Marine diesel engines usually operate on a highly boosted intake pressure. The reciprocating feature of diesel engines and the continuous flow operation characteristics of the turbocharger (TC) make the matching between the turbocharger and diesel engine very challenging. Sequential turbocharging (STC) technology is recognized as an effective approach in improving the fuel economy and exhaust emissions especially at low speed and high torque when a single stage turbocharger is not able to boost the intake air to the pressure needed. The application of STC technology also extends engine operation toward a wider range than that using a single-stage turbocharger.
 This research experimentally investigated the potential of a STC system in improving the performance of a TBD234V12 model marine diesel engine originally designed to operate on a single-stage turbocharger. The STC system examined consisted of a small (S) turbocharger and a large (L) turbocharger which were installed in parallel. Such a system can operate on three boosting modes noted as 1TC-S, 1TC-L and 2TC. A rule-based control algorithm was developed to smoothly switch the STC operation mode using engine speed and load as references. The potential of the STC system in improving the performance of this engine was experimentally examined over a wide range of engine speed and load. When operated at the standard propeller propulsion cycle, the application of the STC system reduced the brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) by 3.12% averagely. The average of the exhaust temperature before turbine was decreased by 50°C. The soot and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions were reduced respectively. The examination of the engine performance over an entire engine speed and torque range demonstrated the super performance of the STC system in extending the engine operation toward the high torque at low speed (900 to 1200 RPM) while further improving the fuel economy as expected. The engine maximum torque at 900 rpm was increased from 1680Nm to 2361 Nm (40.5%). The average BSFC over entire working area was improved by 7.4%. The BSFC at low load and high torque was significantly decreased. The application of the STC system also decreased the average NOx emissions by 31.5% when examined on the propeller propulsion cycle.


With more than 21,000 MW installed capacity of renewable energy sources as of now out of an estimated potential of about 189,000 MW, in the years to come it is really a challenge to integrate the same into the smart grids in a country like India. This is basically on account of unevenly distributed renewable resources. With 5 regional grids gradually getting connected, formation of national grid in totality is a reality. Of course with major sources of generation being thermal with availability up to certain distant future, entire thrust has been put in recent years on the development of renewable resources that would be the source of energy to run side by side to the conventional ones. At the same time vast assets created in transmission and distribution will also continue to be gainfully used, may be in conjunction other form of value addition to the same for proper functioning. Under this condition, keeping in mind the eventualities, regulations have been framed and so also the certification process has been made effective to handle the situation particularly on grid connectivity front. Expectations from smart grids by the consumers and suppliers as well of course may lead further refinement to the existing protocols in the process in the years to come as and when harnessing of renewable resources progresses to attain a very high level.


This report examines mass-market broadband access and take-up, analyzing the current and prospective level of competition and drawing implications for public policy. The report was commissioned by The Brussels Round Table, a forum for leading European telecommunication operators and equipment manufacturers, including Alcatel, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, France Telecom, Siemens, Telefonica de Espana, and Telecom Italia.A distinction is drawn between 'facilities-based competition', where providers are using all (or some of) their own infrastructure, and 'access-based competition', where providers depend on access to someone else's network. Amongst EU Member States, there is a general consensus that infrastructure-based competition is desirable in telecommunications and has an important role in delivering innovations such as broadband. However, public statements from national regulatory authorities (NRAs) about the benefits of infrastructure competition have not always been matched by coherent regulatory policy designed to facilitate such competition. Broadband is a new service. Typically, new services are not subject to specific regulation, owing to the risk that this would discourage investment and stifle innovation. However, from its inception, the development of broadband access has been influenced by intervention from policy makers and regulators. This intervention includes local and national government initiatives to promote broadband, and ex-ante obligations on incumbent telecom operators to provide access to their networks.While broadband penetration is widely portrayed as being disappointingly slow, penetration is actually quite fast relative to the adoption of comparable technologies - thus questioning the claim's use as a justification for public policy intervention. Given the prevalence of intervention to date, an equally valid response is to question the effectiveness of existing regulation. Both new entrants and incumbent operators are rational agents who inevitably respond to regulatory incentives; if broadband deployment in the EU has been too slow, regulatory policy is a key area where one should look for an explanation. The current approach of NRAs to broadband is heavily influenced by the existing regulatory framework for traditional telephony services, with its emphasis on access to the local loop. The appropriateness of this approach may be questioned, given that broadband is a new service that requires new infrastructure build (even if existing networks are used) and that it can and is delivered over many different types of platforms, including cable, satellite, fixed wireless and mobile.Against this background, this report has a number of objectives: to highlight the extent to which there is currently competition between platforms in the provision of broadband access; to explore the potential for growth in platform competition (subject to a supportive policy environment) and likely market dynamics; to assess the relative effectiveness of platform competition and access-based entry in delivering benefits for customers and reducing the need for regulation; to assess the impact of public policy on incentives to invest in infrastructure and so on the future development of platform competition; and to develop conclusions about the appropriate public policy towards broadband.The report's authors are Dan Maldoom and Richard Marsden of DotEcon, and Gregory Sidak and Hal Singer of Criterion Economics. The report was presented in Brussels on October 15, 2003 to the BRT conference "The Future of the European Telecommunications Industry," attended by member company CEOs, members of the European Parliament, Commissioner Erkki Liikanen, and other regulators from the European Commission.


The precise measurement of cosmic-ray antiparticles serves as important means for identifying the nature of dark matter. Recent years showed that identifying the nature of dark matter with cosmic-ray positrons and higher energy antiprotons is difficult, and has lead to a significantly increased interest in cosmic-ray antideuteron searches. Antideuterons may also be generated in dark matter annihilations or decays, offering a potential breakthrough in unexplored phase space for dark matter. Low-energy antideuterons are an important approach because the flux from dark matter interactions exceeds the background flux by more than two orders of magnitude in the low-energy range for a wide variety of models. This review is based on the "dbar14 - dedicated cosmic-ray antideuteron workshop", which brought together theorists and experimentalists in the field to discuss the current status, perspectives, and challenges for cosmic-ray antideuteron searches and discusses the motivation for antideuteron searches, the theoretical and experimental uncertainties of antideuteron production and propagation in our Galaxy, as well as give an experimental cosmic-ray antideuteron search status update. This report is a condensed summary of the article "Review of the theoretical and experimental status of dark matter identification with cosmic-ray antideuteron" (arXiv:1505.07785).


The Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is widely used for the acquisition of distributed greenhouse micro-climate data, such as temperature, humidity, CO2 concentration and solar radiation. In this paper the communication reliability of a WSN was evaluated based on experimental data within the greenhouse. In order to reduce redundant and invalid data to achieve a low power transmission, this paper proposes two kinds of multi-sensor data fusion scheme depending on the characteristics of the parameters. For parameters that change slowly (such as temperature, humidity, and CO2), a time fusion algorithm which can detect the time consistency of data is used to reduce the amount of data transmitted. The spatial fusion based on the supporting vector is used to give the final decision variable for the control system. For rapidly-changing parameters such as solar radiation, this paper proposes the Dual Prediction Scheme (DPS) based on an adaptive model selection to reduce the amount of data transmitted, with a spatial fusion algorithm based on GIA (Grey Incidence Analysis) for the aggregator. The data fusion schemes were implemented and tested in a greenhouse at the Tongji University Jiading Campus. The implementation results showed that the data fusion schemes can guarantee the sensor precision, and also significantly reduce the amount of data transmitted, which means prolonging the lifetime of the network.


"Delahaye Styling and Design" celebrates the extraordinary coachwork produced in France for the Delahaye chassis between 1920 and the early 1950s. A detailed analysis and race history of this grand French marque is followed by descriptions of individual cars, each section being accompanied by vintage images and Michael Furman's striking modern photography.


This selected tri-annual list has been prepared by R. J. Adie, Terence Armstrong) J. D. M. Blyth, Amorey Gethin, John Glen, H. G. R. King, Brian Roberts and Ann M. Savours. Readers can greatly assist by sending reprints of papers and reports. Attention is drawn to the bibliographies in each number of the Journal ofGlaciology, which covers scientific aspects of snow and ice in all parts of the world. Both the Polar Record and the Journal of Glaciology deal with glaciological literature having specific polar interest and with general matters of a practical nature such as snowcraft. For Russian material the system of transliteration used is that adopted by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names and the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use (see the Polar Record, Vol. 6, No. 44,1952, p. 546). Reprints of "Recent Polar Literature", from Nos. 37/38 onwards, can be obtained separately (to allow references to be cut out for pasting on index cards) from the Institute, price 2s. 6d. for two reprints. Copies will be sent without charge to organizations with which the Institute maintains exchange arrangements and which notify their wish to receive them.


