We study the problem of identifying unreliable and adversarial workers in crowdsourcing systems where workers (or users) provide labels for tasks (or items). Most existing studies assume that worker responses follow specific probabilistic models; however, recent evidence shows the presence of workers adopting non-random or even malicious strategies. To account for such workers, we suppose that workers comprise a mixture of honest and adversarial workers. Honest workers may be reliable or unreliable, and they provide labels according to an unknown but explicit probabilistic model. Adversaries adopt labeling strategies different from those of honest workers, whether probabilistic or not. We propose two reputation algorithms to identify unreliable honest workers and adversarial workers from only their responses. Our algorithms assume that honest workers are in the majority, and they classify workers with outlier label patterns as adversaries. Theoretically, we show that our algorithms successfully identify unreliable honest workers, workers adopting deterministic strategies, and worst-case sophisticated adversaries who can adopt arbitrary labeling strategies to degrade the accuracy of the inferred task labels. Empirically, we show that filtering out outliers using our algorithms can significantly improve the accuracy of several state-of-the-art label aggregation algorithms in real-world crowdsourcing datasets.


This paper will explore how a portfolio approach to teaching and learning can help the educator incorporate unique forms of reflective practice into his or her daily work. By being able to express ideas more clearly to himself, the educator can better promote the relational construction of knowledge in his educational communities. This paper, as part of a larger body of research asks, how can a portfolio approach to teaching and learning help the educator develop unique forms of reflective practice that will help him express his ideas more clearly, first to himself and then secondly to his educational communities? Research methodology is primarily participatory action research and includes an autoethnographic review of the author's work, reviews, interviews, observations, and focus groups with student teachers and professional teachers in the United Arab Emirates. The research concludes that in consideration of McLuhan's (1964) notion that the "medium is the message," the interactions that arise through the use of new media tools can lead us to relational, co-constructed ideas that are not those simply passed on from other texts. By making our thinking visible, the portfolio approach allows the educator to capture the contextual relationship between the author, the audience or community, and the knowledge being created.


This Article offers a novel account of the theoretical foundations of American "Moral Rights" laws in intellectual property, laws which give artists the right to prevent purchasers of their works from altering those works, even after the purchase is complete, if the artist disapproves of the alterations. Conventional accounts of these laws' foundations rely either on economic incentives or on creators' "rights of personality." Examination of the central provisions of both federal and state moral rights laws, however, reveals the implausibility of both those accounts: the central provisions that the laws actually contain are incompatible with what we would expect to find if the traditional accounts were correct, and no mere variant of the traditional accounts is likely to be plausible. Instead, these laws are best understood as resting upon a moral duty of respect for artworks' creative excellence. Such an account both flows naturally from broader American cultural practices concerning respect for excellence and succeeds, where the other accounts failed, in providing a coherent explanation for the central provisions that we in fact observe in American moral rights laws. The Article further explains why these moral rights protections are given only to visual artists and not to creators of other works, and it shows how this analysis can inform debates about expanding creators' legal rights of attribution. The Article also draws upon the considerable similarities between visual art and other products of human creativity to highlight the broader challenge that its analysis poses to the traditional, purely economic, understanding of the foundations of American intellectual property law more generally.


In economic situations a player often has preferences regarding not only his or her own outcome but also regarding what happens to fellow players, concerns that are entirely apart from any strategic considerations. While this can be modeled directly by simply writing down a player's final preferences, these are commonly unknown a priori. In many cases it is therefore both helpful and instructive to explicitly model these interactions. This paper, building on a model due to Bergstrom (1989, 1999), presents a simple structure in the context of game theory that incorporates the "synergies" between players. It is powerful enough to cover a wide range of such interactions and model many disparate experimental and empirical results, yet it is straightforward enough to be used in many applied situations where altruism, or a baser motive, is implied.


Although the disease, cholera, has been recognized since antiquity, the bacteria responsible for causing it was only discovered in the mid-19 th century. Since 1817, cholera has spread on a global basis to cause seven pandemics. According to information reported to the World Health Organization in 1999, almost 8,500 people died and another 223,000 became sick with cholera worldwide. During the period between full outbreaks, the cholera organism, Vibrio cholerae , thrives in brackish waters, in harmless as well as disease-causing forms. Vibrio cholerae is just one of a variety of ocean-borne microbes that can sicken humans via seafood, drinking water, and swimming. Location, time, and intensity of cholera epidemics can now be accurately predicted from satellite observations of sea surface temperature, sea surface height, and chlorophyll in the water. Bacteria such as Vibrio cholerae have been found to be able to communicate with members of their own species and others to coordinate their behavior in response to cell density in a process known as quorum sensing, which relies on the production of and sensitivity to one or more secreted signal molecules. A growing body of scientific studies has identified a complex quorum sensing network in the human pathogen Vibrio cholerae . To gain a better understanding of this pathogen, this study provides an overview of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae , the mechanism of its virulence, a discussion concerning the symptomatology of the bacterium and its epidemiology. An analysis of how quorum sensing influences the virulence of the bacterium is followed by a discussion of diagnostic and treatment considerations. A discussion of ongoing preventative measures is followed by a summary of the research and salient findings in the conclusion. log-phase and constitutive expression of HapR blocks ToxR-regulon expression.


Classical results in social choice theory on the susceptibility of voting rules to strategic manipulation make the assumption that the manipulator has complete information regarding the preferences of the other voters. In reality, however, voters only have incomplete information, which limits their ability to manipulate. We explore how these limitations affect both the manipulability of voting rules and the dynamics of systems in which voters may repeatedly update their own vote in reaction to the moves made by others. We focus on the Plurality, Veto, k-approval, Borda, Copeland, and Maximin voting rules, and consider several types of information that are natural in the context of these rules, namely information on the current front-runner, on the scores obtained by each alternative, and on the majority graph induced by the individual preferences.


Germany lacks good securities markets. Initial public offers are infrequent, securities trading is shallow, and even large public firms typically have big blockholders that make the big firms resemble 'semi-private' companies. These 'private' firm characteristics of German ownership are often attributed to poor legal protection of minority stockholders, to the lack of an equity-owning and entrepreneurial culture, and to permissive rules that allow big banks and bank blockholding in ways barred in the U.S. Here, I sketch out another explanation. German codetermination (by which employees control half of the seats on the German supervisory board) undermines diffuse ownership. First, stockholders may want the firm's governing institutions to have a blockholding 'balance of power,' a balance that, because half the supervisory board represents employees, diffusely owned firms may be unable to create. Second, managers and stockholders sapped the supervisory board of power (or, more accurately, stopped it from developing power). Board meetings are infrequent, information flow to the board is poor, and the board is often too big and unwieldy to be effective. Instead of boardroom governance, out-of-the-boardroom shareholder caucuses and meetings between managers and large shareholders substitute for effective boardroom action. But, because diffuse stockholders will at key points in a firm's future need a plausible board (due to a succession crisis, a production downfall, or a technological challenge), diffuse ownership for the German firm would deny the firm both boardroom and blockholder governance. Blockholder governance would be gone (if the block dissipated into a diffuse securities market) and board-level governance would be unavailable because the shareholders and managers had weakened the board beforehand. Stockholders would face a choice of charging up the board (and hence further empowering its employee-half) or of living with sub-standard (by current world criteria) boardroom governance. In the face of such choices, German firms (i.e., their managers and blockholders) retain their 'semi-private,' blockholding structure, and German securities markets do not develop.


