Background Proper stabilisation of suspected unstable spine injuries is necessary to prevent (worsen) spinal cord damage. Although the lift-and-slide (L&S) technique has been shown superior to the log-roll (LR) technique to place the body on the spinal board, no studies have yet compared different techniques of manual stabilisation of the c-spine itself. Objective To compare cervical motions that occur when trained professionals perform the Head Squeeze (HS) and Trap Squeeze (TS) c-spine stabilisation techniques. Design Cross-over. Setting and participants 12 experienced therapists. Assessment HS and TS during lift-and-slide (L&S) and LR placement on spinal board, and agitated patient trying to trying to sit up (AGIT-Sit) or rotate his head (AGIT-Rot). Main outcome measurements Peak head motion with respect to initial conditions using inertial measurement units attached to the forehead and trunk of the simulated patient. Comparisons between HS and TS with a priori minimal important difference (MID) of 5° for flexion or extension, and 3° for rotation or lateral flexion. Results Overall, the L&S technique was statistically superior to the LR technique. The only differences to exceed the MID were extension and rotation during LR (HS>TS). In the AGIT-Sit test scenario, differences in motion exceeded MID (HS>TS) for flexion, rotation and lateral flexion. In the AGIT-Rot scenario, differences in motion exceeded MID for rotation only (HS>TS). There was similar inter-trial variability of motion for HS and TS during L&S and LR, but significantly more variability with HS compared to TS in the agitated patient. Conclusion The L&S is preferable to the LR when possible for minimizing unwanted c-spine motion. There is little overall difference between HS and TS in a cooperative patient. When a patient is confused and trying to move, the HS is much worse than the TS at minimizing c-spine motion.


Tangential flow filtration (TFF), also known as cross flow filtration (CFF), comprises a rising technology in the last decades for the dewatering, isolation, and concentration of products of interest (e.g. biomolecules, metabolites and cells) from bioprocesses. Tangential Flow fitlration consists on the passage of the product feed in parallel to the surface of the filtering element/membrane [1]. The most bioprocesses use surface-active agents to reduce the foam formation, widely known as antifoams, defoamers and defoaming agents among others. These defoaming agents can be of different kinds depending on what they are made of, being silicone antifoams, oil antifoams, and glycol antifoams common examples of them. Usually, the main criteria for the selection of the right antifoam are effectiveness in low amount, biocompatibility and price. Nevertheless, the criteria selection also must take into account the downstream process type to be used, in order to avoid fouling problems and the formation of sub-layers of particles. This would otherwise reduce the filtration yields, having a detrimental impact on the flux (i.e. operation times), the operating costs of production, the cleaning, the maintenance and the optimal design of the filtration unit [2].


The concept of illuminating a silicon photodetector along an edge to increase the light propagation path through the depletion region and thus to increase quantum efficiency at near IR wavelengths is introduced. Quantum efficiency measurements using both a GaAlAs laser and a He–Ne laser are included. These measurements show an improvement in quantum efficiency at λ = 0.83 μm for edge illumination over normal incidence of 75% for a photodiode and of 142% for a MOS capacitor photosensor.


Abstract This study examined whether academics at the University of Nairobi (Kenya) would differ in their support for merit versus equity values in student admission based on their demographic and role structure characteristics. The findings indicated that overall academics gave overwhelming support to the use of merit as the admission criterion in higher education while equity received only slight support. In demographic terms, sex, age and ethnicity were significantly associated with attitudes towards equity. With regard to role structure variables, only disciplinary affiliations of the academics were significantly associated with either merit or equity. Faculty in humanities showed significantly lower support for merit than those in social and natural sciences while those in the social sciences showed significantly higher support for equity. It was concluded that the academics, to a considerable degree, display homogeneity of values that center on support for merit. Furthermore, it was deduced that the sex, age, ethnicity and disciplinary affiliation of academics moderate this support for merit. Policy-wise, the results gave a strong reason for recommending for the continuation of merit-based admissions since most academics would likely reject equity-based admission policies. Additionally, it was suggested that policy initiatives aimed at reducing disparities in higher education should be directed at the qualitative improvement of education at the lower levels in order to provide equality of opportunity in the national examinations.


Ecological memory is central to how ecosystems respond to disturbance and is maintained by two types of legacies – information and material. Species life-history traits represent an adaptive response to disturbance and are an information legacy; in contrast, the abiotic and biotic structures (such as seeds or nutrients) produced by single disturbance events are material legacies. Disturbance characteristics that support or maintain these legacies enhance ecological resilience and maintain a "safe operating space" for ecosystem recovery. However, legacies can be lost or diminished as disturbance regimes and environmental conditions change, generating a "resilience debt" that manifests only after the system is disturbed. Strong effects of ecological memory on post-disturbance dynamics imply that contingencies (effects that cannot be predicted with certainty) of individual disturbances, interactions among disturbances, and climate variability combine to affect ecosystem resilience. We illustrate these concepts and introduce a novel ecosystem resilience framework with examples of forest disturbances, primarily from North America. Identifying legacies that support resilience in a particular ecosystem can help scientists and resource managers anticipate when disturbances may trigger abrupt shifts in forest ecosystems, and when forests are likely to be resilient.


The last few years have witnessed a tremendous change in the geographic location patterns of the Mexican popula- tion in the United States. The rural South represents one of the areas that have seen a noticeable growth in the Mexican population over the last few years. Unfortunately, data necessary to examine the social and economic adjustment of Mexicans in this area are not available at this time. This analysis uses data from the 1990 Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) to examine the earnings patterns bf Mexican-origin workers in the South. The sample used to conduct the analysis includes 9,509 Mexican-origin workers living in the South. For comparative purposes, the analysis is conducted sepa- rately by gender and nativity status. The results of the analysis suggest that nonmetro Mexican workers have lower earnings com- pared to metro Mexican workers even after control variables are taken into account. However, the findings show that nonmetro and metro Mexican workers do not differ significantly on their economic returns to their human capital endowments. The results of this study may serve as a benchmark for future studies that use data from the 2000 decennial census to assess the labor market experiences of Mexican newcomers to the South.


Our case-control studies were the first to report an association between the use of mobile or cordless phones and brain tumors; glioma and acoustic neuroma. Criticism of these results has been based partly on results from the Inter- phone studies conducted under the auspice of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Here, we com- pare study design and epidemiological methods used in our studies and the Interphone studies. We conclude that while our results appear sound and reliable, several of the Interphone findings display differential misclassification of exposure due to observational and recall bias, for example, following low participation rates in both cases and controls and bed-side computer guided interviews of cases rather than blinded interviews of cases and controls. However, as we have presented elsewhere, there seems to be a consistent pattern of an association between mobile phone use and ipsilateral glioma and acoustic neuroma using > 10 years latency period.


A dynamical model for an evolutionary nonantagonistic (nonzero sum) game between two populations is considered. A scheme of a dynamical Nash equilibrium in the class of feedback (discontinuous) controls is proposed. The construction is based on solutions of auxiliary antagonistic (zero-sum) differential games. A method for approximating the corresponding value functions is developed. The method uses approximation schemes for constructing generalized (minimax, viscosity) solutions of first order partial differential equations of Hamilton-Jacobi type. A numerical realization of a grid procedure is described. Questions of convergence of approximate solutions to the generalized one (the value function) are discussed, and estimates of convergence are pointed out. The method provides equilibrium feedbacks in parallel with the value functions. Implementation of grid approximations for feedback control is justified. Coordination of long- and short-term interests of populations and individuals is indicated. A possible relation of the proposed game model to the classical replicator dynamics is outlined.


We have investigated de-reddened spectral line ratios for some 538 planetary nebulae. As a result, it has proved possible to dene comparative variations be- tween diering transitions, evaluate the viability of ra- diative modeling for the generality of nebulae, and assess the importance of shocks in modifying low- excitation line strengths. Whilst most transitions are well represented in terms of radiative excitation, the (OI) 6300 A line ap- pears to be appreciably too strong in most of the present sample; a deviation which may arise through shock inter- action between the primary outflow shell and enveloping superwind material. Comparison between shock modeling and line excesses also suggests that an appreciable propor- tion of (SII)6716=31 A emission may arise through shock excitation; a conclusion which, if conrmed, may have seri- ous consequences for nebular density estimations. Some 14 nebulae are identied as likely shock candidates, whilst it is proposed that the majority of bipolar nebulae may also show spectral deviations associated with shock excitation. Line excesses for these latter sources are most consistent with shock velocities Vs 80) 100 km s 1 ; values which are also comparable to observed wind velocities. Finally, sources containing FLIERs (Balick et al. 1993) are shown to be conned to highly specic spectral regimes; a result which permits us to identify three fur- ther possible FLIER sources, and propose characteristic line ratio diagnostics for the further discovery of such fea- tures.


Abstract Background: Vitamin B12 (vit B12) deficiency is one of the major causes of megaloblastic anaemia and should be avoided as early as possible since a supplementation of mother and child can prevent neurological symptoms of the baby. Furthermore, the neurological symptoms of affected children are (partially) reversible. Elevated methylmalonic acid in urine and homocysteine (Hcy) in plasma are sensitive indicators. In the State of Qatar, extended newborn screening of classical homocystinuria was realized for all 73,994 neonates in last 4.5 years. Newborns with slightly elevated Hcy levels in dried blood spots (DBS) were followed up with regard to possible vit B12 deficiency. In addition, the propionylcarnitine (C3) levels were analysed. Methods: Determination of Hcy in DBS was performed using liquid chromatography electrospray tandem mass spectrometry. C3 levels were obtained from general newborn screening. The vit B12 levels in plasma were analysed spectrophotometrically. Results: In all, 117 cases with mildly elevated Hcy levels were found. 65 were diagnosed with vit B12 deficiency. Only 9 of these 65 newborns had abnormal C3 levels. No correlation was found in this group between Hcy and C3 levels. Conclusion: Extended neonatal screening of Hcy is a useful tool for early diagnosis and treatment of vit B12 deficiency.


