegosaurus, and several ankylosaurs, began with small rounded or ovoid structures that typically had slight, anteroposteriorly oriented keels. These scutes were elaborated in two general and overlapping ways: they could flare laterally and asymmetrically beneath the keels that mark the anteroposterior axis, and they could be hypertrophied in their distal growth to produce plates, spikes, and other kinds of ornamentation. Stegosaurus plates and spikes are thus primarily hypertrophied keels of primitive thyreophoran scutes, sometimes with elaboration of dermal bone around their pustulate bases. Histologically, most thyreophoran scute tissues comprise secondary trabecular medullary bone that is sandwiched between layers of compact primary bone. Some scutes partly or mostly comprise anatomically metaplastic bone, that is, ossified fibrous tissue that shows incremental growth. The "plumbing" of Stegosaurus plates was not apparently built to support a "radiator" system of internal blood vessels that communicated with the outside of the plates and coursed along their external surfaces to return heated or cooled blood to the body core. Possibly a purely external system supported this function but there is no independent evidence for it. On the other hand, many of the vascular features in stegosaurian plates and spikes reflect bautechnisches artifacts of growth and production of bone. Surface vascular features likely supported bone growth and remodeling, as well as the blood supply to a keratinous covering. When the gross and microstructural features of the plates and spikes are viewed in phylogenetic context, no clear pattern of thermoregulatory function emerges, though an accessory role cannot be eliminated in certain individual species. It seems more likely, as in other groups of dinosaurs, that the variation of dermal armor form in stegosaurs was primarily linked to species individuation and recognition, perhaps secondarily to inter- and intraspecific display, and rarely to facultative thermoregulation.


PPE volumes 6 and 7 are parts of a project report published in 1999 in collaboration with the Karnataka Forest Department on the assessment and conservation of forest biodiversity in the Western Ghats of Karnataka. After introducing the project objectives and the study area, this volume deals more specifically with forest land-cover and land-use changes over a 20-year period (1977-1997), assessed from vegetation maps and satellite images. The study revealed that forest areas were converted to anthropogeneic cover types at an annual rate of 0.63%. Forest loss was mitigated in areas under state protection (reserve forest), while degraded or fragmented forests lost more area than dense, undisturbed ones. Conservation priorities and recommendations for forest management are discussed in the second volume (PPE 7).


We study if Italian teachers do apply gender discrimination when judging students. To this aim, we use a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the availability of both teachers (non-blind) and standardized test (blind) scores in math and language that Italian students receive during the school year. Using data for all sixth graders, descriptives show that in both scores girls are better than boys in the language scores, while in math boys perform better than girls in the blind test. Moreover, our analysis suggest that boys are always discriminated by teachers in both subjects. This result holds also when we control for class fixed effects, students noncognitive skills, gender specific-attitude towards cheating and possible cultural differences towards gender attitudes in math or language.


In the months ahead, policymakers in the United States will continue to debate how to control the ever-increasing cost of our nation's health care system. Several legislative proposals introduced in the 102nd Congress included provisions intended to reduce the cost of administering the system,[1] and similar proposals have already been introduced in the 103rd Congress.[2] Indeed, the President has recently unveiled his health care reform proposal. A key feature of most of these reform proposals is the heavy reliance on computer technology to facilitate the flow of sensitive medical records (potentially on a national scale) to achieve administrative savings. A major impetus for relying on computerized medical records is the mobile nature of U.S. society. Census figures indicate that 44 percent of the American population changed their place of residence between 1985 and 1990. Approximately 25 percent of these people changed residences across state lines.[3] Because the health care system is to be reformed on a national scale, conforming to a minimum set of standards, it is crucial that patients' right to privacy and the confidentiality of their medical records also be standard across the nation. Yet thus far, the fact that die law currently does not provide consistent protection for most medical records has been conspicuously absent from reform discussions. Only a handful of states have adopted any laws to protect these records, an d those vary in scope and applicability. For instance, most states recognize a provider-patient privilege (discussed in more detail later). Some states also have specific laws to deal with highly sensitive medical information, such as mental health records and/or AIDS test results. A few states--for example, California, Washington, and Montana--have enacted laws defining access to health information generally, while others deal more with insurance transactions. In addition, different states may have laws governing patient medical records within their statutes dealing with licensing of medical providers and facilities, insurance transactions, or public health reporting. Moreover, state laws often contain provisions more favorable to information exchange than to patient privacy.[4] With the exception of records relating to substance abuse or records in the custody of the federal government, federal law does not protect the confidentiality of medical information. In fact, video rental records are afforded more federal protection than are medical records. As the law now stands, while the unauthorized disclosure of medical records may be ethically reprehensible, in the majority of states in this country it is not illegal. A patient's fundamental need to provide sensitive medical information to a practitioner without fear of the consequences should be fixed arid not fluid--it must be consistent across every state. This will be especially critical with the advent of standardized and automated medical records and insurance claims. As a report to the secretary of health and human services noted, Historically, providers have stored medical information and filed health insurance claims on paper. The paper medium is cumbersome and expensive, two factors that led to the call for the use of EDI [electronic data interchange]. Ironically, it is this "negative" aspect of the paper medium (its cumbersome nature) that has minimized the risk of breaches of confidentiality. Although a breach could occur if someone gained access to health records or insurance claim forms, the magnitude of the breach was limited by the sheer difficulty of unobtrusively reviewing large numbers of records or claim forms. From the provider perspective, EDI changes the environment dramatically. …


Overview: Capnocytophaga canimorsus and Capnocytophaga cynodegmi are part of the normal bacterial flora of the oral cavity of dogs and cats. C canimorsus is more pathogenic and causes more severe infections in humans. Infection: Disease is less frequently seen after a cat bite, scratch or close contact than after dog contacts. Serious disease has been reported in people, especially associated with immunocompromise and alcoholism. Disease in cats is not well documented; two cases of respiratory infection have been associated with the presence of these bacteria. Diagnosis: Diagnosis is based on culture in specific media, but these are slow growing bacteria; polymerase chain reaction and sequencing may aid in diagnosis and species identification. Treatment: Penicillin or beta-lactams are the treatment options of choice. Zoonotic potential: Based on incidence surveys, the zoonotic potential is low. The risk may be higher for immunocompromised persons, where dog and cat ownership must be discussed.


Economic values were calculated for grass traits of economic importance in Irish grass-based ruminant production systems. Traits considered were those that had the greatest potential to influence the profitability of a grazing system. These were: grass dry matter (DM) yield in spring, mid-season and autumn, grass quality (dry matter digestibility; DMD), 1 st and 2 nd cut silage DM yield and sward persistency. The Moorepark Dairy Systems Model was used to simulate a dairy farm. Economic values were calculated by simulating the effect of a unit change in the trait of interest while holding all other traits constant. The base scenario involved a fixed herd size and land area (40 ha), and an annual DM yield of 13 t/ha. The economic values generated under the base scenario were: € 0.152/kg for DM yield in spring, € 0.030/kg for DM yield in mid-season and € 0.103/kg for DM yield in autumn; € 0.001, € 0.008, € 0.010, € 0.009, € 0.008 and € 0.006 per 1 g/kg change in DMD for the months of April to September, respectively; € 0.03/kg for 1 st cut silage DM yield, € 0.02/kg for 2 nd cut silage DM yield; and − € 4.961 for a 1 percent reduction in persistency. Alternative scenarios were examined to determine the sensitivity of the economic values to changes in annual DM yield, sward utilisation and a scenario where silage production was the focus of the system. The economic values were used to calculate a total merit index for each of 20 perennial ryegrass cultivars based on production data from a 3 year plot study. The rank correlation between the merit index values for the cultivars under the base scenario and the scenario involving a reduction in herbage utilisation was 1.0, while that with the scenario involving reduced annual DM yield was 0.94. It is concluded that the total merit index can be used to identify cultivars that can generate the greatest economic contribution to a grass-based production system, regardless of system or intensity of grass production.