Theoretical and practical approaches associated with conservation biogeography, including ecological niche modeling, have been applied to the difficult task of determining how to incorporate climate change into conservation prioritization methodologies. Most studies have focused on identifying species that are most at risk from climate change, but here we asked, which areas within a species' range does climate change threaten most? We explored methods for incorporating climate change within a range-wide conservation planning framework, using a case study of jaguars (Panthera onca). We used ecological niche models to estimate exposure to climate change across the range of the jaguar and incorporated these estimates into habitat quality scores for re-prioritization of high-priority areas for jaguar conservation. Methods such as these are needed to guide prioritization of geographically-specific actions for conservation across a species' range.


This volume unites, for the first time, Books IV and V of Mill's great treatise on political economy with his fragmentary chapters on socialism. It shows him applying his classical economic theory to policy questions of abiding concern, particularly the desirability of sustained growth of national wealth and population versus a stationary state, the merits of capitalism versus socialism, and the expedient scope of government intervention in the competitive market economy. His answers to those questions have considerable relevance today, and they serve to illustrate the enduring power and imagination of his distinctive liberal utilitarian philosophy. In his introduction, Jonathan Riley clarifies Mill's approach, considers what constitutes the Millian Utopia, and shows how examination of such an ideal society provides valuable insights into the structure of his philosophy. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.


This article surveys the existing mechanisims (primarily stemming from federal law) resulting in financial disclosure in connection with the offering and sale to the public of securities of New York municipal issuers. It also describes and compares alternative models for regimes of municipal issuer financial disclosure, such as the MFOA Guidelines, the federal Williams Bill and Industrial Bond Act and New York's Disclosure Proposals. The article ultimately concludes that although the isolated purpose of protecting investors in a municipal securities market that is largely national could most effectively be pursued by the imposition of uniform disclosure requirements through federal law, the Disclosure Proposals are not demonstrably inadequate to this purpose, and the intrustion into the affiars of the state and local governments of New York that would accompany the federal law approach makes the enactment of the Disclosure Proposals a more attractive alternative.


This document provides an overview of various ways to tunnel IPv6
packets over IPv4 networks. It covers mechanisms in current use,
touches on several mechanisms that are now only of historic interest,
and discusses some newer tunnel mechanisms that are not widely used at
the time of publication. The goal of the document is helping people
with an IPv6-in-IPv4 tunneling need to select the mechanisms that may
apply to them.


Investigations of complaints regarding police families made to the Manchester and Liverpool City Police provide insights into working-class neighborhoods not available in standard sources. The files suggest that interwar neighborhoods were losing long-term residents and becoming more diverse and variable. Families tried to find areas with similar standards regarding noise, space and privacy. Formerly stable neighborhoods changed, creating stress if changes were too dramatic. Even minor tensions could unsettle streets since causes of strain tended to reflect on respectability and status. While women remained the main presence due to their domestic responsibilities, men were spending more time with their families. The presence of men exacerbated misunderstandings, adding frictions over masculinity and territoriality. Complaints over noise overlapped with concerns over space which overlapped with anxiety over respectability and masculinity, all aggravated by children and gossip. When differences became too extreme, neighbors started campaigns of arguments, complaints, and harassment. Ultimately, if families were not in harmony with the rest of a street, efforts were made to force them to move. Yet neighborliness had not disappeared. Working-class neighbors generally managed to get along even in the unsettled conditions of interwar Liverpool and Manchester.


This thesis deals with modelling, analysis, and design of interactions between subsystems in chemical process plants and intracellular biochemical processes. In the first part, the focus is on the selection of decentralized feedback control structures for plants in the chemical process industry, with the aim of achieving a desired performance in the presence of interactions. The second part focuses on modelling and analysis of complex biochemical networks, with the aim of unravelling the impact of interactions between genes, proteins, and metabolites on cell functions. Decentralized control is almost the de-facto standard for control of large-scale systems, and in particular for systems in the process industry. An important task in the design of a decentralized control system is the selection of the control configuration, the so-called input-output pairing, which effectively decides the subsystems. Previous research addressing this problem has primarily focused on the effect of interactions on stability. In this thesis, the problem of selecting control configurations that can deliver a desired control performance is addressed. It is shown that existing measures of interactions, such as the relative gain array (RGA), are poor for selecting configurations for performance due to their inherent assumption of perfect control. Furthermore, several model based tools for the selection of control configurations based on performance considerations are proposed. Central functions in the cell are often linked to complex dynamic behaviors, such as sustained oscillations and multistability, in a biochemical reaction network. Determination of the specific interactions underlying such behaviors is important, for example, to determine sensitivity, robustness, and modelling requirements of given cell functions. A method for identifying the feedback connections and involved subsystems, within a biochemical network, that are the main sources of a complex dynamic behavior is proposed. The effectiveness of the method is illustrated on examples involving cell cycle control, circadian rhythms and glycolytic oscillations. Also, a method for identifying structured dynamic models of biochemical networks, based on experimental data, is proposed. The method is based on results from system identification theory, using time-series measurement data of expression profiles and concentrations of the involved biochemical components. Finally, in order to reduce the complexity of obtained network models, a method for decomposing large-scale networks into biologically meaningful subnetworks is proposed.


After the collapse of the centralized Soeharto regime, deforestation caused by over-logging accelerated. To tackle this problem, an IMF/World Bank-led forestry sector reform program adopted a market-friendly approach involving the resumption of round wood exports and raising of the resource rent fee, with the aim to stop rent accumulation by plywood companies, which had enjoyed a supply of round wood at privileged prices. The Indonesian government, for its part, decentralized the forest concession management system to provide incentives for local governments and communities to carry out sustainable forest management. However, neither policy reform worked effectively. The round wood export ban was reimposed and the forest management system centralized again with cooperation from a newly funded industry-led institution. In the midst of the confusion surrounding the policy reversal, the gap between the price of round wood in international and domestic markets failed to contract, although rent allocations to plywood industries were reduced during 1998-2003. The rents were not collected properly by the government, but accumulated unexpectedly in the hands of players in the black market for round wood.


Curve-fitting methods are widely used in derivatives markets for construction of the implied volatility surface (IVS). Here we discuss the goodness of fit, smoothness, and economic implications of 12 distinctive curve-fitting methods. The choice of method relies on specific requirements. When fitting the Chicago Board Options Exchange data, three interpolation methods were found to provide the best goodness, whereas quadratic regression, the Nadaraya–Watson kernel regression, and the theoretical Carr–Wu model generate the smoothest surfaces. Because of the irregular nature of the emerging options market data, we propose a transformation method to improve three statistical methods to satisfy the Lee's condition. Empirically, quadratic regression provides the best goodness when fitting the China 50ETF options data. In addition, the Carr–Wu model is a very good alternative because it natively satisfies the Lee's condition and has economic implications.


ABSTRACT This paper carries out a social semiotic analysis of an IKEA commercial to show how their contemporary kitchens, despite being market for those on a more modest budget, present an aspirational form of elite space, constructed on the basis of ideas, values and priorities favored by a neoliberal ideology. Using the notions of new writing and technologization, and carrying out an analysis of form, texture and color, we show how the kitchen, its occupants and their actions are designed and represented as a tightly coded and functional whole into which the ideas and values of neoliberalism can be realized. The designs erase personal difference and actual context and in the commercial allow performances which mark aspirational values according to neoliberalism. Here the kitchen space itself, as is usual across IKEA commercials, allows the protagonist to be "creative," improve his performance, be "dynamic" and "flexible." Yet these, like the objects and textures in the kitchen, are merely symbolic components which appear reasonable in the context of the tightly coded system.


