We consider the problem of average consensus seeking in networked multi-agent systems. Based on local information and a simple distributed algorithm, states of all agents automatically converge to the average value of the initial conditions, where the convergence speed is determined by the algebraic connectivity of the underlying communication network. In order to achieve an average consensus quickly, we propose a new type of consensus protocol, multi-hop relay protocol, in which each agent expands its knowledge by employing multi-hop communication links. We explicitly show that multi-hop relay protocol increases the convergence speed without physically changing the network topology. Moreover, accumulated delays along communication links are discussed. We show that, for multi-hop relay protocol, the faster the protocol converges, the more sensitive it is to the delay. This tradeoff is identified when we investigate the stable delay margin using frequency sweep method.


Abstract: In this paper we present a novel approach for securing financial XML transactions using an effective and intelligent fuzzy classification technique. Our approach defines the process of classifying XML content using a set of fuzzy variables. upon fuzzy classification phase, a unique value is assigned to a defined attribute named "ImportanceLevel". Assigned value indicates the data sensitivity for each XML tag. The framework also defines the process of securing classified financial XML message content by performing element-wise XML encryption on selected parts defined in fuzzy classification phase. Element-wise encryption is performed using symmetric encryption using AES algorithm with different key sizes. Key size of 128-bit is being used on tags classified with "Medium" importance level; a key size of 256-bit is being used on tags classified with "High" importance level. An implementation has been performed on a real-life environment using online banking system in one of the leading banks in Jordan to demonstrate its flexibility, feasibility, and efficiency. Our experimental results of the new model verified tangible enhancements in encryption efficiency, processing-time reduction, and resulting XML message sizes.


Background. Although slow and insufficient muscle activation is a hallmark of hemiparesis poststroke, movement speed is rarely emphasized during upper-extremity rehabilitation. Moving faster may increase the intensity of task-specific training, but positive and/or negative effects on paretic-limb movement quality are unknown. Objective. To determine whether moving quickly instead of at a preferred speed either enhances or impairs paretic-limb task performance after stroke. Methods. A total of 16 people with poststroke hemiparesis and 11 healthy controls performed reach–grasp–lift movements at their preferred speed and as fast as possible, using palmar and 3-finger grip types. The authors measured durations of the reach and grasp phases, straightness of the reach path, thumb–index finger separation (aperture), efficiency of finger movement, and grip force. Results. Reach and grasp phase durations decreased in the fast condition in both groups, showing that participants were able to move more quickly when asked. When moving fast, the hemiparetic group had reach durations equal to those of healthy controls moving at their preferred speed. Movement quality also improved. Reach paths were straighter, and peak apertures were greater in both groups in the fast condition. The group with hemiparesis also showed improved efficiency of finger movement. Differences in peak grip force across speed conditions did not reach significance. Conclusions. People with hemiparesis who can perform reach–grasp–lift movements with a 3-finger grip can move faster than they choose to, and when they do, movement quality improves. Simple instructions to move faster could be a cost-free and effective means of increasing rehabilitation intensity after stroke.


Background: Superoxide radicals are produced during oxidative metabolic processes, and removed by superoxide dismutase (SOD) enzymes. Controversial results have been reported regarding the tissue and plasma concentration of SOD in patients with breast cancer.Methods: Venous blood was obtained from study participants and activity of SOD enzyme was determined in 100 women. Comparison was made between 50 patients with breast cancer and 50 individuals in control group.Results: The activities of SOD in patients with malignancy and control group were 553.56±53.67 U/gr Hb and 1218.60±98.55 U/gr Hb, respectively (P <0.001). Patients with higher stage and nuclear grade had lower SOD activity.Conclusions: lower levels of SOD activity was observed in women with breast cancer compared to healthy individuals. Considering the existing controversy regarding the SOD level in breast cancer patients, further studies to explore the reason of these differences are warranted.


The use of ICT in government institutions of the Republic of Liberia has been around for decades though very few institutions implemented it most especially in the old fashion EDP- Electronic Data Processing systems where large departments were created for centralized data processing tasks. The Old fashion EDP proof very costly, less effective, difficult to manage which provides the basis of establishing a more effective, user friendly, collaborative oriented systems in the form of Electronic government. Though in most other government institutions there is less usage or appreciation of the roles ICT in government. Liberia, just emerging from a long 14 years of civil crisis which destroyed its entire human and technical infrastructure, lacks behind most of the African countries and the world at large in the wagon of implementing ICT and its related research With the continuous and ever important requirement for transparency and accountability in the public sector services, With ICT been a tool to assist efficiency and accountability in the public sector, the government of Liberia has embarked on the implementation of ICT projects in governance, though there is limited research work so far done in use of ICT in governance in Liberia. There has been very little known research in ICT or e-government with specific focus on Liberia, with one limited research done by UN in 2010. Though there are records of research on E-government of developing countries including Kenya, Ghana and post war Rwanda, etc. There are lessons learnt from these research works that will be of good input for the Liberia case as per similarities in challenges and obstacles of implementing e-government developing countries. This thesis research is in support of identifying obstacles, challenges, and benefits of transforming the public sector by introducing ICT. There are few known ICT projects in government including the Finance Ministry's IFMIS and ASYCUDA projects, the CSA Biometric systems which were evaluated, partly to ascertain government readiness for e-government. The investigation included some key government ministries. The research results using international approved methodologies identified the e-readiness level of the government of Liberia, with given challenges, obstacles and benefits. The findings of the research show that Liberia can successfully implement e-government if the identified obstacles are removed or minimized.


Abstract. Using four different climate models, we investigate sea level pressure variability in the extratropical North Atlantic in the preindustrial climate (1750 AD) and at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 21 kyrs before present) in order to understand how changes in atmospheric circulation can affect signals recorded in climate proxies. In general, the models exhibit a significant reduction in interannual variance of sea level pressure at the LGM compared to pre-industrial simulations and this reduction is concentrated in winter. For the preindustrial climate, all models feature a similar leading mode of sea level pressure variability that resembles the leading mode of variability in the instrumental record: the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). In contrast, the leading mode of sea level pressure variability at the LGM is model dependent, but in each model different from that in the preindustrial climate. In each model, the leading (NAO-like) mode of variability explains a smaller fraction of the variance and also less absolute variance at the LGM than in the preindustrial climate. The models show that the relationship between atmospheric variability and surface climate (temperature and precipitation) variability change in different climates. Results are model-specific, but indicate that proxy signals at the LGM may be misinterpreted if changes in the spatial pattern and seasonality of surface climate variability are not taken into account.


The objective of the study was to estimate the proportion of U.S. households with access to a residential swimming pool and the prevalence of adequate pool fencing. Data were collected using national cross-sectional telephone surveys in 1994 and 2001–03. Nearly 15% of households (16.3 million) reported access to a swimming pool at their residence (14.9%, 95% CI 14.1–15.7); only 74% were reported to be adequately fenced. Adequate pool fencing is associated with lower income, renting the residence, and residing in a building with multiple units or an attached house. An estimated 488,633 households with pool access, where the family owns the residence and has children less than 5 years old, were not adequately fenced. Between 1994 and 2001–03, the percentage of pools that were adequately fenced did not change substantially. This study highlights the need for continued efforts to target families with young children with drowning-prevention interventions that include and emphasize adequate pool fencing.


Modern society has produced a wealth of data to preserve for the long term. Some data we keep for cultural benefit, in order to make it available to future generations, while other data we keep because of legal imperatives. One way to preserve such data is to store it using survivable storage systems. Survivable storage is distinct from reliable storage in that it tolerates confidentiality failures in which unauthorized users compromise component storage servers, as well as crash failures of servers. Thus, a survivable storage system can guarantee both the availability and the confidentiality of stored data.
Research into survivable storage systems investigates the use of m-of-n threshold sharing schemes to distribute data to servers, in which each server receives a share of the data. Any m shares can be used to reconstruct the data, but any m − 1 shares reveal no information about the data. The central thesis of this dissertation is that to truly preserve data for the long term, a system that uses threshold schemes must incorporate recovery protocols able to overcome server failures, adapt to changing availability or confidentiality requirements, and operate in a decentralized manner.
To support the thesis, I present the design and experimental performance analysis of a verifiable secret redistribution protocol for threshold sharing schemes. The protocol redistributes shares of data from old to new, possibly disjoint, sets of servers, such that new shares generated by redistribution cannot be combined with old shares to reconstruct the original data. The protocol is decentralized, and does not require intermediate reconstruction of the data; thus, one does not create a central point of failure or risk the exposure of the data during protocol execution. The protocol incorporates a verification capability that enables new servers to confirm that their shares can be used to reconstruct the original data.


Ireland's economic growth (1992–2007) was fuelled by availability of capital, but also through access to cheap flexible labour. This article attempts to provide evidence that the Irish state played a central role in facilitating and shaping labour supply, a role that has resulted in the clustering of non-Irish workers in particular sectors of the labour market. Worker mobility across national borders takes place at the intersection of global economic trends and local or regional labour market development, thus creating global consistency in the operation of local or regional markets and demand for workers; however, each labour market is unique as each creates its own local and global social relations. The state, as a main actor in the formulation of immigration policies and in shaping labour market structure, has a central role in affecting the nature of the interconnection between global and local. The analysis considers how Ireland's immigration policies, as they reflect global labour trends, contribute to the clustering of certain migrants in particular sectors. The method of analysis involves a three-step numerical analysis of clustering: (1) percentages, (2) ODDS ratios and (3) two-step cluster analysis. Results suggest the existence of economic clustering and channelling of workers into specific jobs linked back to immigration policies and recruitment drives.


