Background: Autism is a complex neurobiological development disorder that includes disorders of aspects of social interaction, communication, language, behavior, emotions and sensory perceptions. Children with autism who experience developmental delay will feel difficulty in the ability to socialize with the environment. Some therapies that can be done are behavioral, speech, occupational, physical and play therapy. Role play therapy in early childhood can improve social ability. Role play can cultivate empathy, sympathy and enhance cooperation with others. Purpose: This study aims to determine the influence of role play on the development of autistic children in SLB Negeri Semarang. Methods: The research design was pre experiment with pre-post test design approach. Sample study was 34 children with autism. Pretest was done by assessing child development. Intervention was done on the second, fourth and sixth days after the pretest. Post test was done on the eighth day. Developments were observed based on Gilliam Autism Rating Scale. Role play was done by asking the child to play a role with the theme of health in pairs. Intervention was done 3 times in 1 week for 5-10 minutes. Wilcoxon test was used for Data analysis. Finding: The results showed that there was an influence of role play on the development, before the role play 11.8% of good development and after the role play showed 20.6% good development. When children perform role plays, interaction occurs with others, practice improving speech and listening skills and the ability to express feelings. Conclusion and Recommendation: An Influence of role play on the development. Role play can be used as a therapy for children with autism.


Abstract A general introduction to ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stability of tokamak plasmas is given, using linear perturbations of the ideal MHD equations. Subsequently the Energy Principle for ideal MHD instabilities is derived. The specific instabilities which are then discussed are loosely divided into two categories. Under the name "current driven instabilities", external and internal kink modes, which are modes with a large radial extent, are discussed. The internal m = 1 kink mode is responsible for sawtooth collapses and fishbone oscillations in tokamaks. Under the header "pressure driven instabilities", more localized modes are presented. These modes may limit the pressure gradient in the plasma without causing sizeable disruptions. The ballooning limit and the Mercier criterion are presented. The Troyon limit is mentioned as a synthesis of several of these stability boundaries.


Problem statement: Depression is said to have a relationship with academic achievement.
Thus, the purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between age, depression and
academic achievement among adolescents. Approach: The study was carried out among 400 students
(200 boys and 200 girls) in the age range 15-19 years. The instrument used for data collection was the
Beck Depression Inventory (21 item BDI). The analysis of data used correlation coefficient and t-test.
Results: The results showed that 27.5% of the boys and 31.5% of the girls were depressed and that
depression and academic achievement were significantly correlated, r = -0.22, p≤0.000. Also, based on
results of the present study, age and academic achievement were significantly correlated (r = 0.23,
p≤0.000). In addition there was significant difference of academic achievement between male and
female, (t (1) = -5.47, p = 0.000). Conclusion/Recommendations: It is recommended that along with
academic achievement, mental health be developed in school settings using support strategies such as
educational guidance and counseling, teaching life skill programs and psychotherapy.


Recent double digit billion dollar mergers of telecommunications firms consolidate both market share and market leadership by incumbent operators such as Verizon. These companies seek to exploit technological and market convergence by offering a triple play package of wired and wireless telephone service, video and Internet access. As well they need to develop new profit centers to compensate for declining revenues and market shares in traditional services such as wireline telephony. While incumbent telecommunications operators have pursued new market opportunities, these ventures have not abandoned core management philosophies, operating assumptions and business strategies. Longstanding strategies for recovering investments, using a telecommunications template greatly contrast with the means by which information processing and content providers achieve profitability. Internet ventures have come up with many different business models including ones that offer free, subsidized or deliberately underpriced access as well as regularly increasing value propositions to consumers, e.g., more options for the same price. Incumbent telecommunications firms rarely deviate from a rigid cost recovery structure that identifies cost causers. Internet and telecommunications business models rarely jibe, even though convergence and business transactions puts incumbent telecommunications firms in market leadership positions. Having such dominant market share now makes it likely that incumbent telecommunications firms will attempt to imprint their business models and their mindsets on Internet markets. Recently senior managers of several incumbent carriers have expressed displeasure with the apparent inability of their companies to recover the sizable investment in broadband Internet access. With an eye toward recouping these investments, the companies have announced plans to replace, or offer alternatives to unmetered All You Can Eat Internet access and to oppose any initiative that restrains their pricing and operational flexibility. The incumbent telecommunications companies characterize their new Internet pricing plans as offering "greater choice" to consumers. Different pricing points based on throughput caps makes sense to a "Bellhead" corporate officer who thinks he or she can identify cost causers and capture rents that otherwise would accrue to content providers. However, the Internet seamlessly blends content and conduit, making it difficult to identify the cost causer. This article will examine Bellhead business models incorporating metering and other traditional cost recovery strategies with an eye toward determining what constitutes reasonable price discrimination and what represents an unfair trade practice or an anticompetitive strategy. The article will consider whether and how Bellhead management strategies will jeopardize the serendipity and positive networking externalities that have accrued when users can freely "surf the web" and content providers can bundle user sought content with advertising. Different pricing points based on throughput caps makes sense to Bellhead corporate officers who think they can capture rents that otherwise would accrue to content providers. The article also will examine the clash of Bellhead and Nethead cultures with an eye toward identifying the stakes involved when Internet access pricing and interconnection primarily follows a telecommunications infrastructure cost recovery scheme in lieu of different commercial relationships favored by most Internet ventures. The article concludes that most Bellhead cost recovery models are lawful even though they will reduce for most consumers the real or perceived value proposition offered by an unmetered monthly Internet access subscription.


Multimedia technology is a key component of the Digital Society. This book comprehensively examines the extent to which copyright and database right protect multimedia works. It does so from the perspective of UK law, but with due attention being paid to EU law, international treaties and comparative developments in other jurisdictions, such as Australia and the U.S. The central argument of the book is that the copyright and database right regimes are, for the most part, flexible enough to meet the challenges presented by multimedia. As a result, it is neither necessary nor desirable to introduce separate copyright protection or sui generis protection for multimedia works. This important and original new work will be essential reading for any lawyer engaged in advising on IP matters relating to the new media industries, and scholars and students working in intellectual property and computer law.


A slowly resolving or non-resolving pneumonia (NRP) is a common clinical dilemma, affecting 10-20% of patients hospitalised with community-acquired pneumonia. Potential causes are many and include inadequate or inappropriate antibiotic therapy, antibiotic resistant pathogens, infectious complications, or incorrect diagnosis. Objective criteria have been described to define clinical stability and represent the best current definition of adequate treatment response. The time to clinical stability varies substantially between patients, being longer in older patients, patients with comorbidities, and patients with a higher severity of pneumonia. NRP is associated with increased mortality and requirement for intensive care unit admission, and so it is essential to identify these patients. Once non-response is recognised, patients should undergo a full re-evaluation, including microbiological testing, repeat chest X-ray and consideration of further imaging, and an increased spectrum of antibiotic therapy if drug resistant pathogens are suspected. A wide range of non-infectious disorders can masquerade as bacterial pneumonia, including pulmonary embolism, malignancy, interstitial lung diseases, alveolar haemorrhage, and vasculitis. There is no uniform recommended diagnostic or treatment approach for patients with NRP. The investigations and interventions required are determined on a case-by-case basis. The present article reviews the causes, investigation, and management of NRP, and presents an algorithm for identification and management of these patients.


Deep-seismic reflection profiles across parts of the Central Appalachian orogenic belt indicate that the crust here includes an exposed Paleozoic fold-and-thrust belt that is mainly soled in Proterozoic Grenville basement. Translation strain in the foreland and Highlands resulting from Paleozoic orogenesis is as much as 25 km, exclusive of layer-parallel-shortening penetrative strains. This estimate is limited by the slight structural relief beneath the Pocono plateau and by the lack of extensive Cambrian-Ordovician cover beneath the sole thrust. Earlier estimates of translation strain are much higher. To the southwest, this parautochthonous region is separated by an unrecognized structural transition from the more allochthonous parts of the central and southern Appalachian overthrust belt, marked by significantly larger translation strains. Crustal architecture in the hinterland part of the region is poorly understood due to data gaps.


OBJECTIVES--To assess the value and limitations of using transoesophageal echocardiography as the sole diagnostic test in patients with suspected thoracic aortic dissection. DESIGN--Retrospective data review over a two year period. SETTING--A regional cardiothoracic centre. PATIENTS--Data were compiled from admission records, surgical records, and lists of patients undergoing diagnostic investigations in the hospital. Patient's notes were used to identify presentation, management, and outcome. INTERVENTIONS--Patients were managed according to the policy of our unit, which is to treat patients with dissection affecting the ascending aorta by an operation. Patients with uncomplicated dissection sparing the ascending aorta are initially managed medically. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES--In hospital and two year follow-up of patients who were investigated by transoesophageal echocardiography alone. RESULTS--Of 48 patients referred, 45 underwent transoesophageal echocardiography. Dissection was confirmed in 22 patients. Transoesophageal echocardiography showed the proximal extent of the dissection in 21/22 (96%) and only one patient required a further diagnostic investigation. Ten patients with dissection of the ascending aorta underwent graft replacement of the ascending aorta; operative mortality was 10% and their two year survival was 80%. Of the eight patients with dissection of the descending aorta, six were discharged home, and five were alive at two years. No patient without evidence of dissection on their initial transoesophageal echocardiographic examination required re-investigation into possible dissection in the two years after discharge. CONCLUSIONS--In patients with suspected thoracic dissection transoesophageal echocardiography rapidly and safely gives all the necessary diagnostic information. Further investigations, including coronary angiography, before surgery are unnecessary.


