One of the 'grand challenges' of this age is the anthropogenic impact exerted on the nitrogen cycle. Issues of concern range from an excess of fixed nitrogen resulting in environmental pressures for some regions, while for other regions insufficient fixed nitrogen affects food security and may lead to health risks. To address these issues, nitrogen needs to be managed in an integrated fashion, at a variety of scales (from global to local). Such management has to be based on a thorough understanding of the sources of reactive nitrogen released into the environment, its deposition and effects. This requires a comprehensive assessment of the key drivers of changes in the nitrogen cycle both spatially, at the field, regional and global scale and over time. In this focus issue, we address the challenges of managing reactive nitrogen in the context of food production and its impacts on human and ecosystem health. In addition, we discuss the scope for and design of management approaches in regions with too much and too little nitrogen. This focus issue includes several contributions from authors who participated at the N2013 conference in Kampala in November 2013, where delegates compiled and agreed upon the 'Kampala Statement-for-Action on Reactive Nitrogen in Africa and Globally'. These contributions further underline scientifically the claims of the 'Kampala Statement', that simultaneously reducing pollution and increasing nitrogen available in the food system, by improved nitrogen management offers win-wins for environment, health and food security in both developing and developed economies. The specific messages conveyed in the Kampala Statement focus on improving nitrogen management (I), including the reduction of nitrogen losses from agriculture, industry, transport and energy sectors, as well as improving waste treatment and informing individuals and institutions (II). Highlighting the need for innovation and increased awareness among stakeholders (III) and the identification of policy and technology solutions to tackle global nitrogen management issues (IV), this will enable countries to fulfil their regional and global commitments.


We generate a bright atomic beam containing laser-cooled rubidium and cesium, and we use this beam to load a mixed-species ultrahigh-vacuum (UHV) magneto-optical trap. We have characterized our two-species atomic beam over a range of operating conditions, and we obtain similar atom fluxes for each species. Within the UHV trap, interspecies inelastic collisions are observed in the form of enhanced decay rates of a given species in the presence of a second trapped species. We analyze the trap decays to obtain a loss rate due to heteronuclear cold collisions, and we compare our result to similar measurements in vapor-cell traps Phys. Rev. A 63 , 033406 (2001).


As a result of past practices, up to 580 m3 carbon tetrachloride (CT) was discharged to waste sites at the 200 West Area of the USDOE's Hanford Site near Richland, WA. Three‐dimensional modeling was conducted to enhance the current conceptual model of CT distribution beneath the major disposal site (216‐Z‐9). The simulations, using the STOMP code, focused on migration of dense nonaqueous phase liquid (DNAPL) consisting of CT and codisposed organics under scenarios with differing sediment properties, sediment distribution, waste properties, and waste disposal history. Simulation results support a conceptual model for CT distribution where CT in the DNAPL phase migrated primarily in a vertical direction below the disposal site and where some CT DNAPL likely migrated across the water table into the regional aquifer. Results also show that the lower permeability Cold Creek unit retained more CT DNAPL within the vadose zone than other hydrologic units during the infiltration and redistribution process. Due to the relatively high vapor pressure of the CT, the resulting vapor plumes are extensive and influenced by density‐driven advection. Any continued migration of CT from the vadose zone to the groundwater is likely through interaction of vapor phase CT with the groundwater and not through continued DNAPL migration. Additional simulations assessed the impacts of soil vapor extraction (SVE) as a remediation method. These simulations showed rapid CT removal associated with the assumed local equilibrium of CT between the phases. Additional efforts are needed to enhance the understanding of rate‐limited volatilization to improve simulation of the SVE process and to provide a basis for refining the design and operation of SVE systems.


Linear peptide amphiphiles are excellent biocompatible scaffolds for the hierarchical self-assembly of one-dimensional nano-structures in aqueous media. However, their structural exploration and screening of self-assembling properties are often limited by time-consuming synthesis and purification steps. We here describe the application of an oxime bond as a powerful synthetic tool towards the conjugation of peptide heads bearing a hydroxylamine group with hydrophobic aldehyde tails. This methodology allowed the quick preparation of a small library of oxime-connected peptide amphiphiles, whose supramolecular screening revealed nano-to-micro-fibrillation with dependency on their chemical structure. These results demonstrate the simplicity and the synthetic potential of the oxime conjugation for the preparation of peptide amphiphiles with improved self-assembling capabilities.


The estimation of an f-divergence between two probability distributions based on samples is a fundamental problem in statistics and machine learning. Most works study this problem under very weak assumptions, in which case it is provably hard. We consider the case of stronger structural assumptions that are commonly satisfied in modern machine learning, including representation learning and generative modelling with autoencoder architectures. Under these assumptions we propose and study an estimator that can be easily implemented, works well in high dimensions, and enjoys faster rates of convergence. We verify the behavior of our estimator empirically in both synthetic and real-data experiments, and discuss its direct implications for total correlation, entropy, and mutual information estimation.


Abstract This article is premised on the suggestion that there are now two separate Western systems of fashion; here the word "system" is not intended to evoke the model suggested by Roland Barthes, but rather to refer, quite simply, to a pragmatic "system" of design, manufacture, distribution, and dissemination, similar to the cultural studies' "circuit of culture" model of analysis. A new, unacknowledged "system" of design and promotion has emerged in the last decade, which has its own fashion leaders in young female celebrities, its own magazines to chronicle their activities and showcase their style, its own Internet presence, and its own retailing patterns. These young women often resemble in their self-presentation the "glamour models" or pin-up girls of popular men's magazines, whose "look" is a muted version of the styling associated by many with that of hard-core pornography. The "body ideal" of this alternative system is very different to that of high-fashion; once again, it resembles the look of the women pictured in magazines for men. Although one or two writers on fashion have noted this new trend, it is feminist scholars who have shown most interest; they see the new system as part of the "pornification" of contemporary visual culture. A number of these same scholars are avowed anti-pornography campaigners and I argue that this could further damage the fragile feminist project, already riven by differences.


A comprehensive critical review of the phase fields, metastable modifications, solid solution ranges and phase transitions of monazite- and zircon-type REE X O 4 ( X = P, As, V) compounds is given. Monazite-type REEPO 4 compounds are stable for REE = La to Gd and metastable for Tb to Ho; zircon-type members exist for REE = Gd to Lu, and Y, Sc. REEAsO 4 compounds with monazite-type structure exist for REE = La to Nd, while zircon-type compounds are known for REE = Pm to Lu, and Y, Sc; no metastable arsenate members are known. The only stable monazite-type REEVO 4 is LaVO 4 , but metastable members are known for REE = Ce to Nd. Zircon-type REEVO 4 compounds are stable for REE = Ce to Lu, and Y, Sc, and metastable for REE = La. Solid solution series are complete only if minor size differences exist between REE 3+ or X 5+ cations in respective end-members. Phase transitions occur under pressure (zircon → (monazite →) scheelite) and at very low temperatures. The evaluation of the metastable phase fields and of naturally occurring members suggests that metastable modifications of REE X O 4 compounds can occur in nature under certain conditions (formation at temperatures


Redundancy ofthe motor control system is an important feature that gives the central control structures options for solving everyday motor problems. The choice of particular control patterns is based on priorities (coordinative rules)that are presently unknown. Motor patterns observed in unimpaired young adults reflect these priorities. We hypothesize that under certain atypical conditions, which may include disorders in perception of the environment and in decision making, structural or biochemical changes within the central nervous system (CNS), and/or structural changes ofthe effectors, the central nervous system may reconsider its priorities. A new set of priorities will reflect the current state of the system and may lead to different patterns ofvoluntary movement. Under such conditions, changed motor patterns should be considered not pathological but rather adaptive to a primary disorder and may even be viewed as optimal for a given state of the system of movement production. Therapeutic approaches should not be directed toward restoring the motor patterns to as close to normal as possible but rather toward resolving the original underlying problem. We illustrate this approach using, as examples, movements in amputees, in patients with Parkinson's disease, in patients with dystonia, and in persons with Down syndrome.


In a study of violent men, 443 symptomatic adult male volunteers were evaluated for presence of intermittent explosive disorder (IED). Investigators first established presence of severe and frequent violent outbursts not readily explainable by another disorder. Seventy-nine violent men were so selected. Of these, 26 had excessive impulsivity, an exclusionary criterion for IED. Twenty-one were excluded because of other, exclusionary mental disorders. Violent behavior of five subjects was deemed proportionate to the provocation. Insufficient data were obtained for an accurate diagnoses of IED in 12 subjects. Fifteen subjects satisfied all criteria for IED, i.e., 18.9 percent of sufficiently violent men without other major psychopathology or 1.49 percent of all 443 men who complained of violence. Epidemiologic and validity aspects of IED are discussed.