Immune repertoire sequencing reveals humoral signatures of systemic sclerosis and uncovers determinism in the repertoire's response to B cell depletion. A revealing repertoire for systemic sclerosis Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune disease associated with fibrosis and serious complications, including pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Abnormal B cell responses have been associated with SSc pathogenesis, and de Bourcy et al. analyzed immunoglobulin heavy chain (IGH) transcripts of SSc-PAH patients enrolled in a B cell depletion clinical study. SSc-PAH was associated with several B cell development anomalies, particularly underuse of the IGHV2-5 segment and B cell homeostasis abnormalities. Depletion temporarily reversed these anomalous SSc-PAH disease signatures, and the data suggest that the rate of naïve B cell replenishment could be estimated from baseline measurements. These results define antibody signatures associated with SSc-PAH and reveal how B cell depletion shapes the antibody repertoire during reconstitution. Systemic sclerosis with pulmonary arterial hypertension (SSc-PAH) is a debilitating and frequently lethal disease of unknown cause lacking effective treatment options. Lymphocyte anomalies and autoantibodies observed in systemic sclerosis have suggested an autoimmune character. We study the clonal structure of the B cell repertoire in SSc-PAH using immunoglobulin heavy chain (IGH) sequencing before and after B cell depletion. We found SSc-PAH to be associated with anomalies in B cell development, namely, altered VDJ rearrangement frequencies (reduced IGHV2-5 segment usage) and an increased somatic mutation–fixation probability in expanded B cell lineages. SSc-PAH was also characterized by anomalies in B cell homeostasis, namely, an expanded immunoglobulin D–positive (IgD+) proportion with reduced mutation loads and an expanded proportion of highly antibody-secreting cells. Disease signatures pertaining to IGHV2-5 segment usage, IgD proportions, and mutation loads were temporarily reversed after B cell depletion. Analyzing the time course of B cell depletion, we find that the kinetics of naïve replenishment are predictable from baseline measurements alone, that release of plasma cells into the periphery can precede naïve replenishment, and that modes of B cell receptor diversity are highly elastic. Our findings reveal humoral immune signatures of SSc-PAH and uncover determinism in the effects of B cell depletion on the antibody repertoire.


Qualitative research is just as able as quantitative research to follow certain fundamental principles of logic in general and scientific reasoning in particular. Two such principles are the logic of modus ponens and the logic of modus tollens. In this essay, we frame different research approaches- positivist research, interpretive research, action research, and design research-in the forms of modus ponens and modus tollens. Three issues emerge from this framing and call into question how research is now conducted in the discipline of information systems. They are the issue of a common scientific basis, the issue of the fallacy of affirming the consequent, and the issue of summative validity. Both rigor and relevance in information systems research may be better achieved by attending to the three issues.


As gas turbine engine manufacturers strive to implement condition-based operation and maintenance, there is a need for blade monitoring strategies capable of early fault detection and root cause determination. Given the importance of blade cooling flows to turbine blade health and longevity, there is a distinct lack of methodologies for coolant flow rate monitoring. The present study addresses this identified opportunity by applying an infrared (IR) thermography system on an engine-representative research turbine to generate data-driven models for prediction of blade coolant flow rate. Thermal images were used as inputs to a linear regression and regularization algorithm to relate blade surface temperature distribution with blade coolant flow rate. Additionally, this study investigates how coolant flow rate prediction accuracy is influenced by the number and breadth of diagnostic measurements. The results of this study indicate that a source of high-fidelity training data can be used to predict blade coolant flow rate within about six percent error. Furthermore, identification of prioritized sensor placement supports application of this technique across multiple sensor technologies capable of measuring blade surface temperature in operating gas turbine engines, including spatially-resolved and point-based measurement techniques.


This study consists of four parts. The first part was to develop an efficient in vitro
micropropagation protocol for Melastoma malabathricum, Melastoma
decemfidum, Melastoma dodecandrum and Tibouchina semidecandra. These
plants are locally known as 'senduduk'. Nodal segment and shoot tip of each
species were used as explants for shoot initiation. Shoot tip was a more suitable
explant for M. malabathricum, M. dodecandrum and M. decemfidum shoot
initiation performed in full strength Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium
supplemented with 30 μM 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP), while nodal explant was
chosen for T. semidecandra shoot initiation in full strength MS medium
supplemented with 20 μM BAP.
Shoot multiplication and elongation was optimal in half strength MS medium
supplemented with 6 μM BAP for T. semidecandra, 9 μM BAP for M.
malabathricum and 12 μM BAP for M. decemfidum while M. dodecandrum
required quarter strength MS medium supplemented with 3 μM BAP. Shoots
v
cultured on MS medium without any growth regulators supplementation was
found to have higher in vitro rooting compared to medium supplemented with
naphthalene acetic acid (NAA), indole butyric acid (IBA) and indole acetic acid
(IAA). Full strength MS medium was suitable for in vitro rooting of T.
semidecandra and M. decemfidum, opposed to half strength MS medium for M.
malabathricum and quarter strength MS medium for M. dodecandrum. Rooting
in the solid medium was better than liquid medium. A higher percentage of
plantlets survived when they were acclimatized for one week compared to
plantlets that were directly transferred from tissue culture medium to the soil.
The second part of this study was to regenerate shoots directly from the leaf,
petiole and internode explants of M. malabathricum. Explants obtained from the
most apical part of the plant formed a higher number of shoots compared to those
below the apical end. Quarter strength MS medium was the most suitable
medium strength for shoot regeneration of all explants tested. The highest
number of shoots was formed from the leaf explant at 9 μM BAP, followed by
petiole at 6 μM BAP, and internode at 9 μM BAP.
The third part of this study was to regenerate shoots from leaf-, petiole- and
internode-derived calli of M. malabathricum. A suitable callus induction medium
was found to be a full strength MS medium supplemented with 2.5 μM dicamba
and 2.5 μM kinetin for leaf explant, 10.0 μM NAA and 2.5 μM BAP for petiole
explant, and 10.0 μM NAA and 2.5 μM kinetin for internode explant. Full
vi
strength MS medium supplemented with 5.0 to 7.5 μM BAP alone had induced
multiple shoots from the leaf-derived callus compared to 2.5 to 5.0 μM BAP for
petiole-derived callus. A combination of 0.5 μM NAA and 5.0 μM BAP,
however, was found to enhance shoot formation from the petiole-derived callus
compared to when 5.0 μM BAP was used alone.
The final part of this study was to evaluate the effects of growth retardants on
vegetative growth and the flowering of M. malabathricum, M. decemfidum and T.
semidecandera. Growth retardants (paclobutrazol and flurprimidol) significantly
reduced the plant size, induced early flowering and increased the number of
flowers formed unlike the untreated plants. Paclobutrazol applied at 200 mg/L
(w/v) was found to be suitable for M. malabathricum compared to 300 mg/L
(w/v) for M. decemfidum. Flurprimidol applied at 50 mg/L (w/v) concentration
was suitable for T. semidecandra.


Encouraging the uptake of sustainable soil management practices often requires on‐farm experiential learning and adaptation over a sustained period, rather than the traditional knowledge transfer processes of identifying a problem and implementing a solution. Farmer‐to‐farmer learning networks are emerging with farmers experimenting and sharing knowledge about these practices amongst themselves. One potential communication channel for such interaction and knowledge sharing is social media and Twitter in particular. A content analysis of a Twitter account for an EU research project, SoilCare, and in‐depth qualitative interviews with five farmers using Twitter, was used to illustrate the extent and type of farmer‐to‐farmer knowledge sharing in relation to sustainable soil management practices. Evidence of farmer learning and knowledge sharing on Twitter with respect to these practices was identified. Twitter can capture the immediacy of the field operations and visual impacts in the field. Furthermore, the brief messages channelled through Twitter appeal to time‐constrained farmers. The ability for interaction around particular hashtags in Twitter is developing virtual networks of practice in relation to sustainable soil management. Within these networks, farmer champions are emerging that are respected by other farmers. Twitter works best for those actively seeking information, rather than passive recipients of new knowledge. Therefore, its use with other forms of face‐to‐face interaction as part of a blended learning approach is recommended. Twitter also offers a potential space for other actors, such as researchers and advisers, to interact and share knowledge with farmers.


This article explores the determinants of personal resilience using the case of nurse prescribing in the North West Region of Cameroon. Nurse prescribing has long been identified as a practical solution to the severe shortage of well-trained doctors and high incidence of diseases in developing countries. However, the working conditions of nurses are risky and vulnerable due to major constraints, such as inadequate training, poor reward systems, limited access to medical facilities/equipment, and high workloads. Building on the resilience concept and using narrative analysis of in-depth interviews with nurses and nursing managers in public, private, and faith-based hospitals, the article develops a framework depicting three interrelated determinants of personal resilience, namely organisational plans and procedures, personal work context, and personal perception of an individual employee. The determinants are discussed further, and implications for human resource development theory and practice are critically examined.


Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution mandates that "[t]he trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury." Yet in modern America, bench trials have become a well-accepted feature of the contemporary federal criminal docket. Some of these bench trials occur because defendants, consulting their best interests, waive their right to a jury trial. This seems to be a sensible exception to Article III's peremptory command. It would be paternalistic not to allow defendants to waive a constitutional requirement presumably created for their protection. Yet, neither the English common law nor Founding-era practices permitted defendants prosecuted for serious criminal offenses the option of a bench trial. Federal bench trials violate both the Constitution's text and its original understanding. Nonetheless, in 1930, in Patton v. United States, a unanimous Supreme Court declared federal bench trials constitutionally permissible. Justice George Sutherland — who strongly believed that the sole goal of constitutional interpretation is to discern and effectuate the Constitution's original meaning — wrote the Patton opinion. True to form, Sutherland's Patton opinion maintained that defendants' jury waivers and federal bench trials for serious offenses were consistent with Article III's original understanding. However, Justice Sutherland got his history wrong. This Article joins the long list of books and articles questioning the Supreme Court's use of history as a basis for its decisions. More importantly, by studying how evolving principles of constitutional policy transformed the interpretation of Article III, Section 2's clear text through a mechanism known as "motivated reasoning," this Article reveals how evolving principles of constitutional policy have become the basis for constitutional law even in the hands of dedicated originalists. This Article is a study of the problem that motivated reasoning presents for the practice of originalist jurisprudence, and to that extent, it is an argument for the desirability of a forthright jurisprudence of "living constitutionalism."


A major objective of peer-to-peer (P2P) systems is the management of large amounts of data distributed across many systems. Distributed hash tables (DHT) are designed for highly scalable, self-organizing, and efficient distribution and lookup of data, whereby data is stored globally persistent. The range of values of the corresponding hash function is partitioned and each interval is assigned to a node of the DHT. Because the assignment of data to nodes is based on hash functions, one assumes that the respective data load is distributed evenly across all participating nodes. However most DHT show difficulties with load balancing as we demonstrate in this paper. As a solution for this problem, we present a new and very simple approach for balancing stored data between peers in a fashion analogous to the dissipation of heat energy in materials. We compare this algorithm with other approaches for load balancing and present results based on simulations and a prototype implementation. This new algorithm improves the distribution of load in DHT without requiring major changes of the DHT themselves. In addition, we show that the fault tolerance of peer-to-peer systems is increased by the proposed algorithm.


Extension educators are frequently tasked with strengthening organizations they collaborate with or provide education to. When a county government in Wisconsin experienced significant personnel changes in a span of less than 18 months, department heads contacted Extension to request professional development and team-building education for their staffs. Extension educators facilitated a series of Real Colors workshops that were attended by over 300 participants and transformed the county's organizational culture. Workshop evaluations and behavior change reported by the county administrator provided evidence of this transformation.


Paul Preston is the world's foremost historian of Spain. This surging history recounts the struggles of the 1936 war in which more than 3,000 Americans took up arms. Tracking the emergence of Francisco Franco's brutal (and, ultimately, extraordinarily durable) fascist dictatorship, Preston assesses the ways in which the Spanish Civil War presaged the Second World War that ensued so rapidly after it. The attempted social revolution in Spain awakened progressive hopes during the Depression, but the conflict quickly escalated into a new and horrific form of warfare. As Preston shows, the unprecedented levels of brutality were burned into the American consciousness as never before by the revolutionary war reporting of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Herbert Matthews, Vincent Sheean, Louis Fischer, and many others. Completely revised, including previously unseen material on Franco's treatment of women in wartime prisons, The Spanish Civil War is a classic work on this pivotal epoch in the twentieth century.


[1] The Cloud Absorption Radiometer (CAR) was flown aboard the University of Washington Convair CV-580 research aircraft during the Southern Africa Regional Science Initiative 2000 (SAFARI 2000) dry season campaign and obtained measurements of bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) for a variety of natural surfaces and ecosystems in southern Africa. To measure the BRDF of the surface–atmosphere system, the University of Washington CV-580 banked at a roll angle of ∼20° and flew circles about 3 km in diameter above the surface, taking approximately 2 min. Multiple circular orbits were acquired over selected surfaces so that average BRDFs could be acquired, smoothing out small-scale surface and atmospheric inhomogeneities. In this paper, we present results of BRDFs taken over two Earth Observing System (EOS) validation sites: Skukuza tower, South Africa (25.0°S, 31.5°E) and Mongu tower, Zambia (15.4°S, 23.3°E). Additional sites are discussed and include the Maun tower, Botswana (20.0°S, 23.6°E), Sua Pan, Botswana (20.6°S, 25.9°E), Etosha Pan, Namibia (19.0°S, 16.0°E), and marine stratocumulus clouds off the west coast of Namibia (20.5°S, 13.1°E). Results clearly show anisotropy in reflected solar radiation over the various surfaces types: savanna, salt pans, and cloud. The greatest anisotropy is observed over marine stratus clouds, which exhibit strong forward scattering as well as important water cloud scattering features such as the rainbow and glory. The BRDF over savanna is characterized by a distinct backscattering peak in the principal plane and shows directional and spectral variations. Over the pans, the BRDF is more enhanced in the backscattering plane than forward scattering plane and shows little directional variation.


This thesis explores the macro-economic history of Cyprus and Malta in the inter-war period. It constructs the first detailed estimates of output at aggregate and sector levels, enabling the analysis of economic growth and the sector structure of the islands" economies. It evaluates their performance within the context of economic change on Europe"s South Eastern periphery and, specifically, in light of the experience of British colonial rule.
The thesis argues, first, that economic growth was slow in wider European comparison and as sluggish as in neighbouring countries. It was so despite the two islands' being far less exposed to the political upheavals of the First World War than most other economies in South Eastern Europe. Second, the proximate reasons for their comparatively weak growth performance differed: Cyprus experienced a prolonged agricultural crisis, but participated in the post-depression recovery through the growth in international demand for the output of its copper mining industry. Malta"s growth was slower than Cyprus due to the combination of declining British military expenditure and the population increasing faster than previously.
These differences notwithstanding, the islands were ultimately affected by common problems. Their small overall size had a negative effect on their performance as global protectionism increased and restricted export opportunities. In addition, the colonial governments remained committed to balanced budgets and non-intervention in the economy, limiting their ability to combat the effects of the great depression. As a result, the deteriorating economic situation increased the political tension between the islanders and the colonial governments. The reluctance to mount an effective policy response to the great depression acted as a catalyst to political polarization, leading to violence and the suspension of the islands" constitutions.


BACKGROUND:
People with intellectual disabilities are living longer, with increasingly complex needs and their family caregivers may have a broad scope of unmet needs.

AIMS:
To identify the most common needs of family caregivers, to identify gaps in the literature, and distinguish the information needs of family caregivers of people with intellectual disabilities who require palliative care.

METHODS:
This two phase literature review used five electronic databases (CINAHL, PsycINFO, Medline, Cochrane and Pubmed). Phase 1 involved a review of systematic reviews of the needs of family caregivers across healthcare settings. Phase 2 explored the commonly reported information needs from phase 1, in relation to family caregivers of people with intellectual disability who require palliative care. There was no research explicit to the information needs of these family caregivers.

FINDINGS:
This review reveals potential information needs which may exist, guided by the palliative caregiving literature; alluding to information needs surrounding the disease, finances, and psychological or practical support.

CONCLUSION:
It is surmised that a greater scope of informational need exists for this population and further research is pertinent for international healthcare settings.


Tailings dams, due to methods and materials used in their construction are vulnerable structures to earthquake. In many cases storage of water over tailings is required to prevent aerial pollution or reduction in water consumption by the means of a recycling system, therefore failure of these kinds of dams not only induce affects similar to conventional water dams, but also may lead to irreversible damage to their surrounding environment due to toxic content of tailings. Sarcheshmeh Tailings dam, a rockfill dam with an inclined clay core, is 70 m height and necessity for increasing reservoir capacity has led to dam upgrading to a minimum level of 90 m; using downstream method. Different options have been studied in order to get the safest and most economical alternative. Vulnerability of dam site to earthquake has considerably affected the design issue. This paper represents the results of dynamic and pseudo-static analyses of this tailings dam. Dynamic analysis is carried out using the finite difference code FLAC (Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua, ITASCA).This code is able to take into account pore water pressure generation during construction and earthquake. Different acceleration time history records and soil models are used and results have been compared.


This article reviews the options for future international climate policy after the 2009 Copenhagen conference. It argues that a major reassessment of the current approach to building a climate regime is required. This approach, which we refer to as the 'global deal' strategy, is predicated on the idea of negotiating a comprehensive, universal and legally binding treaty that prescribes, in a top-down fashion, generally applicable policies based on previously agreed principles. From a review of the history of the 'global deal' strategy from Rio (1992) to Kyoto (1997) and beyond we conclude that this approach has been producing diminishing returns for some time, and that it is time to consider an alternative path – if not goal – for climate policy. The alternative that, in our view, is most likely to move the world closer towards a working international climate regime is a 'building blocks' approach, which develops different elements of climate governance in an incremental fashion and embeds them in an international political framework. In fact, this alternative is already emergent in international politics. The goal of a full treaty has been abandoned for the next climate conference in Mexico, which is instead aiming at a number of partial agreements (on finance, forestry, technology transfer, adaptation) under the UNFCCC umbrella. For this to produce results, a more strategic approach is needed to ensure that – over time – such partial elements add up to an ambitious and internationally coordinated climate policy which does not drive down the level of aspiration and commitment.