Approximately 25% of women experience major weight gain after pregnancy, retaining more than 4.5 kg. Preliminary efforts to promote postpartum weight loss have encountered some success, but little is known about the types of programs of greatest interest to postpartum women. The purpose of this study was to better understand the weight control needs and preferences of postpartum women in the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Nutrition program (N = 100) and an Adult Education Parenting (AEP) program (N = 75). A self-report questionnaire was used to collect participants' demographic and weight history information as well as participants' degree of interest in various weight loss treatment modalities. Results indicated that, independent of weeks postpartum and breastfeeding status, women in both groups (WIC and AEO) experienced high postpartum weight retention, and greater weight retention was reported in WIC than AEP (7.6 ± 7.7 kg vs. 3.2 ± 6.9 kg, respectively; p = .0001). When asked about types of weight control treatments, women in both setting expressed greatest interest in weekly face-to-face group meetings, but 66.2% of AEP and 60.6% of WIC reported needing childcare to attend such meetings. Women in both settings reported interest in an Internet-based program, particularly one that integrated monthly face-to-face meetings. Future randomized controlled trials are needed to examine the efficacy of Internet-based treatment in reducing postpartum weight retention in diverse patient populations.


We review the latest breakthroughs in ultrafast fiber laser technology in the mid-IR wavelength range ≥2 μm. In particular, we concentrate on two novel laser systems built around passively mode-locked Tm:fiber lasers and fiber-based Cr:ZnS lasers, generating sub-100 femtosecond pulses and frequency combs with several Watt average output powers, hundreds of kilowatts peak powers and tens of nanojoule pulse energies. The tunability in the broad wavelength range between 2 and 2.5 μm as well as a simple all-silica-fiber design makes the Tm-fiber laser a truly unique broadband light source, particularly relevant for applications in gas sensing, fine material processing of semiconductors, composite materials, glasses and plastics, as well as for brain surgery, breath analysis, remote sensing and stand-off trace gas detection, especially in oil and gas industry. We also review techniques for coherent supercontinuum generation in the mid-IR, including a novel technique of direct generation of the supercontinuum in the fiber. A competing Watt level few-optical cycle Cr:ZnS laser operating at 2.4 μm (Patent pending, ATLA Lasers, Trondheim, Norway) is distinguished by extremely short pulse duration of only 41 fs, reliability and compactness. This unique ultrashort-pulsed laser generates intrinsically coherent frequency combs, which further extends the application range to high-resolution and high-sensitivity spectroscopy and optical clocks.


In 1989, the University of North Texas was authorized by the Texas Coordinating Board of Higher Education to offer a master of science degree in behavior analysis. In 1990, the degree program appeared for the first time in the UNT Graduate Catalog. Due to the wide variety of career applications within behavior analysis, the program was designed to produce behavior analysts who could rise to whatever circumstance, opportunity, or challenge they faced--specifically, to perform at a high professional level in any of a variety of employment settings and/or to enter into doctoral programs with a thorough background in behavior analysis. In the paragraphs below, we briefly describe the curriculum, the enrollment history, the faculty, student involvement, and the current status of the program in the context of the department. Perhaps of greatest importance to most readers is "what do UNT graduates do after receiving their master's degrees?" Because our graduates can best answer that question, we asked a few of them, who represent the broad spectrum of activities and positions that characterize UNT graduates. Their answers are in the text boxes in the margins of this paper. Behavior analysis covers a large body of knowledge and a broad range of activities. The UNT program is fortunate in having an entire curriculum devoted to behavior analysis, as well as a faculty willing to accomplish the program's goal of preparing its students for interesting, remunerative, and fulfilling lifelong careers in behavior analysis. Toward that end, the program includes in-depth coursework in the principles, methods, techniques, theory, and philosophy of behavior analysis and it provides supervised experience in several areas of application and research. Students choose one of two concentrations: the applied concentration is for students who plan to seek employment upon obtaining the Master's Degree and the General/Research concentration is for students who plan to pursue a doctorate upon completion of the master's degree. The concentrations share 7 core courses that cover behavioral principles, surveys of experimental analysis and applied behavior analysis literatures, research methods, theory and philosophy, and quantitative methods. Students in the applied concentration go on to take three required courses in applications and have several additional applied electives to choose from, including a 2-course sequence in OBM and a 3course sequence in autism. General/research students take one required course beyond the core, one or two semesters of research problems, and one or two electives. Electives in both concentrations may be behavior analysis courses or courses in other departments. Computer science, business administration, psychology and biology courses, as well as seminar courses in behavior analysis have been chosen as electives. Applied students have a total of 3 faculty- supervised practica in at least two different applied fields and an internship that is faculty-approved and supervised by behavior analysts in the field. All students complete a data -based thesis, usually experimental in nature. The course requirements and course descriptions may be found on the department web page at www.scs.unt.edu/depts/behv UNT's master's degree program was the first graduate program to be accredited by the Association for Behavior Analysis (1993) and the first to be re-accredited (1998). Four of its faculty members are board certified behavior analysts (BCBA). Graduates of the master's program applied concentration will have met the eligibility requirements published by the Behavior Analysis Certification Board for taking the national examination. Enrollment History Prior to approval of the master's degree program, four graduate courses in behavior analysis had been offered each year between 1984 and 1989. Several students were enrolled during that period in an interdisciplinary master's degree program offered by the Graduate School. …


BACKGROUND
Hemostatic dressings have become increasingly popular as the optimal initial treatment for severe hemorrhage. The purpose of this study was to compare the hemostatic properties of a novel highly porous silica and chitosan-based dressing (TraumaStat) to HemCon, and gauze dressing in a severe groin injury model in swine.

METHODS
Thirty swine were blindly randomized to receive TraumaStat, HemCon, or standard gauze dressing for hemostatic control. A complex groin injury involving complete transaction of the femoral artery and vein was made. After 30 seconds of uncontrolled hemorrhage, the randomized dressing was applied and pressure was held for 5 minutes. Fluid resuscitation was initiated to achieve and maintain the baseline mean arterial pressure and the wound was inspected for bleeding. Failure of hemostasis was defined as pooling of blood outside of the wound. Animals were then monitored for 120 minutes and surviving animals were euthanized.

RESULTS
Blood loss before treatment was similar between groups (p > 0.1). TraumaStat had one failure, compared with five for gauze, and eight for HemCon (p = 0.005, TraumaStat vs. HemCon). TraumaStat significantly reduced median blood loss when compared with both HemCon and gauze (117 vs. 774 and 268 mL respectively, p < 0.05). At study conclusion, TraumaStat animals had a greater median hematocrit than both HemCon (24 vs. 19, p = 0.033), and gauze (24 vs. 19, p = 0.049) animals. Median volume of fluid resuscitation and mortality were not different between groups (p > 0.1).

CONCLUSIONS
TraumaStat was superior to HemCon and gauze dressings in controlling bleeding from a severe groin injury. TraumaStat may be a better hemostatic dressing for control of active hemorrhage than current standards of care.


Cancer treatments have moved on dramatically in the past 20 years but have we incorporated these new treatments into skin assessments when delivering fundamental care for prevention of skin damage? A prevalence report carried out in 2016 at the Christie Hospital in Manchester, highlighted the rate as 3.2% for hospital-acquired pressure ulcers, which is higher than average for a hospital of similar size (Christie NHS FT, 2016). However, the report also found that targets for utilising risk assessment tools within a timely manner had been met and indeed exceeded the Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) expectations. The report was carried out by the current pressure equipment provider in collaboration with the tissue viability team. This supported the notion that risk assessments were carried out in a timely manner and in conjunction with a pressure ulcer prevention strategy; however, patients still went on to develop pressure ulcers (Christie NHS FT, 2016).


The eleven contributions to this volume, written by expert corpus linguists, tackle corpora from a wide range of perspectives and aim to shed light on the numerous linguistic and pedagogical uses to which corpora can be put. They present cutting-edge research in the authors' respective domain of expertise and suggest directions for future research. The main focus of the book is on learner corpora, but it also includes reflections on the role of other types of corpora, such as native corpora, expert users corpora, parallel corpora or corpora of New Englishes. For readers who are already familiar with corpora, this volume offers an informed account of the key role that corpus data play in applied linguistics today. As for readers who are new to corpus linguistics, the overview of approaches, methods and domains of applications presented will undoubtedly help them develop their own taste for corpora. This volume has been edited in honour of Sylviane Granger, who has been one of the pioneers of learner corpus research.


The purpose of this thesis is to explore how Indigenous men understand Indigenous identity, how they experience Indigenous-specific programming while in prison, and how these experiences intersect. Through a number of qualitative semi-structured interviews, Indigenous men described their experiences of participating in Indigenous-specific programming while incarcerated; the data is then understood within an historical context of colonialism and assimilation policy. The key findings of these interviews highlight the importance and necessity of Indigenous-specific prison programming to incarcerated Indigenous men, as well as the healing potential of Indigenous culture and spirituality. However, systemic barriers in provincial prison systems prevent Indigenous men from being able to access such programming. This thesis also finds that Canada's history of colonialism has affected the Indigenous identities of many of the research participants. Some spoke about culture and language loss as a direct result of colonization (the residential school system, the sixties-scoop, and the child welfare system) while others spoke about the indirect outcomes of colonization, such as marginalization and fragmented identities. Based on these findings the main conclusion is that while Canada is attempting to appear postcolonial in light of talks of renewed relationships and reconciliation, colonization of Indigenous men continues within the Canadian prison system. As incarcerated Indigenous men are denied access to culture and spirituality the prison itself is serving to further disconnect Indigenous people from being Indigenous and fostering the erasure of Indigenous identity from the Canadian settler state as a means of continuing what can be termed as the 'civilizing' project.


