The Identifiers.org resolution system provides consistent access to life science data using Compact Identifiers (CIDs). CIDs consist of an assigned unique prefix and a local provider designated accession number (prefix:accession). The resolving location of CIDs is determined using information that is stored in the Identifiers.org Registry, which contains high quality, manually curated information on over 700 life science data resources (largely databases). The prefix assignment process involves registration of a unique prefix to individual life science data collections together with recording a variety of useful metadata, including a description of the data resource, accession identifier pattern and a list of known resolving locations. When a Compact Identifier is presented to the Identifiers.org resolver, redirection can be accomplished in either a resource specified or location independent (resource unspecified) manner. The latter method takes into consideration information such as the uptime and reliability of all available hosting resources, for example, pdb:2gc4, GO:0006915. Besides resolution, Identifiers.org provides a number of additional services, including the ability to harvest and display Schema.org (and bioschemas) metadata markup associated with datasets by presenting a CID to the Identifiers.org metadata service. We have also re-engineered the system to address the need to provide scalable, highly available and low latency services within global scientific e-infrastructures. We have deployed the identifiers.org infrastructure in multiple cloud environments including Amazon web services and Google Cloud Platform, bringing our services closer to the data. The new Identifiers.org system benefits from the auto-scaling and multiple zone availability afforded by cloud provision.


Previous studies have shown that postseismic relaxation following the 2004 Mw6.0 Parkfield, CA, earthquake is dominated by afterslip. However, we show that some fraction of the afterslip inferred from kinematic inversion to have occurred immediately below the seismically ruptured area may in fact be a substitute for viscous postseismic deformation of the lower crust. Using continuous GPS and synthetic aperture radar interferometry, we estimate the relative contribution of shallow afterslip (at depth less than 20km) and deeper seated deformation required to account for observed postseismic surface displacements. Exploiting the possible separation in space and time of the time series of displacements predicted from viscoelastic relaxation, we devise a linear inversion scheme that allows inverting jointly for the contribution of afterslip and viscoelastic flow as a function of time. We find that a wide range of models involving variable amounts of viscoelastic deformation can fit the observations equally well provided that they allow some fraction of deep-seated deformation (at depth larger than ∼20 km). These models require that the moment released by postseismic relaxation over 5 years following the earthquake reached nearly as much as 200% of the coseismic moment. All the models show a remarkable complementarity of coseismic and shallow afterslip distributions. Some significant deformation at lower crustal depth (20–26 km) is required to fit the geodetic data. The condition that postseismic deformation cannot exceed complete relaxation places a constraint on the amount of deep seated deformation. The analysis requires an effective viscosity of at least ~10^(18) Pa s of the lower crust (assuming a semi-infinite homogeneous viscous domain). This deep-seated deformation is consistent with the depth range of tremors which also show a transient postseismic response and could explain as much as 50% of the total postseismic geodetic moment (the remaining fraction being due to afterslip at depth shallower than 20 km). Lower crustal postseismic deformation could reflect a combination of localized ductile deformation and aseismic frictional sliding.


We demonstrate the possibility to characterize Si photonic crystal (PhC) nanocavity modes made on Silicon on insulator (SOI), and operating at telecom wavelengths, through photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy at room temperature. In fact, a wide PL band between 1200 and 1600 nm is observed under optical pumping when proper material processing is performed after the nanocavities fabrication, namely Ar/H2 plasma treatment and Si implantation. PL emission is originated through the carrier recombination occurring at defect states formed in silicon after such treatments. We study photonic modes of L3 PhC nanocavities, with a proper geometry optimization in order to obtain high quality (Q) factors [1] and improved coupling to the far field [2].


The rising popularity of the sensor-equipped smartphone is changing the possible scale and scope of human activity inference. The diversity in user population seen in large user bases can overwhelm conventional one-size-fits-all classification approaches. Although personalized models are better able to handle population diversity, they often require increased effort from the end user during training and are computationally expensive. In this paper, we propose an activity classification framework that is scalable and can tractably handle an increasing number of users. Scalability is achieved by maintaining distinct groups of similar users during the training process, which makes it possible to account for the differences between users without resorting to training individualized classifiers. The proposed framework keeps user burden low by leveraging crowd-sourced data labels, where simple natural language processing techniques in combination with multi-instance learning are used to handle labeling errors introduced by low-commitment everyday users. Experiment results on a large public dataset demonstrate that the framework can cope with population diversity irrespective of population size.


Women's leadership training programs provide organizations opportunities to value women leaders as organizational resources. This qualitative research utilized phenomenological methodology to examine lived experiences of seven alumni of a women's-only leadership program. We conducted semi-structured interviews to clarify what learning elements were most beneficial in furthering an individuals' leadership role. Emerging research themes included perceptional and personal agency changes within participants. Women's leadership programs provided an opportunity for cognitive, affective, and behavioral growth; engaging learning activities, social capital development, and relational model methodologies were perceived as most helpful in leadership development. Action learning techniques, fostering interconnectedness, and philosophical leadership development activities were critical elements in leadership development. Insights gained from this study provided perspective on the unique experiences of women in a leadership training program.


Understanding the temporal and spatial dynamics of species populations remains a key focus of population biology, providing vital insight into the drivers that influence demography and into sub-populations that are vulnerable to extinction. Across regional landscapes, spatially separated sub-populations may fluctuate in synchrony, or exhibit sub-structuring due to subtle differences in local intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Using a long-term data set (17–22 yr) obtained from a large (8000 km2) study region in arid central Australia, we tested firstly for regional synchrony in annual rainfall and the dynamics of five small mammal species across nine widely separated sites. Using Moran's theorem, we predicted that the spatial correlation between the regional sub-populations of these species would equal that between local density-independent conditions (annual rainfall). For species that showed synchronous spatial dynamics, we then used multivariate state-space (MARSS) models to predict that regional rainfall would be positively associated with their populations, whereas species with asynchronous sub-populations would be influenced largely by other factors. For these latter species, we used MARSS models to test four hypotheses. These were that sub-population structures: (1) were asynchronous and governed by local site-specific factors, (2) differed between oasis and non-oasis sites, (3) differed between burnt and unburnt sites, and (4) differed between three sub-regions with different rainfall gradients. We found that the spatial population dynamics of our study small mammals differed between and within families. Two species of insectivorous dasyurid marsupials showed asynchronous dynamics, which most likely tracked local conditions, whereas a larger carnivorous marsupial and two species of rodents had strongly synchronous dynamics. These latter species exhibited similar spatial correlations to local and regional rainfall events, providing evidence that the Moran effect operates for some, but not all, species in this arid system. Our results suggest that small mammal populations do not respond in similar ways to shared environmental drivers in arid regions, and hence will vary in their responses to climate change. As arid lands globally are predicted to face climatic shifts that will exacerbate rainfall-drought cycles, we suggest that future work focuses on exploring these responses at different spatial scales across multiple dryland taxa.


Background: Swimming has been
shown to cause beneficial effects on lung function. However, increased
adverse effects have been hypothesized due to the air quality of indoor swimming pools. Objectives: To
compare competitive swimmers present lung function to swimmers twenty to thirty years ago and examine the associations between lung
function and medical history and reported respiratory symptoms in present swimmers. Methods: One
hundred swimmers, 47 females and 53 males were studied with flow-volume
spirometry. These findings were compared with ones obtained 20 - 30 years ago
among 98 swimmers, 40 females and 58 males. Forced expiratory volume in one
second (FEV1), forced expiratory volume (FVC) and their ratio (FEV%)
were analysed for airways obstruction. Associations between lung function and
asthma, allergy, and respiratory symptoms were examined using questionnaire. In
addition airways inflammation was measured with exhaled nitric oxide measurement (FENO) in present swimmers. Airborne trichloramine was measured
in air of indoor swimming pools. Results: Airway obstruction was found in 15%, 15 out
of 100 studied swimmers, which all
reported physician diagnosed asthma and/or family history of asthma.
Most, 12 out of 15 of swimmers with obstruction finding, were males. Twenty to
thirty years ago obstruction was found in 17 of the 98 swimmers. Airborne
concentrations of trichloramine in the present swimming pools, were low, less
than 0.1 mg/m3. Conclusion: Airway obstruction
was associated with asthma and family history of asthma. There was no
increase in obstruction findings among competitive swimmers within 2 - 3
decades. Measured concentrations of trichloramine raised no concern on swimmers health.


Abstract We revise the nominal species of mouse opossums currently synonymized with Marmosa mexicana Merriam, 1897, and M. robinsoni Bangs, 1898, which include all of the trans-Andean taxa currently assigned to the nominotypical subgenus of Marmosa. In addition, we redescribe two other species that appear to be closely related to M. mexicana and M. robinsoni based on morphological or molecular citeria: M. rubra Tate, 1931, and M. xerophila Handley and Gordon, 1979. Based on first-hand examination of holotypes and other material (about 1500 specimens in total), we additionally recognize M. isthmica Goldman, 1912, and M. simonsi Thomas, 1899 (both currently synonymized with M. robinsoni), and M. zeledoni Goldman, 1917 (currently synonymized with M. mexicana), as valid species. For each of the seven species recognized as valid herein (M. mexicana, M. zeledoni, M. isthmica, M. robinsoni, M. xerophila, M. simonsi, M. rubra), we describe and illustrate diagnostic external and craniodental characters, tabulate measurement data from adult specimens, list all known examples of sympatry, and map geographic ranges based on specimens examined. The species newly recognized as valid herein, all of which occur in Central America and/or northwestern South America, substantially increase the known diversity of trans-Andean mouse opossums, but it is not currently known whether or not these represent a distinct radiation within the genus Marmosa.