This paper proposes a cementing material from spent bleaching earth (SBE). SBE consists mainly of residual oil and bleaching clay. The SBE reported in this case is the waste material from vegetable oil processing industries. One of the SBE samples tested had a calorific value of 15.8 J/g. The ash content was 52.3 to 58.6 %. When calcined at 550 C for four hours, the resulting ash met the Kenya Standard 02 1263 chemical composition requirements for pozzolanas. When calcined in small quantities in a muffle furnace and tested with commercial hydrated lime (CHL), the material met the ASTM 593 part C requirements for use of pozzolana with lime. The pozzolanic activity of the ashed SBE vis a vis commercial volcanic tuff was investigated. A 1: 2 ratio of the lime to the ash gave the highest compressive strength. At the 28th day of curing, the compressive strength was 10.9 Mpa while that of the volcanic tuff-lime was 8.99 Mpa. The setting time of a workable paste of the ashed SBE-lime material was well within the Kenya standard 02 1263 requirements for Portland pozzolana cements. Key words : Cement, pozzolana, Spent bleaching earth, volcanic tuff, hydrated lime, compressive strengths, setting times


In many highly glazed buildings, the thermal comfort of the occupants will tend to be related to the incoming solar energy and the heat transfer behaviour of the glazing. In this study, several glazing systems were designed using the software tools VISION 3 (University of Waterloo 1992) and WINDOW-6 (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2011), with a view to improving thermal environment of occupants near the glazed wall of a commercial office. The systems were fabricated and experimentally tested to validate the software modelling results. Subsequently, the glazing systems were retro-fitted to the office and tested in situ for a summer month. Results of this testing, in the form of Fangers' predicted mean vote (PMV) and the predicted percentage dissatisfied (PPD), are presented, and some options for improving the thermal environment in this near-façade zone are discussed.


Following the increased popularity of dynamic languages and their increased use in critical software, there have been many proposals to retrofit static type system to these languages to improve possibilities to catch bugs and improve performance. A key question for any type system is whether the types should be structural, for more expressiveness, or nominal, to carry more meaning for the programmer. For retrofitted type systems, it seems the current trend is using structural types. This paper attempts to answer the question to what extent this extra expressiveness is needed, and how the possible polymorphism in dynamic code is used in practise. We study polymorphism in 36 real-world open source Python programs and approximate to what extent nominal and structural types could be used to type these programs. The study is based on collecting traces from multiple runs of the programs and analysing the polymorphic degrees of targets at more than 7 million call-sites. Our results show that while polymorphism is used in all programs, the programs are to a great extent monomorphic. The polymorphism found is evenly distributed across libraries and program-specific code and occur both during program start-up and normal execution. Most programs contain a few ``megamorphic'' call-sites where receiver types vary widely. The non-monomorphic parts of the programs can to some extent be typed with nominal or structural types, but none of the approaches can type entire programs.


According to the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, changes in the climate over the last 30 years have already reduced global agricultural production by 1 – 5 % per decade relative to a baseline without climate change. In addition, recent studies indicate that even a 2 degrees increase in global temperature will affect agricultural productivity, particularly in the tropics, and this impact will rise with increases in temperature. In this context, this Info Note presents recent evidence on the implications for crops, livestock, and fisheries production, and their associated pests and diseases in Africa.


Performability and Translation A Case Study of the Production and Reception of Ying Ruocheng's Translations by YANG Yichen Doctor of Philosophy The active scholarly contribution made by practitioners of theatre translation in the past decades has turned the research area into what is now considered a burgeoning field. Despite recent developments, it seems that performability, a long-discussed yet controversial concept in the study of theatre translation, would remain part of the practitioners' discourse. Based on a historical survey of the production and reception of the translations of Anglo-American plays by Chinese actor-director Ying Ruocheng (1929-2003) in and around the 1980s, this study explores how the performability, or theatrical potential, of a translated playtext is constructed through the negotiation between/among the norms mainly operating on three levels—the textual, the theatrical and the socio-cultural—and the agency of the individuals involved. This thesis chooses to focus on Ying because he not only was one of the most successful theatre translators in contemporary Mainland China, but also seems to be an "impossible" ideal, considering his accomplishments in translating, acting, directing and as culture diplomat. Acknowledging that performability, which is essentially fluid and constructed, this descriptive-analytical survey will cover a whole range of possible activities involved in the production and reception of a translated playtext, and put the translator's seemingly ideal status into perspective. The broadening of the scope of investigation is crucial to the outcome of this thesis, and recommendable to future researchers of theatre translation studies. In this study, translated playtexts and their stage productions are treated as the products of the receiving linguistic, theatrical and socio-cultural systems. The investigation begins with an evaluation of Ying's practice against his stated translation principles to identify the textual and extra-textual factors that might have governed his work as a translator in reality. The discussion emphasises that performability cannot be realised through the textual medium only, before moving on to the exploration of the performers' attempts to negotiate with his texts for theatrical enactment. The investigation, which examines the actions taken by the theatrical institution and individual actors in two separate chapters, draws attention to the roles of the translational, theatrical and socio-cultural norms and the power dynamics between the translator and his theatrical collaborators in their efforts to 'ensure' or create performability. The discussion is followed by an analysis concentrating on Ying's role as a mediator within the production process and between the productions and the target environment, which is crucial to the achievement of both the immediate success of the productions and the transfer of repertoire. The study concludes that while a theatre translator and his or her theatrical collaborators are subject to various systemic constraints, the translator can find more power in his or her mediatory role as a bilingualist and biculturalist and promote the performability of the text.


The dissertation explores a current and popular phenomenon referred to as 'online communities' from both theoretical and empirical viewpoints. Online communities are discussed in the context of a wider development in social life from small geographybased units to large and dispersed social networks, which can be mediated by technology. In this study, online communities are understood as fluid objects that are created and maintained through users' social interactions and actual social practices. Therefore, they are not stable and fixed groups but, instead, a social process that transforms over time. The empirical portion of this work illustrates the multifaceted nature of the research subject and consists of five case studies exploring the usage of software intended for various purposes: an online photo-sharing service, an online exercise diary, online auctions, and social-media applications for smartphones. In addition, there is a research article consisting of a literature review that synthesise research into online community participation conducted over the past 12 years. The findings from the empirical sub-studies show that community-evocative feelings and behaviors can emerge within various online settings, including dispersed networks and contentoriented sites focusing on artefacts that users produce, such as photographs. However, users can have very different orientations with respect to their interest in social networking and community-building within the context of the same site. The literature review shows that the majority of previous research on user participation has focused on the quantity of their activity. Instead of dividing users into active and passive on the basis of the amount of content they produce, research should acknowledge that there is greater variety in the ways of participating and belonging to an online community. The dissertation vividly illustrates that online communities are a constantly changing and developing phenomenon. In recent years, the most notable technological changes have been the surge in popularity of large-scale social network sites and increased usage of the Internet via mobile devices. In order for the concept of community to be applied in description of online sociability within current technological settings, the meaning of this term and the criteria for community needs to be rethought.


Tiny embedded systems have not been an ideal outfit for high performance computing due to their constrained resources-limitations in processing power, battery life, communication bandwidth, and memory constrain the applicability of existing complex medical analysis algorithms such as the electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis. Among various limitations, battery lifetime has been a major key technological constraint. In this paper, we address the issue of partitioning such a complex algorithm while the energy consumption due to wireless transmission is minimized. ECG analysis algorithms normally consist of preprocessing, pattern recognition, and classification. Considering the orientation of the ECG leads, we devise a technique to perform preprocessing and pattern recognition locally in small embedded systems attached to the leads. The features detected in the pattern recognition phase are considered for the classification. Ideally, if the features detected for each heartbeat reside in a single processing node, the transmission will be unnecessary. Otherwise, to perform classification, the features must be gathered on a local node and, thus, the communication is inevitable. We perform such a feature grouping by modeling the problem as a hypergraph and applying partitioning schemes which yield a significant power saving in wireless communications. Furthermore, we utilize dynamic reconfiguration by software module migration. This technique, with respect to partitioning, enhances the overall power saving in such systems. Moreover, it adaptively alters the system configuration in various environments and on different patients. We evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed techniques on MIT/BIH benchmarks and, on average, achieve 70 percent energy saving


This paper discusses the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design (CETLD) Online Exhibitions Project, a collaboration between the University of Brighton, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art. The project entailed creating a virtual exhibition drawn from the archives of the partner institutions, with the goal of encouraging students to use archives for practice-based inquiry and in historical/theoretical research. Designing an exhibition that incorporates student involvement through the use of Web 2.0 technologies has presented various challenges: technical, conceptual and pedagogical. The paper is thus a case study of how virtual access to archives can contribute to teaching and learning in the design disciplines.