This paper examines the white-black house value gap across the entire value distribution. Instead of using standard conditional mean analysis and decomposition methods (via OLS regression), we estimate and decompose the changes in the white-black house value gap from 1997 to 2005 using quantile regression. We find that the racial gap in 1997 and 2005 is mostly explained by differences in housing characteristics of white- and black-owned houses but that the variation in the racial gap is explained by racial di fferences in implicit prices of housing characteristics. Our results show that analysis at the conditional mean masks variations at the tails of the distribution.


Bipolar disorder (BD) is one form of mental illness and is estimated to affect around 0.4{1.6% of the population. The disorder is characterised by recurrent episodes of mania and depression and is estimated to cost the UK economy £5.21 billion a year. Many people with BD self-monitor their behaviour to help them identify the early warning signs of an affective episode. The Personalised Ambient Monitoring (PAM) project has been conceived take ideas from existing telehealth systems and apply them to BD. By using a distributed network of discreet, unobtrusive sensors, the user's behavioural patterns can be monitored and deviations in their behaviour can be detected. In doing so it is hoped that the early warning signs can be detected and that this can be used to assist them in their self-monitoring. The PAM system is being developed by a multi-disciplinary team based at the ISVR and the School of Management at the University of Southampton, the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Nottingham and the Department of Computing Science and Mathematics at the University of Stirling. This thesis presents the background and motivations for the PAM project, the approach the project will take, a review of appropriate data analysis techniques and the experimental work that has been undertaken in the investigation of accelerometry for activity monitoring, the use of a wireless camera to monitor a complex environment and the use of multiple sensors to capture behaviour patterns in a technical trial. Results from the technical trial show that it is possible to process information from a variety of sensors to identity activity signatures and behavioural patterns in normal controls. When these activity patterns are trained on week-days, the results presented show that it is possible to identify weekend days as being behaviourally different.


McTaggart distinguished two conceptions of time: the A-series, according to which events are either past, present or future; and the B-series, according to which events are merely earlier or later than other events. Elsewhere, I have argued that these two views, ostensibly about the nature of time, need to be reinterpreted as two views about the nature of the universe. According to the so-called A-theory, the universe is three dimensional, with a past and future; according to the B-theory, the universe is four dimensional. Given special relativity (SR), we are obliged, it seems, to accept (a modified version of) the B-series, four dimensional view, and reject the A-series, three dimensional view, because SR denies that there is a privileged, instantaneous cosmic "now" which seems to be required by the A-theory. Whether this is correct or not, it is important to remember that the fundamental problem, here, is not "What does SR imply?", but rather "What is the best guess about the ultimate nature of the universe in the light of current theoretical knowledge in physics?". In order to know how to answer this question, we need to have some inkling as to how the correct theory of quantum gravity incorporates quantum theory, probability and time. This is, at present, an entirely open question. String theory, or M-theory, seems to evade the issue, and other approaches to quantum gravity seem equally evasive. However, if probabilism is a fundamental feature of ultimate physical reality, then it may well be that the A-theory, or rather a closely related doctrine I call "objectism", is built into the ultimate constitution of things.


The recent observation of neural power-law scaling relations has made a significant impact in the field of deep learning. A substantial amount of attention has been dedicated as a consequence to the description of scaling laws, although mostly for supervised learning and only to a reduced extent for reinforcement learning frameworks. In this paper we present an extensive study of performance scaling for a cornerstone reinforcement learning algorithm, AlphaZero. On the basis of a relationship between Elo rating, playing strength and power-law scaling, we train AlphaZero agents on the games Connect Four and Pentago and analyze their performance. We find that player strength scales as a power law in neural network parameter count when not bottlenecked by available compute, and as a power of compute when training optimally sized agents. We observe nearly identical scaling exponents for both games. Combining the two observed scaling laws we obtain a power law relating optimal size to compute similar to the ones observed for language models. We find that the predicted scaling of optimal neural network size fits our data for both games. This scaling law implies that previously published state-of-the-art game-playing models are significantly smaller than their optimal size, given the respective compute budgets. We also show that large AlphaZero models are more sample efficient, performing better than smaller models with the same amount of training data.


This article reviews selected developments in human rights and democratisation in sub-Saharan African during 2017. It discusses the presidential elections held in Kenya, Liberia, Angola, Rwanda and Somalia/ Somaliland, noting in particular democratic gains in Liberia, Angola and Somalia where elections resulted in changes of government, which brought in new leadership. It further notes the democratic crises in Zimbabwe, where President Mugabe was removed from power through military intervention, and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where instability continued due to efforts by incumbent President Kabila to prolong his term of office. It reports on incidents of protests, recurrent internet shutdowns and interference with the freedom of expression and right of access to information in various African countries. The authors identify the cause of the rift between the African Union and the International Criminal Court as the Al-Bashir warrant issued pursuant to a Security Council Resolution, and recommend that the AU should focus on petitioning the Security Council to withdraws its referral, rather than to persist with its current onslaught against the ICC. In this context, they discuss the decision of ICC Pre-Trial Chamber, which clarified that there is no conflict between article 27(2) and article 98 of the ICC Statute in relation to state parties to the Statute or states referred to the ICC by the Security Council. As far as women's rights are concerned, the article traces significant normative and jurisprudential gains, in particular the adoption of the Joint General Comment on ending child marriage, the Guidelines on combating gender-based violence and its consequences, and the decision of the ECOWAS Court of Justice against Nigeria denouncing gender-based discrimination as a violation of the right to dignity and non-discrimination.


Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is one of the most common liver diseases. l-Tryptophan and its metabolite serotonin are involved in hepatic lipid metabolism and inflammation. However, it is unclear whether l-tryptophan promotes hepatic steatosis. To explore this issue, we examined the role of l-tryptophan in mouse hepatic steatosis by using a high fat and high fructose diet (HFHFD) model. l-Tryptophan treatment in combination with an HFHFD exacerbated hepatic steatosis, expression of HNE-modified proteins, hydroxyproline content, and serum alanine aminotransaminase levels, whereas l-tryptophan alone did not result in these effects. We also found that l-tryptophan treatment increases serum serotonin levels. The introduction of adenoviral aromatic amino acid decarboxylase, which stimulates the serotonin synthesis from l-tryptophan, aggravated hepatic steatosis induced by the HFHFD. The fatty acid-induced accumulation of lipid was further increased by serotonin treatment in cultured hepatocytes. These results suggest that l-tryptophan increases the sensitivity to hepatic steatosis through serotonin production. Furthermore, l-tryptophan treatment, adenoviral AADC introduction, and serotonin treatment induced phosphorylation of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), and a potent mTOR inhibitor rapamycin attenuated hepatocyte lipid accumulation induced by fatty acid with serotonin. These results suggest the importance of mTOR activation for the exacerbation of hepatic steatosis. In conclusion, l-tryptophan exacerbates hepatic steatosis induced by HFHFD through serotonin-mediated activation of mTOR.


Breeding Stud Sheep shows how to establish and manage a successful sheep stud. All aspects of stud breeding are covered, including where and how to buy your sheep, selecting the right breeding stock for your stud, flock management, nutrition, disease control, lambing problems, showing sheep, promotion and marketing, and selling stud genetics. The detailed step-by-step strategies will give the reader the ability to develop alternative approaches that best suit their situation.

It also explains how new initiatives such as performance recording, DNA testing and modern reproductive techniques can be integrated with the old, time-honoured traditions of sheep breeding.

Profiles of highly recognised stud breeders are included, detailing how they started and the strategies they have used to grow their stud sheep operations over many years.

This book will help new breeders avoid the pitfalls and mistakes that can occur when starting a new stud venture, and show how to succeed in what is ultimately a tough but very rewarding industry.


Objective: To observe the toxicity of chlorophyllin against Lymnaea acuminata to control fasciolosis caused by liver fluke fasciola gigantica, very prominent in eastern region of Uttar Pradesh. Materials and Methods: Ten snails Lymnaea acuminata were placed in a glass aquarium containing 3 L of dechlorinated tap water. These snails were treated with different concentrations of chlorophyllin. Chlorophyll was extracted from spinach with the help of macerated leaves and kept for 2 h in 100% ethanol at 55oC. Results: The results of the experiment showed that the photodynamically active chlorophyllin, at low concentration was able to kill the snails under exposure of solar radiation in summer season instead of winter season. In winter, extracted chlorophyllin toxicity against L. acuminata in sunlight (96 h LC50 91.82 mg L-1) /laboratory condition (96 h LC50 921.93 mg L -1) was less than pure chlorophyllin in sunlight (96 h LC50 12.05 mg L -1) /laboratory condition (96 h LC5019.22 mg L -1), respectively. In summer, pure chlorophyllin was more toxic in sunlight (96 h LC50 3.90 mg L -1) than laboratory condition (96 h LC50 7.18 mg L -1). Pure chlorophyllin is more than five times toxic than synthetic molluscicides. Treatment of chlorophyllin caused no toxic effect against the fish (Colisa fasciatus). The result presented in this paper is found very beneficial and ecologically safe, as a photodynamic substance chlorophyllin, which found in every green plant. Conclusion: Phytotherapy of snails by photodynamic water soluble chlorophyllin to control fasciolosis can be used as potent molluscicides with low cost and easily biodegradable.


