Central Otago is one of the driest parts of New Zealand, and much of the natural vegetation of the region was lost to fires following human settlement in the 13th Century AD. Plant macrofossil and pollen records have provided detailed insights into the vegetation communities that existed in Central Otago's lowlands at the time of human settlement, but relatively little is known about the regional vegetation patterns prior to ~3000 years ago. Here, we present analyses of pollen and plant macrofossil assemblages from a buried cave deposit in the Cromwell Gorge which dates to the early Holocene (~11 700–8300 years ago), a time when the climate was significantly warmer than during the late Holocene. The results show that at this time the local vegetation community consisted of low open scrubland or woodland, very similar to that found there during the late Holocene. Rare tall forest tree pollen was probably derived from distant sources in Southland or coastal Otago, where forest was spreading at this time. The absence of evidence for tree species that were regionally dominant during the late Holocene (Phyllocladus alpinus, Kunzea serotina and Podocarpus hallii), and the abundance of low-growing shrubs, indicates that during the early Holocene the interior valleys of Central Otago may have experienced a climate substantially drier than present.


This paper reviews theoretical results on financial policy. We use basic accounting identities to illustrate relations between gross assets and liabilities, net debt positions and the appropriation of (primary) budget surplus funds. We then discuss Ramsey policies, answering the question how a committed government may use financial instruments to pursue its objectives. Finally, we discuss additional roles for financial policy that arise as a consequence of political frictions, in particular lack of commitment.


The purpose of this community-based action research project was for teachers and Somali families to collaboratively improve communication between parents and teachers at a suburban school in Minnesota. The project used multiple data sources to understand how to improve communication between Somali families and teachers. A teacher survey revealed the current communication practices teachers use at this school. Data was collected for attendance and behavior referrals to see how Somali students related to other students. A Somali family focus group met to discuss communication practices at the school. This group discussed what was going well, what needed to be improved, and the families recommendations to enhance communication. After analyzing the results of the data, the researcher concluded that there is not a consistent method of communication at the school, many teachers do not feel confident in their knowledge of Somali culture, and Somali families face many obstacles in Minnesota. Recommendations from the study included having family nights every few months to inform parents about what is happening at school, educating teachers about Somali culture by visiting a mosque or Somali museum in the community, and developing a consistent communication method at the school.


This qualitative study has been undertaken to address a literature gap relating to the efforts to integrate health and adult social care within England at a time of austerity. This study adopted an interpretivist paradigm utilising a social constructionist epistemology in that there are multiple realities to be understood and different perspectives and perceptions to be explored. This interpretivist study explored the impact of social work within an integrated organisation from the perceptions of the practitioners: social workers, occupational therapists and nurses.

Free-text data from 41 survey respondents were subject to thematic analysis. Subsequently a further 6 interview respondents were also subject to thematic analysis. Data were coded using a multistage approach: coding of comments into general categories (e.g. resources, budgets); coding of subcategories within main categories (e.g. s75 agreement, staffing levels); cross- sectional analysis to identify themes cutting across categories; and mapping of categories/subcategories to corresponding comparable research for comparison.

Most free-text respondents (51 per cent) were from social workers, with 32 per cent from occupational therapists and 17 per cent from nurses. 5 interviewees were social workers (83%) with 1 nurse participant (17%). These respondents provided comments that the author developed into four overarching themes: first, culture – cultural biases and clashes of professional culture within an integrated care organisation which result in a negative experience for professionals and confusion for service users and/or carers. A lack of shared socialisation and the development of a shared culture. Second, austerity: the impact of economic austerity. Third, organisation: conceptual confusion in respect of outlining/organising/ structuring integrated care within a health organisation. Fourth, political: the political drivers of integration.

This study highlights areas of concern specifically for social workers as well as for integrated social care and health, uncovering a number of themes that exist across the integration journey. While most of the comments were negative, analysis reveals concerns shared by substantial numbers of respondents: conceptual confusion in respect of organising integrated care within a health organisation, a lack of shared socialisation and the development of a shared culture within the integrated organisation, and the impact of economic austerity on integrated care. The findings and recommendations are therefore pertinent to many health and social care organisations looking to integrate in the future.


I. IntroductionAn attorney signs a retainer agreement to represent a Connecticut resident allegedly harmed by taking a new prescription drug manufactured by a New York drug company. The attorney will charge a 40% contingency fee according to the agreement. The attorney decides to bring the case in federal court in the Southern District of New York on the basis of diversity jurisdiction and files suit under New York state tort law. Given that the defendant's headquarters are in New York, the plaintiffworks full-time in New York, and the plaintiff's injury-a heart attack-happened in New York, the attorney believes New York law will apply to all substantive legal issues under New York choice-of-law rules.Just weeks later, upon the defendant's motion in this case and in 500 other cases filed nationwide involving the same drug, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation approves the transfer of all 501 cases to the federal district court in Connecticut for consolidated multidistrict litigation (MDL) proceedings. In a matter of months, the defendant settles almost all of its pending claims with the MDL plaintiffs in a single settlement, while the case is still pending before the MDL transferee court.1 The original Connecticut plaintiffsettles for $800,000, and the attorney keeps 40% ($320,000) as her contingency fee. But the Connecticut plaintiffwants the benefit of New York state law, which caps contingency fees for this size settlement at 25%,2 or $200,000 in this case. Can the Connecticut plaintiffenforce the state contingency fee caps?Stated differently, the question posed by this hypothetical is whether state laws capping contingency fees apply to settlements of federal diversity cases pending before MDL transferee courts. Because several state laws broadly cap contingency fee awards, this question will continue to arise in cases consolidated through the MDL process. This question also raises a plethora of interesting legal issues, including the application of state law in federal courts, the possibility of forum shopping between state and federal forums, and the equities among plaintiffs and their counsel, all consolidated in the same MDL court.This Note ultimately argues that state contingency fee caps should apply to settlements of federal diversity cases pending before MDL courts. Part II of this Note begins by giving background on state contingency fee caps and the MDL consolidation process. Part III then moves to the Note's core analysis: it argues that state fee caps should apply to MDL settlements for three important reasons. Next, Part IV addresses two policy concerns that critics have advanced against the analysis in Part III. After resolving these policy concerns, the Note briefly concludes in Part V.II. Background on State Contingency Fee Caps and MDL ConsolidationA. State Contingency Fee CapsSeveral state laws broadly cap contingency fees in most kinds of tort suits.3 For example, New Jersey's rule caps contingency fees in all tort cases, "including products liability claims . . . but excluding statutorily based discrimination and employment claims."4 Other state laws cap contingency fees in more narrow contexts, like medical malpractice or worker's compensation suits.5 For the purposes of this Note, the state contingency fee caps that apply broadly are most relevant, since many MDL settlements arise outside of the narrower contexts like medical malpractice.6 This Note addresses three states' broad contingency fee caps-those of New Jersey, New York, and Florida-as examples of the kinds of state caps at issue. What follows is a brief description of each of these states' fee caps.New Jersey's fee caps are found in a rule entitled "Contingent Fees" within the New Jersey Rules of Court.7 As mentioned, the New Jersey caps apply "[i]n any matter where a client's claim for damages is based upon the alleged tortious conduct of another" with the exception of statute-based discrimination and employment claims. …


Tuberculosis (TB) has plagued the humanity for several thousands of years. The bacteria causing TB is mainly spread from person to person as an aerosol transmission. It is estimated that one third of the world's population is infected with the disease; about 10% of these will develop active TB during their lifetime. In year 2000, 8 million TB-cases were detected, of which 2 million died. Except for studies of the correlation between TB and HIV/AIDS, the epidemiology of TB in developing countries has been little investigated. The aims of this thesis have been to evaluate risk factors for positive tuberculin skin test (TST), which is the test for diagnosing TB infection, in the population and among TB-case household members, to assess incidence and risk factors for active TB, and to determine clinical predictors for death in TB patients.

A study area in Bissau, the capital of Guinea-Bissau, with a population of about 43,000 has been followed through a demographic census system for over 25 years. In 1996, a TB surveillance system was set up in the area; all adults (age >15 years) with active TB within the chest were included. The background data from the census system allows analyses comparing TB-cases with the whole population.

From 1996 to 2001 a total of 811 TB-cases were included and investigated. The risk of positive TST was closely related to previous or recent exposure to TB, and among the family members of the TB cases the extent of contact was important. BCG vaccination status did not confound the interpretation of the test. TST performed during the early rainy season, from June to August, resulted in smaller reactions, and testing during these months may confound the results. The incidence of active TB in the area was high; 471/100,000 for the adult population. Both HIV-1 and HIV-2 infection greatly increased the risk for TB, although the effect was considerably higher for HIV-1. Other independent risk factors for active TB corresponded well with factors believed to increase the risk also during the epidemic situation in Europe and USA during the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century: male sex, older age, poverty, less schooling and more adults in the family (adult crowding). Interestingly it seemed as if children had a protective influence; children in the household reduced the risk for TB among the adults. The mortality was increased for HIV-1-positive TB-cases, but also co-infection with HIV-2 increased the risk of death compared to HIV-negative. Signs of weakened immune function, such as oral candida infection, and malnutrition increased the risk of dying in both HIV-positive and HIV-negative patients. Estimating the degree of malnutrition using the mid-upper-arm circumference provided a good tool in the evaluation of increased risk for TB death. A civil war 1998-1999 caused involuntary treatment interruption among the patients which considerably increased the mortality, an effect that was most marked in HIV-positive. The increased mortality in HIV-positive TB-cases continued also after the war had ended.