Based on the long-term in-situ observations of aerosol particle number size distributions and meteorological parameters, the measures of traffic restriction during the Sino-African Summit (4–6 November 2006) in Beijing, China have been found to be efficient in reducing the number concentration of aerosol particles, in particular Aitken and accumulation mode particles, and in improving the visibility when local emissions dominated. The influence of traffic restrictions on the particle concentrations differed for different particle sizes. More significant effects on fine particles with diameters ranging from 40 to 500 nm have been found. Based on statistical analysis of long-term observations, under comparable weather conditions, the number concentrations of the particles in Aitken and accumulation modes seemingly were reduced by 20–60% when the traffic restrictions were in place. This change may be mainly due to the reduction of secondary particle contributions. However, it is worth to notice that the reduction of 60% might overestimate the effect of the measures of traffic control, due to the inherent data shortage with very high wind speeds in the comparison data population. Our size-dependent aerosol data also indicate that measures led to reductions in particulate air pollution in the optically most important diameter range, whereas further vehicle restriction measures might lead to an increase in ultrafine particle formation if the condensational sink further decreased. Assuming that there were no traffic restrictions and with normal levels of the vehicle emissions, the visibilities during the Summit would have been lower by about 20–45%. The fact that over 95% cases with visibility range lower than 5 km during 2004 to 2007 occurred when the local wind speed was lower than 3 m s −1 may suggest that the importance of the emission restrictions is highest when the wind speed is lower than 3 m s −1 , concerning the improvement of serious low visibility situations in Beijing.


ABSTRACT The kind of advances in spaceflight envisioned in the mid-twentieth century have largely failed to materialize, thereby limiting space exploration to relatively small areas of a very large galaxy. That will change with the advent of directed energy technologies, specifically laser propulsion. The privately funded Breakthrough Starshot program is already working on such a propulsion system to carry nanosatellite Star Chips to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. But powerful lasers – a dual-use technology much like rocketry, nuclear energy, and cyber technology, which have both security-related and civilian uses – have been largely stigmatized as weapons. While security concerns about the use of large lasers are certainly justified, the development of Starshot and other big, multinational science programs can have positive national and international outcomes. Therefore, the use of a large laser array as a propulsion system will require, much like other large multinational cutting-edge science programs, a negotiated, cooperative governance system. Those negotiations should begin soon.


Multiple stressors that include climatic and non-climatic constraints negatively impact rain-fed smallholder productivity and livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Global circulation models predict temperature increases of about 3C by the middle of the century. Impacts of warmer climates on rain-fed smallholder production are projected to be mainly negative.
Female-headed households (FHHs) constitute between 30% and 40% of households in smallholder areas of Zimbabwe. Access to resources and capital assets required for agricultural production often varies between male-headed households (MHHs) and FHHs. Differences in resource levels and roles of men and women imply different vulnerabilities and adaptation requirements to climate change for MHHs and FHHs. Mainstreaming gender in climate change planning is thus imperative for successful adaptation by MHHs and FHHs. There is, however, limited information on gendered differences in smallholder practices and outcomes arising from differently managed households in Zimbabwe, which is required for climate change planning. This study therefore sought to assess how the gender of household head affects smallholdings and adaptation to climate change in rural Zimbabwe using climate analogue analysis.
The analogue pair sites selected had similar annual rainfall totals but differed by 2-4oC in mean annual temperature. The sites were Kadoma (722mm, 21.8oC) expected to represent Mazowe/Goromonzi (842.9mm, 18.2oC) for sub-humid areas and Chiredzi (541mm, 21.3oC) hypothesized to represent Matobo (567mm, 18.4C) for semi-arid areas following the effects of global warming by the 2050s. Household surveys, participatory evaluations and focus group discussions were conducted during the 2010/2011 and 2012/2013 rain seasons. Household demographic and socio-economic characteristics, farmer perceived stressors to production, and management strategies in MHHs and FHHs were assessed at each study site.
Resources that included financial capital and adult male labour were fewer, and education levels lower in FHHs than MHHs at the study sites. Crop production was the main source of income in FHHs at all the study sites. Meanwhile, in Kadoma, Mazowe/Goromonzi and Matobo districts, MHHs had more diverse sources of income. At each study site, crop choices, soil fertility, and soil and water management strategies in MHHs and FHHs were similar. However, quantities of inputs including fertilizer rates and share of area allocated to crops differed. Consequently, in Mazowe/Goromonzi and Matobo districts, crop yields were lower in FHHs compared to MHHs. Additionally, in Mazowe/Goromonzi, Kadoma, and Matobo districts, more FHHs than MHHs were food insecure.
Climatic stressors to agricultural production of analogue pair sites differed. At the sub-humid analogue pair sites, maize was the main crop grown. However, management practices differed. At the semi-arid sites, more farmers in Chiredzi compared to Matobo grew small grains. Maize yields were lower at the warmer analogue sites compared to the reference sites.
This study demonstrates that resource levels and resource-based forms of management differ by gender of household head, and MHHs and FHHs have different requirements for adaptation to current and future climates.


Part of Hill and Wang's Critical Issues Series and well established on college reading lists, PRISONERS WITHOUT TRIAL presents a concise introduction to a shameful chapter in American history: the incarceration of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. With a revised final chapter and expanded recommended readings, Roger Daniels's updated edition examines a tragic event in our nation's past and thoughtfully asks if it could happen again.


ABSTRACT Election prediction has long been an evergreen in political science literature. Traditionally, such efforts included polling aggregates, economic indicators, partisan affiliation, and campaign effects to predict aggregate voting outcomes. With increasing secondary usage of online-generated data in social science, researchers have begun to consult metadata from widely used web-based platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Trends and Wikipedia to calibrate forecasting models. Web-based platforms offer the means for voters to retrieve detailed campaign-related information, and for researchers to study the popularity of campaigns and public sentiment surrounding them. However, past contributions have often overlooked the interaction between conventional election variables and information-seeking behaviour patterns. In this work, we aim to unify traditional and novel methodology by considering how information retrieval differs between incumbent and challenger campaigns, as well as the effect of perceived candidate viability and media coverage on Wikipedia's predictive ability. In order to test our hypotheses, we use election data from United States Congressional (Senate and House) elections between 2016 and 2018. We demonstrate that Wikipedia data, as a proxy for information-seeking behaviour patterns, is particularly useful for predicting the success of well-funded challengers who are relatively less prevalent in the media. In general, our findings underline the importance of a mixed-data approach to predictive analytics in computational social science.


In recent years, federal courts have heard, without clear subject matter jurisdiction, contract disputes involving billions of dollars worth of securitized financial instruments (SFIs). These SFI disputes are litigated in federal court under the federal interpleader statute, which specifies that a federal court has subject matter jurisdiction over these cases only when parties deposit the disputed amount with the court. SFI litigants have ignored this requirement, so courts have, at best, uncertain jurisdiction over these cases. Why have no parties raised the jurisdictional defect, even though some would stand to gain from raising it? This Essay advances game theoretical explanations for litigants' puzzling silence in these major post-financial crisis cases, and argues that parties may strategically value litigating in federal court under jurisdictional uncertainty over other alternatives.


Protein aggregates, which can result in cellular toxicity, are found in the brains of people afflicted with neurodegenerative diseases. One of the proteins found to aggregate is Tau, a protein that stabilizes microtubules in neuronal cells. Based on its amino acid sequence, Tau is likely to be N-terminally acetylated by the complex NatA, which is responsible for the acetylation of a majority of proteins with this post-translational modification. Mutations in the NatA complex result in a variety of pleiotropic detrimental phenotypes, showing that acetylation is a crucial modification for many proteins. Without the presence of NatA – and therefore without acetylation – Tau may be more prone to aggregation and toxicity. By expressing Tau in yeast strains with and without the presence of NatA, the possible effects of acetylation or lack thereof can be determined by examining protein expression and aggregation within the cells by SDS-PAGE and SDD-AGE. Initial results indicate that Tau aggregates within these yeast cells although the nature and effect of the aggregates is still being determined. This project has allowed for the creation of a system by which Tau aggregates can be examined in vivo.


In this paper we show that it is possible to make good predictions of text relevance, from only features of conscious eye movements during reading. We pay special attention to the order in which the lines of text are read, and compute simple features of this sequence. Artificial neural networks are applied to classify the relevance of the read lines. The use of ensemble techniques creates stable predictions and good generalization abilities. Using these methods we won the first competition of the PASCAL Inferring Relevance from Eye Movement Challenge [1].


A central question in terms of political (self-)selection relates to the incentives leading high ability individuals to enter – or abstain from entering – into politics. In this article, we use data from Italian municipalities over the period 1985-2012 to empirically assess how changes in individuals' expected payoffs affect political (self-)selection. Identification derives from murders of local politicians by the mafia, and indicates that such a negative shock to politicians' expected payoffs induces a strong decrease in first-time elected politicians' human capital. The effect is not limited to the municipality where a political murder takes place, but also extends to nearby municipalities.


AIM
The carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the commonest compressive neuropathy. Electromyography (EMG) is accepted as gold standard in diagnosis of CTS. However, pathologies and variations that are associated with a various findings may lead to failure.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Magnetic resonance Imaging (MRI) was applied to 69 wrists of 55 patients, who received a diagnosis of CTS by means of clinical and electrodiagnostic testing (EDT) during the years 2011 and 2013.