Faced with myriad potential sources of financial exposure from ever-increasing environmental regulation, companies are grappling with the substance and timing of shareholder disclosures about the effect of environmental laws and regulations. Equally challenged, financial statement auditors must assess whether environmental issues have beet) considered properly before reporting a company's statements are presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. This article will help accountants and auditors assess the sources of a public or private company's financial risk and the adequacy of presentation or disclosure of environmental matters in financial statements. STATUTORY SOURCES OF ENVIROMMENTAL LIABILITY Companies are subject to a wide range of federal, state and local environmental laws and regulations. Major federal statutes include the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA), the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) as well as the Toxic Substances Control Act. The scope of current environmental laws is very broad. Under RCRA, for example, companies must track hazardous waste from cradle to grave. " Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations developed pursuant to RCRA impose strict standards for hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal. RCRA also empowers the EPA to investigate potential violations and, if necessary, initiate legal proceedings against violators. Just four years after RCRA, Congress enacted CERCLA, the so-called superfund statute, which was extended and refined by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA). Touted by environmental groups for its comprehensive scope, CERCLA imposes hazardous waste-site cleanup liability on a broadly defined group of potentially responsible parties (PRPS): * The current owner or operator of a facility identified as a hazardous site. * Anyone who at the time of disposal of hazardous substances owned or operated any facility at which such substances were disposed of * Generators of hazardous substances disposed of at the facility. * Anyone who transported hazardous substances to the facility. CERCLA liability defenses are limited and difficult to assert successfully. Due both to CERCLA'S extensive reach and the financial magnitude of cleanup costs, the statute has spawned considerable environmental litigation in recent years. Many states have adopted their own CERCLA-TYPE cleanup statutes. New York, for example, has an active state superfund program. New Jersey's Environmental Cleanup Liability Act (ECLA) requires industrial-establishment owners or operators planning to sell or transfer operations to notify state environmental authorities and provide either a negative declaration there are no hazardous substances or wastes on site or a cleanup plan to address any site contamination. Failure to comply is grounds for the buyer or the state to void the sale. POTENTIAL SOURCES OF FINANCIAL EXPOSURE Federal and state laws and regulations may result in a number of financial risks that CPAS must consider. One such risk is the possibility a company will be required to commit substantial funds to comply with environmental laws and regulations. For example, a manufacturing facility is required to install or upgrade devices to remove particulate matter from smokestack emissions or to remove chemicals or heavy metals from liquid or solid waste before disposal. The resulting capital expenditures will increase production costs-which cannot be fully passed on to customers and will lead to a decline in future earnings. CPAS must consider a company's exposure to toxic tort liability for personal injury or property damage due to chemical exposure. In toxic tort lawsuits, massive damages often are sought by victims of a company-caused environmental problem. …


Modern cloud systems have a vast number of components that continuously undergo changes. Deploying these frequent updates quickly without breaking the system is challenging. In this paper, we present Gandalf, an end-to-end analytics service for safe deployment in a large-scale system infrastructure. Gandalf enables rapid and robust impact assessment of software rollouts to catch bad rollouts before they cause widespread outages. Gandalf monitors and analyzes various fault signals and correlates each signal against all the ongoing rollouts using a spatial and temporal correlation algorithm. Its core decision logic includes an ensemble ranking algorithm that determines which rollout caused the fault signals and a binary classifier that assesses the impact of the fault signals. The analysis result determines whether a rollout is safe to proceed or should be stopped. By using a lambda architecture, Gandalf provides both real-time and long-term deployment monitoring with automated decisions and notifications. Gandalf has been running in production in Microsoft Azure for more than 18 months, serving both data-plane and control-plane components. It achieves 92.4% precision and 100% recall (no high-impact service outages in Azure Compute were caused by bad rollouts) for data-plane rollouts. For control-plane rollouts, Gandalf achieves 94.87% precision and 99.84% recall.


We propose a new unsupervised learning method to obtain a layered pictorial structure (LPS) representation of an articulated object from video sequences. It will be seen that this is related in turn to methods for learning sprite based representations of an image. The method we describe involves a new generative model for performing segmentation on a set of images. Included in this model are the effects of motion blur and occlusion. An initial estimate of the parameters of the model is obtained by dividing the scene into rigidly moving components. The estimate of the matte of each part is refined using a variation of the α-expansion graph cut algorithm. This method has the advantage of achieving a strong local minimum over labels. Results are demonstrated on animals for which an articulated LPS representation is naturally suited.


We investigated whether TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) with different size ranges and crystalline forms could affect iron homeostasis in Pseudomonas brassicacearum. In the Pseudomonas species, regulation of iron homeostasis involves two sRNAs known as PrrF. We identified two sRNA-encoding genes prrF1 and prrF2 in the P. brassicacearum genome. To investigate the cytotoxicity of TiO2 NPs, we prepared two shapes of anatase titania particles for physico-chemical characterization before and after in vitro use. We determined their biological activity by analyzing the TiO2 NPs–bacteria interaction using hyperspectral microscopy, as well as their impact on the intracellular iron content. Overall, our results demonstrate that under dark conditions, TiO2 NPs do not have any impact on bacterial growth. We investigated the adaptive response of bacteria and showed that TiO2 NPs induced oxidant stress and consequently altered iron homeostasis. Furthermore, the bacterial iron content significantly decreased, whereas adsorption of TiO2 NPs on bacterial cells increased. Although we used two different crystalline forms that differ in size and shape, they displayed nearly identical mechanisms of toxicity towards bacteria. Finally, we found that the expression of prrF RNA represents a good indicator of intracellular iron status, yielding new insights into the mechanism underlying TiO2 NP toxicity towards bacteria.


Server Sprawl and escalating IT costs have managers and system administrators scrambling to find ways to cut costs and reduce Total Cost of Ownership of their physical infrastructure. Combining software applications onto a single server, even if those applications are from the same software vendor, can be dangerous and problems hard to troubleshoot. Virtualization allows you to consolidate many servers onto a single physical server reducing hardware, electrical, cooling, and administrative costs. These virtual servers run completely independent of each other so if one crashes the other are not affected. Planning and implementing a server consolidation is a complex process. This book details the requirements for such a project, includes sample forms and templates, and delivers several physical to virtual migration strategies which will save both time and costs. Readers of this book will easily be able to plan and deploy VMware, Microsoft Virtual Server, and Xen. Key Features:* Create a virtual network to exchange information or provide a service to other virtual machines or computers.* Use virtualization to support removable media such as CD or DVD optical disks* Reduce server costs, administration overhead, and complexity


The consequences of warming for Antarctic long‐lived organisms depend on their ability to survive changing patterns of climate and environmental variation. Among birds and mammals of different Antarctic regions, including emperor penguins, snow petrels, southern fulmars, Antarctic fur seals and Weddell seals, we found strong support for selection of life history traits that reduce interannual variation in fitness. These species maximize fitness by keeping a low interannual variance in the survival of adults and in their propensity to breed annually, which are the vital rates that influence most the variability in population growth rate (λ). All these species have been able to buffer these rates against the effects of recent climate‐driven habitat changes except for Antarctic fur seals, in the Southwest Atlantic. In this region of the Southern Ocean, the rapid increase in ecosystem fluctuation, associated with increasing climate variability observed since 1990, has limited and rendered less predictable the main fur seal food supply, Antarctic krill. This has increased the fitness costs of breeding for females, causing significant short‐term changes in population structure through mortality and low breeding output. Changes occur now with a frequency higher than the mean female fur seal generation time, and therefore are likely to limit their adaptive response. Fur seals are more likely to rely on phenotypic plasticity to cope with short‐term changes in order to maximize individual fitness. With more frequent extreme climatic events driving more frequent ecosystem fluctuation, the repercussions for life histories in many Antarctic birds and mammals are likely to increase, particularly at regional scales. In species with less flexible life histories that are more constrained by fluctuation in their critical habitats, like sea‐ice, this may cause demographic changes, population compensation and changes in distribution, as already observed in penguin species living in the Antarctic Peninsula and adjacent islands.


Genome sequencing projects from diverse bacteria and the release of genetically
engineered microorganisms make the topic of horizontal gene transfer (HGT)
fashionable. Sequence analysis indicates the high frequency and the importance of
horizontal gene transfer to the microbial evolution. Much knowledge about horizontal
transfer has been derived from studies using soil microcosms, fluorescent-marked donors
and recipients and from study of the increase of the antibiotic resistance as a result of use
and often abuse of antibiotics. However, little is known about the transfer of
chromosomally-located antibiotic biosynthesis genes in natural populations. The
streptomycin pathway-specific regulator, strR, has been found in a set of diverse
streptomycetes both phenotypically and genetically that previously have already been
described to carry the resistance (strA) and one biosynthetic (strBl) gene from the same
cluster. Phylogenetic analysis of both 16S rRNA and trpB gene fragments showed that
two isolates were closely related to S. coelicolor which are known not to produce
streptomycin or to contain any biosynthesis or resistance genes. The remaining pair did
appear to be closely related to each other, particularly from the trpB analysis. trpB gene
proved to be useful for resolving phylogenetic relationships between strains with highly
conserved gamma region of the 16S rRNA gene. However, one of these strains is the
only one from the S. griseus distant isolates that produced streptomycin and possessed
many other genes from the cluster. The phylogenetic incongruency between `species'
tree and `gene' tree can be attributed to horizontal gene transfer. The sequence identity
of the detected genes is extremely high (99%) indicating a recent transfer event. Besides
the physical proximity of strRABl genes, there is also a well-characterised functional
correlation of these genes in the streptomycin producer, S. griseus. However, strRA
genes are silent in coelicolor-like isolates ASSF15 and ASB37. Therefore, this transfer
may have other ecological role than a simple resistance phenotype such as the evolution
of antibiotic cluster. It was not possible to prove the integration site of strRABl genes
within ASB37 genome but a possible site was identified.
Pathway-specific regulator StrR activates the transcription of strBl and other
genes from the streptomycin cluster by binding to the upstream promoter regions. This
protein binds as a tetramer. N-terminal deleted StrR derivatives were still able to bind as
pseudodimers (two monomers). Two putative domains in the N'-terminus of the protein
responsible for the protein dimerisation during the binding process have been identified.