Earth Systems, a new course developed expressly for pre-service middle school teachers, was developed in response to new Ohio Academic Content Standards in Science and the rigorous Ohio Graduation Test. The course is designed to increase students' content knowledge, research skills and confidence in teaching Earth systems science. It is broken into three modules in which students examine volcanic eruptions, global warming, and the latest ice age. Working in teams, the students determine how each of the above phenomena affects and is affected by Earth's systems. The students then jigsaw into new teams to work out how the various effects in the system create positive and negative feedbacks that determine the ultimate impact of the event (eruption, etc,) on the Earth system. Each group produces a report that is assessed using a rubric. Students are individually assessed through lesson plans and journals.


This Licentiate thesis presents research accomplished at theSection of Atomic and Molecular Physics at the Royal Instituteof Technology in Stockholm using photon induced fluorescencespectroscopy (PIFS) during the last two years.The main results presented are summarized:- Neutral photodissociation in CO was observed aftersynchrotron photon excitation in the range 19-26 eV bycollecting dispersed fluorescence from excited neutral C atoms.Follow-up ab initio calculations point out CO Rydberg seriesconverging to the CO+ C and D states as precursors.- The branching ratio between N2 + (B-X)(v'=1,v''=2) and (v'=0,v''=1)transitions in the 20-46 eV energy range reveals strongnon-Franck-Condon effects. Ab initio calculations indicate thatthe autoionization of certain superexcited states areresponsible for some of the structures present in the branchingratio curve, confirming the important role of non-Rydbergdoubly excited resonant states (NRDERS) in de-excitationprocesses above the ionization potential.- Photon induced neutral dissociation processes in NO arereported. Neither Rydberg series nor other molecular states inNO known so far can account for the collected data. From abinitio calculations more information regarding the NO precursorstates and the mechanism behind the observed neutraldissociation were obtained.- The details of a new experimental set-up for gas phasefluorescence measurements using synchrotron radiation aredescribed. It is able to perform simultaneous measurements ofdispersed and total fluorescence in the visible range. Thefirst results obtained with this set-up are presented,concerning fluorescence after excitation of the N2 molecules inthe N 1s edge.These four studies conform the set of papers enclosed in theLicentiate thesis.Finally a pre-study to further apply PIFS to speciespreviously excited by microwave discharge is included as futureplans.


This publication provides a collection of material useful to planners and managers of parks and protected areas in East Asia. It has been designed to help them think about the influx of tourism to natural protected areas, and to urge them to consciously plan for management of the interactions of tourists and the natural and cultural environment. General suggestions have been made that each jurisdiction and park can use when developing their own approaches to policy development, funding, implementation and management. Local communities, private tourism operators and land-use planners will also be able to use various sections of this document to assist their practices in being more sustainable


This paper examines the complex factors facilitating the rise of high frequency trading (HFT) from a historical perspective. Over the course of several decades, various stock market regulations and reforms, championed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), created room for HFT to develop and flourish. While advancements in technology initially may appear to be the primary cause of HFT, in fact, HFT could not exist (or at least, not to the extent it does today) if certain rules and older ways of doing business on the exchanges were still in place, and if other regulations did not support its existence. This paper identifies multiple factors contributing to the eventual rise of HFT: decimalization, the decline of the specialist system, market fragmentation, rate deregulation, the repeal of the uptick rule, demutualization of the stock exchanges, and the institution of Regulation National Market System [NMS]. Moreover, it seeks to position these developments within the broader context of long-standing aims and themes embraced by the SEC.


Abstract. Temperature-dependent volume nucleation rate coefficients for supercooled water droplets, JV(T), are derived from infrared extinction measurements in a cryogenic laminar aerosol flow tube using a microphysical model. The model inverts water and ice aerosol size distributions retrieved from experimental extinction spectra by considering the evolution of a measured initial droplet distribution via homogeneous nucleation and the exchange of vapour-phase water along a well-defined temperature profile. Experiment and model results are reported for supercooled water droplets with mean radii of 1.0, 1.7, and 2.9 μm. Values of mass accommodation coefficients for evaporation of water droplets and vapour deposition on ice particles are also determined from the model simulations. The coefficient for ice deposition was found to be 0.031 ± 0.001, while that for water evaporation was 0.054 ± 0.012. Results are considered in terms of the applicability of classical nucleation theory to the freezing of micrometre-sized droplets in cirrus clouds, with implications for the parameterization of homogeneous ice nucleation in numerical models.


In many respects it is Jamaican women who play a pivotal role in small-scale farming, particularly in marketing farm produce. More highly educated than men, and gender-wise, women farmers are highly self-reliant; however, their socio-economic strength is not fully capitalized through cooperative endeavors to foster productivity on their farms. This research examines women's cooperatives and the operations of women farmers in two remote rural communities using focus group discussion and targeted on-site investigation approaches. We find that over the years, small farming cooperatives are unsustainable because of their land-tenure problem, and lack of decision-making power at the grassroots level. The research suggests that the potential of women farmers in rural Jamaica has not been well utilized to foster their farming cooperatives. Crucially needed is the promotion of grassroots-based farming groupings to ensure the durability of cooperatives, as well as a multi-sector approach in agriculture, and the intensification of appropriate technological applications in all stages of farming, coupled with micro-food processing. Furthermore, a conducive environment for agricultural production and economic return requires land reform, increasing marketing opportunities, and cooperatives based on the diversification of agricultural and non-agricultural activities.


This article explores the promotion of a young adult literature collection to promote pleasure reading and literacy among the students of Bowling Green State University. Due to the rising crossover appeal of many YA titles among adults, an established but underused young adult collection within the library was identified as a way to serve students looking for popular titles. An effort to promote YA literature throughout the library was subsequently undertaken. Results showed an increase in circulation of YA literature, reflecting a desire for recreational reading and a willingness among college students to read YA literature.


In "Victoria's Wars: The Rise of Empire" Saul David explores the early part of Queen Victoria's reign, when the British Empire was well on the way to becoming the greatest empire the world had ever seen. This is the story of how it happened and the people who made it happen. In a fast-moving narrative ranging from London to the harsh terrain of India, Russia and the Far East, Saul David shows how Britain ruthlessly exploited her position as the world's only superpower to expand her empire. Yet little of this territorial acquisition was planned or sanctioned by the home government. Instead it was largely the work of the men on the ground, and to those at home it really did seem that the empire was acquired in a 'fit of absence of mind'. Saul David creates a vivid portrait of life on the violent fringes of empire, and of the seemingly endless and brutal wars that were fought in the name of trade, civilization and the balance of power. "Splendid ...a terrific treasure-chest of anecdotes ...a splendidly brisk, cool and judicious narrator". ("Daily Telegraph"). "Incisive and acute ...thorough and occasionally revelatory, [David] always finds a telling phrase, an eye-catching detail or a human story". ("Sunday Times"). Saul David is Professor of War Studies at the University of Buckingham and the author of several critically acclaimed history books, including "The Indian Mutiny: 1857" (shortlisted for the Westminster Medal for Military Literature), "Zulu: The Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879" (a Waterstone's Military History Book of the Year) and, most recently, "Victoria's Wars: The Rise of Empire".


America's Hundred Years' War: U.S. Expansion to the Gulf Coast and the Fate of the Seminole, 1763-1858. Edited by William S. Belko. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011. Pp. 279. Cloth, $65.00.)The Mississippi Territory and the Southwest Frontier, 1795-1817. By Robert V. Haynes. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010. Pp. 431. Cloth, $50.00.)Nexus of Empire: Negotiating Loyalty and Identity in the Revolutionary Borderlands, 1760s-1820s. Edited by Gene Allen Smith and Sylvia L. Hilton. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010. Pp. 375. Paper, $32.95.)Reviewed by Nathaniel MillettFor many years, the colonial and early nineteenth-century Southeast and Gulf Coast inhabited the margins of America's popular and scholarly historical imagination. There were many reasons for this. Since large portions of the regions were, at various times, Spanish or French colonial possessions, the area does not neatly conform to an Anglo-centric view of the American past. The regions' heterogeneous population and culture further supported such beliefs. To many historians, the Southeast and Gulf Coast were an odd appendage to the history of North America that did not become important until the territories were acquired by the United States.Recent years have witnessed a reversal in the tendency to marginalize the early history of the Southeast and Gulf Coast. This has occurred as a generation of scholars, often trained as historians of the Atlantic world, borderlands, Native Americans, or African Americans, have questioned the traditional chronological, geographic, and human contours of colonial and nineteenth-century North American history. Armed with cutting-edge methodologies, language skills, and a willingness to borrow from various disciplines, historians such as Claudio Saunt, Jane Landers, Daniel Usner, Adam Rothman, and Peter Kastor, to name but a few, have more squarely situated the Southeast and Gulf South within the broader history of North America. America's Hundred Tears' War, The Mississippi Territory and the Southwest Frontier, and Nexus of Empire continue this trend.America's Hundred Years' War is a collection of nine essays and an introduction. According to the collection's editor, William Belko, "The chapters within this volume reassess the traditional periods provided for U.S.-Seminole relations, and, in the process, advocate a new approach to how we look at the relationship between American expansion and the adverse effects of such expansion on the Seminole people" (6). This is an ambitious goal."So in Fear of Both the Indians and the Americans" by Susan Richbourg Parker, the first essay in the volume, begins not in 1763, as is suggested in the collection's title or its thesis, but rather in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris. Indeed the period between 1763 and 1783 warrants virtually no attention in Parker's essay or the volume as a whole. Ideally the volume could have either begun with an essay that examined the experience of the Seminoles during the British period of Florida's history (1763-1783) or scaled back the thesis to begin in 1783. Nonetheless, Parker's essay is a good overview of the chaotic conditions that defined the Southeast in the first years of the Second Spanish period. The Seminoles, who missed the presence of their British benefactors and had little regard for the chronically weak Spanish, were forced into an increasingly defensive posture as American-led cross-border violence became the norm. James Cusick follows with "King Payne and His Policies. A Framework for Understanding the Diplomacy of the Seminoles of La Chua, 1784-1812." Cusick's essay is an excellent example of how a scholar can capture a Native perspective. In Cusick's telling, Payne was a shrewd practitioner of realpolitik in an increasingly volatile period that took a stark turn for the worse in 1812. Belko's essay on the First Seminole War argues, in great detail, that the war (1817-1818) and the events that both preceded and followed are best understood in the context of Anglo-American rivalry and a corresponding American fear of British designs in the Southeast. …