RESULTS
We detected a total of 71 additional pathologies in MRI analyses: 29 degenerative bone cysts, 28 ganglion cysts, 8 tenosynovitis, and 6 avascular necroses. While the MRI detected 44 (59.5%) additional radiological pathologies in 39 wrists diagnosed with mid-level CTS by means of EMG, the number of detected additional pathologies was 27 (36.5%) in 30 wrists diagnosed with advanced-level CTS.

CONCLUSION
Wrist MRI is an effective means to reveal associated pathologies in patients diagnosed with CTS by means of clinical testing and EDT. Additional pathologies may not only change the applicable type of surgery, but also decrease the number of postoperative failures. Wrist MRI is recommended, especially for young cases with unilateral CTS history accompanied by dubious clinical symptoms and lacking any pronounced predisposing factors.


When talking about the History of Medicine we refer to various considerations about the ways in which body, health and disease are built, experienced and even negotiated. The primary literature texts investigated in this article are De rara medicatione vulnerum written by Cesare Magati, published in 1616, and the two articles written by Professor Egisto Magni published in the «Bullettino delle Scienze Mediche» in 1917 and 1919, the former on the rare dressing of Magati and the latter on the reform of the Magati surgery. The medicine of Magati saw the body through the discrepancy of humors, and his scientific point of view started from the statement that the distinction between doctor-surgeon and doctor-physician was «one of medicine's misfortunes, something without reason, without authority and a damage to the patient».


Using the model recently developed by Jaumandreu (2003) this paper reports new results on the relationship between innovation and employment growth for Germany. The model is taylor-made for analysing firm-level employment effects of innovations using specific information provided by CIS data. It establishes a theoretical link between employment growth and innovation output. The econometric analysis confirms that product innovations have a positive employment impact. In contrast to previous studies, this effect is independent of the novelty degree. Moreover, different employment effects between manufacturing and service firms regarding process innovations were found. Finally, in a cross country perspective the results for Germany are very similar to those found for Spain and the UK.


Changes in the world energy context, the increasing awareness of the environmental stakes and the development of research on the production of second and third generation biofuels revealed a clear need to write a new book which updates and complements all technical, financial and environmental aspects of Les Biocarburants - Etat des lieux, perspectives et enjeux du developpement (Biofuels - Current status, outlook and development stakes) published in 2006. This book provides a detailed state of the art of the first generation biofuel production technologies. It describes the new "second generation" pathways which use lignocellulosic biomass as raw material and are starting to find industrial applications, thereby reducing the competition between the food resource and the use of agricultural materials for energy purposes. It also provides a technical update on the algaeto-energy pathway (third generation) and the production of methane and hydrogen by biochemical pathways. The book arrives at exactly the right time to renew the interest in biofuels, including for air transport, and provide an insight on the technological research and development axes currently being investigated. It is intended for transport companies, refiners, forestry companies, the agricultural and agribusiness sectors as well as the public authorities, students, university teachers and researchers.


This paper focuses on the specific question of how Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) address migration and its potential to enhance human development at the national level. Based on a review of PRSPs completed since 1999, it argues that migration often remains poorly recognised or analysed in poorer countries in terms of its impacts on poverty reduction, whilst attitudes towards migration in these countries are often highly negative and/or based on limited evidence, especially in relation to internal migration. Analysis of how both internal and international migration are treated in PRSPs is also placed in the context of a broader understanding of the purpose of, and constraints faced by the PRS process. The paper goes on to highlight the extent to which in Sub-Saharan African countries, successive drafts of PRSPs have shown increasing attention to migration. It also considers how analysis of the problems and opportunities associated with different types of migration are converted into policy initiatives, highlighting the lack of good practice in terms of the incorporation of migration into human development policy.


In the Cave of Crystals in Chihuahua, Mexico, gypsum crystals in a form called selenite (CaSO4∙2H2O) have grown as big as trees. But researchers now report that loss of water may damage the crystal surfaces (Cryst. Growth Des. 2018, DOI: 10.1021/acs.cgd.8b00583). Maria Elena Montero-Cabrera of the Center for Research in Advanced Materials and colleagues put fragments of a cave crystal under 16 sets of conditions that varied the exposure to different atmospheres, different temperatures, and the presence or absence of water. The researchers expected that carbon dioxide exposure, which could come from exhaled human breath, would cause calcium carbonate to form on the crystal surface, Montero-Cabrera says. However, both infrared spectrometry and grazing incidence X-ray diffraction analysis revealed no detectable calcium carbonate. Instead, they found bassanite (CaSO4∙½H2O), a dehydrated form of gypsum crystal. This conversion could, over many years, cloud and scar the crystal surfaces. By learning more about the


On 5 July 2009 a metal-detector user started to unearth some gold objects in a Staffordshire field. Thus began the discovery of the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found. Consisting of over 1600 items including fittings from the hilts of swords, fragments from helmets, Christian crosses and magnificent pieces of garnet work, "The Staffordshire Hoard" is set to rewrite history. This is just the beginning of the story. This is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England in the seventh and early eighth centuries as radically, if not more so, as the 1939 Sutton Hoo discoveries did; it will make historians and literary scholars review what their sources tell us, and archaeologists and art-historians rethink the chronology of metalwork and manuscripts; and it will make us all think again about rising (and failing) kingdoms and the expression of regional identities in this period, the complicated transition from paganism to Christianity, the conduct of battle and the nature of fine metalwork production to name only a few of the many huge issues it raises. 'Absolutely the metalwork equivalent of finding a new "Lindisfarne Gospels" or "Book of Kells"' - Leslie Webster, former Keeper of the Department of Prehistory & Europe, the British Museum. 'The quantity of gold is amazing but, more importantly, the craftsmanship is consummate; this was the very best that the Anglo-Saxon metalworkers could do, and they were very good. Tiny garnets were cut to shape and set in a mass of cells to give a rich, glowing effect; it is stunning. Its origins are clearly the very highest levels of Anglo-Saxon aristocracy or royalty. It belonged to the elite' - Dr Kevin Leahy.


Technological progress takes the form of improvements in quality of an array of intermediate inputs to production. In an equilibrium that is standard in the literature, all research is carried out by outsiders, and success means that the outsider replaces the incumbent as the industry leader. The equilibrium research intensity involves three considerations: leading-edge goods are priced above the competitive level, innovators value the extraction of monopoly rents from predecessors, and innovators regard their successes as temporary. We show that, if industry leaders have lower costs of research, then the leaders will do all the research in equilibrium. However, if the cost advantage is not too large, then the equilibrium research intensity and growth rate depend on the existence of the competitive fringe and take on the same values as in the standard solution. We discuss the departures from Pareto optimality and analyze the determination of the economy's rate of return and growth rate.


Immunoassays are suitable tools for high-throughput screenings. The prerequisite for accurate determinations by these methods is the selection of an excellent antibody. The production and selection of monoclonal antibodies is usually a tedious process. In this study, new strategies for improving antibody production and characterization were applied. This includes the monitoring of the immunization progress in mice through antibodies extracted from feces, which allows a time-resolved and animal-friendly monitoring of the immune response. Additionally, fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA) could be successfully applied for fast and easy examination of cell culture supernatants and the investigation of antibody/antigen interactions including kinetics and fluorescence properties. These methods simplify the selection of the optimal antibody. As a target analyte, carbamazepine was chosen. This is a widely used antiepileptic drug which also frequently occurs in the environment. The new antibody enables CBZ determination in the concentration range 0.66–110 mg L 1 within 10 min using a high-throughput microtiter plate-based FPIA, and between 1.4 and 79 mg L 1 within 5 min applying an automated cuvette-based FPIA instrument, and from 0.05–36 mg L 1 using ELISA. The measurements were performed at a non-equilibrium state which improved the sensitivity and selectivity of the assays. Due to low cross-reactivity especially towards the main CBZ metabolite and other pharmaceuticals (<1%), this antibody gives the opportunity for application in medical and environmental analyses.