Abstract The aim of this study is to assess pullulan as a novel steric stabilizer during the wet-stirred media milling (WSMM) of griseofulvin, a model poorly water-soluble drug, and as a film-former in the preparation of strip films via casting–drying the wet-milled drug suspensions for dissolution and bioavailability enhancement. To this end, pullulan films, with xanthan gum (XG) as thickening agent and glycerin as plasticizer, were loaded with griseofulvin nanoparticles prepared by WSMM using pullulan in combination with sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) as an ionic stabilizer. The effects of drug loading and milling time on the particle size and suspension stability were investigated, as well as XG concentration and casting thickness on film properties and dissolution rate. The nanosuspensions prepared with pullulan–SDS combination were relatively stable over 7 days; hence, this combination was used for the film preparation. All pullulan-based strip films exhibited excellent content uniformity (most <3% RSD) despite containing only 0.3–1.3 mg drug, which was ensured by the use of precursor suspensions with >5000 cP viscosity. USP IV dissolution tests revealed fast/immediate drug release (t80 < 30 min) from films <120 μm thick. Thinner films, films with lower XG loading, or smaller drug particles led to faster drug dissolution, while drug loading had no discernible effect. Overall, these results suggest that pullulan may serve as an acceptable stabilizer for media milling in combination with surfactant as well as a fast-dissolving film former for the fast release of poorly water-soluble drug nanoparticles.


This article examines how party discipline and legislators' individual policy goals induced by electoral rules influence the likelihood of defections from the party line in the Bundestag. Using a new indicator based on legislators' explanations of their voting behaviour we find strong evidence that discipline, not policy cohesiveness alone, drives party unity. In particular, the allocation of offices by the party leadership significantly affects legislators' propensity to defect from the position of their party. First, holding an executive office reduces legislators' probability to defect by approximately 19 per cent. Second, parliamentary office also reduces legislators' probability to defect, although the effect is smaller. District legislators are not generally more prone to defect, but their propensity to defect increases if electoral competition increases.


Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy. Donald Gutstein. Toronto, ON: Key Porter, 2009. 376 pp. $22.95 pbk. Canada has historically been a liberal country with a liberal media. From 1963 to 2005, Liberal governments held power federally about three-quarters of the time. In 2006, however, a dozen years of Liberal rule ended with the election of a minority Conservative government led by Stephen Harper, which was returned with increased support after a snap election two years later. Then, for the first time in recent memory, the 2008 election of Barack Obama saw the United States with a more liberal administration than Canada. Much of the explanation for this anomaly can be found in a recent rightward shift in Canada's news media, the background for which is illuminated by Donald Gutstein's Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy. Gutstein, an emeritus faculty member in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, builds on the ideas of the late Australian sociologist Alex Carey. In his 1995 book, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy, Carey distinguished between "grassroots" propaganda, such as is occasionally required to mobilize public opinion in support of war, and "treetops" propaganda, which is instead aimed at elites, such as media, that are better able to directly influence the policy agenda. Carey pointed to the rise of U.S. think tanks, such as the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, starting in the mid-1970s. Backed by enormous corporate funding, they have published vast amounts of research promoting small government and free-market solutions to most economic and social problems. Greatly influential in the revival of U.S. conservatism in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, their model was adopted by Canadians intent on replicating that success. As Canadian media ownership is even more highly concentrated than in the United States, the ascendance of rightwing solutions was comparatively easy to achieve in Canada. Gutstein chronicles the successful campaign to "unite the right" in Canada when the Conservative Party was reduced to just two seats in Parliament following the 1993 federal election after the party fractured along East-West lines. Conservatives in Western Canada formed the breakaway Reform party to push a deregulatory agenda that sought, among other things, tax cuts, economic integration with the United States, and even the dismantling of Canada's socialized health care system. Backed by well-heeled foundations such as the Donner Canadian Foundation, sympathetic journalists collaborated in this cause by helping to found neoconservative magazines designed to emulate Irving Kristol's influential Weekly Standard. Indeed, Harper himself even resigned his seat as a Reform Party Member of Parliament in 1997 to head the National Citizens Coalition, a tax-cutting advocacy group, and to edit the short-lived magazine Next City. By far, the biggest media boost to Canadian conservatism, however, came in 1996, when Conrad Black, one of the world's leading newspaper owners and neoconservatives, completed a hostile takeover of the country's largest newspaper chain, Southam Inc. …


We study experimentally and numerically the influence of orthogonal optical feedback on the polarization-resolved light versus bias current characteristic (L-I curve) of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). The feedback scheme is such that only one linear polarization is selected to be fed back into the laser while the orthogonal polarization is completely suppressed before the output is rotated 90° and reinjected into the laser. We experimentally demonstrate that weak feedback levels modify the polarization switching point only slightly, but as the feedback increases the otherwise depressed mode grows and the hysteresis is suppressed. While polarization-preserved and X-orthogonal feedback have similar effects (X indicates the direction of the polarization selected at threshold), Y-orthogonal feedback strongly modifies the shape of the L-I curve, even suppressing the polarization-switching for strong enough feedback. Numerical simulations of the spin-flip model show good qualitative agreement with the observations. We also analyze the influence of various parameters, such as linear birefringence, dichroism, and the spin-flip relaxation rate.


Harmful non-indigenous species (NIS) impose great economic and environmental impacts globally, but little is known about their impacts in Southeast Asia. Lack of knowledge of the magnitude of the problem hinders the allocation of appropriate resources for NIS prevention and management. We used benefit-cost analysis embedded in a Monte-Carlo simulation model and analysed economic and environmental impacts of NIS in the region to estimate the total burden of NIS in Southeast Asia. The total annual loss caused by NIS to agriculture, human health and the environment in Southeast Asia is estimated to be US$33.5 billion (5th and 95th percentile US$25.8–39.8 billion). Losses and costs to the agricultural sector are estimated to be nearly 90% of the total (US$23.4–33.9 billion), while the annual costs associated with human health and the environment are US$1.85 billion (US$1.4–2.5 billion) and US$2.1 billion (US$0.9–3.3 billion), respectively, although these estimates are based on conservative assumptions. We demonstrate that the economic and environmental impacts of NIS in low and middle-income regions can be considerable and that further measures, such as the adoption of regional risk assessment protocols to inform decisions on prevention and control of NIS in Southeast Asia, could be beneficial.


ABSTRACT This paper explores the theoretical underpinning of the LEGO® Serious Play® methodology and highlights the affordances of the method in the context of eliciting thoughts and views within groups made up of a range of stakeholders. It provides insight into how LEGO® Serious Play® can be integrated into discursive research practices amongst stakeholders, in this case for International Education. The work reports on the application of the method in a workshop with participants, diverse in terms of gender, age, national and linguistic background, professional experience and seniority. The workshop explored and developed conceptions of International Education. The LEGO® Serious Play® method is shown to overcome some of the hierarchies and hegemonies, which can exist in such contexts, allowing equality of voice amongst participants, such that each expresses their views or opinions, which are given equal consideration and legitimacy. This resulted in high levels of engagement, which enabled the presentation, and inclusion, of a broad spectrum of ideas, as well as the development of a shared vision of research in the field of International Education. Findings in this paper show that the LEGO® Serious Play® method has enabled imaginative conceptualisations of the rationale, role and potential for research in International Education.


A big challenge for wireless networked control systems is how to design the underlying networking algorithms and protocols to provide high reliability, defined as the end-to-end probability of packet delivery, despite the high packet loss rates of individual wireless links. This paper formulates the problem of jointly designing a set of packet forwarding policies on a multipath mesh network to meet control application requirements. We derive several results to help understand the problem space. First, we demonstrate that some common approaches, like applying a single forwarding policy to all packets or always routing packets on disjoint paths, are not optimal for the application when the links are bursty. Second, we introduce the notion of dominance to give a partial ordering to sets of forwarding policies, used to prove that an optimal policy schedules all outgoing links at each node and that an upper bound on the performance attained by unicast forwarding policies on the network graph can be computed assuming a flooding policy. Third, we demonstrate how to convert application performance metrics to packet forwarding policy objectives, using the probability that the error covariance of a Kalman filter stays within a bound as our application metric. Fourth, we provide an algorithm to compute the joint probability mass function that a sequence of packets are delivered, given a set of policies and a network graph. Finally, we describe how to obtain optimal policies via an exhaustive search, motivating future research for more computationally efficient solutions.


Issue linkage—the simultaneous discussion of two or more issues for joint settlement—is a bargaining tactic that (1) increases the probability of states reaching a negotiated agreement and (2) motivates states to remain committed to an agreement. Unfortunately, beyond some suggestive case studies and a few indirect statistical tests, there exists no direct and systematic evidence to support either claim. To empirically identify the effect of issue linkage, one must overcome five difficulties: properly evaluating multilateral processes, identifying issue linkage, identifying failed negotiations, identifying enforcement problems, and accounting for missing linkage data. I address these limitations through a variety of new approaches, most notably a new unit of analysis (the k-ad) for analyzing multilateral events, new data on failed military alliance negotiations, and using "buffer states" to test the credibility of alliance commitments. I find that, for military alliance negotiations from 1860 to 1945, offers of trade cooperation provisions increase the probability of states reaching agreement and improve the credibility of those agreements. However, I also find that offers of trade cooperation do not have a positive effect on alliance negotiations from 1815 to 1859.


