In 2001 the Ministerial Report on Abuse, Neglect and Ill-treatment of Older Persons ('Mothers and Fathers of the Nation: The Forgotten People') gave horrific accounts of older persons suffering neglect and abuse in residential care, in their communities and in their family homes. The long-awaited Older Persons Bill 68 of 2003 and the resultant Older Persons Act 13 of 2006 promised to provide the regulatory framework within which older persons would receive the care and protection they deserve.
The aim of this article is to trace the legislative and policy developments from the Aged Persons Act of 1967 up to the Older Persons Act 13 of 2006. The Older Persons Act is compared to the Aged Persons Act to determine whether the former truly can live up to its promise as all-inclusive legislation regulating the protection and care of older persons, or whether it has ended up being merely its predecessor cloaked in more politically correct terms. In particular, it will be argued that the lack of express enforcement mechanisms detracts from the significant advance in the protection of older persons created by the rights-based approach introduced by the Older Persons Act.


The coccidia (protistan phylum Apicomplexa Levine, 1970) comprise a large group of obligate intracellular parasites commonly found in all classes of vertebrate hosts and in some invertebrates. This review focuses on those species within the Eimeriidae because they are among the most prevalent and speciose of all parasite groups, and there is no taxonomic summation currently available for those species that infect insectivores. All published species descriptions in the genera Cyclospora, Eimeria and Isospora that infect insectivores are reviewed and evaluated. Some of the named species are invalid, either because rules concerning the naming of new species (International Code of Zoological Nomenclature) were not followed and/or the original description was so incomplete as to be of little use; such names have been relegated to species inquirendae. The mammalian order Insectivora has seven families composed of 66 genera and 428 species. There are no coccidia described from three families: Chrysochloridae, Nesophontidae and Solenodontidae. In the Erinaceidae, only Erinaceus, Hemiechinus and Hylomys have valid coccidia described from them; in the Soricidae, only six genera, Crocidura, Suncus (Crocidurinae) andBlarina, Cryptotis, Neomys, and Sorex (Soricinae) have valid species described; in the Tenrecidae, only Hemicentetes and Setifer have valid species; and in the Talpidae, only Condylura, Mogera, Neurotrichus, Parascalops, Scalopus, Scapanus, Talpa and Urotrichus (Talpinae) have valid species described. In all, 75 eimeriid coccidia are known from insectivore hosts including 48 Eimeria, 22 Isospora and five Cyclospora species; 45 species inquirendae are noted.


Changes in technology are influencing all sectors of human activity. The need for information and access to right information is vital in the digital environment. It is hence important for librarians to shift roles from being silent custodians to spirited catalysts. The libraries and librarians must adopt the changing technology in reaching out to the user community. This paper throws light on a few Web 2.0 tools and other emerging technologies that will guide the librarians of the future. Application of these tools is sure to bring about the transformation of libraries provided the library professionals take up the challenge of equipping themselves and assume the role of embedded librarians. The paper also attempts to establish the relevance of Dr. S. R. Ranganathan in the technology dominated library scenario.


(Abstract) This paper provides a historical analysis of the desegregation of George Washington High School and Langston High School in Danville, Virginia in 1970. The author focuses on the related desegregation litigation on a national, state, and local level as well as the historical context for desegregation in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In August of 1970, Danville, Virginia embarked on a new era in education as its schools would be totally desegregated. It would no longer operate under the freedom of choice plan that had been in effect since 1965 and permitted African-American parents to send their children to the all-white schools. The school system was to be fully integrated and operating as a unitary system. Using newspaper accounts, correspondence from key figures, and interviews with key people in Danville in 1970, the author addresses four areas of research: (a) What led to the desegregation of schools in Danville, Virginia? (b) Who were the key players in the desegregation movement? (c) How were the community, the students, and the staff prepared for desegregation? and (d) What were the attitudes and the concerns about desegregation? The data was collected and analyzed using qualitative methodology. The constant-comparative method espoused by Maykut and Morehouse was used to analyze the data and Bronfenbrenner's concept of the " nested environment " was the theoetical model used to organize the data. iii Acknowledgements


The debate over race in this country has of late converged on the contentious issue of affirmative action. Although the Supreme Court once supported the concept of racial affirmative action, in recent years a majority of the Court has consistently opposed various affirmative action programs. The Law of Affirmative Action provides a comprehensive chronicle of the evolution of the Supreme Court's involvement with the racial affirmative action issue over the last quarter century. Starting with the 1974 DeFunis v. Odegaard decision and the 1978 Bakke decision, which marked the beginnings of the Court's entanglement with affirmative action, Girardeau Spann examines every major Supreme Court affirmative action decision, showing how the controversy the Court initially left unresolved in DeFunis has persisted through the Court's 1998-99 term. Including nearly thirty principal cases, covering equal protection, voting rights, Title VII, and education, The Law of Affirmative Action is the only work to treat the Court decisions on racial affirmative action so closely, tracing the votes of each justice who has participated in the decisions. Indispensable for students and scholars, this timely volume elucidates reasons for the 180 degree turn in opinion on an issue so central to the debate on race in America today.


Momordica cochinchinensis Spreng, Cucurbitaceae, is indigenous to Southeast Asia and consumed there for dietary as well as medicinal uses. In Viet Nam, this plant is called ''Gac'', and the seed membrane (seed pulp or aril) of the ripe fruit is widely used as a rice colorant due to its intense red color from its high carotene content. The aim of this study is to investigate the different ratios of carrier material to find out the appropriate ratio to protect carotene in Gac powder. The result shows that the most appropriate ratio of carier: Gac is 1: 1 (dry matter) in which the ratio of maltodextrin: gelatin is 0.5: 0.5 (w/w).


This paper seeks to provide an overview of those economic social and environmental issues which could be relevant for sustainable development of the rural economy. Rural development is of great significance for the future of both the EU and Hungary. We must reduce migration, create new jobs and focus on sustainability and the principles and goals of environmental protection and nature conservation. Rural economy is a complex and dynamic system, and agriculture should be treated as a part of it. The development of rural settlements and their infrastructure, the manifold exploitation of the agroecological potential, the rationalization of farming remain, extremely important components of rural development.


A hybrid heterojunction-based photocatalyst is synthesized by an electrostatic self-assembly strategy including surface modification and controlled metal deposition. The interfacial contact was made by mixing negatively charged anatase TiO2 nanoparticles with positively charged g-C3N4. Visible-light deposition of Pd nanoparticles largely on TiO2 was made possible due to the charge transfer from C3N4 (excited by visible light) to the conduction band of TiO2 reducing Pd ions on contact with its surface. In order to further test the efficiency of this cascade of electron transfer across the conduction bands of the two semiconductors, photocatalytic H2 production from water was studied. Upon optimizing the ratio of the two semiconductors, increased H2 production rates were observed and attributed to enhanced charge separation. Catalysts were studied by a variety of techniques in order to probe into their properties and link them to activity. The reaction rate, under visible-light excitation, of the best sample showed an 8-fold enhancement when compared to that of Pd-C3N4 in identical conditions and the highest apparent quantum yield of 31% was achieved by a 0.1%Pd/20%TiO2/C3N4 sample in a 420- to 443-nm range.


As conventional oil reserves are declining, the debate on the oil production peak has become a burning issue. An increasing number of papers refer to Hubbert's peak oil theory to forecast the date of the production peak, both at regional and world levels. However, in our views, this theory lacks microeconomic foundations. Notably, it does not assume that exploration and production decisions in the oil industry depend on market prices. In an attempt to overcome these shortcomings, we have built an adaptative model, accounting for the behavior of one agent, standing for the competitive exploration-production industry, subjected to incomplete but improving information on the remaining reserves. Our work yields challenging results on the reasons for an Hubbert type peak oil, lying mainly "above the ground", both at regional and world levels, and on the shape of the production and marginal cost trajectories.


Solving differential-algebraic equations (DAEs) efficiently is an ongoing topic in applied mathematics. Applications are given with respect to many fields of practical interest, such as multiphysics problems or network simulations. Due to the stiffness properties of DAEs, linearly implicit Runge-Kutta methods in the form of Rosenbrock-Wanner (ROW) schemes are an appropriate choice for effecitive numerical time-integration. Compared to fully implicit schemes, they are easy to implement and avoid having to solve non-linear equations by including Jacobian information in their formulation explicity. But, especially when having to solve large coupled systems, computing the Jacobian is costly and proves to be a considerable drawback. Inspired by the works of Steihaug and Wolfbrandt [4], we introduce concepts to realize linearly-implicit Runge-Kutta methods for DAEs in the form of so-called W-methods. These schemes allow for arbitrary approximations to given Jacobian entries and, thus, for versatile strategies to reduce computational effort significantly when solving semi-explicit DAE problems of index-1. An approach extending Roche's procedure [3] will be presented that enables to derive order conditions of the resulting methods by an algebraic theory using rooted trees, a strategy originally introduced by Butcher regarding Runge-Kutta schemes [1,2]. Besides, suitable sets of coefficients for implementing embedded schemes and their potential of increasing efficincy when solving DAEs will be demonstrated.