Rural accessibility is the only metric used in the Sustainable Development Goals to track progress toward better transport services in low- and middle-income countries. This paper estimates the rural accessibility index, defined as the proportion of the rural population who live within 2 kilometers of an all-season road, in 166 countries using open data. It then explores the cost of increasing the rural accessibility index in 19 countries, using an algorithm that prioritizes rural roads investments based on their impact on rural access and connectivity. Investment costs quickly balloon as the rural accessibility index increases, questioning the affordability of universal access to paved roads for many countries by 2030. If countries spent 1 percent of their gross domestic product annually on the upgrade of rural roads, even under optimistic assumptions on growth of gross domestic product, rural accessibility would only increase from 39 to 52 percent by 2030 across all developing countries. Alternative solutions to rural integration must thus be implemented in the short run until countries can afford to increase significantly access to all weather roads. For example, drones that supply regular food and medicine supply to remote communities are much more affordable than roads in the short term.


We address the problem of formal and automated security verification of transport protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSN) that may perform cryptographic operations. The verification of this class of protocols is difficult because they typically consist of complex behavioral characteristics, such as real-time, probabilistic, and cryptographic operations. To solve this problem, we propose a probabilistic timed calculus for cryptographic protocols and demonstrate how to use this formal language for proving security or vulnerability of protocols. The main advantage of the proposed language is that it supports an expressive syntax and semantics, allowing for studying real-time, probabilistic, and cryptographic issues at the same time. Hence, it can be used to verify systems that involve these three properties in a convenient way. In addition, we propose an automatic verification method, based on the well-known PAT process analysis toolkit, for this class of protocols. For demonstration purposes, we apply the proposed manual and automatic proof methods for verifying the security of DTSN and SDTP, which are two of the recently proposed WSN transport protocols.


Future smart cities are demanding for new infrastructures and networks. Novel multifunctional objects should be able to acquire, store and transmit information, generate their own energy need, light up the surroundings and more.  Thanks to their transparency, glass structures are ideal support for hi-tech components because of the inherent opportunity offered by laminated glass to embed PV cells, sensors, OLEDs and lighting devices. The project HYbrid GLAss-Steel Stele (HYGLASS) aims at the realization of a cantilevering hybrid vertical structure working as a stand-alone or a grid-connected smart tower. The facetted geometry of the construction originates from the tetrahelix solid, and its structural conception is based on segmentation and post-tensioning, which are the same basic principles of the Travi Vitree Tensegrity (TVT). The spatial complexity and the height of the tower (about 7.00 meters) requires a high ULS safety level that is obtained by designing the structure to withstand the worst-case scenario of all panels cracked. To this purpose and to facilitate the assembly operations, a filigree metal skeleton is placed at the edges of the base polyhedron. Equal triangular glass panels are corner clamped into special nodes at the vertices of the solid. Modularity and dry connections facilitate an easy replacement of the damaged components. FE nonlinear analyses highlight the safe design and efficiency of the system. Such structural concept is the key to extent the hybrid glass-steel construction to the domain of self-supporting high-rise and long-spanned structures or building skins.


: Radome causes refraction of the incoming rardar wave in radar-guided interceptors, thus having a destabilizing effect on the guidance loop, especially at high altitudes. Therefore, a compensator is required to maintain the stability of the guidance loop and causes minimum miss distance in the presence of radome error. From the control perspective, Radome causes an unwanted feedback that is not similar to the conventional feedback loops, in which output must follow a desired control signal. In this paper, the desired closed-loop response is determined first, then a novel approach is proposed to shape the frequency response of the feedforward path so that the stability and performance requirements are satisfied . Frequency response is shaped by linear matrix inequality (LMI) tools and v-gap metric is used to select the best frequency response. Simulation results show that the designed compensator drastically decreases the miss distance, while the stability is guaranteed.


The interaction of agricultural land cover area between land use systems and level of household income was identified. The annual cropland area was significantly higher than the natural pastureland and perennial cropland. The difference in household income earned was not significant between the annual crop and livestock. Such a difference however is not surprising because smallholder land system is a dual asset, and farm components are interrelated to and interdependent upon each other. In one season directly and simultaneously, the diversified forms of agricultural land provide food and feed that reduce the direct allocation of land for grazing. Nonetheless, decisions made in the household on the land use allocation for farm enterprise is neither random nor optional but are through behavioural adaptation of the system in changing condition, emerging opportunity and its ability to maximize choice and utility in the household. The study set up was initiated from the characterization of smallholder mixed crop-livestock systems divided into different agro-ecological zones for land use in South-western Ethiopia. Agricultural productivity in a smallholder system is chiefly an aggregate effect of interaction between elements and component, specialization and diversity in a farming system mainly found in food production biomass base. Several challenges, however, limit various positive significant balance reflected in the food and non-food production biomass base, as well as non-farm activities.

 Key words: Agricultural productivity performance, agro-ecology, crop-livestock, draught animal power, soil distribution, system interaction.


BACKGROUND AND AIMS
Chronic myeloproliferative diseases (MPDs) are heterogenous group of haematological malignant disorders. It is now a well recognized fact that the JAK2 (V617F) mutation occurs in majority of the patients with polycythaemia vera (PV) and half of those with myelofibrosis and essential thrombocythaemia. The presence of JAK2 (V617F) mutation is considered an important criterion for the exclusion of secondary-reactive from clonal disorders. In the present uni-institutional study, we analyzed the JAK2 (V617F) mutation status in the ethnic Malay and Chinese patients who were diagnosed as MPDs.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The study was performed on known cases of chronic MPDs either at diagnosis or during the follow-up. A total of 45 cases were studied with informed consent. The allele specific PCR, ARMS-PCR and RQ-PCR methods were used.

RESULTS
The frequency of the JAK2 (V617F) mutation varied between the MPD subtypes, with the mutation being most frequent in PV (95.8%) and 39% showed homozygous mutant allele. The mutation was detected in 52.9% cases of ET, of which 36.4% were homozygous for the mutant allele and 1 case of MF was homozygous for the mutant allele.

CONCLUSION
Screening for the mutation in all cases suspected of chronic MPD could be beneficial in differentiating patients with reactive erthrocytosis or thrombocytosis from the true clonal MPDs especially polycythaemia vera.


Nowhere is the scarcity of water more evident than in the Rio Grande Valley shared by Las Cruces, New Mexico, El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. The battle for control over water has already strained relations between the three cities, the three states and two national governments. The controversy brings out many of the fundamental questions that arise when the utilization of a valuable and relatively scarce resource is discussed. In this article we will analyze the way in which water has been allocated in El Paso County. We will address specifically the issue of El Paso County's colonias (the unincorporated rural settlements without basic water and sewage services). Neither governmental nor private entities (developers) have provided water or sewage service to the colonias . This, compounded with poor housing conditions, becomes a threat to all, as disease spreads rapidly in the unsanitary conditions present in many colonias . Why has the population in the colonias grown so rapidly? Why do the colonias have such poor infrastructure and lack so many services? What are the politics behind water apportionment in the county? These are some of the questions that this aricle will address. Section I will review the causes for the development of the colonias . Section II will describe the water resources available in the El Paso-Juarez region. In Section III, the politics of water allocation in the county will be discussed. Section IV describes efforts by Mexican Americans and the grassroots organization EPISO to bring water and waste treatment facilities into the colonias . Finally, in the conclusion, we review the lessons that can be learned about water disputes and Lagino empowerment.


This essay examines the collision of Renaissance narrative or historia in the visual arts and the eyewitnessed event and the pressure put on that convergence by the dissemination of the latter in the new print media. The example discussed here is the Council of Trent, a storyless but signal event that conformed with difficulty to an ideal "historia," and one that was often depicted after eyewitnessed scenes of the event had already been disseminated in engravings. The veracity of the scene captured in a print created new chains of media: prints led to paintings, and to more prints, and images led to written history, rather than vice versa.


This paper examines the manner by which transactions costs in financial markets, broadly defined, not only derive from the regulatory-institutional framework, but in turn affect the development of this framework. We develop a simple model of policymaking with common agency that embeds endogenous transactions costs and institutions, so that the two are allowed to influence each other over time. Our approach seeks to go beyond attributing the crisis to either complex finance or regulatory/government failures, since such explanations generate necessary but not sufficient conditions for a financial crisis. Instead, we focus on the central role of rising transactions costs. We document the increasing presence of such costs in the U.S. financial sector since 1980, along with how changes in transactions costs coevolved with regulatory and institutional innovations over the past 30 years. We argue that such transactions costs amplified an ever-greater disconnect between market prices and their economic fundamentals, and increased financial fragility to the point that the system became vulnerable to the 2007/08 financial crisis.