One of the most challenging problems in legal scholarship is the measurement of attorney ability. Measuring attorney ability presents inherent challenges because the nonrandom pairing of attorney and client in most cases makes it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between attorney ability and case selection. Las Vegas felony case data, provided by the Clark County Office of the Public Defender in Nevada, offer a unique opportunity to compare attorney performance. The office assigns its incoming felony cases randomly among its pool of attorneys, thereby creating a natural experiment free from selection bias. We find substantial heterogeneity in attorney performance that cannot be explained simply by differences in case characteristics, and this heterogeneity correlates with attorneys' individual observable characteristics. Attorneys with longer tenure in the office achieve better outcomes for the client. We find that a veteran public defender with ten years of experience reduces the average length of incarceration by 17 percent relative to a public defender in her first year. While we find no statistical difference based on law school attended or gender, we find evidence that the public defender's race correlates with sentence length, with Hispanic attorneys obtaining sentences that were up to 26 percent shorter on average than those obtained by black or white attorneys. We also find evidence suggesting that differences in sentencing may be driven partly by different plea bargaining behavior on the part of the public defenders.


Humans rely on nature for various ecosystem services to enhance their well-being. However, the gains in human well-being have been achieved at the losses in many ecosystem services. One of the key challenges in ecosystem service science is to determine how to manage ecosystems for multiple services in an efficient, equitable and sustainable manner due to unknown factors and processes that drive ecosystem changes. It is now commonly accepted that ecosystem services are not generated by ecosystems alone, but by social-ecological or human-environment systems. These systems are complex and possess critical thresholds, multiple drivers of change and reciprocal feedbacks between the two components. Attempts to enhance a single ecosystem service might lead to gains (synergies) or losses (trade-offs) in other ecosystem services. Therefore, determining synergies and trade-offs in ecosystem services can provide useful information to either reduce their associated costs to society or enhance ecosystem functionality and net human well-being. In this regard, application of the economic efficiency concept is relevant for decision making of how ecosystem services can best be used to fulfil human wants and desires because it is undertaken for decision making units of either individuals, communities, or the society as a whole. Although ecosystem services are becoming a popular topic of inquiry; and continued progress of and interactions between ecology and economics have contributed to the understanding of social-ecological or human-environment systems, integrating economic and ecological studies in ecosystem service science is still a key step needed for sustainable development. This is because the ecological underpinning of economic studies is often limited; and ecological studies on ecosystem service management often lack appropriate economic considerations. This thesis has been directed to improve understanding of ecosystem service science with a focus specifically on examining the gains and losses in ecosystem services. The thesis dealt with three themes under this umbrella: (i) trade-offs and drivers of changes in ecosystem services (Part A), (ii) efficiency and improvement of ecosystem services (Part B), and (iii) policy and research implications for ecosystem services (Part C). In Part A, Paper 1 determines the synergies and trade-offs between private economic benefits and environmental pollution (nitrate leaching) with different farm management practices at field plot level under the tropical monsoon climate conditions in a developed country (South Korea). Paper 2 explores the synergies and trade-offs between a provisioning and a regulating service (crop production and water runoff regulation) at sub-landscape level in a developing country (Vietnam). In these two papers, the synergies and trade-offs in ecosystem services are investigated using a combination of ecological modeling frameworks with economic analyses. Paper 3 examines the effects of climate change on a provisioning service (biomass production) that contributes to the mitigation of climate change (bioenergy) at local level (Germany) using a physiological process based model. Paper 4 evaluates the conservation potential of different crop production techniques (conventional versus organic farming) at field plot level (South Korea) using an empirical soil loss model. In Part B, Papers 5 and 6 apply the economic efficiency concept to examine the drivers and trade-offs between the private economic return and environmental performance of land users (rice farmers, South Korea). Paper 7 examines the efficiency and determinants of reforestation with a native tree species (Vietnam). The findings of these examples supplement the conventional ecosystem service trade-off analysis in Part A as they contribute to the identification of opportunity costs of preferring a specific land use alternative to another; and thus provide important implications in terms of ecosystem use and management for land use and policy decision makers. In Part C, Paper 8 identifies an output-based system of payments for forest ecosystem services and evaluates such a system under regional land use change scenarios using an empirical model derived from experimental data measurements and simulations with changes of market prices and payment arrangements. Paper 9 evaluates the effects of the institutional property right systems on human livelihoods and forest conditions in a comparative way between two developing countries (Ghana and Vietnam). Paper 10 conceptualizes the integration of ecological with economic studies for a decision support system to meet the challenges of energy shortage and climate change at local scale. Finally, Paper 11 synthesizes a general framework for examining classical trade-offs in ecosystem services and drivers of changes in ecosystem services at landscape and/or regional level. In summary, the thesis contributes to the current literature in several ways: (i) the conventional trade-off between regulating and provisioning services was examined both theoretically and empirically in much more details, with the combination of ecological models and economic analyses, and at different levels (field plot, landscape, farm, local, and regional); (ii) the provisioning and regulating services are quantified in physical and monetary terms which are more convenient and useful for land users and policy makers; (iii) synergies and trade-offs in ecosystem services could potentially be identified using the economic efficiency framework; and (iv) payments for ecosystem services were determined with an output-based instead of a traditionally common input-based approach or non-market valuation methods.


Sea cage fish farming is typically open to the environment, with disease transmission possible between farmed and wild hosts. In salmonid aquaculture, salmon louse Lepeophtheirus salmonis infestations cause production losses, reduce welfare for farmed fish and increase infestation rates for wild fish populations. The high density of hosts in farms likely also shifts the coevolutionary arms race between host and parasite, with ecological and evolutionary consequences for the salmon louse. Using farm-reported salmon and louse abundances and publicly reported estimates of wild salmonid host abundances and the salmon lice they carry, we estimated (1) the relative abundance of farmed and wild salmonid hosts and (2) the relative importance of each for the abundance of salmon lice for the coastal zone of Norway from 1998 to 2017. Farmed hosts increased in importance over time with the expansion of the industry. From 2013 to 2017, farmed salmonids outnumbered wild salmonids by 267−281:1. By 2017, farmed salmonids accounted for 99.6% of available hosts and produced 99.1% of adult female salmon lice and 97.6% of mated (ovigerous) adult female salmon lice in Norwegian coastal waters. The persistent dominance of farmed hosts has clear implications: (1) management decisions that aim to limit lice abundance can be guided by lice data from farms alone, as lice on wild salmonids make a trivial contribution to the national lice population; and (2) strategies to prevent or treat lice infestations are vulnerable to the evolution of resistance, as the pool of wild hosts is inconsequential and will not act as a refuge large enough to stem the evolution of resistance. As the Norwegian salmon industry expands and salmon lice infestations continue, farmed salmon will drive the ecology and evolution of salmon lice.