One of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was a master of self-invention who carefully regulated the image he projected through self-portraiture and through his collaboration with those who portrayed him. During his long career, Duchamp recast accepted modes for assembling and describing identity, indelibly altering the terrain of portraiture. This groundbreaking book (which accompanies a major exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery) demonstrates the ways in which Duchamp willfully manipulated the techniques of portraiture both to secure his reputation as an iconoclast and to establish himself as a major figure in the art world. Although scholars have explored Duchamp's use of aliases, little attention has been paid to how this work played into, and against, existing portrait conventions. Nor has any study yet compared these explicitly self-constructed projects with the large body of portraits of Duchamp by others. Inventing Marcel Duchamp showcases approximately one hundred never-before-assembled portraits and self-portraits of Duchamp. The (broadly defined) self-portraits and self-representations include the famous autobiographical suitcase Bote-en-Valise and Self-Portrait in Profile, a torn silhouette that became very influential for future generations of artists. The portraits by other artists include works by Duchamp's contemporaries Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, Francis Picabia, Beatrice Wood, and Florine Stettheimer as well as portraits by more recent generations of artists, including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Sturtevant, Yasumasa Morimura, David Hammons, and Douglas Gordon. Since the mid-twentieth century, as abstraction assumed a position of dominance in fine art, portraiture has been often derided as an art form; the images and essays in Inventing Marcel Duchamp counter this, and invite us to rethink the role of portraiture in modern and contemporary art.


Patents, trade marks and other forms of intellectual property may be of considerable value and financiers are often asked to take security over these fights. Whilst it now seems clear that these forms of property are 'property' for the purposes of the various stamp acts' it has been widely assumed that a mortgage or charge over intellectual or industrial property is not liable to mortgage or loan security duty.


The annual North Dakota farmland market study reported a December, 1976, average value of land and buildings of $325 per acre. This represents a 14 per cent increase over 1975 study results. Estimated average values of crop and pastureland are reported by State Economic Areas. Characteristics of buyers, sellers, and of the tracts sold were examined. Farm expansion continued as the dominant force in the North Dakota farmland market in 1976.


Wireless communication system incorporating coherent OFDM requires the estimation and tracking of the channel Impulse Response (CIR) for accurate demodulation of data at the receiver. In pilot-symbol-aided OFDM system, Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) estimator performs better than Least Square (LS) estimator; however, computational complexity associated with the MMSE method is relatively higher than the LS. Although, the LS estimator has lower complexity and requires minimum knowledge the channel state information, the estimator suffers from inherent additive Gaussian noise and Inter Carrier Interference (ICI). Following that, in this study an efficient and improved channel estimation technique is proposed based on the LS algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed method performs considerably better than the conventional LS method for a range of Signal to Noise Ratios (SNRs). In addition, the performance of the proposed method is found to be almost equal, if compared with the MMSE estimator. Despite the proposed method experiences relatively higher computational complexity than the LS, the complexity is yet to be achieved about 40 % lower than the MMSE.


An experimental investigation on the effect of thickness on fiberglass reinforced epoxy matrix which is subjected to impact loading was conducted. The composite structure consists of Type C-glass/Epoxy 200 g/m2 and Type C-glass/Epoxy 600 g/m2. The material is used as a composite reinforcement in high performance applications since it provides certain advantages of specific high strength and stiffness as compared to metallic materials.
This study investigates the mechanical properties, damage characterization and impact resistance of both composite structures, subjected to the changes of impact velocity and thickness. For mechanical properties testing, the Universal Testing Machine was used while for the high velocity impact, a compressed gas gun equipped with a velocity measurement system was used.From the results, it is found that the mechanical properties, damage characterization and impact resistance of Type C-glass/Epoxy 600 g/m2 posses better toughness, modulus and penetration compared to Type C-glass/Epoxy 200 g/m2. A general trend was observed on the overall ballistic test results which indicated that as the plate specimen thickness continues to increase, the damage at the lower skin decreases and could not be seen. Moreover, it is also found that, as the plate thickness increases, the maximum impact load and impact energy increases relatively.
Impact damage was found to be in the form of perforation, fiber breakage and matrix cracking. Results from this research can be used as a reference in designing structural and body armour applications in developing a better understanding of test methods used to characterize impact behaviour.


Neonatal jaundice [2] is the yellow discoloration of the skin and eyes due to elevated bilirubin levels in the bloodstream of a newborn. Bilirubin is a byproduct of the breakdown of red blood cells. Jaundiced infants are unable to process bilirubin at a normal rate or they have an abnormally high amount of bilirubin in their bloodstream, resulting in a buildup of the yellow colored bilirubin. That build up is called hyperbilirubinemia and is the cause of jaundice [2]. Jaundice can lead to kernicterus, a rare neurological disorder that results in hearing loss, permanent brain damage, and sometimes death. Research into the causes of jaundice [2] and kernicterus began in the late eighteenth century in Paris, France. By the middle of the twentieth century, scientists developed treatments for jaundice [2] that successfully treated infants afflicted with the condition, such as phototherapy and blood exchange transfusion. Due to those treatments, the risk for an infant in developing kernicterus is very low.


This essay makes the argument that the numerous ''networks'' or ''inter/intranetworks'' that structure the video game industry have lived local effects for those involved in the production of video games. In particular, this is most visible in the realm of console video game development but is visible in many other contexts as well. It uses the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) as an index into this complex and highly structured world that frequently disappears from developers perception. The essay uses largely historical data drawn from patent filings, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, and court cases to analyze these networks. The essay argues that these inter/intranetworks, as constructed, have been instrumental in the way that the game industry now finds itself structured and that as the industry has ''matured,'' the networks have become less accessible and less interoperable.


Abstract:  Contemporary consumers have become accustomed to nutrition labels in the 20 y since they were federally mandated. However, "health claim" labels that link nutrients to disease prevention have a contentious history involving regulators, corporations, and the public. The "oat bran craze" of the late 1980s demonstrated these claims' enormous profit potential, but also the need for more rigorous regulation. In response, the 1990 Nutrition Labeling Education Act created quantitative nutrition labels and qualitative "health claims" to summarize medical knowledge about specific foods. Quaker Oats was granted the first food-specific health claim in January 1997 when the Food and Drug Administration determined that consumption of soluble fiber from oats lowered risk of heart disease. The company subsequently made the oat health claim a central part of its strategy and has served as a model for other manufacturers seeking health claims. This article examines the institutional interactions and underlying values that made health claims desirable, legally possible, and profitable from the 1980s onward.


For the past three decades, the Alvarez impact theory of mass extinction, causally related to catastrophic meteorite impacts, has been recurrently applied to multiple extinction boundaries. However, these multidisciplinary research efforts across the globe have been largely unsuccessful to date, with one outstanding exception: the Cretaceous—Paleogene boundary. The unicausal impact scenario as a leading explanation, when applied to the complex fossil record, has resulted in force-fitting of data and interpretations ("great expectations syndrome". The misunderstandings can be grouped at three successive levels of the testing process, and involve the unreflective application of the impact paradigm: (i) factual misidentification, i.e., an erroneous or indefinite recognition of the extraterrestrial record in sedimentological, physical and geochemical contexts, (ii) correlative misinterpretation of the adequately documented impact signals due to their incorrect dating, and (iii) causal overestimation when the proved impact characteristics are doubtful as a sufficient trigger of a contemporaneous global cosmic catastrophe. Examples of uncritical belief in the simple cause-effect scenario for the Frasnian—Famennian, Permian—Triassic, and Triassic—Jurassic (and the Eifelian—Givetian and Paleocene—Eocene as well) global events include mostly item-1 pitfalls (factual misidentification), with Ir enrichments and shocked minerals frequently misidentified. Therefore, these mass extinctions are still at the first test level, and only the F—F extinction is potentially seen in the context of item-2, the interpretative step, because of the possible causative link with the Siljan Ring crater (53 km in diameter). The erratically recognized cratering signature is often marked by large timing and size uncertainties, and item-3, the advanced causal inference, is in fact limited to clustered impacts that clearly predate major mass extinctions. The multi-impact lag-time pattern is particularly clear in the Late Triassic, when the largest (100 km diameter) Manicouagan crater was possibly concurrent with the end-Carnian extinction (or with the late Norian tetrapod turnover on an alternative time scale). The relatively small crater sizes and cratonic (crystalline rock basement) setting of these two craters further suggest the strongly insufficient extraterrestrial trigger of worldwide environmental traumas. However, to discuss the kill potential of impact events in a more robust fashion, their location and timing, vulnerability factors, especially target geology and palaeogeography in the context of associated climate-active volatile fluxes, should to be rigorously assessed. The current lack of conclusive impact evidence synchronous with most mass extinctions may still be somewhat misleading due to the predicted large set of undiscovered craters, particularly in light of the obscured record of oceanic impact events.


Using a smartphone while walking in urban traffic is dangerous. Pedestrians might become distracted and have to split their attention between traffic, walking and using the mobile device. The increasing level of automation in vehicles introduces novel challenges and opportunities for pedestrian-vehicle interaction, e.g external displays attached to automated vehicles. However, these approaches are hardly scalable and fail to provide clear information in a multi-user environment. We investigate whether a smartphone app could provide individual guidance to enhance pedestrian safety in future traffic. To this end, we tested three app concepts in a user study (N=24) and found that on-screen guidance increases the frequency of successful crossing decisions significantly. In addition, all participants indicated that they would use the proposed system, preferably with an unobtrusive colored bar indicating the safest crossing decision in real-time. Integrating smartphones into the interaction between vehicles and pedestrians could increase situational awareness while crossing roads, solve the scalability problem and thus foster pedestrian safety in future traffic scenarios.