Purpose: We developed a plan quality classification model to assess IMRT plan quality of prostate cancer patients for automatic plan quality control. Methods : For hollow organs such as rectum and bladder, dose-wall-histogram (DWH) was used to evaluate OAR dose sparing in our institution. Correspondingly, we proposed a new descriptor called overlap-wall-histogram (OWH) to describe the complex spatial relationship between PTV and a hollow organ. Two metrics calculated from the OWH and DWH are introduced to quantitatively evaluate the difficulty of patient geometry for planning and plan quality in terms of OAR sparing, respectively. A linear correlation between these two metrics was observed after plotting plan quality metric as a function of geometry difficulty metric studied from a database of prostate cases treated in our institution with acceptable plan quality. Thus, a fitting line was built acting as the boundary of high quality and poor quality plans. A query plan falling above the boundary is assessed as high quality, vice versa poor quality. Results: 15 prostate IMRT plans were used to test our model. One was identified as poor quality and the others were common-level. After re-planning all plans, the dose constraints for bladder wall W75 (percentage of wall receiving more than 75Gy), W 70 , W 65 and W 60 can be reduced by 3.34%, 3%, 6.99%, 6.54% for that poor quality plan and 1.11%, 0.95%, 1.45% and 1.81% averagely for the common-level quality group, without sacrificing PTV coverage and rectum dose sparing. Conclusion : An effective model was built to provide automatic IMRT plan quality control by evaluating hollow OAR dose sparing for prostate cancer patients. Furthermore, for the query plan with poor quality, potential improvement of plan quality can be estimated and a good reference plan with similar or harder geometry can be automatically chosen from our database to help guide the re-planning if necessary. --------------------------- Cite this article as : Song T, Tian Z, Jia X, Zhou L, Jiang SB, Gu X. A plan quality classifier derived with overlap-wall-histogram of hollow organs for automatic IMRT plan quality control of prostate cancer cases. Int J Cancer Ther Oncol 2014; 2(2):020241. DOI: 10.14319/ijcto.0202.41


Celebrity model Ines de La Fressange shares the well-kept secrets of how Parisian women maintain effortless glamour and timeless allure. Ines de La Fressange Frances icon of chic shares her personal tips for living with style and charm, gleaned from decades in the fashion industry. She offers specific pointers on how to dress like a Parisian, including how to mix affordable basics with high-fashion touches, and how to accessorize. Her step-by-step dos and donts are accompanied by fashion photography, and this book is personalized with her charming drawings. Ines also shares how to bring Parisian chic into your home, and how to insert your signature style into any space even the office. The ultra chic red volume is flexi-bound with a wrapper band and features off set aquarelle paper. Complete with her favorite addresses for finding the ultimate fashion and decorating items, this is a musthave for any woman who wants to add a touch of Paris to her own style.


Amino acid analysis is an important procedure to measure free amino acids (AAs) in various samples including proteins, blood plasma, urine, foods and beverages. Due to the complexity of these samples, chemical separations are required to determine the composition and quantities of AAs. Here, we report a fast and accurate approach to quantify AAs in beers. This method was based on a flow-gated capillary electrophoresis (CE) system coupled with alternate injections enabled by a micro-fabricated switch. AAs in beer samples and standard solutions were fluorogenically derivatized with 2,3-naphthalenedicarboxaldehyde (NDA) in the presence of cyanide. The two derivatized mixtures were then loaded into two separate micro-syringes and were alternately delivered to the flow gate for rapid injections and separations. Here, the standards functioned as side-by-side calibration and quantitation references. The separation of 21 AA derivatives was achieved within 90 seconds under an electric field of 1470 V cm−1 by using optimized background electrolytes consisting of 40 mM sodium tetraborate, 60 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate, and 2 mM 2-hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin, and theoretical plates of >300k for most AAs were obtained. The beer matrix effect was studied, and the quantitation of AAs was conducted by directly comparing the peak heights of analytes with those of their individual self-standards. The method was validated with respect to the linearity, precision, and accuracy, and was applied to the measurements of 21 AAs in eight different beer samples. The results demonstrated the quantitative capability of flow-gated CE coupled with alternate injections for side-by-side calibration that was able to compensate for potential drift of the CE system. The developed method is expected to be valuable for high-throughput amino acid analysis of a variety of samples.


Context: Cervical cancer is most common type of cancer in women of rural India. More than 60-70% of cancers are diagnosed in later stages with poor survival rate. Screening helps in early detection of cervical cancer and better survival. Awareness and attitude of women towards cervical cancer screening may determine health-seeking behavior. As per operational framework of cancer screening in India, community health workers will be key mobilizers for encouraging women to undergo cervical cancer screening. Aim: This study aims to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of cervical cancer and its screening amongst community health workers of Varanasi district, Uttar Pradesh. Settings and Design: Descriptive, cross-sectional study was done to assess the socio demographic profile and KAP for cervical cancer and its screening of community health workers. Scoring for awareness and attitude for cervical cancer screening was done. Statistical Analysis Used: Descriptive statistics such as mean±SD, frequency and proportion were used for socio-demographic data and KAP of study population. Determinants of knowledge and practice for screening was determined using Chi-square test. P value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: We observed that despite of good knowledge and perception less than 10 percent of workers have undergone screening. Significant association was seen between level of knowledge and practice of screening. Conclusion: It is of utmost importance that narrowing of existing gap between the perception and practice of cervical cancer screening should be initiated through introducing more educational programs for workers and encouraging them to participate in screening campaigns.


The process of educating future architects and designers around the world varies dramatically. However, there is one striking similarity – the dominance of the design studio as the main forum for knowledge acquisition and assimilation, and for creative exploration and interaction. Such a setting encompasses intensive cognitive and physical activities, which ultimately result in conceptualizing meaningful environments proposed to accommodate related human activities. The design studio is the primary space where students explore their creative skills that are so prized by the profession; it is the kiln where future architects are molded. It has occupied a central position since architectural education was formalized two centuries ago in France and later in Germany, the rest of Europe, North America, and the rest of the world. My personal experience of the design studio comes principally from being academic, studio educator, and researcher on architectural education and studio teaching practices for over fifteen years. Continuous endeavors have resulted in a number of publications that analyzed traditional studio while probing into the motivations of my colleague educators and allowing for critical examination of studio pedagogy (Salama, 1995; 1996; 1998; 1999; 2002; 2005; 2006). My passion for a continued exploration and investigation of the studio underlying rituals, teaching styles and learning outcomes, design processes and studio projects motivated me to entertain the idea of guest editing this issue and to venture a call for contributions for soliciting visions and experiences on the theme. This initiation was further encouraged and supported by the Editor in Chief – Nicholas Wilkinson. This issue of Open House International-OHI is concerned with the studio pedagogy's increasing importance within the context of contemporary architectural and design education, a crucial subject that poses itself confidently on the map of current academic research. Twelve papers are included; of them, nine were selected from over 30 submission responses to the call for contributions. These are of Nisha Fernando; Kevin Mitchell, Malika Bose, Eliza Pennypacker, and Tom Yahner; Tasoulla Hadjiyanni; Carlos Balsas; Rabee Reffat; Jeffrey Hou and Min-Jay Kang; Jamal Al Qawasmi; and Jeffrey Haase. Three papers were selected as they won the first three awards of the International Architectural Education Competition entitled "Alternative Educational Ways for Teaching and Learning Architectural Design," which was organized in 2005 by Open House International and the Faculty of Architecture, Eastern Mediterranean University, Northern Cyprus. Results were announced in April 2006 and the three winners were Joongsub Kim (1st Prize); Noam Austerlitz & Avigail Sachs, (2nd Prize); and Guita Farivarsadri & Ustun Alsac (3rd Prize).


Bark flour from ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) was consolidated into pellets using citric acid as cross-linking agent. The pellets were evaluated for removal of toxic heavy metals from synthetic aqueous solutions. When soaked in water, pellets did not leach tannins, and they showed high adsorption capacity for Cu(II), Zn(II), Cd(II), and Ni(II) under both equilibrium and dynamic adsorption conditions. The experimental data for Cd(II) and Zn(II) showed a better fit to the Langmuir than to the Freundlich isotherm. The Cu(II) data best fit the Freundlich isotherm, and the Ni(II) data fitted both Freundlich and Langmuir isotherms equally. According to the Freundlich constant KF, adsorption capacity of pelletized bark for the metal ions in aqueous solution, pH 5.1 ± 0.2, followed the order Cd(II) > Cu(II) > Zn(II) >> Ni(II); according to the Langmuir constant b, adsorption affinity followed the order Cd(II) >> Cu(II) ≈ Zn(II) >> Ni(II). Although data from dynamic column adsorption experiments did not show a good fit to the Thomas kinetic adsorption model, estimates of sorption affinity series of the metal ions on pelletized bark derived from this model were not consistent with the series derived from the Langmuir or Freundlich isotherms and followed the order Cu(II) > Zn(II) ≈ Cd(II) > Ni(II). According to the Thomas kinetic model, the theoretical maximum amounts of metal that can be sorbed on the pelletized bark in a column at influent concentration of ≈10 mg/L and flow rate = 5 mL/min were estimated to be 57, 53, 50, and 27 mg/g for copper, zinc, cadmium, and nickel, respectively. This study demonstrated the potential for converting low-cost bark residues to value-added sorbents using starting materials and chemicals derived from renewable resources. These sorbents can be applied in the removal of toxic heavy metals from waste streams with heavy metal ion concentrations of up to 100 mg/L in the case of Cu(II).