Background: Osteoporosis is a chronic, progressive disease of multifactorial aetiology and one of the most common metabolic bone diseases worldwide. There is a paucity of data on osteoporosis in Africa as it's generally thought not to affect the non-Caucasian population. We sought to describe the population with osteoporosis in a Nairobi rheumatology clinic. Objective: To evaluate the clinical characteristics of patients with osteoporosis seen at a rheumatology clinic in Nairobi. Methods: Clinical, with emphasis on musculoskeletal manifestations, treatment and selected comorbidities in 56 patients diagnosed with osteoporosis were followed up and evaluated in the Nairobi Arthritis Clinic. Results: The age distribution was 31- 95 years with majority being above the age of 60 years at 71.5%. Majority were female (89.3%). The main musculoskeletal manifestations were polyarthralgia (30.4%) followed by lower back pain (19.6%) and pathological fractures (12.5%). The types of osteoporosis were grouped as primary (9%), secondary (44.6%) and post-menopausal (46.4%). The most common clinical association being rheumatoid arthritis (39.3%) followed by steroids therapy (25%). Other comorbidities included osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, systemic lupus erythromatosus and diabetes. Seven study participants had history of fracture with lumbar spine fractures leading at 42.8%. None of the study participants were smokers. The number of patients on calcium supplements was at 71.4% and bisphosphonates was low at 32%. Conclusion: The findings of this study from age to comorbidities on osteoporosis are in keeping with literature. The number of patients on bisphosphonates was low which differed from Western literature. Persons at increased risk for osteoporosis in this set-up include post-menopausal women with debilitating chronic illness causing reduced mobilization over time and presenting with bone pains.These patients should be investigated for osteoporosis and effective treatment administered early.


The main purpose of this study is to explore and compare the relationships of justice and commitment among Chinese employees working in International Joint Ventures (IJVs) and reformed State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) today. In this study, distributive justice and procedural justice are considered as antecedents of affective commitment, and interactional justice is considered as antecedent of commitment to supervisor. Additionally, the model further suggests that affective commitment will affect employees' turnover intention and organisational citizenship behaviour; and commitment to supervisor will affect employees' organisational citizenship behaviour. A data set consisting of 247 employees in two international joint ventures and 253 employees in two state-owned enterprises in Shanghai and Southern China are used to test the hypotheses empirically. The LISREL results support the hypotheses. The study shows the major differences of employees' attitudes and behaviour in international joint ventures and state-owned enterprises in China today. The effect of distributive justice on employees' affective commitment is stronger in SOE than in IJV. On the contrary, the effect of procedural justice on employees' affective commitment is stronger in IJV than in SOE. Additionally, the effect of interactional justice on commitment to supervisor is similar in both types of organisation. These results reveal that interactional justice is highly emphasized in both IJVs and SOEs in contemporary China, though the employees are working in different organisational contexts. Finally, theoretical and practical implications of the present study are discussed.


Abstract The relationship of first score and length of life in the herd was measured in Holstein females two or three years of age at first classification. The regression of herd life (number of times classified) on the first over-all type score (nearly all values were between 65 and 90 points) was 1.7 months. Correlation between first classification score and herd life was approximately 0.2, indicating that less than 5% of the variation in herd life could be attributed to the relationship between first score and herd life. Differences among herds accounted for about 10% of the total variance in overall type score and in the individual type traits. Differences among sires accounted for from 5 to 8% of the variation in over-all score and in each of the categories (general appearance, dairy character, body capacity, mammary system, fore udder, rear udder, legs and feet, and rump) of the Holstein classification system. Similarly, differences among classifiers accounted for 2 to 6% of the total variance. Classifier variation was greatest in the areas of general appearance, body capacity, and legs and feet. An analysis of variance components on 7,927 artificially inseminated (AI) sired animals scored from 1958 through 1963 gave a heritability of 0.16 for over-all type score. Heritabilities of over-all score from each of the six years varied widely.


Two examples are considered: (1) The effects-of organotin agricultural fungicides on soil Acarina; (2) The effects of reclamation of intertidal land on overwintering shorebirds at Seal Sands, Teesmouth, The effect of triphenyltin acetate and triphenyltin hydroxide was examined by field experiments and the results are discussed in relation to the dose level, regime and season of treatment. Numbers of soil Acarina were reduced by both clianicals when applied in autumn at recctmended doses. The Mesostigmata and an abundant Prostigmatid, Ttarsonemus floricolus. were particularly affected and the magnitude of reductions was related to the quantity of chemical applied. Not all species of mites were affected and treatment of half the recommended dose resulted in an increase in seme families, of Prostigmata, Seasonal changes in the abundance of mites are described and compared with the results of studies elsewhere in Britain, Suitable laboratory culturing techniques were devised for small Prostigmatid mites. Reclamation of Seal Sands between 1972-74 resulted in a loss of feeding area and reduced feeding time. The effects of reclamation are considered in relation to the overwintering numbers of five waders: Grey Plover (Pluvialis squatarola), Curlew (Numenius arauata). Godwit (Limosa lapponica). Redshank (Trinqa tetanus) and Dunlin (Calidris alpina) and to the Shelduck (Tadorna tadorna). Monthly counts of each species are described and compared with counts in previous winters. Changes in numbers are discussed in relation to progressive reclamation. The relative importance of the reduction in feeding area and feeding time in determining the overwintering numbers after reclamation is considered by examination of: (a) the time spent feeding, and (b) the foraging behaviour and diet. The waders overwintered in lower numbers than previously but Shelduck numbers were unchanged. To satisfy their food requirements. Grey Plovers adapted by feeding at night while the other waders fed on adjacent fields in mid-winter. Shorebirds did not change their diet or foraging behaviour. Reduction in numbers was related to the reduced feeding area and food resources available, but for Dunlins loss in feeding tine was more important.


In recent months, there have been many revelations about the tactics used by the Bush Administration to prosecute their war on terrorism. These stories involve the exploitation of technologies that allow the government, with the cooperation of phone companies and financial institutions, to access phone and financial records. This paper focuses on the revelation and widespread criticism of the Bush Administration's operation of a warrantless electronic surveillance program to monitor international phone calls and emails that originate or terminate with a United States party. The powerful and secret National Security Agency heads the program and leverages its significant intelligence collection infrastructure to further this effort. Fueling the controversy are undeniable similarities between the current surveillance program and the improper use of electronic surveillance that was listed as an article of impeachment for former President Richard M. Nixon. President Bush argues that the surveillance program passes constitutional inquiry based upon his constitutionally delegated war and foreign policy powers, as well as from the congressional joint resolution passed following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. These arguments fail to supersede the explicit and exhaustive statutory framework provided by Congress and amended repeatedly since 2001 for judicial approval and authorization of electronic surveillance. The specific regulation by Congress based upon war powers shared concurrently with the President provides a constitutional requirement that cannot be bypassed or ignored by the President. The President's choice to do so violates the Constitution and risks the definite sacrifice of individual rights for the speculative gain from warrantless action.


Shrines and Souls provides a multi-layered contextualization of the article on religious liberty in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 18), which was propounded by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948. It shows how the framers of the Declaration decided to break with some of the conventional ways of framing religious liberty in international law, by foregrounding the inner freedom of thought and conscience instead of the free exercise of religion, by directly recognizing the right to change religion or belief, and by restricting the human rights framework to the rights of individuals. It argues that these decisions can be traced back to a set of particular concerns and ideological standpoints of some of the central agents involved in this process. By drawing on the official UN records, a wide range of published sources, and hitherto underexplored archival material, it reveals the significance of the Lebanese diplomat and philosopher, Charles Malik, and the representative of the then newly established Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, O. Frederick Nolde, in determining the orientation of the text. However, it also reveals how their proposals to include references protecting the rights of religious groups and corporations fell short due to the opposition of the American states—spearheaded by the United States—and France, which favored a text that would chime with policies of national assimilation and state-church separation. This work distinguishes itself from other studies of the origins of the Universal Declaration by focusing on how the framers made use of the concepts of human rights and religious liberty in context-bound political arguments, and how these uses in turn affected the text's architecture. By directing attention to the particular battles in the negotiations on the text, Shrines and Souls takes issue with many of the dominant ways of narrating the emergence of the Universal Declaration, including accounts that present the text as the international community's response to the atrocities of World War II. In a broadening chapter, it provides a unique exploration of how the concepts of human rights and religious liberty operated in the preparatory work for the Partition Plan for Palestine of November 29, 1947. This document also contained clauses on religion and rights, but here the main emphasis is on the rights of religious communities rather than the individual freedom of choice. This study argues that the differences between these two ways of articulating religious liberty and rights in the context of the early United Nations were largely a function of the documents' differences in genre. Whereas the Partition Plan addressed a complex geo-political situation and a wide range of competing interests, the Universal Declaration was a non-binding, educational text, intended to outline the moral horizon for nations to strive towards, and which therefore could bypass difficult issues of implementation. This feature of the Declaration meant that it was fertile ground for unconventional enunciations of rights-principles, including the seemingly ancient idea of religious liberty. (Less)


In this work we investigated how robust a robot swarm acts against disturbances caused by another robot swarm, both using the BEECLUST algorithm, which is inspired by honeybee behaviour. For our investigation we simulated an environment with an ambient illuminance, a light spot and a shadow spot. In such an environment we tested two different castes of Jasmine III robots whereas each caste had to perform a different task. One swarm aggregates at places of high illuminance (light spot) and the other one at places of low illuminance (shadow spot). We show that small swarm populations can benefit from the presence of another robot swarm. Medium populated swarms are affected neither positively nor negatively. Large swarm populations act robust against disturbances caused by other robot swarms as long as no jamming effects occur. In this article we show that the BEECLUST algorithm provides all features for making collective decisions. Furthermore we show that the robustness of the BEECLUST algorithm allows us to control a heterogeneous robot swarm in environments which demand differing controller strategies and swarm intelligent behaviour.