One of the basic principles behind the publication of Evidence-Based Mental Health (EBMH) is that the research which we abstract in the journal should have immediate practical implications for mental health clinicians. The key question we ask ourselves in selecting studies to include in EBMH is will mental health clinicians be able to use the findings of this study in their practice? We do not believe that the results of analogue studies are useful in clinical practice, and in this note we outline our reasoning. By analogue studies, we are referring to studies in which the therapeutic setting is in some senses an "analogue" of routine clinical practice or the participants (usually students) are different from those to whom the treatment or scale will ultimately be applied. There are various issues that determine how useful a study can be to practitioners, some of which are shared by research in other areas of health care. Thus, for example, all studies should be designed in a way that gives readers confidence in their findings. This is why EBMH and the other evidence-based journals have explicit methodological criteria for the selection of studies (detailed in our purpose and procedures section p 98-9). Other issues may be more specific to mental health. One of these is the use of analogue studies. Analogue studies are sometimes used, particularly in studies of psychotherapy, to examine the outcomes and processes of different methods of therapy. They are also used in scale development to look at reliability, validity, and factor structure. The use of analogue studies in psychotherapy research was stimulated by experimental and social psychological research. Analogue research attempts to mimic real life while at the same time controlling as many extraneous variables as possible. Analogue studies therefore maximise the internal validity, or rigour, of research studies; the trade off for this rigour is reduced generalisability to real clinical settings. Thus, an analogue outcome study of psychotherapy might recruit university students with symptoms of depression to compare the efficacy of brief cognitive therapy from a clinical psychologist with treatment as usual from the university counselling centre. Recruitment to the study may be by advertisements put up around the university or directly from undergraduate classes. Students may be attracted by the offer of free counselling, or by the offer of course credits for completing the research project. Analogue studies may also be used to examine questions such as treatment preferences among potential clients, or preferences for different types of therapists. Under experimental conditions, volunteer subjects can be shown standardised video taped extracts of different methods of psychotherapy, or extracts of therapists with different characteristics. Because analogue therapy studies are relatively easy to conduct they can be extremely useful in the early stages of treatment research. Well conducted analogue studies can inform the design of subsequent clinical trials and may indicate if treatment methods are acceptable to clients, and practicable to deliver by therapists. They enable researchers to exercise control over key variables which may not be possible in clinical trials. Analogue studies can help researchers explore promising avenues of enquiry. However, even well conducted analogue studies do not provide reliable information about the effectiveness of treatment in clinical populations. Thus they are only of limited value to clinicians, whose main interest is in the effective care of patients. In the area of scale development, analogue studies have the advantage of access to a large pool of often captive participants, who must be compliant to receive class credit. This, however, is counterbalanced by the fact that in many cases the intended targets for scales are people attending clinics or in hospital with real disorders or traits that are interfering with their lives. Assessing reliability or validity with students, and then assuming these results also apply to clinical populations is misguided. Reliability and validity are not invariant properties of the test; they are functions of the test score obtained under particular circumstances. 4 This means that a test may have high reliability and good internal consistency with one group of participants, for example, but not with another. Thus, psychometric studies with "analogue" patients rarely inform us of the utility of the test with real patients. Analogue studies limit generalisability in several ways. Firstly, the target disorder in therapy itself may be an analogue for a clinical disorder. Coyne discusses the limits of self reported distress among college students as an analogue for clinical depression. Secondly, participants in analogue studies differ from clinical populations in important sociodemographic variables such as age, social class, and educational level. Less important differences between participants in analogue studies and participants in clinical trials include the method of recruitment, and the contexts in which treatment and assessment take place. The distinction between analogue studies and clinical studies is not always clear. Important mental health services are provided to college students by college based counselling services, and college students do experience mental health problems of clinical severity. For some clinical populations, such as people with eating disorders, college students may constitute a high risk group, and treatment and psychometric studies with a high proportion of students would not necessarily be excluded from EBMH. Indeed, the first issue of EBMH in February 1998 included a study by Mintz et al in which a questionnaire to diagnose eating disorders was tested on a non-clinical sample of mainly college students, as well as on a clinical sample of women with eating disorders. The guiding principle for selection of studies in EBMH will continue to be the relevance of research findings to mental health clinicians.


This paper assesses the effects of public policies on income taxes and benefits in six African countries. The comparative analysis focuses on the distribution and composition of incomes and assesses the effect of these policies on inequality and poverty. The results are based on newly developed microsimulation models for Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia. They highlight differences in tax and benefit systems among these African countries, show the extent (or lack) of support available for different population sub-groups, and disentangles the redistributive impact of various income components.


In the present study, an approach for a climate characterization based on a statistical analysis of monthly precipitation and temperature data is presented. First, the original database (1916–2010) was homogenized and a geostatistical analysis was carried out to characterize the monthly mean distribution of the two variables in the study area. Then, temporal change of precipitation and temperature were evaluated through the Mann–Kendall test. Finally, to better assess the climate patterns in Calabria, a climatic characterization was carried out by means of the Peguy climograph. Results have shown a decreasing trend for autumn–winter rainfall and an increasing trend in summer. With respect to the average temperature, the analyses revealed a positive trend in late spring and summer, mainly due to the increase in the minimum values, and a negative trend in the autumn–winter period, mainly due to a decrease in the maximum values. The analysis of the Peguy climographs allowed the dataset to be divided into three groups, depending on the different elevation of the gauges. Moreover, different temporal behaviours were detected by analysing the climographs in three sub-periods.


A coevolutionary model was developed to test interactions between diploid plants and herbivores using genetic algorithms on a spatial lattice. Simulated plants carried defensive genes and herbivores carried genes coding for resistance (metabolism of herbivore defense) in gene-for-gene synchrony. Collectively these genes are referred to as defensive/resistance genes (DR-genes). Genes were linked on chromosomes. Regulatory genes modified both dominance at these DR loci and the tradeoff cost involved in producing either defense or resistance. We tested the effects of varying a) the number of DR-loci, b) the ratio of the number of herbivore:plant generations, c) the shape (square vs. long and thin) and function (torus vs. island) of the lattice, and d) herbivore encounter rate on plant progeny dispersal distance. Increasing both the number of DR-genes and the ratio of herbivore:plant generations caused a tighter coevolutionary response between plants and herbivores. Plant defense was highly sensitive to herbivory but not to increasing encounter rates. Plant DR-genes were selectively disadvantageous with only one lucus but selectively favored with two or more loci. Increasing the number of herbivore:plant generations caused increased fluctuations in herbivore resistance gene frequencies and a decrease in the lag time in herbivore response to changes in plant defensive gene frequencies. The relationship between heterotroph and autotroph DR-genes increased exponentially with increasing numbers of DR-loci. This relationship suggests that autotrophs benefit from increased diversity of defense that causes a relative increase in cost for the heterotrophs. The shape of the lattice interacted with lattice function, resulting in high species persistence on wraparound habitats and the greatest extinction likelihood on rectangular islands. Low to moderate herbivore encounter rates increased plant progeny dispersal distance while high herbivore encounter rates tended to reduce dispersal distance. The frequencies of genes coding for plant defense and herbivore resistance were dynamic for thousands of generations, despite the homogeneous lattice. This interaction may increase extinction probabilities in fragmented habitats.


Malaysia is endowed with abundant surface water resources. However, the distribution of the rainfall in time and space has resulted in limited availability of water of acceptable quantity and quality for domestic water use in some parts of the country. The purpose of this study was to determine areas of groundwater potential and to assess the amount of potentially available groundwater and its quality. It was
envisioned that with the proposed development of the groundwater resource in the area, the available surface water and the additional groundwater would meet the domestic need of the people in the area. Several pumping tests were carried out by Geological Survey Department and
Rintisan Sdn. Bhd. at Teluk Datuk - Olak Lempit aquifer. Results of the tests showed that the formation was proven to yield water of considerable quantity. THWells software was used to calculate the drawdown due to the combined effect of 2 and 4 discharge wells. The results showed that the drawdown could be as high as 18 m if pumping was carried out once a year at 5 MGD pumping rate. The drawdown would cause water from a river nearby to flow into the aquifer but would not affect the quality of well water. From the results of groundwater quality test, there were two parameters which were higher than the standards. The parameters were Ammonia Nitrogen and Chemical Oxygen Demand. The maximum length of saltwater intrusion was 1.185km when the nearest wellfield was about 14 to 15 km from the sea. This means the groundwater quality was not affected by the salt- water intrusion. A three-dimensional finite-difference groundwater flow code known as MODFLOW
was used in this study. From the analysis, it could be deduced that the suitable rate of pumping for the study area was 25.5 MGD, which did not affect the surroundings
including the Paya Indah wetland. If there was no recharge at all for the whole year, then the suitable rate of pumping was around 10 to 12 MGD only. With the development of this groundwater project, some of the water supply
problems in the Klang Valley can be alleviated. The Teluk Datuk - Olak Lempit aquifer can be developed as a reliable alternative source of water supply.


Background: Myocutaneous flaps have been increasingly used in surgical reconstruction of the lower limbs, requiring the use of muscles that result in less functional and esthetic damage as flaps. This study aimed to evaluate the use of the fibularis tertius muscle (in terms of frequency and anatomy) as flaps in this procedure. Methods: Sixty-four lower limbs from preserved cadavers were dissected and evaluated based on the following parameters: proximal insertion, distal insertion, syntopy, morphology, and morphometry. Results: The fibularis tertius muscle was detected in 96.9% of the study cases. Most pro ximal insertions (96.8%) were found at the interosseous membrane, anterior border of the fibula, and anterior intermuscular septum. Most distal insertions (77.4%) were found at the lateral and dorsal sides of the 5 th metatarsal. Mean value of muscle belly length was 17.89 cm and width was 1.95 cm. The mean length of the distal tendon with no muscle fibers was 1.2 cm, and the mean width was 0.45 cm. Conclusions: The fibularis tertius muscle is frequent and has a distinct morphology, making it a viable option for the repair of lower limb (distal segment) defects.


At the climate conference in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018 (COP 24), Parties to the Paris Agreement intend to adopt a comprehensive set of decisions that provide details on its implementation, based on the so-called Paris Agreement Work Programme (PAWP). We outline some of the many finance issues to be addressed COP 24 and look more in-depth at two particular issues: the overarching goal regarding finance flows in Article 2(1)(c); and transparency of support. Article 2(1)(c) is a major innovation because it establishes addressing financial flows as one of the three goals of the Paris Agreement. At the same time it is an essential means to achieve the mitigation and adaptation goals. Article 2(1)(c) has a transformational objective with huge potential implications in the real world. Despite its overarching importance, the current negotiations do not address Article 2(1)(c) in the holistic man-ner it requires. Transparency of support relates to the delivery of information and data on financial and other support within the UNFCCC. The Paris Agreement requires Parties to 'build on and enhance' the existing transparency arrangements. The current negotiations are focused mainly on the financial support provided by developed countries, with less time dedicated towards support received and other parts of the bigger picture. If it was more balanced and addressed all aspects of transparency of support, the real-world impact of the transparency framework could be considerable.