The poison pill has been a staple of Delaware corporate law for several decades. It was originally developed to ward off hostile takeovers and has been quite successful. Given the potency of the pill, Delaware courts have always applied an enhanced level of scrutiny, the Unocal test, when a board of directors' decision to implement the poison pill is challenged. There has been a recent spate of litigation involving the poison pill in situations not previously litigated including Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. v. Airgas, Inc.; Versata Enterprises, Inc. v. Selectica, Inc.; and eBay Domestic Holdings, Inc. v. Newmark. This Note reviews the history of the poison pill including attempts to expand the potency of the pill in takeover situations, from alterations in the 1990s to the recent court decisions which discuss the use of the poison pill in combination with other corporate mechanisms, specifically the staggered board. The Note then focuses on the recent evolution of the poison pill outside of the corporate takeover context. The poison pill has been used successfully to protect corporate assets and unsuccessfully to protect corporate culture. This Note argues that context is key when courts review poison pills, particularly when they are implemented outside of a corporate takeover. Corporate law is constantly evolving; this will create growing pains as the Delaware courts grapple with these new mutations. As the poison pill is increasingly used in innovative ways the courts must remain cognizant of the context in which directors are acting, to ensure the appropriate standard of review is applied. The Unocal test is highly dependent on the takeover context and exists to ensure that directors are not entrenching themselves when they decline a takeover offer. Applying this test to asset protection or closely-held corporation cases where there is no takeover offer, nor even an entrenchment motivation, may produce results that can unexpectedly stunt the growth of this developing area of corporate law.


This thesis presents results from a comprehensive channel measurement study. The 802.11 b/g channel was studied in 25 locations, including 14 indoor channels and 11 outdoor channels, where each measured used 11 wide bandwidths channels. For each location, measurements were taken along a 3 meter strip with 1.5 cm between each measurement, where the location of each measurement was controlled by a robotic linear actuator. Several hundred measurements were taken at each location, ensuring precise estimate of the signal strength. In all, 77 million signal strength measurements were made. However, in order to develop and verify the quality of the measurement, far more measurements were made. The collected data was used to estimate the change in signal strength as a function of the displacement. The observed change in signal strength was modeled with a standard channel model that contains a fast fading component and a lognormal shadowing component. While this standard model provided a good fit, we found that the lognormal shadowing component has much less spatially correlated than previous studies had found. Thus, this thesis developed a new model for the correlation of lognormal shadowing. Considering that the 802.11 b/g channel is a wide bandwidth channel (which reduce channel variations caused by fast fading), this study finds more significant variations in signal strength than has been previously known.


Cells communicate with their external environment via focal adhesions and generate activation signals that in turn trigger the activity of the intracellular contractile machinery. These signals can be triggered by mechanical loading that gives rise to a cooperative feedback loop among signaling, focal adhesion formation, and cytoskeletal contractility, which in turn equilibrates with the applied mechanical loads. We devise a signaling model that couples stress fiber contractility and mechano-sensitive focal adhesion models to complete this above mentioned feedback loop. The signaling model is based on a biochemical pathway where IP3 molecules are generated when focal adhesions grow. These IP3 molecules diffuse through the cytosol leading to the opening of ion channels that disgorge Ca2+ from the endoplasmic reticulum leading to the activation of the actin/myosin contractile machinery. A simple numerical example is presented where a one-dimensional cell adhered to a rigid substrate is pulled at one end, and the evolution of the stress fiber activation signal, stress fiber concentrations, and focal adhesion distributions are investigated. We demonstrate that while it is sufficient to approximate the activation signal as spatially uniform due to the rapid diffusion of the IP3 through the cytosol, the level of the activation signal is sensitive to the rate of application of the mechanical loads. This suggests that ad hoc signaling models may not be able to capture the mechanical response of cells to a wide range of mechanical loading events. © 2011 American Society of Mechanical Engineers.


12 Saharan dust has a crucial influence on the earth climate system and its emission, transport, and deposition are 13 intimately related to e.g. wind speed, precipitation, temperature and vegetation cover. The alteration in the physical 14 and chemical properties of Saharan dust due to environmental changes is often used to reconstruct the climate of 15 the past. However, to better interpret possible climate changes the dust source regions need to be known. By 16 analysing the mineralogical composition of transported or deposited dust, potential dust source areas can be 17 inferred. Summer dust transport offshore Northwest Africa occurs in the Saharan air layer (SAL). In continental 18 dust source areas dust is also transported in the SAL, however the predominant dust input occurs from nearby dust 19 sources with the low-level trade winds. Hence, the source regions and related mineralogical tracers differ with 20 season and sampling location. To test this, dust collected in traps onshore and in oceanic sediment traps offshore 21 Mauritania during 2013 to 2015 was analysed. Meteorological data, particle-size distributions, back-trajectory and 22 mineralogical analyses were compared to derive the dust provenance and dispersal. For the onshore dust samples, 23 the source regions varied according to the seasonal changes in trade-wind direction. Gibbsite and dolomite 24 indicated a Western Saharan and local source during summer, while chlorite, serpentine and rutile indicated a 25 source in Mauritania and Mali during winter. In contrast, for the samples that were collected offshore, dust sources 26 varied according to the seasonal change in the dust transporting air layer. In summer, dust was transported in the 27 SAL from Mauritania, Mali and Libya as indicated by ferryglaucophane and zeolite. In winter, dust was transported 28 with the Trades from Western Sahara as indicated by e.g. fluellite. 29


The neutron capture cross sections of the Zr isotopes have important implications in nuclear astrophysics and
for reactor design. The small cross section of the neutron magic nucleus 90Zr, which accounts for more than 50%
of natural zirconium represents one of the key isotopes for the stellar s-process, because it acts as a bottleneck
in the neutron capture chain between the Fe seed and the heavier isotopes. The same element, Zr, also is an
important component of the structural materials used in traditional and advanced nuclear reactors. The (n, γ )
cross section has been measured at CERN, using the n TOF spallation neutron source. In total, 45 resonances
could be resolved in the neutron energy range below 70 keV, 10 being observed for the first time thanks to the
high resolution and low backgrounds at n TOF. On average, the γ widths obtained in resonance analyses with
the R-matrix code SAMMY were 15% smaller than reported previously. By these results, the accuracy of the
Maxwellian averaged cross section for s-process calculations has been improved by more than a factor of 2.


Modelling land surface water flow is of critical im- portance for simulating land surface fluxes, predicting runoff and water table dynamics and for many other applications of Land Surface Models. Many approaches are based on the popular hydrology model TOPMODEL (TOPography-based hydrological MODEL), and the most important parameter of this model is the well-known topographic index. Here we present new, high-resolution parameter maps of the topo- graphic index for all ice-free land pixels calculated from hy- drologically conditioned HydroSHEDS (Hydrological data and maps based on SHuttle Elevation Derivatives at multi- ple Scales) data using the GA2 algorithm (GRIDATB 2). At 15 arcsec resolution, these layers are 4 times finer than the resolution of the previously best-available topographic in- dex layers, the compound topographic index of HYDRO1k (CTI). For the largest river catchments occurring on each continent we found that, in comparison with CTI our revised values were up to 20 % lower in, e.g. the Amazon. We found the highest catchment means were for the Murray-Darling and Nelson-Saskatchewan rather than for the Amazon and St. Lawrence as found from the CTI. For the majority of large catchments, however, the spread of our new GA2 index val- ues is very similar to those of CTI, yet with more spatial variability apparent at fine scale. We believe these new index layers represent greatly improved global-scale topographic index values and hope that they will be widely used in land surface modelling applications in the future.