Tyrosine phosphorylation and activation of phospholipase C-γ (PLC-γ) after stimulation of the T cell antigen receptor (TCR) is dependent on the activities of the tyrosine kinases Lck, ZAP-70 (ζ chain-associated protein kinase of 70 kD), and ITK (IL-2-inducible T cell kinase). Other important components are adaptor molecules, such as SLP-76 (SH2-domain-containing leukocyte protein of 76 kD), which couple Syk family kinases, such as ZAP-70, to PLC-γ activation. Two tyrosine residues important for TCR-mediated phosphorylation and activation of PLC-γ1 are Y783 and Y775. Although previous studies suggest that ZAP-70 and ITK act together to activate PLC-γ1, it is not known which is responsible for phosphorylating the critical tyrosines. Bogin et al. performed studies in a SLP-76-deficient T cell line called J14 (derived from the human CD4+ T cell line, Jurkat) to answer this question. In vitro kinase assays with ITK, but not ZAP-70, immunoprecipitated from TCR-stimulated J14 cells (transfected with a tagged form of SLP-76) resulted in the phosphorylation of both Y783 and Y775 in a recombinant form of PLC-γ1, whereas both kinases could phosphorylate SLP-76. The ability of ITK to phosphorylate PLC-γ1 was dependent on SLP-76. Studies with mutants of SLP-76 found that ITK phosphorylation of recombinant PLC-γ1 was dependent on the presence of tyrosines in the N-terminal region of SLP-76. Coimmunoprecipitation studies revealed that stimulation of the TCR resulted in the association of SLP-76 with ITK in J14 cells. Immunoprecipitated ITK in complex with SLP-76 was catalytically more active than uncomplexed ITK. These data suggest that SLP-76 is necessary to initiate and maintain the activity of ITK. Y. Bogin, C. Ainey, D. Beach, D. Yablonski, SLP-76 mediates and maintains activation of the Tec family kinase ITK via the T cell antigen receptor-induced association between SLP-76 and ITK. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104, 6638-6643 (2007). [Abstract] [Full Text]


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ABSTRACT South African nursing remains a largely feminised and devalued profession, further undermined by the popular construction of nurses as indifferent and the healthcare systems as hindered by multiple challenges. Over the last 20 years of democracy, multiple efforts have been made at the level of policy, practice and knowledge production to address the challenges of the primary healthcare sector where nurses are such central role players. There are clearly resource challenges in South Africa which may undermine caring practices; however, this article also foregrounds the dominant discourses that shape international and local nursing, and which arguably mitigate against care that is democratic, socially responsive and sensitive to the diverse care needs of communities and individuals. Drawing on Tronto's political ethics of care and on Foucauldian frameworks, the paper analyses the processes currently shaping the experience of nurses and practices of care. Key themes are the hierarchical, regulatory framework of surveillance in nursing, the dominance of biomedical discourse and the mechanistic framework that fragments nursing practice. These aspects not only disempower nurses and deny them recognition but, together with institutional disregard for the need for self-care, also reproduce a system that is inherently unable to provide humane healthcare.


In the study of the involved geometry of singular distributions, the use of fractal and multifractal analysis has shown results of outstanding significance. So far, the investigation has focussed on structures produced by one single mechanism which were analyzed with respect to the ordinary metric or volume. Most prominent examples include self-similar measures and attractors of dynamical systems. In certain cases, the multifractal spectrum is known explicitly, providing a characterization in terms of the geometrical properties of the singularities of a distribution. Unfortunately, strikingly different measures may possess identical spectra. To overcome this drawback we propose two novel methods, the conditional and the relativemultifractal spectrum, which allow for a direct comparison of two distributions. These notions measure the extent to which the singularities of two distributions 'correlate'. Being based on multifractal concepts, however, they go beyond calculating correlations. As a particularly useful tool, we develop the multifractal formalism and establish some basic properties of the new notions. With the simple example of Binomial multifractals, we demonstrate how in the novel approach a distribution mimics a metric different from the usual one. Finally, the applications to real data show how to interpret the spectra in terms of mutual influence of dense and sparse parts of the distributions.


Anthropogenic pressures on the Earth System have reached a scale where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded. We propose a new approach to global sustainability in which we define planetary boundaries within which we expect that humanity can operate safely. Transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental- to planetary-scale systems. We have identified nine planetary boundaries and, drawing upon current scientific understanding, we propose quantifications for seven of them. These seven are climate change (CO2 concentration in the atmosphere <350 ppm and/or a maximum change of +1 W m-2 in radiative forcing); ocean acidification (mean surface seawater saturation state with respect to aragonite ≥ 80% of pre-industrial levels); stratospheric ozone (<5% reduction in O3 concentration from pre-industrial level of 290 Dobson Units); biogeochemical nitrogen (N) cycle (limit industrial and agricultural fixation of N2 to 35 Tg N yr-1) and phosphorus (P) cycle (annual P inflow to oceans not to exceed 10 times the natural background weathering of P); global freshwater use (<4000 km3 yr-1 of consumptive use of runoff resources); land system change (<15% of the ice-free land surface under cropland); and the rate at which biological diversity is lost (annual rate of <10 extinctions per million species). The two additional planetary boundaries for which we have not yet been able to determine a boundary level are chemical pollution and atmospheric aerosol loading. We estimate that humanity has already transgressed three planetary boundaries: for climate change, rate of biodiversity loss, and changes to the global nitrogen cycle. Planetary boundaries are interdependent, because transgressing one may both shift the position of other boundaries or cause them to be transgressed. The social impacts of transgressing boundaries will be a function of the social-ecological resilience of the affected societies. Our proposed boundaries are rough, first estimates only, surrounded by large uncertainties and knowledge gaps. Filling these gaps will require major advancements in Earth System and resilience science. The proposed concept of "planetary boundaries" lays the groundwork for shifting our approach to governance and management, away from the essentially sectoral analyses of limits to growth aimed at minimizing negative externalities, toward the estimation of the safe space for human development. Planetary boundaries define, as it were, the boundaries of the "planetary playing field" for humanity if we want to be sure of avoiding major human-induced environmental change on a global scale.


Economists have long recommended market-based instruments for efficient environmental policy-making – taxes, tradable permits, auctions of property rights, etc. So why is progress on them so slow? The reality is that any environmental policy faces many political, institutional and technical obstacles, but market-based instruments face more than most. Many relate to false perceptions, although some are real. Most have solutions, some do not.


Success of Mujtahid in al-Istinbât. One cause of the emergence of the difference of opinion and legal fatwa toward events is the difference in the level of understanding of expert ulama in fiqh in comprehending phenomena altogether. Ijtihad is able to function at maximum if the conditions are fulfilled satisfactorily. The necessity for a systematic method and certain requirements in undertaking ijtihad does not mean limiting that ijtihad rather that legal product is not created from a instant process. The thinking of mujtahid whose systematic method is still a source of reference and inspiration to this day. Although there is a difference of opinion among them, all are easily analysed until the points are concluded. This paper also includes some verification methods of mujtahids and legal confusion which was has been instantly established. DOI:  10.15408/ajis.v14i1.1252


Background Men comprise nearly two-thirds of trafficked and forced labourers in common low-skilled labour sectors including fishing, agriculture and factory work. Yet, most evidence on human trafficking has focused on women and girls trafficked for sex work, with scant research on trafficked men and boys. Methods We analyse survey data from the largest systematic consecutive sample of trafficked people collected to date to describe the prevalence of violence, occupational health risks and injuries and associated factors. Participants were labour-trafficked men and boys using post-trafficking support services in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Findings Data are presented on 446 males aged 10–58. Men and boys were mainly trafficked for fishing (61.7%), manufacturing (19.1%) and begging (5.2%). Fishermen worked extensive hours (mean 18.8 hours/day, SD 5.9) and factory workers worked on average 11.9 hours/day (SD 2.9). 35.5% of male survivors had been injured while trafficked; 29.4% received no personal protective equipment (e.g. gloves). The most commonly reported injuries among all males were deep cuts (61.8%) and skin injuries (36.7%), injuries for which fewer than one-quarter reported receiving medical care. Six fishermen lost body parts, none of whom received medical care. Most males (80.5%) had no or very few rest breaks. One-third (37.8%) experienced severe violence. Work-related injuries were associated with severe violence (AOR 3.44, CI:1.63–7.26), being in the fishing sector, (AOR 4.12, CI:2.39–7.09) and threats (AOR 2.77, CI:1.62–4.75). Experiencing any violence was associated with threats (AOR 26.86, CI:14.0–51.23), being in the fishing sector (AOR 18.53, CI:8.74–39.28) and fluency in language of destination country (AOR 0.39, CI:0.20–0.75). Conclusion This study highlights the abuse and extreme occupational hazards suffered by trafficked men and boys. Occupational health and safety interventions are urgently needed to protect male migrant labourers working in high-risk sectors, particularly fishing.