This work presents a new external driving scheme that uses the current feedback method with a 3T1C pixel circuit. The proposed circuit provides a stable OLED driving current by compensating for the threshold voltage shift of amorphous-silicon thin-film transistors (a-Si TFTs). For fabricated a-Si TFTs and the 0.35 μm CMOS process associated with the proposed driving scheme, measurements reveal that the normalized OLED current degradation is less than 5% after 60 hours of operation at 60°C. Moreover, for a data line load of 1.69 K Ω/110 pF, the relative error rates between data currents and OLED currents are less than 4% within a settling time of 19 μs.


Abstract. This paper focus on traffic light distance measurement using stereo camera which is a very important and challenging task in image processing domain, where it is used in several systems such as Driving Safety Support Systems (DSSS), autonomous driving and traffic mobility. In this paper, we propose an integrated traffic light distance measurement system for self-driving based on stereo image processing. Therefore, an algorithm to spatially locate the detected traffic light is required in order to make these detections useful. In this paper, an algorithm to detect, classify the traffic light colours and spatially locate traffic light are integrated. Detection and colours classification are made simultaneously via YOLOv3, using RGB images. 3D traffic light localization is achieved by estimating the distance from the vehicle to the traffic light, by looking at detector 2D bounding boxes and the disparity map generated by stereo camera. Moreover, Gaussian YOLOv3 weights based on KITTI and Berkeley datasets has been replaced with the COCO dataset. Therefore, a detection algorithm that can cope with mislocalizations is required in autonomous driving applications. This paper proposes an integrated method for improving the detection accuracy and traffic lights colours classification while supporting a real-time operation by modelling the bounding box (bbox) of YOLOv3. The obtained results show fair results within 20 meters away from the sensor, while misdetection and classification appeared in further distance.


A brief introduction to the air-jet texturing process is given, with reference to similarities between air-jet textured yarns and spun yarns, differences between them and stretch yarns, and developments in texturing nozzles. Researches undertaken at various universities on the investigation of the loop formation mechanism are reviewed. An alternative explanation of the loop formation mechanism is offered by detailed reference to current research in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Loughborough University of Technology, this being based on high-speed photography and flow measurement methods applied mainly to the standard core HemaJet produced by Heberlein of Switzerland. It is argued that the suggested mechanism applies generally to all texturing nozzles.


This is the english translation (by Helen Tomlinson) of a report commissioned by BSN 4 and BSN 7 for the French Ministry of Research (see https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01388556/ for the original). It is concerned with the new ways in which open access journals can be editorialised. The transition to open access has accelerated in recent years. Several countries have established a legal framework to secure the depositing of articles in open archives (in France, a provision of this type is included in the Digital Bill). In May 2016, the Council of the European Union called for open access to be made a "default option" in all Member States by 2020.

While the conversion of scientific publishing to open access distribution appears to be a given in the short term, the ways and means remain uncertain: is the process confined to simply transferring budgets from subscription to the payment of publishing rights, without fundamentally changing the existing publishing structures ("journal flipping")? Or does it entail new models that reconfigure the existing parameters as a whole (review procedures, writing practices, business models, governance)?

This dynamic of change opens up the prospect of large-scale reforms. The initial remit of the present study falls into this framework: what publishing forms can the state encourage in a digital age that is witnessing the transformation of scientific publishing and the failure of scientific peer review? This report maps four aspects of the emerging practices and initiatives: publishing tools, writing forms, peer review and economic models. The different "dimensions" we have mapped are interdependent and raise common issues, adressed in the final part. In an ecosystem as "interdependent" as digital scientific publishing, this reform would imply the implementation of infrastructure policies which, above and beyond supporting specific usages and tools, would define the convergent linkages between mechanisms, actors and practices.


With 2857 km in length, the quiet Danube quietly tells Europe's history. We only must be aware of its story. Since ancient times it was connected with empires, expansion, and navigation. The Romans fully understood its role, and proceeded accordingly. They made it their border, but used it for transporting goods and military, too. After the Dark Ages, all European affairs have been in one way or another connected and influenced by the Danube. Romania's modern history was influenced by the evolution of international problems connected to this river. The Moldavia and Wallachia 1859's unification in a single state – Romania – had lot to do with the Danube and it was involved in London's interests in the Oriental Question. The paper presents shortly the way the legal framework regarding the Danube was developed, and what was Romania's role in facilitating navigation on the Danube. The main data which inspired this work – regarding both the political-legal aspects, and the technical solutions used to facilitate navigation on Danube – are based on earlier writings and studies of Romanian thinkers such as Antipa, Baicoianu, Dascovici and Gogeanu. The evolution of these aspects has a direct or an indirect connection with the evolution of political events and the economic development in all European states, but their importance is crucial especially for those countries which are located in the Danube's basin. The main text regarding the political aspects related to the Danube is the Belgrade Convention, which has been the general framework under which riparian countries come together to collaborate and to solve the technical impediments for navigation, such as those imposed by the building of the Iron Gate System. At the same time, this paper signals the role of education in understanding the Danube's role for riparian countries, and for their possible evolution in connection with this river.


Peter Lundberg will speak about his personal experiences living and working as a sculptor and curator around the world; working within the community of sculptors, working with sculpture organizations around the world and developing sculpture parks such as 'Sculpture for New Orleans'. He will discuss travelling the symposium circuit, creating sculptures in strange new places, and the challenges and surprises of working in countries where you don't speak the language! He will also talk about the value of apprenticeships; working for other artists to learn the ropes, and welcome any questions from the audience. For the last two years Lundberg has exhibited in China and Australia and has numerous permanent sculptures in both countries. This year Peter was the recipient of the prestigious Nord Art Prize in Germany, selected from more than 250 artists, and is currently working with Senator Bill Carris of Vermont in the development of a free sculpture park.

As a part of the next Ten Days on the Island festival (March 15-24 2013) there will be a large scale installation by international award winning, Tasmanian based sculptor Marcus Tatton, at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens - Tatton@RTBG. Marcus has invited Vermont based artist and curator Peter Lundberg to curate Tatton@RTBG. Marcus' impressive and arresting work has gained attention nationally through its exposure in public exhibitions and private collections, and this major visual arts project will be one of the cornerstone works of the Ten Days 2013 programme. The installation of 8 large artworks will commence in late 2012, with the ten days of festival to be the final days of installation.


It is expected that biopolymers obtained from renewable resources will in due course become fully competitive with fossil fuel-derived plastics as food-packaging materials. In this context, biopolymer nanocomposites are a field of emerging interest since such materials can exhibit improved mechanical and barrier properties and be more suitable for a wider range of food-packaging applications. Natural or synthetic clay nanofillers are being investigated for this purpose in a project called NanoPack funded by the Danish Strategic Research Council. In order to detect and characterize the size of clay nanoparticulates, an analytical system combining asymmetrical flow field-flow fractionation (AF4) with multi-angle light-scattering detection (MALS) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is presented. In a migration study, we tested a biopolymer nanocomposite consisting of polylactide (PLA) with 5% Cloisite®30B (a derivatized montmorillonite clay) as a filler. Based on AF4-MALS analyses, we found that particles ranging from 50 to 800 nm in radius indeed migrated into the 95% ethanol used as a food simulant. The full hyphenated AF4-MALS-ICP-MS system showed, however, that none of the characteristic clay minerals was detectable, and it is concluded that clay nanoparticles were absent in the migrate. Finally, by means of centrifugation experiments, a platelet aspect ratio of 320 was calculated for montmorillonite clay using AF4-MALS for platelet size measurements.