Habits of Mind maintains that the fact that almost everyone now goes to college need not be seen as an obstacle to excellence in education. Some critics have insisted that college is not for everyone, but William B. Allen and Carol Allen assert that the college diploma has rightly become as much the norm in this century as the high school diploma was during the twentieth century. Accordingly, it is essential that higher education remains true to its deepest purpose: the cultivation of proficient humanity. The authors see the key to this goal as the development of judgment, or "habits of mind." Habits of mind are far and away the most influential determinants of human conduct, and nowhere are they more profoundly shaped than in institutions of higher education. Furthermore, liberal education has proven most effective in this undertaking. The authors elaborate on the purpose of higher education and identify the chief obstacles to achieving its aim. They demonstrate the critical role of academic leaders in achieving the aim of higher education and posit that excellence in judgment is the primary characteristic of the academic leaders who fulfill this role. They examine three aspects of access to higher education: academic readiness, the cost and funding of higher education, and the capacity of the physical plant. Finally, they use policies developed in Virginia to demonstrate realistic approaches to achieving the aims of access and quality discussed throughout the book. The authors draw on their years of experience as practitioners in both private and public institutions, liberal arts colleges, and research universities to develop their material. This volume will be of interest to faculty and students in higher education programs, nation and state public policymakers, legislative and academic leaders, and a general public concerned about the cost and value of a college education.


Herein, we report a fast synthesis of 1,4-dihydropyridines, decahydroacridine-1,8-diones by one-pot multi-component reaction of 1,3-cyclohexanedione or dimidone, arylaldehydes, and ammonium acetate under solvent-less condition using Cu(II)-schiff base-SBA-15 as  a reusable heterogeneous catalyst in high yields. These kinds of catalysts are built from mesoporous silica SBA-15 which was covalently anchored with Cu(II) schiff base complex. The shorter reaction times, good yields, simple work-up procedure and environmentally friendly conditions are the main advantages of this method compared to the last one. This method is also  the first example of synthesizing acridines by Cu(II)-schiff base-SBA-15 as an efficient catalyst in solvent-free media which can be valuable to be used or investigated for similar systems. The product was identified by its 1H NMR, mass and IR spectra, which were compared to those reported previously.


Jason R. Rudy, "Settled: Dorrit Down Under" (pp. 184–206)
 Although the conclusion to Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit (1855–57) finds the protagonists Arthur Clennam and Amy Dorrit comfortably situated in London, the novel's long and meandering narrative entertains alternate possibilities. This essay considers the relation of emigration to British middle-class identity, both in the historical context of the 1850s and in the fictional world of Dickens's novel. Australian free emigration, which saw a significant rise in the 1850s, serves as a limit case against which to test the significance of remaining at home in England. Little Dorrit is a novel that "settles" on a domestic life of bourgeois stability, but it arrives at this conclusion only after contemplating less-predictable futures abroad. Dickens himself considered emigrating to Australia while writing Little Dorrit, and the novel's quiet conclusion reflects the author's own conflicted resolution to forego life beyond British shores. Dickens's novel ultimately suggests that Victorian middle-class stability depended at least in part on the rejection of economic possibilities abroad.


In recent years, magnetic-based technologies, like nanomagnet logic (NML), are gaining increasing interest as possible substitutes of CMOS transistors. The possibility to mix logic and memory in the same device, coupled with a potential low power consumption, opens up completely new ways of developing circuits. The major issue of this technology is the necessity to use an external magnetic field as clock signal to drive the information through the circuit. The power losses due to the magnetic field generation potentially wipe out any advantages of NML. To solve this problem, new clock mechanisms were developed, based on spin transfer torque current and on voltage-controlled multiferroic structures that use magnetoelastic properties of magnetic materials, i.e., exploiting the possibility of influencing magnetization dynamics by means of the elastic tensor. In particular, the latter shows an extremely low power consumption. In this paper, we propose an innovative voltage-controlled magnetoelastic clock system aware of the technological constraints risen by modern fabrication processes. We show how circuits can be fabricated taking into account technological limitations, and we evaluate the performance of the proposed system. Results show that the proposed solution promises remarkable improvements over other NML approaches, even though state-of-the-art ideal multiferroic logic has in theory better performance. Moreover, since the proposed approach is technology-friendly, it gives a substantial contribution toward the fabrication of a full magnetic circuit and represents an optimal tradeoff between performance and feasibility.


An epicontinental sea bisected West Africa periodically from the Late Cretaceous to the early Eocene, in dramatic contrast to the current Sahara Desert that dominates the same region today. Known as the Trans-Saharan Seaway, this warm and shallow ocean was a manifestation of globally elevated sea level associated with the rapid break-up of the supercontinent Gondwana in the late Mesozoic. Although it varied in size through time, the Trans-Saharan Seaway is estimated to have covered as much as 3000 km2 of the African continent and was approximately 50 m deep. The edges of the sea were defined in part by the high topography of the Precambrian cratons and mobile belts of West Africa. Over its approximately 50 million year episodic existence, through six major periods of transgression and regression, the Trans-Saharan Seaway left behind extensive nearshore marine sedimentary strata with abundant fossils. The waters that yielded these deposits supported and preserved the remains of numerous vertebrate, invertebrate, plant, and microbial species that are now extinct. These species document a regional picture of ancient tropical life that spanned two major Earth events: the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Whereas extensive epeiric seas flooded the interior portions of most continents during these intervals, the emerging multicontinental narrative has often overlooked the Trans-Saharan Seaway, in part because fundamental research, including the naming of geological formations and the primary description and analysis of fossil species, remained to be done. We provide such synthesis here based on two decades of fieldwork and analyses of sedimentary deposits in the Republic of Mali. Northern parts of the Republic of Mali today include some of the farthest inland reaches of the ancient sea.

We bring together and expand on our prior geological and paleontological publications and provide new information on ancient sedimentary rocks and fossils that document paleoequatorial life of the past. Ours is the first formal description of and nomenclature for the Upper Cretaceous and lower Paleogene geological formations of this region and we tie these names to regional correlations over multiple modern territorial boundaries. The ancient seaway left intriguing and previously unclassified phosphate deposits that, quite possibly, represent the most extensive vertebrate macrofossil bone beds known from anywhere on Earth. These bone beds, and the paper shales and carbonates associated with them, have preserved a diverse assemblage of fossils, including a variety of new species of invertebrates and vertebrates, rare mammals, and trace fossils. The shallow marine waters included a wide range of paleoenvironments from delta systems, to hypersaline embayments, protected lagoons, and carbonate shoals.

Our overarching goal has been to collect vertebrate fossils tied to a K-Pg stratigraphic section in Africa. We provide such a section and, consistent with prior ideas, indicate that there is a gap in sedimentation in Malian rocks in the earliest Paleocene, an unconformity also proposed elsewhere in West Africa. Our phylogenetic analyses of several vertebrate clades across the K-Pg boundary have clarified clade-by-clade species-level survivorship and range extensions for multiple taxa. Few macrofossil species from the Trans-Saharan Seaway show conspicuous change at either the K-Pg boundary or the PETM based on current evidence, although results are very preliminary. Building on our earlier report of the first record of rock-boring bivalves from the Paleocene of West Africa, we further describe here a Cretaceous and Paleogene mollusk fauna dominated by taxa characteristic of the modern tropics. Among the newly discovered fossil osteichthyans, large body size characterizes both the pycnodonts and a new freshwater Eocene catfish species, one of the largest fossil catfishes found in Africa. Our new paleoecological and faunal reconstructions show an evergreen, broadleaf forest that included some of the oldest mangroves known. The ancient Malian ecosystem had numerous apex predators including Crocodyliformes, Serpentes, and Amiidae, some of which were among the largest species in their clades. The Trans-Saharan Seaway exhibited intermittent isolation from major seas. This environmental variable may have created aquatic centers of endemism, stimulating selection for gigantism as previously observed for species on terrestrial islands.


Some factors besides treatment can significantly influence on the fatal outcomes of pneumonia. Objective. Identification of non-medication risk factors of death based on study of the inpatients clinical signs of pneumonia. Methods. Retrospective analyze of 62 case histories of patients died from pneumonia in hospitals: 12 women and 50 men of 30 to 88 years. Results. 24% of patients had constant job, 76% were not working. 21% of patients had a disability for chronic diseases. The beginning of disease averaged 5,4 days before hospitalization. The recourse was on average 1 day before hospitalization. The most frequent complaints were cough (10% with hemoptysis), weakness and dyspnea. 45% of patients smoked. 50% abused alcohol. Dipsomania preceded hospitalization in 40% of cases. 10% had a drug addiction, 5% were HIV-positive, 13% had chronic viral hepatitis B and C. Leading role of cardiovascular (66%) and gastrointestinal (65%) pathology have been revealed. Based on dates of autopsies, attention should be paid to alcoholic genesis of these diseases. Coronary heart disease and hypertension took place much rarer. In 40% we observed various stages of consciousness disturbance from mild lethargy to coma. In 69% we saw skin and mucosa cyanosis, in 63% - tachypnea, 55% - hypotension. 57% had body mass deviations. In 63% we observed bilateral pneumonia, in 33% - pleural effusion. Conclusions. Social status, late hospitalization, smoking, alcoholism, alcoholic genesis of comorbidity, deviation of the mental, nutritive status, bilateral pneumonia, pleural effusion, hemodynamic disorders should be recognized as non-medication predictors of fatal outcome, requiring early attention and subsequent correction of treatment.