In an exact quantum-mechanical framework we show that space-time expectation values of the second-quantized electromagnetic fields in the Coulomb gauge in the presence of a classical conserved source automatically lead to causal and properly retarded ℏ-independent electromagnetic field strengths. The classical ℏ-independent and gauge invariant Maxwell's equations naturally emerge in terms of quantum-mechanical expectation values and are therefore also consistent with the classical special theory of relativity. The fundamental difference between interference phenomena due to the linear nature of the classical Maxwell theory as considered in, e.g., classical optics, and interference effects of quantum states is clarified. In addition to these issues, the framework outlined also provides for a simple approach to invariance under time-reversal, some spontaneous photon emission and/or absorption processes as well as an approach to Vavilov-Čherenkov radiation. The inherent and necessary quantum uncertainty, limiting a precise space-time knowledge of expectation values of the quantum fields considered, is, finally, recalled.


Decentralized political institutions increasingly play a substantial role in the lives of people, implementing services deriving from influential (elected) bodies of governance, and influencing the relative degree of civil society access to policy-making. The following paper challenges pluralist and social capitalist claims of how decentralized institutions arise and differ in their ability to function. Robert Putnam, Robert Leonardi, and Raffaela Nanetti's (1993) book Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy will provide the base from which this paper departs, utilizing comparative historical analysis to argue instead that subnational or otherwise regional and local governments entail dialectical relations within and between different levels of state institutions. Overall, this paper argues that the struggles over decentralization ultimately depend on ideological opponents and the balance of power in the struggle for political change, simultaneously affecting both political institutions and civil society participation. This paper briefly unfolds Putnam et al.'s arguments regarding the relationship between democratic institutions and civil society, followed by two case studies – France and Brazil – explaining several macrofactors influencing the processes, outcomes, and implications of decentralization. Thirdly, decentralization and multi-level governance is tied to civil society participation. Lastly, decentralization in relation to partisan objectives is discussed with reference to participatory budgeting.


Abstract Since 2009 the USA and the Bolivian government have been trying to fix their broken diplomatic relations. These negotiations culminated in 2011 in the signing of a bilateral agreement but, ultimately, failed to establish a basis for mutually acceptable development aid relations. This article analyses these negotiations and suggests a partial explanation that accounts for their dynamics and results. Specifically it shows how the negotiations have pitted Bolivian demands for state sovereignty and mutual respect, based on an egalitarian understanding of inter-state relations, against the US emphasis on common obligations and universal rights, informed by a non-egalitarian notion of liberal hegemony.


Context. A bright X-ray transient was seen during an XMM-Newton observation in the direction of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) in October 2006. Aims. The data from the European Photon Imaging Cameras (EPIC) allow us to accurately locate the source and to investigate its temporal and spectral behaviour. Methods. We extracted X-ray spectra covering 0.2-10 keV and pulse profiles in different energy bands from the EPIC data. Results. The detection of 6.85 s pulsations in the EPIC-PN data unambiguously identifies the transient with XTE J0103-728, discovered as 6.85 s pulsar by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. The X-ray light curve during the XMM-Newton observation shows flaring activity of the source with intensity changes by a factor of two within 10 min. Modelling of pulse-phase averaged spectra with a simple absorbed powerlaw indicates systematic residuals, which can be accounted for by a second emission component. From a model implying blackbody emission due to reprocessing by optically-thick material in the inner accretion disk, we estimate the inner disk radius to ~160 km. The photon index of the powerlaw of ~0.4 indicates a relatively hard spectrum. The 0.2-10 keV luminosity was 2 $\times 10^{37}$ erg s -1 with a contribution of ~3% from the disk-blackbody component. A likely origin for the excess emission is reprocessing of hard X-rays from the neutron star by optically-thick material near the inner edge of an accretion disk. From a timing analysis we determine the pulse period to 6.85401(1) s, indicating an average spin-down of ~0.0017 s per year since the discovery of XTE J0103-728  in May 2003. Conclusions. The X-ray properties and the identification with a Be star confirm XTE J0103-728 as Be/X-ray binary transient in the SMC.


A lake-wide bloom of the dinoflagellate Ceratium hirundinella, discovered in Albert Falls Dam in October 2006, exposed a significant ecological change indicative of reduced water quality in this historically mesotrophic reservoir. The spatial distribution of the bloom was examined synoptically in October 2006 and January 2007; these surveys revealed generally higher dinoflagellate densities in inshore reaches of the lake, and especially in the discharge plume of the inflowing Mgeni River. Ceratium totally dominated the phytoplankton assemblage, accounting almost completely for coincident chlorophyll levels, which generally increased with depth to generate a 'deep' chlorophyll maximum. Vertical oxygen profiles during the bloom differed substantially from corresponding profiles during non-bloom conditions historically typical in this reservoir. Direct count data and ordination analysis using non-metric multidimensional scaling exposed marked changes in zooplankton community structure compared to seasonally congruent non-bloom conditions in other years. Changes included the effective replacement of Moina by Bosmina, substantial reductions in Daphnia and Ceriodaphnia, and smaller but definite increases in abundance especially of calanoid copepods, as well as cyclopoid copepods and of Chaoborus, although not all of these differences were apparent in both survey months. These compositional changes are attributable to intrinsic differences in feeding biology among taxa and their associated susceptibility to the altered food environment, which was commensurate with Ceratium's emergence. In addition, chydorid cladocerans appeared as a new (but spatially restricted) eutrophic bio-indicator component of the zooplankton, and the species diversity of cyclopoid copepods was enriched. The historical incidence of Ceratium in the lake since 1995 coincided with low NO3-N:TP values (used here as an N:P ratio proxy), particularly of inflow waters, and with broadly coincident values in the open lake. Ceratium was present but sparse in 1995, at average N:P ratios around 5.5. It disappeared in 1996 when the ratio increased radically to >10, and reappeared in 2004 after an erratic decline of the ratio to < 5 in the lake. The decline in N:P ratio of inflow waters since 1996 was clearly associated with a consistent rise in TP levels in inflows, most plausibly attributable to inputs of (Howick) wastewater treatment (WWT) plant origin. The appearance of Ceratium blooms is accordingly related to progressive elevations in mean annual P concentrations in inflows from ~40 ig/l in 1995 to 120 ig/l in 2007 (broadly mirrored in annual TP loadings), suggesting that improved operational efficiency (and capacity) of the WWT plant offers a plausible prospect for mitigation and reversal


Innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) are white blood cells derived from a common progenitor in the bone marrow. They respond rapidly to a limited array of antigens at the site of infection to provide immediate protection. The first identified ILCs were natural killer cells. However, several non-cytotoxic members of the family have since been reported. All ILCs lack the rearranged antigen receptors characteristic of T- and B-cells but can be similarly divided into three main groups based on cell surface markers and cytokine expression profiles. Similar to their adaptive immune response counterparts, they play specific roles in providing host defence against different pathogens. In addition, there is growing evidence that ILCs can contribute to multiple inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Key Concepts

ILCs are lymphocytes of the innate immune system and provide a rapid response to invading pathogens.
ILCs lack the specific antigen receptors found on cells of the adaptive immune system.
Development of ILCs is governed by sequential expression of different transcription factors and proceeds from a common precursor found in the bone marrow.
Differential expression of cell surface markers and cytokines allows ILCs to be grouped into three families, each having a different role in host immunity.
ILCs respond to signals released from epithelial and other cells to provide a rapid source of cytokines that can recruit other immune cells and stimulate tissue repair.
The dysregulation of ILC activation has been linked to several human inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Keywords:

lymphocytes;
innate immunity;
cytokines;
transcriptional regulation;
inflammation;
ILCs


Corruption has huge detrimental effects, and private-to-private corruption contributes hugely to this detriment. Its consequences match those of public corruption, particularly in the contemporary world, when private entities not only are becoming more influential but also increasingly are engaged in the dispensing of public functions. Hence, to give more muscle to the war against corruption and for it to bear some fruit, proper attention should be given to confronting corruption within the private sector. Criminalisation is one of the pivotal tools in this regard. This paper explicates the regulation of private-to-private corruption under key international anti-corruption instruments which are relevant in the African context. It also discusses the criminalisation of private sector corruption by the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples' Rights.


We develop a novel computerized real effort task, based on moving sliders across a screen, to test experimentally whether agents are disappointment averse when they compete in a real effort sequential-move tournament. We predict that a disappointment averse agent, who is loss averse around her endogenous choice-acclimating expectations-based reference point, responds negatively to her rival's effort. We find significant evidence for this discouragement effect, and use the Method of Simulated Moments to estimate the strength of disappointment aversion on average and the heterogeneity in disappointment aversion across the population.


Bono is one of the most influential musicians at work today. Over the past twenty-five years his band, U2, have sold a staggering 130 million albums and collected 14 Grammys. Their success has made Bono one of the most recognisable faces in the world. Here, in a series of conversations with his friend, the music journalist, Michka Assayas, Bono reflects on his transformation from extrovert singer of a small, Irish, post-punk band into an international rock star. Along the way he speaks candidly about his childhood, about his mother's death, about his Christian faith and about his difficult relationship with his father, who died recently. Bono also speaks passionately about how he has used his fame as a platform to campaign fervently on a range of global issues, and why these issues - which include the IRA ceasefire, Third World debt and, most recently, the growing AIDS crisis in Africa - are so important to each of us. Intimate, humorous, and fiercely opinionated, BONO ON BONO is Bono's story in his own words. It will fascinate and challenge fans of U2 and general readers alike.