This paper addresses the problem of scheduling real-time dwells in multi-function phase array radar systems. To keep track of targets, a radar system must meet its timing and energy constraints. We propose a new task model for radar dwells to accurately characterize their timing parameters. We develop an algorithm of transforming every dwell task as a semi-period task so the dwell task can meet its timing constraint and the interarrival times of the task will not be a constant. We also develop an enhanced template-based scheduling algorithm to schedule such tasks to meet the timing and energy constraints. Simulation results show that this algorithm can significantly improve the resource utilization.


Abstract We use standard general relativity to illustrate and clarify several common misconceptions about the expansion of the universe. To show the abundance of these misconceptions we cite numerous misleading, or easily misinterpreted, statements in the literature. In the context of the new standard ΛCDM cosmology we point out confusions regarding the particle horizon, the event horizon, the 'observable universe' and the Hubble sphere (distance at which recession velocity = c). We show that we can observe galaxies that have, and always have had, recession velocities greater than the speed of light. We explain why this does not violate special relativity and we link these concepts to observational tests. Attempts to restrict recession velocities to less than the speed of light require a special relativistic interpretation of cosmological redshifts. We analyze apparent magnitudes of supernovae and observationally rule out the special relativistic Doppler interpretation of cosmological redshifts at a confidence level of 23σ.


Lane Ryo Hirabayashi gathers a unique collection of photographs by War Relocation Authority photographer Hikaru Iwasaki, the only WRA photographer from the period still living. With substantive focus on resettlement -- and in particular Iwasaki's photos of Japanese Americans following their release from WRA camps from 1943 to 1945 -- Hirabayashi explores the WRA's use of photography in its mission not only to encourage "loyal" Japanese Americans to return to society at large as quickly as possible but also to convince Euro-Americans this was safe and advantageous. Hirabayashi also assesses the relative success of the WRA project, as well as the multiple uses of the photographs over time, first by the WRA and then by students, scholars, and community members in the present day. Although the photographs have been used to illustrate a number of publications, this book is the first sustained treatment addressing questions directly related to official WRA photographs. Under what conditions were they taken? How and where were they developed, selected, and stored? How were they used during the 1940s? What impact did they have during and following the war? By focusing on the WRA's Photographic Section, Japanese American Resettlement through the Lens makes a unique contribution to the body of literature on Japanese Americans during World War II.


The widespread availability of high-quality Web-based content offers new potential for supporting teachers as designers of curricula and classroom activities. When coupled with a participatory Web culture and infrastructure, teachers can share their creations as well as leverage from the best that their peers have to offer to support a collective intelligence or crowdsourcing community, which we dub crowdteaching . We applied a collective intelligence framework to characterize crowdteaching in the context of a Web-based tool for teachers called the Instructional Architect (IA). The IA enables teachers to find, create, and share instructional activities (called IA projects) for their students using online learning resources. These IA projects can further be viewed, copied, or adapted by other IA users. This study examines the usage activities of two samples of teachers, and also analyzes the characteristics of a subset of their IA projects. Analyses of teacher activities suggest that they are engaging in crowdteaching processes. Teachers, on average, chose to share over half of their IA projects, and copied some directly from other IA projects. Thus, these teachers can be seen as both contributors to and consumers of crowdteaching processes. In addition, IA users preferred to view IA projects rather than to completely copy them. Finally, correlational results based on an analysis of the characteristics of IA projects suggest that several easily computed metrics (number of views, number of copies, and number of words in IA projects) can act as an indirect proxy of instructionally relevant indicators of the content of IA projects.


The performance of different reflexive and refractive secondaries optimized for the same primary lens is studied by using ray-tracing simulation. Different solutions are approached according to materials and manufacturing processes currently available in the market, which can be potentially cost-effective for concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) modules. They are compared in terms of system optical efficiency and acceptance angle. In addition, irradiance distribution over the cell is also studied.


An increase in Australian investors wanting their retirement funds to go into the stocks of ethical companies means change is afoot within the nation's finance industry.  The latest move has come from AMP Capital, which has announced it's banning investment in companies that manufacture tobacco, cluster munitions, landmines and biological and chemical weapons.  Now there are suggestions that this could be the start of a new trend in ethical investments.


Observing trends and predicting future values are common tasks for viewers of bivariate data visualizations. As many charts do not explicitly include trend lines or related statistical summaries, viewers often visually estimate trends directly from a plot. How reliable are the inferences viewers draw when performing such regression by eye? Do particular visualization designs or data features bias trend perception? We present a series of crowdsourced experiments that assess the accuracy of trends estimated using regression by eye across a variety of bivariate visualizations, and examine potential sources of bias in these estimations. We find that viewers accurately estimate trends in many standard visualizations of bivariate data, but that both visual features (e.g., "within-the-bar" bias) and data features (e.g., the presence of outliers) can result in visual estimates that systematically diverge from standard least-squares regression models.


Alaska courts have assisted unrepresented litigants in civil cases, explaining procedural technicalities to pro se litigants and applying more lenient standards to pro se pleadings. Although the origin of this policy is unclear, the Alaska Supreme Court in Breck v. Ulmer held that the trial court should advise pro se litigants of procedural requirements and hold pro se litigants to less stringent standards than attorneys. However, two recent cases, Greenway v. Heathcott and Wagner v. Wagner, have complicated Alaska's policy by adopting different approaches regarding when a court should advise a pro se litigant of procedural requirements. This Article proposes that, based on the State's recognition of a constitutional right to represent oneself, Alaska courts apply a due process analysis to judicial duties toward self-represented litigants to ensure that courts consistently recognize and protect pro se litigants' interests.


In 1940 S.M. Ulam proposed the famous Ulam stability problem. In 1941 D.H. Hyers solved the well-known Ulam stability problem for additive mappings subject to the Hyers condition on approximately additive mappings. In this paper we introduce generalized additive mappings of Jensen type mappings and establish new theorems about the Ulam stability of additive and alternative additive mappings.


Drug disasters from Thalidomide to Opren, and other less dramatic cases of drug injury, raise questions about whether the testing and control of medicines provides satisfactory protection for the public. In this revealing study, John Abrahan develops a theoretically challenging realist approach, in order to probe deeply into the work of scientists in the pharmaceutical industry and governmental drug regulatory authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. Through the examination of contemporary controversial case studies, he exposes how the commercial interest of drug manufacturers are consistently given the benefit of the scientific doubts about medicine safety and effectiveness, over and above the best interests of patients.; A highly original combination of philosophical rigour, historical sensitivity and empirical depth enables the "black box" of industrial and government science to be opened up to critical scrutiny much more than in previous social scientific study. All major aspects of drug testing and regulation are considered, including pre- clinical animal tests, clinical trials and postmarketing surveillance of adverse drug reactions. The author argues that drug regulators are too dependent on pharmaceutical industry resources and expertise, and too divorced from public accountability. The problem of corporate bias is particularly severe in the UK, where regulatory decisions about medicine safety are shrouded in greater secrecy than in the US.; Since the purpose of drug regulation should be to maximize the safety and effectiveness of medicines for patients, the public needs and deserves policies to counteract corporate bias in drug testing and evaluation. John Abraham's realist analysis provides a robust basis for policy interventions at the institutional and legislative levels. He proposes that corporate bias could be reduced by more extensive freedom of information, greater autonomy of government scientists from pharmaceutical industry, the development of independent drug testing by the regulatory authority, increased patient representation on regulatory committees, and more frequent and thorough oversight of regulatory performance by the legislature. This book should be of interest to anyone who cares about how medicines should be controlled in modern society. It should prove particularly rewarding for students and researchers in the sociology of science and technology, science and medicines policy, medical sociologists, the medical and pharmaceutical professions, and consumer organizations.


This thesis investigates the electrodeposition of PdNi films with controllable composition and their suitability as electrical contacts in electronic and spintronic devices based on Silicon and Carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The electrodeposition process and characterisation of the electrical and magnetic properties of the deposited PdNi films are described. PdNi films with a wide composition range can be deposited from the same bath by changing the deposition potential. Electrical characterisation shows the formation of high quality PdNi-Si Schottky barriers while magnetic measurements prove the ferromagnetic nature of the PdNi films. Electrodeposited PdNi films are thus shown to be suitable contacts for electronic and spintronic devices. Hydrogen sensors comprising back to back electrodeposited PdNi-Si Schottky barriers are fabricated and characterised. The back to back architecture ensures low current operation at all biases. Palladium causes the Hydrogen molecules to dissociate and be absorbed by the film, while Nickel makes the sensor resistant to repeated cycling in the Hydrogen environment. The sensors exhibit extremely low idle currents, large percentage current increases on Hydrogen exposure and high selectivity for Hydrogen. These factors, in addition to the simplicity of fabrication and easy integration with conventional electronics show that electrodeposited PdNi-Si Schottky barriers are well suited for use as Hydrogen sensors. The workfunction change in PdNi films exposed to Hydrogen is used to characterise CNTs contacted by electrodeposited PdNi. The PdNi contacted CNTs exhibit ohmic characteristics, which change on exposure to Hydrogen. Examining this change allows differentiation between semiconducting and metallic CNTs. Raman spectroscopy is used to characterise the same CNTs and the results are compared with the electrical characterisation in Hydrogen. The electrical and Raman analysis experimentally verify the theoretically assigned CNT Raman features. The fabrication and electrical characterisation of CNT transistors incorporating electrodeposited PdNi contacts are presented. The CNTs are spin coated from a 1,2-dichlorobenzene dispersion and contacted with electrodeposited PdNi. The PdNi-Si Schottky barrier is used to suppress the current through the Silicon substrate during electrical characterisation. The operating restrictions imposed by the direct PdNi-Si contact and methods to overcome the same are discussed. The characteristics of the CNT transistor in a changing magnetic field at room temperature are presented.