The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of the duration (24 hours, 60 days and 120 days) of frozen storage (-20 °C) on the fatty acid composition of meat from ostriches supplemented with linseed and rapeseed. The study was carried out on muscles of 40 ostriches raised on five dietary groups: control with no supplementation (C), with 4% linseed (L4); 8% linseed (L8); and 5% rapeseed (R5); or 10% rapeseed (R10) in the diet. As the frozen storage period increased, the fatty acid profile of the ostrich meat in all the "enriched" groups changed, especially treatments L4 and L8. There was a decrease in the polyunsaturated fatty acid content (especially from 61 to 120 days of storage) including linolenic, arachidonic and docosahexaenoic acids. However, storage did not influence the fatty acid profile of ostrich meat up to 60 days. These results suggest that freezing is an acceptable method for preserving ostrich meat (up to 60 days), causing only a small decrease in the fatty acids of ostrich meat enriched with n-3 fatty acids. However, further research on prolonged frozen storage is recommended.


Anisakiasis is a parasitic disease caused by the consumption of raw or undercooked fish containing the third larval stage of anisakid nematodes. Safety in fish consumption from extractive fisheries is a challenge for public health authorities. This study presents the hematological analysis, necroscopic and histopathological examination of three Hoplias lacerdae parasitized by Anisakis spp. captured in an affluent of the Teles Pires River, in the municipality of Sinop, State of Mato Grosso, Brazil. At necropsy, intense parasitism was observed, characterized by free and adherent anisakid larvae in organs and mesentery. In the histopathological study, there were nephrotic alterations and hepatopathies, as well as the first report of the presence of Anisakis cyst adhered in the myocardium of Hoplias lacerdae. There was a correlation between the increase in the number of parasites and the circulating leukocytes, influenced by the number of neutrophils and eosinophils. However, other studies should be designed to elucidate the pathophysiological and epidemiological changes in Hoplias lacerdae by the parasitism of Anisakis spp., due to its socioeconomic importance, as well as the potential risk to public health.


To incentivize households to increase private savings, the Indian government implemented in July 2014 a new tax-subsidized saving policy that largely incentivizes homeowners by allowing them to exempt an additional 50,000 INR ($833) of the mortgage principal and interest payments from taxable income. We exploit the exogeneous policy change and assess the extent to which households reduce their consumption in order to finance a tax-favored saving instrument using a unique administrative panel data of consumer debit card and credit card spending transactions. We find that about 31% of households with a mortgage increase the principal repayment amount after the policy change; the median annual increase in principal repayment is about US$307, which is about 36.8% of the higher tax exemption limit. We estimate that households with a mortgage reduce their consumption by US$25 (5.2%) per month on average in order to finance the tax-favored saving account. For a one dollar increase in the income tax exemption limit on long-term savings, private saving increases by $0.23 for the treatment group. Relative to annual income, private savings for the treatment group increase by about 1.87% on average.


Abstract The pioneering research on the Doublet-III (DIII) tokamak and its upgrade the DIII-D has contributed significantly to understanding of the physics of divertor plasmas and the development of the modern poloidal divertor. The earliest experimental investigations of the "class of open divertors" were carried out on DIII and DIII-D tokamaks. Divertor advances on these devices include the discoveries of the "high-recycling regime" and divertor impurity enrichment via induced scrape-off-layer flow. Density control was achieved, and high-confinement modes were discovered with the aid of an innovative in-vessel cryopump. In this paper, we present a review of research and development on the DIII and DIII-D tokamaks that has contributed to the development of the modern poloidal divertor, emphasizing the aspects that are of importance to the next-generation tokamak devices.


Modern underground coal mines can be very large, having a total connected load in excess of 15 000 hp. These mines generally have many miles of high-power conveyor belts and 15 or more miles of high-voltage power cables at distribution voltages of 12.47, 13.2, 13.8, or 14.4 kV. The shielded cables used in mine power distribution systems have a significant level of capacitance, on the order of 110 pF/ft. This level of capacitance, in an extensive power distribution system at today's voltage levels, can cause significant charging currents during a ground fault. This paper addresses the potential detrimental effects of capacitance charging currents during line-to-ground faults in mine power distribution systems. A representative mine power system is modeled, and simulations with faults at various locations are conducted to evaluate the effects of this capacitance on the level of fault current and relay selectivity. This paper also includes results of capacitance measurements made on mine power feeder cables used to validate the simulation model


Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) is the material of choice for denture base construction. In spite of its many good qualities, the application of PMMA as an ideal dental base material is still restricted by a few limitations. One of these is the difficulty in achieving intrinsic radiopacity in the material. The aim of the present study is to investigate the possibility of using barium titanate (BaTiO3) as a radiopacifier in PMMA. The formulation used in this study composed of PMMA 89.5 wt%, BaTiO3 10 wt% and benzoyl peroxide (BPO) 0.5 wt% as an initiator, methyl methacrylate (MMA) 90 wt% as a monomer and ethylene glycol dimethyl acrylate (EGDMA) 10 wt% as a cross-linking agent. The BaTiO3 was treated by a silane coupling agent, 3-trimethoxysilylpropyl methacrylate (γ-MPS), prior to incorporation in the solid components (PMMA, BPO). The curing was carried out using a water bath at 78°C for 1.5 h. The samples were tested for fracture toughness before and after soaking for 28 days in simulated body fluid (SBF). Moreover, the morphology of the specimens was investigated by scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results showed that the neat PMMA possessed slightly higher fracture toughness properties than the PMMA composite, and after 28 days of immersion, the fracture toughness values were reduced by 4.8% and 3.4% for neat PMMA and PMMA composite, respectively.


As robots become more reliable and user interfaces (UI) become more powerful, humanrobot teams are being applied to more real world problems. Human-robot teams offer redundancy and heterogeneous capabilities desirable in scientific investigation, surveillance, disaster response, and search and rescue operations. Large teams are overwhelming for a human operator, so systems employ high level team plans to describe the operator's supervisory roles and the team's tasks and goals. In addition, UIs apply situational awareness (SA) techniques and mixed initiative (MI) invocation of services to manage the operator's workload. However, current systems use static SA and MI settings which cannot capture changes in the plan's context or the overall system configuration. The configuration for one domain, device, environment, or section of a plan may not be appropriate for others, limiting performance. This thesis addresses these issues by developing a team plan language for human-robot teams and augments it with a situational awareness and mixed initiative (SAMI) markup language. SAMI markup captures SA techniques for UI components, MI settings for decision making, and constraints for algorithm selection at specific points in a team plan. In addition, we identify properties of the team plan language and use them to develop semantic and syntactic software agents which aid plan development. To test the team plan language and markup's ability to capture complex behavior and context specific needs, we design several experiments in simulation and deploy a large team of autonomous watercraft. Run-time statistics and the team's ability to adapt to challenges "in the wild" are used to evaluate the effectiveness of the marked up language. To assess the learnability of the language by non-experts, a user study evaluating a series of self-guided lessons is designed. Users with exposure to computer science concepts complete training material during which task performance and interviews are used to assess the effectiveness and scalability of the material. These contributions demonstrate an approach to improve the accessibility of human-robot teams and their performance in complex environments.