Foaming isotactic polypropylene (i-PP) by foam injection molding usually results in inhomogeneous, large cell structures. Possibilities to realize more homogeneous and finer foam morphologies are adjusting processing parameters or adding nucleating agents. Often, inorganic nucleating agents such as talc in concentrations of about 2 wt% are used to influence the foam morphology. This article discusses the use of two benzene trisamide-based nucleating agents to control cell nucleation during foaming of i-PP. These additives form supramolecular nanostructures in the polymer melt acting first as nucleating sites for foam formation and second as nuclei for the polymer crystallization. Foaming was performed by foam injection molding with nitrogen as physical blowing agent. A specially designed variotherm mold technology was utilized to exactly control the foaming temperature, foaming pressure, and expansion ratio. Foamed i-PP samples were prepared with a density reduction of 50% and analyzed with respect to foam structure and mechanical properties. We demonstrate that the benzene trisamide additives have a strong influence on the foam morphology at very low additive concentrations. Only 0.02 wt% of an additive is sufficient to obtain a remarkable reduction of the cell sizes. It appears that the cell struts, those dimensions can be influenced by the additives as well, leads to a significant improvement of the mechanical properties.


Abstract: Activity based costing system (ABC) is, indeed, among the powerful and useful tools to achieve companies' goals in maintaining competitiveness.
The main aim of the present study is "The Improvement of Competitiveness of Samfar Company Using Activity Based Costing System." Due to such items as high proportion of overhead, complexity of production, diversity of production, variation in production volume, and complexity of the primary materials in Samfar Company, the results of this research can be taken into consideration and used by the senior management of this organization, leading to strengthening and enhancement of the company's competitiveness. The statistical population of the current research includes 26 products of Samfar Co.
The researcher has concluded that in technological, technical knowledge, and/or customer standards matters, some of Samfar's products are more complex, taking engineering and R&D department a great deal of time. Moreover, due to the resting of great proportion of organization's overhead upon engineering and R&D department, a greater amount of overhead goes to this group of products in that the findings of the present study have made a significant difference in computational cost of Samfar's products, especially RD02, RD107, and RD120.
In conclusion, the results of the present study are analyzed, using AHP method, and consistency of the judgments are proven.


Building a quantum computer is a formidable challenge. In this thesis, we focus on two projects, which tackle very different aspects of quantum computation, and yet still share a common goal in hopefully getting us closer to implementing a quantum computer on a large scale. The first project involves a numerical error threshold calculation of a quantum error correcting code called a surface code. These are local check codes, which means that only nearest neighbour interaction is required to determine where errors occurred. This is an important advantage over other approaches, as in many physical systems, doing operations on arbitrarily spaced qubits is often very difficult. An error threshold is a measure of how well a given error correcting scheme performs. It gives the experimentalists an idea of which approaches to error correction hold greater promise. We simulate both toric and planar variations of a surface code, and numerically calculate a threshold value of approximately 6.0×10−3, which is comparable to similar calculations done by others [44, 45, 54]. The second project deals with coupling superconducting flux qubits together. It expands the scheme presented in [43] to a three qubit, two coupler scenario. We study L-shaped and line-shaped coupler geometries, and show how the coupling strength changes in terms of the dimensions of the couplers. We explore two cases, the first where the interaction energy between two nearest neighbour qubits is high, while the coupling to the third qubit is as negligible as possible, as well as a case where all the coupling energies are as small as possible. Although only an initial step, a similar scheme can in principle be extended further to implement a lattice required for computation on a surface code.


The causes for the hypercalciuria and diagnostic criteria for the various forms of hypercalciuria were sought in 56 patients with hypercalcemia or nephrolithiasis (Ca stones), by a careful assessment of parathyroid function and calcium metabolism. A study protocol for the evaluation of hypercalciuria, based on a constant liquid synthetic diet, was developed. In 26 cases of primary hyperparathyroidism, characteristic features were: hypercalcemia, high urinary cyclic AMP (cAMP, 8.58+/-3.63 SD mumol/g creatinine; normal, 4.02+/-0.70 mumol/g creatinine), high immunoreactive serum parathyroid hormone (PTH), hypercalciuria, the urinary Ca exceeding absorbed Ca from intestinal tract (Ca(A)), high fasting urinary Ca (0.2 mg/mg creatinine or greater), and low bone density by (125)I photon absorption. The results suggest that hypercalciuria is partly secondary to an excessive skeletal resorption (resorptive hypercalciuria). The 22 cases with renal stones had normocalcemia, hypercalciuria, intestinal hyperabsorption of calcium, normal or low serum PTH and urinary cAMP, normal fasting urinary Ca, and normal bone density. Since their Ca(A) exceeded urinary Ca, the hypercalciuria probably resulted from an intestinal hyperabsorption of Ca (absorptive hypercalciuria). The primacy of intestinal Ca hyperabsorption was confirmed by responses to Ca load and deprivation under a metabolic dietary regimen. During a Ca load of 1,700 mg/day, there was an exaggerated increase in the renal excretion of Ca and a suppression of cAMP excretion. The urinary Ca of 453+/-154 SD mg/day was significantly higher than the control group's 211+/-42 mg/day. The urinary cAMP of 2.26+/-0.56 mumol/g creatinine was significantly lower than in the control group. In contrast, when the intestinal absorption of calcium was limited by cellulose phosphate, the hypercalciuria was corrected and the suppressed renal excretion of cAMP returned towards normal. Two cases with renal stones had normocalcemia, hypercalciuria, and high urinary cAMP or serum PTH. Since Ca(A) was less than urinary Ca, the hypercalciuria may have been secondary to an impaired renal tubular reabsorption of Ca (renal hypercalciuria). Six cases with renal stones had normal values of serum Ca, urinary Ca, urinary cAMP, and serum PTH (normocalciuric nephrolithiasis). Their Ca(A) exceeded urinary Ca, and fasting urinary Ca and bone density were normal. The results support the proposed mechanisms for the hypercalciuria and provide reliable diagnostic criteria for the various forms of hypercalciuria.


Since its inception as a theme park in 1992, and aiming to adjust to a seasonal adjusted demand, Port Aventura had invested heavily in new shows, rides, hotels, golf courses, a convention centre, and a shopping mall. Yet, such evolution from a theme park to a resort had posed new challenges for the executive team of Port Aventura. In particular, whereas as a resort the commercial activity had focused on aggregated statistical information from customers, as a resort they needed to know and target individual customers. However, this new one-to-one marketing focus was not supported by the existing information systems of the company. The case is situated in the mid-2009 when the CEO requests the CFO and the CIO to find a solution that addresses the commercial needs of the resort. The case discussion takes students to discuss and assess the business problems and relate them with the existing information systems. Students will also have to analyze different alternatives for the information systems proposed in the case and develop a deployment plan for the alternative they chose.


Background. Research indicates that academic stressors, living circumstances, working conditions and where students undertake leisure activities affect academic performance, capabilities and achievements (functionings). Objective. To investigate how 1st-year medical and nursing students perceived their own capabilities compared with their actual achievements (functionings). The article focuses on the achievements (functionings), as these students were admitted through a selection process, indicating their potential capability to succeed. Methods. In this descriptive, comparative study, all 1st-year medical and nursing students at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa were invited to complete a validated questionnaire to reflect their capabilities (scope) and achievements (outcomes). The questionnaire incorporated seven domains: happiness, achievements, health, intellect, social relations, environment and integrity. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics (frequencies, medians, means, standard deviations and standard errors). Results. All respondents valued the domains positively with regard to the outcomes (functionings). On average, nursing students valued the domains 17.4% lower than the medical students. Integrity was valued the highest by all. Health scored the lowest in the medical group, and environment (where students study and undertake leisure activities) the lowest in the nursing group. Conclusions. Medical schools should include wellness in their curricula, limit the degree of physical and emotional exhaustion associated with training, and have realistic expectations of students. Programmes should allocate enough time for students to manage their time well to take part in physical activity and eat healthy foods. Nursing students' work environment should improve. More time should be made available for leisure activities and improvement to students' study environment.


This book offers a series of original essays by an international group of scholars whose work looks comparatively at law's attempts to deal with the past. Ranging from questions of criminal responsibility and amnesty to those of law's relation to time,memory, and the ethics of reconciliation, it is a sustained jurisprudential and philosophical analysis of one of the most important and pressing legal concerns of our time. Among its key concerns is that justice's demand on law has changed and, in the face of a divided and violent past, law is being called on to do the kind of work it ordinarily shuns. What this means for conventional understandings of law, as well as for the relation between law and politics in times of transition, is explored through a discussion of experiences from Eastern Europe and Germany, to South Africa, Israel, and Australia. The book thus provides a timely investigation of the nature of law and legal institutions in times of political and social change, and will appeal to a broad international audience including lawyers, political theorists, criminologists, and philosophers.