Athletic training was spawned from physical education in the 1960s, and since that time has evolved into a recognized health care profession. The majority of accredited athletic training education programs (ATEPs) are housed within academic units of kinesiology. However, the National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA) has recommended that ATEPs be aligned in colleges of health-related professions. To set some context for the issue, this paper will review the history and evolution of athletic training education. NATA's rationale for alignment of ATEPs with the health-related professions will be presented, and the implications of this potential transition for kinesiology will be addressed. Finally, the challenges kinesiology administrators and faculty face in offering and retaining accredited ATEPs will be explored.


Methicillin-resistance is clinically important because a single genetic element confers resistance to the β-lactam antibiotics, which include penicillins, cephalosporins and carbapenems. In the past 20 to 30 years, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains have been present in hospitals and have become a major cause of hospital-acquired infection. Comprehensive MRSA-control programmes that include screening cultures to detect patients colonised with MRSA, use of contact precautions, appropriate hand hygiene and automatic alerts of readmission of colonised patients have reported success in controlling or reducing transmission of MRSA and also reduced acquisition of MRSA in high-risk units in hospitals. Community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) emerged worldwide in the late 1990s.


This essay was the result of a conference held at Tate Gallery Liverpool, that ran in conjunction with an exhibition curated by Simon Wallis that focused on current practices in painting that could be described formally, historically or conceptually as hybrid. My essay developed the conference paper analysing the history of the term, its problematic use within the field of contemporary art, alternatives to it such as that of syncretism, and how such issues relate to the development of painting within Brazilian art during the 20th century.

It begins with the analysis of the 1920s search for a national modern art that would culminate in the development of the notion of Anthropophagy – a critical digestion of the culture of the other. Here a parallel is suggested between this process and the concurrent Rappel a l'Ordre wave of nationalist and classicist 'purification' of the cubist legacy.

The essay later discusses the distinct context of the 1960s when in Brazil Anthropophagy re-emerged as a powerful cultural currency faced with the advent of North American mass culture and the collapse of the national utopian constructivist ideals. The essay concludes with the unmasking of a centain Eurocentric view of contemporary art produced in Brazil, via an analysis of the painting of Beatriz Milhazes. It is argued that the surface of her pictures fools the viewer into believing his/her preconceptions of the place.

The Brazilian expression 'For the English to see' is evoked as the painting purports to be something it is not, in a siimilar manner in which the Portuguese fooled the British by disguising slave ships.


When different technologies are present in an industry, we assume that a homogeneous technology will lead to misleading implications about technical change and inefficient policy recommendations. In this article a latent class modelling approach and flexible estimation of the production structure is used to distinguish different technologies for a representative sample of EU dairy producers, as an industry exhibiting significant structural changes and differences in production systems in the past decades. The model uses a transformation function to recognize multiple outputs; separate technological classes based on multiple characteristics, a flexible generalized linear functional form, a variety of inputs and random effects to capture firm heterogeneity; and measures of first- and second-order elasticities to represent technical change and biases. We find that if multiple production frontiers are embodied in the data, different firms exhibit different output or input intensities and changes associated with different production systems that are veiled by overall (average) measures. In particular, we find that farms that are larger and more capital intensive experience greater productivity, technical progress and labour savings, and enjoy scale economies that have increased over time.


A series of hematite samples (>98 % Fe 2 O 3, Sishen Mine, South Africa) with different initial grain sizes of −5 s −1 and 4.7 × 10 −5 s −1 , resulting in finite shear strains between 0.4 and 4.7 and finite shear strengths in the range of 32–326 MPa. The data obtained at high shear strain (>3) fit to a power law creep equation with a pre-exponential constant of lnA = −5.03 ± 0.61 MPa −2.5 s −1 , an activation energy of Q = 249 ± 48 kJ mol −1 , and a stress exponent of n = 2.5 ± 0.5, indicating dislocation creep partially assisted by grain boundary sliding as the main deformation mechanism. Irrespective of the initial grain size, the final grain size ( D ) of fully recrystallized samples decreases continuously with increasing (steady state) equivalent stress (σ), yielding a piezometric relationship of the form: D = 1055 × σ 1.03 ± 0.10 . The piezometer is applied to itabiritic hematite ores of the Iron Quadrangle, Minas Gerais, Brazil, consisting mainly of layered hematite and quartz. Compared to hematite the measured recrystallized grain size of quartz is always larger, which is in agreement with the grain size range predicted by recrystallized grain size-based piezometers for hematite and quartz if deformed at similar stress below about 100 MPa.


This paper investigates how it is that a child has become an abuser, and by what means that process may be deconstructed. We know that abusers generally have a childhood history of abuse, though not necessarily sexual. Since not all children who have been traumatised repeat those patterns, and inflict abuse on others, then something must have happened for these particular children in response to their abuse. The author elaborates the view that there is no such thing, to paraphrase Winnicott, as 'an abused child' – no such child, that is, separate from the world of the relationships that formed him. He draws on the conceptualisation by Bentovim of an interlocking set of roles described as a 'trauma organised system'; this notion reflects the fact that the child is a product not just of his specifically traumatic experiences but of a milieu in which power and control is exerted by someone who has typically succeeded in neutralising any caring function in a family in order to bring about the exploitation of a child. Clinical material is presented from the intensive psychotherapy of a nine-year-old boy, who happened also to be a refugee, for whom abusive family dynamics dominated his internal world. He was found to have identified with the abuser, his own father, in order to escape the pain of his victim self and was threatening to act this out in the treatment, making the therapist into a victim. Management of the treatment setting by the inclusion of a benign parental figure enabled the acting out to be contained. Symbolisation of the child's inner conflicts became possible through play. As the abuser self was contained so the child's victim experiences could be processed. The conclusion is drawn that engaging therapeutically with the residues of trauma from the beginning of treatment is essential in working with young people who have abused.


The thesis consists of an introduction and three studies, which are comparative sociological and institutional analyses of a number of countries' publicly regulated vocational education and training systems at upper secondary and post-secondary level. Official regulation of programme content and curricula - the main empirical material - is interpreted, and focus is directed on aspects which distinguish between, among others, general and vocational elements of teaching, learning and training. The analyses employ concepts from educational studies, historical sociology and institutional sociology with the aim of conceptual elaboration and illumination of similarities and differences between cases.Study I compares upper secondary vocational education and training programmes in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The programmes are analysed and compared with respect to scope, sequence and selection of curricular units of subject matter and periods of training. Programmes combine general and vocational elements in various ways, thereby offering choices for obtaining both the occupation-related qualification, as well as higher education eligibility. The combination of curricular units with additional subject matter seems to, in some cases, lead to emerging learning aims.Study II focuses on vocational education and training systems at upper secondary level in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and seeks to identify differences and similarities by conceptualising features of ideal types along different dimensions. It furthermore develops a method of analysis and visualisation which enables more accurate understanding of how various learning aims are designed within educational programmes. Some of the results indicate that the resources necessary for attaining the full, intended educational qualification are not guaranteed in any of the three cases; however, this applies particularly to apprenticeship-based programmes, where it can be attained only after training contracts with status-like features, resembling parts of occupational jurisdictions, are seized within sheltered circumstances. In the school-based programmes, a larger proportion of resources are guaranteed, but training is shorter and less vocationally oriented. Vocational education and training programmes in all three systems orient learning not only towards vocational, but also general learning aims.Study III compares admission criteria to post-secondary vocational education and training programmes in Denmark and Sweden, focusing on the Danish erhvervsakademi and the Swedish yrkeshogskola. Options, as elements of life chances, for individuals holding upper secondary vocational education qualifications who wish to apply for admission to these programmes, differ in terms of scope between the two cases. In the Swedish case, options are wide and mostly structured by course-based admission criteria; while in the Danish case, options are more narrow and structured by qualification-based admission criteria.


During the last two decades research on software engineering is concentrated on quality. The best approach to quality evaluation goes through determining well-defined metrics on software properties. One such property is module complexity, which is a view of the software that is related to how easily it can be modified. There has been work on constructing a metrics domain which measures the module complexity. Generally, PCA (Principal Component Analysis) is used for defining principal metrics in the domain. Since there are usually no labels for the software data, an unsupervised dimensionality reduction technique, such as PCA needs to be used for determining the most important metrics. In this study, we use the clustering similarity obtained when a certain subset of metrics and when the whole set of metrics are used, to determine the most important metrics. We measure the relative difference/similarity between clusterings using three different indices, namely Rand, Jaccard and Fowlkes-Mallow. We use both backward feature selection and PCA for dimensionality reduction. On the publicly available NASA data, we find out that instead of the whole set of 42 metrics, using only 15 dimensions, we get almost the same clustering performance. Therefore, instead of the whole set of software metrics, a smaller number of them could be used to evaluate the software quality.


Within the current higher education context, early career researchers (ECRs) face a 'risk-career' in which predictable, stable academic careers have become increasingly rare. Traditional milestones to signal progress toward a sustainable research career are disappearing or subject to reinterpretation, and ECRs need to attend to new or reimagined signals in their efforts to develop a researcher identity in this current context. In this article, we present a comprehensive framework for researcher identity in relation to the ways ECRs recognise and respond to divergent signals across spheres of activity. We illustrate this framework through eight identity stories drawn from our earlier research projects. Each identity story highlights the congruence (or lack of congruence) between signals across spheres of activity and emphasises the different ways ECRs respond to these signals. The proposed comprehensive framework allows for the analysis of researcher identity development through the complex and intertwined activities in which ECRs are involved. We advance this approach as a foundation for a sustained research agenda to understand how ECRs identify and respond to relevant signals, and, consequently, to unravel the complex interplay between signals and spheres of activity evident in struggles to become researchers in a risk-career environment.