A melanocyte-stimulating hormone (MSH) has been isolated from extracts of the neurointermediate lobe of the pituitary of the dogfish Squalus acanthias by gel-filtration and ion-exchange chromatography. It had approximately 1% of the potency of mammalian alpha-MSH on bioassays in vitro on frog skin and dogfish skin. Sequence analysis revealed it to be a hexadecapeptide with the following primary structure: Asp-Gly-Asp-Asp-Tyr-Lys-Phe-Gly-His-Phe-Arg-Trp-Ser-Val-Pro-Leu. It appears to be related to the beta-MSH species of mammalian species but has only the sequence -His-Phe-Arg-Trp- in common with the heptapeptide core -Met-Glu-His-Phe-Arg-Trp-Gly- which is characteristic not only of the MSH peptides but also of the adrenocorticotrophins and lipotrophins studied so far. An alpha-MSH was also isolated, 50% of which was amidated at the C-terminus group. Sequence data from this study taken in conjunction with those from a previous study (Lowry & Chadwick, 1970b) revealed it to be a tridecapeptide which is identical with the N-terminal sequence of dogfish adrenocorticotrophin.


The method of purification Erwinia carotovora recombinant L-asparaginase, expressed in E.coli, including ultrasonic disintegration of biomass, fractionation ammonium sulfate and column chromatography on CM- or SP-Sepharose has been developed. According to SDS-PAAGE the enzyme preparation was homogeneous, its specific activity and yield consist respectively about 620 IU/mg of protein and 75%. Physical-chemical and structural properties of recombinant Erwinia carotovora L-asparaginase are similar to the enzymes from the wild strains Erwinia carotovora and recombinant L-asparaginase Erwinia chrysanthemi.


Improvements in the apparatus formerly used include the use of an eleven-stage electron multiplier tube, the control of the transmitter frequency by the laboratory standard, the substitution of a 1000-watt water-cooled mercury arc for the light source, a new type of Kerr cell, changes in the mirror supports and base line measurements, and the use of an automatic recorder. The apparatus has been completely rebuilt and converted to a.c. operation. The optical system has been changed to permit simpler measurements of the path difference, and electrical circuits have been devised to smooth out the fluctuations due to voltage variations and other causes.Group velocity is discussed as a correction factor in this and previous measurements. The correction is shown to amount to as much as 7 km/sec. in some cases. Electron transit time is shown to be a limiting factor for this method of measuring the velocity of light. The final result of 2895 observations is given as 299,776±14 km/sec. This includes a group velocity correction and should not be compared with previous results without taking this into consideration. The conclusion is reached that the velocity of light is a constant as nearly as we can measure it at present.


Grid computing faces a great challenge because the resources are not localized, but distributed, heterogeneous and dynamic. Thus, it is essential to provide a set of programming tools that execute an application on the Grid resources with as little input from the user as possible. The thesis of this work is that Grid-centric scheduling techniques of workflow applications can provide good usability of the Grid environment by reliably executing the application on a large scale distributed system with good performance. We support our thesis with new and effective approaches in the following five aspects.
First, we modeled the performance of the existing scheduling approaches in a multi-cluster Grid environment. We implemented several widely-used scheduling algorithms and identified the best candidate. The study further introduced a new measurement, based on our experiments, which can improve the schedule quality of some scheduling algorithms as much as 20 fold in a multi-cluster Grid environment.
Second, we studied the scalability of the existing Grid scheduling algorithms. To deal with Grid systems consisting of hundreds of thousands of resources, we designed and implemented a novel approach that performs explicit resource selection decoupled from scheduling Our experimental evaluation confirmed that our decoupled approach can be scalable in such an environment without sacrificing the quality of the schedule by more than 10%.
Third, we proposed solutions to address the dynamic nature of Grid computing with a new cluster-based hybrid scheduling mechanism. Our experimental results collected from real executions on production clusters demonstrated that this approach produces programs running 30% to 100% faster than the other scheduling approaches we implemented on both reserved and shared resources.
Fourth, we improved the reliability of Grid computing by incorporating fault- tolerance and recovery mechanisms into the workow application execution. Our experiments on a simulated multi-cluster Grid environment demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach and also characterized the three-way trade-off between reliability, performance and resource usage when executing a workflow application.
Finally, we improved the large batch-queue wait time often found in production Grid clusters. We developed a novel approach to partition the workow application and submit them judiciously to achieve less total batch-queue wait time. The experimental results derived from production site batch queue logs show that our approach can reduce total wait time by as much as 70%.
Our approaches combined can greatly improve the usability of Grid computing while increasing the performance of workow applications on a multi-cluster Grid environment.


This paper presents a derivation of the probability density function (PDF) of the signal-to-interference and noise ratio (SINR) for the downlink of a cell in multicellular networks. The mathematical model considers uncoordinated locations and transmission powers of base stations (BSs) which reflect accurately the deployment of randomly located femtocells in an indoor environment. The derivation is semianalytical, in that the PDF is obtained by analysis and can be easily calculated by employing standard numerical methods. Thus, it obviates the need for time-consuming simulation efforts. The derivation of the PDF takes into account practical propagation models including shadow fading. The effect of background noise is also considered. Numerical experiments are performed assuming various environments and deployment scenarios to examine the performance of femtocell networks. The results are compared with Monte Carlo simulations for verification purposes and show good agreement.


The Estonian Citizens' Assembly (ECA) was initiated in late 2013 as a direct consequence ofa legitimacy crisis of Estonian political parties and representative institutions. The spark igniting this crisis was the unravelling of a scheme of illegal party financing. The response from the governmental institutions took the form of a democratic innovation drawing on public crowd sourcing and deliberative mini-publics. This study is conducted on the basis of a broad survey among the participants in the culminating deliberative process of the ECA (n=847). The focus of this paper is on the relationship between citizen participation and political trust. Two main research questions guides this paper: (1) How has participants vertical and horizontal trust developed in relation to their participation in the ECA?, and (2) What factors explain variations of change in trust among participants? While existing research questions whether citizens engagement in political participation functions as a source of trust, participatory processes alike the ECA are continually being initiated with the explicit aim of impeding developments of growing public distrust and fostering a greater trust ingovernmental institutions.


The typical real-time microseismic monitoring workflow involves using seismic sources at known locations, such as perforation shots, string shots, or ball-seating events, to calibrate the velocity model. In some cases, none of these sources are available, they are of poor quality, or their coverage of the rock volume of interest is limited (e.g., in horizontal monitoring configurations). Crosswell seismic data provide a great opportunity to calibrate a velocity model for use in real-time microseismic monitoring when optimal calibration sources are not available. We tested two data sets with different well configurations and available calibration data to demonstrate the use of crosswell sources for velocity-model calibration. The first data set, which includes both crosswell sources and perforation shots, shows that using crosswell source shots for velocity-model calibration results in event locations as good as locations based on perforations. In a second example, we establish the feasibility of using cro...


This article reports a study that was carried out to investigate the impact of the study of grammar on students' essay writing skills. The research subjects were students studying for the Certificate in Law at the University of Botswana. The sample consisted of 60 students that were divided into (i) an experimental group of 32 students enrolled for the 1992-1993 academic year and (U) a control group of 28 students enrolled for the 1993-1994 academic year. The experimental group was exposed to an Experimental Research Method (ERM) that combined the teaching of language forms and their immediate application in sentence composition and essay writing. The control group was not exposed to this method. It was, instead, exposed to an instructional method that focused on a descriptionption of essay types such as the narrative, descriptionptive and the argumentative types and the general mechanics for 'staging' an essay from the introduction to the conclusion. The results of the study showed that at the end of their courses, the experimental subjects performed better than the control group.


Optimizations in a traditional compiler are applied sequentially, with each optimization destructively modifying the program to produce a transformed program that is then passed to the next optimization. We present a new approach for structuring the optimization phase of a compiler. In our approach, optimizations take the form of equality analyses that add equality information to a common intermediate representation. The optimizer works by repeatedly applying these analyses to infer equivalences between program fragments, thus saturating the intermediate representation with equalities. Once saturated, the intermediate representation encodes multiple optimized versions of the input program. At this point, a profitability heuristic picks the final optimized program from the various programs represented in the saturated representation. Our proposed way of structuring optimizers has a variety of benefits over previous approaches: our approach obviates the need to worry about optimization ordering, enables the use of a global optimization heuristic that selects among fully optimized programs, and can be used to perform translation validation, even on compilers other than our own. We present our approach, formalize it, and describe our choice of intermediate representation. We also present experimental results showing that our approach is practical in terms of time and space overhead, is effective at discovering intricate optimization opportunities, and is effective at performing translation validation for a realistic optimizer.


Abstract This research evaluated the impact of Give us a break! (GUAB!) — a programme for children and young people who have experienced bereavement or negative change including the impact of divorce/separation; experiences around ill health and circumstances leading to individuals being 'looked after'. A repeated measures design was utilised to measure the pre-post difference in the factors which contribute to young people's resilience following intervention. Additionally, as the programme is based on a model of Solution Focused Brief Therapy — which aims to develop a positive orientation towards the future — optimistic thinking was closely evaluated. Young people completed the Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents (Prince-Embury, 2006) and, to increase the rigour of data collection, parents/carers and teachers completed the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (LeBuffe, Shapiro & Naglieri, 2009). The findings provide evidence that the programme positively impacted on young people in terms of their Sense of Relatedness to others, Sense of Mastery, Social and Emotional Competence and Optimistic Thinking. Furthermore, these findings were not contingent upon the type of loss experienced (bereaved/non-bereaved). Some methodological limitations are highlighted and directions for future research considered.