Like many other assets, housing prices are quite volatile relative to observable changes in fundamentals. If we are going to understand boom-bust housing cycles, we must incorporate housing supply. In this paper, we present a simple model of housing bubbles that predicts that places with more elastic housing supply have fewer and shorter bubbles, with smaller price increases. However, the welfare consequences of bubbles may actually be higher in more elastic places because those places will overbuild more in response to a bubble. The data show that the price run-ups of the 1980s were almost exclusively experienced in cities where housing supply is more inelastic. More elastic places had slightly larger increases in building during that period. Over the past five years, a modest number of more elastic places also experienced large price booms, but as the model suggests, these booms seem to have been quite short. Prices are already moving back towards construction costs in those areas.


The article examines Inner Asia's drug problem, which arose in the nineteenth century during the China's last dynasty, the Manchu Qing (1644-1911). It establishes a relationship between China proper's market system of smokeable opium paste and the spread of that system into Qing Inner Asian territories via the dynasty's own structures of local control. The intention is to geographically and ethnically reorient inquiry regarding the paradigmatic example of drug imperialism in Asia, the British smuggling traffic on the Chinese coast during of the first half of the nineteenth century. Consequently, the focus is on the largely unexamined regions of western China, where opium production, distribution and consumption were carried on exclusively by Chinese and Inner Asian peoples during roughly this same time period. The article focuses on three particular aspects of Chinese prohibition in order to show how opium spread into the empire's western dominions through Qing administrative structures that had arisen as a direct consequence of dynastic expansion from China proper westward into Inner Asia. The first aspect is the imperial system of territorial incorporation which expanded the opium market system, as embodied in the immigrants and penal exiles from China proper, to the Qing northwest Inner Asian frontier territory of Xinjiang. The second aspect is the imperial military system, which maintained a Lhasa garrison whose opium smoking spread the market system to Tibet. The third aspect is the system of interstate diplomacy, which attempted to enlist the cooperation of both tsarist Russia and the khanate of Kokand, which lay directly to the west of Xinjiang, in an ultimately futile attempt to control interstate trafficking in Inner Asia. The article concludes that while Qing civil, penal and military expansion into Tibet and Xinjiang did bring the opium market system to Inner Asia, Qing diplomacy was able to inhibit the regional development of this same system. The multiple crises faced by the dynasty after its defeat in the first Opium War (1839-42), including the complete collapse of its authority in Xinjiang during the 1870's, removed all dynastic limitations on the opium traffic, permitting an unfettered expansion of the market system into regions that are today known as the Golden Crescent and the Golden Triangle, respectively. This regional persistence of the drug traffic is indicative of common weaknesses and contradictions in state control over peoples and territories rather than of any inherent weakness unique to the Chinese dynastic system. DB.


From the earliest days of oral history to brightly illuminated modern times, the vampire myth persists among mankind's deeply rooted fears. This encyclopedia, with entries ranging from "Abchanchu" to "Zmeus," catalogs nearly 600 different species of historical and mythological vampires, fully described and detailed. This is a cultural resource tool as well as literary entertainment.


This paper presents the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task (BRET), an intuitive procedure aimed at measuring risk attitudes. Subjects decide how many boxes to collect out of 100, one of which containing a bomb. Earnings increase linearly with the number of boxes accumulated but are zero if the bomb is also collected. The BRET requires minimal numeracy skills, avoids truncation of the data, allows to precisely estimate both risk aversion and risk seeking, and is not affected by the degree of loss aversion or by violations of the Reduction Axiom. We validate the BRET and test its robustness in a large-scale experiment, although the task can be performed in the field as well. Choices react significantly to the stakes and to the size of the choice set. Our experiment rationalizes the gender gap that often characterizes choices under uncertainty by means of a higher loss rather than risk aversion. JEL Classifications: C81; C91; D81.


For Lucy Jane Bledsoe, wilderness had always been a source of peace. But during one disastrous solo trip in the wintry High Sierra she came face to face with a crisis: the wilderness no longer felt like home. The Ice Cave recounts Bledsoe's wilderness journeys as she recovers her connection with the wild and discovers the meanings of fear and grace. These are Bledsoe's gripping tales of fending off wolves in Alaska, encountering UFOs in the Colorado Desert, and searching for mountain lions in Berkeley. Her memorable story "The Breath of Seals" takes readers to Antarctica, the wildest continent on earth, where she camped out with geologists, biologists, and astrophysicists. These fresh and deeply personal narratives remind us what it means to be simply one member of one species, trying to find food and shelter—and moments of grace—on our planet.


At 4 p.m. on a hazy November afternoon in Rangoon, 1862, a shrouded corpse was escorted by a small group of British soldiers to an anonymous grave in a prison enclosure. As the British Commissioner in charge insisted, 'No vestige should remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Moghuls rests.' Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal Emperor, was a mystic, a talented poet, and a skilled calligrapher. But while Zafar's Mughal ancestors had controlled most of India, the aged Zafar was king in name only. Deprived of real political power by the East India Company, Zafar nevertheless succeeded in creating a court of great brilliance, and presided over one of the great cultural renaissances of Indian history. Then in 1857 Zafar's flourishing capital became the centre of an uprising that reduced his beloved Delhi to a battered, empty ruin. When Zafar gave his blessing to a rebellion among the Company's own Indian troops, it transformed an army mutiny into the largest uprising the British Empire ever had to face. The Siege of Delhi was the Raj's Stalingrad: a fight to the death between two powers, neither of whom could retreat. The Last Mughal is a portrait of the dazzling Delhi Zafar personified, the story of the last days of the great Mughal capital and its final destruction in the catastrophe of 1857. William Dalrymple's powerful retelling of this fateful course of events is shaped from groundbreaking material: previously untranslated Urdu and Persian manuscripts that include Indian eyewitness accounts, and the records of the Delhi courts, police, and administration during the siege. The Last Mughal is an extraordinary revisionist work with clear contemporary echoes. It is the first account to present the Indian perspective on the siege, and has at its heart the stories of the forgotten individuals tragically caught up in one of the bloodiest upheavals in history.


Gold is frequently mined in rainforests that can provide either gold or forest benefits, but not both. This conflict in resource use occurs in Ghana, a developing country in the tropics where the capital needed for mining is obtained from foreign direct investment (FDI). We use a dynamic model to show that an ad valorem severance tax on gross revenue can be used to internalize environmental opportunity costs. The optimal tax must equal the ratio of marginal benefits from forest use to marginal benefits from gold extraction. Furthermore, the tax should increase (decrease) when adjusted net return on all other assets in the economy is higher (lower) than the growth in the price of gold. Empirical results suggest that the 3 per cent tax rate currently used in Ghana is too low to fully represent the external cost of extraction (i.e., lost forest benefits).


Abstract The Jurassic Bokan Mountain complex (BMC), composed of arfvedsonite and/or aegirine-bearing peralkaline A-type granitic rocks, is a circular body about 3 km in diameter located in southeastern Alaska. Like many other highly fractionated granitic bodies, the BMC granites were affected by late magmatic or post-magmatic processes, which, however, did not modify the contents of major elements. The granitic rocks are distinctly enriched in high-field-strength elements (HFSEs), rare earth elements (REEs), Y, Th, and U but depleted in Ba, Sr, and Eu and have high positive ɛNd(T) values. Unlike the variations in the major elements, Sr and Ba, which can be accounted by fractional crystallization, the abundance of REE, Y, HFSE, U, and Th (the elements which are hosted in accessory phases) were modified by F-rich hydrothermal fluids. The BMC hosts significant rare metal mineralization related to the late-stage crystallization history of the complex involving late magmatic and/or post-magmatic fluids. The mineralization includes two types: (1) a U–Th deposit which was exploited at the former Ross-Adams mine and (2) REE and Y mineralization mostly hosted in felsic dikes. Thermodynamic modelling of granites and spatially associated mafic rocks using the programme Rhyolite-MELTS implies that the granites can be derived from the mafic rocks by fractional crystallization. It is suggested that such a process (i.e. derivation of peralkaline granitic magma from the alkali or transitional basaltic magmas derived by partial melting from a lithospheric source metasomatically enriched in rare metals) can be invoked for other peralkaline granitic rocks hosting rare metal deposits.


Tourmaline-supergroup minerals are proposed as efficient indicators of porphyry-style Cu, Au and Sn deposits and therefore are considered as useful for both the prospection and exploration of these important mineral deposits. The tourmaline-supergroup minerals from the porphyry deposits exhibit some general features: (1) sector and oscillatory chemical zoning of crystals; (2) presence in several generations; (3) Fe → Al coupled substitution; (4) evolution from Fe-rich to Mg-rich varieties resulting from sulphide deposition at the late stage; (5) Li concentration ranging from a few to ~30 ppm. On the other hand, there are distinguishing features for tourmalines from different deposits: (1) total Mg content is ~2 apfu for tourmaline in the Cu deposits, 1–2 apfu in the Au deposits, and 0–1 apfu in Sn deposits; (2) maximum Fe tot ~3 apfu (Cu, Sn) and ~5 apfu (Au), (3) maximum F content up to 0.1 apfu (Cu, Au) and up to 0.5 apfu (Sn); (4) Fe 3+ /Fe tot ~0.5–0.8 (Cu, Au) and ~0.2 (Sn).


Abstract As Documentary Photographers increasingly introduce the collaborative and participatory methodologies common to socially engaged art practices into their projects (particularly those that are activist in nature, seeking to catalyse social change agendas and policies through image making and sharing), there is an increased tension between the process of production and the photographic representation that is created. Over the course of the last five years I have utilised these methodologies of co-authorship. This article contextualizes this kind of transdisciplinary work, and examines the ways in which the integration of collaborative strategies and co-authored practice in projects that are explicitly designed to be of benefit to a primary audience (the participants, collaborators and producers) might be usefully disseminated to a secondary audience (the general public, the 'art world', critics etc.) through analysis of my projects Red Light Dark Room; Sex, lives and stereotypes made in Melbourne, Australia, and The King School Portrait Project made in Portland, Oregon, America.