Biomass is expected to play a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions holding global temperature rise to well below 2oC, as agreed on at the 21st Conference of Parties in Paris. The diversity of biomass production systems (feedstocks, regions, end-uses) and their varying performance from an environmental and (macro-)economic perspective requires a systematic assessment of biomass applications for energy and materials. Increasingly, advances on biomass conversion technologies offer alternatives to sectors that have few or no other renewable alternative options such as to the chemical or the aviation industry. While the role of bioenergy in climate change mitigation has received a lot of attention, so far these advanced biomass applications have not been systematically addressed by literature. On the one hand, there are uncertainties on their potential deployment levels and on the other hand on how energy systems dynamics and greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts may be affected. Towards the increasingly advanced uses and the large volumes of biomass required to meet climate targets, the need to understand the implications of emerging bioeconomy is crucial. The starting points of this dissertation are the following research questions: (a) what are current and potential mid-term environmental implications of biofuels and biochemical applications, (b) what is the potential size and contribution of bioeconomy in a national energy system in pursuing mid-term climate change mitigation targets, (c) what are the potential mid-term economic implications of bioeconomy developments at a national level and (d) how can tools and methods for assessing current and mid-term bioeconomy developments be improved. To shed light into the environmental impacts of advanced biochemicals, this dissertation applies life cycle assessment on existing bioplastics supply chains, namely bioplastics from Brazilian and Indian sugarcane ethanol. The potential for large-scale bioeconomy developments is assessed by extending an energy systems model of the Netherlands to include detailed representation of biomass cost and supply, and emerging sectors such as advanced biofuels and biochemicals. Scenario analysis is performed for different technological development pathways, biomass cost-supply and fossil fuel price scenarios to 2030. The macro-economic impacts of large-scale bioeconomy developments in the Netherlands to 2030 are assessed using a macro-economic top down model. The results show that bioplastics may offer savings on greenhouse gas emissions and fossil resource use, compared to their petrochemical counterparts. However, the use of fossil fuel in bio-based production systems needs to be reduced as their use may lead to comparable or higher greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil fuel-based plastics. In the Netherlands, biochemicals are shown to be cost-competitive in the mid-term, if old petrochemical production capacity is phased out and fossil fuel prices are as anticipated by business-as-usual scenarios. Under existing policies, the Netherlands reduce their greenhouse gas emissions but fail to achieve the necessary emission reduction, in line with their committed targets. Efforts need to intensify, and even under an ambitious carbon tax, rapid technological development of advanced biomass conversion technologies, and carbon capture and storage are required for deep emission reduction. In the long term, large-scale bioeconomy developments may benefit the Netherlands by leading to higher economic returns and reduce downward trends in employment and trade balance. However, low technology development, high fossil fuel prices and/or high biomass prices impede achieving the emission reduction targets. In light of the above, advanced biomass uses may offer benefits, if stricter targets and stimulating policies on renewable energy and bioeconomy are considered. To valorise opportunities and minimise risks efforts are required to ensure sustainable and low-cost supply of biomass, promote sustainable bioenergy and biochemical pathways and stimulate co-operation across different end-use sectors of bioenergy.


What are the politics of Gilles Deleuze's study of cinematic modernity? In film studies, the discipline that formally assumes cinema as its object, Deleuze's concepts have been used to explore the processes by which national identities have been historically constructed and deconstructed through aesthetic means as well as the political stances of particular films to the narratives through which particular national identities are still being written. Alternatively they have been used to explore how cinema invents discourses that function as the basis for collective enunciations of minorities that find themselves precariously positioned at the peripheries of national cultures. In both cases, the understanding of the political in Deleuze's studies has been reduced to the struggles between nations and their minorities. This paper argues in contrast that understanding and fulfilling the political potential of his works requires analyzing the importance of his account of the rupture between classical and modern cinema for his political concept of "a people." The concepts of peoples, nations, and minorities are not the same, and it is to the detriment of film studies that its understanding of politics has by and large been reducible to the latter two. This article seeks to move beyond the impoverished state of the debate on Deleuze and "political cinema" by exploring how his works trace the changing relation of cinema to the historical development of a post-national politics of people-production, and especially his account of what it names "a people of seers".


We consider the different types of rent-seeking practices in emerging oil economies, and discuss how they contribute to social conflict and a local resource curse in the Albertine Graben region of Uganda. The rent-seeking activities have contributed to speculative behavior, competition for limited social services, land grabbing, land scarcity, land fragmentation, food insecurity, corruption, and ethnic polarization. Local people have interpreted the experience of the consequent social impacts as a local resource curse. The impacts have led to social conflicts among the affected communities. Our research used a range of methods, including 40 in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, participant observation, and document analysis. We argue there is an urgent need by all stakeholders—including local and central governments, oil companies, local communities, and civil society organizations—to address the challenges before the construction of oil infrastructure. Stakeholders must work hard to create the conditions that are needed to avoid the resource curse; otherwise, Uganda could end up suffering from the Dutch Disease and Nigerian Disease, as has befallen other African countries.


The Euro-area poses a unique problem in evaluating policy: a currency union with a shared monetary policy and country-specific fiscal policy. Analysis can be further complicated if high levels of public debt affect the performance of stabilization policy. We construct a framework capable of handling these issues with an application to Euro-Area data. In order to incorporate multiple macroeconomic series from each country but, simultaneously, treat country-specific fiscal policy, we develop a hierarchical factor-augmented VAR with zero restrictions on the loadings that yield country-level factors. Monetary policy, then, responds to area-wide conditions but fiscal policy responds only to its country level conditions. We find that there is broad quantitative variation in different countries'' responses to area-wide monetary policy and both qualitative and quantitative variation in responses to country-specific fiscal policy. Moreover, we find that debt conditions do not diminish the effectiveness of policy in a significant manner, suggesting that any negative effects must come through other channels.


This thesis takes the reader through the process of making an idea into a prototype. An out-of-office notification system, aimed to help office workers notify coworkers about their absence, is implemented with custom-made hardware and specialised software. The hardware consists of 100BASE-TX Ethernet, PoE, microSD, WQVGA capacitive touch display, and parallel flash and SRAM. A 16-bit microcontroller with integrated graphics controller and GPUs is used for driving the display, and a 32-bit microcontroller with RMII support drives Ethernet. An embedded HTTP server is adapted to work with FAT32 using a microSD card, together with 2048-bit SSL. The results reveal a throughput of 550 kB/s without and 317 kB/s with SSL, and there are suggestions for improvement.


Background: Chromogenic in situ hybridisation (CISH) is an alternative to immunohistochemistry or FISH for the assessment of HER2 oncogene status in breast cancer. Although CISH is being used increasingly in routine diagnostics, there are no established inter-laboratory quality assurance programmes for this test. Methods: The reproducibility of HER2 CISH analysis was assessed when performed by seven different centres that use the test routinely in diagnostic service. Results: The results from 28 cases showed overall concordance of 98.5% (192/195 tests; κ coefficient 0.91). One of the discrepancies was due to the invasive carcinoma having been cut out in the sections received by two of the centres, and the other two were in the non-amplified/equivocal/low-amplified category. Conclusion: This is believed to be the first report of a quality assurance study assessing laboratories that use HER2 CISH routinely in clinical diagnostics. The results show that CISH is a robust technique providing a suitable assay for the frontline testing of HER2 status in breast cancer.


The complex phenomenon of architecture consists of too many irreconcilable and conflicting categories of thought, intention, emotion, interaction and action to be condensed into the framework of a single theory of architecture. Besides, art and architecture are constituted in their mental encounter and experience instead of the material works themselves. Works of architecture and art are encountered and lived rather than understood intellectually.
Architecture is commonly understood, taught, practiced and evaluated primarily as a visual art form. However, we encounter buildings and environments through our entire sense of being. Perceptions interact with memory and imagination to constitute an experience with meaning and temporal duration. Art and architecture are essentially relational phenomena as they express our being in the world instead of themselves or their authors. The interest in architecture as experience also directs our attention to such diffuse and neglected experiences as atmospheres, ambiences, feelings, moods and attunements.


Many people assume that arbitration is private and confidential. But is that assumption accurate? This article is the first to explore that question in the important context of whether arbitration communications can be discovered and admitted into evidence in other legal proceedings - a question that is just beginning to show up in the cases. It first surveys the federal and state statutory and case law, finding that arbitration communications in fact are generally discoverable and admissible. It then considers the normative desirability of discovering and admitting arbitration communications evidence, concluding that the free discovery and admissibility of arbitration communications would frustrate the intent of the Federal Arbitration Act and contradict the case law that has arisen under it, thwart the reasonable expectations of the parties, and give rise to potential abuses of the arbitration process. It finally concludes with a recommendation that the burden of proof be elevated for arbitration communications evidence, permitting their discovery only when the evidence is otherwise unavailable and necessary in a particular case.