This paper describes a system that supports software development processes in virtual software corporations. A virtual software corporation consists of a set of enterprises that cooperate in projects to fulfill customer needs. Contracts are negotiated in the whole lifecycle of a software development project. The negotiations really influence the performance of a company. Therefore, it is useful to support negotiations and planning decisions with software agents. Our approach integrates software agent approaches for negotiation support with flexible multiserver workflow engines.


The basic virtual memory-mapped communication (VMMC) model provides protected, direct communication between the sender's and receiver's virtual address spaces, but it does not support high-level connection-oriented communication APIs well. This paper presents VMMC-2, an extension to the basic VMMC. We describe the design, implementation, and evaluate the performance of three mechanisms in VMMC-2: (1) a user-managed TLB mechanism for address translation which enables user libraries to dynamically manage the amount of pinned space and requires only driver support from many operating systems; (2) a transfer redirection mechanism which avoids copying on the receiver's side; (3) a reliable communication protocol at the data link layer which avoids copying on the sender's side. To validate our extensions we implemented stream sockets on top of the VMMC-2 running on a Myrinet network of Pentium PCs. This zero-copy sockets implementation provides a maximum bandwidth of over 84 Mbytes/s and a one-way latency of 20 s.


Objective: To aid the implementation of a medication reconciliation process within a hybrid primary-specialty care setting by using qualitative techniques to describe the climate of implementation and provide guidance for future projects. Methods: Guided by McMullen et al's Rapid Assessment Process1, we performed semi-structured interviews prior to and iteratively throughout the implementation. Interviews were coded and analyzed using grounded theory2 and cross-examined for validity. Results: We identified five barriers and five facilitators that impacted the implementation. Facilitators identified were process alignment with user values, and motivation and clinical champions fostered by the implementation team rather than the administration. Barriers included a perceived limited capacity for change, diverging priorities, and inconsistencies in process standards and role definitions. Discussion: A more complete, qualitative understanding of existing barriers and facilitators helps to guide critical decisions on the design and implementation of a successful medication reconciliation process.


Are you trying to make sense of all the different industrial automation networks on the market today? Whether you're a novice industrial network user or someone who simply needs to brush up on the technology, Automation Network Selection will help you better understand and select the "right" network for a given application. Automation networks have changed from the initial publication in 2003. This second edition has been updated with those changes. Some promised network standards have become reality and some new standards have begun. In this time period, wireless networks have proliferated, and two standards are emerging: WirelessHART and ISA100.11a. Ethernet has continued its assault on all of the wired networks and has become dominant at the base network layers, as well as with several Application/User layers. Even wireless now carries the traffic once assigned to the wired Ethernet network.


Despite successful treatment of infertility with assisted reproductive technology (ART), total fertilization failure (TFF) after in vitro fertilization (IVF) and even after intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) still occurs. In the current chapter, the incidence and etiology of TFF after ICSI are described. The literature on physiology of oocyte activation, electrical properties of gametes' membranes, and ion currents is reviewed. Calcium oscillations play an essential role in fertilization, and calcium ions act as secondary messengers in different metabolic pathways and cellular processes during oocyte activation. The contribution of oocyteand spermrelated causes of fertilization failure is discussed. Many studies on the physiology of fertilization in mammals have shown that oocyte activation is triggered by the sperm factor. Methods for artificial oocyte activation (AOA) try to bypass fertilization failure by influencing physiological processes that are crucial for successful fertilization. Activation can be induced with the use of electrical, mechanical, or chemical stimuli that elevate intracellular concentrations of calcium ions. Different AOA methods and their success and safety are presented.


How is language organized in the human brain? The Neuroscience of Language, published in 2003, puts forth a systematic model of language to bridge the gap between linguistics and neuroscience. Neuronal models of word and serial order processing are presented in the form of a computational, connectionist neural network. The linguistic emphasis is on words and elementary syntactic rules. Introductory chapters focus on neuronal structure and function, cognitive brain processes, the basics of classical aphasia research and modern neuroimaging of language, neural network approaches to language, and the basics of syntactic theories. The essence of the work is contained in chapters on neural algorithms and networks, basic syntax, serial order mechanisms, and neuronal grammar. Throughout, excursuses illustrate the functioning of brain models of language, some of which are accessible as animations on the book's accompanying web site. It will appeal to graduate students and researchers in neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, and computational modeling.


Ubiquitylation of cellular proteins alters protein function and half-life to impact cell signaling and fate decisions. In T cells, ubiquitylation events, mediated by substrate-specific E3 ubiquitin ligases and deubiquitylating enzymes, can promote or limit T cell activation and alter function. For example, the catalytic E3 ligase Nedd4 is required for robust T cell activation, while a related Nedd4 family member, Itch, negatively regulates T cell signaling. Several Nedd4 family ligases are activated by binding Nedd4 family interacting protein 1 (Ndfip1) and/or Ndfip2. I have determined that ligase activity depends non-redundantly on both Ndfip1 and Ndfip2. Unlike Ndfip1, Ndfip2 is not a prominent negative regulator of T cell activation or TH2 polarization. However, loss of Ndfip2 in Ndfip1 deficient cells leads to a T cell-intrinsic expansion of pathogenic TH2 effector cells. Defining substrates of critical ubiquitylation events in activated T cells can enhance our understanding of T cell function in both health and disease. Thus, I took a targeted approach to identify new substrates of Nedd4 family catalytic E3 ligases in activated T cells, developing a proteomics workflow for unbiased quantification of differential ubiquitylation in T cells. I identified Jak1 as a substrate for Ndfip-dependent E3 ligases, and determined that Ndfip-mediated Jak1 degradation limits cytokine signaling during TCR engagement. Having successfully used proteomics for substrate-identification, I considered the utility of quantitative proteomics in globally assessing ubiquitylation in T cells. I developed a mass spectrometry-based approach pairing immunoprecipitation of "ubiquitin remnant" peptides (with di-glycine modified lysine residues) and whole proteome analysis to quantify changes in protein-specific ubiquitylation in activated CD4+ T cells. I observed dynamic changes in ubiquitylation of hundreds of proteins, including key signal transducers, during TCR stimulation. Comparing changes in ubiquitylation with changes in protein abundance in stimulated CD4+ T cells I propose to identify proteins for which ubiquitylation is tightly linked to protein abundance and/or function in a signal-dependent manner. This profiling effort, in combination with targeted studies similar to those undertaken to identify substrates of Ndfip-dependent E3 ligases, will facilitate a more global understanding of how ubiquitylation events in activated T cells finely tune the T cell response. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Cell & Molecular Biology First Advisor Paula M. Oliver


Motivating people who are not inclined to engage in health behavior presents a significant challenge to public health practitioners. Although there have been advances in interventions that increase individuals' motivation to engage in health-related behaviors, there is still a relative dearth of evidence as to the processes and mechanisms by which interventions exert effects on behavior. There is also considerable need to identify the moderating factors that enhance or diminish the effects of behavioral interventions. Searching for moderators is important as it will address whether large-scale interventions administered to a population will be effective (a "one size fits all" approach) or whether interventions should be tailored to specific groups with particular demographic, behavioral, and psychological profiles (a "tailored" approach).

Developing effective interventions to facilitate behavior change in health contexts requires a detailed understanding of the demographic, psychological, and ecological factors associated with the behavior. Research has identified multiple correlates of health behavior change, and interventions have been developed to target these factors. Such interventions have shown significant effects in changing behavior, but the size of effects has been modest. A possible reason for the muted effectiveness of interventions is that they do not account for individual differences in salient moderating factors when examining their effects. Target populations in intervention research are rarely grouped according to profiles of these moderators. When segmentation does take place, it is often based on demographic factors such as age, gender, and socio-economic status and not on the psychological and behavioral correlates shown to have pervasive effects on behavior (e.g., Powell et al., 2007; Tapp et al., 2008). As a consequence, individuals recruited for interventions tend to be treated as a homogenous group. However, the assumption of sample homogeneity on variables other than demographics has been recognized as a reason for a lack effectiveness of interventions and the UK Department of Health (2010) has advocated an individualized, tailored approach. In this article, we propose that health behavior change interventions could be more effective if they are tailored to groups of individuals based on key factors likely to moderate the effectiveness of interventions such as motives, preferences, and needs. We argue that improving the effectiveness of interventions for unmotivated individuals should begin with an analysis of the underlying reasons for lacking motivation and support needs when it comes to health behaviors and how these may be specifically targeted in interventions.

The notion of segmentation is effectively used in marketing where it is common practice to distinguish homogenous groups of customers who can be targeted in the same way because they have similar needs and preferences (Wedel and Kamakura, 1998) and is the act of classifying individuals into meaningful sub-groups based on certain characteristics (Wedel and Kamakura, 1998). Social marketing is used to target groups of individuals and to communicate a message tailored to individual needs and preferences (French and Blair-Stevens, 2005). These groupings are based on the premise that people must be treated in different ways because they are motivated by different factors and have different needs. If such segmentation could be applied to health behavior change, intervention developers may be able to target groups with messages tailored to meet the specific characteristics of the segmented groups. There is a need for more psychographic segmentation to reveal patterns or differences between people in a specific cohort. Psychographic segmentation seeks to understand the values, interests and lifestyles of individuals in order to uncover needs and motives (Walker et al., 2014). The identification of distinct sub-groups whose members have unique barriers, motives and needs would assist the development of more tailored and varied interventions. So far, the approach to segmentation has been quantitative a priori or post hoc on the basis of multivariate statistical analysis to identify segments. We advocate an alternative approach, and suggest that there is a need to identify groups of individuals with specific profiles of key moderating variables within a sample from the outset and tailor interventions accordingly. The inclusion of psychographic factors adds information about "why" and "what" is needed in addition to the "who" and "where" provided by socio-demographic and geo-demographic information (French et al., 2011).