To our knowledge, there is a need to develop a methodological approach to the assessment of united communities` human resources` level of interactions, as a large group, and of separate structural unit's – a small group. This allows us to determine the dependence of the level of interactions on the number of people who interact within a particular structure and the nature of the activity they carry out – intellectual or manual labor. The purpose of our research is to develop a methodological approach to the assessment of the level of human resources` interactions, which allows us to identify key areas and policy measures. Expert assessments and analytical dependencies are used as research tools in the article. These tools allow us to quantitatively determine the level of human resources` interactions for an individual entity. Empirical implementation of the proposed approach, using the example of two entities varying in size and nature of labor, allowed us to make a comparative analysis and to distinguish the characteristic features that are the basis for making managerial decisions. A manager acts as an expert who assesses the presence or absence of a particular event in the subordinate unit. The indicator, which characterizes the presence or absence of certain activities and the level of participation in them, is defined on the basis of managerial assessment. The next stage is to determine the interaction rate by means of certain mathematical dependencies and results` analysis. As a result of the research, we got the assessment of the level of human resources` interactions between two entities – a united community and a structural unit. The assessment revealed a dependence on the level of interactions on the entity`s size (small and large groups) and the nature of labor. The results showed that a structural unit, focused on intellectual labor and presented by a small group, has a greater level of interactions than a united community, which has a bigger size and a predominance of manual labor.


There are many ways we can not know. Even in systems that we created ourselves, as, for example, systems in mathematical logic, Goedel and Tarski's theorems impose limits on what we can know. As we try to speak of the real world, things get even harder. We want to compare the results of our mathematical theories to observations, and that means the use of inductive methods. While we can demonstrate how an ideal probabilistic induction should work, the requirements of such a method include a few infinities. Furthermore, it would not be even enough to be able to compute those methods and obtain predictions. There are cases where underdeterminacy might be unavoidable, such as the interpretation of quantum mechanics or the current status of string theory. Despite that, scientists still behave as if they were able to know the truth. As it becomes clear that such behavior can cause severe cognitive mistakes, the need to accept our limits, both our natural human limits and the limits of the tools we have created, become apparent. This essay will discuss how we must accept that knowledge is almost only limited to formal systems. Moreover, even in those, there will always be undecidable propositions. We will also see how those questions influence the evaluation of current theories in physics.


Nearly 30 years ago, the first of a series of bills to remove asbestos litigation from the tort system by creating an industry-funded mechanism to administratively pay asbestos claims was introduced into Congress. The need for a legislative fix of asbestos litigation has long been manifest. After many unsuccessful efforts to resolve the asbestos litigation crisis, the Senate is poised to take up consideration of S.852, The Fairness In Asbestos Injury Resolution Act of 2005. This essay is a preliminary effort to present some context for discussion of certain aspects of S.852 and to estimate the costs that may be incurred for resolution of personal injury asbestos claims if S.852 is enacted. To date, over 850,000 individual claimants have filed suit against over 8,400 manufacturers, distributors installers and sellers of asbestos-containing products distributed across most of U.S. industries, as well as against owners of buildings and plants in which asbestos is present, claiming injury from exposure to asbestos. Since each plaintiff sues approximately 60-70 different defendants and bankruptcy trusts, the total number of claims probably numbers in excess of 50,000,000. A number of factors account for the significant impetus to current consideration of legislative proposals that range from limiting compensation available in the tort system to plaintiffs whose injuries meet specified medical and exposure criteria to the creation of an administrative alternative to asbestos and exposure litigation. These factors include: the number of asbestos lawsuits; the almost $80 billion in costs already imposed; an even larger sum projected for future costs; 500,000 jobs lost or not created because of the litigation; the further financial consequences of the litigation's impact on capital markets; and the concern for the integrity of the civil justice system as most recently voiced by a federal judge presiding over the silica MDL proceeding that X-ray readers, diagnosing doctors, screening companies and lawyers were engaged in a scheme to manufacture diagnoses for money. S.852, which is now before the Senate, is the product of an extended and extensive negotiation between a number of stakeholders, including, inter alia, businesses, insurers, labor unions, and lawyers. The bill proposes creation of a $140 billion trust ("Trust Fund") funded mostly by business and insurers, to pay claims that meet the medical and exposure criteria set out in the bill. In this essay, I examine the financial costs, in addition to the $140 billion to be paid into the Trust Fund, which may be incurred to resolve current and future personal injury claims based upon asbestos exposure. In attempting to quantify the costs that "fixing" the asbestos litigation crisis may generate and, in particular, those costs additional to the Trust Fund, I am neither advocating adoption or rejection of S.852 or any other legislative "fix" of the massive civil justice system failure that I describe in this essay. Moreover, though I consider the costs that may be incurred in addition to the Trust Fund to be created if S.852 is enacted, I am not expressing any view as to the likelihood of the bill's passage. To set the stage for my analysis, I first consider the benefits that can be realized by enacting legislation to create an administrative mechanism for resolution of asbestos claims in place of the tort system. I then present a brief history of asbestos litigation, including the development of an entrepreneurial model of claim generation, followed by a brief summary of legislative efforts to fix the asbestos litigation crisis. I then briefly summarize S.852's legislative history and current format. Finally, I consider the costs which contributors to the trust fund may additionally have to bear to resolve personal injury asbestos claims. I identify five such areas of costs: 1. asbestos claims handled and paid over the past thirty months since S.1125 was first discussed; 2. "exigent" claimants who qualify for special treatment under S.852; 3. subrogation and workers' compensation claims; 4. pending lawsuits where evidence has commenced, lawsuits where a final judgment has been entered, and certain settlements; and 5. silica/mixed dust claims. Considering only the costs that I have been able to quantify, my analysis indicates that the costs that defendants and insurers may incur for resolution of personal injury asbestos claims, in addition to the $140 billion to be paid into the Trust Fund, could range from approximately $37 billion to $60 billion. To this should be added the cost of four other exceptions that may impose costs outside the Trust Fund that I have not quantified: (i) trial court verdicts; (ii) cases where the presentation of evidence has commenced; (iii) certain settlements; and (iv) silica claims. Each will add unspecified sums to the cost of resolving personal injury asbestos litigation. The assumptions I have made in quantifying costs and the reports and studies I have relied upon (which I have not attempted to validate), may generate outcomes that are too high or too low. I have set out these costs and acknowledged my inability to quantify certain other costs, however, as an invitation to undertake a similar calculus to those who seek to meaningfully compare the costs of the tort and bankruptcy systems (which I have not attempted to quantify), with the costs that may be incurred for resolution of personal injury asbestos claims if S.852 is enacted.


Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are going to be big -- not just for gaming but for work, for social life, and for evaluating and buying real-world products. Like many big technological advances, they will in some ways challenge legal doctrine. In this Article, we will speculate about some of these upcoming challenges, asking:

(1) How might the law treat "street crimes" in VR and AR -- behavior such as disturbing the peace, indecent exposure, deliberately harmful visuals (such as strobe lighting used to provoke seizures in people with epilepsy), and "virtual groping"? Two key aspects of this, we will argue, are the Bangladesh problem (which will make criminal law very hard to practically enforce) and technologically enabled self-help (which will offer an attractive alternative protection to users, but also a further excuse for real-world police departments not to get involved).

(2) How might the law handle tort lawsuits, by users against users, users against VR and AR environment operators, outsiders (such as copyright owners whose works are being copied by users) against users, and outsiders against the environment operators?

(3) How might the law treat users' alteration of other users' avatars, or creation of their own avatars that borrow someone else's name and likeness?

(4) How might privacy law deal with the likely pervasive storage of all the sensory information that VR and AR systems present to their users, and that they gather from the users in the course of presenting it?

(5) How might these analyses reflect on broader debates even outside VR and AR, especially order without law and the speech-conduct distinction?


We introduce AdaptOver, a new LTE signal overshadowing attack that allows an adversary to reactively and adaptively overshadow any downlink message between the network and the user equipment (UE). We demonstrate the impact of AdaptOver by using it to launch targeted Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks on UEs. We implement AdaptOver using a commercially available software-defined radio. Our experiments demonstrate that our DoS attacks cause persistent connection loss lasting more than 12 hours for a wide range of smartphones. DoS attacks based on AdaptOver are stealthier than attacks that relied on the use of fake base stations, and more persistent than existing overshadowing attacks, which caused connection loss of only up to 9 minutes. Given that AdaptOver can reactively overshadow any downlink message, its use is not limited to DoS attacks — it can be used for a wide range of other attacks, e.g., to extract the IMSI from a UE in a stealthier manner than traditional IMSI catchers. We consider AdaptOver to be an essential building block for many attacks against real-world LTE networks. In particular, any fake base station attack that makes use of spoofed downlink messages can be ported to the presented attack method, causing a much more reliable, persistent, and stealthy effect.


Since its increase in popularity in the 1990's, mainstream knowledge management research has grappled with problems of capturing, storing and disseminating knowledge in order to support growth and learning in organisations. Attempts by management to impose knowledge management initiatives often ignore the fact that, as knowledge workers, many employees possess a huge array of work-related tacit knowledge, which cannot readily be made explicit through formal enterprise knowledge management systems and processes. Informal collaborative software, known as Wikis, may provide a more appropriate knowledge management capability and environment to capture tacit knowledge. However Wikis are only now moving from the social to the corporate arena because they challenge management authority by engaging the knowledge worker in democratising organisational knowledge. Theoretical development is needed, accompanied by sound methodologies, to better understand these new processes of creation, accumulation and maintenance of knowledge in organisations. This paper has addressed the gap between theory and method by using Activity Theory to analyse the Wiki as a tool that mediates employee-based knowledge management activities.