In today's WDM all-optical networks, a majority of existing virtual topology design algorithms have ignored link-performance limiting factors such as dispersion, amplified spontaneous emission (ASE), cross talk resulting from signal leakage in optical cross connects (OXCs), and fiber nonlinearities. All these factors result in bit-error-rate (BER) degradation at the receiving end. To maintain a BER below a certain level, some lightpaths in the network will require regeneration at the intermediate nodes, thus, setting up a lightpath in a multihop manner. In synchronous optical network (SONET) ring networks, the terminal equipment cost associated with electronic multiplexing is predominantly high. Wavelength add–drop multiplexers reduce the amount of SONET terminal equipment at each node by allowing certain wavelengths or bands to bypass the node optically without being electronically terminated. Most of the previous research in this area has focused on the virtual topology design and wavelength-routing algorithms to address the cost savings. Here we consider both unidirectional path-switched and bidirectional line-switched rings (UPSR, BLSR/2) with optical bypass. We analytically derive a relationship for the number of regenerators to support both single-hub and all-to-all situations for uniform and nonuniform traffic cases with an arbitrary internodal length distribution. We obtain lower and upper bounds for regeneration cost on a ring when nodes are randomly placed. Equivalency is established between UPSR and BLSR/2 networks in terms of regeneration cost for cases of single link failure. Regeneration cost advantage is shown for nonzero dispersion-shifted fiber (NZDSF) over standard single-mode fiber in dispersion-limited regimes.


the problem of creating an adaptive source coding algorithm for a genomic encryption protocol using a small alphabet such as the nucleotide bases represented in the genetic code. For codewords derived from an alphabet of N plaintext with probability of occurrence, p, we describe a mapping into a floating point representation of the codewords which are translated into genomic codewords derived from a novel modification of the Shannon-Fano-Elias coding process. Errors in the reverse decoding process are processed through an adaptive, self-correcting codebook to determine the best fit codeword decoding solution. A genetic algorithmic approach to error correction within the source coding is also summarized.


Digital healthcare is becoming increasingly important as the ageing population and the number of people diagnosed with chronic diseases is increasing. The face of healthcare delivery has changed radically and at its core is a digital and customer revolution. Connected health is the convergence of medical devices, security devices, and communication technologies. It enables patients to be monitored and treated remotely from their home or primary care facility rather than attend outpatient clinics or be admitted to hospital. This chapter discusses the recent advances in connected health technologies and applications. The authors investigate a reconfigurable supporting connected health solution for people with chronic diseases using reconfigurable hardware and intelligent data interpretation and analysis. In addition, a thorough review of the existing information and communications technologies and challenges in the area of connected health including embedded medical devices, sensors, social networking, knowledge management, data fusion, and cloud computing is presented in this chapter. Finally, future directions and ongoing research in the area of connected health are presented.


Numerous studies have examined the effect of cigarette prices on cigarette consumption. These studies either evaluate the price elasticity of demand for each observation and report the average price elasticity across all observations or report the price elasticity of demand at the mean of the price variable. Policy makers rely on these average price elasticity estimates for public health and revenue generation purposes. The use of an average price elasticity may yield misleading predictions given the substantial variation in cigarette prices between states. This research is the first econometric study to examine the price elasticity of cigarette demand at different price levels. We use aggregate state-level data for years 1991 – 2012 and employ generalized linear models with log link and gamma distribution to estimate cigarette demand equations. We find that the absolute value of the price elasticity of demand monotonically increases with price. The findings from this study will be valuable to policymakers contemplating the use of cigarette excise taxes to reduce cigarette consumption or to generate revenue.


H.264/AVC adopts many directional spatial prediction models in block-based manner that neighboring pixels on the left and top sides yield prediction for the pixels in a data block to be encoded. However, such models may adapt poorly to the rich textures inside blocks of video signal. In this letter, a new lossless intra coding method based on pixel-wise interleave prediction is presented to enhance the compression performance of H.264/AVC. In our scheme, pixels are coded alternately with interleave prediction, which makes full use of reconstructed pixels to predict later ones in bidirectional or multidirectional manner. Extensive experiments demonstrate that compared to the H.264/AVC standard, our scheme has higher compression ratio, especially for sequences of high resolution. In addition, the scheme can be regarded as a frame-level coding mode and can be easily integrated into the H.264/AVC framework.


In today's knowledge economy, technology is utilized more than ever to deliver instructional material to the learner. Nonetheless, information may not always be presented in a manner that maximizes the learning experience resulting in a negative impact on learning outcomes. Drawing on the Task-Technology Fit model, a research model was developed to investigate the influence of various factors on learning outcomes in computer-mediated learning environments. Specifically, a laboratory experiment was conducted to examine the influence of vividness, interactivity, task complexity, and learning style on learning outcomes in the context of learning procedural knowledge. Overall, strong support was found in support of the proposed research model. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.


This is the third and final report on the Kankakee River in Illinois supported by the Conservation 2000 Program of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. For this project, the Illinois State Water Survey mapped the bank erosion of the main stem of the Kankakee River from the Route 30 bridge in Indiana to the mouth of the Kankakee River with the Illinois River near Wilmington, collected about 100 bed and bank material samples, resurveyed all the previously surveyed river cross sections, surveyed four sand bars, and analyzed all historical and new data. This research has shown that of 223.6 river bank miles (includes both sides of the river), about 10.4 river bank miles have severe erosion, 39.4 river bank miles have moderate erosion, 70.8 river bank miles have minor erosion, and the remainder are either protected or stabilized or data are not available. The median diameter of the bed materials varied from 0.27 millimeters (mm) to 0.52 mm. The median diameter of bank materials varied from 0.07 mm to 0.41 mm. Analyses of the long-term flows from six gaging stations in Illinois showed an increasing trend in flows through the 1960s with no discernible increase since that time. Cross-sectional analyses of the river from the Kankakee Dam to the State Line Bridge did show some trends. The river reach from the Kankakee Dam to Aroma Park called SixMile Pool has lost 13.4 percent of its capacity due to sediment deposition since 1980. Similarly, Momence Wetland also has lost about 10.2 percent of its capacity since 1980. The section of the river between Aroma Park and Singleton Ditch showed both scour and sediment deposition. In general areas close to Aroma Park exhibited sediment deposition and the middle reach experienced scour. The recurring sand bar at the State Line Bridge area contains about 8,500 cubic yards of additional sediment in 1999 than were measured in 1980. The volumetric measurement of three additional sand bars showed some changes since 1980. The river is accumulating sediments within Six-Mile Pool and Momence Wetland. The middle reach is in semi-equilibrium with some sediment accumulation at several areas. Several management alternatives, both in-channel and watershed-based also are included to assist in the reduction of sedimentation problems of the Kankakee River.


The acquisition of conservation easements by nonprofit organizations ("NPOs") over the past twenty-five years has revolutionized the preservation of American land. Recently, however, legislatures, courts, practitioners, and commentators have debated whether and how conservation easements should be modified and even terminated. The discussion has almost always been on a theoretical level without empirical grounding and has sometimes generated much heat but little light. The discussion has lacked the necessary empirical context to allow legislatures and courts to thoughtfully develop resolutions to these issues free from sloganeering and posturing. This article provides and analyzes a previously uncollected dataset that offers guidance on the appropriate rules of law for conservation easement modification. It examines policy goals in light of the data to suggest various modification rules that would be more effective than current practice. The dataset represents a significant sample of easement modifications that have been made during a six year period (2008-2013) and indicates several findings: first, modifications have actually been taking place, despite claims that conservation easements are "perpetual," apparently indicating that NPOs need flexibility in at least some areas; most of the changes have been "minor" and have been either conservation neutral or conservation positive, though one would expect pressure for more significant alterations over time due to shifts in the environment and human needs; there is a range of types and degree of modifications to this point, suggesting that there should be a spectrum of procedural and substantive requirements for the different varieties of modifications; and, a mandate for a stand-alone, state registry of conservation easements and modifications would allow for improved policymaking. The article suggests that a doctrine that requires different procedures and substantive rules for various categories of modifications — a sliding scale — may yield the best, policy-based results. The work also identifies and analyzes existing doctrines — federal tax law, specific state statutes, charitable trust doctrine, standing rules, and director liability — that would need to be altered or clarified to adopt effective modification rules.


Continuous cropping without external nutrient inputs to soils has led to the expression of poorly productive patches in farmers' fields in semi-arid Eastern Kenya. The smallholder farmers attempting to correct these conditions are often confused by the spatial and symptomatic irregularity of the affected plants, until recently, no soil management product was commercially available that is specifically formulated to restore soil fertility to these patches. PREP-PAC contains 2 kg Minjingu rock phosphate (RP), 0.2 kg urea, seeds of various symbiotic nitrogen-fixing food legumes (in this case tepary bean (TB)), rhizobial inoculant, gum Arabica seed adhesive, lime for seed pelleting and instructions for the use of these materials. It is intended for addition to 25 m 2 and produced at a cost of US $ 0.56 per unit. The general principle is to apply slowly available RP sufficient for several cropping seasons with readily available nitrogenous fertiliser and to intercrop farmer's maize (Zea mays) with a legume that provides residual fixed-nitrogen and organic inputs to the soil. This approach was tested in on-farm trials covering 50 farms, conducted in collaboration with farmers groups. An experiment examined interactions between PREP-PAC components in a maize-TB (Vigna unguiculata) intercrop in nutrient depleted Ferralsols of semi-arid Eastern Kenya. The treatments included ±RP, ±Urea, and ±inoculant arranged as a 2 3 factorial with four replicated at each location. Total value of the intercrops ranged between US $ 0.95 in the unamended plots and US $ 2.90 in plots treated with PREP-PAC. Significant positive effects were observed with the addition of RP (P< 0.001), urea (P = 0.04) and inoculant (P = 0.01) and in interactions between RP and urea (P = 0.02) or inoculant (P = 0.07). The return ratio to PREP-PAC investment was 2.8 in the sandy fields and 4.2 in the clay fields. PREP-PACs were tested on-farm in 50 symptomatic patches containing maize-TB intercrops. Unamended patches (25 m 2 = 0.0025 ha) produced 1.9 kg maize and 0.06 kg TB. With addition of PREP-PAC, yields increased to 4.2 kg maize and 1.6 kg TB (P < 0.001, for both crops). PREP-PAC is a strategic approach because all of its components, except for urea, originate from East Africa and are relatively inexpensive; the product is intended for distribution through the existing local retail and rural development networks.