Many processes, such as discrete event systems in engineering or population dynamics in biology, evolve in discrete space and continuous time. We consider the problem of optimal decision making in such discrete state and action space systems under partial observability. This places our work at the intersection of optimal filtering and optimal control. At the current state of research, a mathematical description for simultaneous decision making and filtering in continuous time with finite state and action spaces is still missing. In this paper, we give a mathematical description of a continuous-time partial observable Markov decision process (POMDP). By leveraging optimal filtering theory we derive a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) type equation that characterizes the optimal solution. Using techniques from deep learning we approximately solve the resulting partial integro-differential equation. We present (i) an approach solving the decision problem offline by learning an approximation of the value function and (ii) an online algorithm which provides a solution in belief space using deep reinforcement learning. We show the applicability on a set of toy examples which pave the way for future methods providing solutions for high dimensional problems.


The purpose of this design case is to raise questions and open a dialogue about design ethics for projects in online communities. Boardfamily is a web community inspired by semantics and knowledge-based systems that investigate how information is transferred between groups of people. Boardfamily provides a community platform with a set of rich tools that visualize how people are connected. Design plays a critical role in the development of large-scale collaborative information systems. These systems present design with new opportunities and challenges to investigate new research and methodologies. The role that interactive designers play in creating new types of civil space online raise ethical questions about how to best create these new public spaces, provide relevance through reputation and enable collaboration between people.


Recent evaluations of the role of management research have highlighted problems associated with its academic quality, and its relevance to management practitioners. It has been suggested that one of the main causes of these problems has been the fashionable nature of certain ideas disseminated through the management literature. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a model through which fashions in management literature may be identified; and to analyse the characteristics associated with these fashionable ideas. This in turn facilitates analysis of why particular management ideas are susceptible to the pressures of fashion.

Fashions in management literature are identified on the basis of their influence upon the management research community. This is evaluated via analysis of citations appended to academic journals over recent decades. In order to model the citation patterns associated with management publications, mathematical curve modelling is implemented. The models generated provide measurements of the influence and longevity of management literature. Such measurements may be employed in the identification of management fashions.

Multiple regression analysis os emplopyed to study the impact of publication characteristics (ie authoring details, publishing media) upon the pattern of influence of management literature; while cluster analysis and case studies of individual publications are used to analyse the relationship between the content of published literature and the longevity of its influence.

The results of these analyses reveal that the relative level of influence of management publications can be predicted with some accuracy on the basis of their input characteristics. Howver, the longevity of this influence is affected to a greater extent by the content of publications. A theory of management fashions is developed, based upon the content of management ideas, and the characteristics of the publications through which these ideas are disseminated.


A protein kinase links energy stores to control of autophagy. Autophagy is a process by which eukaryotic cells engulf and break down cellular components to provide new substrates for metabolism. Egan et al. (see the Perspective by Hardie) report a biochemical mechanism by which low energy stores in a cell can be linked to autophagy. The authors searched for targets of the adenosine monophosphate–activated protein kinase (AMPK), which is activated when cellular concentrations of adenosine triphosphate are depleted. AMPK was found to regulate another protein kinase, ULK1, which functions in regulation of autophagy. Cells engineered so that ULK1 could not be phosphorylated by AMPK failed to respond properly to starvation, had decreased autophagy, and were prone to starvation-induced cell death. D. F. Egan, D. B. Shackelford, M. M. Mihaylova, S. Gelino, R. A. Kohnz, W. Mair, D. S. Vasquez, A. Joshi, D. M. Gwinn, R. Taylor, J. M. Asara, J. Fitzpatrick, A. Dillin, B. Viollet, M. Kundu, M. Hansen, R. J. Shaw, Phosphorylation of ULK1 (hATG1) by AMP-activated protein kinase connects energy sensing to mitophagy. Science 331, 456–461 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text] D. G. Hardie, Why starving cells eat themselves. Science 331, 410–411 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that the 1997/98 El Nino might have been the cause of the dengue fever epidemics in many tropical countries. Because of the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean, the warm El Nino and the cold La Nina phases of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) engender significant temperature and precipitation anomalies around the world. This paper presents the results of a correlation analysis of past ENSO events with dengue epidemics across the Indonesian archipelago and northern South America. Our analysis shows that there is a statistically significant correlation at the 95% confidence level between El Nino and dengue epidemics in French Guiana and Indonesia and at the 90% confidence level in Colombia and Surinam. These regions experience statistically significant warmer temperatures and less rainfall during El Nino years. Public health officials could therefore strongly benefit from El Nino forecasts, and they should emphasise control activities such as insecticide sprayings and media campaigns con- cerning the potential breeding sites of dengue mosquitoes during these years.


The groundbreaking work of modern genetics that culminated in the Human Genome Project has blazed new pathways in both science and law. As the assertion of property rights generally, and patents in particular, has become increasingly common surrounding the new products and processes of modern biotechnology, the transactions that must occur for downstream research and development to occur have shifted in important ways, in both academic and business settings. "Perspectives on Properties of the Human Genome Project" addresses the problems raised in this complex area under different regimes of laws and norms to offer hope and help as we wrestle to ensure optimal use of such essential innovations. This unique collection of authors, views, and topics is essential reading for academics, policy-makers, and practitioners in medicine, biology, sociology, management, ethics, law, and economics, and anyone else interested in gaining perspective on the broad interface between biotechnology and property. It represents diverse views interwoven into a coherent dialogue. It includes contributions from the leading thinkers in the field. It explores the legal ramifications, in terms of property rights and patents, of the scientific developments arising from the work on the Human Genome Project.


Abstract. Formaldehyde (CH2O) is the most abundant aldehyde in the atmosphere, and it strongly affects photochemistry through its photolysis. We describe simultaneous measurements of CH2O and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) using broadband cavity-enhanced absorption spectroscopy in the ultraviolet spectral region. The light source consists of a continuous-wave diode laser focused into a Xenon bulb to produce a plasma that emits high-intensity, broadband light. The plasma discharge is optically filtered and coupled into a 1 m optical cavity. The reflectivity of the cavity mirrors is 0.99930 ± 0.00003 (1− reflectivity  =  700 ppm loss) at 338 nm, as determined from the known Rayleigh scattering of He and zero air. This mirror reflectivity corresponds to an effective path length of 1.43 km within the 1 m cell. We measure the cavity output over the 315–350 nm spectral region using a grating monochromator and charge-coupled device array detector. We use published reference spectra with spectral fitting software to simultaneously retrieve CH2O and NO2 concentrations. Independent measurements of NO2 standard additions by broadband cavity-enhanced absorption spectroscopy and cavity ring-down spectroscopy agree within 2 % (slope for linear fit  = 1.02 ± 0.03 with r2 = 0.998). Standard additions of CH2O measured by broadband cavity-enhanced absorption spectroscopy and calculated based on flow dilution are also well correlated, with r2 = 0.9998. During constant mixed additions of NO2 and CH2O, the 30 s measurement precisions (1σ) of the current configuration were 140 and 210 pptv, respectively. The current 1 min detection limit for extinction measurements at 315–350 nm provides sufficient sensitivity for measurement of trace gases in laboratory experiments and ground-based field experiments. Additionally, the instrument provides highly accurate, spectroscopically based trace gas detection that may complement higher precision techniques based on non-absolute detection methods. In addition to trace gases, this approach will be appropriate for measurements of aerosol extinction in ambient air, and this spectral region is important for characterizing the strong ultraviolet absorption by brown carbon aerosol.


Some of the factors that affect the rheological characteristics of fibril gels are discussed. Fibrils with nanoscale diameters from β-lactoglobulin (β-lg) and α-lactalbumin (α-la) have been used to create gels with different rheological characteristics. Values of the gelation time, tc, the critical gel concentration, c0, and the equilibrium value of the storage modulus, G, such as ' inf G at long gelation times, derived from experimental rheological data, are discussed. Fibrils created from β-lg using solvent-incubation and heating result in gels with different rheological properties, probably because of different microstructures and fibril densities. Partial hydrolysis of α-la with a serine proteinase from Bacillus licheniformis results in fibrils that are tubes about 20 nm in diameter. Such a fibril gel from a 10.0% w/v α-la solution has a higher modulus than a heat-set gel from a 10% w/w β-lg, pH 2.5 solution; it is suggested that one reason for the higher modulus might be the greater stiffness of α-la fibrils. However, the gelation times of α-la fibrils are longer than those of β-lg fibrils.


Recent experiments have revealed that the wax on the lotus leaf surface, by itself, is weakly hydrophilic, even though the lotus leaf is known to be superhydrophobic. Conventional understanding suggests that a surface of such waxy composition should not be able to support superhydrophobicity and high contact angles between a liquid and the surface. Here, we show that the unexpected superhydrophobicity is related to the presence of "reentrant texture" (that is, a multivalued surface topography) on the surface of the lotus leaf. We exploit this understanding to enable the development of superoleophobic surfaces (i.e., surfaces that repel extremely low-surface-tension liquids, such as various alkanes), where essentially no naturally oleophobic materials exist. We also develop general design parameters that enable the evaluation of the robustness of the composite interface on a particular surface. Based on these design parameters, we also rank various superhydrophobic and superoleophobic substrates discussed in the literature, with particular emphasis on surfaces developed from inherently hydrophilic or oleophilic materials.