Abstract The ongoing financial turmoil has brought into sharp relief the importance of financial services regulation. Yet, we still know relatively little about how financial regulation is negotiated within the EU, in particular which policy actors are most influential and what are the mechanisms that allow them to exercise influence. This paper addresses these questions using Social Network Analysis (SNA), focusing on the banking regulation network and one core piece of legislation: the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD). Of particular interest is the flow of influence among the key actors. Triangulating an in-depth case study with qualitative interview data and social network analysis, this work investigates a number of hypotheses, associating brokerage roles and extroversion with relative influence in the policy making process. We find that influential actors are those that hold key structural positions in this network and by implication appear to have a better understanding of network topography.


Architected materials are a new class of engineered materials with carefully controlled internal structures that give rise to properties that differ from or surpass those of their constituent materials. Recent advances in additive manufacturing provide an extraordinary opportunity to rationally design the structure and the chemical composition of architected materials across multiple length scales to optimize properties and functionalities for a variety of applications. These functional architected materials are capable of decoupling critical trade-offs, such as strength vs. density, to reach new regions of the material property space, and enabling exotic properties that rarely exist in classical materials such as negative refraction and negative thermal expansion. This thesis probes into the dynamic behaviors of architected materials undergoing electrochemical reactions and aims to provide an in-depth understanding of the underlying mechanisms as well as design principles generalizable for other functional architected material systems. We developed novel fabrication methods based on two-photon lithography and various physical and chemical post-processing techniques to create architected materials with multi-level design freedom including feature sizes, structural geometries, and material compositions, which resonates with the multi-faceted challenges in electrochemical systems. We demonstrated that architected materials provide a new platform to design battery electrodes that could accommodate the large volumetric changes associated with conversion-based electrode materials, while decoupling the longstanding trade-off between active material loading and transport kinetics in batteries. Furthermore, we presented a new class of electrochemically reconfigurable architected materials that could transform their structures in a programmable, reversible and non-volatile fashion, which provide new vistas for designing mechanical metamaterials with tunable phononic bandgaps and deployable micro-devices for biomedical applications. The multi-scale and multi-physics nature of these electrochemically driven architected materials prompted us to develop a toolset of (1) in situ SEM and optical microscopy to visualize the dynamic responses, (2) coupled chemo-mechanical finite element analysis to reconstruct detailed mechanical evolution as electrochemical reactions proceed, and (3) a statistical mechanics framework to capture the transient interactions between coupled mechanical instabilities. Using these tools, we investigated lithiation-induced cooperative beam buckling in tetragonal Si microlattices: from the deformation mechanisms of individual beams and the cooperative coupling between buckling directions of neighboring beams to the lithiation rate-dependent distribution of ordered buckling domains separated by distorted domain boundaries. Results indicate that local defects and stochastic energy fluctuations play a critical role in the dynamic response of architected materials in a way analogous to that during phase transformations of classical materials. These connections have profound implications on how we could understand and design architected materials by drawing inspiration from established theories in materials science.


Each year, tropical rivers export a dissolved organic carbon (DOC) flux to the global oceans that is equivalent to ~4% of the global land sink for atmospheric CO2. Among the most refractory fractions of terrigenous DOC is dissolved black carbon (DBC), which constitutes ~10% of the total DOC flux and derives from the charcoal and soot (aerosol) produced during biomass burning and fossil fuel combustion. Black carbon (BC) has disproportionate storage potential in oceanic pools and so its export has implications for the fate and residence time of terrigenous organic carbon (OC). In contrast to bulk DOC, there is limited knowledge of the environmental factors that control riverine fluxes of DBC. We thus completed a comprehensive assessment of the factors controlling DBC export in tropical rivers with catchments distributed across environmental gradients of hydrology, topography, climate, and soil properties. Generalized linear models explained 70 and 64% of the observed variance in DOC and DBC concentrations, respectively. DOC and DBC concentrations displayed coupled responses to the dominant factors controlling their riverine export (soil moisture, catchment slope, and catchment stocks of OC or BC, respectively) but varied divergently across gradients of temperature and soil properties. DBC concentrations also varied strongly with aerosol BC deposition rate, indicating further potential for deviation of DBC fluxes from those of DOC due to secondary inputs of DBC from this unmatched source. Overall, this study identifies the specific drivers of BC dynamics in river catchments and fundamentally enhances our understanding of refractory DOC export to the global oceans.


This edited volume with selected papers from extinguished experts and professors in the field of learning technology and the related fields who are far-sighted and have his/her own innovative thoughts on the development of learning technology. This book will addresses the main issues concerned with the trend and future development of learning processes, innovative pedagogies changes, effects of new technologies on education, future learning content. Learning technology has been affected by advances in technology development and changes in the field of education. Nowadays we cannot afford to sense the changes and then make adaption to it. What we should do is to predict the changes and make positive and active reactions to help the trend go smoothly and in a more beneficial way. This book aims to gather the newest ideas on the frontiers and future development of learning education from the aspects of learning, pedagogies, and technologies in learning in order to draw a picture of learning education in the near future.


Effective information retrieval on handwritten document images has always been a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a novel handwritten word spotting approach based on graph representation. The presented model comprises both topological and morphological signatures of handwriting. Skeleton-based graphs with the Shape Context labeled vertexes are established for connected components. Each word image is represented as a sequence of graphs. In order to be robust to the handwriting variations, an exhaustive merging process based on DTW alignment results introduced in the similarity measure between word images. With respect to the computation complexity, an approximate graph edit distance approach using bipartite matching is employed for graph matching. The experiments on the George Washington dataset and the marriage records from the Barcelona Cathedral dataset demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art structural methods.


This article explores how temperance as a virtue relates to organizational leadership. The study begins with a short survey of classical Greek and Christian notions of temperance before proceeding to ex- plore temperance in relation to self-leadership, visionary and strategic leadership, and relational lead- ership. The final part of the article offers reflections on how temperance might be cultivated from a theological perspective. Temperance is understood not only as sound thinking but also as embodied self-control and active patience. On the level of self-leadership, it is argued that temperance enables the leader to establish forms of integrity that protect the leader's self from chaos and destruction. Moreover, temperance may also nurture focused visionary leadership that accepts ethical limits and has an eye to the common good. The study also suggests that organizations should cultivate a culture of strategic discipline that is capable of realizing such visions. On the interpersonal level, temperance is viewed as critical in terms of enabling leaders to treat co-workers with respect and wisdom and handle conflict with consideration. Finally, is argued that that the cultivation of temperance is not a one-way street from the inside to the outside or a subordination of feelings to reason but rather a very complex process that includes interpersonal humility, finds vision in an encounter with the good, and yet remains a personal responsibility.


'Alternative' food systems (AFS), understood as assemblages of agri-food related production, exchange and consumption activities, often characterised by increased physically and/or cognitive proximity between producers and consumers, have experienced considerable academic and popular interest in the past decade and a half. Despite continued growth in the number and popularity of AFS manifestations like farmers' markets, research suggests that these provisioning systems remain the preserve of relatively affluent consumers. Furthermore, the language and practices of alternative food system advocates has tended to create a divide between 'alternative' and 'conventional' food systems which is not always empirically supported and which has made attempts at improving AFS access equity susceptible to claims that their defining quality attributes are inevitably diluted as they enter the mass market.
At the same time, the growing popularity of internet enabled e-commerce has resulted in fundamental changes to many markets, including claims that there is a structural shift by consumer away from mass marketed products towards niche markets, such as those which characterise AFS. This study examines this changing dynamic via a comparison of e-commerce mediated AFS and non e-commerce mediated AFS. The purpose of this comparison being to determine if the application of e-commerce to AFS has resulted in a relative increase in demand from resource constrained consumers and/or a significant change to the quality conventions associated with these systems and which currently mark them as 'alternative'.
This research goal required the development of a novel theoretical model capable of incorporating the language of firm level strategy, as it relates to e-commerce and niche markets, as well as providing a means of discussing AFS quality attributes which does not resort to a bifurcated theory of alternative and conventional food systems. To this end, a theoretical model is advanced within this study which incorporates Michael Porter's theory of generic strategy, the product lifecycle theory and French conventions theory. The latter being particularly useful as a tool for highlighting differences in production systems based upon different consumer and producer quality conventions.
Empirical data for this study was gathered using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative data was gathered via in-depth interviews with AFS business actors within both e-commerce and non e-commerce mediated AFS in Melbourne, Australia and Vancouver, Canada. Quantitative data was gathered via a survey of 375 consumers who regularly acquired food through either the e-commerce mediated or non e-commerce mediated AFS studied in Melbourne and Vancouver.
Results from this study show that the application of e-commerce to AFS is indeed associated with significant changes in consumer demand for AFS products, including consumer demographics, order size and consumer motivation. The data gathered on consumer motivation is particularly useful in determining how the consumer's understanding of quality varies between e-commerce mediated and non e-commerce mediated AFS. Together with the interview and case study data gathered from participating AFS firms this study is able to show that the application of e-commerce to AFS is associated with changes in access for resource constrained consumers, but also that these changes have come at the expense of specific quality attributes. These finding are relevant not only to AFS scholars and participants interested in improved access equity and a reduction in simplistic interpretations of AFS, but also to participants in niche markets more generally which rely on the production, exchange and consumption of diverse quality attributes.