Public-private partnerships (PPP) have been advanced as a new tool of global governance, which can supply both effective and legitimate governance. In the context of recent debates on the democratic legitimacy of transnational governance, this paper focuses on accountability as a central component of legitimacy. The aim of this paper is to map transnational climate partnerships and evaluate their accountability record in terms of transparency, monitoring mechanisms and representation of stakeholders. Three types of partnerships are identified with respect to their degree of public-private interaction: public-private (hybrid), governmental and private-private. Most of the climate partnerships have functions of advocacy, service provision and implementation. None are standard setting, which indicates that governmental actors are less willing to contract out rule-setting authority to private actors in the climate change. Some partnerships, such as the World Summit on Sustainable Development climate partnerships and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects represent new modes of hybrid governance with high degree of public-private interaction. However, many partnerships, not least the voluntary technology agreements such as the APP, rest on old form of governance based on the logic of lobbying, corporatism, co-optation and interstate bargaining. Private (business-to business) climate partnerships are to varying degrees geared toward quantitative targets in the Kyoto Protocol. The accountability record is higher for hybrid climate partnerships, such as the CDM, due to extensive reporting and monitoring mechanisms, while lower for the governmental networks, such as voluntary technology agreements. Partnerships do not necessarily replace or erode the authority of sovereign states, but rather propels the hybridization and transformation of authority that is increasingly shared between state and nonstate actors.


Inbreeding may impair an individual's immune system, render it more susceptible to disease and hence contribute to the extinction risk of small and isolated populations, as often found on islands. So far, surprisingly few studies have assessed the effects of inbreeding on immunocompetence in wild populations. Using 26 microsatellite loci and genetic data from museum specimens and contemporary samples, we calculated short-term and long-term inbreeding in 13 different mockingbird populations covering the range of all 4 species in the Galapagos Islands and compared them with three different measures of innate immunity and ectoparasite load. We found no significant effect of either measure of inbreeding on natural antibody or complement enzyme titres, heterophil-lymphocyte ratio or feather louse abundance. Hence, our results do not support a link between inbreeding and immunocompetence. However, overall statistical power and repeatabilities of antibody and complement enzyme titres were low. Nevertheless, generally, natural antibody titres were high suggesting that the mockingbirds may be equipped with a strong first line of defence, as found in other island species.


A reliable species–area relationship holds true for a number of terrestrial systems. When species–area data are plotted on logarithmic axes, the slope bears strong consistency across taxa. This study examined effects of habitat space on the diversity of coral reef fish species. Because habitat space on coral reefs is 3-dimensional, we developed and employed a methodology that accounts for volume. A positive relationship was observed both between log species richness of fish and log area, and log species richness and log volume. Area explained 88 to 99% and volume explained 76 to 99% of the variation in species richness. The slopes of species–area curves observed here (z = 0.46 to 0.61) are considerably higher than for other taxa (average z-value of 0.26), but are similar to those observed in other 3-dimensional systems (fishes 0.43, carabid beetles 0.36, birds 0.61). Volume accounted for some of the observed difference, and factoring out volume reduced the slope of the curve by up to 18% (z = 0.38 to 0.52). An increase in suitable habitat (habitat diversity) has been proposed as an important factor explaining the noted increase in species relative to space. Habitat heterogeneity showed strong positive relationships with both area and volume. Canonical correspondence analysis indicated that habitat variables explained 66 to 76% of the variation in species richness at our sites at all spatial scales. The results of this study suggest that the relationship between species and space holds true for reef systems, and that habitat space and microhabitat diversity are good predictors of fish species richness.


Mastitis in two herds managed as a comparison between organic and conventional dairy farming systems was monitored for 4 years utilising regular bacterial culture of milk samples, individual and bulk somatic cell counts and observation by farm staff. The objective was to develop strategies for the control of mastitis in organic cows without the use of antibiotics. The herds showed differences in clinical mastitis incidence, subclinical mastitis prevalence and bulk milk somatic cell count. Despite these differences, the level of mastitis in the organic herd remained manageable.


Transverse magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves permeate the solar atmosphere and are a candidate for coronal heating. However, the origin of these waves is still unclear. In this Letter, we analyze coordinated observations from Hinode/Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) and Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) of a prominence/coronal rain loop-like structure at the limb of the Sun. Cool and dense downflows and upflows are observed along the structure. A collision between a downward and an upward flow with an estimated energy flux of 107–108 erg cm−2 s−1 is observed to generate oscillatory transverse perturbations of the strands with an estimated ≈40 km s−1 total amplitude, and a short-lived brightening event with the plasma temperature increasing to at least 105 K. We interpret this response as sausage and kink transverse MHD waves based on 2D MHD simulations of plasma flow collision. The lengths, density, and velocity differences between the colliding clumps and the strength of the magnetic field are major parameters defining the response to the collision. The presence of asymmetry between the clumps (angle of impact surface and/or offset of flowing axis) is crucial for generating a kink mode. Using the observed values, we successfully reproduce the observed transverse perturbations and brightening, and show adiabatic heating to coronal temperatures. The numerical modeling indicates that the plasma β in this loop-like structure is confined between 0.09 and 0.36. These results suggest that such collisions from counter-streaming flows can be a source of in situ transverse MHD waves, and that for cool and dense prominence conditions such waves could have significant amplitudes.


The methodology of pedagogy belongs to the youngest group of pedagogical disciplines. The first thoughts about the basic postulates of the methodology of pedagogy were recognized long ago, even in the pedagogical paradigm of John Amos Comenius (1592-1670), who created support for the methodology of pedagogy as an integral component of pedagogical science. After the presentation of the basic concepts of the pedagogical theory of this Moravian thinker, the principle of evidence in his pedagogical theory is considered in this paper. A review was made of the influence Comenius left on his followers Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827), especially from the point of view of further development of the principles of evidence in their education theories. In this paper, we have confirmed our hypothesis about the compatibility of the principle of evidence with research techniques and instruments. Proactively action by Comenius represents a turning point not only in the field of pedagogy development as a science and its disciplines, but also in the field of human development in general. Regarding that, there is a need for a new pedagogical discipline, Comeniology, which will give a new perspective to this pedagogical doctrine and will foster a critical review in relation to his pedagogical theory. According with our research subject, we have presented some of our dilemmas and questions to which the Comeniology as a new scientific discipline could give an answer, and therefore a kind of scientific contribution. Based on the previous methodological achievements, Comeniology remains committed to discovering the origins of other research techniques and methods in the pedagogical postulates of Comenius, to determine the applicability of the Comenius pedagogical principles with regard to the changes and challenges facing the contemporary teaching process, to open the issue of pedagogical psychological competencies of teachers for the application of the golden rule of Comenius and its other principles, to continue engagement of Comenius in the qualitative educational function of a modern school, but also to consider the influence of other factors (family environment) that may influence the choice of teaching principles and methods.


The purpose of the study was to examine the relationships between music
preference and each of the four independent variables music characteristics, social
influence factors, musical training and familiarity with the music. Ten excerpts of
each of the three types of music Commercial, Western Art and Malaysian were
recorded on a CD. This is the first instance when a CD, rather than a cassette, is
used to contain the sound stimulus. It is also a pioneer work in which preferences
for Malaysian Music is studied alongside preferences towards Commercial and Art
Music, hence Malaysian genre preferences are discussed in greater detail. Music
characteristics, social influences, musical training and familiarity were variables that
have been identified in the literature review. Music characteristics included tempo,
rhythmic clarity, dynamics, melodic smoothness, pitch, harmony, timbre and mood.
Preferences are analysed separately for each of the types of music, since Western
Music and Malaysian Music do not share many common characteristics. The social
influence variables were influences from family, peers, teachers and media. Musical training was considered as general, overall training in music as well as training for
acquiring instrumental skills. Preferences were indicated on a seven-point scale.
Familiarity was shown on a three-point scale. The respondents were 171
undergraduates, randomly selected from a local university. Subjects listened to the
CD containing the music excerpts and indicated their preferences and familiarity.
They also provided demographic data and information concerning their social
environment and musical training. The subjects were unpaid. The results showed
that all the four independent variables had a bearing upon music preferences. Of the
four, familiarity with the music and music characteristics were the most significant
correlates for each type of music, although the other two variables also affected
music preference significantly. Respondents indicated that the influence of media
and peers were higher than the influence of family and teachers, but it was the
influence of family and teachers that actually correlated with preference for
Commercial and Western Art Music, but not Malaysian Music. Musical training
had the highest positive correlation with preference for Western Art Music, among
the three types of music. Familiarity and musical characteristics were the correlates
that contributed to preference for all the three types of music.