Urban development plans always designed based on two important factors; population growth and city's expansion. In many cases, the size of expansion of a city depends on the rate of population growth. The expansion process for a city may include many types of projects, such as building new residential and commercial areas, opening internal and access roads, constructing new service buildings (schools, hospitals, etc.) with providing many types of services such as electricity power, communication access points and towers, and sewerage with water net systems. In this project, an accurate prediction model with prediction function is proposed. The model depends on a time series based Artificial Neural Network to achieve the work. The input data for this model will be the number of families, number of students, and number of registered cars to get fuel in Koya petrol stations. These records that are distributed over different spans of years (from 2000 to 2013) were collected in Koya city. This work has general and specific aims. The specific aim of this work is to support some governmental service departments in Koya through providing a correct prediction about the size of requirements for this city in 2020. This case could be generalized to other cities similar to Koya, which is the general aim of this work.


Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are integrated application software packages that meet most of the information systems requirements of business organisations. ERP, or more simply enterprise systems (ES), have constituted the majority of investment in information technology by global businesses over the last two decades and have had a profound impact upon the way these businesses have been managed. Yet there is not a good understanding of how the business success, as opposed to the implementation project success, of enterprise systems projects can be evaluated. Of the two success concepts, extant literature places more emphasis upon project success rather than business success.

This research is directed at exploring the relationship between planned business success, generally included in ERP project business cases, and subsequent, empirical, post-implementation measures of business success. The study involved the interviewing of 20 key informants from both ERP adopting companies and ERP consulting firms to answer the research question of 'how do businesses evaluate the business success, as opposed to the project implementation success, of enterprise systems?'

Using 10 a priori categories derived from the literature, 100 correlated categories were identified from interview data by use of a three stage coding process; 25 categories were selected from this larger group to identify relationships that were the most pertinent to the central research question.

The key findings of the research were that the strength of the ERP system business case was generally determined by three main categories of business driver; strategic business change, a lower cost business model and business survival. These categories of business driver then determined the criteria for business success applied to the project in post-implementation stages. Where lower cost business models, often involving shared service centres and outsourcing of these centralised functions, were the driver, the business case metrics were more likely to be used for measurement of business success. Otherwise there was generally either a dissociation of benefits estimates in business cases from subsequent success measurement or simply an absence of estimated benefits.

This framework for the evaluation of the business success of enterprise systems has advantages over the delivery of estimated, a priori, business benefits because:

(1) The assumptions underlying the initial estimates of benefits will generally be invalidated because of the changed business environment prevailing after the lengthy implementation of a systems project. This makes comparisons with empirical post-implementation measures of business success of reduced value. Further, measures of business success based upon delivered benefits assume a degree of causality between the new ERP system and business benefits. However, it is often difficult to disentangle benefits from new business processes enabled by the enterprise system from benefits derived from other business initiatives.

(2) Actual, realised business benefits of a new IT system are often not measured for organisational and behavioural reasons. For example, there may be a lack of continuity of project stakeholders over the implementation period. Or more simply, people are reluctant to study what are viewed as past and irreversible events.

(3) A final factor is the absence of accounting or other measurement systems to evaluate actual benefits, often the result of the replacement of legacy accounting systems used to estimate the initial planned benefits.

This research also adds considerably to current literature on the implementation of enterprise systems, which has generally studied project success rather than business success because of the relative ease of measurement of project implementation success.


Cleft Lip and Palate (CLP) is among the most frequent congenital abnormalities. The impaired facial development affects the articulation, with different phonemes being impacted inhomogeneously among different patients. This work focuses on automatic phoneme analysis of children with CLP for a detailed diagnosis and therapy control. In clinical routine, the state-of-the-art evaluation is based on perceptual evaluations. Perceptual ratings act as ground-truth throughout this work, with the goal to build an automatic system that is as reliable as humans. We propose two different automatic systems focusing on modeling the articulatory space of a speaker: one system models a speaker by a GMM, the other system employs a speech recognition system and estimates fMLLR matrices for each speaker. SVR is then used to predict the perceptual ratings. We show that the fMLLR-based system is able to achieve automatic phoneme evaluation results that are in the same range as perceptual inter-rater-agreements.


Until its 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court had never struck down any firearm restrictions as violating the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In Heller, the majority held that the Second Amendment's text and original public meaning protect an individual's right to keep and bear arms for self-defense in the home. Both proponents and opponents of gun control regulation saw the Heller decision as ushering in a new era of Second Amendment jurisprudence. On the one hand, Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion for the majority in Heller was seen as a vindication of an inherent natural right that had been obscured for too long. On the other hand, many see the Heller decision as having few consequences (besides at the margins) for " America's already weak gun control regime. " Until the Supreme Court offers more guidance on how far the Second Amendment right extends outside the home for self-defense, it is the lower courts that will ultimately decide how and to what extent that right may be restricted by government regulation. According to several commentators, in the years since Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago, lower courts have shied away from invalidating any current restrictions besides total bans similar to the ones at issue in those decisions. This Note will examine how the Supreme Court's decisions in Heller and McDonald have affected state and municipal attempts to regulate the possession and use of firearms. In the wake of those decisions, lower courts have developed several loose frameworks for evaluating challenges to firearm restrictions. Given this confusing judicial landscape, scholars and commentators offer competing views of what that landscape means for the choices that state and local regulators can and should make. This Note will ultimately evaluate these views in light of the developments and trends in recent case law. " A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. " 1 " Our thoughts and prayers are with the students and families impacted by yesterday's terrible tragedy in Centennial, Colorado, and with every one of the 90 families that lose loved ones in our nation every day to gun violence. We will continue to fight for the solutions we know exist to make this the safer nation we all want and deserve, on behalf …


This book brings together some of the best researchers in the field of aging and neurodegenerative diseases and presents up-to-date information concerning new developments in this exciting area of research in quite separate fields of biomedical science. It includes a wide range of issues such as basic and applied concepts, methods, and techniques used in this area. The chapters examine and evaluate our understanding of the pathogenetic mechanisms involved in these fields such as increased protein oxidation and macromolecular modifications associated with aging. This is a novel strategy for the visualization of ROS-induced protein oxidation and protection by antioxidants in living cells using fluorescent probes, thermochemiluminescence (TCL) methodology for determination of the oxidative status of biological systems in experimental and clinical setups, protein degradation, proteasome inactivation observed in the aging process or caused by oxidative stress. Other topics addressed are the oxidative stress theory of aging, oxidation and removal of protein aggregates in neurodegeneration, causes and consequences of oxidative stress in Alzheimer's disease, assessment of antioxidants as a therapeutic for neurodegenerative diseases, rafts and prions, the many forms of the prion protein and its subcellular pathways, signaling pathways in protection of neural tissues by ischemic and drug-induced preconditioning, folding of proteins associated with neurodegenerative disorders and aging and neuroprotection in immuno-mediated neurodegeneration from infection to autoimmunity.


It is generally accepted that historically Africa experienced colonialism. Thus, in the neocolonial age articulated by the likes of Sugirtharajah, Segovia and Nkrumah, most African countries are faced with the challenge of power struggle in which imperialism and dictatorship inhibits the development of the Two-Thirds world countries. This challenge, it is argued, reveals an imperialistic tendency of the European Union, China and African government(s) to alter democracy and freedom. As such, the Zimbabwe context, amongst others, will be used as a main point of reference. This article examines the elements of imperialism in African states in the light of Persian hegemonic power in the books of Deuteronomy and Ezra-Nehemiah. It investigates whether or not the Jews were free under the Persian hegemonic influence in the post-exilic period. The comparison of the influence of Persian hegemony in the books of Deuteronomy and Ezra-Nehemiah with the evidence of imperialism in African government(s), leads to the argument that certain African states do not appear to be completely democratic and free. Intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary implications: Based on aspects of Old Testament and political science studies, this article explores traces of imperialism in African governments in the light of Persian hegemonic power in the Hebrew Bible. In the end, the article argues that certain African states, for instance Zimbabwe, should not be considered as completely democratic and free nations.