Beech wood (Fagus sylvatica L.) is one of the most important timber species produced in Kosovo. About 33% of the trees in our country are beech and most of the wood products are from this kind of timber. The color difference between red heart wood and white wood of the beech is significant. Adequate protection against weathering (snow, rain and low temperature) and leaching of preservative components into the environment are the main problems faced by wood companies in Kosovo as coatings defects may become apparent after only one year of outside exposure. The aim of this study was to assess the best way to protect beech wood products from weathering with available types of commercial wood coatings: film forming, non film forming, transparent stain and semi transparent penetrating stain. We concluded that the film forming and semitransparent penetrating stain are the best painting methods for beech wood products protection, according to weathering performance and coating properties.


Personal protection measures against biting arthropods include topical insect repellents, area repellents, insecticide‐treated bednets and treated clothing. The literature on the effectiveness of personal protection products against arthropods is mainly limited to studies of prevention of bites, rather than prevention of disease. Tungiasis was successfully controlled by application of topical repellents and scrub typhus was reduced through the use of treated clothing. Successful reduction of leishmaniasis was achieved through the use of topical repellents, treated bednets and treated clothing in individual studies. Malaria has been reduced by the use of insecticide‐treated bednets (ITN), certain campaigns involving topical repellents, and the combination of treated bednets and topical repellents. Although area repellents such as mosquito coils are used extensively, their ability to protect humans from vector‐transmitted pathogens has not been proven. Taken together, the literature indicates that personal protection measures must be used correctly to be effective. A study that showed successful control of malaria by combining treated bednets and topical repellents suggests that combinations of personal protection measures are likely to be more effective than single methods. Implementation of successful programmes based on personal protection will require a level of cooperation commonly associated with other basic societal functions, such as education and food safety.


Simple morphological identification of a sample as parathyroid gland tissue is not always sufficient for optimal patient treatment. Instead, patients with parathyroid gland lesions that increase the risk of disease relapse should be identified. To assess the possibility of differentiating adenoma from hyperplasia in preoperative material by use of computerized morphometric analysis in order to enable better preoperative work-up in patients with hyperparathyroidism. Samples obtained by US guided fine-needle aspiration biopsy of 67 parathyroid glands without known histopathologic diagnosis were dried and stained by May-Grünwald-Giemsa. Fifty nuclei per sample were analyzed and designated automatically with manual correction using image analyzer and specific software. The area, circumference, convexity, minimal and maximal radius, length and width, and factors of regularity, i.e. form factor and factor of nucleus elongation, were determined for each nucleus. Basic descriptive parameters and measures of variability (variation coefficient and standard deviation) were calculated for each continuous variable. The correlation of continuous variables was analyzed by use of Mann-Whitney test. Computer analysis of cell image classified the cell nuclei into two groups. The area, circumference, minimal radius, convexity and width of the nuclei showed higher values in the hyperplasia group as compared with the adenoma group. Standard deviation also showed higher values of each of the study parameters in the former group. Our own observations and subjective assessment of variations in nucleus size to represent substantial characteristics differentiating parathyroid adenoma and hyperplasia in cytologic smear were quantitatively verified by the use of objective morphometric measurement and should therefore be considered valid parameters on differentiating these two entities.


The THz emission of an undoped/n-type GaAs thin film on a porous silicon distributed Bragg reflector (PSi DBR) is presented. The process was carried out by epitaxial lift-off of an MBE-grown GaAs epilayer, followed by integration on the DBR via Van der Waal's bonding. The active GaAs film has a total thickness less than the penetration depth of the 800 nm excitation source, while the PSi DBR substrate was designed as a reflector for the transmitted optical excitation photons at the film-substrate interface. The design exhibited a 67% increase in the peak-to-peak THz amplitude compared to a similar GaAs film integrated on silicon (Si) substrate. The THz enhancement was attributed to a higher number of photogenerated carriers in the film due to the increased 800nm light absorption and the additional drift-related THz radiation at the GaAs-PSi DBR interface.


BACKGROUND
Although we know that exacerbations are key events in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), our understanding of their frequency, determinants, and effects is incomplete. In a large observational cohort, we tested the hypothesis that there is a frequent-exacerbation phenotype of COPD that is independent of disease severity.

METHODS
We analyzed the frequency and associations of exacerbation in 2138 patients enrolled in the Evaluation of COPD Longitudinally to Identify Predictive Surrogate Endpoints (ECLIPSE) study. Exacerbations were defined as events that led a care provider to prescribe antibiotics or corticosteroids (or both) or that led to hospitalization (severe exacerbations). Exacerbation frequency was observed over a period of 3 years.

RESULTS
Exacerbations became more frequent (and more severe) as the severity of COPD increased; exacerbation rates in the first year of follow-up were 0.85 per person for patients with stage 2 COPD (with stage defined in accordance with Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease [GOLD] stages), 1.34 for patients with stage 3, and 2.00 for patients with stage 4. Overall, 22% of patients with stage 2 disease, 33% with stage 3, and 47% with stage 4 had frequent exacerbations (two or more in the first year of follow-up). The single best predictor of exacerbations, across all GOLD stages, was a history of exacerbations. The frequent-exacerbation phenotype appeared to be relatively stable over a period of 3 years and could be predicted on the basis of the patient's recall of previous treated events. In addition to its association with more severe disease and prior exacerbations, the phenotype was independently associated with a history of gastroesophageal reflux or heartburn, poorer quality of life, and elevated white-cell count.

CONCLUSIONS
Although exacerbations become more frequent and more severe as COPD progresses, the rate at which they occur appears to reflect an independent susceptibility phenotype. This has implications for the targeting of exacerbation-prevention strategies across the spectrum of disease severity. (Funded by GlaxoSmithKline; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00292552.)


WHEN THE CUBAN AIR DEFENSE SHOT down two civilian planes earlier this year, killing four Cuban-Americans, the United States swerved away from the process of normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba. The details of the incident are unclear; little is known besides the fact that the planes and their pilots belonged to a Cuban-American group known as Brothers to the Rescue, an organization that sends planes to help Cuban refugees who wish to enter the United States. The details of the incident are less important than its immediate consequences. Cuba's downing of these planes has prompted the US government to impose new economic sanctions on Cuba, and the bitter enmity between Washington and Havana has been rekindled. This turn of events is unfortunate, for it seems that US President Clinton will follow the lead of the Republican congress and return to the unsuccessful policy of confrontation and isolation that marked the first three decades of Washington's relationship with Fidel Castro's regime. However, Clinton ought to continue the process of normalization with Cuba, even in the face of hostile acts such as the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes. The domestic political costs to President Clinton of improving US-Cuban relations are overstated, and such a process of normalization is the most prudent course for US foreign policy. In the past, US relations with Cuba have been motivated too much by domestic politics, especially by Cuban-American special interest groups. Former US President Jimmy Carter improved relations with Cuba somewhat, but this improvement was limited by the fear of an anti-Castro backlash in the United States. Although Carter did have some successes--most notably the establishment of cooperation between the US and Cuban coast guards, and the release of political prisoners--his policy failures had dramatic consequences. The Carter Administration did not define the terms of migration from Cuba to the United States, and as a result Castro orchestrated the Mariel boatlift of 1980 which dumped 125,000 Cubans, including 2,700 criminals and mental patients on US shores. Ultimately, Carter's overly-minimal dealings with Cuba did great harm to the United States. This, in turn, caused a massive setback in US-Cuban relations. When he was elected in 1980, Ronald Reagan vowed non-negotiation with Castro, as was required by his party. However, Reagan was too conscious of Cuba's importance to uphold his pledge of non-negotiation, and he opened discussions despite his vow. As a result of these negotiations, Castro took back many of the dangerous migrants of the Mariel boatlift and released 3,000 political prisoners. He established immigration laws, suspended them, and then resumed them again in 1987. Thus it is clear that, while Castro has not made moves towards democracy, he has been consistently responsive to the United States, sporadic political overtures. In past several decades, the Soviet Union was the main obstacle to establishing relations between Washington and Havana. Now that the ally-or-enemy paradigm of the Cold War is outdated, so is US policy towards Cuba. While the United States and Cuba still have serious differences on issues like human rights and immigration, the Cold War policy of isolation and non-recognition is not appropriate for dealing with these kinds of issues. In forging its new foreign policy on Cuba, the United States cannot rely upon the policies advocated by particular special interest groups or cling to the foreign policy ideology of the Cold War. A more effective US foreign policy toward Cuba must take into account the interests of the US public and the international community at large. Such a policy must include steps towards normalizing relations with Cuba. Outdated Rationales The arguments advanced for continuing the policy of non-recognition and isolation simply do not stand up to scrutiny. The first argument frequently made against normalizing US-Cuban relations is that the United States should not associate with a dictatorship and a communist regime, but rather, as US Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff stated, "deny it legitimacy through international and direct pressures. …


Answer set programming (ASP) is a declarative problem solving framework introduced by Michael Gelfond and Vladimir Lifschitz in the late '80s. ASP has received much
attention by researchers for its expressiveness and simpleness so that well-engineered and optimized implementations have been developed for it. However, state-of-the-art answer set solvers have still a strong limitation: they are not be able to reason on nonground programs and then the input program have to be instantiated before the solver can start to reason on it. Consequently,
answer set solvers (i) cannot handle infinite domains and (ii) use huge amounts of memory even if domains are finite. This work wants to give some contribution for these two not trivial problems.
First, I analyze finitary programs as a class of programs that can effectively deal with function symbols and recursion (hence infinite domains and models). Interestingly, even if finitary programs are computationally complete, their restrictions make it possible to keep complexity under control. I study the consequences of relaxing the restrictions on finitary programs and my results enforce a kind of minimality of the properties that characterize finitary programs.
Next, I investigate what happens when we "compose" two programs P and Q belonging to some particular classes that imposing them some restrictions guarantee good computational
properties, so obtaining a program P [ Q that, as a whole, might not be subject to the restrictions of P or Q but that again enjoys good computational properties.
Finally, I study a new approach to tackle the problem (ii) of ASP. The idea is to integrate answer set generation and constraint solving to reduce the memory requirements for a class of multi-sorted logic programs with cardinality constraints: constrained programs. I prove some
theoretical results, introduce provably sound and complete algorithms, and report experimental results on my prototype system for evaluating constrained programs, showing that my approach can solve problem instances with significantly larger domains.