Background: Sexual life is important in the life of a person, i:e. the interaction between male and female. An adequate knowledge of sex helps one to avoid a variety of problems in living, helps prevent sexual dysfunctions among other disorders, adds enjoyment of sex itself, and probably enhances life in numerous other ways. However, modern societies restrict and control the sexual behavior and expression of the young, so that the sex instinct does not prepare young person for a successful sex life. Objective: To identify the difference in perception of the importance of sex education among adolescence between elderly and adolescence. Subjects: The study was carried out in Yogyakarta among elderly (retired person) and adolescence (students in the first year of their undergraduate study). Methods: The study was undertaken using structured questionnaires distributed to subjects selected using simple random sampling. Study design: cross-sectional survey. Statistical analysis: Chi-square technique. Results: The results showed that there was a significant difference between the group of elderly subjects and adolescence according to the perception of the importance of the sex education among adolescence (p<0.05). Conclusions: there is a relationship between age and the perception on the importance of sex education for  adolescence. Key words: sexual education - elderly - adolescence


The common fruit fly, Drosophila, has long been one of the most productive of all laboratory animals. From 1910 to 1940, the centre of Drosophila culture in America was the school of Thomas Hunt Morgan and his students, Alfred Sturtevant and Calvin Bridges. They first created "standard" flies through inbreeding and by organizing a network for exchanging stocks of flies which spread their practices around the world. In "Lords of the Fly", Robert E. Kohler argues that fly laboratories are a special kind of ecological niche in which the wild fruit fly is transformed into an artificial animal with a distinctive natural history. He shows that the fly was essentially a laboratory tool whose startling productivity opened many new lines of genetic research. Kohler also explores the moral economy of the "Drosophilists": the rules for regulating access to research tools, allocating credit for achievements, and transferring authority from one generation of scientists to the next. By closely examining the Drosophilists' culture and customs, Kohler reveals essential features of how experimental scientists do their work.


Cell suppression and audit programs have been used at the Census Bureau for many years for insuring the confidentiality of establishments that contribute data that are used for building economic magnitude data tables. Since the 1987 Economic Census, the suppression programs were based on network flow models which work well for 2D tables but which have some drawbacks for higher dimensional tables. Linear programming (LP) based models now appear to be a practical option for higher dimensional tables and they do not have these same drawbacks. This paper describes work over the last two years in implementing these LP models, as well as some of the mathematical reasons for preferring the LP based models. Practical aspects of these programs are discussed; e.g., calculating capacities, refinement runs, backtracking, linked tables, frozen cells, and rounded data. A description of earlier work is also included, as are goals for future research.


Prepared by the Highway Innovative Technology Evaluation Center (HITEC), a CERF/IIEC Innovation Center. This report describes a HITEC evaluation designed to determine the basic capabilities and limitations of the Terramesh Retaining Wall System for use as a technically viable, mechanically stabilized earth, retaining wall system. The evaluation was conducted based on material, design, construction, performance, and quality assurance mainformation outlined in the HITEC Protocol. The Terramesh System, supplied by Maccaferri, Inc., features a Gabion basket facing of various configurations and metal double-twisted grid type of soil reinforcement, which is manufactured integrally with the basket facing blocks.


Engineering of large-scale metabolic pathways to maximize production of a certain substance or to minimize creation of undesired chemicals require explicit information about the underlying enzyme kinetics. Unfortunately, such information is frequently not available, or when available, it involves uncertainty due to biological variability and to differences in experimental conditions and measurement techniques. In this contribution, we present a computational framework that allows us to characterize the kinetic responses of metabolic network in the presence of uncertainty. The proposed methodology uses Monte Carlo sampling to explore the kinetic data space, and it accounts explicitly for mechanistic properties of enzymes and physico-chemical and thermodynamic constraints. In our bottom-up approach, we start by modeling the kinetic responses of the individual reactions, and then we integrate this mechanistic information with the thermodynamically feasible pairs of substrate and product concentrations to build a population of all biochemically and thermodynamically meaningful models of the metabolic network. In the integration procedure, we exploit the fact that the control coefficients computed for a kinetic mechanism are the elasticities of the enclosing reaction of a metabolic network. The employed sampling method benefits from the specific structure of the underlying constraints and its effectiveness allows implementing the proposed methodology for modeling of large-scale metabolic networks. We demonstrate the properties of the proposed framework through a case study for the identification of rate limiting steps in the central carbon pathway in S. cerevisiae.


Introduction: The initiation of sexual activity in early age, the increasing percentages of teenage pregnancies, the abortions, the HIV/AIDS infection and he Sexual Transmitted Diseases (STD's) are some of the factors that have a negative effect on young people's sexual health in contemporary years (UNAIDS, 2004). Sexual and reproductive health is affected and formed through specific cultural frameworks, such as religion and family. Aim: The aim of this article is the review of the data in Greece and in Cyprus, in relation to sexual and reproductive health and education, in the bases of the European Union policies on this matter. Methodology: The methodology included the review of research studies and documents referring to the Greek and Cypriot data, related to the sexual and reproductive health and education through the European Union policy. Methods were based on literature review in the data bases of MEDLINE and CINAHL (1990-2009). Conclusion: The recent methodology of health education does not aim to the plain acquire of knowledge, but it aims to the development of skills intending to the adoption of positive behavior, which advocates and promotes health through the active and synergic learning and experiences. Educators and health professionals through teaching and daily practice have the opportunity to transfer knowledge and reform attitudes and behaviors relatively to the sexual and reproductive health. Both in Greece and in Cyprus, students in secondary education are taught different aspects of sexuality education in the context of their school programs. The European Parliament and the European Council have passed several directives highlighting the necessity of sexuality education, underlying a wide field of knowledge and learning.


We have investigated the effect of cohesion and drag models on the bed hydrodynamics of Geldart A particles based on the two-fluid (TF) model. For a high gas velocity U0 = 0.03 m/s, we found a transition from the homogeneous fluidization to bubbling fluidization with an increase of the coefficient C1, which is used to account for the contribution of cohesion to the excess compressibility. Thus cohesion can play a role in the bed expansion of Geldart A particles. Apart from cohesion, we have also investigated the influence of the drag models. When using the Wen and Yu drag correlation with an exponent n = 4.65, we find an under-prediction of the bed expansion at low gas velocities (U0 = 0.009 m/s). When using a larger exponent (n = 9.6), as reported in experimental studies of gas-fluidization, a much better agreement with the experimental bed expansion is obtained. These findings suggest that at low gas velocity, a scale-down of the commonly used drag model is required. On the other hand, a scale-up of the commonly used drag model is necessary at high gas velocity (U0 = 0.2 and 0.06 m/s). We therefore conclude that scaling the drag force represent only an ad hoc way of repairing the deficiencies of the TF model, and that a far more detailed study is required into the origin of the failure of the TF model for simulating fluidized beds of fine powders.


The skyline operator has received considerable attention from the database community, due to its importance in many applications including multicriteria decision making, preference answering, and so forth. In many applications where uncertain data are inherently exist, i.e., data collected from different sources in distributed locations are usually with imprecise measurements, and thus exhibit kind of uncertainty. Taking into account the network delay and economic cost associated with sharing and communicating large amounts of distributed data over an internet, an important problem in this scenario is to retrieve the global skyline tuples from all the distributed local sites with minimum communication cost. Based on the well-known notation of the probabilistic skyline query over centralized uncertain data, in this paper, we propose the notation of distributed skyline queries over uncertain data. Furthermore, two communication- and computation-efficient algorithms are proposed to retrieve the qualified skylines from distributed local sites. Extensive experiments have been conducted to verify the efficiency, the effectiveness and the progressiveness of our algorithms with both the synthetic and real data sets.


Climbing beans are vines that can be grown in either monoculture using wooden or bamboo trellises or in intercropping with other support crops such as maize, but in either case an important characteristic of climbing beans is their vegetative vigor and climbing ability. A range of climbing bean architecture exists; some are extremely vigorous producing more biomass at the top of the plant (type IVb), while others distribute biomass more uniformly across their the length of their vines (type IVa). Different types are selected by farmers in given situations, depending on climate, cropping system, harvesting method and growing period. Few studies have analyzed the inheritance of climbing ability in common bean or analyzed the interaction of this trait with soil fertility levels. Information about climbing ability and its component traits could be used by plant breeders to develop climbing bean ideotypes for different production
systems. Therefore one of our research objectives has been to develop methods to analyze climbing bean growth and apply these to genetic mapping populations. In this research we analyzed a population of recombinant inbred lines derived from the cross of a climbing bean, G2333, by a bush bean, G19839, grown under high and low phosphorus treatments, for traits involved with climbing ability.


Two dams built in the 1920's and 1940's within southern California coastal drainages have reached the end of their useful lives, and their decommissioning and removal is being actively considered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Both projects have the potential to replenish downcoast eroded beaches through the release of stored sediments and the re-establishment of natural sediment transport regimes. The removal of these dams are complicated by the disposition of stored sediments, which if released above background levels, could adversely affect downstream properties on adjacent floodplains, as well as sensitive species which occupy coastal wetlands at the mouths of both stream systems. Re-establishment of natural sediment transport from inland sources to coastal areas is receiving increasingly serious consideration in comprehensive coastal shoreline management programs, and offers an alternative to shoreline armoring and artificial beach nourishment programs.