Extending π-conjugation in the benzodithiophene (BDT) side chains has been proven useful to improve the efficiencies of the BDT-based polymer solar cells (PSCs). Herein, combined with a symmetry-breaking strategy of a BDT unit, we further designed a new asymmetric 1D–2D (one dimensional–two dimensional) monomer asy-BDTBP with an alkoxyl group as the 1D part and a π-extending alkoxybiphenyl as the 2D substituted group. Medium band-gap donor–acceptor (D–A) conjugated polymer P1 was synthesized with asy-BDTBP and 4,7-di(4-(2-ethylhexyl)-2-thienyl)-5,6-difluoro-2,1,3-benzothiadiazole (DTffBT) as the donor and acceptor unit, respectively. Encouragingly, P1 blended with PC71BM exhibited an obviously enhanced power conversion efficiency (PCE) compared to the reported symmetric analogue PBDTBP–DTffBT (6.70%). The PCE increased to 8.45% with an open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 0.838 V, a short-circuit current density (JSC) of 14.35 mA cm−2 and a fill factor (FF) of 70.27%. However, P1 coupled with a classical non-fullerene acceptor ITIC revealed a relatively poor efficiency of 6.35% due to the bad complementarity of absorption spectra. To match the absorption of ITIC, a wide band-gap D–A polymer P2 was further designed with a weak electron-withdrawing group benzo[1,2-c:4,5-c′]dithiophene-4,8-dione (BDD) instead of DTffBT as the acceptor unit. As a result, P2 possessed a complementary absorption spectrum with ITIC, and the resulting devices presented an excellent photovoltaic performance. The optimal efficiency boosted to 10.04% with VOC of 0.873 V, JSC of 17.60 mA cm−2 and FF of 65.37%. This work demonstrates the great potential of asymmetric BDTs for high efficient PSCs and the importance of the rational design of polymers for different types of PSCs.


The objective of this study was to compare two techniques for estimating benthic fluxes of nutrients (nitrate, phosphate, and silicic acid) and Ge/Si flux ratios. In situ flux chambers were deployed, and cores were collected and incubated at 9 sites along the California margin in July 2001. Both techniques were successful at 8 sites, at depths from 100 to 3300 m. Flux chambers were deployed for 1 to 2 d, and cores were incubated for slightly longer on board the ship in a cold room. In some cases, core incubation flux temperature varied by up to 5°C from in situ temperature, and core incubation results were adjusted for this factor based on the effects of temperature on diffusivities and the adsorption of silicic acid. Sites studied had a range in nutrient fluxes of more than an order of magnitude, based on in situ chambers. The temperature‐adjusted core incubation fluxes showed a similar, but slightly smaller range. Both methods had similar precision based on replicates, with uncertainties for high flux stations that were 5% to 20% of the mean. Only phosphate showed significant (95% confidence level) spatial variability in replicate cores; the larger in situ flux chambers had less spatial variability. The two techniques did show some systematic differences that are attributed to several artifacts created by core recovery. Silicic acid fluxes from cores were significantly lower than in situ fluxes at 2 sites; overall averages were about 80% of those for in situ chambers. The differences are attributed to reduced macrofaunal irrigation in incubated cores. Nitrate uptake in core incubations at 5 of 8 stations was significantly lower than in situ uptake; shipboard rates for all sites averaged about 66% of in situ chamber rates. This difference is attributed primarily to decreased denitrification rates in recovered cores in response to altered temperature and pressure. Phosphate fluxes from cores were significantly lower at only one site; overall, results for the two techniques were indistinguishable. Only one site had a significantly different Ge/Si flux ratio.


Introduction Historical trends in late-fetal mortality in developed countries may have important implications for both the current level and future trends in developing countries. In developing countries, the reduction of child mortality remains one of the chief objectives for public health programmes, but little attention is given to fetal mortality. (1,2) In many developed countries, while absolute rates have never been lower, late-fetal mortality is now higher than infant mortality. Perinatal deaths are the principal subject of concern among obstetricians and paediatricians. The causes of antepartum stillbirths and the survival of preterm live births represent two important areas for research and policy initiatives. The reduction of intrapartum stillbirths to 10% or less of all late-fetal deaths is credited to the availability of effective birth attendants supported by skilled obstetricians, advanced medical technology and specialized institutional facilities. How did the developed countries reach this fortunate, although still challenging, position and what are the implications for developing countries where early-age mortality remains high and fetal health is not yet a priority? This question has several complicated aspects. The definitions of miscarriage, abortion (induced, unsafe and natural), stillbirth or late-fetal death, viability and live birth are particularly complicated, socially as well as biologically constructed, and subject to variation. (3) This variability will affect the prospects for accurate recording in registration systems, community and hospital surveys, together with those for measurement and comparison. Since the immediate causes of fetal deaths may be difficult to identify, even with the aid of postmortem examinations, the ultimate causes (e.g. maternal physique, infection, poor midwifery) are also likely to be difficult to identify. Data problems: developed countries European countries have adopted a variety of different practices for stillbirth and live birth registration, and this limits the comparative value of perinatal mortality as an index of healthcare. (4) Also, in countries where legal abortion is used as a form of birth control, the registration of stillbirths, live births and neonatal deaths has a different meaning from those countries where abortion is uncommon or illegal. (5) h has also been common practice in several countries (e.g. Belgium, France, Spain) to register as live births only those infants who survived for a specified period beyond birth. Those who did not survive were placed in a category often known as "false stillbirths" or they were completely ignored for registration purposes. Despite these problems, and there are others, there is a long and remarkably rich history of attempts to register late-fetal deaths in many developed countries. Indeed, the very commitment to registration signifies an appreciation of the importance of perinatal health and the need to monitor progress. (6) Fig. 1 draws on registration data from 11 countries to illustrate the course of late-fetal mortality over the longest period of time possible. It shows time-series for the stillbirth rate (SBR), i.e. registered stillbirths per 1000 total births (stillbirths plus live births). Usually, the terms stillbirth, late-fetal death and dead born can be regarded as synonymous since they relate to the birth of a fetus of more than 28 weeks gestation showing no vital signs, but this is not always the case. The 11 countries can be divided into three groups determined by the length of the registration period and the sorts of problems to which the resulting data are exposed. In the first group we have Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden with registration dating from at least the early years of the 19th century (1750s in Sweden shown in Fig. 1 as a solid line for decades), a reputation for high quality (especially from the 1870s) and a commitment to state support for midwifery services. …


Two tetracarboxylatetetrabenzoporphyrinzinc(II), TCPBP (9,18,27,36-tetrakis-meso-(4-carboxyphenyl)tetrabenzoporphyrinatozinc(II)) and TCPEBP (9,18,27,36-tetra-(4-carboxyphenylethynyl)tetrabenzoporphyrinatozinc(II)), and their two corresponding porphyrins, TCPP (tetrakis-meso-(4-carboxyphenyl)porphyrinatozinc(II)) and TCPEP (5,10,15,20-tetra-(4-carboxyphenylethynyl)porphyrinatozinc(II)) as sodium salts in a 1 : 1 mixture of 2MeTHF/MeOH at 77 K exhibit phosphorescence in the near-IR region with maxima ranging from 785 to 1005 nm. The position of these triplet state emissions has been corroborated from DFT (B3LYP) by calculating the total energy difference between the ground, S0, and lowest energy triplet excited state T1 (the calculated position ranges from 797 to 1041 nm). At both temperatures, 77 and 298 K, these dyes make ionic driven host–guest assemblies with the unsaturated redox-active cluster Pd3(dppm)3(CO)2+ ([Pd32+], dppm = Ph2PCH2PPh2 as a PF6− salt). The formation of these assemblies is accompanied by a quenching of the phosphorescence band, without changing the emission lifetime. This phenomenon is consistent with the formation of the non-emissive assemblies dye⋯[Pd32+]x according to dye + [Pd32+] → dye⋯[Pd32+]x (x = 1–4), where only the porphyrin and tetrabenzoporphyrin dyes are phosphorescent. Quenching analysis confirmed that a static quenching mechanism operates. In one case, the quenching rate (kQ) has been evaluated from transient absorption spectroscopy (TAS) where the signal associated with the dye's triplet state exhibits a very short lifetime τ(T1), thus corroborating the efficient quenching. The quenching rate (1/τ(T1)) is much faster (3.0 × 108 s−1) than that expected for the other dye⋯[Pd32+]x assemblies in the literature (∼104 s−1) known for their triplet–triplet energy transfer. Based on the excited state driving force argumentation for oxidative quenching, this fast process is assigned to a predominant photo-induced electron transfer (3dye* + [Pd32+] → dye+˙ + [Pd3+˙]).


Rationale The European Quality of Life 5-Dimensions 5-Levels questionnaire (EQ-5D-5L) is a multidimensional patient-reported questionnaire that supports calculation of quality-adjusted life-years. Our objectives were to demonstrate feasibility of use and to calculate the minimum important difference (MID) of the EQ-5D-5L and its associated visual analogue scale (EQ-VAS) in patients with fibrotic interstitial lung disease (ILD). Methods Patients who completed the EQ-5D-5L were identified from the prospective multicentre CAnadian REgistry for Pulmonary Fibrosis. Validity, internal consistency and responsiveness of the EQ-5D-5L were assessed, followed by calculation of the MID for the EQ-5D-5L and EQ-VAS. Anchor-based methods used an unadjusted linear regression against pulmonary function tests (PFTs) and dyspnoea and other quality of life questionnaires. Distribution-based method used one-half SD and SE measurement (SEM) calculations. Results 1816 patients were analysed, including 472 (26%) with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. EQ-5D-5L scores were strongly correlated with the dyspnoea and other quality of life questionnaires and weakly associated with PFTs. The estimated MID for EQ-5D-5L ranged from 0.0050 to 0.054 and from 0.078 to 0.095 for the anchor-based and distribution-based methods, respectively. The MID for EQ-VAS ranged from 0.5 to 5.0 and from 8.0 to 9.7 for the anchor-based and distribution-based methods. Findings were similar across ILD subtypes, sex and age. Conclusion We used a large and diverse cohort of patients with a variety of fibrotic ILD subtypes to suggest validity and MID of both the EQ-5D-5L and EQ-VAS. These findings will assist in designing future clinical trials and supporting cost-effectiveness analyses of potential treatments for patients with fibrotic ILD.