To date, only a handful of studies have adopted psychographic segmentation applied to health behaviors including physical activity (Boslough et al., 2005; Staten et al., 2006; Sport England, 2009), food choice (Byrd-Bredbenner et al., 2008), and obesity (Wills et al., 2014). However, most approaches to psychographic segmentation have been deductive using surveys to identify clusters (e.g., Boslough et al., 2005; Byrd-Bredbenner et al., 2008; Sport England, 2009). Future research may do well to segment based on inductive, bottom-up methods to ensure that the factors distinguishing clusters of individuals are those voiced by the individuals themselves, rather than factors thought to influence motivation and behavior change, derived from the researcher or interventionist based on theoretical models that assume sample homogeneity. For example, inductively-driven psychographic segmentation by Wills et al. (2014) found that traditional targeting according to the "stages of change" did not fit with people's values and needs. Their more nuanced analysis identified degrees of motivation based on perceived causes and consequences of obesity, barriers and enablers for change that included self-efficacy and social norms. Their segmentation analysis indicated the type of interventions likely to appeal to particular groups who are aware of their obesity but unsure of what to do versus those who were well informed but discouraged by previous unsuccessful weight loss attempts. In light of these findings, and the limitations of top-down approaches to psychographic profiling, future research should, perhaps conduct idiographic psychographic profiling prior to and to inform, the development of more effectively tailored interventions.

In conclusion, we contend that current interventions tend to focus on a generalized, "one size fits all" approach that do not adequately address the different needs of individuals to facilitate change. We propose that researchers and interventionists seek to identify means to segment individuals within their samples based on their motives, preferences, and support needs, and use the evidence to develop more effective, nuanced, and tailored interventions.


Over the last two decades, social capital has received increasing attention in the international literature. Despite the popularity of the construct, problems concerning definition, theoretical conceptualisation, and measurement continue to plague research and policy in this area. This investigation aimed to address this gap by developing a new social capital instrument to test the theorised nature of the construct. Utilising a sample of 1371 young Australians living in disadvantaged communities, the newly developed Social Capital and Cohesion Scale (SCCS) combined the commonalities in the current theoretical conceptualisations of social capital defining it as a multi-level, multidimensional construct consisting of trust and reciprocity across family, peer, neighbour, and institutional networks. To test the convergent validity of the scale, relations with mental health were also examined. Confirmatory factor analysis results demonstrated that the SCCS was a valid and reliable multidimensional scale, which was invariant across both regional and gender groups. Correlational analysis demonstrated that associations with depression, anxiety, and stress were consistent with past research thereby strengthening the validity of the SCCS measure.


In their search for the next generation of talented employees, big businesses are looking critically at the early years of their future recruits. Fearing that public education may only get worse, corporations are initiating partnerships with schools to help bolster the quality and tailor the skill sets of graduates soon to enter the work force. In today's technological society, the bar has been raised: the required level of reading, writing and arithmetic skills is moving steadily upward. Yet for business/school partnerships to work, companies have to listen, as well as teach. Educators probably have more to offer businesses than businesses can offer to education. By operating with some measure of humility, companies stand to gain much from their education partners: how to create an environment in which people—employees and students alike—can not only learn and achieve, but prosper.


Families of Veterans with traumatic brain injury (TBI) are often faced with providing long-term informal care to their loved one. However, little is known about how their perceived health and caregiving burden contribute to their quality of life (QOL). The purpose of this descriptive study was to describe perceived health, somatic symptoms, caregiver burden, and perceived QOL and to identify the extent to which these variables are associated with QOL in female partners/spouses of Veterans with TBI. Participants completed a written questionnaire including the Patient Health Questionnaire-15, Caregiver Reaction Assessment, Quality of Life Index, and the general health subscale of the 12-Item Short Form Survey version 2. Caregivers reported moderate levels of QOL, and over a quarter of the sample reported high levels of somatic symptoms, particularly fatigue and sleep disturbance. Age, perceived general health, somatic symptoms, the five subscales of caregiver burden (self-esteem, disrupted schedule, effect on finances, lack of family support, and effect on health) predicted QOL and explained 64% of its variance (adjusted r2 = 0.64, F(8,31) = 9.59). However, only somatic symptoms and the caregiver burden subscales of self-esteem and effect on finances were significant predictors in the model. These findings have implications for development of family-centered interventions to enhance the QOL of informal caregivers of Veterans with TBI.


During Fusion 2019 Conference (https://www.fusion2019.org/program.html), leading experts presented ideas on the historical, contemporary, and future coordination of artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) with sensor data fusion (SDF). While AI/ML and SDF concepts have had a rich history since the early 1900s—emerging from philosophy and psychology—it was not until the dawn of computers that both AI/ML and SDF researchers initiated discussions on how mathematical techniques could be implemented for real-time analysis. ML, and in particular deep learning, has demonstrated tremendous success in computer vision, natural language understanding, and data analytics. As a result, ML has been proposed as the solution to many problems that inherently include multi-modal data. For example, success in autonomous vehicles has validated the promise of ML with SDF, but additional research is needed to explain, understand, and coordinate heterogeneous data analytics for situation awareness. The panel identified opportunities for merging AI/ML and SDF such as computational efficiency, improved decision making, expanding knowledge, and providing security; while highlighting challenges for multi-domain operations, human-machine teaming, and ethical deployment strategies.


Title of Thesis: FINITE ELEMENT MODELING AND CELLULAR STUDIES ON CONTROLLED PORES WITH SUBSURFACE CONTINUITY FOR BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS Paul Keslar Lambert, Master of Science, 2012 Thesis Directed By: Professor Sreeramamurthy Ankem Department of Materials Science and Engineering This work investigated a novel process for improving the reliability of loadbearing joint prosthetics, in which electrical discharge machining (EDM) is used to create pores with sub-surface continuity on a conventionally-fabricated prosthetic material. The first part of this investigation utilized in vitro studies to verify the biocompatibility of deep, high-aspect-ratio EDM-produced pores. Mesenchymal stem cells were seeded onto Grade 4 titanium samples with EDM-created pores, and osteodifferentiation and mineralization were induced and assessed. It was found that such pores allowed for cell proliferation and mineralization indicating good biocompatibility. The second part of this work utilized three dimensional finite element modeling (FEM) to characterize simulated porous implant interfaces under stress. Interlocking strengths of selected structures were verified, interface separation under applied stress was measured for these structures with implications for wear particle intrusion in the interfaces, and stress shielding analysis was performed on simulated implants containing intersecting and non-intersecting pores. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number CMMI-0733522.


In Zabid, Republic of Yemen, women often succumb lo an illness called 'fright' (faja'a) when they or their loved ones are, or are believed to be, in danger. The shock of a sudden threat to oneself or one's family, through illness or accident, is said to cause the soul to shake, leaving one vulnerable to 'fright'. This essay traces women's stories about their fright experiences and their recovery (or failure to recover). Zabidi women hold to a worldview inflected by the tenet that 'all is from God', yet ironically fright illnesses, their treatment, and narratives about them dwell uncomfortably on the difficulty of accepting the will of God when it means the loss of a loved one.


Abstract This study investigates the effectiveness of an automatic system for detection of deception by individuals with the use of multiple indicators of such potential deception. Deception detection research in the information systems discipline has postulated increased accuracy through a new class of screening systems that automatically conduct interviews and track multiple indicators of deception simultaneously. Understanding the robustness of this new class of systems and the limitations of its theoretical improved performance is important for refinement of the conceptual design. The design science proof-of-concept study presented here implemented and evaluated the robustness of these systems for automated screening for deception detection. A large experiment was used to evaluate the effectiveness of a constructed multiple-indicator system, both under normal conditions and with the presence of common types of countermeasures (mental and physical). The results shed light on the relative strength and robustness of various types of deception indicators within this new context. The findings further suggest the possibility of increased accuracy through the measurement of multiple indicators if classification algorithms can compensate for human attempts to counter effectiveness.