Controlled generation of DNA fragments is a critical step required by all Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) platforms. Covaris truSHEAR employs Adaptive Focused AcousticsTM (AFA) technology for the controlled mechanical shearing of the phosphodiester backbone of nucleic acids. AFA hydrodynamic shear force-based fragmentation is purely mechanical and designed to be isothermal, ensuring both unbiased fragmentation and high recovery of double-stranded and single–stranded DNA.


1b Individual RCT (with narrow Confidence Interval‡) Individual inception cohort study with > 80% follow-up; CDR† validated in a single population Validating** cohort study with good††† reference standards; or CDR† tested within one clinical centre Prospective cohort study with good follow-up**** Analysis based on clinically sensible costs or alternatives; systematic review(s) of the evidence; and including multi-way sensitivity analyses 1c All or none§ All or none case-series Absolute SpPins and SnNouts†† All or none case-series Absolute better-value or worsevalue analyses†††† 2a SR (with homogeneity*) of cohort studies SR (with homogeneity*) of either retrospective cohort studies or untreated control groups in RCTs SR (with homogeneity*) of Level > 2 diagnostic studies SR (with homogeneity*) of 2b and better studies SR (with homogeneity*) of Level > 2 economic studies


The application of surface-anchored metal-organic frameworks (SURMOFs) as highly porous host materials for molecules in the field of nanoplasmonic sensing (NPS) is reported. SURMOFs are grown by a layer-bylayer procedure on the surface of the NPS sensors, which consist of a quartz glass with SiO2 coated gold nanodisks. As the spectral position of the gold plasmon band depends on the refractive index of the surrounding medium, the loading of the SURMOF pores with guest molecules results in a change of the effective refractive index of the SURMOF and therefore in a spectral shift of the plasmonic band. The combination of SURMOFs that change their optical properties with loading with the method of nanoplasmonic sensing opens new fields of application in sensor technology. Here we show the proof of principle with HKUST-1 as the SURMOF material and with cyclohexane and ethanol as guest molecules.


ircadian clocks are internal timekeepers that provide organisms with a sense of time. These oscillators, which are entrained by external stimuli, predict the daily day/night transitions and have a periodicity of about 24 hours. The Arabidopsis thaliana circadian clock is composed of interconnected transcriptional-translational feedback loops. The morning expressed elements CCA1 and LHY, which are clock controlled and light inducible, repress the transcription of the evening element TOC1. At dusk, TOC1 repression is relieved as CCA1 and LHY protein diminish. Then TOC1 stimulates the expression of the morning components closing the loop. Still, how the light signal at dawn entrains this clock has remained elusive. time for coffee (tic) was originally reported as a circadian-clock mutant based on its early phase and a short period. It was found that tic is defective in sensing dawn because its clock incorrectly resets before morning light. Because TIC mRNA and protein were found to be constant through a diurnal cycle, an activation event could trigger TIC time-specific function within the oscillator. Therefore TIC action takes place before the expression of CCA1 and LHY and coincides in time with clock entrainment by light. In this thesis, I report the results from a microarray study that led to a detailed phenotypic analysis of tic in an effort to uncover the mechanism to clock entrainment. I could confirm and expand the defective clock-gene expression profile of tic. Interestingly tic showed increased transcriptional changes in response to the environment compared to wild type. Global transcriptomic analysis indicated that tic has altered redox homeostasis and defects in ABA signalling pathways. Furthermore GO enrichment analysis highlighted that stress and environmental responses were among the most abundant categories misexpressed in tic. In conclusion, TIC was found to be an essential component for global transcriptome reprogramming to a dawn light signal. The results obtained through the microarray analysis directed me to demonstrate that tic resulted in an array of pleiotropic phenotypes. Besides its clock defects, tic presented hypersensitivity to oxidative stress, altered ABA-related signalling and responses, such as drought tolerance, defects in iron homeostasis, alterations in starch metabolism and disrupted stress responses. Furthermore it is suggested that tic has a role in nucleotide and secondary metabolism. All together, I concluded that TIC functions in maintaining metabolic homeostasis through modulation of stress responses. In summary from the data presented here, I hypothesize that clock entrainment occurs through metabolic signals, probably derived from photosynthesis and cellular energy homeostasis. These signals would be integrated to the oscillator by TIC. In this way, TIC would promote the anticipation of the oncoming new day.


After spending years as an integral part of the Imbonggu community, Wormsley provides a special insight into these people. In this fascinating narrative, readers learn about the Imbonggu's social structure, political process, leadership, social and economic exchange and obligations, bridewealth, religion and magic - as well as what it is like to be an anthropologist.


Previous work has shown the perhaps surprising result that, for any binary phylogenetic tree ${\cal T}$, there is a set of four characters that define ${\cal T}$. Here we deal with the general case, where ${\cal T}$ is an arbitrary $X$-tree. We show that if $d$ is the maximum degree of any vertex in ${\cal T}$, then the minimum number of characters that identify ${\cal T}$ is $\log_2 d$ (up to a small multiplicative constant).


To establish N-efficient crop rotations with perennial ryegrass/white clover, maize and triticale, a 9-year field experiment was executed on an organic experimental farm in the Netherlands. Crop rotations with different levels of slurry (dairy effluent from the free-stall barn, average dry matter content of 7%) application were tested for dry matter (DM) yield, N yield, soil mineral N in autumn, soil organic matter and soil organic N. Maize cropping and slurry application both increased annual DM yield. However, the second year of grass/ clover following maize, maize itself and slurry applications each resulted in higher soil mineral N in autumn, increasing the risk of nitrate leaching losses. A rotation of 4 years of grass/clover, 2 years of maize and 1 year of triticale resulted in relatively high average annual DM production (12 t DM/ha/year) for Dutch conditions, with a higher potential N leaching loss in 2 out of 7 years.


The Scanning proton microprobe uses a focused beam of MeV protons to give analytical information by exploiting two physical processes, particle induced X-ray emission (PIXE) and Rutherford Backscattering (RBS). Scanning transmission ion microscopy may also be included in the nuclear microscopy package to give imaging data. PIXE is particularly appropriate for biomedical research as signals from hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, which are the main components of a biological matrix, are not detected and therefore signals from inorganic elements with z > 10 will not be swamped by signals from the matrix. Elements with z < 10 can, however, be detected using RBS when present at higher concentrations.Apart from the biomedical field, the SPM has wide-ranging applications spanning diverse areas such as archaeology, materials science and environmental chemistry. This paper reviews the theory of ion beam analysis, the Oxford Scanning Proton Microprobe and outlines some of the work currently being carried out at Oxford.


Abstract. A Reference Case (RC) scenario for emissions of HFC-23 from co-production during HCFC-22 manufacture over the next 25 years is presented. Offered as a template rather than a prediction, this model projects current production practices and existing abatement frameworks to yield insights into how atmospheric composition and radiative forcing might change with and without additional efforts to constrain HFC-23 emissions. Assuming that no additional abatement measures are implemented, emissions for year 2035 in this Reference Case would rise to 24 ktonnes yr−1, (cf., 8.6 ktonnes yr−1 in 2009), the atmospheric abundance of HFC-23 would rise to 50 ppt, which is a 121 % increase over the 2009 observed abundance, and HFC-23 would be expected to contribute a radiative forcing of 9 mW m−2 (cf., 4 mW m−2 in 2009). Under such a scenario, the HFC-23 emission growth rate would be a continuation of the historical trend of ∼0.2 ktonnes yr−2 until 2030, after which the growth is projected to quadruple as the Montreal Protocol phase-out of HCFC production for dispersive use concludes and HFC-23 thermal decomposition in the projects of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) comes to a scheduled end while growth in the production of HCFC-22 for feedstock use continues to climb with projected GDP growth. Two opposite variations regarding the future renewal of CDM projects are examined for their impact on projected emissions and abundance, relative to the Reference Case scenario.


Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) is the commonest form of childhood malignancy with an estimated annual incidence of 40 to 50 new cases (<15 years) in Hong Kong. The cure rate for ALL in children has improved drastically over the past 2 decades and is approaching 70% currently. Well-designed collaborative clinical trials had contributed greatly to this success in treatment outcome. The advances in new technology especially in the field of molecular biology also help to revolutionise the process of risk assessment, treatment stratification and disease monitoring. In addition to the advances in treatment, progresses had also been made in the understanding of leukaemogenesis and its associated risk factors, individual susceptibility and prognosis assessment. But while there are more and more childhood ALL children being cured, long-term therapy-related complications starts to emerge and becomes a new challenge. This review article will mainly focus on the recent advances in the areas of leukaemogenesis, prognostic assessment, current treatment design and late effect of ALL management.