-The Internet consists of rapidly increasing number of hosts interconnected by constantly evolving networks of links and routers. Interdomain routing in the Internet is coordinated by the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP allows each autonomous system (AS) to choose its own administrative policy in selecting routes and propagating reachability information to others. These routing policies are constrained by the contractual commercial agreements between administrative domains. For example, an AS sets its policy so that it does not provide transit services between its providers. Such policies imply that AS relationships are an important aspect of Internet structure. We propose an augmented AS graph representation that classifies AS relationships into customer-provider, peering, and sibling relationships. We classify the types of routes that can appear in BGP routing tables based on the relationships between the ASs in the path and present heuristic algorithms that infer AS relationships from BGP routing tables. The algorithms are tested on publicly available BGP routing tables. We verify our inference results with AT&T internal information on its relationship with neighboring ASs. As much as 99.1% of our inference results are confirmed by the AT&T internal information. We also verify our inferred sibling relationships with the information acquired from the WHOIS lookup service. More "lhan half of our inferred sibling-to-sibling relationships are conf~rmed by the WHOIS lookup service. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no publicly available information about AS relationships and this is the first attempt in understanding and inferring AS relationships in the Internet. We show evidence that some routing table entries stem from router misconfigurations.


Regulation is essential to health systems and is central to advancing equity-oriented policy objectives in health. Regulating new medical specialties is an emerging, yet underexplored, aspect of health sector governance in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), such as India. Limited research exists regarding how regulatory institutions in India decide what specialties should be formally recognized and how training programmes for these specialties should be organized. Understanding these regulatory functions provides a lens into how policymakers envision the role of these specialties in the broader health system and how they view the linkages between medical education, health system needs and equity. Drawing upon the recent development of emergency medicine in India, the goal of this study was to understand how recognition and training for new medical specialties are regulated in India. Building on previous frameworks, we examined the institutions, functions, enforcement, mechanisms and institutional relationships that make up the regulatory architecture, and situated our analysis in historical context. Two data sources were iteratively utilized: document review (n = 93) and in-depth interviews (n = 87). Our analysis reveals a plurality of institutions involved in regulating recognition and training for new medical specialties in India, characterized by a lack of coordination, limited collaboration and weak accountability. We also found an absence of clear responsibility for the systematic, planned development of specialties, particularly in terms of health system in strengthening and achieving health equity. As medical specialization continues to shape health systems in LMICs, further streamlining and coordination in the regulatory system will enable policymakers, researchers, practitioners and civil society to proactively plan for how these specialties can better integrate with health systems, and to advance their contribution to improving health outcomes.


Recent years have seen a revival of interest in extending ML's predicative type inference system with impredicative quantification in the style of System F, for which type inference is undecidable. This paper suggests a modest extension of ML with System F types: the heart of the idea is to extend the language of types with unary universal and existential quantifiers. The introduction and elimination of a quantified type is never inferred but indicated explicitly by the programmer by supplying the quantified type itself. Quantified types co-exist with ordinary ML schemes, which are in turn implicitly introduced and eliminated at let-bindings and use sites, respectively. The resulting language, QML, does not impose any restriction on instantiating quantified variables with quantified types; neither let- nor λ-bound variables ever require a type annotation, even if the variable's inferred scheme or type involves quantified types. This proposal, albeit more verbose in terms of annotations than others, is simple to specify, implement, understand, and formalize.


Stem cell research has sparked controversy and heated debate since the first human stem cell line was derived in 1998. Too frequently these debates devolve to simple judgments-good or bad, life-saving medicine or bioethical nightmare, symbol of human ingenuity or our fall from grace-ignoring the people affected. With this book, Ruha Benjamin moves the terms of debate to focus on the shifting relationship between science and society, on the people who benefit-or don't-from regenerative medicine and what this says about our democratic commitments to an equitable society. People's Science uncovers the tension between scientific innovation and social equality, taking the reader inside California's 2004 stem cell initiative, the first of many state referenda on scientific research, to consider the lives it has affected. Benjamin reveals the promise and peril of public participation in science, illuminating issues of race, disability, gender, and socio-economic class that serve to define certain groups as more or less deserving in their political aims and biomedical hopes. Under the shadow of the free market and in a nation still at odds with universal healthcare, the socially marginalized are often eagerly embraced as test-subjects, yet often are unable to afford new medicines and treatment regimes as patients. Ultimately, Ruha Benjamin argues that without more deliberate consideration about how scientific initiatives can and should reflect a wider array of social concerns, stem cell research- from African Americans' struggle with sickle cell treatment to the recruitment of women as tissue donors-still risks excluding many. Even as regenerative medicine is described as a participatory science for the people, Benjamin asks us to consider if "the people" ultimately reflects our democratic ideals.


My mom's recent death left behind a heartbroken daughter who could not fathom the huge vacancy in her life—amidst a societal expectation that one can rapidly move on. Instead of my grieving process tidily expiring shortly after the funeral, I was saturating myself in her: wearing her clothing, jewelry, boots, purses, scent; driving her car; and embarking on multiple related research projects. My actions seemed intuitive and natural, yet I felt overwhelmed in an autobiographical silo. I decided to explore what other people actually do and "why". I developed a cultural probe—sending it through social media, receiving myriad responses that spanned generations, cultures, circumstances of death and time-elapsed since death. This study captures the rituals, activities, artifacts and interactions that people create to keep their loved one's memory alive. These stories are especially poignant since no one is left untouched.


The creation of a field-controlled variation of the index of refraction in a liquid crystal cell has been analyzed and experimentally verified. To obtain a spherical lens utilizing a simple electrode structure and capable of focusing arbitrary incoming polarizations requires four flat nematic liquid crystal cells. With electrodes fabricated well within the current capability of photolithography, near diffraction-limited performance in terms of the optical transfer function is predicted. The focusing capability of a liquid crystal lens was demonstrated using a single cell with linear transparent electrodes. A plano-convex cylindrical lens for a single incoming polarization was thus created. While the cell had a crude electrode structure, it affirmed all the major qualitative predictions. The fringing along the edge of the electrodes required for eventually obtaining near diffraction-limited performance was observed.


This paper presents three applied analysis. Our principal interest is to understand how meso (university level) and macro (national level) contexts interact with micro phenomena such as students' careers. To achieve this aim, the paper shows a secondary analysis of longitudinal administrative data by means of Sequence Analysis and Event History Models. Furthermore, it shows the results of an additional analysis using a quasi-experimental research on longitudinal data.
The paper examines typical pathways of Italian students, by means of administrative information's on student enrollment from Sapienza University of Rome. The aim of this paper is triple: 1. describe students' careers in higher education by building a typology of pathways using Sequence Analysis. 2. Identify how socio-economic and macro level characteristics affect students' careers by multinomial logistic regression model where clusters are used as dependent variables and focus on the study of the "event" by using Event History analysis. 3. Evaluate the Italian Higher Education reform policies and their main outcomes throughout a quasi-experimental research.
Mainly, the outcomes show the importance of the warming-up period, the individual choice and the exogenous events after enrolment in determining the success/failure of each career. Our outcomes suggest that Italian universities should rethink the mechanisms available to manage failure and guide student choices.


As a result of the collapse of a 140 foot high-mast lighting tower in Sioux City, Iowa in November of 2003, a thorough investigation into the behavior and design of these tall, yet relatively flexible structures was undertaken. Extensive work regarding the root cause of this failure was carried out by Robert Dexter of The University of Minnesota. Furthermore, a statewide inspection of all the high-mast towers in Iowa revealed fatigue cracks and loose anchor bolts on other existing structures. The current study was proposed to examine the static and dynamic behavior of a variety of towers in the State of Iowa utilizing field testing, specifically long-term monitoring and load testing. This report presents the results and conclusions from this project. The field work for this project was divided into two phases. Phase 1 of the project was conducted in October 2004 and focused on the dynamic properties of ten different towers in Clear Lake, Ames, and Des Moines, Iowa. Of those ten, two were also instrumented to obtain stress distributions at various details and were included in a 12 month long-term monitoring study. Phase 2 of this investigation was conducted in May of 2005, in Sioux City, Iowa, and focused on determining the static and dynamic behavior of a tower similar to the one that collapsed in November 2003. Identical tests were performed on a similar tower which was retrofitted with a more substantial replacement bottom section in order to assess the effect of the retrofit. A third tower with different details was dynamically load tested to determine its dynamic characteristics, similar to the Phase 1 testing. Based on the dynamic load tests, the modal frequencies of the towers fall within the same range. Also, the damping ratios are significantly lower in the higher modes than the values suggested in the AASHTO and CAN/CSA specifications. The comparatively higher damping ratios in the first mode may be due to aerodynamic damping. These low damping ratios in combination with poor fatigue details contribute to the accumulation of a large number of damage-causing cycles. As predicted, the stresses in the original Sioux City tower are much greater than the stresses in the retrofitted towers at Sioux City. Additionally, it was found that poor installation practices which often lead to loose anchor bolts and out-of-level leveling nuts can cause high localized stresses in the towers, which can accelerate fatigue damage.


A study of 658 consecutive psychiatric outpatients receiving careful medical and biochemical evaluation, defined an incidence of medical disorders productive of psychiatric symptoms in 9.1% of cases. The most frequent presentations were of depression, confusion, anxiety, and speech or memory disorders. The presence of visual hallucinations was believed to indicate medical etiology until proved otherwise. Major illnesses presenting with psychiatric symptoms in order of frequency were infectious, pulmonary, thyroid, diabetic, hematopoietic, hepatic and CNS diseases. Forty-six percent of these patients suffered from medical illnesses previously unknown to either them or their physician. A plea is made for careful medical evaluation of psychiatric patients.