The Eighth Assembly of the World Council of Churches affirmed for me the importance of the body of Jesus Christ. It is only within the body of Christ, as it brings together all Christians of every culture and land, that we can catch a glimpse of what we are to be as the living community of faith. The witness of any and every Christian denomination is incomplete without the testimony, challenge and encouragement that comes from other Christian sisters and brothers as they experience faith in their own life context. I went to the assembly expecting to have my ecumenical commitment strengthened, and it was. What I did not expect was to hear and see that in the complexity and multiplicity of the situations that the body of Christ is called to be in mission there are some fundamentals which do not change. Those fundamentals are prayer, ministering to people wherever they are, and placing one's faith in the transcendent power of God. I remember very little about the prayers we prayed during the assembly worship services. I know that they touched me while we prayed together, prepared me for the days of meetings and decision making. At night they enabled me to set aside work and weariness for rest and renewal. These were blessed prayers, but the prayers that most affected me were the prayers that persons lifted up as the very prayers that had been sustenance for them in their struggles and vision bearers in their efforts to be faithful to God's calling in their lives. At a commemoration of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, a brother from Chile spoke about the horror of the downfall of the Chilean President Salvador Allende, and the repression that followed. He himself had been detained and tortured. Family, friends and colleagues had also suffered, many of them had been murdered. He lauded the Declaration of Human Rights as a strong arm of justice and advocated for its continuance. As much as he appreciated the human rights efforts made in behalf of his country and his people, he stated that what had most sustained him were the prayers of persons from all over the world. They had provided for him a sense of care in the midst of the beatings by those who sought to destroy him, a measure of confidence in knowing that he was not alone, and an unwavering hope in the One who hears all prayers. A woman came and assumed the vacant delegate seat next to me one afternoon. Her church had just been accepted as a new member of the World Council of Churches. During a recess I asked her about her church. Her enthusiasm and her reports of a young church experiencing phenomenal growth led me to ask her how the church had come to be. Her answer was simple. "We prayed and God gave us a vision of what we were to do." Not all persons and churches at the assembly were experiencing the joy and growth that the sister from this new member church was experiencing. There were persons from declining churches, others from divided churches, and others who felt their church had lost its direction in ministry and mission. The divisions and tensions among member churches of the WCC were also quite evident. This was the stuff of conversations at the meal table, during recesses, and late into the night. Histories were shared, concerns were unpacked, ideas and strategies were considered. Sharing and struggling and thinking together helped, but in all the conversations that I was a part of, there always came a moment in which it became obvious that human explaining, planning and effort were not sufficient to renew spirits, overcome brokenness, or provide a clear vision for our mission together. Transformation, reconciliation and clarity of vision for witness and mission are possible only through the grace of God. We all committed to continue working for the wholeness of the body of Jesus Christ and for its witness. In every expression of commitment there was the primary commitment to pray with and for each other, that God would look down upon us, and guide us and fill us with divine grace for healing and faithful discipleship. …


An increasing number of turnkey, domain specific software packages are available to help users take advantage of advanced cyber-infrastructure and resources such as TeraGrid. However, novice users of cyber-infrastructure are often overwhelmed by the complexities of using cyber-infrastructure. For instance, the user may need to install multiple software tools just to connect with advanced hardware, and successfully installing and navigating this software frequently requires the use of Command Line Interfaces (CLI) that are unfamiliar to novice users. Even when applications provide a Graphical User Interface (GUI), special software (such as an X11 server) may be required to use the interface. Installing, configuring and running this software is generally a multi-step process that can be overly confusing to novice users and presents a barrier to entry, particularly in research domains not traditionally associated with advanced computation.
 Scientific gateways (such as the TeraGrid Portal [1]) are one possible solution to this problem. However, not all research projects or High Performance Computing (HPC) centers have the resources necessary to provide scientific gateways. We have developed an alternative solution: a "plug and play" HPC system portal stored on a USB thumb drive. The thumb drive contains all the software necessary to connect to traditional cyber-infrastructure and all programs run directly from the thumb drive -- no installation or setup is required. To access the software from a Windows-based machine, the user simply connects the thumb drive and runs the desired programs. The current thumb drive includes all the typical software necessary to connect to an HPC resource, such as X11 [2], ssh [3], and scp [4]. Since the software is pre-installed on the drive, it can also be preconfigured with the necessary preferences required to immediately connect to the resource.
 This presentation will describe the development process for the "Portable Apps" [5] HPC thumb drive, including lessons learned and suggestions for adapting the paradigm for other systems. The Portable Apps drive has been successfully distributed to both expert and novice HPC users at Michigan State University (MSU) and has proved to be a popular and easy-to-use tool for accessing local and national cyber-infrastructure resources, including TeraGrid [6]. This presentation will offer specific suggestions for adapting the Portable Apps idea (such as procedures for site specific applications [7]) and developing similar outreach and educational tools for other institutions and resources.


Since 2011 the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is using an in-house developed battery electric vehicle based on a Volkswagen Lupo 3L for educational and research projects. The TU/e Lupo Electric Lightweight (EL) is able to recuperate kinetic energy by using regenerative braking. A brake pedal based regenerative braking strategy demands applying a combination of hydraulic and regenerative brake force. A proper control of this brake blending proves to be challenging. An advantage of an electric vehicle compared to an ICE car is that substantial amounts of deceleration can be achieved without applying the friction brakes. These observations have led to the concept of One Pedal Driving (OPD) where the accelerator pedal can also be used to perform regenerative braking. A similar concept is applied in for example the BMW i3 and Tesla Model S and is rated quite positively by drivers. Since kinetic energy cannot be recuperated with 100% efficiency, for some driving conditions the best thing to do is neither propel nor brake the vehicle and just let the car roll freely, which is known as coasting. During coasting minimal energy is used which improves the overall energy efficiency. To assess regenerative braking strategies that are currently applied in electric vehicles, a selection of vehicles has been investigated. These vehicles are subjectively evaluated by driving tests on public roads where special attention is paid to the regenerative braking and coasting characteristics. Before designing a suitable OPD algorithm, a list of requirements is composed. The overall motor performance limits are investigated and based on the OPD requirements a general accelerator pedal map is designed and implemented. Based on a limited number of driving tests, subjective and objective conclusions regarding energy efficiency and drivability are drawn. The tests with various drivers indicate a slightly improved driving efficiency. Furthermore, all drivers comments positively on using OPD as being very intuitively and are able to adapt to it quickly.


South Africa is a water-stressed country where scarce water resources are unequally available to South Africans. It seems inevitable that climate change will in future severely affect the availability of water resources and the ecological and socio-economic aspects of water uses in the country. It is especially the poor, indigent and marginalized sectors of the population that have inadequate access to water and it is these people who would also be most severely affected by the impact of climate change on water resources. While South African constitutional and statutory provisions guarantee everyone access to sufficient water, an environmental right and other laws simultaneously aim to protect water resources. There is accordingly a very real possibility for sustainability conflicts to arise where difficult decisions have to be made with respect to providing people access to sufficient water on the one hand and protecting water resources for the benefit of present and future generations on the other. The latter conflict was recently illustrated in the Constitutional Court judgment of Mazibuko v City of Johannesburg 2009 JDR 1030 (CC). For the first time, South Africa's highest Court was required to provide content to the constitutionally entrenched right of access to sufficient water. Against a general discussion of the state of water resources in South Africa, the predicted impact of climate change on these resources and the prevailing socio-economic conditions in the country, this article analyses the Court's decision in Mazibuko and argues that its restrictive interpretation of the right to access to water could be considered ecologically responsible and conducive to achieving inter-generational equity.


Multilayer coatings for high-power laser mirrors and lenses have been optimized by a particular constrained gradient method to reach together with a reduction of damage threshold (i.e., suppression of the peak electric field), good values of optical parameters (reflectance or transmittance). The problem has been solved for normal and oblique incident radiation of λ = 10.6 μm. Reflectance values of more than 0.99 have been achieved with only two layers deposited on a metal mirror.


The Demos Inquiry into Faith, Community and Society set out to explore the role of faith in British society and politics. It investigated the relationship between religious belief, values and political motivation, and looked at the role that faith groups play in delivering public services. This collection brings together the research conducted for the inquiry, and includes a new essay by the inquiry's chair, Stephen Timms MP.

The first report of the inquiry, Faithful Citizens, found both that religious people are more active citizens, and that they are more likely to be politically progressive, putting a greater value on equality than the non-religious. The second report, Faithful Providers, argued that local authorities stand to benefit both financially and through improved community relations if religious groups were brought into service delivery.

The essay draws on this research base to discover how, at a time when the number of active faith group participants in Britain far exceeds the number of members of all the political parties put together, politicians can make common cause with this vital constituency.


Helsinki in Early Twentieth-Century Literature analyses experiences of the Finnish capital in prose fiction published in Finnish in the period 1890–1940. It examines the relationships that are formed between Helsinki and fictional characters, focusing, especially, on the way in which urban public space is experienced. Particular attention is given to the description of movement through urban space. The primary material consists of a selection of more than sixty novels, collections of short stories and individual short stories. This study draws on two sets of theoretical frameworks: on the one hand, the expanding field of literary studies of the city, and on the other hand, concepts provided by humanistic and critical geography, as well as by urban studies. This study is the first monograph to examine Helsinki in literature written in Finnish. It shows that rich descriptions of urban life have formed an integral part of Finnish literature from the late nineteenth century onward.Around the turn of the twentieth century, literary Helsinki was approached from a variety of generic and thematic perspectives which were in close dialogue with international contemporary traditions and age-old images of the city, and defined by events typical of Helsinki's own history. Helsinki literature of the 1920s and 1930s further developed the defining traits that took form around the turn of the century, adding a number of new thematic and stylistic nuances. The city experience was increasingly aestheticized and internalized. As the centre of the city became less prominent in literature,the margins of the city and specific socially defined neighbourhoods gained in importance. Many of the central characteristics of how Helsinki is experienced in the literature published during this period remain part of the ongoing discourse on literary Helsinki: Helsinki as a city of leisure and light, inviting dreamy wanderings; the experience of a city divided along the fault lines of gender,class and language; the city as a disorientating and paralyzing cesspit of vice;the city as an imago mundi, symbolic of the body politic; the city of everyday and often very mundane experiences, and the city that invites a profound sense of attachment – an environment onto which characters project their innermost sentiments.