Nowadays, one of the most important areas of interest in archeology is the characterization of the submersed cultural heritage. Mediterranean Sea is rich in archaeological findings due to storms, accidents and naval battles since prehistoric times. Chemical analysis of submerged materials is an extremely valuable source of information on the origin and precedence of the wrecks, and also the raw materials employed during the manufacturing of the objects found in these sites. Sometimes extracting the archeological material from the marine environment is not practical due to the size of the sample, or is not permitted by the legislation or preservation practices. In these cases, the in-situ analysis turns into the only alternative. The versatility of laserinduced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has been successfully tested in oceanography. Advantages such as rapid and in situ analysis with no sample preparation make LIBS a suitable alternative for field measurements. Laser Laboratory of the University of Malaga is evaluating the capability of stand-off LIBS (ST-LIBS) for seafloor exploration (20003000 meters deep). Several experiments including the transmission of laser radiation through water or the influence of the range of analysis over LIBS signal, has been performed in laboratory inside a water tank. Preliminary results are quite satisfactory and suggests the possibility of integrating LIBS technology in a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) for geological/mineralogical exploration, cultural heritage investigation and/or the inspection of oil and gas pipelines in the seafloor, among others.


A novel CFD-based methodology for generalised thermal analysis of protected steel structures in fire has been developed, in order to overcome some of the limitations of detailed thermal analysis methods. Relying on having an appropriate balance of semi-empirical methods and detailed numerical heat transfer approaches, in order to give solutions of sufficient accuracy for structural members in a generalised fashion, the novel methodology has been developed as an essentially 1D heat transfer model with appropriate representations for 2D and 3D effects to reconstruct a quasi-3D solution. The model has been implemented both in spreadsheet format, to facilitate sensitivity studies for model verification and identification of key parameters, and as a submodel within the SOFIE RANS CFD code. Parallel calculations are performed to consider a range of parameters of interest, including member size and protection material properties, as well as uncertainties in some of the essential input parameters (such as emissivities). Model sensitivities are demonstrated, revealing the expected strong dependencies on the properties of the thermal protection materials. Initial validation is undertaken with respect to the full-scale tests on a 12m x 12m compartment at BRE Cardington, comparing with the measured temperatures in a protected steel indicative, with satisfactory agreement. Predictions of steel temperatures for variations on the key input parameters will ultimately be provided as field variable predictions by the parallel calculations implemented in the CFD code, thereby providing a much more flexible means of assessing the thermal response of structure to fire than has been available hitherto. The final result is a comprehensive, but practical tool for structural fire design, with potential to improve the efficiency and safety of the relevant constructions.


In this paper, we model and experimentally verify the evolution of liquid water and nitrogen fronts along the length of the anode channel in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell operating with a dead-ended anode that is fed by dry hydrogen. The accumulation of inert nitrogen and liquid water in the anode causes a voltage drop, which is recoverable by purging the anode. Experiments were designed to clarify the effect of N2 blanketing, water plugging of the channels, and flooding of the gas diffusion layer. The observation of each phenomenon is facilitated by simultaneous gas chromatography measurements on samples extracted from the anode channel to measure the nitrogen content and neutron imaging to measure the liquid water distribution. A model of the accumulation is presented, which describes the dynamic evolution of a N2 blanketing front in the anode channel leading to the development of a hydrogen starved region. The prediction of the voltage drop between purge cycles during nonwater plugging channel conditions is shown. The model is capable of describing both the two-sloped behavior of the voltage decay and the time at which the steeper slope begins by capturing the effect of H2 concentration loss and the area of the H2 starved region along the anode channel.


This work presents Trial-Based Calibration (TBC), a novel, automated calibration technique robust to both unseen and widely varying conditions. Motivated by the approach taken by forensic experts in speaker recognition, TBC delays estimating calibration parameters until trial-time when acoustic and behav-ioral conditions of both sides of the trial are known. An audio characterization system is used to select a small subset of candidate calibration audio samples that best match the conditions of the enrollment sample and a subset that resembles the test conditions. Calibration parameters learned from the target and impostor trials generated by pairing up these samples are then used to calibrate the score output from the speaker identification system. Evaluated on a diverse, pooled collection of 5 different databases with 14 distinct conditions, the proposed TBC out-performs traditional calibration methods and obtains calibration performance similar to having an ideally matched calibration set.


We start from the state-of-the-art Bag of Words pipeline that in the 2008 benchmarks of TRECvid and PASCAL yielded the best performance scores. We have contributed to that pipeline, which now forms the basis to compare various fast alternatives for all of its components: (i) For descriptor extraction we propose a fast algorithm to densely sample SIFT and SURF, and we compare several variants of these descriptors. (ii) For descriptor projection we compare a k-means visual vocabulary with a Random Forest. As a preprojection step we experiment with PCA on the descriptors to decrease projection time. (iii) For classification we use Support Vector Machines and compare the x2 kernel with the RBF kernel. Our results lead to a 10-fold speed increase without any loss of accuracy and to a 30-fold speed increase with 17% loss of accuracy, where the latter system does real-time classification at 26 images per second.


We have determined the solution structure of the synthetic chimeric duplex r(ccca)d(AATGA).d(TCATTTGGG) by two-dimensional NMR, distance geometry, restrained molecular dynamics, and full relaxation matrix simulation of the two-dimensional nuclear Overhauser effect spectra at various mixing times. The chimeric strand of this duplex consists of the last four residues of the tRNA(Pro) primer for (-) strand DNA synthesis of Moloney murine leukemia virus and the first five residues of the (-) strand DNA produced by extending this primer; the complementary DNA strand corresponds to the (+) strand product from this template. The hybrid section of this chimeric duplex assumes a structure similar to that found for pure hybrid duplexes of mixed sequence, while the DNA section assumes a conformation closer to B-form DNA. There is significant distortion of the duplex at the hybrid-DNA junction which is manifested in marked changes in the helical parameters buckle, roll, and tip, changes in glycosidic torsion angles, and changes in the backbone torsion angles delta, epsilon, and zeta. The sugar conformations also undergo large changes, from heteromerous puckers in the hybrid section to a more B-form in the DNA section. Furthermore, the intrastrand phosphate separation in the chimeric strand is more typical of A-form duplexes in the RNA section but more like B-form duplexes in the DNA section. In the DNA section the minor groove width changes gradually from B-form at the periphery and approaches hybrid-like dimensions closer to the junction. The structural discontinuities act synergistically to produce a bend of 18 +/- 3 degrees at the junction. The global structure of this sequence is similar to that previously found in the chemically analogous Okazaki fragment r(gcg)d(TATACCC).d(GGGTATACGC) in solution. Such structure homology suggests a possible link between structure and function with respect to the recognition and cleavage of the junction RNA residues in both retroviral chimeras and Okazaki fragments during reverse transcription and normal DNA replication.


There is still significant speculation regarding the nature of femtosecond laser induced index change in bulk glasses with colour centre formation and densification the main candidates. In the work presented here, we fabricated waveguide Bragg gratings in doped and undoped phosphate glasses and use these as a diagnostic for monitoring subtle changes in the induced refractive index during photo- and thermal annealing experiments. Reductions in grating strengths during such experiments were attributed to the annihilation of colour centres.