The grey nurse shark Carcharias taurus is critically endangered in eastern Australia. Although fully protected, instances of recreational hooking persist in this population, with potentially fatal consequences. Here we used in situ underwater video to quantify the rates at which C. taurus interacts with a range of proximately deployed recreational fishing gears, and we suggest appropriate management changes to limit such interactions. Bottom-set baits elicited strong responses, with 15 to 43% of whole and filleted mackerel baits depredated within 5 min. Smaller Australian sardine (pilchard) and squid baits were taken by C. taurus at a significantly lower, yet appreciable rate of 3 to 15%. These smaller baits were depredated more by recreationally important teleosts, although this relationship was not significant for sardine baits. There was no consistent diel influence on shark bait depredation, although C. taurus was the only nocturnal bait depredator. Trolled gears posed no direct threat to C. taurus at any time, even when trolled at depth. Benthic-oriented jigs were rarely snapped at by C. taurus, yet may still pose a foul-hooking risk as sharks showed a propensity to rub against these jigs at depth. Vertical jigs elicited little response by C. taurus, although foul-hooking was also a risk as jigs contacted sharks in 5% of proximate drops, with near misses or line-only interactions occurring in a further 6% of cases. Our findings suggest that restricting bottom-set baits and benthic-oriented gears such as jigs around C. taurus aggregations would be a feasible and enforceable strategy to minimise recreational fishing interactions.


Criminal justice failure has been well-documented. The traditional response to this failure has been to seek out alternatives. However, by their very nature, alternatives are usually conceived and positioned in relation to the failed criminal justice interventions they seek to replace. In this paper we focus on an initiative, Justice Matters, which seeks to provide a model, not for developing alternatives to criminal justice failure, but instead the creation of transformative solutions to a range of social problems. To illustrate the potential of this approach we explore two examples: drugs and violence against women. Central to our argument is that for nearly all social problems, solutions already exist. But they exist beyond the boundaries of criminal justice and its experts. By drawing on appropriate knowledge – health for drugs and feminism for gendered violence; – aligned to a political commitment to social justice, we argue it is possible to develop transformative solutions which can provide the foundation for a society that lies beyond criminal justice.


In previous investigations the physicochemical state of electrochemically activated glassy carbon (GC) has been found to affect the electrochemical activity of GC-supported Pt particles. It has been assumed that carbon functional groups (CFGs) generated by GC anodization are able to renew the Pt surface through bifunctional catalysis. In order to provide evidence for the intimate electrocatalytic relationship between Pt and anodized GC and reveal the cause of CFG-induced enhancement of Pt activity, the dynamic response of Pt black supported on differently anodized GC is analysed in this paper by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) in acidic solution. It was found that the capacitive properties of Pt black are not affected by modest GC anodization, but the pore resistance of the Pt layer is considerably affected. Clear evidence for the promoting influence of activated GC (i.e., CFGs) on the Pt desorption capability toward reverse hydrogen spillover at a Pt/CFGs-decorated GC interface in the Pt double layer region is elucidated by both EIS and CV measurements. The extent of GC anodization influences, in a quite similar way, both reverse hydrogen spillover desorption parameters (gained by EIS and CV) and the methanol oxidation rate as it has influence on the parameters describing the particular state of activated GC itself. Namely, the pore resistance of the Pt layer and GC resistance due to the presence of CFGs the highest when GC was moderately anodized, whereas the charge transfer resistance for hydrogen spillover desorption is the lowest. The CFGs of the anodized GC are able to "permeate" the above-applied Pt layer, thus increasing the Pt/CFGs-decorated GC interface responsible for the enhancement of Pt electrochemical activity.


Commissions-motivated agents have historically helped the development of many markets, but research suggests brokers motivated by commissions sometimes steer consumers towards inappropriate products. This issue is particularly important in household financial markets where consumers may be unable to evaluate products on their own. While reforms attempting to limit commission payments have been undertaken worldwide, little research has evaluated the impact of these reforms. We study a major Indian investor protection reform that attempted to reduce commissions tied to mutual fund sales by banning the distribution fees that mutual funds had previously earmarked for commissions. We analyze the policy impact by comparing funds charging high versus low distribution fees pre-reform and find no evidence that the reform itself reduced fund flows. We argue that the most plausible explanation is that the Indian asset management industry maintained substantial commissions to brokers through other revenue sources apart from the banned distribution fees.


OBJECTIVES
This article argues that health outcomes, specifically nutrition related health outcomes, are socially determined, and can be linked to a wider political economy in which peoples' dietary consumption is structurally determined, evolving from political, economic and social forces. The article examines trade and investment agreements as regulatory vehicles that cultivate poor dietary consumption and inequalities in health outcomes between and within countries. How does this happen? The liberalization of trade and investment, and unfettered influence of powerful economic interests including transnational food and beverage companies has resulted in trade agreements that enable excess availability, affordability and acceptability of highly processed, nutrient poor foods worldwide, ultimately resulting in poor nutrition and consequently oral and other non-communicable diseases. These trade and nutrition policy tensions shine a spotlight on the challenges ahead for global health and development policies, including achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.


This paper reviews recent findings from Western Australia, regarding the career choice of twelfth grade high school students. It examines the thesis that males and females are affected by different socio-cultural influences when they choose a career. Female students in most societies still occupy lower-level positions and are steered toward more nurturant and supportive occupations, such as nursing, social work, primary teaching and secretarial work. Males tend to have a wider choice of careers, and are taught to strive toward higher-level positions and occupations that tend to require a more scientific-technological background, such as engineering, architecture, motor-mechanics or medicine. It is hypothesized that the extent to which this is true depends, to a certain degree, upon one's socio-economic position and the historical circumstances in respect to women's position in the particular society. In this study it is assumed that the higher one's socio-economic background and the greater women's participation in the labour force, the more frequently a female student will aspire to a male-dominated high-status occupation.

The analysis based principally on the two variables of sex and social class uses correlation coefficients to test the relative impact of those two variables and other significant factors, such as, N-achievement, parental encouragement and friend's encouragement for further education, on educational aspirations and occupational expectations.

On a rather tentative basis the study is given a cross-cultural dimension by adding two smaller samples from India and the United States to discover whether the disparity between males' and females' career choices varies from one society to another, dependent upon the individual's socio-economic position and upon women's participation in the labour force of that society.


Given the effectiveness of semiconductor devices for classical computation one is naturally led to consider semiconductor systems for solid state quantum information processing. Semiconductors are particularly suitable where local control of electric fields and charge transport are required. Conventional semiconductor electronics is built upon these capabilities and has demonstrated scaling to large complicated arrays of interconnected devices. However, the requirements for a quantum computer are very different from those for classical computation, and it is not immediately obvious how best to build one in a semiconductor. One possible approach is to use spins as qubits: of nuclei, of electrons, or both in combination. Long qubit coherence times are a prerequisite for quantum computing, and in this paper we will discuss measurements of spin coherence in silicon. The results are encouraging—both electrons bound to donors and the donor nuclei exhibit low decoherence under the right circumstances. Doped silicon thus appears to pass the first test on the road to a quantum computer.


The Ebola outbreak of 2014–2016 was a fast-moving, multidimensional emergency that presented unprecedented challenges for the multilateral system. In response to the outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, the UN established the first-ever emergency health mission, the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER).
UNMEER is an important case study of how the UN, with member-state support, can provide a whole-of-system response through coordination, partnership, and creative use of existing tools. This report, therefore, asks three questions about this groundbreaking mission: was it needed, was it properly structured, and did it deliver? In answering these questions, it offers eight broad lessons for UN crisis response:
- A sequenced approach and flexible mandate allow for better responses to unanticipated challenges.
- Effective responses draw upon the full range of UN tools and implementing partners based on the principle of comparative advantage, but they must take into account the challenge of integrating distinct organizational cultures.
- Flexible and predictable funding is critical for rapidly scaling up responses to multidimensional crises.
- Local engagement with key stakeholders during the peak of a crisis enhances long-term effectiveness.
- A system-wide communications strategy, bolstered by strong communications capacity in the field, is required from the outset.
- High-level coordination and oversight can provide flexibility and quick reaction.
- Close proximity to frontline responders and the site of the crisis enhances field coordination.
- A regional office can improve coordination across borders, but it must be joined with a strategy to account for the specificity of national and local contexts.


Teleseismic location is heavily dependend on the spatial distribution of recording stations and the number of registered phases. In the Arctic Basin, a total lack of local or regional recording stations makes location of earthquakes especially challenging.In 1999 an unusually strong earthquake swarm at Gakkel Ridge, Arctic Ocean, which consisted of 252 events with body-wave magnitudes up to 5.2 lasted over 9 months. Using the ISC reviewed dataset, we relocated this swarm with the probabilistic routine NonLinLoc and tested extensively the influence of velocity model, station coverage and weighting on the location result. For calculation of travel times we used the velocity model AK135 combined with a regional velocity model for recording stations with epicentral distance < 30°. T he dataset was reviewed with regard to the quality of the location and reduced to 63 well located events whose epicentre locations are largely independent of the above tested parameters. T he 68% error in ellipse semi-major axes of the new localization is in the order of 15 km for the best events.We tested if the choice of location routine influences the resulting locations. Comparing our solution for the 1999 earthquake swarm to that for the L2-norm-based algorithm Hyposat, we found significant differences in the location for the 63 best constrained events, the epicenters not even matching within error-ellipses. Additionally, to improve locations within the cluster, we performed a simple master event relocalization and tested again the dependence of the results on the location algorithms.