A 4-year study was conducted on Kansas Flint Hills bluestem range to monitor animal gain, grass, and forb standing biomass following grazing, plant population dynamics, and in 2 years, subsequent feedlot performance of steers under intensive-early stocking supplemented with increasing levels of sorghum grain. Each year from 1988 through 1991, crossbred beef steers were stocked at 0.24 ha/100 kg of initial steer weight from 5 May to 1; July. Steers in twice-replicated pastures were given no supplementation, 0.91 kg rolled sorghum grain per head daily, or 1.82 kg rolled sorghum grain per head daily, which corresponded to approximately 0, 0.3, and 0.6% of body weight -1. All steers were implanted with estradiol 17 beta in 1988 and zeranol in 1989-91 during initial processing and had unlimited access to a lasalocid/mineral mixture during the entire trial. In 1989 and 1990, representative groups of steers selected from all treatment/pasture combinations were subjected to a feedlot finishing phase and carcass data were obtained. Grass and forb standing crops were estimated each year at livestock removal in mid-July and again in early October. Pretreatment species composition and basal cover were determined in 1988 and compared to those at the end of the study. In mid-July, when cattle were removed, residual standing biomass of grass increased in direct proportion to increasing level of supplement. Standing biomass of grass at the end of the growing season did not differ among pastures with different supplement levels. Forb standing biomass did not differ among pastures with different supplement levels in July or October. Changes in plant populations among treatments during the course of the study were minimal. During the early portion of the grazing period, sorghum grain supplementation did not significantly influence steer gains, but average daily gain during the latter part of the grazing period increased in direct proportion to increasing level of sorghum grain supplement. Daily gain. feed intake, carcass characteristics, and gain:feed ratio were not different among treatments during the feedlot phase. Although conversion efficiencies may be economically marginal, low-level grain supplementation has the potential to increase the daily gain of cattle grazing early-season tallgrass prairie under an intensive-early stocking program.


Abstract Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common endocrine disorder among reproductive-aged women; however, to date there has been no synthesis of the burden of PCOS specifically among indigenous women. We aimed to systematically identify and collate studies reporting prevalence and clinical features of PCOS among indigenous women worldwide. We performed a comprehensive search of six databases (Ovid MEDLINE, MEDLINE In Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations, EMBASE, EBM reviews, CINAHL, and SCOPUS) supplemented by gray literature searches and the screening of reference lists. A narrative synthesis was conducted. Fourteen studies met inclusion criteria; however, one was excluded as it assessed only children and adolescents younger than 15 years, with limited clinical relevance. Studies examined indigenous women from Australia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, and the United States. Prevalence of PCOS was reported in only four studies and ranged from 3.05% for women in Sri Lanka to 26% for women in Australia. All included studies reported on at least one clinical feature of PCOS. Of the studies that reported on a comparison group from the same country, there was evidence of more severe features in indigenous women from New Zealand and the United States. The limited evidence available warrants further investigation of the burden of PCOS in indigenous women to build the knowledge base for effective and culturally relevant management of this condition.


Clostridium perfringens type D causes enterotoxemia in sheep and goats. The disease is mediated by epsilon toxin (ETX), which affects the cerebrovascular endothelium, increasing vascular permeability and leading to cerebral edema. In the present study, we compared the distribution and severity of the cerebrovascular changes induced in lambs by C. perfringens type D strain CN1020, its isogenic etx null mutant, and the ETX-producing complemented mutant. We also applied histochemical and immunohistochemical markers to further characterize the brain lesions induced by ETX. Both ETX-producing strains induced extensive cerebrovascular damage that did not differ significantly between each other in nature, neuroanatomic distribution, or severity. By contrast, lambs inoculated with the etx mutant or sterile, nontoxic culture medium did not develop detectable brain lesions, confirming that the neuropathologic effects observed in these infections are dependent on ETX production. Lambs treated with the wild-type and complemented strains showed perivascular and mural vascular edema, as well as serum albumin extravasation, particularly severe in the cerebral white matter, midbrain, medulla oblongata, and cerebellum. Brains of animals inoculated with the ETX-producing strains showed decreased expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein and increased expression of aquaporin-4 in the end-feet processes of the astrocytes around blood vessels. Early axonal injury was demonstrated with anti–amyloid precursor protein immunohistochemistry. Perivascular accumulation of macrophages/microglia with intracytoplasmic albumin globules was also observed in these animals. This study demonstrates that ETX is responsible for the major cerebrovascular changes in C. perfringens type D–induced disease.


The input of aeolian sediment into foredune systems from beaches represents a key component of sediment budget analysis along many soft sedimentary coastlines. Where there are significant offshore wind components in local wind regimes this is normally excluded from analysis. However, recent work has shown that if the topography of the foredune is favourable then this offshore component is steered or undergoes flow reversal through leeside eddying to give onshore transport events at the back beach under offshore flow conditions. At particular distances from the foredune crest flow reattaches to the surface to continue its incident offshore direction. The location of this reattachment point has important implications for aeolian transport of sand on the back beach and foredune toe locations.
This study reports initial results where the positioning of the reattachment point is mobile and is driven by incident wind velocity (at the foredune crest) and the actual undulations of the foredune crest's topography, dictating heterogeneous flow behaviour at the beach. Using detailed field measurements (25 Hz, three-dimensional sonic anemometry) and computational fluid dynamic modelling, a temporal and spatial pattern of reattachment positions are described. Implications for aeolian transport and dune evolution are also examined.


Although there is a good correlation between the levels of gonadal steroids and sex differences in reproductive behavior and food intake, the neurochemical mechanisms by which a gonadal steroid may regulate these behaviors remain unknown. An important central nervous site for steroid modulation of food intake and reproduction is the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus (VMH). Recently it has been suggested that some of the activities of the VMH are dependent on the neuroactive peptide cholecystokinin octapeptide (CCK). High levels of CCK in the VMH have been measured by radioimmunoassay, and immunohistochemical analysis has revealed a dense plexus of CCK fibers and terminals which appose and make synaptic contact with VMH neurons. There is, however, a paucity of information concerning the presence of CCK-binding sites in the VMH. This study demonstrates high levels of 125I-CCK8 binding in the VMH of male and female rats. Tissue sampled on the morning of estrus revealed depressed levels of CCK binding, and, while ovariectomy itself did not affect binding, ovariectomy followed by estrogen replacement depressed CCK binding. These results provide evidence for an estrogenic effect on CCK-binding sites that may help elucidate a role of CCK in the VMH.


Renal artery stenosis (RAS) is a common cause of secondary hypertension. Pheochromocytomas have been associated with hypertension in 0.1% of the population. Pheochromocytoma is a well-documented co-morbid condition of unilateral RAS. Bilateral RAS with a pheochromocytoma is extremely rare with only one documented case in the literature. We present the second documented case of bilateral RAS with a pheochromocytoma. The coexistence of these pathologies makes diagnosis challenging. Proper diagnosis of the etiology of hypertension is essential given the pre-surgical treatment required for neuroendocrine tumors. J Endocrinol Metab. 2016;6(3):95-96 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14740/jem335w


New molecular structures based on azobenzene and bisazobenzene mesogenic units, which can support mesophase were prepared, in particular four different types of liquid crystalline materials have been synthesized and characterized, following the general criteria. All materials were characterized by spectroscopic methods (FT-IR, NMR, MS and CHNS analyses) and the liquid crystalline properties were investigated using differential scanning colorimetry (DSC), optical polarizing microscopy (OPM) and, X-ray diffraction. The presence of smectic A mesophase was confirmed by the textures and X-ray diffraction studies (XRD).
The calamitic liquid crystals (rod-shaped) compounds were generally synthesized via diazotization of primary aromatic amine, coupling with phenol and subsequent etherification of phenol with ten fold excess of an appropriate α,ω-dibromoalkane which was further etherified in methanol to give the final compounds, giving rise to a typical features of calamitic liquid crystals (rod-shaped) compounds. Four of the liquid crystalline compounds containing azobenzene moiety denoted as AZOn series, exhibited enantiotropic smectic A phase AZO3-AZO6 (C3-C6) while, compound AZO8 (C8) show monotropic smectic A phase.
The liquid crystalline trimer (AZOTn series) containing azobenzene with a short acetyl mesogenic group and a biphenyl as central mesogenic core were prepared by employing the procedures described for the calamitic mesogenic compounds above. The final compound was produced by etherification of the 4`4-hydroxybiphenyl with two-fold mole ratio of 1-bromoalky-(4-phenylazo)acetophenone. Compound with C5 polymethylene flexible alkyl spacer (AZOT5) exhibited enantiotropic nematic and smectic A liquid crystalline properties. While the compound with C6 polymethylene flexible alkyl spacer showed an enantiotropic nematic phase, the (AZOT6) exhibited the higher values of melting and clearing temperatures.
The calamitic bisazobenzene liquid crystal series (BAn series) were synthesized from 4-phenylazoaniline as mentioned above. All the compounds were found to show enantiotropic mesophase behavior and the presence of enantiotropic behavior throughout the series might be connected to the bisazobezene core and the terminal groups that extend the molecules along their molecular axes which, increase thermal stability of the mesophases and anisotropy of molecular polarizability. The photoisomerization experiment indicates a decrease in intensities of the absorption bands for compound BA4 (BAn series). These show that the structure of the compounds does not have significant effect on the photoisomerization rate. This group of compounds have potential application in photonics more specifically, in reversible optical data storage, optical switching devices, optical computing and integrated optical devices for communication.
The final series of compound 4-propyloxy-[4-biphenyloxyalkyl]-4`-(4-phenylazo)azobenzene for the dimer containing bisazobenzene mesogenic moiety and alkoxybiphenyl linked by flexible spacers (BAOnO.3 series) was prepared by reacting the 4-propyloxy-4-hydroxybiphenyl with 1-bromoalkyloxy-4`-(4-phenylazo)azobenzene. The synthesized compounds exhibited enantiotropic phase with dimer containing propyl, butyl and octyl as flexible alkyl spacers showing SmA and those with pentyl and hexyl spacers exhibited SmA and SmC phases respectively. The stability of the smectic layer depends on the spacer length for the compounds studied.