Aim/Purpose The aims of this study were to investigate the feasibility of automatic assessment of programming tasks and to compare manual assessment with automatic assessment in terms of the effect of the different assessment methods on the marks of the students. Background Manual assessment of programs written by students can be tedious. The assistance of automatic assessment methods might possibly assist in reducing the assessment burden, but there may be drawbacks diminishing the benefits of applying automatic assessment. The paper reports on the experience of a lecturer trying to introduce automated grading. Students' solutions to a practical Java programming test were assessed both manually and automatically and the lecturer tied the experience to the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). Methodology The participants were 226 first-year students registered for a Java programming course. Of the tests the participants submitted, 214 were assessed both manually and automatically. Various statistical methods were used to compare the manual assessment of student's solutions with the automatic assessment of the same solutions. A detailed investigation of reasons for differences was also carried out. A further data collection method was the lecturer's reflection on the feasibility of automatic assessment of programming tasks based on the UTAUT. Contribution This study enhances the knowledge regarding benefits and drawbacks of automatic assessment of students' programming tasks. The research contributes to the UTAUT by applying it in a context where it has hardly been used. Furthermore, the study is a confirmation of previous work stating that automatic assessment may be less reliable for students with lower marks, but more trustworthy for the high achieving students. Automatic Assessment of Programs 202 Findings An automatic assessment tool verifying functional correctness might be feasible for assessment of programs written during practical lab sessions but could be less useful for practical tests and exams where functional, conceptual and structural correctness should be evaluated. In addition, the researchers found that automatic assessment seemed to be more suitable for assessing high achieving students. Recommendations for Practitioners This paper makes it clear that lecturers should know what assessment goals they want to achieve. The appropriate method of assessment should be chosen wisely. In addition, practitioners should be aware of the drawbacks of automatic assessment before choosing it. Recommendation for Researchers This work serves as an example of how researchers can apply the UTAUT theory when conducting qualitative research in different contexts. Impact on Society The study would be of interest to lecturers considering automated assessment. The two assessments used in the study are typical of the way grading takes place in practice and may help lecturers understand what could happen if they switch from manual to automatic assessment. Future Research Investigate the feasibility of automatic assessment of students' programming tasks in a practical lab environment while accounting for structural, functional and conceptual assessment goals.


The neurobiology of mood states is complicated by exposure to everyday stressors (e.g., psychosocial, ubiquitous environmental infections like CMV), each fluctuating between latency and reactivation. CMV reactivation induces proinflammatory cytokines (e.g., TNF-α) associated with induction of neurotoxic metabolites and the presence of mood states in bipolar disorder (BD). Whether CMV reactivation is associated with bipolar diagnoses (trait) or specific mood states is unclear. We investigated 139 BD type I and 99 healthy controls to determine if concentrations of IgG antibodies to Herpesviridae (e.g., CMV, HSV-1, and HSV-2) were associated with BD-I diagnosis and specific mood states. We found higher CMV antibody concentration in BD-I than in healthy controls (T234 = 3.1, P uncorr = 0.002; P corr = 0.006) but no difference in HSV-1 (P > 0.10) or HSV-2 (P > 0.10). Compared to euthymic BD-I volunteers, CMV IgG was higher in BD-I volunteers with elevated moods (P < 0.03) but not different in depressed moods (P > 0.10). While relationships presented between BD-I diagnosis, mood states, and CMV antibodies are encouraging, they are limited by the study's cross sectional nature. Nevertheless, further testing is warranted to replicate findings and determine whether reactivation of CMV infection exacerbates elevated mood states in BD-I.


Introduction: Landslides are one of the critical natural processes, which cause enormous damage to life and property..Uttarakhand Himalaya is vital to sustainity of region. This region is very fragile due to topographic and climatic condition. Landslides in the mountainous terrains are natural derivational processes and one of the most. There is a need for Landslide Hazard Zonation for identification of potential landslide areas. Keeping this in mind one hilly district, Pauri district of Uttarakhand, India was selected. Materials and Methods: The present study is an attempt towards development of a landslide model by using multi-criteria decision analysis in GIS and remote sensing techniques for landslide hazard zonation. The IRS LISS-4 satellite imageries, Survey of India topographical maps, and ancillary data were used as inputs to the study. The data layers of land use–land cover and geology were interpreted from satellite image and available ancillary data. Other raster thematic layers, i.e., slope, aspect, elevation, and drainage density, have been generated in Arc info three-dimensional analyst tool using ASTER DEM of 30 m resolution. A numerical rating scheme for the factors was developed for spatial data analysis in GIS. Results and Decision: Using high-resolution LISS-IV and Cartosat-2A, merged data of 2011–2012 landslides were mapped by visual interpretation of satellite image. A total of 167 landslides have been identified. Elevation map of Pauri district was prepared by classifying digital elevation model into 5 elevation categories. Distribution of landslides in different elevation categories is also done. Maximum landslides have occurred in elevation category (710–1134 m) and (185–709 m). Slope map has been generated and classifi ed into 6 slope classes, i.e. 0°–5°, 5°–10°, 10°–20°, 20°–30°, 30°–40°, and more than 40°. Distribution of landslides in different slope categories is also done. Maximum landslides have occurred in slopecategories (10°–20°), (20°–30°), and (30°–40°). Aspect map has been generated and classified into 8 aspect classes. Maximum landslides have occurred in aspect categories South-West (14.37%), South (35.97%), and South East (15.57%) directions. The Southern aspect (SW-S-SE) contributes to 65.91% of total landslides. Drainage density map has been generated from ASTER DEM using three-dimensional Analyst tool and classified into 6 classes, namely 0–2, 2–4, 4–6, 6–8, and more than 8 (km/sq.km). Geological map of Pauri district has been adopted from Geological map from Geological SOI. Rock types such as phyllites, quartzites, slates, siltstone, sandstones, graywacks, granitoids, alluvium, crystallines and metamorphics, and limestones are present in the district. Distribution of landslides in different drainage density categories is also done. Maximum landslides have occurred in drainage density category 2–4, 4–6, and 6–8 (km/sq.km). LULC map of Pauri was classified into various classes such as water body, forest scrub, wasteland/scrub, tree-clad, forest evergreen, agriculture land, built up, forest deciduous open, and forest deciduous dense/close. Maximum landslides have occurred in forest deciduous open category (84) followed by agriculture land (22), forest scrub (14), forest evergreen and forest deciduous dense/close (13 each), and water body. Conclusion: The above-mentioned 6 layers were integrated in the weighted overlay model of Arc Info and weights were assigned corresponding to landslide occurrence in these layers. The influence of the layer in causing landslide has also assigned. The final LHZ map generated after processing 6 themes. The final map has been classified into 3 categories, namely high, moderate, and low hazard categories. Of a total of 167 landslides, 110Landslides fall in the high HZ and 43 landslides fall in moderate HZ category while only 14 landslides fall in the low HZ category. 34.01% of the district falls under low HZ category and 40.73% falls under moderate HZ category while 25.26 under high HZ category. More layers need to be added in the model to obtain more precision. This map is not checked in the fi eld ground truth.


of rural women against key Millennium Development Goal (MDG) indicators, pointing to some of the advancements made and gaps that still exist. It suggests that globally, and with only a few exceptions, rural women fare worse than rural men and urban women and men for every MDG indicator for which data are available. While data collection along these lines has improved in recent years – in part because of increased donor and government interest – there still remains a general lack of data not only disaggregated by sex, but also by rural and urban areas. This has an impact on our global ability to confidently monitor progress toward the MDGs for all people in all regions, urban and rural, and particularly where progress is needed most.


Why did Fair Trade take momentum in some industries within certain national contexts and not in others? In this thesis, I apply the arguments of H. C. White, Tilly, Fligstein and McAdam in order to understand the success and failure of applying similar standards to various product markets through one certificate. Four national settings and seven product categories are compared – coffee, cocoa, bananas, sugar, rice, wine, and honey in Austria, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the USA are chosen and analyzed between the years 2002 and 2011.
The effects of the discourse and structural preconditions (i.e. oligopolies) are analyzed in concert through the application of fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). I investigate the role of firms and social movements in the process of change. Two equifinal paths to change in markets are theorized and analyzed. One of those paths is driven by institutional entrepreneurship, the other by social movements. The findings of the fsQCA back the perspective of social movements and institutional entrepreneurship as substitutive drivers of change in markets and the two paths. Less successful attempts to penetrate markets though certification lack the discourse and the focus of single firms or entrepreneurs within the discourse. In addition, the evidence pinpoints to changing processes over time and the need to move beyond static analyses. This study contributes to the current state of the art by offering a comparative perspective on the effect of social movements and institutional entrepreneurship on mature markets. In this vein, fsQCA is applied deductively and the concepts and paths are disentangled in a compelling manner. INUS conditions are theorized as constitutive parts of paths to change. Finally, this study compares the opportunities and fallacies of penetrating markets through certification in general - and Fair Trade certification in particular.