Abstract. Gravity waves (GWs) play a crucial role in the dynamics of the earth's atmosphere. These waves couple lower, middle and upper atmospheric layers by transporting and depositing energy and momentum from their sources to great heights. The accurate parameterisation of GW momentum flux is of key importance to general circulation models but requires accurate measurement of GW properties, which has proved challenging. For more than a decade, the nadir-viewing Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) aboard NASA's Aqua satellite has made global, two-dimensional (2-D) measurements of stratospheric radiances in which GWs can be detected. However, one problem with current one-dimensional methods for GW analysis of these data is that they can introduce significant unwanted biases. Here, we present a new analysis method that resolves this problem. Our method uses a 2-D Stockwell transform (2DST) to measure GW amplitudes, horizontal wavelengths and directions of propagation using both the along-track and cross-track dimensions simultaneously. We first test our new method and demonstrate that it can accurately measure GW properties in a specified wave field. We then show that by using a new elliptical spectral window in the 2DST, in place of the traditional Gaussian, we can dramatically improve the recovery of wave amplitude over the standard approach. We then use our improved method to measure GW properties and momentum fluxes in AIRS measurements over two regions known to be intense hotspots of GW activity: (i) the Drake Passage/Antarctic Peninsula and (ii) the isolated mountainous island of South Georgia. The significance of our new 2DST method is that it provides more accurate, unbiased and better localised measurements of key GW properties compared to most current methods. The added flexibility offered by the scaling parameter and our new spectral window presented here extend the usefulness of our 2DST method to other areas of geophysical data analysis and beyond.


Deep-sea carbonate deposition is a complex process that is encapsulated in the carbonate compensation depth (CCD)—a facies boundary separating calcareous sediments from non-carbonates. Knowing how the CCD has varied over time is important for understanding and predicting the distribution of seafloor sediments and assessing their role in the global carbon cycle. We focus on the South Atlantic Ocean where the most recent CCD curve is based on Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Leg 73 sites drilled in 1980 in the South Atlantic Ocean. We compute the South and central South Atlantic CCD from the Late Cretaceous to the present day using updated age models from 45 DSDP and Ocean Drilling Program sites and backtracking with lithology-specific decompaction, eustasy, and dynamic topography. Our models extend further back in time and show more fluctuations than previous reconstructions, with the CCD varying by hundreds of meters during a span of 2–3 m.y. The addition of eustasy and dynamic topography deepens the CCD by as much as 500 m between 74 Ma and 45 Ma, and by ~200 m during the Cenozoic. The central South Atlantic CCD diverges from the average South Atlantic CCD during the Eocene and Miocene, when it was ~1 km shallower. These regional deviations may be due to changes in primary productivity and/or carbonate dissolution leading to reduced carbonate accumulation rates. Our CCD curves highlight the importance of regional processes in carbonate deposition across the South Atlantic and provide improved constraints for the modeling of geochemical cycles.


Abstract We documented changes in the relative abundance of bivalve genera and functional groups in the southwest Caribbean over the past 11 Myr to determine their response to oceanographic changes associated with the closure of the Central American Seaway ca. 3.5 Ma. Quantitative bulk samples from 29 localities yielded 106,000 specimens in 145 genera. All genera were assigned to functional groups based on diet, relationship to the substrate, and mobility. Ordinations of assemblages based on quantitative data for functional groups demonstrated strong shifts in community structure, with a stark contrast between assemblages older than 5 Ma and those younger than 3.5 Ma. These changes are primarily due to an increase in the abundance of attached epifaunal bivalves (e.g., Chama, Arcopsis, and Barbatia) and a decrease in infaunal bivalves (e.g., Varicorbula and Caryocorbula). Taxa associated with seagrasses, including deposit-feeding and chemosymbiotic bivalves (e.g., Lucina), also increased in relative abundance compared to suspension feeders. The composition of bivalve assemblages is correlated with the carbonate content of sediments and the percentage of skeletal biomass that is coral. Our results strongly support the hypothesis that increases in the extent of coral reefs and Thalassia communities were important drivers of biologic turnover in Neogene Caribbean benthic communities.


Material-method: twenty-two patients, aged 22-67 are presented. They were admitted in the outpatient department of our hospital with clinical and laboratory findings suggestive of acute appendicitis. All patients were examined by CT after the oral administration of contrast material. The imaging findings were confirmed intraoperatively. Results: a common imaging finding in all patients that were examined by spiral CT, was the enlargement of the appendix with periappendiceal and right paracolic fissure fluid collections. Intraluminal air-bubbles were demonstrated in 19 patients (86.3%) and calcified faecaliths in 16 (72.7%). The wall of the inflamed appendix was demonstrated abnormally thin in 15 patients (68.2%) while thickening of the appendiceal wall was detected in 7 patients. In 15 patients localized peritonitis' imaging findings were demonstrated by hazy periappendiceal and pericaecal fat, as well as stranding of the area. Diffuse peritonitis was demonstrated in 7 patients as diffusely hazy peritoneal fat stranding with fluid collections in the Douglas pouch. In 13 patients spiral CT detected diffuse inflammation of the right colon and terminal ileum, demonstrated by thickening of their walls. Finally, obstructive ileus was demonstrated in 4 patients. Conclusion: spiral CT is a valuable method, appropriate for the immediate diagnosis of gangrenous appendicitis, which represents a serious complication of acute appendicitis. The specific imaging findings of spiral CT, make early diagnosis and early operative management possible. These imaging findings are especially taken into account, in order to present some specific imaging diagnostic characteristics for acute gangrenous appendicitis.


Developing a Role for Men in Preventing Human Trafficking into the Sex Industry in Madrid Stephen B. Morse Doctor of Ministry School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary 2016 This ministry project aims to counter the masculine-related cultural dynamics that lead to human trafficking into the sex industry in Madrid, by developing a discipleship program that helps men to understand biblical masculine identity and their role in the Missio Dei, reducing demand through their approach to cultural and socio-economic structures. Although Madrid is a main center for sex trafficking, the evangelical churches often lack the ability to respond effectively. Government efforts to combat trafficking largely focus on prosecution and protection. Meanwhile, the issue of prevention and the development of a positive role for men have received less attention. However, efforts to reduce the demand globally address masculine sexual identity and behavior. The paper contains three parts. Part One examines the cultural and socioeconomic environment proliferating sex trafficking. Specific attention is given to masculine culture and how this manifests in various social settings. It also raises some cultural and theological issues that limit local evangelical church engagement. Part Two establishes the theological foundations of this project. It begins with a review of five books, and leads to a reflection on the relationship between masculine identity, the dynamic of spiritual powers, and the role of men in the outworking of the Missio Dei. These theological tenets then inform discussions on the role of men in influencing the power dynamics implicit in the cultural and socio-economic structures of Madrid. Part Three provides a practical strategy for helping evangelical men develop the awareness and skills to participate in the prevention of sex trafficking through an understanding of biblical masculinity. The strategy focuses on the creation of a pilot project for future implementation in local churches, in the form of weekly teaching sessions, trust circle, prayer retreat, and the creation of ongoing project support groups. A plan for evaluation and implementation is also offered. Content Reader: Christa Foster Crawford, J.D.


This paper introduces a concept of inequality comparisons with ordinal bivariate categorical data. In our model, one population is more unequal than another when they have common arithmetic median outcomes and the first can be obtained from the second by correlation-increasing switches and/or median-preserving spreads. For the canonical 2 × 2 case (with two binary indicators), we derive a simple operational procedure for checking ordinal inequality relations in practice. As an illustration, we apply the model to childhood deprivation in Mozambique.


The ability to reach logical conclusions on the basis of prior information is central to human cognition. Yet, it is generally agreed that the state of our knowledge regarding the mechanisms underlying logical reasoning remains incomplete and highly fragmented (e.g., Khemlani and Johnson-Laird, 2012). The emergence of functional neuroimaging over the past 20 years—and its ability to examine reasoning at the level of recruitment of cortical systems—provides an additional source of data to, not only better understand reasoning as a phenomenon, but to test different theoretical approaches. This has the potential to both prune the number of theoretical explanations of reasoning, but also to expand the space of possibilities in directions unanticipated by behavioral data. This Research Topic explores the extent to which neuroimaging and brain-lesion studies have informed cognitive theories of reasoning. It includes a selection of 20 empirical and theoretical papers from 69 authors. Below we briefly review these papers by breaking them down into two types of contribution, (i) original research articles, and (ii) review and methodological articles.


Iron-oxidizing thiobacilli were adapted to grow on a chalcopyrite and a galena ore concentrate. When grown on the chalcopyrite concentrate, the bacteria exhibited a doubling time of 38.4 ± 2.9 h, with a final cellular protein concentration of 185 μg/ml and solubilization of 10.3 g of copper per liter. When grown on the galena ore concentrate, the generation time was 39.6 ± 2.7 h, with a final cellular protein concentration of 120 μg/ml. Galena was converted to lead salts soluble in 1 M ammonium acetate to a concentration of 20.2 g of lead per liter. X-ray diffraction and refractive-image analysis indicated that the smaller-sized particles were favored in this process. Galena was converted to anglesite, and soluble copper was liberated from chalcopyrite with the concurrent formation of jarosite.