Orientation: In order to create competitive advantage in an increasingly turbulent economic environment, sustainability of high performance is crucial. Only a few individuals have the drive, mindset, discipline and ability to sustain high performance on a daily basis. Thus, it is necessary to consider what can be done so that employees can sustain high performance over the long term. Research purpose: The purpose of the study was to establish whether spiritual workplaces will enhance employees' work engagement and thriving at work. Motivation for the study: Two important mechanisms for understanding the human dimension of sustainability are thriving at work and work engagement. However, because work engagement and thriving are affective-motivational states, it is necessary to consider contextual factors that promote these positive states. As work engagement and thriving at work move beyond mere energy, to a sense of connectedness, it seems important that spiritual workplaces are created. Research approach, design and method: The study was quantitative in nature, and data were collected from employees working at small, medium and macro enterprises (SMMEs) in one geographical area in South Africa. The final sample consisted of 259 employees. A survey that was cross-sectional in nature was conducted by means of a self-administered questionnaire. Main findings: The findings of the study show that there is a positive and significant relationship between workplace spirituality, work engagement and thriving at work. Furthermore, workplace spirituality significantly influences the variance in both work engagement and thriving at work. Practical or managerial implications: In order for SMMEs to promote work engagement and thriving at work, spiritual workplaces need to be created. Furthermore, emphasis needs to be placed on the work experience, rather than on work outcomes. It is also important that SMMEs develop employees holistically, that they create spiritually based organisational cultures and that they pay more attention to relationship management and networking. Contribution or value-add: The study contributes to the literature on workplace spirituality, work engagement and thriving at work.


We study the 420 US drone strikes in Pakistan from 2006-2016, isolating causal effects on terrorism, anti-US sentiment, and radicalization via an instrumental variable strategy based on wind. Drone strikes are suggested to encourage terrorism in Pakistan, bearing responsibility for 16 percent of all attacks or 2,964 terror deaths. Exploring mechanisms, we distinguish between insiders (members of terrorist organizations) and outsiders (the Pakistani populace). Analyzing data from a leading Pakistani newspaper, anti-US protests, and Google searches, drone strikes appear to increase anti-US sentiment and radicalization: Outsiders seem to sympathize with insiders because of drone strikes.


CHANGES IN UPPER LIMB ISOMETRIC STRENGTH AND ERROR TRACKING FOLLOWING TRAINING USING ITERATIVE LEARNING CONTROL (ILC) MEDIATED BY FUNCTIONAL ELECTRICAL STIMULATION (FES) Authors: Hughes, A. M. MSc1, Freeman, C. PhD2, Burridge, J. PhD1, Chappell, P. PhD2, Lewin, P. PhD2 and Rogers, E. PhD2 Affiliations: University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK 1 School of Health Professions and Rehabilitation Sciences 2 School of Electronics and Computer Science SUMMARY Based on existing motor control theory, an intervention involving a robot, ILC and FES was developed and tested on five chronic stroke patients. Improvements were seen in isometric strength and error tracking. CONCLUSIONS ILC mediated by FES enabled five chronic stroke subjects to accurately track a range of trajectories. Over time this related to an improvement in motor control reflected by increasing accuracy observed in unassisted tracking, and in isometric strength. INTRODUCTION Current opinion in motor learning, reinforced by clinical evidence, supports the use of FES and robot therapy to improve motor control [1-3]. ILC is a technique applicable to processes which repeatedly perform a task with a view to sequentially improving accuracy such as trajectory following in robots. The aim of this study is to test the feasibility of applying ILC to neurological rehabilitation. PATIENTS/MATERIALS and METHODS 5 hemiplegic stroke subjects underwent screening tests, and baseline assessments including isometric strength. Subjects used a robotic workstation to track 2 dimensional trajectories, over 18 intervention sessions within a 3 month period. At the beginning and end of each intervention session the ability of the stroke subject to track four trajectories without any FES or robot assistance was assessed. During the treatment sessions, ILC was used to modulate the FES applied to their triceps muscles in terms of timing and amplitude to improve tracking performance, whilst encouraging a maximal voluntary contribution to the task. Assessments of isometric muscle strength in six directions from a mid position were repeated after the eighteen sessions and for two subjects after an additional seven sessions. RESULTS Improvements in isometric strength were seen for all individual subjects after the intervention, with significant improvements for five out of six directions. Unassisted performance of the tracking tasks improved significantly for 3 out of the 4 tasks across the group. Subjects who performed poorly on the initial visit, showed the biggest improvements in tracking. DISCUSSION Analysis of the variability of the results may assist in the identification of good responders. Future work with the existing system includes assessing the potential for use with other neurological conditions, such as cerebral palsy and incomplete spinal cord injury. A subsequent study will develop a system for reaching in three dimensions and include opening the wrist and hand using 'Smart glove' as a position sensor. REFERENCES [1] De Kroon, J. R., van der Lee, J. H., Izerman, M. J., & Lankhorst, G. J. 2002, Clinical Rehabilitation, vol. 16, pp. 350-360. [2] Schmidt, R. A. & Lee, T. D. Motor control and learning a behavioural emphasis. 3rd Edition. 261-285. 1999. Human Kinetics. [3] Kwakkel, G., Kollen, B. J., & Krebs H.I 2008, Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, vol. 22, pp. 111-121.


In healthcare, consumerism is not a product or program. Instead, it is an orientation to new care delivery models that encourage and enable greater patient responsibility through the intelligent use of information technology. Despite the promise of consumerism, current approaches have not fully realized the potential benefits of improved outcomes and lower cost. We recommend 4 guiding principles to ensure that next-generation innovation yields the returns that providers, patients, and other stakeholders expect: (1) keep the consumer at the center of innovation, (2) keep it simple, (3) link products and services to a broader "ecosystem" of care, and (4) encourage health in addition to treating illness. Now may be a particularly compelling time to invest in a consumerist approach.


'Alternative' medicine is now used by one in three of us. In the UK, we spend an estimated GBP4.5 billion a year on it and its practitioners are now insinuating themselves into the mainstream. There are methods based on ancient or far-eastern medicine, as well as ones invented in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many are promoted as natural treatments. What they have in common is that there is no hard evidence that any of them work. Treatments like homeopathy, acupuncture and chiropractic are widely available and considered reputable by many.Ever more bizarre therapies, from naturopathy to nutraceuticals, ear candling to ergogenics, are increasingly favoured. Endorsed by celebrities and embraced by the middle classes, alternative medicine's appeal is based on the spurious rediscovery of ancient wisdom and the supposedly benign quality of nature. Surrounded by an aura of unquestioning respect and promoted through uncritical airtime and column inches, alternative medicine has become a lifestyle choice. Its global market is predicted to be worth $5 trillion by 2050. "Suckers" reveals how alternative medicine can jeopardise the health of those it claims to treat, leaches resources from treatments of proven efficacy and is largely unaccountable and unregulated. In short, it is an industry that preys on human vulnerability and makes fools of us all. "Suckers" is a calling to account of a social and intellectual fraud; a bracing, funny and popular take on a global delusion.


MS1-based label-free quantification can compare precursor ion peaks across runs, allowing reproducible protein measurements. Among bioinformatic platforms enabling MS1-based quantification, MaxQuant (MQ) is one of the most used, while Proteome Discoverer (PD) has recently introduced the Minora tool. Here, we present a comparative evaluation of six MS1-based quantification methods available in MQ and PD. Intensity (MQ and PD) and area (PD only) of the precursor ion peaks were measured and then subjected or not to normalization. The six methods were applied to data sets simulating various differential proteomics scenarios and covering a wide range of protein abundance ratios and amounts. PD outperformed MQ in terms of quantification yield, dynamic range, and reproducibility, although neither platform reached a fully satisfactory quality of measurements at low-abundance ranges. PD methods including normalization were the most accurate in estimating the abundance ratio between groups and the most sensitive when comparing groups with a narrow abundance ratio; on the contrary, MQ methods generally reached slightly higher specificity, accuracy, and precision values. Moreover, we found that applying an optimized log ratio-based threshold can maximize specificity, accuracy, and precision. Taken together, these results can help researchers choose the most appropriate MS1-based protein quantification strategy for their studies.


Recent progress on low-bending-loss single-mode optical fibers for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is reviewed. Designing and manufacturing for three types of fibers-a step-index-profile fiber, a trench-index-profile fiber, and a holey fiber-are discussed. The trench-index-profile fibers and the holey fibers are confirmed to be candidates for indoor wiring because of their low bending losses, as well as splice losses.