The world of education is changing, and changes affect all its components. Libraries operating in the education system see their role through a support of the education process they are ties to. By transforming their services, modern libraries meet the growing educational requirements while simultaneously taking on an increasingly significant place in the field of education. In the past, libraries have focused on their funds and their size as a measure of their own quality and importance. Today, given the needs and requirements of the contemporary environment, educational orientation is necessary for all libraries, especially libraries operating in the education system.This paper deals with the importance and impact of school libraries providing support to the education of pupils of national minorities' schools. The paper deals specifically with the school libraries of the Italian national minority operating within the educational system of the Republic of Croatia.
The aim of this paper is to show the activity of school libraries in Italian national minority schools and their importance for the creation of a sound intercultural cooperation and life in the majority community.


We present a wish list for a domain-independent theory of explanation under uncertainty, based on the research literature. We examine the prevalent explanation schemes in light of this list, and show why none of the currently used schemes are adequate for domain-independent explanation. In particular, we look at maximum a-posteriori (MAP) explanations (which suffer from the overspecification problem) and posterior probabilities (which may select inconsistent explanations). We also consider one non-probabilistic scheme, cost-based abduction, but relate it to the probabilistic work by providing a probabilistic semantics for it, using Bayesian belief networks. We show that although this is a useful explanation scheme (a similar scheme, least-cost proofs, is used in Hobbs'' and Stickel''s TACITUS natural language understanding program), it makes independence assumptions that are not valid in the general case. We then suggest a new theory, ``irrelevance-based MAPs'''', a scheme where explanations are partial models, such that irrelevant variables are left unassigned. We propose and evaluate four instances of irrelevance-based MAPs: independence-based MAPs, delta independence-based MAPs, generalized delta independence-based MAPs and quasi-independence-based MAPs. We show that these schemes have the advantages of MAP explanations but do not exhibit the overspecification problem. A best-first algorithm that generates explanations for the first two above schemes is presented. Implementations of the algorithm exhibit reasonable run-time behavior over a toy-domain set of problems, despite the fact that the problem of finding explanations is NP-hard. We demonstrate empirically that our independence-based MAP algorithm shows reasonable performance for up to medium-size problems, by experimenting on a set of randomly generated belief networks. Finally, we discuss alternate algorithms for computing irrelevance-based explanations: linear systems of inequalities and stochastic simulation.


This article summarises and reflects a more extensive analysis about the experiences of attemps to develop and apply analytical tools to comprehend the transformation of Indonesian democracy over 15 years. Such attempts can be retrospectively classified into four phases: (1) conducted in the mid-1990s to the fall of Soeharto in May 1998 by focusing on the anti-Soeharto democracy actors; (2) participatory case studies of the post-Soeharto democracy movement; (3) the development of an alternative framework for national surveys of the problems and options of democratisation from below that began in 2003; (4) institutionalisation of the previous surveys and case studies of power and democracy. These prolonged experiences have opened up the possibilities for academics and practitioners to develop and apply an alternative framework for a less elitist and more inclusive model of democracy in Indonesia.


The deterioration of concrete in structure is a result of several internal or
external degradation mechanism and which results in distress of the structure i.e.
decrease in strength and integrity of the structure. The state of distress is often
hidden from view and is only evident at a stage where there is significant reduction
in strength of the structure. Defects are often introduced during construction and are
viewed during in-service life. Some deterioration is viewed physically in the early
age or during the service life of the structure in terms of spalling, surface crack,
swelling and honeycombing. This deterioration collectively or individually results in
reducing the load carrying capacity in terms of the distress of the structure.
In this project, the common defects in the concrete structures and mapping
techniques by nondestructive test are presented. Among the various techniques of the
nondestructive tests, the Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity (UPV) and DOCtor's Impactecho
were chosen for their effectiveness. The UPV is used to estimate the concrete
strength, detecting flaws such as voids and cracks and also to investigate the effects
of smaller diameter bar in the concrete. In detecting various sizes of voids by the Impact-echo test techniques a format was suggested to identify them from the
frequency spectrum.


Background: Cervical cancer, despite being a preventable disease endangers the lives of significant number of women every year and also its incidence is growing with time. Cervical cytology which is a well-accepted standard screening tool in developed countries but in developing countries like India it fails not only due to the lack of awareness but also due to financial and technical constraints. Visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) and visual inspection with Lugol's iodine (VILI) have been evaluated in a number of large clinical trials and is considered to be a possible alternative to cervical cytology for primary cervical cancer screening in low-resource settings. Aim of the Study: (1) The aim of the present study was to compare the efficacy of VIA and Lugol's iodine with Pap smear cytology in screening for cancer cervix and evaluate their usefulness as tools for screening of premalignant and malignant lesions of cervix so that VIA can be used in peripheral areas where cytology is not available. (2) Early detection of pre-cancerous conditions and treating them before they progress to invasive cancer. Methodology: This clinical study was conducted on 200 gynecological patients who were nonpregnant or who had no history suggestive of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia or carcinoma cervix. After taking informed and written consent each woman who fulfilled the inclusion criteria were subjected to Pap smear examination, VIA and VILI. A biopsy was taken in patients with abnormal findings or suspicious findings on VIA/VILI. Results: In the present study, the sensitivity of VIA and VILI was 88.23%, specificity 78.68%, positive predictive value was 53.57%, and negative predictive value was 96% with biopsy as the reference standard. The sensitivity and specificity of cytology in our study were 88% and 52.63%, respectively. Conclusion: VIA and VILI are simple, inexpensive, and low-technology test. Both when combined have high sensitivity as well as specificity. This can be practiced by clinicians and paramedics on a wide scale. Another advantage is immediate availability of results and hence that treatment can be started during the same visit.


Wireless body area network (WBAN) is a network of wireless sensor nodes, which monitor mobile health when placed carefully on the human body or in the wearable cloths. WBAN have a great potential for the growth and development of the future ubiquitous health systems, however; the security concern associated with the current WBAN is an alarming challenge. Security of a body area network (BAN) is unavoidable as it is mainly used for securing the life of patients and soldiers. By securing the BAN we actually secure the life of its wearer. Two techniques i.e. Physiological values (PV's) based key management ,which generate random keys by using the vital signs of human body and Pre-loading based scheme, which will be used to strengthen the security of our PVs based scheme. The potential limitation of PV's is short keys generation, which can be easily brute forced and high computational cost whereas in Pre-loading the keys are not random and require enough keys storage. In this paper we will merge PV's and pre-loading techniques by using electrocardiography (EKG/ECG) values of PVs and pre-loading based schemes to strengthen the security. The applied technique will enhance the security as well as reduce storage and power consumption. Key words: Physiological values (PV's), Electrocardiogram (EKG/ECG), Wireless body area network (WBAN)


This paper presents and evaluates an active dual-sensor autofocusing system that combines an optical vision sensor and a tactile probe for autofocusing on arrays of small holes on freeform surfaces. The system has been tested on a two-axis test rig and then integrated onto a three-axis computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine, where the aim is to rapidly and controllably measure the hole position errors while the part is still on the machine. The principle of operation is for the tactile probe to locate the nominal positions of holes, and the optical vision sensor follows to focus and capture the images of the holes. The images are then processed to provide hole position measurement. In this paper, the autofocusing deviations are analyzed. First, the deviations caused by the geometric errors of the axes on which the dual-sensor unit is deployed are estimated to be 11 μm when deployed on a test rig and 7 μm on the CNC machine tool. Subsequently, the autofocusing deviations caused by the interaction of the tactile probe, surface, and small hole are mathematically analyzed and evaluated. The deviations are a result of the tactile probe radius, the curvatures at the positions where small holes are drilled on the freeform surface, and the effect of the position error of the hole on focusing. An example case study is provided for the measurement of a pattern of small holes on an elliptical cylinder on the two machines. The absolute sum of the autofocusing deviations is 118 μm on the test rig and 144 μm on the machine tool. This is much less than the 500 μm depth of field of the optical microscope. Therefore, the method is capable of capturing a group of clear images of the small holes on this workpiece for either implementation.


Abstract:  The ability to monitor changes in biodiversity is fundamental to demonstrating sustainable management practices of natural resources. Disturbance studies generally focus on responses at the plot scale, whereas landscape‐scale responses are directly relevant to the development of sustainable forest management. Modeling changes in occupancy is one way to monitor landscape‐scale responses. We used understory vegetation data collected over 16 years from a long‐term study site in southeastern Australia. The site was subject to timber harvesting and frequent prescribed burning. We used occupancy models to examine the impacts of these disturbances on the distribution of 50 species of plants during the study. Timber harvesting influenced the distribution of 9 species, but these effects of harvesting were generally lost within 14 years. Repeated prescribed fire affected 22 species, but the heterogeneity of the burns reduced the predicted negative effects. Twenty‐two species decreased over time independent of treatment, and only 5 species increased over time. These changes probably represent a natural response to a wildfire that occurred in 1973, 13 years before the study began. Occupancy modeling is a useful and flexible technique for analyzing monitoring data and it may also be suitable for inclusion within an adaptive‐management framework for forest management.