This essay investigates the idea of biofuturity within modernism, focusing specifically on the figure of male maternity in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood. Although the figure of the pregnant male occurs in ancient and classical literature, it surfaces significantly in modernist works-Joyce's Ulysses, Pound's Cantos, Freud's Schreber case-at a moment when biological life was being reimagined through the optic of eugenic science and comparative anatomy. The essay extends Lee Edelman's critique of reproductive futurity in No Future to suggest that dystopic biological futures were being imagined around figures such as Dr. O'Connor whose desire, as he says, to "boil some good man's potatoes and toss up a child … every nine months" reinforces his queer identity and annexes the importance of disability in many of the novel's characters. Modernist cultural representations of the pregnant male foreground the spectacle of reproduction loosed from its putative organic site in the female body and displace it elsewhere-the test tube, the surrogate womb, the male body, and, not insignificantly, the novel. This displacement is both a queering and cripping of normative attitudes toward reproductive health and the futures that such embodiment implies. It also warps traditional narrative attitudes toward biological futurity when the family romance no longer reproduces the heterosexual body. Barnes's novel is not a baroque anomaly among stream of consciousness narratives but perhaps the representative modernist novel because it offers an inside narrative of individuals interpellated within biological and racial science.


Garland Seep is a Southern Appalachian fen that supports a population of federally endangered green pitcher plants (Sarracenia oreophila). The wetland is underlain by clayey stream deposits above fractured bedrock, is located at the base of a mountain slope, and is fed by groundwater that originates as recharge on the adjacent hillslope. Groundwater wells were installed following a hydrologic restoration in the mid-1990s and have been monitored at varying frequencies since that time. The 20+ year record provides evidence that Garland Seep can be classified as a "hypocrene fen," in which spring flow rarely reaches the ground surface because of low discharge rates and high evapotranspiration (ET). In general, water-level fluctuations followed seasonal ET patterns, with higher water levels in the winter and early spring (when ET is low) and lower levels in the summer and fall. During wetter years, the water table remained near the ground surface for much of the year, with the clay layer underlying the site retaining moisture even after water levels had dropped. The "clay wetting" period was shorter during dryer years and corresponded with a reduction in the number of pitcher plant clumps observed at the site. In addition to the geologic and climatic controls on hydrology, previous landowners used fire to maintain open space for grazing, and The Nature Conservancy has continued the practice to combat woody vegetation and to open the canopy. Prescribed burns reduce ET (at least initially), cause a rise in water levels, and have helped maintain a thriving Sarracenia population.


Received: October 02, 2018 Accepted: October 20, 2018 Published: November 30, 2018 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 DOI: 10.32996/ijllt.2018.1.4.9 Besides to the communicative function of language there is the social function which shows the role that language plays in society. This can be noted in sociolinguistics through code switching. The main purpose of the case study is to investigate and understand the functions of Arabic-English code switching among the bilingual Saudi speakers in Jouf University from a sociolinguistic perspective. The case study was carried out qualitatively. This paper focuses on the analysis and discussion of the code switching of four bilingual Saudi speakers living in Jouf, Saudi Arabia. Data were collected through observation, audio taping and semi-structured interviews. The findings indicated that there are four communicative functions of Arabic-English code switching among bilingual Saudi speakers i.e. to quote, to show off, to change topics and to express feelings. KEYWORDS


A method to evaluate forecasts of total fractional cloud cover using satellite measurements is demonstrated. Cloud analyses in the form of monthly cloud climatologies are extracted from NOAA AVHRR data which are compared to corresponding cloud forecast information from the HIRLAM and ECMWF numerical weather prediction models. The satellite-based cloud information is extracted for a summer month in 1994 and a winter month in 1995 by use of the SMHI cloud classification model SCANDIA. Cloud analyses are conducted for an area covering a substantial part of northern Europe. Deficiencies in forecasted cloud amounts are found for both models, especially the underestimation of cloudiness for short forecast lengths with the HIRLAM model. Forecast improvements using the HIRLAM model are indicated when introducing a cloud initialisation technique using cloud fields from initial 6-hour forecasts (first-guess fields). Future systematic validations using this technique are, however, needed to make firm conclusions on the general model behaviour. SCANDIA-derived cloud information is proposed as a valuable complement to other datasets used for cloud forecast validation (e.g., the SSM/I- and ISCCP data sets). DOI: 10.1034/j.1600-0870.1996.t01-1-00015.x


We investigate the mechanisms that shape social comparison in organizations and generate social comparison costs. In particular, we focus on heterogeneity in the strength and type of incentives and argue that, from an efficient design perspective, such variance in rewards is a double-edged sword. While the sorting and incentive effects that result may increase productivity, the social comparison processes that arise may dampen it. We posit that the mechanisms underlying these behavioral costs are shaped not only by the magnitude of reward variance, but by the formal and informal design elements shaping the distance of advantaged peers. In other words, the more proximate socially, structurally, or geographically are those to whom one socially compares, the larger the behavioral response. Empirically, we use an unanticipated event during which outlets of a bank, previously operating under essentially homogenous incentives, were assigned to tournament groups with differing ex ante probabilities of winning a prize—an event that increases variance in awards and hence generates an impetus for social comparison. We find that units with more socially, geographically, and structurally proximate peers assigned to "advantaged" tournament groups decreased their productivity. We discuss implications of these results for organizational design and boundaries.The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2016.1103 .


Significance Regional quantification of feasibility and effectiveness of forest strategies to mitigate climate change should integrate observations and mechanistic ecosystem process models with future climate, CO2, disturbances from fire, and management. Here, we demonstrate this approach in a high biomass region, and found that reforestation, afforestation, lengthened harvest cycles on private lands, and restricting harvest on public lands increased net ecosystem carbon balance by 56% by 2100, with the latter two actions contributing the most. Forest sector emissions tracked with our life cycle assessment model decreased by 17%, partially meeting emissions reduction goals. Harvest residue bioenergy use did not reduce short-term emissions. Cobenefits include increased water availability and biodiversity of forest species. Our improved analysis framework can be used in other temperate regions. Strategies to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions through forestry activities have been proposed, but ecosystem process-based integration of climate change, enhanced CO2, disturbance from fire, and management actions at regional scales are extremely limited. Here, we examine the relative merits of afforestation, reforestation, management changes, and harvest residue bioenergy use in the Pacific Northwest. This region represents some of the highest carbon density forests in the world, which can store carbon in trees for 800 y or more. Oregon's net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB) was equivalent to 72% of total emissions in 2011–2015. By 2100, simulations show increased net carbon uptake with little change in wildfires. Reforestation, afforestation, lengthened harvest cycles on private lands, and restricting harvest on public lands increase NECB 56% by 2100, with the latter two actions contributing the most. Resultant cobenefits included water availability and biodiversity, primarily from increased forest area, age, and species diversity. Converting 127,000 ha of irrigated grass crops to native forests could decrease irrigation demand by 233 billion m3⋅y−1. Utilizing harvest residues for bioenergy production instead of leaving them in forests to decompose increased emissions in the short-term (50 y), reducing mitigation effectiveness. Increasing forest carbon on public lands reduced emissions compared with storage in wood products because the residence time is more than twice that of wood products. Hence, temperate forests with high carbon densities and lower vulnerability to mortality have substantial potential for reducing forest sector emissions. Our analysis framework provides a template for assessments in other temperate regions.


For system administrators, ensuring that all Windows servers are performing optimally is a tall order. The larger the enterprise, the greater the chance for irritating, time-consuming configuration problems. Sometimes, you can determine the root cause of the problem yourself-but that's only if you're lucky. With Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), the diagnosis is done for you. MOM monitors server operations and automatically notifies you of problems by sending an immediate alert to your console, email address, or pager. To help you better understand how MOM works, O'Reilly presents Essential Microsoft Operations Manager.The goal of this comprehensive tutorial is to give first-time MOM administrators a solid foundation for planning, implementing, and administering MOM 2005. Author Chris Fox, a renowned MOM expert, offers the type of practical, real-world advice that you need to improve the performance of your IT infrastructure.After taking you through the entire process of setting up MOM on the network, the book moves on to more advanced administration issues. It carefully instructs you how to program and automate MOM and the agents that reside on the servers themselves. You'll also learn how to manage the scripts that determine which server agents are relevant to report.By capturing system data, intelligently analyzing it, and then notifying you with a suggested course of action, MOM makes extinguishing fires a breeze. And now, thanks to Essential Microsoft Operations Manager, learning how to use MOM is a breeze, too.


10 Minute Guide to Business Presentations gives you the tools you need to get your point across and keep the attention of your listeners when making a business presentation. It gives tips on producing well-targeted presentations, establishing your objectives, designing effective story boards and grids, using color graphics to help illustrate your points, and arranging the sequence of your presentation so that you don't lose the interest of your audience. It also suggests techniques for overcoming fear of public speaking and for handling unusual circumstances, like presenting via teleconferencing or conference calls.