A study of detrital zircon age populations in Namurian–Westphalian (Carboniferous) sandstones in the southern Central Pennine Basin of the UK has revealed considerable complexity in their provenance history. The Pendleian–Marsdenian Morridge Formation, which is known to have been derived from the Wales‐Brabant Massif to the south on the basis of palaeocurrent and petrographic information, is dominated by zircons ultimately derived from the Caledonian belt to the north. These zircons were recycled from sandstones of northern origin that had been previously deposited over the massif during Middle to Late Devonian times. The Morridge Formation also includes Late Neoproterozoic zircons of local Wales‐Brabant Massif origin. The south lobe of the Yeadonian Rough Rock has been previously interpreted as having a complex provenance including sediment of northern origin interbedded with sediment ascribed to a Wales‐Brabant Massif source. However, the zircon spectrum lacks a Late Neoproterozoic component that would have been diagnostic of input from the Wales‐Brabant Massif, and the provenance history of the Rough Rock south lobe therefore remains enigmatic. The Langsettian Ludgbridge Conglomerate is dominated by Late Neoproterozoic zircons of Wales‐Brabant Massif origin, but even in this evidently proximal deposit, the provenance is complex since the main zircon group (ca. 640 Ma) cannot be matched with known local Neoproterozoic basement sources. The data either indicate the presence of hitherto‐unknown magmatic rocks of this age adjacent to the South Staffordshire coalfield or indicate that the zircons were recycled from sediment with a more distal origin. Finally, the Duckmantian Top Hard Rock contains zircons that can be reconciled with a source in the Irish Caledonides, consistent with the palaeocurrent evidence, supplemented by zircons derived from the Wales‐Brabant Massif, possibly including the Monian Composite Terrane of Anglesey. The study reinforces the important message that failure to recognize the presence of recycled zircon could lead to erroneous reconstructions of sediment provenance and transport history. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


It is well documented that a concerted effort is required to reduce the threat of climate change. One vital component in this portfolio of solutions--carbon capture and utilization--has been stalled by significant economic and technical barriers. To overcome these obstacles, it is necessary to identify economically viable capture opportunities--targets that can serve as a driver to lower life cycle costs, increase commercialization efforts and provide an impetus for development in the utilization arena. This study presents a methodology for assessing the levelized cost of CO2 capture, compression, and transport from industrially-sourced capture to regional utilization (sink) opportunities. Industrial sources are targeted over coal and gas-fired power plants given industrial sources often have exhausts with higher CO2 purity, a factor that lends to a lower minimum work of separation and, hence, lower cost of capture. The greater concentration in CO2 results from combination of process emissions with those associated with stationary combustion. These industrial sources, together with a full inventory of geo-referenced utilization opportunities, serve as inputs to a robust cost model that accommodates for differences in source exhaust composition, flow rate, and source-sink geographical relationships. A case-study conducted for the US state of Pennsylvania yields a cost-based ranking of 47 industrial sites, whereby steel and cement manufacturing dominated the least levelized cost options, anchored by high CO2 exhaust content (14 - 33% CO2). Further, we find truck transport is cost-competitive with pipeline for small volumes (


This research is concerned with the question of performance
in scientific research, and focusses on the potential of
Adaption-Innovation theory (Kirton, 1976) for providing
insights into individual innovativeness. Using empirical data
from four large research organisations, a taxonomy of
scientists is developed using the Kirton Adaption-Innovation
(KAI) inventory. This taxonomy breaks new ground in its use
of the sub-scales of KAI. It shows that the use of the total
KAI scale, as in previous research in the literature, is a
conflation which conceals important insights. The research
also breaks new ground in its conceptualisation of research
performance. Two dimensions of performance are hypothesised:
creative performance and skills performance. The evidence
suggests that the distinction is meaningful and that the two
dimensions are essentially orthogonal.
The taxonomy developed in this research identifies four types
of scientists according to their location on the '0' and 'E'
sub-scales of the KAI. It is in the distinction between two
types possessing similar mid-range KAI scores that the
research makes a notable contribution to the literature.
These two types are shown to be very different in terms of
their performance, job satisfaction and other
characteristics. It is through these insights that the
research offers the prospect of an instrument of value in the
deployment of research scientists.
Finally, concerns about the conceptual status of the KAI are
developed. The KAI is critically reviewed, and the evidence
presented seriously challenges the claim that the KAI is
purely a measure of cognitive style. Criticism is focussed on
the 0 sub-scale which, it is argued, contains items
measuring level of cognitive ability. A refined KAI is
developed and evaluated using a sample of post-graduate
students of management. It is demonstrated that sub-scales
can be derived which are more homogeneous conceptually and
give nearly orthogonal measures.


According to data published in The Burden of Musculoskeletal Diseases in the United States (BMUS) nearly 18% of the US population experienced a sports-related musculoskeletal injury in 2012. The field of Tissue Engineering has made strides towards 3D printing musculoskeletal grafts in the past few years to treat these injuries. Despite these advances, producing bioinks that are highly printable and also imitate the dynamic viscoelastic properties of soft tissue types in order to stimulate regeneration remains a challenge. An ideal bioink for 3D bioprinting must possess proper mechanical, biological, and rheological properties for specific tissue applications. The most important rheologic properties of the bioink are shear rate, shear stress, viscosity, and critical shear point of the material to determine if the bioink displays shear-thinning behavior for enhanced print fidelity without compromising the internal bonding structure of the bioink. Shear thinning behavior is determined using the power law regression model and is defined as a flow behavior index (n) of less than 1. Gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) is one commonly used polymer for 3D printing soft tissue constructs due to its concentration dependent viscoelasticity and biocompatible similarities to collagen, however, adjusting the concentration of a GelMA bioink to match specific tissue viscoelasticity influences the rheologic properties and printability of the ink. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine the rheologic properties of a 10% w/v gelatin methacrylate bioink in order to establish the critical shear point and subsequent shear-thinning behavior for potential applications in 3D bioprinting soft tissue grafts. METHODS: The rheologic properties of a 10% w/v gelMA ink were determined by performing a steady state flow sweep using an MCR702 twindrive rheometer and 25mm Parallel Plate. The test shear rate ranged from 0.002s-1 to 500s-1 and the lower plate temperature was set to 25°C. The test was programmed using the software RheoCompass to collect 50 data points as shear rate logarithmically increased. A power law regression model of the shear stress vs shear rate was used to determine the critical point and shear-thinning behavior of the bio-ink. RESULTS: The critical shear point occurred at shear rate 0.0326s-1 with shear stress 3.92Pa and bioink viscosity of 120.25Pa· s. Following power law regression analysis of the shear rate vs the shear stress it was determined that the shear behavior index (n) of the material was 0.16, indicating that the GelMA bioink was exhibiting strong shear thinning behavior. CONCLUSION: These preliminary results indicate that 10% gelMA bioink displays shear thinning behavior at low shear rates. These results provide insight into the development of a biomaterial that possesses good printing fidelity and can be covalently crosslinked to enhance mechanical properties for soft musculoskeletal tissue applications.


Two competing theories in financial economics offer different policy approaches for financial market development. The imperfect information paradigm supports financial repression with government intervention. Financial liberalization policies are designed to "liberate" the financial systems from government interference. Despite decades of intervention and liberalization, savings and investments in many developing countries have remained low. This suggests that policy designs influenced by the two paradigms are not sufficient to address problems facing financial systems in developing countries. Financial deepening cannot occur without sound institutional infrastructure. While getting prices is necessary, public policy has an important role in financial market development.


In East Africa, several major taphrogenic events gave rise to the formation of extensive Late Palaeozoic to Mesozoic intracratonic rift basins. Deposition of fluvio-lacustrine beds took place in the tectonically controlled basins during the Permian and Early Triassic, and in Tanzania they constitute an extensive Karoo-aged sequence.

The Kilombero Rift Valley occupies a minor, narrow N-S trending basin in Tanzania. The present rift valley is bounded by Precambrian basement and appears today as a Cenozoic rift modification of an earlier Permian (Karoo) rift basin. Within the present rift lies a Karoo succession with a total thickness of approx. 6000 m. The Kilombero Karoo is made up of mainly siliciclastic sediments, dominated by shales and feldspathic sandstones. Conglomeratic and calcareous units are found at various levels in the commonly calcite cemented formations.

The Kilombero Karoo succession began with the deposition of debris flows and braided streams on alluvial fans adjacent to a westward facing rift escarpment. Petrographical and mineralogical analyses of clasts and heavy mineral fractions of these lowermost Karoo successions reveal a close similarity to the immediate adjacent basement lithologies. The clast population and matrix minerals support deposition close to a major (concealed) boundary fault of Karoo (or pre-Karoo) age.

This initial (alluvial fan) depositional stage was succeeded by lacustrine sedimentation, before a final rift filling phase, characterized by flood plain deposition. The different stages in the rift development have been recorded by changing sedimentary facies, shifts in sediment transportation directions and changes in sediment composition. Hence, a marked transition between the lower 3500 m of the succession and the upper 2500 m is revealed in a reversal in sediment transport directions: from NW → SE to SE → NW. We interpret this shift to reflect a change in rift architecture, possibly triggered by a tectonic event. This is supported by a subtle change in the pebble/clast lithologies as well as in the amphibole compositions. Our sedimentological, mineralogical and geochemical investigations support a western, more granitoid provenance of the upper fluviolacustrine and deltaic to fan deltaic sediments. Comparisons of the heavy mineral populations in the units investigated also reflect different mineral stability during the different climatic and sedimentological environments.