Although the current state of the United States Supreme Court's Religion Clause jurisprudence is an area of considerable complexity, the Court's approach is largely premised upon a number of basic underlying principles and doctrines. This Symposium issue explores an underlying principle of the Supreme Court's current Religion Clause jurisprudence, the Court's hands-off approach to questions of religious practice and belief. The Symposium is based on the program of the Law and Religion Section at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools, in which a panel of leading scholars was asked to evaluate the Court's approach. The program description invited a variety of modes of analysis, ranging from descriptive considerations of the extent to which the Court's doctrine can, indeed, be characterized as hands-off, to normative justifications for - and critiques of - the Court's approach, to more practical and consequentialist arguments supporting or opposing the Court's position. Taken together, the essays in this Symposium demonstrate wide areas of disagreement among scholars as to both the conceptual underpinnings and the normative and policy justifications for the Supreme Court's hands-off approach to questions of religious practice and belief. In addition, there appears to be a correlation between scholars' views toward the hands-off approach and their broader attitudes toward the function of religion and the Religion Clauses in the context of American society. To the extent that the Court likewise premises its hands-off approach upon a more general Religion Clause jurisprudence, it remains to be seen whether, along with changes in other areas of Religion Clause doctrine, the Supreme Court might rethink both the conceptual and substantive components of the hands-off approach.


Chromosomal abnormalities are defined as changes in the chromosome structure and fall in one of two categories. The first category is numerical alterations while the second category consists of structural abnormalities. Structural chromosomal abnormalities do not always interrupt genes in order to cause disease. They can also affect gene expression by separating a gene and its promoter element from distant regulatory elements. We have used characterisation of structural chromosomal abnormalities to identify the genetic bases for several congenital disorders.In papers I-III, we have applied molecular characterisation of chromosomal translocations in order to identify candidate genes involved in mental retardation, hypospadias and anal malformation and premature ovarian failure. In paper I, we localised the chromosome X translocation breakpoint in a t(X;15) to be in the immediate proximity of the gene ZDHHC15 in a patient with severe mental retardation. Subsequent experiments revealed loss of ZDHHC15 transcription in the patient which suggests this gene to be involved in the aetiology of the patient's phenotype. In paper II, we show that a balanced translocation between chromosomes 6 and 17 in a patient with urogential malformation disrupts 2 genes, one at each translocation breakpoint. We also identified a fusion-gene as a result of the translocation. Our hypethesis is that the translocation together with its molecular consequences is important for the phenotype in the patient. Similarly, in paper III, we have used molecular characterisation of the breakpoints in a balanced translocation between chromosomes X and 11 in order to localise candidate genes in ovarian function. Our results indicate a number of genes affected by the translocation. In paper IV, we have used array-based comparative genomic hybridisation (array-CGH) in order to investigate a cohort of autistic sib-pairs for submicroscopic chromosomal alterations. We have identified several novel duplications and one novel deletion with strong association with autism.


When the National Academies Press announced that more than 4,000 electronic books would be made freely available for download, many academic libraries expressed interest in obtaining MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging) records for them. Using cataloging e-mail distribution lists, volunteers were recruited for a project to identify and upgrade bibliographic records for aggregation into a batch that could be easily loaded into catalogs. Project organization, documentation, quality control measures, and problems are described, as well as processes for adding new titles. The project's implications for future efforts are assessed, as are the numerous challenges for network-level cataloging.


Studies have shown that people with low health literacy understand health information less well, obtain preventative healthcare such as screenings for cancer less frequently and use expensive resources such as emergency rooms more often. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with guidance from Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports, developed quality indicators for individual institutions to demonstrate improvement. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA, 2012) constructed online communication education modules for healthcare professionals including health literacy tools developed by the AHRQ. The purpose of this project was to examine the impact of RN communication education on patient satisfaction. A prepost intervention design was used. Nurses were provided a brief overview and instruction about the HRSA website, use of the online education modules and an explanation of target patient satisfaction scores. The domains studied included five target patient satisfaction questions regarding communication with nurses and communication about medications. Post intervention results (July-December 2015) demonstrate a marked increase in scores when compared to the six months prior to the introduction of the content (January-June 2015). All twenty-two respondents responded agreed or strongly agreed that they would recommend the Effective Communication for Healthcare Professionals 100 course. APRNs have an unprecedented opportunity to support research and education surrounding ethnic differences in communication and aspects of communication that may contribute to patient comprehension, adherence to follow-up care and patient satisfaction.


The relative scarcity of microbes in low-microbial-biomass environments makes accurate determination of community composition challenging. Identifying and controlling for contaminant bacterial DNA are critical steps in understanding microbial communities from these low-biomass environments. Our study introduces the use of a mock community dilution series as a positive control and evaluates four computational strategies that can identify contaminants in 16S rRNA gene sequencing experiments in order to remove them from downstream analyses. The appropriate computational approach for removing contaminant sequences from an experiment depends on prior knowledge about the microbial environment under investigation and can be evaluated with a dilution series of a mock microbial community. ABSTRACT Microbial communities are commonly studied using culture-independent methods, such as 16S rRNA gene sequencing. However, one challenge in accurately characterizing microbial communities is exogenous bacterial DNA contamination, particularly in low-microbial-biomass niches. Computational approaches to identify contaminant sequences have been proposed, but their performance has not been independently evaluated. To identify the impact of decreasing microbial biomass on polymicrobial 16S rRNA gene sequencing experiments, we created a mock microbial community dilution series. We evaluated four computational approaches to identify and remove contaminants, as follows: (i) filtering sequences present in a negative control, (ii) filtering sequences based on relative abundance, (iii) identifying sequences that have an inverse correlation with DNA concentration implemented in Decontam, and (iv) predicting the sequence proportion arising from defined contaminant sources implemented in SourceTracker. As expected, the proportion of contaminant bacterial DNA increased with decreasing starting microbial biomass, with 80.1% of the most diluted sample arising from contaminant sequences. Inclusion of contaminant sequences led to overinflated diversity estimates and distorted microbiome composition. All methods for contaminant identification successfully identified some contaminant sequences, which varied depending on the method parameters used and contaminant prevalence. Notably, removing sequences present in a negative control erroneously removed >20% of expected sequences. SourceTracker successfully removed over 98% of contaminants when the experimental environments were well defined. However, SourceTracker misclassified expected sequences and performed poorly when the experimental environment was unknown, failing to remove >97% of contaminants. In contrast, the Decontam frequency method did not remove expected sequences and successfully removed 70 to 90% of the contaminants. IMPORTANCE The relative scarcity of microbes in low-microbial-biomass environments makes accurate determination of community composition challenging. Identifying and controlling for contaminant bacterial DNA are critical steps in understanding microbial communities from these low-biomass environments. Our study introduces the use of a mock community dilution series as a positive control and evaluates four computational strategies that can identify contaminants in 16S rRNA gene sequencing experiments in order to remove them from downstream analyses. The appropriate computational approach for removing contaminant sequences from an experiment depends on prior knowledge about the microbial environment under investigation and can be evaluated with a dilution series of a mock microbial community.


Natural groundwater replenishment in (semi-) arid areas is low and can be sometimes negligible as a result of low precipitation rates and high evapotranspiration. Therefore, groundwater resources in these areas can be considered as non-renewable. Due to increasing demand for water, aquifer systems have been subject to an over-abstraction depleting fossil water resources and causing numerous negative impacts; declining groundwater table and aquifer storage, salt water intrusion, land subsidence and other problems. Additionally, the disappearance of wetlands in many areas in the world has been associated with groundwater over-abstraction which constitutes a significant ecological lost. The Azraq oasis located in the heart of the desert in Jordan is an example of the degradation of an important ecosystem as a result of groundwater over-abstraction.
Azraq basin is characterized by high heterogeneity in groundwater recharge, where the main recharge area is in the north of the basin. The central part of the basin is covered by wetland known as the Azraq Oasis containing a wealthy biodiversity. Abstraction for agricultural and domestic purposes occur mainly around the oasis area, leading to drastic decline of groundwater table. In this study different management solutions for the basin including pumping strategies and application of Managed Aquifer Recharge are analyzed.
A groundwater model is first built and calibrated for the Azraq basin in order to understand the response of groundwater table at the oasis area to pumping practices as well as to remote groundwater recharge, and predict its behavior under possible future scenarios and management alternatives.
The application of Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) is then discussed with a focus on the analysis of subsurface characteristics which play the main role in determining the ability of an aquifer to accommodate a specific amount of infiltrated water. A new approach of employing numerical groundwater modeling in the generation of MAR suitability maps in terms of sub-surface characteristics is presented. A number of model-runs are conducted to simulate groundwater table's response at different locations of the aquifer for different scenarios of infiltration water volumes. Simulation results are employed to calibrate an empirical equation that calculates the height of groundwater mound as a function of aquifer transmissivity and volume of infiltrated water, for a certain value of aquifer' specific yield, a certain range of vertical hydraulic conductivity, and fixed design and operation conditions of MAR structure.
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This empirical equation is applied in GIS to spatially calculate the height of groundwater mounding beneath a hypothetical MAR structure, and generate based on that suitability maps for MAR implementation. Suitability maps are generated for different scenarios of aquifer's hydraulic conductivity and assuming MAR structures capture the 50th and 80th percentile of monthly amount of surface runoff at the respective wadi in the study area.
Three surface factors are investigated in the basin for their suitability for MAR implementation; slope, soil texture and soil thickness, to generate a MAR suitability map in terms of surface factors where a new decision system is proposed for the integration of factors.
Based on MAR suitability map three MAR structures were proposed in the basin. MAR scenarios along with a number of pumping scenarios were tested using the calibrated groundwater flow model. The calibrated model was also used to define the safe yield of the aquifer and predict the behavior of the aquifer under scenarios of climate change.
The results show that by the year 2045 groundwater decline will range between 15 and 25 meters if current pumping practices continue. The safe yield of the aquifer where the groundwater table stabilizes was found to be 70% less than current pumping rates, indicating that the aquifer is being exploited largely beyond its limits. Two scenarios of future groundwater recharge, where recharge rates were reduced 25% and 50%, were tested. Under these two scenarios, negligible impacts on the groundwater table in the oasis area were realized indicating that the aquifer can be considered as non-renewable.
The results show that the application of MAR in the basin doesn't contribute greatly to increasing the safe yield. Under MAR scenario where the capacity of MAR dam is designed based on the 50th and 80th percentiles of monthly surface runoff, groundwater head will increase 0.7 and 1 m by the year 2045 respectively.
Finally, a multi-criteria analysis was conducted for choosing abstraction rate in the basin based on conflicting environmental and socio-economic criteria under two scenarios of the future development of economic and other demographic issues.
the safe yield scenario was found to be the alternative that contributes the most to the goal of choosing the abstraction rate in the basin for the scenario of future economic prosperity, while keeping the current pumping rate was found to be the best alternative under a scenario of poor economic and social awareness.