The CLIC Test Facility 3 (CTF3) drive beam injector should provide high intensity and high quality electron beams. The present installation relies on a thermionic gun followed by a complexRF bunching system. As an upgrade to improve the beam emittance and the energy spread and to minimize the beam losses, a photo-injector is being developed and tested at CERN. One of the major challenges is to provide a 3.5A beam with a stable (0.1%) beam energy over 1.2 μs and a relative energy spread smaller than 1%. A 90◦ spectrometer line consisting of a segmented dump and an Optical Transition Radiation screen has been built in order to study these issues. The following paper describes its design and shows performances during the beam commissioning.


Software professionals' (SPs') performance is often understood narrowly in terms of input–output productivity. This study approaches performance from a broader perspective and examines whether the emotional intelligence competencies (EICs) of SPs, the leadership style of team leaders, social capital among team members, and human resource management (HRM) practices of software firms affect performance of SPs. It also tests whether the value of and opportunities for knowledge sharing moderate such relationships. Data were collected from 441 Indian SPs in a questionnaire survey. Fifty-five team leaders assessed the performance of SPs, and SPs assessed the other constructs. Results revealed that EICs, transformational leadership style, social capital, and HRM practices positively affect performance. EICs are the most important predictors of performance. Under high (low) value of and high (low) opportunities for knowledge sharing, the antecedents influencing performance are strengthened (attenuated or nullified). The value of and opportunities for knowledge sharing are quasi-moderators. These findings have significant implications for organizing effective work teams.


In this experiment the effects of feeding treatments from mid pregnancy until lambing on the behaviour of twin-bearing ewes and their lambs were investigated. Fifty seven four-year-old Romney ewes were offered a medium (1164 ± 31.6 and 819 ± 16.0 kg DM/ ha preand post-grazing pasture mass, respectively) or ad libitum (2181 ± 47.6 and 1431 ± 24.6 kg DM/ha preand post-grazing pasture mass, respectively) feeding treatment from day 76 of pregnancy until after lambing. At ear-tagging the time taken for the lambs to stand, make contact with, suck from and follow their dam was recorded. A maternal behaviour score based on the distance the ewe moved away from her lambs during tagging was also recorded. Survival analysis showed that lambs born to ewes offered the medium feeding treatment from mid pregnancy until lambing were quicker to stand, suck and follow compared with lambs born to ewes offered the ad libitum feeding treatment (P<0.05). It is unclear whether these behaviours indicate that lambs born to ewes in the medium treatment were more vigorous or that they had unmet needs that prompted the apparent increase in vigour. Ewe feeding treatments did not affect the maternal behaviour of the ewes.


Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are childhood psychiatric conditions characterized by a deficit in social interaction skills, communication abilities, and behavioral patterns marked with repetitive, idiosyncratic behaviors that typically function to serve as self-stimulatory actions. Due to the overlap of behavior seen in more than one diagnosis on the Autism spectrum (e.g., Autistic Disorder & Asperger's Disorder), it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between developmental disorders, particularly when the clinical presentation of problem behavior is more sophisticated and falls on the higher end of the autism spectrum. Although a discussion on how to discriminate diagnostically between developmental disorders goes beyond the scope of this article, it is worth noting that some researchers contend that children with Asperger's Disorder typically develop secondary psychiatric conditions in the form of externalizing behaviors (Polirstok & Houghteling, 2006). Though the literature suggests that a formal diagnosis of a behavioral disorder may be more unique to Asperger Syndrome, the presence of behavioral difficulties (i.e., oppositionality, aggressiveness, limited attention span) in children with ASD is widely cited and recognized. In fact, some research has demonstrated that most children who fall on the autism spectrum present to clinics with problem behavior as the primary focus of treatment (Mandell, Walrath, Manteuffel, Sgro, & Pinto-Martin, 2005). As any child with excessive problem behavior has difficulty entering or staying enrolled in a structured classroom, it is understandable that parents, in order to increase their child's school readiness, oftentimes seek treatment to target these behaviors. As disruptive behavior is typically the primary presenting problem for children with ASD, clinicians oftentimes take a behavioral approach to treatment. Although traditionally used with typically-developing children, one intervention that has demonstrated success in improving parent-child relationships, reducing problem behavior, and increasing child compliance is Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT: Hembree-Kigin & McNeil, 1995). PCIT is an empirically-based, short-term parent training program for young children ages 2-7 who engage in disruptive problem behavior. Clinically, due to the prevalent behavioral component of developmental disorders, many children with autism spectrum disorders have been referred for PCIT in the last several years. Although the impact of PCIT has not been tested empirically with this population, the increase of referrals has raised the question of whether PCIT may be an effective gateway therapy to enhance children's readiness for more comprehensive treatments that target behavioral concerns specifically associated with autism (e.g., social skills). Clinically, we have seen that PCIT has been a successful first-line treatment in that children become more compliant and less aggressive, thereby increasing their cooperation with more intensive and focused therapy. In addition, our clinical experience demonstrates that parents tend to be more optimistic about undertaking additional services once their child's behavior is under better control. Although PCIT is showing success with the high-functioning Asperger's/Autism population, it is important to note that not all children with ASD are expected to benefit from PCIT. For example, children with poor receptive language skills ( This article gives an overview of the prominent behavioral and educational treatments for Autism Spectrum Disorders demonstrating a number of ways in which researchers and clinicians have conceptualized and treated these diagnoses. Next, an overview of the components of PCIT is outlined, followed by a conceptualization as to how PCIT could possibly serve as an effective adjunct to current interventions for ASD. …


Conventional single-energy CT imaging results in an anatomic depiction of the imaged area based on depiction of differences in physical density. Dual-energy CT imaging differentiates structures of a similar density with different elemental compositions based on differing attenuations at different photon energies. Hence, dual-energy imaging moves away from imaging density toward imaging elemental, or possibly even chemical, composition (see accompanying article).


This paper first discusses the current historical and philosophical framework forged during the last century to account for both the history and the epistemic status of Newton's theory of general gravitation. It then examines the conflict surrounding this theory at the close of the seventeenth century and the first steps towards the revolutionary shift in rational mechanics in the eighteenth century. From a historical point of view, it shows the crucial contribution of the Cartesian mechanistic philosophy and Leibnizian analytic methods to the emergence of so-called Newtonian mechanics which can also be fairly characterized as a synthetic theory of attraction. From a philosophical standpoint, the paper suggests that the reworking of Newton's theory in the 18th century is better understood in a theoretical framework that reconciles Kuhn's notion of invisible revolution rather than his notion of normal science with Whewell's ascription of the completion of dynamical studies to the post Newtonian period.


In the existing literature, studies of innovativeness usually focus on individual characteristics with little concern for aggregated behaviour; the central role of innovativeness, opinion leadership, and geographic location have not been fully reflected in diffusion models; most diffusion models either make simplified as-sumptions to model aggregated trends or concern individual behaviours exces-sively as being 'toy models'; understandings of the diffusion forces bifurcate into explanations on social contagion effect and self-conformity effect and few diffu-sion models have tried to combine these two streams of thinking. In order to contribute knowledge to these fields, this study seeks to model the diffusion process from an agent-based perspective, with a specific focus on the effects of organisational innovativeness, opinion leadership, and geographic location. The proposed model is a focusing tool that helps interpret and organise the empirical observation. In turn, the model's results could raise further questions for empiri-cal exploration.
The result from the model simulation echoes a number of existing works on in-novation strategies with further quantitative implications for both industry policy makers and managers in organisations. It is found that the statistical distributions of organisational innovativeness and opinion leadership are both important fac-tors in diffusion; the level of information flow between organisations with differ-ent innovativeness levels influences the diffusion process significantly; to cluster organisations in one area changes the interactions between them and increases the diffusion rate, even when the average interaction level of the system is con-trolled. The model also indicates that organisations' self-effort is the only way for being innovators; that factors that are related to interactions with others are more important for laying in the majority category; and that laggards normally adopt innovations by 'luck'.


Interpersonal disagreement has been linked to a variety of democratic outcomes, and classic theories of social influence place it at the heart of opinion formation. We examine the relationship between exposure to disagreement and information seeking during elections, while developing and testing a theory of heterogeneous effects based on recent work on personality and discussion (e.g., Gerber et al. 2012). Using a simulated campaign experiment (Lau and Redlawsk 2006) and data from the 2008–9 ANES panel study, we find consistent evidence that personality conditions responses to disagreement in expected ways—it enhances effects for those with certain traits, while suppressing it for those with others. We close by reflecting on this pattern of results, discussing broader implications while moving toward a more general theory of social influence.


Mark Zuckerberg's inaugural pick for his "Year of Books" challenge, The End of Power updates the very notion of power for the 21st century. Power, we know, is shifting: From West to East and North to South, from presidential palaces to public squares, from once formidable corporate behemoths to nimble startups and, slowly but surely, from men to women. But power is not merely dispersing; it is also decaying. Those in power today are more constrained in what they can do with it and more at risk of losing it than ever before. In The End of Power, award-winning columnist and former Foreign Policy editor Moises Naim illuminates the struggle between once-dominant megaplayers and the new micropowers challenging them in every field of human endeavor. Drawing on provocative, original research, Naim shows how the antiestablishment drive of micropowers can topple tyrants, dislodge monopolies, and open remarkable new opportunities, but it can also lead to chaos and paralysis. Naim deftly covers the seismic changes underway in business, religion, education, within families, and in all matters of war and peace. Examples abound in all walks of life: In 1977, eighty-nine countries were ruled by autocrats while today more than half the world's population lives in democracies. CEO's are more constrained and have shorter tenures than their predecessors. Modern tools of war, cheaper and more accessible, make it possible for groups like Hezbollah to afford their own drones. In the second half of 2010, the top ten hedge funds earned more than the world's largest six banks combined. Those in power retain it by erecting powerful barriers to keep challengers at bay. Today, insurgent forces dismantle those barriers more quickly and easily than ever, only to find that they themselves become vulnerable in the process. In this accessible and captivating book, Naim offers a revolutionary look at the inevitable end of power--and shows how it will change your world.