Urban renewal and urban area development projects are by nature highly complex processes involving a multiplicity of professionals, stakeholders, and conflicting interests. Adding to this complexity are the formulated ambitions and societal challenges projects have to answer to. One of these ambitions emphasizes a more inclusive planning process, involving the inhabitants in all stages of the planning process. In terms of design, another challenge is to create environments on a human scale while building in high density such as with tall residential buildings. The metropolitan area of Amsterdam intends to have 100,000 new dwellings by 2025. Most of these dwellings have to be added within the existing urban fabric, planned on obsolete inner-city brownfield locations, at the waterfront, nearby highways whereas others are going to be built in deprived neighborhoods. The deprived neighborhoods are mainly located in the postwar areas of Amsterdam, on its northern, western, and south-eastern sides. The deprived neighborhood called the Bijlmermeer located on the south-eastern side of the city, for instance was the first high-rise development project in the Netherlands. It was designed as a single project with identical high-rise buildings in a hexagonal grid surrounded with large green spaces. These deprived, modernistic neighborhoods lack the classic housing block structures with a clear articulation of buildings and street spaces. They appear to be responsible for an 'inhuman' scale and demonstrate the lasting impact critical design flaws can have on the daily lives of inhabitants. Hence, the question is how to develop liveable environments where people feel fully supported by building architecture and streetscape configuration. To prevent new urban area developments that will again fail to incorporate human scale, scientific methods and user input are needed to inform the practice of planning and design, and their applied design solutions. Building on two research projects (one on participatory planning and the other on neuroarchitecture research), we explore how the newly emerging field of neuroarchitecture - and the eye-tracker in particular, might enhance urban area developments on a human scale.


Pre-trained language models such as BERT have recently contributed to significant advances in Natural Language Processing tasks. Interestingly, while multilingual BERT models have demonstrated impressive results, recent works have shown how monolingual BERT can also be competitive in zero-shot cross-lingual settings. This suggests that the abstractions learned by these models can transfer across languages, even when trained on monolingual data. In this paper, we investigate whether such generalization potential applies to other modalities, such as vision: does BERT contain abstractions that generalize beyond text? We introduce BERT-gen, an architecture for text generation based on BERT, able to leverage on either mono- or multi- modal representations. The results reported under different configurations indicate a positive answer to our research question, and the proposed model obtains substantial improvements over the state-of-the-art on two established Visual Question Generation datasets.


Philosophers have frequently distinguished mathematics from the physical sciences. While the sciences were constrained to t themselves via experimentation to the `real' world, mathematicians were allowed more or less free reign within the abstract world of the mind. This picture has served mathematicians well for the past few millennia but the computer has begun to change this. The computer has given us the ability to look at new and unimaginably vast worlds. It has created mathematical worlds that would have remained inaccessible to the unaided human mind, but this access has come at a price. Many of these worlds, at present, can only be known experimentally. The computer has allowed us to y through the rare ed domains of hyperbolic spaces and examine more than a billion digits of but experiencing a world and understanding it are two very di erent phenomena. Like it or not, the world of the mathematician is becoming experimentalized. The computers of tomorrow promise even stranger worlds to explore. Today, however, most of these explorations into the mathematical wilderness remain isolated illustrations. Heuristic conventions, pictures and diagrams developing in one subeld often have little content for another. In each subeld unproven results proliferate but remain conjectures, strongly held beliefs or perhaps mere curiosities passed like folk tales across the Internet. The computer has provided extremely powerful computational and conceptual resources but it is only recently that mathematicians have begun to systematically exploit these abilities. It is our hope that by focusing on experimental mathematics today, we can develop a unifying methodology tomorrow.


Habitat structure has a major influence on the composition of all animal
communities. In complex coral reef environments, a range of habitat features appear to
influence the structure of reef fish assemblages, with the effects of live coral cover and
topographic complexity receiving most attention. The role of coral diversity in
determining the structure of local fish communities and the consequences of species specific
fish-coral interactions in these ecosystems have not been fully explored. The
aim of this thesis was to investigate the relationships between coral reef fish
assemblages and habitat structure by sampling species-specific fish and coral
associations in the lagoon at Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef. Specifically, I
examined (a) the relative importance of coral cover, habitat topographic complexity and
coral diversity in explaining the structure of the local fish community, (b) the role of
different coral species in supporting diverse and abundant fish communities and, the
structural characteristics of coral species likely to be responsible for the observed
relationships, (c) the effects of sampling scale on the strength of the measured
associations between fish and corals, (d) patterns of habitat specialisation and habitat
overlap among the 14 co-existing damselfish species, and among ontogenetic stages.
The relationships between a range of habitat features and local fish diversity,
abundance and community structure were investigated by sampling over sixty 2m²
quadrats at three sites in the Lizard Island lagoon. Fish species richness, total abundance
and community structure were examined in relation to location within the lagoon and a
wide range of habitat variables, including topographic complexity, habitat diversity,
coral diversity, coral species richness, hard coral cover, branching coral cover and the
cover of corymbose corals. Fish species richness and total abundance were strongly
related to coral species richness and cover, but only weakly related to topographic
complexity. Regression tree analysis indicated that coral species richness accounted for
over 63% of the variation in fish species richness, while hard coral cover explained
more variation in total fish abundance (17.4%), than any other variable. The results
suggest that the diversity of scleractinian corals is critical in maintaining local coral reef
fish diversity, and loss of coral species will in turn lead to declining fish diversity.

Further surveys were carried out to assess the relative importance of different
coral species in structuring fish communities, to identify the characteristics of corals
that support higher fish diversity, and to evaluate whether sampling scale has any effect
on the perceived strength of fish-habitat relationships. The communities of fishes
present on colonies of eight common coral species (Porites cylindrica, Echinopora
horrida, Hydnophora rigida, Stylophora pistillata, Seriatopora hystrix, Acropora
formosa, A. tenuis and A. millepora) were examined at three spatial scales of sampling
(2x2 m, 1x1 m, 0.5x0.5 m) at multiple sites in the Lizard Island lagoon. Coral species
was the only variable that explained significant amount of variation in fish species
richness among the samples. It also explained a significant amount of variation in total
fish abundance. Coral species explained more of the variability in fish species richness
(36-54%), than in fish abundance (10-15%). Colonies of E. horrida and H. rigida,
which exhibited an intermediate level of branching structure, supported more fish
species and individuals than similar sized colonies of all other coral species. Species of
coral with either very fine branching structure (A. millepora, A. tenuis, S. hystrix) or
very open branching structure (A. formosa), supported the lowest number of species and
individuals. The relationships between coral species and fish species richness or
abundance became stronger as the spatial scale of sampling increased. These results
indicate that the types of coral present on reefs can significantly influence the structure
of reef fish communities, and that coral species with an intermediate level of branching
structure support the most diverse and abundant fish communities. Furthermore, the
spatial scale of sampling can influence the perceived relationship between fish
communities and their habitats.

The decline in fish diversity with coral diversity may be explained by habitat
specialisation and partitioning among reef fishes and/or common preferences for
particular corals that are susceptible to disturbance. These preferences may develop at
different life history stages. To test this, I examined species-specific habitat preferences
and ontogenetic habitat shifts among 14 co-occurring damselfish species in the Lizard
Island lagoon. The percent cover of 17 substratum types was estimated at four sites
within the lagoon: Palfrey Island, Lagoon centre, Lizard Head and Bird Island. The
habitat use of each damselfish species was then estimated by focal animal sampling
across the lagoon. Although live coral cover contributed only 26% of the substratum,
28% of adults and 57% of new settlers were mostly found on live coral substratum,
indicating a strong preference for live coral habitat by these species. Some species
exhibited a high degree of habitat specialisation and low overlap in habitat use with
other species, which could help explain the importance of coral diversity on fish
community structure. In general, however, there was a substantial overlap within coral
associated and non-coral associated groups, with different species using similar
resources. Some species exhibited ontogenetic habitat shifts. In particular, new settlers
were commonly associated with finely branched corymbose corals, whereas adults were
more commonly linked to more open branching morphologies or non-coral substratum.

The results from this study indicate a closer association between fish and coral
diversity than previously demonstrated. It suggests that human impacts on the
composition and diversity of coral communities are likely to have profound and
negative effects on reef fish biodiversity, more so than would be predicted on the basis
of declining coral cover or topographic complexity alone.