ABSTRACT Ethionamide (ETH) is a second-line drug for the treatment of tuberculosis. As a prodrug, ETH has to be activated by EthA. ethA is controlled by its repressor EthR. 2-Phenylethyl-butyrate (2-PEB) inhibits EthR binding, enhances expression of EthA, and thereby enhances the growth-inhibitory effects of ethionamide, isoxyl, and thiacetazone in Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains with resistance to ETH due to inhA promoter mutations but not ethA mutations.


The current study aims to investigate the impact of academic achievement on child labor. The study utilizes survey data collected from Palestinian children in West Bank schools who are in the primary grades (5th–9th). The results show that increasing a child's academic achievement is significantly associated with decreasing the probability that a child works for money in the following period. Our findings varied among children according to their gender, age, and parental academic background. Our analyses are subject to different specifications, including two-stage least squares (2SLS) to account for potential endogeneity. The results provide robust evidence about the linkage between school performance and child labor in the West Bank. Further, the study proposes an assessment of the child's mental health problems by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) as a potential mechanism through which the child's achievement at school affects child labor.


This book draws on a selection of papers that were presented at the international conference "Migration & the Global City" at Ryerson University, Toronto, in October of 2010. Through the use of international and Canadian perspectives, this book examines the contemporary challenges, experiences, and opportunities of immigration and settlement in global, Canadian, and Torontonian contexts. In seventeen comprehensive chapters, this text approaches immigration and settlement from various thematic angles, including: rights, state, and citizenship; immigrants as labour; communities and identities; housing and residential contexts; and emerging opportunities. Immigration and Settlement will be of interest to academics, researchers and students, policy-makers, NGOs and settlement practitioners, and activists and community organisers.


This paper describes a new mathematical formulation, specifically suitable for finite-difference analysis of stresses and displacements of three-dimensional mixed-boundary-value elastic problems. Earlier, mathematical models of elasticity were very deficient in handling three-dimensional practical stress problems. In the present model, a new scheme of reduction of unknowns is used to formulate the three-dimensional problem in terms of a single potential function, defined in terms of the three displacement components. Compared to the conventional models, the present model provides numerical solution of higher accuracy in a shorter period of computational time. The application of the potential function formulation is demonstrated here through a number of classical problems of solid mechanics, and the results are compared with the available solutions in the literature. The comparison of the results establishes the rationality of the present approach.


Background & Aims: Peripheral nerve injuries affect both sensory and motor function, resulting in retrograde reaction to neuronal cell bodies in the ventral horn of spinal cord ventral and their destruction. Achillea wilhelmsii is one of the popular medicinal herbs which grow in dry and semitropical areas worldwide. There are several reports indicating the anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, antibacterial, and antioxidant effects of Achillea. The purpose of this study was to investigate the protective effects of aqueous extract of Achillea wilhelmsii, on alpha neuronal density after sciatic nerve compression in rats. Methods: This experimental study was carried out on 30 male Wistar rats which were divided randomly into 5 groups; group A (control), group B (compression), group C (compression, and treatment with 25 mg/kg aqueous extract), group D (compression and treatment with 50 mg/kg aqueous extract), and group E (compression and treatment with 75 mg/kg aqueous extract). Rats were anesthetized, the thigh muscle of right legs removed, and the sciatic nerve was compressed using a surgical forceps for 60 seconds, and then, thigh muscle and skin were sutured. Intraperitoneal injection of the various doses was performed once every week for 3 weeks. The samples were dissected from lumbar spinal cord by perfusion method and histological slides were prepared serially 28 days after compression. Slides were stained by toluidine blue and erythrosine. Neuronal density of alpha motor neurons of the spinal cord anterior horn was calculated by dissector method. Statistical analysis was performed by Students' t-test and one way ANOVA using SPSS software. Results: The results showed that neuronal density in the compression group decreased significantly compared to the control group (943 ± 59 vs. 1620 ± 51.1, P < 0.001). Neuronal density in group C (1032 ± 40.8), group D (1207 ± 131.3), and group E (1527 ± 46.4) increased significantly in comparison to compression group. The highest neuroprotection was observed in the group which received 75 mg/kg dose of aqueous extract. Conclusion: In conclusion, our results indicate that aqueous extract of Achillea wilhelmsii could protect the sciatic nerve against pathological alterations such as compression.


Because they are chiefly domestic conflicts, civil wars have been studied primarily from a perspective stressing domestic factors. We ask, instead, whether (and how) the international system shapes civil wars; we find that it does shape the way in which they are fought—their "technology of rebellion." After disaggregating civil wars into irregular wars (or insurgencies), conventional wars, and symmetric nonconventional wars, we report a striking decline of irregular wars following the end of the Cold War, a remarkable transformation of internal conflict. Our analysis brings the international system back into the study of internal conflict. It specifies the connection between system polarity and the Cold War on the one hand and domestic warfare on the other hand. It also demonstrates that irregular war is not the paradigmatic mode of civil war as widely believed, but rather is closely associated with the structural characteristics of the Cold War.


Scalable Distributed Data Structures (SDDS) need scalable availability. This can be provided through replication, which is storage intensive, or through the use of Erasure Correcting Codes (ECC) to provide redundancy, which is more complicated. We calculate availability under both strategies and show that redundancy through use of an ECC implies significantly less overhead. We introduce a generalized Reed Solomon code as an ECC that uses ordinary parity (XOR) for the first level of redundancy, and adapts to the scaling up and down of an SDDS file. We derive the relevant properties of the ECC directly and discuss its adaptation to the changing needs of a SDDS.


A new hybrid algorithm of Particle Swarm Optimization and Genetic Algorithm (PSOGA) is presented to get the optimum design of truss structures with discrete design variables. The objective function chosen in this paper is the total weight of the truss structure, which depends on upper and lower bounds in the form of stress and displacement limits. The Particle Swarm Optimization basically modeled the social behavior of birds on the basis of the fact that Individual birds exchange information about their position, velocity, fitness, and on the basis that the behavior of the flock is then influenced to increase the probability of migration to other regions with high fitness. One of the problems of PSO is that it is easily trapped at the local point due to its non-uniform movement. The present study uses the mutation, random selection, and reproduction to reach the best genetic algorithm with the operators of natural genetics. Therefore, only identical chromosomes or particles can be converged. In other words, PSO and GA algorithm goes from one point in the search space to another point, interacting with each other. In this way, this helps them to find the optimum design by means of deterministic and probabilistic rules. The present study merged the two algorithms together in order to design several benchmark truss structures, and then the results of the new algorithm compared to those of other evolutionary optimization methods.


This Masters research proposes a new system which deals with the management of renewable energy sources in a domestic/commercial small scale environment. The aim of the project is to develop an intelligent system which will monitor current in individual circuit loads in a domestic/commercial environment and establish whether the load can be powered from mains supply or be switched to an alternative energy supply in a dynamic way. The alternative energy can be solar energy from photovoltaic panels, wind generators or hydro generation. The switching between supplies is decided by monitoring load currents using a microcontroller and the switching action is taken only at specific allowed instants. The CAN (Controller Area Network)communication system is a two-wire differential serial bus system, developed by Bosch for automotive applications in the early 1980s. Its reliability and robustness in communication between nodes within the control system are the reasons for its popularity. The CAN system is implemented in the Eco Energy Controller. The prototype of the Eco Energy Controller is operational and has been tested with 6Ω resistive load, 24mH inductive load, and three 25W incandescent light bulbs. Experimental measurements and waveforms indicate that the prototype is successful in switching between two supplies to each of the loads without causing high current peaks during turn on.