We introduce the Expandable Grid, a novel interaction technique for creating, editing, and viewing many types of security policies. Security policies, such as file permissions policies, have traditionally been displayed and edited in user interfaces based on a list of rules, each of which can only be viewed or edited in isolation. These list-of-rules interfaces cause problems for users when multiple rules interact, because the interfaces have no means of conveying the interactions amongst rules to users. Instead, users are left to figure out these rule interactions themselves. An Expandable Grid is an interactive matrix visualization designed to address the problems that list-of-rules interfaces have in conveying policies to users. This paper describes the Expandable Grid concept, shows a system using an Expandable Grid for setting file permissions in the Microsoft Windows XP operating system, and gives results of a user study involving 36 participants in which the Expandable Grid approach vastly outperformed the native Windows XP file-permissions interface on a broad range of policy-authoring tasks.


Leading theorists and practitioners trace the evolution of key ideas in urban and regional planning over the last hundred years Over the past hundred years of urbanization and suburbanization, four key themes have shaped urban and regional planning in both theory and practice: livability, territoriality, governance, and reflective professional practice. Planning Ideas That Matter charts the trajectories of these powerful planning ideas in an increasingly interconnected world. The contributors, leading theorists and practitioners, discuss livability in terms of such issues as urban density, land use, and the relationship between the built environment and natural systems; examine levels of territorial organization, drawing on literature on regionalism, metropolitanism, and territorial competition; describe the ways planning connects to policy making and implementation in a variety of political contexts; and consider how planners conceive of their work and learn from practice. Throughout, the emphasis is on how individuals and institutions-including government, business, professional organizations, and universities-have framed planning problems and ideas. The focus is less on techniques and programs than on the underlying concepts that have animated professional discourse over the years. The book is recommended for classroom use, as a reference for scholars and practitioners, and as a history of planning for those interested in the development of the field.


The application of technological and related procedures to safeguard the security of various documents while moving on the channel is an important responsibility in electronic data systems. This paper specifies the modification of the MD5 which may organizations to protect sensitive data. Protection of data during transmission or while in storage may be necessary to maintain the confidentiality and integrity of the information represented by the data. The algorithms uniquely define the mathematical steps required to transform data into a cryptographic cipher and also to transform the cipher back to the original form. The Data Encryption Standard is being made available for use by various agencies within the context of a total security consisting of physical security procedures, good information management practices, and computer system/network access controls. Key words: computer security, data encryption standard, triple data encryption algorithm, Federal


Abstract. For the first time, a liquid-water cloud study of the aerosol–cloud-dynamics relationship, solely based on lidar, was conducted. Twenty-nine cases of pure liquid-water altocumulus layers were observed with a novel dual-field-of-view Raman lidar over the polluted central European site of Leipzig, Germany, between September 2010 and September 2012. By means of the novel Raman lidar technique, cloud properties such as the droplet effective radius and cloud droplet number concentration (CDNC) in the lower part of altocumulus layers are obtained. The conventional aerosol Raman lidar technique provides the aerosol extinction coefficient (used as aerosol proxy) below cloud base. A collocated Doppler lidar measures the vertical velocity at cloud base and thus updraft and downdraft occurrence. Here, we present the key results of our statistical analysis of the 2010–2012 observations. Besides a clear aerosol effect on cloud droplet number concentration in the lower part of the altocumulus layers during updraft periods, turbulent mixing and entrainment of dry air is assumed to be the main reason for the found weak correlation between aerosol proxy and CDNC higher up in the cloud. The corresponding aerosol–cloud interaction parameter based on changes in cloud droplet number concentration with aerosol loading was found to be close to 0.8 at 30–70 m above cloud base during updraft periods and below 0.4 when ignoring vertical-wind information in the analysis. Our findings are extensively compared with literature values and agree well with airborne observations.


This paper summarizes a framework for investigating predictability based on information theory. This framework connects and unifies a wide variety of statistical methods traditionally used in predictability analysis, including linear regression, canonical correlation analysis, singular value decomposition, discriminant analysis, and data assimilation. Central to this framework is a procedure called predictable component analysis (PrCA). PrCA optimally decomposes variables by predictability, just as principal component analysis optimally decomposes variables by variance. For normal distributions the same predictable components are obtained whether one optimizes predictive information, the dispersion part of relative entropy, mutual information, Mahalanobis error, average signal to noise ratio, normalized mean square error, or anomaly correlation. For joint normal distributions, PrCA is equivalent to canonical correlation analysis between forecast and observations. The regression operator that maps observations to forecasts plays an important role in this framework, with the left singular vectors of this operator being the predictable components and the singular values being the canonical correlations. This correspondence between predictable components and singular vectors occurs only if the singular vectors are computed using Mahalanobis norms, a result that sheds light on the role of norms in predictability. In linear stochastic models the forcing that minimizes predictability is the one that renders the "whitened" dynamical operator normal. This condition for minimum predictability is invariant to linear transformation and is equivalent to detailed balance. The framework also inspires some new approaches to accounting for deficiencies of forecast models and estimating distributions from finite samples.


Physical-layer security (PLS) for industrial indoor terahertz (THz) wireless communication applications is considered. We use a similar model as being employed for additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) wireless communication channels. A cell communication and a directed communication scenario are analyzed to illustrate the achievable semantic security guarantees for a wiretap channel with finite-blocklength THz-wireless communication links. We show that weakly directed transmitter (Al-ice) antennas, which allow cell-type communication with multiple legitimate receivers (Bobs) without adaptation of the alignment, result in large insecure regions. In the directed communication scenario, the resulting insecure regions are shown to cover a large volume of the indoor environment only if the distance between Alice and Bob is large. Thus, our results for the two selected scenarios reveal that there is a stringent trade-off between the targeted semantic security level and the number of reliably and securely accessible legitimate receivers. Furthermore, the effects of secrecy code parameters and antenna properties on the achievable semantic security levels are illustrated to show directions for possible improvements to guarantee practically-acceptable security levels with PLS methods for industrial indoor THz-wireless communication applications.


Anti-violence activism for women in India has been riddled with a unique advocacy challenge. Women experiencing violence within the home confront a widespread backlash against Penal Code section 498A, the only criminal law in India that specifically encompasses domestic violence. Analysis of this phenomenon reveals that this prohibition against marital cruelty has been drastically undermined by a level of skepticism that not only permeates societal consciousness, but more perilously, has entered judicial decision-making in these cases. In this essay I deconstruct the patriarchal narratives that undergird the judicial backlash against Section 498A, arguing that they reflect a modern incarnation of the "crisis" discourses that have characterized state responses to women's right claims. I contend that Indian patriarchies are being recast in law through the construction of gendered subjects who threaten to destabilize the sanctity of the Indian family, and who are therefore deemed undeserving of the law's protection.


Carbon monoxide, formed as a product of heme oxygenase activity, has been postulated to act as an intra- and intercellular messenger molecule. We addressed the hypothesis that heme oxygenase is involved in the relaxation of the guinea pig trachealis elicited by vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) or by electrical field stimulation. Immunohistochemical studies revealed the presence of heme oxygenase-II in airway smooth muscle and epithelium. Zinc protoporphyrin-IX (ZnPPn), an inhibitor of heme oxygenase, effectively inhibited VIP-induced relaxations of tracheal smooth muscle. Surprisingly, the potency of ZnPPn was increased if the drug was preincubated with the VIP solution before addition to the tissue bath. The relaxant responses to 3-morpholinosydnonimine were unaffected by ZnPPn. Zinc deuteroporphyrin-IX 2,4 bisglycol, a more potent inhibitor of heme oxygenase than ZnPPn, did not affect the VIP responses. ZnPPn (300 microM) had no effect on nonadrenergic, noncholinergic relaxations of the guinea pig trachea. These data indicate that although ZnPPn is an efficacous inhibitor of VIP-induced relaxations of the guinea pig trachealis, it is unlikely that heme oxygenase plays an important role in this response. Rather, the data are consistent with the hypothesis that ZnPPn inhibits the VIP response via an interaction with the VIP molecules themselves. Although the results demonstrate the existence of heme oxygenase-II in the guinea pig trachealis, they do not support the hypothesis that it plays a role in electrical field stimulation-induced nonadrenergic, noncholinergic relaxations.


We use the term structure of disagreement of professional forecasters to document a novel set of facts: (1) forecasters disagree at all horizons, including the long run; (2) the term structure of disagreement differs markedly across variables: it is downward sloping for real output growth, relatively flat for inflation, and upward sloping for the federal funds rate; (3) disagreement is time-varying at all horizons, including the long run. These new facts present a challenge to benchmark models of expectation formation based on informational frictions. We show that these models require two additional ingredients to match the entire term structure of disagreement: First, agents must disentangle low-frequency shifts in the fundamentals of the economy from short-term fluctuations. Second, agents must take into account the dynamic interactions between variables when forming forecasts. While models enriched with these features capture the observed term structure of disagreement irrespective of the source of the informational friction, they fall short at explaining the time variance of disagreement at mediumand long-term horizons. We also use the term structure of disagreement to analyze the monetary policy rule perceived by professional forecasters and show that it features a high degree of interest-rate smoothing and time variation in the intercept.


We introduce FingerFlux, an output technique to generate near-surface haptic feedback on interactive tabletops. Our system combines electromagnetic actuation with permanent magnets attached to the user's hand. FingerFlux lets users feel the interface before touching, and can create both attracting and repelling forces. This enables applications such as reducing drifting, adding physical constraints to virtual controls, and guiding the user without visual output. We show that users can feel vibration patterns up to 35 mm above our table, and that FingerFlux can significantly reduce drifting when operating on-screen buttons without looking.