This article tells the story of a central Los Angeles community garden and the women, who came primarily from Southern Mexico and Central America, who had plots there. The garden fostered an informal support network for the women and families who used it, and a place to grow food and flowers common in their home communities but not found in Los Angeles. The essay then traces the upheaval the followed a local nonprofit's takeover of, and investment in, the garden.


The setup of a full mesh of Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)
Traffic Engineering (TE) Label Switched Paths (LSP) among a set of
Label Switch Routers (LSR) is a common deployment scenario of MPLS
Traffic Engineering either for bandwidth optimization, bandwidth
guarantees or fast rerouting with MPLS Fast Reroute. Such deployment
may require the configuration of a potentially large number of TE LSPs
(on the order of the square of the number of LSRs). This document
specifies Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) routing extensions for
Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS) and Open Shortest
Path First (OSPF) so as to provide an automatic discovery of the set
of LSRs members of a mesh in order to automate the creation of such
mesh of TE LSPs. [STANDARDS-TRACK]


Physiological methods have become popular recently in psi research. In particular, measurement of skin conductance was applied successfully for the detection of presentiment, that is, precognitive response to its eliciting stimulus (Bierman & Radin, 1997; for a summary of the early work see Radin, 1997). The technology of automated stimu lus presentation as well as conductance measurement and recording is now mature enough for a sound and generally acceptable methodology. In the 1960s I conducted an experiment for the detection of a simple telepathic message between a sender and a receiver, in which a conditioned galvanic skin response was measured. An extended abstract of that experiment appeared in The Journal of Parapsychology about a decade later (Vassy, 1978). Because recording equipment was lacking, all data were obtained by human observation, which was cumbersome and prone to errors. So although the results were significantly positive, the method did not seem to be appropriate at that time. Nowadays, however, with the newly established methodology of skin conductance measurement, the weaknesses of that procedure hopefully can be eliminated. The aim of the experiment reported here was to investigate the adequacy of the method both for detecting telepathy and for asking some specific questions about its nature. GENERAL EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN In this paper a series of three experiments will be reported; however, they all share many common elements. In this section those aspects will be highlighted. Basic Idea and Notation We began by assuming that telepathy involves an as yet unidentified physiological process in the brain of the receiver. This assumption is plausible because the reception of the telepathic information is connected to a behavioral output, which obviously involves a physiological process. In these experiments, that process was used for detecting the reception of the telepathic message. We assumed further that the receiver's physiological process can be used as a conditioned stimulus in the paradigm of classical conditioning. This paradigm allows for a conditioned response upon the reception of telepathic information. In classical experiments, one must remove an unconditioned stimulus from time to time in order to recognize the conditioned response. In the experiments described in this paper, we were able to time shift the conditioning stimulus to always occur before an unconditioned stimulus, so the above requirement was not necessary here. The dependent variable throughout these studies was skin conductance. We used a mild electric shock that was administered to two of the receivers as an unconditioned stimulus. As is well known in experimental psychology (Woodworth & Schlosberg, 1961), electric shocks cause a sudden rise in skin conductance. The skin conductance response (i.e., unconditioned response) to electric shock stimuli does not habituate, even after many trials. This is contrary to the responses to gentler emotional photographic stimuli, which have been used in "presentiment" studies. Thus, electric shocks seemed a more likely candidate for unconditioned stimuli. Expanding upon the idea above, the conditioned stimulus was the reception of a putative telepathic message from the sender. That is, during an experimental session, a trigger signal was presented to a sender at random times. In turn, the sender was instructed to forward the warning telepathically to the receiver. After a constant delay time, a shock was presented to the receiver. Clearly, we could detect the unconditioned skin conductance response (i.e., to the shock). We hoped that we would also detect the conditioned response in advance of the unconditioned shock stimulus. The time interval between the conditioned and the unconditioned stimulus was set to be longer than the latency time of the skin response, so the conditioned response could appear before the unconditioned stimulus. …


The Discrete Tchebichef Transform (DTT) is a transform method based on the scaled orthogonal Tchebichef polynomials, which have applications recently found in image compression and pattern recognition. This report summarises the research carried out for the development of a fast DTT algorithm. The mathematical properties and the related algorithmic details of the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) have been studied in order to develop a fast DTT algorithm. A novel DTT algorithm suitable for 4 × 4 image blocks is proposed in this report. A theoretical analysis of the proposed method, the method using the direct application of the definition and the method using the separability and the symmetry shows that the proposed method requires the smallest number of operations while the direct application of the definition performs badly. Presented experimental results also show the improved performance of the proposed algorithm.


For many decades, the primary challenge of land use law has been how to promote and channel growth and development. Nobody wants stagnation; the cure is growth, and lately the cure has been "smart growth." In the last several years, however, some cities have begun openly to address a previously unacknowledged truth: some cities will and do shrink. They lose population and have no foreseeable prospect of ever regaining it. The land use planning community has begun to grapple with the issue of the shrinking city, asking how we can achieve managed, "smart" shrinkage To some extent, the answer is to shift density and promote green uses of various kinds This brings us to the legal question Does an organized effort to help a city shrink pose any distinctive legal issues? What constraints might the law impose on a city's goals of diminishing its infrastructure responsibilities, downzoning its land to less intensive uses, or taking other steps consistent with a goal of managed shrinkage This paper explores a few of those issues, using Cleveland, Ohio as an example. It considers legal challenges the shrinking city might face, particularly when downzoning urban property to promote urban agriculture and other green uses, focusing on the application of takings law It also briefly considers the fairness issues associated with downzoning and the limitations of the current legal structure for revitalizing Brownfields in a setting where traditional redevelopment is unlikely.


IMS-WLAN interworking is a step towards extending IMS functionality into other access technologies, but this architecture is very comprehensive and is unlikely to be employed everywhere. The result is a need for alternative options. Using SIP to deliver services in the Internet or any network where IMS is not available is perhaps the most obvious choice. The reason for that argument is that IMS is based on SIP, and SIP is considered to be a flexible framework for this use, it may be extended to fit almost any purpose – IMS in itself is a perfect example of that. The only problem is, when migrating from an IMS-network to an arbitrary internet with SIP, two things happen: 1. The user has two different identities in the two networks 2. SIP does not employ the same authentication mechanism as IMS For the sake of security and horizontal integration of services, any alternative to IMS must offer approximately the same level of security. The services and access technologies in mention are diverse, in concept, technology and with regards to complexity. They each fulfill a specific purpose all on their own. When proposing a unified authentication framework, it is important to take in to account the individual needs of the elements involved. As such, any proposed solution must not compromise the basic nature of each element, or be damaging to its basic operation. SIM Authentication can be achieved in the SIP client, but the authentication in itself only solves half the problem. The next challenge is to personalize the service, and this can only be done if there is a connection between identities, and their corresponding profiles, across networks. My opinion is that the only way to fulfill the requirements is by introducing an element of connection between the different identities. Federating user identities, Service Providers and Identity Providers together, gives a whole new flexibility with regards to the use of user resources which would otherwise just exist in separate networks.


Due to the side effects of chemical drugs and their expensive prices, nowadays
medicinal plants are of great interest, and dill is one of these plants. The aim of the present study was
evaluating analgesic effect of dill ethanol extract in male mice by using formalin test in the presence
and absence of intravenous morphine.
Materials & Methods: In this study, 28 mice were used and divided into 4 groups of control, morphine
(positive control), dill, and dill+ morphine. Ethanol extract of dill, 500 milligrams per liter in drinking
water for 30 days was given to the animals. In positive control group, 10mg/kg of morphine was
injected with a single dose subcutaneously. Pain scores obtained using formalin test with injection
0.02 ml of formalin 5% to the fourth finger of the animals' right hand.
Results: The results of this study showed that dill ethanol extract by oral administration method
decreased pain scores in the acute and chronic phases of formalin-induced pain. Concurrent using of
ethanol extract of dill and morphine had dramatic analgesic effect.
Conclusion: The results of this study confirm that compounds present in dill have analgesic effects
and also increase the analgesic effects of morphine


The development of political engagement in early life is significant given its impact on political knowledge and participation. Analyses reveal a large influence of parents on their offspring's curiosity about politics during their teenage years. Increasingly, civic education is also considered an important influence on political interest and orientations of young people as schools are assigned a crucial role in creating and maintaining civic equality. We study the effects of civic education on political engagement, focusing especially on whether and how civic education can compensate for missing parental political socialization. We use data from the Belgian Political Panel Study (2006-2011) and the U.S. Youth-Parent Socialization Panel Study (1965-1997), which both contain information on political attitudes and behaviors of adolescents and young adults, those of their parents, and on the educational curriculum of the young respondents. Our findings suggest that civics training in schools indeed compensates for inequalities in family socialization with respect to political engagement. This conclusion holds for two very different countries (the U.S. and Belgium), at very different points in time (the 1960s and the 2000s), and for a varying length of observation (youth to old age and impressionable years only).