People often have to listen to someone speak in the presence of competing voices. Much is known about the acoustic cues used to overcome this challenge, but almost nothing is known about the utility of cues derived from experience with particular voices—cues that may be particularly important for older people and others with impaired hearing. Here, we use a version of the coordinate-response-measure procedure to show that people can exploit knowledge of a highly familiar voice (their spouse's) not only to track it better in the presence of an interfering stranger's voice, but also, crucially, to ignore it so as to comprehend a stranger's voice more effectively. Although performance declines with increasing age when the target voice is novel, there is no decline when the target voice belongs to the listener's spouse. This finding indicates that older listeners can exploit their familiarity with a speaker's voice to mitigate the effects of sensory and cognitive decline.


Abstract Background: Professional caregivers dealing with traumatized victims or mental health clients are at increased risk for developing the same symptoms as persons who are exposed directly to the trauma. Aims: This research was aimed at examining the relationship between secondary traumatic stress, burnout and coping strategies in 502 professional caregivers who work in schools, hospitals, charity institutes and welfare centers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A further aim was to test the mediating effect of coping on the relationship between burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Methods: Measures used in this study were the Professional Quality of Life Questionnaire (ProQOL), The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28), The Maslach Burnout Inventory: Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS) and Endler and Parker's Coping Inventory. Results: Task-focused coping, personal accomplishment and compassion satisfaction were negatively associated with secondary traumatic stress. Burnout, emotion-focused and distraction coping were positively related to secondary traumatic stress. Coping partially mediated the relationship between burnout and secondary traumatic stress. There were also significant gender differences in depersonalization and distraction coping. Conclusions: Efforts need to focus on improvement of caregivers' work environments, enhancing their coping skills and professional development.


A type IIA string (or F-theory) compactified on a Calabi-Yau threefold is believed to be dual to a heterotic string on a K3 surface times a 2-torus (or on a K3 surface). We consider how the resulting moduli space of hypermultiplets is identified between these two pictures in the case of the E8 × E8 heterotic string. As examples we discuss SU(2)-bundles and G2-bundles on the K3 surface and the case of point-like instantons. We are lead to a rather beautiful identification between the integral cohomology of the Calabi-Yau threefold and some integral structures on the heterotic side somewhat reminiscent of mirror symmetry. We discuss the consequences for probing nonperturbative effects in the both the type IIA string and the heterotic string.


With the advent of programmer-friendly GPU computing environments, there has been much interest in offloading workloads that can exploit the high degree of parallelism available on modern GPUs. Exploiting this parallelism and optimizing for the GPU memory hierarchy is well-understood for regular applications that operate on dense data structures such as arrays and matrices. However, there has been significantly less work in the area of irregular algorithms and even less so when pointer-based dynamic data structures are involved. Recently, irregular algorithms such as Barnes-Hut and kd-tree traversals have been implemented on GPUs, yielding significant performance gains over CPU implementations. However, the implementations often rely on exploiting application-specific semantics to get acceptable performance. We argue that there are general-purpose techniques for implementing irregular algorithms on GPUs that exploit similarities in algorithmic structure rather than application-specific knowledge. We demonstrate these techniques on several tree traversal algorithms, achieving speedups of up to 38× over 32-thread CPU versions.


Il contributo, sottoposto a valutazione, e destinato agli  Studi in onore del prof. Mario Tedeschi , di prossima pubblicazione SOMMARIO: 1. Un problema pratico di liberta religiosa: le benedizioni pasquali nella scuola pubblica - 2. Le benedizioni pasquali a scuola nella recente giurisprudenza - 3. La laicita inclusiva della scuola pubblica italiana - 4. La benedizione pasquale in orario extrascolastico e la funzione della scuola come centro di promozione culturale, sociale e civile - 5. Fattore religioso e scuola pubblica nella legislazione scolastica - 6. La garanzia della liberta religiosa nelle comunita segreganti. Religious freedom in public schools. The little  querelle  over Easter Blessings ABSTRACT : This paper examines the current issue concerning the Easter Blessings imparted by a catholic priest in public schools in Italy. According to an old tradition dating back to the past but still followed by many parents, in some schools, especially primary ones, this brief rite usually takes place before Eastern. The majority of parents must agree on having it and it must be scheduled out of lessons time. Moreover, participation is very free for pupils, parents and teachers.  A recent case law has challenged this practice, claiming that it would infringe the principle of secularism proper to public schools. This paper deals with the issue in the light of constitutional principles and the Italian legal framework. It focuses on the importance to keep a balance between secularism and religious freedom in public schools, where nowadays an increasing number of children stay for the whole day when both parents are at work.


In this paper, we propose a pixel-based attention (PBA) module for acoustic scene classifi- cation (ASC). By performing feature compression on the input spectrogram along the spatial dimension, PBA can obtain the global information of the spectrogram. Besides, PBA applies attention weights to each pixel of each channel through two convolutional layers combined with global information. In addition, the spectrogram applied after the attention weights is multiplied by the gamma coefficient and superimposed with the original spectrogram to obtain more effective spectrogram features for training the network model. Furthermore, this paper implements a convolutional neural network (CNN) based on PBA (PB-CNN) and compares its classification performance on task 1 of Detection and Classification of Acoustic Scenes and Events (DCASE) 2016 Challenge with CNN based on time attention (TB-CNN), CNN based on frequency attention (FB-CNN), and pure CNN. The experimental results show that the proposed PB-CNN achieves the highest accuracy of 89.2% among the four CNNs, 1.9% higher than that of TB-CNN (87.3%), 2.2% higher than that of FB-CNN (86.6%), and 3% higher than that of pure CNN (86.2%). Compared with DCASE 2016's baseline system, the PB-CNN improved by 12%, and its 89.2% accuracy was the highest among all submitted single models.


Remanufactured products can save up to 80% of production and energy costs whilst generating lower CO2 emissions. The key success factors for remanufacturing are quality, lead-time and cost. Extensive work within the industry and the detailed analysis of the remanufacturing process has shown that component inspection has significant bearing on overall productivity. Remanufacturing lacks automation because activities are predominantly manual. Automation of remanufacturing process will not only decrease the number of non-remanufacturable components, through decreasing cost and increasing consistency in quality, but also attract industries to design for remanufacture. A digital model of the component is required to automate the disassembly process and move towards industry 4.0 and cyber physical systems. There are several expensive techniques to create a digital model, which are not feasible for the remanufacturing industry. The research paper aims to check feasibility of using Visual Structure for Motion (VFM), a relatively low cost method, to develop a 3D digital model, for automation of the automotive engine (in as received condition) disassembly process using industrial robots. These experiments assess the scientific feasibility of using Videogrammetry to acquire pre-disassembly 3D model of the engine. Multiple 2D images were acquired and processed to find matching common features. The location of the camera was calculated through the matching features, producing a three-dimensional digital representation of the captured volume. A sparse point cloud was initially created and was then converted into a dense 3D point cloud. The 3D point cloud was converted into a meshed model. 2D images were stitched together to create a virtual model of the engine with surface texture and colour. Small features were clearly visible in the 3D model.


Glaucoma is a chronic eye disease that leads to vision loss. As it cannot be cured, detecting the disease in time is important. Current tests using intraocular pressure (IOP) are not sensitive enough for population based glaucoma screening. Optic nerve head assessment in retinal fundus images is both more promising and superior. This paper proposes optic disc and optic cup segmentation using superpixel classification for glaucoma screening. In optic disc segmentation, histograms, and center surround statistics are used to classify each superpixel as disc or non-disc. A self-assessment reliability score is computed to evaluate the quality of the automated optic disc segmentation. For optic cup segmentation, in addition to the histograms and center surround statistics, the location information is also included into the feature space to boost the performance. The proposed segmentation methods have been evaluated in a database of 650 images with optic disc and optic cup boundaries manually marked by trained professionals. Experimental results show an average overlapping error of 9.5% and 24.1% in optic disc and optic cup segmentation, respectively. The results also show an increase in overlapping error as the reliability score is reduced, which justifies the effectiveness of the self-assessment. The segmented optic disc and optic cup are then used to compute the cup to disc ratio for glaucoma screening. Our proposed method achieves areas under curve of 0.800 and 0.822 in two data sets, which is higher than other methods. The methods can be used for segmentation and glaucoma screening. The self-assessment will be used as an indicator of cases with large errors and enhance the clinical deployment of the automatic segmentation and screening.