Regional purchase coefficients (RPCs) are often seen as the weakest link in input-output modeling systems such as IMPLAN. In IMPLAN the RPCs are estimated either by the supply-demand pool (SDP) method, which ignores cross-hauling, or by econometric methods, based on 1977 data. Yet, how much difference do the RPCs make relative to the production functions, which reflect national and not local conditions? This study uses a case study of the swine industry in Martin County, Minnesota to explore this question. While this is a limited test, the results suggest that the production function changes are much more important than the changes due to regional purchase coefficients.


Due to historically low internal saving rates, access to external financing is very important to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), even more so in the context of the 2030 Agenda and the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Public financing falls short of what is needed for this task and must be complemented with private flows, which in fact make up the bulk of the region's external financing. The credit quality of the sovereigns in the region has an important role in determining how costly the access to private external financing can be. This report examines the history of sovereign credit ratings in Latin America and the Caribbean, the evolution of credit quality, and the relationship between credit rating changes and the cost of accessing external financing reflected in the behavior of sovereign debt spreads.


BACKGROUND
Th1 cells preferentially express CXCR3, CCR5 and CCR6, while CCR3 and CCR4 are predominantly expressed by Th2 cell subsets. Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a Th1 cell-dependant chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system, and immunomudolatory cytokines could alter the chemokine expression pattern of these lymphocyte subsets.

OBJECTIVE
This study was performed to measure chemokine receptor expression on CD4 T cells for evaluation of Th1/Th2 dominantly in IFN-β treated patients.

METHODS
Flowcytometry was used to detect chemokine receptor expression on CD4 T cell population in PBMCs obtained from MS and healthy control groups. Twenty six MS patients participated in this study before and after IFN-β therapy and the same number of healthy individuals were included.

RESULTS
The percentage of lymphocytes was 41.28% ± 10.30% 2 in the blood of MS group compared with 36.88% ± 5.51% in the control group (p=0.017). The CD4+CXCR3+ cells were 18.86% ± 8.46% in healthy group, 30.78% ± 9.8% in pre-treated MS patients and 21.06% ± 9.23% in post-treated group (p<0.001). The CD4+CCR4+ cell subsets were 27.35% ± 10.15% in healthy group; 28.17% ± 8.9% in pre-treated group and 34.20% ± 8.96% in the post-IFN-β treatment group. The subset of CD4+CCR4+ was found to be dominant after IFN-β therapy in comparison with the control group (p<0.001). CD4+CCR5+ percentage was 1.24% ± 0.92% in the healthy people, 1.23% ± 0.71% in the MS patients and 0.76% ± 0.49% in post-treatment status (p=0.003). CD4+CCR3+ cell subsets were 0.62% ± 0.67% in control group, 0.28% ± 0.26% in the MS patients (p=0.022) and 0.39% ± 0.54% in IFN-β treated patients (p=0.334). An association was found for CXCR3 expression in pre- and post-treatment status (r=0.840, p<0.001) as well as for CCR4+ expression (r=0.712, p<0.001) in the same groups. The Th1 response was dominant in pre-treatment states, and then it shifted to a Th2 dominant state after IFN-β treatment.

CONCLUSION
We suggest that the chemokine receptor expression of Th1/Th2 cell subsets could be used for monitoring and the evaluation of the MS disease status.


The pollution of water bodies within watersheds has gained relevance in the last decade. Agriculture is designated as the main anthropogenic activity that generates this pollution phenomenon. Specialized studies define this type of pollutants as "diffuse pollution" due to the way that they are distributed within the basins. Among the main substances reported from agriculture are nitrates and phosphates, as remnants of fertilization processes. The objective of our study was to characterize the contribution of nitrates and phosphates from agriculture in the Lower Basin of the Mayo River in the State of Sonora, Mexico, with the purpose of comparing the baseline scenarios and the pollution scenario derived from wheat agriculture in the region. In this research we hypothesize that the contribution of nitrates and phosphates from agriculture exceeds what is established in the baseline scenario. By applying the hydrological simulation model Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), we simulated the contributions of polluting substances within the basin under study for the period of 2000 to 2017. The descriptive study was performed by comparing means where, for all cases, the results of the agricultural simulation exceeded the parameters obtained in the baseline scenario. Significant differences were found for nitrate and nitrogen dioxide. The results show evidence of the fact that the agricultural activity within the hydrological basin under study generates an increase in the contributions of substances exceeding the estimated baseline scenario.


Automatic Chemical Design leverages recent advances in deep generative modelling to provide a framework for performing continuous optimization of molecular properties. Although the provision of a continuous representation for prospective lead drug candidates has opened the door to gradient-based optimization, some challenges remain for the design process. One known pathology is the model's tendency to decode invalid molecular structures. The goal of this paper is to test the hypothesis that the origin of the pathology is rooted in the current formulation of Bayesian optimization. Recasting the optimization procedure as a constrained Bayesian optimization problem allows the model to produce novel drug compounds consistently ranking in the 100th percentile of the distribution over training set scores


Being political scapegoats in the indefinite 'war on terror' is the new normal for Muslims in America. With each federal election cycle or terrorist attack in a Western country comes a spike in Islamophobia. Candidates peddle tropes of Muslims as terrorists in campaign materials and political speeches to solicit votes. Government officials call for bold measures – extreme vetting, bans, and mass deportations – to regulate and exclude Muslim bodies from U.S. soil. The racial subtext is that Muslims in the United States are outsiders who do not belong to the political community. A case in point is the "Muslim Ban" issued by the Trump administration in 2017.
But as the Muslim Ban dominated the news cycle, another racialized counterterrorism policy lurks in the backdrop: a Muslim Registry. This Article explores the political and legal plausibility of a de jure or de facto Muslim Registry. Analyzing separately the case of nonimmigrants, immigrants, and U.S. citizens, the Article concludes that a special registration program explicitly based on religion regardless of the target's immigration status is unlikely to pass constitutional muster under both the rational basis and strict scrutiny test. Likewise, special registration of U.S. citizen Muslims based on national origin is illegal absent Congressional action grounded in credible objective evidence that one's ancestry causes her to become a terrorist. In contrast, a national origin based registration program targeting nonimmigrants would find support in laws and regulations authorizing past registration programs.
The lawfulness of a Muslim Registry of immigrants is likely to be the most contentious. The outcome will depend in large part on whether courts look to the Islamophobic political environment arising from Trump and his advisors' anti-Muslim statements to question the government's facially neutral national security justifications. The litigation surrounding the Muslim Ban indicates that heightened judicial deference granted to the executive in national security cases post-9/11 may finally be yielding to individual rights.


The analysis of the sound field's 3D properties has been strongly improved in recent years, after spatial properties of sound propagation have been acknowledged to be important during the design or correction of theatres and auditoriums. Besides, a proper assessment of spatial accuracy is requested for 3D sound reproduction systems, initially designed for acoustical virtual reality and now also employed in the entertainment/cinema industry. Often only monoaural or binaural measurements are performed by means of omni-directional microphones and dummy heads, although international standards like ISO 3382/1:2009 also define some "truly spatial" parameters such as JLF and JLFC. The two latter parameters are derived from measurements made with a pressure velocity (p/v) microphone, but this is still a 2-channel measurement. 3D Impulse Responses (4-channel B-format) have for many years been measured and employed for sound reproduction. Recently, higher-order 3D Impulse Responses have been measurable thanks to the availability of compact microphone arrays employing a much larger number of transducers. In this paper, a procedure for measuring and analysing the complete spatial sound information is presented, which is aimed to create easy-to-understand images and videos showing the direction-ofarrival of the room reflections. The description of this technique is emphasised and applied in the Teatro all'Antica in Sabbioneta, Italy


Current tools for High-Level Synthesis (HLS) excel at exploiting Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP), the support for Data-Level Parallelism (DLP), one of the key advantages of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), is in contrast very limited. This work examines the exploitation of DLP on FPGAs using code generation for C-based HLS of image filters and streaming pipelines, consisting of point and local operators. In addition to well known loop tiling techniques, we propose loop coarsening, which delivers superior performance and scalability. Loop tiling corresponds to splitting an image into separate regions, which are then processed in parallel by replicated accelerators. For data streaming, this also requires the generation of glue logic for the distribution of image data. Conversely, loop coarsening allows to process multiple pixels in parallel, whereby only the kernel operator is replicated within a single accelerator. We augment the FPGA back end of the heterogeneous Domain-Specific Language (DSL) framework HIPAcc by loop coarsening and compare the resulting FPGA accelerators to highly optimized software implementations for Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), all generated from the exact same code base. Moreover, we demonstrate the advantages of code generation for algorithm development by outlining how design space exploration enabled by HIPAcc can yield a more efficient implementation than hand-coded VHDL.


Chinese rural industry has grown three times faster than national GDP, surpassing agriculture in size in 1987, and now nearing half of the total Chinese economy. We use a rich, new county-level data set to explore this dramatic growth. We find that a Cobb-Douglas production function explains over 80 percent of across-county variation in 1991 rural industrial output per capita, with little role for idiosyncratic regional or provincial fixed effects. There is a very large effect on productivity from being near cities (30 to 35 percent higher productivity for a county one standard deviation above average in nearness to population centers) due to embodied technology transfer from urban residents. We find strong support for the hypothesis that saving from past agricultural income has provided start-up capital for rural enterprises. However, higher land-labor ratios lead to greater allocation of labor and capital to agriculture instead of industry, although induced inflow of migrants reduces the effect on industrial labor. Nearness to cities and more education increase capital and labor in rural industry. Substantial explanatory power (one third or more) for industrial labor and capital is attributed to provincial fixed effects, possibly reflecting local commercial and migration policies.