Numerous cyberattack incidents have demonstrated adversaries' capability to cause Internet outages lasting hours or even days, jeopardizing governmental, financial, telecommunication, transportation, and healthcare services. With the intensity and frequency of cyberattacks constantly growing, it becomes crucial to find a way to provide availability guarantees despite active adversaries. As an initial step toward building a highly available Internet, this dissertation explores how to secure the data plane against off-path adversaries that flood the network (Distributed Denial of Service attacks) as well as on-path adversaries that discriminate against traffic (selective dropping attacks). These two types of attacks are increasingly prevalent, and their mitigation will lead to substantial improvement in Internet availability. However, DDoS and selective dropping attacks have yet to be addressed efficiently and effectively in the current Internet, primarily due to the fact that many security problems are too pervasive and fundamental to be fixed using patches constrained by the underlying Internet architecture. To address this challenge, this dissertation studies complementary defense mechanisms on top of a recently proposed clean-slate Internet architecture. This new architecture is a key enabler of this dissertation, as it provides several useful architectural primitives to support fine-grained isolation and fair access to resources—two driving principles behind the design of the defense mechanisms in this work. Fine-grained isolation protects legitimate traffic from interference with other traffic, including attack traffic. When isolation is not possible, fair access guarantees that legitimate traffic receives a fair share of resources during resource competition. Guided by these two principles, the first part of the dissertation describes novel solutions that cover three aspects of DDoS defense: (1) isolating DDoS traffic via bandwidth reservation, (2) bounding the waiting time before a successful reservation of flow bandwidth, and (3) ensuring that every flow complies with its allocated bandwidth limit without keeping per-flow state. The second part of the dissertation explores the prevention of address-based selective dropping through topological anonymity, and describes a lightweight anonymous forwarding scheme with near-optimal latency under a relaxed attacker model. The integration of these mechanisms achieves end-to-end availability guarantees on top of the clean-slate architecture under the assumptions that the lower layers are available and the routing paths are given. The resulting guarantees are independent of the strength of remote attackers, a feature that none of the existing work is able to achieve. Since several of the proposed mechanisms can be deployed incrementally for incremental protection, they can also improve the availability of the current Internet.


June Medical Services L.L.C. v. Russo has already begun gaining a certain reputation as a Trojan Horse: in form, a pro-choice ruling that overturns a Louisiana anti-abortion measure, but in substance, an anti-choice, pro-life decision that sets the stage for future reversals of the Supreme Court's reproductive rights jurisprudence. Without denying that prospect, this work identifies different possibilities afoot in June Medical, specifically, in Chief Justice John Roberts's key fifth-vote concurrence in the case. A close reading of this opinion shows that its reliance on stare decisis principles exceeds a jurisprudential commitment to a narrow understanding of the Supreme Court's decision in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, the concurrence's immediate point of reference within the Court's abortion rights jurisprudence. In a wider sense, the concurrence demonstrates a commitment to Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, and, by extension, what Casey preserved of Roe v. Wade.

Seen this way, Chief Justice Roberts's June Medical opinion does not set a course for incrementalist reversals of abortion rights that will snowball into Casey's and Roe's shared demise. Subtly, if not perhaps finally, the Chief Justice's June Medical concurrence signals an embrace of Casey that, functioning as a beachhead, should prospectively secure the constitutional foundations of women's abortion rights.

Interwoven with the case for this understanding of the Chief Justice's June Medical concurrence are multiple tallies of the constitutionality of an important set of pro-life legal measures—so-called "reason-based" abortion bans—that take direct aim at Casey's post-Roe doctrinal framework, including one such measure from Ohio, presently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit sitting en banc. Analysis of these measures demonstrates why "reason-based" abortion bans—which make the availability of abortions depend on the reasons that women have for choosing them—are unconstitutional both under Casey's basic doctrinal framework and under the Chief Justice's approach in June Medical. No matter how the Sixth Circuit decides the case on Ohio's reason-based abortion ban now that June Medical has been handed down, the issue of the lawfulness of reason-based abortion bans may soon find its way to the Supreme Court. One way or another, the question of the meaning of the Chief Justice's June Medical concurrence certainly will.


Background: Considering the roles of cockroaches in transmission and distribution of pathogen agents, their prevalence and lack of data on this kind of parasitic and fungal infections in this region, this study was carried out to determine the cockroaches species and their parasitic and fungal agents at the Hospitals of Kashan, Iran in 2002. Materials and Methods: This descriptive study was performed on 158 samples of cockroaches caught from three major medical centers. Species of cockroaches, their parasitic and fungal infections, external and internal levels of infection and isolated parasitic and fungal species were determined. Prevalent infection in cockroaches was determined and their exact amount was estimated. Results: From 158 cockroaches, 85 (53.8%) were American and 73 (46.2%) were German. 58 (36.7%) of cockroaches had parasitic infection. The prevalence of human intestinal parasites in American and German cockroaches was 21.5% and 15.2%, respectively. Blastosystis huminis and Ascaris lumbricoides had maximum and minimum prevalences (32.3% and 3.2%), respectively. Of 158 Hospital cockroaches studied, 101 (63.9%) had fungal contamination. The prevalence of fungal agents in American and German cockroaches was 41.1% and 22.8%, respectively. Aspegillus had maximum (27.3%) and Epicocum and Curvularia had minimum prevalences (0.8%) among fungi observed. Two cases of Candida albicans were separated from American cockroaches. Cockroaches of Naghavi Hospital had more infection (43.9% parasitic and 80.7% fungi infection) than those of other Hospitals. Conclusion: Parasitic and fungal infection of cockroaches is a worriment problem at Kashan Hospitals. Therefore further studies are suggested to reduce the cockroaches and their parasitic and fungal infection.


Variation in gene expression, in addition to sequence polymorphisms, is known to influence developmental, physiological and metabolic traits in plants. Genetical genomics approaches on genetic mapping populations have facilitated the identification of expression Quantitative Trait Loci (eQTL), the genetic determinants of variation in gene expression patterns. We used an introgression population developed from the wild desert-adapted Solanum pennellii and domesticated tomato Solanum lycopersicum to identify the genetic basis of transcript level variation. We established the effect of each introgression on the transcriptome through differential gene expression analysis, and identified ~7,200 eQTL regulating the expression of 5,300 genes. Barnes-Hut t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding clustering identified 42 modules revealing novel associations between gene expression patterns and biological processes. The results showed a complex genetic architecture of global gene expression pattern in tomato. Several genetic hotspots regulating a large number of gene expression patterns relating to diverse biological processes such as plant defense and photosynthesis were identified. We identified important eQTL regulating gene expression patterns related to leaf number and complexity, and hypocotyl length. Genes associated with leaf development showed an inverse correlation with photosynthetic gene expression but their regulation was dispersed across the genome. This is the first comprehensive insight into the global regulation of transcript abundance in tomato and its influence on plant phenotypes, which sets the stage for identifying gene/s underlying these regulatory loci.


The Bioavailabilitv of Sediment-bound Trlbutvltin fTBTl Nicholas Dingle Pope Tributyltin is arguably the most toxic compound ever to be deliberately introduced into the marine environment as an ingredient of antifouling paints. 11 has had widespread toxic effects on a range of marine organisms, with some gastropod species being particularly sensitive. Effects of TBT on non-target species have resulted in partial bans on its use in many countries, so that new inputs to the water column have decreased in most areas. One of the physicochemical features of TBT is that it is readily sequestered by suspended particulates due to its low solubility and its hydrophobicity, therefore becoming incorporated into estuarine sediments. The availability of this sediment-bound TBT has been investigated through its potential for re-release back to the water column, and directly from the sediment using the sediment dwelling gastropod Hinia reticulata. The sorption process itself has been investigated using natural components to determine the sediment-water partition coefficient (Kl) together with factors affecting its magnitude. Sorption by sediments has been shown to be rapid (minutes), although the achievement of equilibrium may take longer (hours), and exhibits a Freundlich-like dependence on the TBT concentration due to the variable energies of TBT sorption sites on sediment particles. The major determinant of Kl is sediment type, greater adsorption occurring in fine-grained organic rich sediments compared to low organic sands; although both salinity and pH modify the degree of adsorption. The sorption process has been shown to be reversible, so that previously contaminated sediments may act as reservoirs of TBT, releasing the compound back to the overlying water for many years. Hinia reticulata has been shown to be an effective and quantitative accumulator of both dissolved and sediment-bound TBT, principally acquiring TBT from water across the respiratory surfaces. When additionally exposed to sediments, significantly higher body burdens were accumulated, with up to 80% of the total attributable to the sediment. Uptake of TBT across the surface of the head/foot appears to be an important pathway for sediment-exposed Hinia reticulata, while the ingestion of contaminated sediment does not appear to occur. Hinia reticulata is capable of metabolising TBT to lesser butylated and presumably less toxic products which are excreted, making its accumulated body burdens responsive to changing environmental TBT levels, and increasing its value as a biomonitor When exposed to a range of TBT contaminated sediments, Hinia reticulata showed there to be greater TBT availability from sediments with a low sorptive capacity (sands), principally through desorption of TBT to the overlying water. Fine-grained organic-rich muds, which have a greater capacity for TBT, produced lower accumulated burdens in Hinia reticulata, but may represent more important long-term sources of TBT to benthic organisms in estuaries.


More than two hundred countries in the world have agreed to abide by the anti-money laundering ("AML") recommendations developed by the Financial Action Task Force ("FATF"), which is an intergovernmental organization. This Article focuses on the potential impact on the legal profession of FATF's fourth round of mutual evaluations. During these mutual evaluations, which currently are underway, FATF-affiliated countries examine each other's compliance with the FATF Recommendations and recommend follow-up action. This Article first presents the legal profession-related results from the completed Mutual Evaluation Reports. A number of these FATF Reports recommend changes that include requiring lawyers to report suspicious client transactions, greater enforcement of existing lawyer AML rules, and changing the entities that supervise lawyer AML efforts. The next Part of this Article examines the legal profession AML situation in the Authors' home countries of the United States and Peru, noting the current or potential impact in these countries of the FATF Recommendations, the FATF Mutual Evaluation process, and lawyer-related money laundering scandals. The final Part of this Article suggests an alternative, education-focused, peer-review approach to the legal profession portions of the FATF Mutual Evaluations that arguably would decrease lawyer facilitation of criminal money laundering activities while better protecting traditional lawyer values that are globally recognized as important components of administration of justice and rule of law systems. Because the regulatory impact of FATF's mutual evaluations may be much broader than anti-money laundering issues, everyone interested in the topic of lawyer regulation should be aware of the FATF Recommendations and the ongoing mutual evaluation process.