Marine ferromanganese oxide crusts (Fe–Mn crusts) are potentially important metal resources formed on the seafloor by precipitation of dissolved and colloidal components from ambient seawater onto rocky surfaces. The unique properties and slow growth rates of the crusts
promote adsorption of numerous elements from seawater: some, such as Te and Co, reach concentrations rarely encountered elsewhere in nature. Consequently, Fe–Mn crusts are potential sources of metals used in technologies
considered essential for the transition to a low-carbon economy. However, the precise distributions and metal concentrations of Fe–Mn crusts at regional and local scales are poorly constrained because of the diversity of geological, oceanographic and chemical processes involved in their formation.


Neonatal sepsis and chorioamnionitis induce morphologic modifications and shrinkage of the thymus. We show fetal and neonatal morphologic modifications of the spleen in the same autopsy subjects as previously used to describe thymus shrinkage, including 10 preterm or full-term neonates who died of proven sepsis within 48 hours after birth and 20 fetuses spontaneously aborted because of extensive ascending chorioamnionitis. Control subjects included 10 fetuses from induced termination of pregnancy and 10 neonates who died suddenly during the perinatal period without evidence of chorioamnionitis. Spleen cell populations were studied by means of immunohistochemical analysis. Neonatal sepsis occurred with severe spleen depletion, involving both B and T lymphocytes (P < .001). Fetuses with chorioamnionitis also showed spleen cell depletion. These observations, to our knowledge not described before, indicate that preterm and term neonates show an inflammatory reaction similar to that of adult patients and that severe chorioamnionitis is associated with a nonspecific inflammatory response comparable to that of sepsis.


The equity premium of interest in theoretical models is the extra return investors anticipate when purchasing risky stock instead of risk-free debt. Unfortunately, we do not observe this ex ante premium in the data; we only observe the returns that investors actually receive ex post, after they purchase the stock and hold it over some period of time during which random economic shocks affect prices. Over the past century U.S. stocks have returned roughly 6 percent more than risk-free debt, which is higher than warranted by standard economic theory; hence the "equity premium puzzle." In this paper we devise a method to simulate the distribution from which ex post equity premia are drawn, conditional on various assumptions about investors' ex ante equity premium. Comparing statistics that arise from our simulations with key financial characteristics of the U.S. economy, including dividend yields, Sharpe ratios, and interest rates, suggests a much narrower range of plausible equity premia than has been supported to date. Our results imply that the true ex ante equity premium likely lies very close to 4 percent.


With the uncertainty of market environment and variety of customer requirements, an increasing number of organizations are implementing Information Systems(IS) to improve their competitive advantage, and large amounts of firms' annual revenues are invested in Information Technology (IT) resources each year. However, research findings determining the impacts of IT on firm performance reveal conflicting results, which leads to an "IT productivity paradox". Drawing upon Resource Based View(RBV) and Knowledge Based View(KBV), this paper analyzes the important role that a Chief Information Officer (CIO) has in IS implementation and deployment, and proposes a conceptual model to examine the moderating effect of CIO's competence on IT investment and organization performance. By analyzing the existing managerial competence framework, CIO's competence has been reconceptualised and divided into six sub-dimensions. The moderating effect of each competence has been illustrated and six hypotheses have correspondingly been established. It is proposed that a research methodology encompassing open and closed ended question surveys will be pursued to examine the model, and their theoretical and practical implications are discussed. The main contribution of this research paper is the re conceptualization of a CIO's competence and a theoretical conceptual model based on RBV and KBV to explain the phenomenon of "IT productivity paradox".


End Stage Renal Disease affects many people in the world. There are three methods of renal replacement therapy available to patients: Continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis, haemodialysis and transplantation. Transplantation is the most viable and cost effective form of renal replacement therapy that is available for these patients. There are 3 factors required to help ensure a successful renal transplantation program: A well legislated donor and recipient program, Human Leukocyte Antigen testing (pre and post transplant), as well as a post transplant follow up program. Keywords: Renal Transplant; South Asia; Nepal; Human Leukocyte Antigen DOI: 10.3126/jpn.v1i1.4453 Journal of Pathology of Nepal (2011) Vol.1, 52-55


The connecting link between the baseband unit (BBU) and the remote radio unit (RRU), in a centralised radio access network (C-RAN), is the fronthaul, which is the topic of this chapter. The fronthaul is presented as a key disruptive technology, vital to the realisation of 5G networks, but one with stringent requirements in terms of capacity, latency, jitter, and synchronisation. This chapter explains the fronthaul paradigm and presents an overview of legacy and new solutions in backhauling/fronthauling with critical analysis of respective advantages and limitations. In view of the debilitating expectations of 5G fronthaul performance, hybrid RAN architectures are also explored and analysed from their respective RAN gain and fronthaul requirements, leading to promising alternative RAN functional splits and innovations in X-hauling. The chapter delves into the (centralised) C-RAN/fronthaul versus (distributed) D-RAN/backhaul dilemma, offering a joint backhaul/RAN perspective and tangible trade-off analysis of the available options. The study advocates the need for a fronthaul architecture that is dynamic, adaptable, flexible, and expandable. To this end, a key catalyst to the realisation of the 5G fronthaul is equipping the network with self-optimisation and organisation (SON) capabilities that would timely adapt the network following the dynamically changing conditions. In this context, SON operation in the fronthaul becomes essential for optimisation objectives such as energy efficiency, latency reduction, or load balancing. Moreover, the SON-enabled joint RAN/fronthaul optimisation has a pivotal role in adjusting the level of centralisation according to the fronthaul capabilities and vice-versa.


This article defi nes Twitter TM ; outlines the features, affordances, and common uses; and conceptualizes "tweeting" as a literacy practice, comprising both traditional and new literacies, and impacting both informal and formal learning settings. Also provided is an overview of traditional and new literacies, and insights from a scan of the research literature to date on tweeting as a literacy practice. The authors outline areas for inquiry and the challenges to conducting such research.


Aqueous colloidal dispersions of silica particles become anisotropic when they are dried through evaporation. This anisotropy is generated by a uniaxial strain of the liquid dispersions as they are compressed by the flow of water toward a solidification front. Part of the strain produced by the compression is relaxed, and part of it is stored and transferred to the solid. This stored elastic strain has consequences for the properties of the solid, where it may facilitate the growth of shear bands, and generate birefringence.


The study mainly deals with the information need and seeking behavior of diabetic patients of the city areas of Rajshahi in Bangladesh. Information on diabetic patients was collected from the 105 diabetic patients from the surveyed areas through questionnaire and personal interviews. It is observed that most of the patients had been recently suffering from diabetes between 0 to 5 years. They consulted with physicians at diabetic center once in 2 months. Moreover, it was seen that the importance on controlling diabetes of the respondents was extremely high and all of them are needed diabetes control related information. Besides, the majority of the respondents believed that information on physical exercise was extremely required. The paper finds that maximum patients treat regular consultation with the physicians as very reliable in order to control the diabetes for a healthy life. This paper also revealed that printed format of publication in Bangla medium was mostly preferred as source of information due to low level education of respondents. Furthermore, while asking about the satisfaction level of sought information, most of them mentioned that they were satisfied.


Background Two-dimensional frontal plane knee projection angle (FPKPA) has been used to assess dynamic knee alignment during single leg squat in athletes with patellofemoral pain and to screen athletes who are at risk for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. The Dynamic Taping (DT) could be used in motor control training to decrease load of lower limbs muscles and improve movement pattern. Objective Compare FPKPA before and after the application of dynamic taping in female volleyball athletes. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting The FPKPA was used to measure knee medial motion. The ICC was 0.90 and the standard error of measurement (SEM) was 1.65°. All these measurements were performed at Minas Tenis Clube. Patients (or Participants) 18 female volleyball players participated in this study; the mean for age was 19.44±4.48 years; body mass, 72.28±8.20 kg; and height 182.67±7.63 cm. Interventions (or Assessment of Risk Factors) A spiral DT(double-layer /Powerband) technique was placed with the hip in 40° abduction, 20° extension and full available external rotation, aiming to resist hip adduction, flexion and internal rotation. The tape was applied by the same professional stretching until resistance begins such that increasing resistance would be created with any movement towards adduction, internal rotation and flexion thereby creating a deceleration force. Main Outcome Measurements The FPKPA was recorded during single leg squat until 80° knee flexion before and after the Dynamic Taping(R) application. Results 10 of 18 athletes had high FPKPA (>8o) and the T-test revealed statistical difference pre and post DT (p<0,0001). Pre DT Mean of FPKPA was 10.5o and Post DT mean was 5.4o. Conclusions This study has shown the DT application decreased FPKPA during single leg squat in female volleyball athletes. This approach could be an important tool to enhance movement quality and prevent knee injuries.


PURPOSE
To retrospectively evaluate the accuracy of endorectal magnetic resonance (MR) imaging in the detection and local staging of transition zone prostate cancers, with pathologic analysis serving as the reference standard, and to assess MR imaging features of these cancers.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The institutional review board approved this HIPAA-compliant retrospective study and waived the informed consent requirement. An institutional database of 986 patients who underwent MR imaging before radical prostatectomy yielded 148 consecutive patients with at least one transition zone cancer at step-section pathologic analysis. An additional 46 patients without transition zone cancer were randomly selected as a control group. Two readers independently reviewed MR studies to identify patients with transition zone cancers and determine the location and local extent of these cancers. Imaging features that helped in the identification of transition zone cancers were recorded. Descriptive and kappa statistics, as well as receiver operating characteristic and multivariate logistic regression analyses, were used.