Human beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place--the physical world demanded it--but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Simply put, everything is suddenly miscellaneous. In Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. In his rollicking tour of the rise of the miscellaneous, he examines why the Dewey decimal system is stretched to the breaking point, how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your childrens teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future in virtually every industry. Finally, he shows how by "going miscellaneous," anyone can reap rewards from the deluge of information in modern work and life. From A to Z, Everything Is Miscellaneous will completely reshape the way you think--and what you know--about the world. The Flocking of Information: An Amazon.com Exclusive Essay by David Weinberger As businesses go miscellaneous, information gets chopped into smaller and smaller pieces. But it also escapes its leash--adding to a pile that can be sorted and arranged by anyone with a Web browser and a Net connection. In fact, information exhibits bird-like "flocking behavior," joining with other information that adds value to it, creating swarms that help customers and, ultimately, the businesses from which the information initially escaped. For example, Wize.com is a customer review site founded in 2005 by entrepreneur Doug Baker. The site provides reviews for everything from computers and MP3 players to coffee makers and baby strollers. But why do we need another place for reviews? If youre using the Web to research what digital camera to buy for your father-in-law, you probably feel there are far too many sites out there already. By the time you have scrolled through one stores customer reviews for each candidate camera and then cross-referenced the positive and the negative with the expert reviews at each of your bookmarked consumer magazines, you have to start the process again just to remember what people said. Wize in fact aims at exactly that problem. It pulls together reviews from many outside sources and aggregates them into three piles: user reviews, expert reviews (with links to the online publications), and the general "buzz." (For shoppers looking for a quick read on a product, Wize assigns an overall ranking.) When Wize reports that 97 percent of users love the Nikon D200 camera, it includes links to the online stores where the user reviews are posted, so customers are driven back to the businesses to spend their money. Zillow.com does something similar for real estate. The people behind Expedia.com, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, were looking for a new business idea--and were in the market for new homes. After hunting for information, they found that most of it was locked into the multiple listings sites of the National Association of Realtors. Now Zillow takes those listings and mashes them up with additional information that can help a potential purchaser find exactly what she wants. The most dramatic mashup right now is the "heat map" that uses swaths of color to let you tell at a glance what are the most expensive and most affordable areas. At some point, though, Zillow or one of its emerging competitors will mash up listing information with school ratings, crime maps, and aircraft flight patterns. Wize and Zillow make money by selling advertising, but their value is in the way their sites aggregate the miscellaneous--letting lots of independent sources flock together, all in one place. Were seeing the same trend in industry after industry, including music, travel, and the news media. Information gets released into the wild (sometimes against a companys will), where it joins up with other information, and the act of aggregating adds value. Companies lose some control, but they gain market presence and smarter customers. The companies that are succeeding in the new digital skies are the ones that allow their customers to add their own information and the aggregators to mix it up, because whether or not information wants to be free, it sure wants to flock.


BACKGROUND & AIMS
Narrow-band imaging is an image-enhanced form of endoscopy used to observed microstructures and capillaries of the mucosal epithelium which allows for real-time prediction of histologic features of colorectal polyps. However, narrow-band imaging expertise is required to differentiate hyperplastic from neoplastic polyps with high levels of accuracy. We developed and tested a system of computer-aided diagnosis with a deep neural network (DNN-CAD) to analyze narrow-band images of diminutive colorectal polyps.

METHODS
We collected 1476 images of neoplastic polyps and 681 images of hyperplastic polyps, obtained from the picture archiving and communications system database in a tertiary hospital in Taiwan. Histologic findings from the polyps were also collected and used as the reference standard. The images and data were used to train the DNN. A test set of images (96 hyperplastic and 188 neoplastic polyps, smaller than 5 mm), obtained from patients who underwent colonoscopies from March 2017 through August 2017, was then used to test the diagnostic ability of the DNN-CAD vs endoscopists (2 expert and 4 novice), who were asked to classify the images of the test set as neoplastic or hyperplastic. Their classifications were compared with findings from histologic analysis. The primary outcome measures were diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and diagnostic time. The accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, and diagnostic time were compared among DNN-CAD, the novice endoscopists, and the expert endoscopists. The study was designed to detect a difference of 10% in accuracy by a 2-sided McNemar test.

RESULTS
In the test set, the DNN-CAD identified neoplastic or hyperplastic polyps with 96.3% sensitivity, 78.1% specificity, a PPV of 89.6%, and a NPV of 91.5%. Fewer than half of the novice endoscopists classified polyps with a NPV of 90% (their NPVs ranged from 73.9% to 84.0%). DNN-CAD classified polyps as neoplastic or hyperplastic in 0.45 ± 0.07 seconds-shorter than the time required by experts (1.54 ± 1.30 seconds) and nonexperts (1.77 ± 1.37 seconds) (both P < .001). DNN-CAD classified polyps with perfect intra-observer agreement (kappa score of 1). There was a low level of intra-observer and inter-observer agreement in classification among endoscopists.

CONCLUSIONS
We developed a system called DNN-CAD to identify neoplastic or hyperplastic colorectal polyps less than 5 mm. The system classified polyps with a PPV of 89.6%, and a NPV of 91.5%, and in a shorter time than endoscopists. This deep-learning model has potential for not only endoscopic image recognition but for other forms of medical image analysis, including sonography, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance images.


In this paper an ontological representation and reasoning paradigm has been proposed for interpretation of time-series signals. The signals come from sensors observing a smart environment. The signal chosen for the annotation process is a set of unintuitive and complex gas sensor data. The ontology of this paradigm is inspired form the SSN ontology (Semantic Sensor Network) and used for representation of both the sensor data and the contextual information. The interpretation process is mainly done by an incremental ASP solver which as input receives a logic program that is generated from the contents of the ontology. The contextual information together with high level domain knowledge given in the ontology are used to infer explanations (answer sets) for changes in the ambient air detected by the gas sensors.


Consumer interest in locally produced foods marketed through local food networks has been increasing. Local food networks utilize local supply chains such as direct market sales to consumers through CSAs, farmers markets, farm stands, and other alternative outlets. Our goal is to examine the role of food cooperatives in strengthening the local food networks and distributing locally produced products. We utilize data from a national study which includes case studies with three leading food co-ops and a national survey of the general managers of food co-ops. We focus on analyzing the business strategies and competitive advantages of food co-ops sourcing local foods from local producers and marketing these local foods to consumers. We identify the emerging business practices, ethics principles, and competition issues for food co-ops with respect to sourcing and marketing of local products. Specifically, we provide a literature review on local food systems, examine local food definitions and recent trends for food co-ops, examine the business models and ethics principles for food co-ops, discuss the business strategies in sourcing and marketing of local foods by food co-ops, and examine the frequency and effectiveness of these business strategies to source and promote local foods. We show that when compared to other grocers, food co-ops have competitive advantages in working with local producers and often play a key role in the local producers' business viability.