This paper introduces a cognitive architecture for a humanoid robot to engage in a proactive, mixed-initiative exploration and manipulation of its environment, where the initiative can originate from both human and robot. The framework, based on a biologically grounded theory of the brain and mind, integrates a reactive interaction engine, a number of state-of-the-art perceptual and motor learning algorithms, as well as planning abilities and an autobiographical memory. The architecture as a whole drives the robot behavior to solve the symbol grounding problem, acquire language capabilities, execute goal-oriented behavior, and express a verbal narrative of its own experience in the world. We validate our approach in human-robot interaction experiments with the iCub humanoid robot, showing that the proposed cognitive architecture can be applied in real time within a realistic scenario and that it can be used with naive users.


Abstract This paper explores the drivers behind a recent "urban turn" of planned knowledge locations in Europe. While acknowledging a general tendency towards more urbanity, we argue that a dense and diverse urban environment is not equally relevant for all types of knowledge-based activities because of nuanced workers' preferences and innovation modes. Based on a theory "considering different types of knowledge bases", we suggest that activities that more intensively rely on symbolic knowledge (e.g., media, design) tend to have a stronger preference for urban settings, while this is less the case for activities based on analytical and synthetic knowledge (e.g., biotechnology and advanced engineering). We illustrate our thesis by three case studies: Kista Science Park in Stockholm, The Digital Hub in Dublin, and Biocant in Coimbra.


The aim of this paper is to assess the CPT-based liquefaction probabilities of Quaternary soft non-cohesive soils at Semani site, Fieri prefecture in Albania.The soil behaviour type index, Ic, as defined by ROBERTSON & WRIDE (1998) is used to identify the liquefiable layers from the CPTU data of the area.The real probability of liquefaction is calculated combining the conditional probability of liquefaction, for a given seismic hazard level expressed in terms of acceleration, with the probability of exceeding the same acceleration during the lifespan of engineering structures (usually 50 years).The computed liquefaction probabilities (up to 45%) indicate that during the life span of a structure, the phenomenon may be encountered and it should be taken into consideration during the design stage of the engineering projects.


Nowadays, an increasing amount of media platforms provide the users with opportunities for sharing their opinions about products, companies or people. In order to support users accessing opinion-based information, and to support engineers building systems that require opinionaware reasoning, intelligent opinion-aware tools and techniques are needed. This thesis contributes methods and technology for opinion-aware information management from two different perspectives, namely document summarisation and knowledge representation. Document summarisation has been widely investigated as a mean to reduce information overload. This thesis focuses on statistical models for summarisation, with a particular attention to divergence-based models, within the context of opinions. Firstly, topic-based document summarisation is addressed, contributing a study on divergence-based document to summary similarity and the definition of a novel algorithm for summarisation based on sentence removal. Secondly, summarisation models are tailored to opinion-oriented content and shown to be useful also when exploited for different tasks such as sentiment classification. Thirdly, summarisation models are applied to knowledge-oriented data, in order to tackle tasks such as entity summarisation. The comprehensive task addressed is the knowledge-based opinion-aware summarisation of content (free text, facts). This thesis also contributes a broad discussion on knowledge representation of opinions. A thorough study on how to model opinions using traditional techniques, such as Entity-Relationship (ER) modelling, underlines that a high-level, opinion-aware layer of conceptual modelling is useful since it hides away implementation details. A conceptual and logical knowledge representation methodology for modelling opinions is hence proposed, with the purpose of guiding engineers towards the use of best practices during the development of sentiment analysis applications. Specifically, an extension of the traditional ER modelling and the definition of an automatic mapping procedure, to translate opinion-aware components of the conceptual model into a relational model, help achieving a clear separation between conceptual and logical modelling. The mapping procedure yields an automatic and replicable methodology to design applications which require opinion-aware reasoning.


Allegations that Stuxnet was part of a U.S. planned and led covert cyber operation and assertions that a nation-state used a cyber-attack in support of national security objectives reinvigorated the attention of cyber-law commentators. Military attorneys, however, must translate deeply theoretical discussions into concrete legal advice. This article concludes that treating all cyber techniques as weapons is impractical. Rather, an assessment focusing on how a capability will be used in context, especially of the primary purpose of the capability, is more effective and consonant with international law. This approach will more clearly delineate cyber attacks and permit a separate discussion of the great majority of cyber events — those that fall below the level of attack.


What is the proper place of solitude in human existence? Some philosophers have claimed that solitude is our truest, most ultimate metaphysically deepest state of being. Others have maintained the contrary view, that it is in encounter that we most truly find ourselves. In Koch's "Solitude", both solitude and encounter emerge as primary modes of human experience, equally essential for human completion. This work draws upon a vast corpus of literary reflections on solitude, especially Lao Tze, Sappho, Plotinus, Seneca, Augustine, Petrarch, Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, Montaigne, Goethe, Wordsworth, Shelley, Cowper, Hugo, Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Whitman, Proust, Lawrence, Rilke, Byrd, Stevens, Eisley, Tillich, Woolf and Sarton.


Let M be a ring of operators on a Hubert space H. This paper considers conditions under which an operator T affiliated with M is bounded (or can be unbounded), in particular, we consider operators whose domain is the entire space H. We prove: THEOREM 3. If M has no type / factor part, then T is bounded. THEOREM 4. T is bounded if and only if T is bounded on each minimal projection in M. THEOREM β. In order that every linear mapping from H into H which commutes with M be bounded, it is necessary and sufficient that M should contain no minimal projection whose range is an infinite dimensional subspace of H. These results were suggested hj a theorem of J. R. Ringrose: THEOREM 8. If M=M then T is bounded.


This paper presents a method which can provide support in determining the grass-clover ratio, in grass-clover fields, based on images from an unmanned aerial vehicle. Automated estimation of the grass-clover ratio can serve as a tool for optimizing fertilization of grass-clover fields. A higher clover content gives a higher performance of the cows, when the harvested material is used for fodder, and thereby this has a direct impact on the dairy industry. An android application is implemented to make the drone fly fully autonomously and collect images at different locations within the field. In this android application it is possible to specify what location the drone should collect images from, which height, and upload the images to a server, which analyze the data based on a convolutional neural network. The convolutional neural network performs a semantic segmentation and thereby pixelwise classify the different classes: grass, clover, soil and weed. The classification of the pixels is used to determine the final grass-clover ratio. The results, presented in this paper, show that the CNN is able to segment the images into the different classes: grass, clover, soil and weed. It is possible to identify the different classes based on images captured at a height up to five meters. Thus, this paper shows a way to use UAVs to perform mapping of actual clover and grass ratio in dense grass-clover fields.


MIT emerged from "nowhere" in the 1930s to its place as one of the three or four most important sites for economic research by the mid-1950s. A conference held at Duke University in April 2013 examined how this occurred. In this article the author argues that the immediate postwar period saw a collapse—in some places slower, in some places faster—of the barriers to the hiring of Jewish faculty in American colleges and universities. And more than any other elite private or public university, particularly Ivy League universities, MIT welcomed Jewish economists.


Professional ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 In C# and VB ASP.NET 3.5 brings the power of Visual Studio 2008 along with the multitude of language improvements in C# 2008 and Visual Basic 2008 as well as powerful new technology called LINQ, together with the ASP.NET 2.0 Framework you already know and love. Packed with valuable coverage of ASP.NET 3.5 SP1, this essential resource offers both C# and VB examples throughout the book, and shares new and updated content on the ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Dynamic Data, and ADO.NET Data Services. While ASP.NET 3.5 boasts server controls like the ListView and the incredibly flexible GridView, it also includes advancements in AJAX technology combined with JavaScript debugging features in Visual Studio 2008. With this book, a stellar author team covers the new controls in the AJAX toolbox, the back button history, and script combining, and they also examine the new capabilities of WCF including changes to DataContractSerializer. In addition, the accompanying CD-ROM features the entire book in PDF format. What you will learn from this book The concepts underlying the server control and its pivotal role in ASP.NET development How to create templated ASP.NET pages using the master page feature How to work with data from enterprise databases including SQL Server Ways to debug, package, and deploy ASP.NET applications, monitor their health and performance, and handle errors How to retrieve, update, and delete data quickly and logically using LINQ with side-by-side examples comparing LINQ to existing techniques Ways to localize your web site in multiple languages for a world-wide audience Methods for adding AJAX capabilities to your ASP.NET applications The many benefits of the new data access additions Ways to use and extend the Provider Model for accessing data stores, processes, and more What freeware tools you need in Scott Hanselman's ASP.NET Ultimate Developer Tools appendix Who this book is for This book is for programmers and developers who are looking to make the transition to ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 with Visual Studio 2008 and either C# 3.0 (2008) or Visual Basic 9 (2008). CD-ROM includes the full book in PDF format and a selection of 7 Wrox Blox mini e-books including: Internet Explorer 8 and Its Impact on Your ASP.NET Web Sites Jumping from ASP.NET to Silverlight 2 Leverage LINQ in ASP.NET 3.5 Projects