RESULTS
For identification of patients with transition zone cancers, sensitivity and specificity were 75% and 87%, respectively, for reader 1 and 80% and 78%, respectively, for reader 2. Interreader agreement was fair. For detection of the location of transition zone cancer, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.75 for reader 1 and 0.73 for reader 2. Interreader agreement was fair. The readers' accuracy in detecting transition zone cancer foci increased significantly (P=.001) as tumor volume increased. In the detection of extraprostatic extension of transition zone cancers, sensitivity and specificity were 56% and 94%, respectively, for reader 1 and 28% and 93%, respectively, for reader 2. Homogeneous low T2 signal intensity (P=.001 for reader 1, P<.001 for reader 2) and lenticular shape (P=.017 for reader 1) were significantly associated with the presence of transition zone cancer.

CONCLUSION
MR imaging can be used to detect, localize, and stage transition zone prostate cancers.


The Handbook of Composites From Renewable Materials comprises a set of 8 individual volumes that brings an interdisciplinary perspective to accomplish a more detailed understanding of the interplay between the synthesis, structure, characterization, processing, applications and performance of these advanced materials. The handbook covers a multitude of natural polymers/ reinforcement/ fillers and biodegradable materials. Together, the 8 volumes total at least 5000 pages and offers a unique publication. This 6th volume Handbook is solely focused on Polymeric Composites. Some of the important topics include but not limited to: Keratin as renewable material for developing polymer composites; natural and synthetic matrices; hydrogels in tissue engineering; smart hydrogels: application in bioethanol production; principle renewable biopolymers; application of hydrogel biocomposites for multiple drug delivery; nontoxic holographic materials; bioplasticizer epoxidized vegetable oils-based poly (lactic acid) blends and nanocomposites; preparation, characterization and adsorption properties of poly (DMAEA) – cross-linked starch gel copolymer in waste water treatments; study of chitosan crosslinking hydrogels for absorption of antifungal drugs using molecular modelling; pharmaceutical delivery systems composed of chitosan; eco-friendly polymers for food packaging; influence of surface modification on the thermal stability and percentage of crystallinity of natural abaca fiber; influence of the use of natural fibers in composite materials assessed on a life cycle perspective; plant polysaccharides-blended ionotropically-gelled alginate multiple-unit systems for sustained drug release; vegetable oil based polymer composites; applications of chitosan derivatives in wastewater treatment; novel lignin-based materials as a products for various applications; biopolymers from renewable resources and thermoplastic starch matrix as polymer units of multi-component polymer systems for advanced applications; chitosan composites: preparation and applications in removing water pollutants and recent advancements in biopolymer composites for addressing environmental issues.


We hear the melody in music, but we feel the beat. We demonstrate that the perception of musical rhythm is a multisensory experience in infancy. In particular, movement of the body, by bouncing on every second versus every third beat of an ambiguous auditory rhythm pattern, influences whether that auditory rhythm pattern is encoded in duple form (a march) or in triple form (a waltz). Visual information is not necessary for the effect, indicating that it likely reflects a strong, early-developing interaction between auditory and vestibular information in the human nervous system.


Purpose: The present article aims to analyse the relationship between the stress experienced by the employees of knowledge-based organizations and the desire to demonstrate prosocial organizational behaviours, which are fundamental for knowledge sharing, as well as to examine the mediating effect of the organizational climate on that relationship. Design/methodology/approach: An empirical, quantitative study was conducted among a sizable sample of knowledge workers (N=677) employed in over 150 knowledge-based organizations operating in Poland, which is the country with a strong knowledge-based economy. Two psychometric questionnaires and one author's own questionnaire were used. To verify the hypotheses, multiple linear regression and mediation with bootstrapping analyses were conducted. Findings: The results of statistical analyses demonstrated that there is a negative correlation between the level of occupational stress and engagement in prosocial behaviours. Also, this relationship is fully mediated by an assessment of the organizational climate, especially the quality of communication, relations with colleagues and work organization. Practical implications: The research results provide pragmatic guidelines for management practices in knowledge-based organizations, ones that may contribute to increasing prosocial organizational behaviours as a basis for information and knowledge exchange in the knowledge-based economy. It is particularly important to ensure the reduction of stress level; it is also vital to improve communication and relations between personnel and to make the organization and control of work more flexible. Originality/value: This research significantly expands the literature on prosocial organizational behaviours, organizational climate and occupational stress, which is of a great importance in the knowledge-based economy. Moreover, the results show that, despite other research, there are organizational factors more significant than management style and approach, which are crucial for performing prosocial organizational behaviours.


Author(s): Kouki, Pigi | Advisor(s): Getoor, Lise | Abstract: There is an ever-increasing amount of richly-structured data from online social media. Making effective use of such data for recommendations and decisions requires methods capable of extracting knowledge both from the content as well as the structure of such networks. Utilizing richly-structured networks derived from real-world data involves three major challenges that I address in this dissertation: 1) matching multiple references that correspond to the same entity (a problem known as entity resolution),2) exploiting the heterogeneous nature of the data to provide accurate recommendations, and, given the complexity and heterogeneity of the data, 3) explaining the recommendations to users. My goal in this work is to address these challenges and improve both accuracy and user experience for resolution and recommendation over richly-structured social data.In the first part of this work, I introduce a collective approach for the problem of entity resolution in familial networks that can incorporate statistical signals, relational information, logical constraints, and predictions from other algorithms. Moreover, the method is capable of using training data to learn the weight of different similarity scores and relational features. In experiments on real-world data, I show the importance of supporting mutual exclusion and different types of transitive relational rules that can model the complex familial relationships. Furthermore, I show the performance improvements in the ER task of the collective model compared to state-of-the-art models that use relational features but lack the ability to perform collective reasoning. In the second part of this work, I present a general-purpose, extensible hybrid recommender system that can incorporate and reason over a wide range of social data sources. Such sources include multiple user-user and item-item similarity measures, content, and social information. Additionally, the framework automatically learns to balance these different information signals when making predictions. I experimentally evaluate my approach on two popular recommendation datasets, showing that the proposed framework can effectively combine multiple information types for improved performance, and can significantly outperform existing state-of-the-art approaches.In the third part of this work, I show how to generate personalized, hybrid explanations from the output of a hybrid recommender system. Next, I conduct two large crowd-sourced user studies to explore different ways explanations can be presented to the users: a non-personalized and a personalized. In the first, non-personalized study, I evaluate explanations for hybrid algorithms in a variety of textual and visual formats. I find that people do not have a specific preference among different versions of textual formats. At the same time, my analysis indicates that among a variety of visualization formats people prefer Venn diagrams. In the second, personalized study, I ask users to evaluate the persuasiveness of different explanation styles and find that users prefer item-based and content-based styles over socio-based explanations. I also study whether the number of the explanation styles can affect the persuasiveness of the explanation. My analysis indicates that users lose interest after showing them three to four different explanation styles. Finally, I experiment with a variety of formats that hybrid explanations can be presented to the users, such as textual or visual, and find that textual explanations are perceived as most persuasive. I formulate the problems of entity resolution, recommendation, and explanation as inference in a graphical model. To create my models and reason over the graphs, I build upon a statistical relational learning framework called probabilistic soft logic. My models, which allow for scalable, collective inference, show an improved performance over state-of-the-art methods by leveraging richly-structured data, i.e., relational features (such as user similarities), complex relationships (such as mutual exclusion), a variety of similarity measures, as well as other heterogenous data sources (such as predictions from other algorithms).


Young, dense forest in Finland and Sweden urgently need to receive first thinning. In such stands, conventional selective thinning methods make the harvester work time consuming and, thus, costly. To make small-sized trees economically competitive as raw material for bioenergy and biorefining, new harvesting technologies and/or thinning methods need to be developed. A potential solution is boom-corridor thinning (BCT), rendering effective cutting work. The aim of this study was to describe and compare the stand structure of two Scots pine stands ( L.) and one birch-dominated ( Roth with natural downy birch, Ehrh.) stand after BCT and selective thinning at the first thinning phase. Furthermore, simulations were conducted to predict the future stand development after the first thinning treatments. The density of the growing stock was 16–46% higher after BCT treatment than after selective thinning because BCT stands included more small and supressed trees with a dbh < 100 mm. However, the numbers of future crop trees with a dbh > 140 mm per hectare were at the same level in both treatments. The stem volume removal per hectare did not differ between treatments. However, simulation of stand development and intermediate thinning and clearcutting revealed that the total removal volume was 10–18% higher in BCT stands compared to selectively thinned ones. The saw log volumes harvested did, however, not differ between treatments. This study shows that BCT generates stands with higher biodiversity compared to conventional thinning as higher levels of biomass removal can be reached throughout stand rotations.Pinus sylvestrisBetula pendulaB. pubescens


In the near future, we envision sensor networks to transport high bandwidth, low latency streaming data from a variety of sources, such as cameras and microphones. Sensor networks will be called upon to perform sophisticated in-network processing such as image fusion and object tracking. It is not too difficult to imagine that computational capabilities of network nodes will scale up relative to the fairly limited resources of current motes. However, it is likely that energy will continue to remain a constrained resource in such futuristic sensor networks. Recently, there have been proposals for middleware that provide capabilities for higher-level in-network processing while minimizing energy drain on the network. In this work, we analyze the interplay between resource requirements for computeand communication-intensive in-network processing and resultant implications on figures of merit of interest to an application including latency, throughput, and lifetime. We use a surveillance application workload along with middleware capabilities for data fusion, role migration (simple relaying versus in-network processing), and prefetching. Through a simulation-based study, we shed light on the impact of device characteristics such as CPU speed and radio features on application figures of merit. We show, in the presence of prefetching, that increasing radio bandwidth may not improve latency nor throughput for compute-intensive workloads and may actually decrease productivity of the network. We show that cost function directed migration can significantly extend application lifetime in sensor networks with topologies two orders of magnitude larger than previous studies. We also show that a simple minded cost function may not be sufficient to guide migration decisions in the middleware.