Premise of research. Well-preserved Triassic plant fossils from Antarctica yield insights into the physiology of plant growth under the seasonal light regimes of warm polar forests, a type of ecosystem without any modern analogue. Among the many well-known Triassic plants from Antarctica is the enigmatic Petriellaea triangulata, a dispersed seedpod structure that is considered a possible homologue of the angiosperm carpel. However, the morphology and physiology of the plants that produced these seedpods have so far remained largely elusive. Methodology. Here, we describe petriellalean stems and leaves in compression and anatomical preservation that enable a detailed interpretation of the physiology and ecology of these plants. Pivotal results. Our results indicate that the Petriellales were diminutive, evergreen, shade-adapted perennial shrubs that colonized the understory of the deciduous forest biome of polar Gondwana. This life form is very unlike that of any other known seed-plant group of that time. By contrast, it fits remarkably well into the "dark and disturbed" niche that some authors considered to have sheltered the rise of the flowering plants some 100 Myr later. Conclusions. The hitherto enigmatic Petriellales are now among the most comprehensively reconstructed groups of extinct seed plants and emerge as promising candidates for elucidating the mysterious origin of the angiosperms.


Burgomaster, Kirsten A., Scott C. Hughes, George J. F. Heigenhauser, Suzanne N. Bradwell, and Martin J. Gibala . Six sessions of sprint interval training increases muscle oxidative potential and cycle endurance capacity in humans. J Appl Physiol 98: 1985–1990, 2005. First published February 10, 2005; doi:10.1152/jappphysiol.01095.2004.— Parra et al. ( Acta Physiol. Scand 169: 157–165, 2000) showed that 2 wk of daily sprint interval training (SIT) increased citrate synthase (CS) maximal activity but did not change "anaerobic" work capacity, possibly because of chronic fatigue induced by daily training. The effect of fewer SIT sessions on muscle oxidative potential is unknown, and aside from changes in peak oxygen uptake (Vo2 peak), no study has examined the effect of SIT on "aerobic" exercise capacity. We tested the hypothesis that six sessions of SIT, performed over 2 wk with 1–2 days rest between sessions to promote recovery, would increase CS maximal activity and endurance capacity during cycling at ∼80% Vo2 peak. Eight recreationally active subjects [age = 22 ± 1 yr; Vo2 peak = 45 ± 3 ml·kg−1·min−1 (mean ± SE)] were studied before and 3 days after SIT. Each training session consisted of four to seven "all-out" 30-s Wingate tests with 4 min of recovery. After SIT, CS maximal activity increased by 38% (5.5 ± 1.0 vs. 4.0 ± 0.7 mmol·kg protein−1·h−1) and resting muscle glycogen content increased by 26% (614 ± 39 vs. 489 ± 57 mmol/kg dry wt) (both P < 0.05). Most strikingly, cycle endurance capacity increased by 100% after SIT (51 ± 11 vs. 26 ± 5 min; P < 0.05), despite no change in Vo2 peak. The coefficient of variation for the cycle test was 12.0%, and a control group ( n = 8) showed no change in performance when tested ∼2 wk apart without SIT. We conclude that short sprint interval training (∼15 min of intense exercise over 2 wk) increased muscle oxidative potential and doubled endurance capacity during intense aerobic cycling in recreationally active individuals.


This paper investigates the impact of cross-border road infrastructure on trade and foreign direct investment in the Greater Mekong Subregion using panel data from 1981 to 2003. Empirical analysis based on a gravity-model approach suggests that the development of cross-border road infrastructure has had a positive effect on intra-regional trade in major commodities with its elasticity in the range of 0.6-1.4. When the impact of domestic road infrastructure is assessed separately, it has been associated with increased trade. When cross-border and domestic road infrastructure are considered together, the former has had a positive and the latter has had a negative association, respectively, with trade. Results regarding the impact of road infrastructure on FDI flows are ambiguous, although data limitations appear to have attributed to the poor performance of these estimates. This paper was presented at the 3rd Annual Latin America/Caribbean and Asia/Pacific Economics and Business Association (LAEBA) Meeting held in Seoul, South Korea on November 16th, 2006.


Associations between dental and chronic-systemic diseases were observed frequently in medical research, however the findings of this research have so far found little relevance in everyday clinical treatment. Major problems are the assessment of evidence for correlations between such diseases and how to integrate current medical knowledge into the intersectoral care of dentists and general practitioners. On the example of dental and chronic-systemic diseases, the Dent@Prevent project develops an interdisciplinary decision support system (DSS), which provides the specialists with information relevant for the treatment of such cases. To provide the physicians with relevant medical knowledge, a mixed-methods approach is developed to acquire the knowledge in an evidence-oriented way. This procedure includes a literature review, routine data analyses, focus groups of dentists and general practitioners as well as the identification and integration of applicable guidelines and Patient Reported Measures (PRMs) into the treatment process. The developed mixed methods approach for an evidence-oriented knowledge acquisition indicates to be applicable and supportable for interdisciplinary projects. It can raise the systematic quality of the knowledge-acquisition process and can be applicable for an evidence-based system development. Further research is necessary to assess the impact on patient care and to evaluate possible applicability in other interdisciplinary areas.


Justice Harry Blackmun described Benjamin N. Cardozo's The Nature of the Judicial Process as "a somewhat disappointing book." A rummage in the folder labeled "Books – Read by Blackmun, lists – 1973-1997" in the Blackmun Papers at the Library of Congress turns up a possible reason for Blackmun's less-than-friendly reaction to Cardozo's great book – the book that brought Cardozo "national fame as well as that idolatrous regard of the law schools which eventually propelled him to the highest court of the land." Possibly, Blackmun's disappointment was a matter of context. Possibly, The Nature of the Judicial Process, as great a work as it may be, just did not measure up to some of the other books Blackmun was reading at the time – books that he might have seen as better-written, or more thought-provoking, or more informative, or more fun. It is certainly possible, because the bibliographic competition for Blackmun's admiration was both diverse and high-powered during the summer he read Cardozo. What to make of such speculation about Blackmun and his books depends in part on what we seek. Four reasons to study the reading habits and judgments of Supreme Court Justices come to mind (and there are surely more): (1) our perennial and important interests in understanding both why they did what they have done – that is, their decisions and opinions in cases past – and what they might do next – that is, their decisions and opinions in pending and future cases (as Eleanor Little observed in The Early Reading of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The importance of [Holmes's] reading lists is that they reflect the influence of other minds on Holmes's own thought..."); (2) a general interest in learning something about the minds and characters of our public leaders from how they speak and write about books, reading, and learning, with an eye to choices we might make as citizens and role models we might emulate as individuals; (3) a far less important but not unreasonable interest in the reading (and listening, and watching, and traveling, and so on) choices made by clever, thoughtful, accomplished individuals, because we might want to try some of the same things; and (4) a perennial but trivial interest in every detail of the lives of celebrities, the Justices being among the biggest celebrities in the law. Why else would we need to know about every opera or baseball game or seminar they attend? Alas, all of these topics are beyond the scope of this little article, because they all depend on the resolution of the preliminary issue addressed below: The quality and reliability of the evidence.