Mossbauer Spectroscopy has been used to investigate the
site of Fe inclusions in a suite of synthetic diamonds (de
Beers MDAS). Information on the hyperfine magnetic fields
and electric field gradients at Fe sites in the diamond
grains were obtained from Mossbauer Spectroscopy of diamond
grains ranging in size from 25 to 250 um. The Fe inclusions
in these samples resulted from the synthesis of the diamond
grains in which Fe was used as a catalytic solvent. The
Mossbauer measurements were carried at room temperature
with a constant acceleration spectrometer operating in
transmission geometry.
The samples with the largest grain size of 180-250 um gave
a well defined six component magnetically split spectrum,
similar to the Zeeman split sextet obtained for natural
iron. As the grain sizes decreased the intensity of
the magnetically split components became greatly reduced
and a strong paramagnetic component appeared. At grain
sizes 105-45 um the spectra are dominated by a central
single line with some evidence of an asymmetric doublet.
For the finest grain size 38-25 um, the reappearance of
the six magnetic hyperfine splitting components together
with the strong central single paramagnetic component was
observed.
The change in the Mossbauer patterns observed with decreasing
grain size suggest that a rapid phase transition of the
Fe inclusions from ferromagnetic to superparamagnetic
takes place.
The analysis of Mossbauer spectra yielded a value of the
hyperfine magnetic field of Bhf = -32.4(4) T and an
electric field gradient in the range of Vzz = 1.4(4) 1.8(
7) X 10'8 V.cm- 2 at the site of the probe s7Fe
nucleus. These values compare favourably with other
measurements.


Summary This paper tries to analyse the historical and present contribution of phenomenology to the hermeneutics of traditions. This attempt is achieved by retracing, in main lines, the history of phenomenological movement, his birth, constitution and evolution. In this proposal, it is showed how, by his both internal and external critics, classic phenomenology is moved to open itself to other contemporary trends of thought, namely hermeneutics and philosophy of language, and, in dialogue with these and with the human sciences, to transform itself in a more fruitful way. This is truth, first of all, in respect of Husserl's·thought, which evolves from static phenomenology, centered in the analysis of the noetic-noematic intentional correlation from the point of view of a transcendental idealism, to genetic and historical phenomenology, based on the "Ur-Impression" of the living-present, as the founding phenomenon-event of all meaning's constitution. A decisive point is made by Heidegger in stressing the hermeneutic, discursive and historical character of all ontological understanding. This allows emphasizing the question of the sense formation (Sinnbildung), which precedes and enables all symbolic and signic institution of meaning (Sinnstiftung), therefore providing a guiding line for search on the topic of the historical constitution of language and traditions.


On 24 June 2016, a narrow majority of citizens of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, a decision which has exposed deep divisions in British society. This article analyses the extent to which the campaign to leave the EU and its aftermath can be explained in terms of existing definitions of 'populism'. It distinguishes between a 'thin' and 'thick' ideology of populism. Whereas the 'thin' ideology refers to a specific political method or style, one which claims to represent the 'true people' against a ruling elite, the 'thick' ideology focuses on substantial ideological elements, e.g. authoritarian and nationalist worldviews. The paper demonstrates that the Brexit campaign has been dominated by exclusive, right-wing populist ideas. In order to understand the appeal of populist parties and movements in the UK, the paper explores the multi-layered factors that have led to widespread support for the anti-European and anti-immigration politics. It argues that a mix of economic, political and cultural disenfranchisement is a root cause of the vote for Brexit. In this light, the Brexit rhetoric of 'taking back control' can be interpreted as a (problematic) attempt to overcome disenfranchisement.


Bulgaria is situated on the Balkan Peninsula. Its northern frontier is the lower part of the Danube. The Balkan range, with its zonal situation, is part of a natural climatic frontier, dividing Bulgaria into two parts—north and south. One of the main features of the climate in the Danube Plain (northern Bulgaria) is insufficient precipitation—a tendency toward dryness and frequent droughts. The annual amount of precipitation is 500–600 mm. The highest monthly values are measured in June (in some places in May), with 55–75 mm. February (in some places, March) is the driest month. Absence of precipitation can occur in any month, but the probability of this happening in May and June is very low. At the same time, monthly precipitation can exceed 100 mm in any month; in the summer it can even exceed 250–300 mm. The radiation balance is about 50 Kkal.sm . In this study, Budyko's dryness ratio (1985) is used to define land moistening. The ratio is:


The green mussel, Pema viridis, constitutes a sustenance fishery in India, particularly along
the Malabar Coast. The paper deals with the distribution, extent of mussel beds, exploited resources,
total stock and the man power employed in the fishery along the Kerala coast from Calicut to
Cannanors and Karnataka coast from Bhatkal to Majali. In the Callcut-Cannanore area fishery Is from
August to June and the catch is estimated at 3043 t, 3074 t and 2596 t during 1981-82, 1S82-83
and 1983'84, respectively. The mussels tanged in length from 20-129 mm. The total man power
employed Is assessed as 685 in the Callcut-Cannanore area, of which 325 are traditional full time
mussel divers and the rest are part time mussel divers, The seed resources varied from 4.57 to
6.52 kg/m- In December 1983 and the size of the seeds ranged from 10-40 mm. There is no
regular commercial fishery in the Bhatkal-Majall area. The paper also deals with the constraints
and prospects for development of the mussel fishery.


Small businesses have the potential to grow the economy, generate jobs and reduce poverty, but they face many constraints including high tax compliance costs and burdens. A comparison of the findings and recommendations made in small business tax compliance cost studies conducted in South Africa with initiatives introduced by the South African Revenue Service (SARS), substantiated by consultations with a SARS and a South African Institute of Chartered Accountants official, reveals that SARS has, in most cases, attempted to address the tax compliance burdens identified in these studies. However, SARS has only partially addressed the complexity of the tax law, the lack of software to assist small businesses with their record-keeping and the compliance burden associated with provisional tax. SARS has failed to address the need for a threshold below which no small business tax return is required to be submitted, the inclusion of tax in the school syllabus, the requirement for first-time offenders to attend courses instead of raising penalties and the need for a reduction in the rates of interest and penalties raised by SARS. These initiatives should be considered by SARS and it is recommended that further research into the success and effectiveness of all the initiatives already introduced by SARS be performed.


Plasma concentrations of HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol are low in the Saudi Arabian population. A B polymorphism at the CETP (cholesteryl ester protein transfer) locus that is detectable with the restriction enzyme Taq I is a genetic determinant of the plasma HDL cholesterol concentration. We assessed the relationship between the Taq I B CETP polymorphism and lipid and apolipoprotein concentrations in a study sample of 335 Saudi residents. The Taq I B1 and B2 allele frequencies were 0.54 and 0.46 respectively, similar to those in other populations. HDL cholesterol levels in B2B2 homozygotes were significantly higher than in B1B1 homozygotes [1.01 (0.3) compared with 0.92 (0.2) mmol/l; mean (S.D.); P=0.03]. There was also a significant difference between the B2B2 and B1B1 homozygotes with regard to apolipoprotein AI concentration [123.6 (16.4) compared with 113.7 (13.9) mg/dl; P=0.04]. This genetic variation was independent of metabolic risk factors known to influence HDL cholesterol levels. The allele frequency of the Taq I B CETP polymorphism and its relatively modest impact on HDL cholesterol concentrations argue against an important role for this allele, or for strongly linked loci, in determining the low levels of HDL cholesterol seen in the Saudi population.


Bulk synchronous parallelism (BSP) offers an abstract and simple model of parallelism yet allows to take realistically into account the communication costs of parallel algorithms. BSP has been used in many application domains. BSPlib and its variants are programming libraries for the C language that support the BSP style.

Bulk Synchronous Parallel ML (BSML) is a library for BSP programming with the functional language OCaml. It offers parallel operations on a data structure named parallel vector. BSML provides a global view of programs, i.e. BSML programs can be seen as sequential programs working on a parallel data structure (seq of par) while a BSPlib program is written in the SPMD style and understood as a parallel composition of communicating sequential programs (par of seq). The communication styles of BSML and BSPlib are also quite different.

The contribution of this paper is a BSPlib-style communication API implemented on top of BSML. It has been designed without extending BSML, but only using the imperative features of the underlying functional language OCaml. Programs implemented using this API are syntactically very close to programs implemented using a BSPlib library for the C language. It therefore shows that BSML is universal for the BSP model.


Many forms of administration of state affairs, in other words many administrative models, emerged and were developed throughout the history of mankind. Some of them were applied in relatively modest conditions of small states; others operated within large empires, either based on a national principle or on multinational and multicultural states. Some of them left hardly any trace in history; others proved their viability by their longevity. One of the models of state administration which undoubtedly stood the test of time was the organisation of central state administration in Rome in the period of the Principate, followed by the slightly modified administration of the Late Roman Empire.