For the Chicago White Sox, revenues are as unpredictable as next week's scores. Every company's fortunes can be affected by a variety of unanticipated factors, such as weather, buying trends and national or international economic conditions. In professional sports, the variables can be particularly unpredictable. A winning player with a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract might bring in sellout crowds one season and go into a slump the next, taking attendance figures with him. A team's revenues can surge or sag depending on how well it plays and how loyal the fans remain during losing streaks. "The baseball business isn't just about bottom lines--it's about winning," says Tim Buzard, vice-president of finance at the Chicago White Sox. "It's a challenge to predict anything." To produce an up-to-date and reliable financial picture, Buzard uses an ongoing, flexible process--with a modified zero-based budget--to ensure that the organization's plans are in sync with its current financial position. Financial managers facing variables in their own businesses may find the team's strategy can be adapted for their own circumstances. WHO'S ON FIRST?. While the team's largest expense is player labor costs, the greatest variable is attendance at games, which can have a significant financial impact. While some teams' fans turn out even during the worst slumps, "I think our attendance depends more on how the team plays than in most markets. The north side of our city [where the Chicago Cubs play] has more tolerance for a losing team than the south side [where the White Sox play]." The team's performance generally reflects player quality so "what we pay our players can have an impact on attendance." But high salaries are no guarantee of success, Buzard says. "Last year we had a very high payroll, but the team still didn't perform very well, so our attendance really didn't support that payroll." "A company can usually look at its cost of goods sold and know what its margins are, but we're unable to predict some margins. At the same time, we have a number of competitors who want to win at all costs without regard for the bottom line; the focus is not necessarily to make an operating profit as in a typical business. We try to be fiscally responsible, but when you're competing with an organization that doesn't care how much money it loses, and your goal is to win games, that drives up your salaries." Teams pay between $10 million and $70 million in player salaries per year, Buzard says. "We're probably somewhere in the middle." Each year, the organization's chairman, Jerry Reinsdorf, sets a tolerance level for salaries based on expected revenues. The greatest financial challenge is to balance the salaries against the results high-paid players can achieve. New stadiums also have an impact on attendance. For a number of years after the new White Sox stadium opened in 1991, "We were drawing about 2.9 million people annually--which we were quite pleased with. Up until last year, we had the best winning percentage record in the American League during the 1990s, but we're now out of the honeymoon period with the new stadium." Buzard hopes the new field has raised minimum attendance permanently. Before it was built, "we had years when we barely got to one million in attendance, and we hope those days are gone." However, when the team competes against other clubs that regularly draw three million people a year because of star teams or new stadiums or some other unpredictable factor, "Those teams have roughly double the gate revenue to spend." FOOLED BY A "CHANGE UP" In baseball, the players, coaches and finances are forever changing. To maintain a constant view of the team's finances, the team relies on a modified zero-based budget that is updated daily. This way, it can quickly revise its plans and spend more or less depending on its current situation. CPAs in a variety of industries can use this example to create their own plans for coping with the unpredictability of day-to-day business. …


With the advent of high-throughput screening technologies, key constraints associated with identifying potential drug candidates are being removed - the bottleneck in the timely delivery of new drugs will inevitably shift toward process development. Conventionally, the pilot plant studies required for process design only start when there is confidence that the drug candidate will make it to market. This means that this development period is very limited, and the flowsheet that enters the manufacturing phase is often sub-optimal. Collaborative work at UCL has been developing new strategies that aim to change this paradigm. The use of scale-down experiments in the drug discovery phase, in conjunction with modelling techniques, has been shown to be capable of providing more robust process definition early on in development. Such methodologies allow the study of more process options and hence rapid identification of optimal conditions, and thus mitigate the risks associated with equipment capital investment. Further advantages are that the experiments require less material, and can be done prior to, as well as in parallel to, pilot plant development. Scale-down can also be useful for the analysis of existing processes, e.g. for validation and troubleshooting, especially where material is valuable and/or scarce.
This thesis describes the design and development of a scale-down device for membrane filtration, with a focus on tangential flow microfiltration for primary clarification. The device uses a rotating disk suspended above a static membrane surface to generate surface shear, in order to mimic the global, hydrodynamic conditions found in commercial crossflow modules. Results are presented showing how filtration performance of the scale-down device (3.5xl0-4m2 membrane area) correlates well with pilot scale data (O.1m2) for a range of representative biological materials including yeast, bacterial and mammalian cell cultures. Methodologies for confident assessment of microfiltration performance are given, which are capable of dealing with different feedstocks, membrane types, and a range of operating strategies, using greatly reduced quantities of feed. The steps required to design and build the next generation of filtration scale-down device for rapid process development are also addressed, along with a discussion of the related business and regulatory issues that shape the industry.


Bio-Oxidation of a Model VOC in Air by Jeong Seop Shim This study was performed to find a satisfactory regime of operation for the vapor phase bio-oxidation of ethyl alcohol, a model volatile organic compound (VOC), in a specially designed bioreactor. Ethanol was selected as a model compound representing bakery oven gas pollution. A spirally wound bioreactor module was used within which was immobilized a mixed bacterial culture from aerobic sludge. The activated sludge from municipal wastewater treatment plants readily attached with no pretreatment on the surface of the spiral biosupport which is a polymeric sheet. The parameters studied were air flow rate and inlet concentrations of ethanol. Ethanol was injected, along with air, into a water reservoir prior to being fed into the bioreactor. The vapor and liquid concentrations in the reservoir were measured continuously and reached an equilibrium state. The reaction rates for all runs were determined. An optimal vapor temperature was observed for the environment of the microorganisms. As expected, the reaction rate varied with air flow rate and vapor temperature. An optimal air flow rate which was used for the action of microorganisms with gaseous ethyl alcohol and oxygen was 20 L/min (retention time:1.45 min). At this flow rate, the desirable vapor temperature in the reservoir was between 27 °C and 30 °C. At 20 L/min of air flow, a local maximum reaction rate was maintained at about 44 to 50 mg of ethanol per minute for this 28 hour run at this feed injection level. The vapor concentration at the inlet in typical runs from this series at this flow rate reached equilibrium levels ranging from about 1,000 ppmv to 1,700 ppmv within the first four hours of the 28 hour runs. The air flow rates for this series ranged from 7.52 to 40 L/min, while the total amount of ethanol fed to the system per minute was kept constant. At higher inlet feed concentrations, the reaction rates increased. For this series, at 2.34 L/min of air flow (retention time: 12.35 min), the maximum inlet vapor concentration reached about 7,000 ppmv within 6 hours. The removal efficiency was 99 percent, equivalent to about 30 mg of ethanol/min due to the low air flow rate. Also, after a 6 hour run at 7.52 L/min of air flow (retention time: 3.84 min), about 6,000 ppmv at the inlet was converted to 24 ppmv at the outlet. The removal efficiency was 99 percent, equivalent to about 87 mg of ethanol/min. This is about 3 times the corresponding rate at 2.34 L/min of air flow.


Conductive atomic force microscopy (CAFM) is one of the most powerful techniques in studying the electrical properties of various materials at the nanoscale. However, understanding current fluctuations within one study (due to degradation of the probe tips) and from one study to another (due to the use of probe tips with different characteristics), are still two major problems that may drive CAFM researchers to extract wrong conclusions. In this manuscript, these two issues are statistically analyzed by collecting experimental CAFM data and processing them using two different computational models. Our study indicates that: (i) before their complete degradation, CAFM tips show a stable state with degraded conductance, which is difficult to detect and it requires CAFM tip conductivity characterization before and after the CAFM experiments; and (ii) CAFM tips with low spring constants may unavoidably lead to the presence of a ~1.2 nm thick water film at the tip/sample junction, even if the maximum contact force allowed by the setup is applied. These two phenomena can easily drive CAFM users to overestimate the properties of the samples under test (e.g., oxide thickness). Our study can help researchers to better understand the current shifts that were observed during their CAFM experiments, as well as which probe tip to use and how it degrades. Ultimately, this work may contribute to enhancing the reliability of CAFM investigations.


Michel Gaudin's book La fonction d'onde de Bethe is a uniquely influential masterpiece on exactly solvable models of quantum mechanics and statistical physics. Available in English for the first time, this translation brings his classic work to a new generation of graduate students and researchers in physics. It presents a mixture of mathematics interspersed with powerful physical intuition, retaining the author's unmistakably honest tone. The book begins with the Heisenberg spin chain, starting from the coordinate Bethe Ansatz and culminating in a discussion of its thermodynamic properties. Delta-interacting bosons (the Lieb-Liniger model) are then explored, and extended to exactly solvable models associated to a reflection group. After discussing the continuum limit of spin chains, the book covers six- and eight-vertex models in extensive detail, from their lattice definition to their thermodynamics. Later chapters examine advanced topics such as multi-component delta-interacting systems, Gaudin magnets and the Toda chain.