The shortfin mako is one of the most important shark species caught in Atlantic Ocean pelagic fisheries. Given increasing concerns for the stock status of the species, the present study was designed to fill gaps in the knowledge of habitat use and movement patterns of shortfin mako in the Atlantic Ocean. From 2015 to 2019, 53 shortfin makos were tagged with pop-up satellite archival tags within the North, Central, and Southwest Atlantic Ocean, with successful transmissions received from 34 tags. Generally, sharks tagged in the Northwest and Central Atlantic moved away from tagging sites showing low to no apparent residency patterns, whereas sharks tagged in the Northeast and Southwest Atlantic spent large periods of time near the Canary Archipelago and Northwest Africa, and over shelf and oceanic waters off southern Brazil and Uruguay, respectively. These areas showed evidence of site fidelity and were identified as possible key areas for shortfin mako. Sharks spent most of their time in temperate waters (18–22°C) above 90 m; however, data indicated the depth range extended from the surface down to 979 m, in water temperatures ranging between 7.4 and 29.9°C. Vertical behavior of sharks seemed to be influenced by oceanographic features, and ranged from marked diel vertical movements, characterized by shallower mean depths during the night, to yo-yo diving behavior with no clear diel pattern observed. These results may aid in the development of more informed and efficient management measures for this species.


With doctoral completion rates hovering around 50%, students, faculty and institutions are seeking methods for improvement. This narrative inquiry examined the impact of collaboration and peer to peer experiences on doctoral completion of three peers in a part-time doctoral program. Prior to this inquiry, minimal research existed on the impact of peer to peer support and collaboration on doctoral completion; therefore, the three peer authors defined, described, and recommended ways to encourage organic collaboration. The authors' defined organic collaboration as a naturally-formed dynamic peer to peer support group, built on individual strengths and differences, while focused on a common goal. Themes found during the narrative inquiry included the identification of a common goal, amicable group dynamics, peer to peer support, and intentional relational learning. The peer authors provided practical knowledge on ways students, faculty and higher education institutions can benefit from encouraging and supporting organic collaboration. This narrative inquiry demonstrated the long-term benefits of peer to peer support and collaboration that led to scholarly, professional, and personal support.


BACKGROUND Hereditary angioedema is a disabling, potentially fatal condition caused by deficiency (type I) or dysfunction (type II) of the C1 inhibitor protein. In a phase 2 trial, the use of CSL830, a nanofiltered C1 inhibitor preparation that is suitable for subcutaneous injection, resulted in functional levels of C1 inhibitor activity that would be expected to provide effective prophylaxis of attacks. METHODS We conducted an international, prospective, multicenter, randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled, dose‐ranging, phase 3 trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of self‐administered subcutaneous CSL830 in patients with type I or type II hereditary angioedema who had had four or more attacks in a consecutive 2‐month period within 3 months before screening. We randomly assigned the patients to one of four treatment sequences in a crossover design, each involving two 16‐week treatment periods: either 40 IU or 60 IU of CSL830 per kilogram of body weight twice weekly followed by placebo, or vice versa. The primary efficacy end point was the number of attacks of angioedema. Secondary efficacy end points were the proportion of patients who had a response (≥50% reduction in the number of attacks with CSL830 as compared with placebo) and the number of times that rescue medication was used. RESULTS Of the 90 patients who underwent randomization, 79 completed the trial. Both doses of CSL830, as compared with placebo, reduced the rate of attacks of hereditary angioedema (mean difference with 40 IU, –2.42 attacks per month; 95% confidence interval [CI], –3.38 to –1.46; and mean difference with 60 IU, –3.51 attacks per month; 95% CI, –4.21 to –2.81; P<0.001 for both comparisons). Response rates were 76% (95% CI, 62 to 87) in the 40‐IU group and 90% (95% CI, 77 to 96) in the 60‐IU group. The need for rescue medication was reduced from 5.55 uses per month in the placebo group to 1.13 uses per month in the 40‐IU group and from 3.89 uses in the placebo group to 0.32 uses per month in the 60‐IU group. Adverse events (most commonly mild and transient local site reactions) occurred in similar proportions of patients who received CSL830 and those who received placebo. CONCLUSIONS In patients with hereditary angioedema, the prophylactic use of a subcutaneous C1 inhibitor twice weekly significantly reduced the frequency of acute attacks. (Funded by CSL Behring; COMPACT EudraCT number, 2013‐000916‐10, and ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01912456.)


The Japanese language is known for its sentence-final particles (SFPs hereafter) that express modality. Although modality would seem to be inseparable from context, only a limited number of studies have explicated the nature of SFPs based on data from conversations. This paper discusses the functions of SFP kana, based on 272 occurrences of the particle from over 7 hours of recorded conversation. I propose that kana, which is commonly defined as a doubt marker, frequently functions as a mitigation marker. My investigation also explores how speakers use this function beyond the sentence level. It suggests that traditional descriptions of the syntactic environments in which SFPs occur are not always substantiated by how kana is actually used. Yet, seemingly unsystematic uses of kana are quite systematic in terms of its semantic and pragmatic aspects. These findings suggest that in studying Japanese sentence-final particles, it's important to study naturally occurring conversations.


In the modern information society online transactions are an important part of our daily lives. In this work we present an alert system that determines the current threat level of financial fraud in the internet. We use data from different sources and off-the-shelf machine learning algorithms to compute the current threat level. Based on the threat level our alert system issues alerts to raise users awareness of current attack vectors. We tested our approaches with real world online banking frauds. Our preliminary results suggest that this mechanisms can be effectively used to warn users about the current threat situation and therefore help avoiding financial fraud.


Hardsetting soil horizons are relatively soft when moist but become unusually hard when dry. Soils with these horizons are common in Australia and elsewhere. They have been studied mainly in exposures such as road cuts where their development is most marked. The main objective of this study was to elucidate the relationships between landscape position and hardsetting processes. Soils were sampled along two transects that start in bedrock hills, cross broad eolian-fluvial plains, and terminate in a local flood plain or lacustrine basin. They are mainly Dystrochrepts, Palexeralfs, and Natrixeralfs, and many soils are aquic intergrades. Samples were analyzed using standard characterization methods, and extracted with water, oxalate solution, and citrate-bicarbonate-dithionite solution; Fe, Al, and Si contents were determined from the extracts. Soil strength was characterized by the modulus of rupture test. Strength was partly related to clay content, but several E and BE horizons were very strong relative to their clay content, thus hardsetting. They were in the zone of the pedon in which exchangeable Na and pH increased sharply with depth. This sodicity was also cyclic in the landscape. Strength was correlated positively with extractable Si and negatively with extractable Al. In hardsetting soils, which tend to have impeded drainage, Fe-oxide minerals periodically precipitate and dissolve. We postulate that silica is dissolved and dispersed in upper horizons with a large pH gradient, moves down the profile, and bonds with Fe-oxide minerals on clay surfaces. The bonds strengthen on drying to form hardsetting horizons.


Multitemporal topographic measurements are essential for monitoring municipal landfills for economic and security reasons. Accurate evaluation of the landfill volumes still to exploit and the extent of subsidence occurring in the closed plots are critical parameters in landfill management. A municipal landfill located in central Italy has been imaged by a UAV helicopter able to fly in full autonomy in industrial areas. Very high resolution images have been processed by a photogrammetric chain in order to obtain Digital Surface Models and orthorectified images. The resolution of these products was 2.8 cm and the vertical precision of the DSM was at worse 0.5 m, resulting into acceptable errors (better than 5%) on available volume estimations. The DSM has been compared to elevation values produced by conventional theodolite and LIDAR measurements. It is shown that the UAV helicopter system is more flexible and more productive than the two other techniques for a similar precision.


The developed nations in the Northern hemisphere had close to an absolute control over the developing nations in the South in the economic and political fronts sometime for over a century. The relation of the South to the North for this considerable long period of time was therefore subordinate-super-ordinate, and was a relationship the North not only jealously guided but which was programmed to be a permanent feature in international relations. One can however assert that the power of oil gave the South a considerable leverage against the North and actions as well as the effort of the North at reducing the power indicated how much of a dilemma the oil issue had become to the developed nations. It can infact be asserted that a Northern reliance on a Southern power was at variance with the existing economic relations, one that is of immense benefit and advantage to the North and of almost a total disadvantage to the South. The Northern discomfort to the power that oil gave to the South is an illustration of how much of dilemma oil is to the North. This therefore explains efforts by the North, not only at various times but both collectively and individually to maintain the status quo. Certain steps have been identified by this work, not only as strategies by the North to considerably reduce if not totally eliminate the power of oil to Southern oil producers but as clear evidence of the dilemma that oil dependency represents to the North. It may be necessary to affirm at this stage that consistent efforts at checking the Southern control testifies to the very important fact that the North not only realizes but equally appreciates the potential that oil is to the Southern developing nations. This therefore totally debunks impressions and positions in certain quarters that oil can hardly be used or utilized as a weapon against the North as efforts at maintaining the status quo are enough to indicate that the North is undoubtedly not comfortable with such a position.


A novel technique to generate ultrashort fundamental solitons is proposed and demonstrated numerically. The technique utilizes both the multisoliton pulse-compression effect and the switching characteristics of a nonlinear optical loop mirror constructed from dispersion-decreasing fiber. We show that, in contrast to the conventional soliton-effect pulse compression in which compressed pulses are always accompanied by broad pedestals, the proposed technique can completely suppress pulse pedestals, and the compressed pulses propagate like fundamental solitons. Unlike the adiabatic-compression technique based on dispersion-decreasing fibers that are limited to input pulse widths <5 ps, the proposed technique does not require the adiabatic condition and therefore can be used to compress long pulses by use of reasonable fiber lengths. Furthermore, the scheme is more tolerant of initial frequency chirps than the adiabatic-compression technique, and it is shown that positive chirps are beneficial to ultrashort soliton generation. The influences of higher-order effects such as Raman self-scattering and third-order dispersion on soliton generation are also investigated, and it is found that Raman self-scattering can significantly enhance pulse compression under certain conditions.