Background Digoxin has long been prescribed in children with heart failure, but its efficacy has not been evaluated. A previous study at the Department of Child Health, Dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital revealed that plasma digoxin levels, following a maintenance dose of 15 μg/kg/d, were sub-therapeutic. Regarding its narrow margin of safety, the trend is to use digoxin in even lower dose. Thus, the drug's impact on cardiac performance need to be evaluated. Objective To evaluate whether a lower maintenance dose of digoxin (10 μg/kg/d) is sufficient to achieve a therapeutic level and to assess for possible correlations between plasma digoxin level and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) as well as fractional shortening (LVFS). Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted on 20 pediatric heart failure patients at the Department of Child Health, Dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, Jakarta, from January to May 2012. Plasma digoxin levels were measured by ELISA method after one month or more of treatment; LVEF and LVFS were measured by echocardiography. Correlations between plasma digoxin level and LVEF or LVFS were analyzed by Spearman's correlation test. The LVEF before and after digoxin treatment were compared by paired T-test. Results Thirteen out of 20 patients had plasma digoxin levels within therapeutic range (0.5-1.5 ng/mL; 95%CI 0.599 to 0.898) and 7 had sub-therapeutic levels (<0.5 ng/ mL; 95%CI 0.252 to 0.417). No significant correlations were observed between plasma digoxin level and LVEF (r=-0.085; P=0.722) or LVFS (r=-0.105; P=0.659). There was a significant increase in LVEF before [42.18 (SD 14.15)%] and after digoxin treatment [57.52 (SD 11.09)%], (P < 0.0001). Conclusion Most patients in this study have plasma digoxin levels within therapeutic range. There are no significant correlations between plasma digoxin level at the time point of measurement and LVEF or LVFS. However, an increase of LVEF is observed in every individual patients following digoxin treatment.


Given an affine subspace of square matrices, we consider the problem of minimizing the spectral abscissa (the largest real part of an eigenvalue). We give an example whose optimal solution has Jordan form consisting of a single Jordan block, and we show, using non-lipschitz variational analysis, that this behaviour persists under arbitrary small perturbations to the example. Thus although matrices with nontrivial Jordan structure are rare in the space of all matrices, they appear naturally in spectral abscissa minimization.


Interfaces are important for many processes in chemistry, physics, and biology. Crucial to their properties are the details of the three-dimensional structure of the participating (macro)molecules. Vibrational Sum Frequency Generation (VSFG) is a tool specifically suited to probing the first few atomic layers of an interface. Traditionally, interfaces are probed by mapping localized vibrational modes. Here, we show that the three-dimensional structure of large interfacial biomolecules can be probed by measuring delocalized vibrational backbone modes, which appear to be extremely sensitive to changes in the skeletal structure. We demonstrate that for three different films of chemically identical poly(lactic acid) polymer, we can observe dramatic changes in the three-dimensional arrangement of the surface molecular backbones. This type of information could not be obtained from probing only localized group modes.


This research focused on the Chinese family owned businesses listed on the Bursa Malaysia's Main Board, Second Board and Mesdaq. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, this research was largely exploratory in nature. The objectives were to determine the adequacy of Government policies, the extent and nature of the corporate governance (CG) practices of the Malaysian Chinese business community (MCBC) and the impact of culture on such practices. Other important objectives were to offer recommendations for good CG practices as well as to identify issues meriting further research.
CG became prominent as a result of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. The multitude of corporate failures and the scale of its impact caused several authorities to categorically identify CG as an important trigger for the crisis.
Since Malaysia was hit by the crisis, the Government and its various agencies took immediate and drastic measures, including capital controls, to stem the domino effect from propagating into all sectors. The Government's initiatives included the formulation of the Malaysian Code of Governance and the strengthening of the regulatory framework for the more effective functioning of the Securities Commission and Bursa Malaysia.
The Malaysian Chinese business community (MCBC) has long dominated the Malaysian economy and the corporate sector. Its operations are characterized by high levels of ownership concentration, cross holdings and significant management control.
Despite the government's race based affirmative policies, including the New Economic Policy, the Chinese remained remarkably persistent. The research findings revealed that this was largely due to their business practices being guided by the teachings of I-Ching, Confucianism and Taoism.
The research also revealed that Chinese business philosophy (which is largely family control) generally does not lend itself to transparency and disclosure. The situation is however changing with the advent of globalization. This is creating the need for high technology products and services as well as for capital and expertise from outside the family circle.
Three research propositions were tested by this research. They were developed from the gaps in the existing scholarship on the research topics. Based on the analysis of the secondary data and the primary data collected through a focus group and a questionnaire survey, this investigative study resulted in several research findings. These showed that Malaysia has a good CG framework. However, the CG practices in the Malaysian Chinese family businesses warranted improvements.
The findings also permitted the crafting of several recommendations for consideration by the public authorities and the MCBC. It also generated new theory as reflected by a modified Family Based CG System to more appropriately explain the CG practices of Malaysian Chinese family controlled businesses.


A detailed morphological study of adult and immature Trioza buxtoni Laing, 1924 (Hemiptera: Psylloidea: Triozidae) shows that the species belongs to the tropical and subtropical genus Pauropsylla Rubsaamen, 1899 to which it is transferred. The adult of Pauropsylla buxtoni (Laing, 1924) comb. nov. is redescribed and the previously unknown immatures are described. Illustrations are provided for both adults and immatures. Immatures of P. buxtoni infest leaves of Ficus carica and induce conspicuous galls. The species is a pest on cultivated figs in the Palestinian Territories. Four successive phases in the formation and development of the galls can be recognised in which the five immature instars of P. buxtoni develop. The gall size increased significantly when the instar length increased and there were significant differences in the susceptibility of fig cultivars to psyllid infestation. The life cycle of P. buxtoni is univoltine with no significant differences between cultivars.


Background. A substantial proportion of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients does not respond or loses initial response to adalimumab therapy. One of the explanations for non-response could be that patients develop anti-adalimumab antibodies. Therefore, we evaluated the incidence of antibody formation against adalimumab and the association with serum adalimumab concentrations and clinical response. Methods. In a cohort of 121 consecutive RA patients treated with adalimumab we measured serum adalimumab concentrations and antibodies against adalimumab together with clinical response parameters before and up to 28 weeks after the start of adalimumab treatment. Results. Anti–adalimumab antibodies were detected in 21 patients (17%) during 28 weeks of treatment. EULAR non-responders significantly more often had anti-adalimumab antibodies than good responders (34% vs. 5%), (P = 0.032). Patients with anti-adalimumab antibodies had less improvement in DAS28 score (mean ± SD, delta DAS28: 0.65 ± 1.35) than patients without antiadalimumab antibodies (mean delta DAS28: 1.70 ± 1.35), (P = 0.001). Patients with anti-adalimumab antibodies during follow-up had lower serum adalimumab concentrations at 28 weeks than patients without anti-adalimumab antibodies (median 1.2 mg/L , range 0.0 5.6 vs. median 11.0 mg/L, range 2.0 33.0, respectively), (P < 0.001). Good responders had higher serum adalimumab concentrations than moderate (P = 0.021) and non-responders (P = 0.001). Concomitant methotrexate use was lower in the group with anti-adalimumab antibodies (52%) than in the patient group without antibodies (84%), (P = 0.003). Conclusions. Serum antibodies against adalimumab are associated with lower serum adalimumab concentrations and non-response to adalimumab therapy.


Using recently available night lights and electricity consumption data for the 212 municipios (counties) of Veracruz state in southern Mexico, the informal economy is analyzed at the Mexican county level for the first time with such data. Most counties between 2000 and 2006 are found to have growing informal economies though the richest county, Boca Del Rio, exhibits a decline in informality suggesting a few wealthier counties may behave differently. Counties have a larger formal economy if they are in northern areas, have higher literacy rates, and more indigenous people. The informal economy appears to have reversed its declining share of total economic activity towards more growth during the Fox era though the regional government of Veracruz remained in the hands of the PRI perhaps limiting federal reform efforts.


The aim is to develop and improve a finishing process that allows reduced CO2 emissions, through
reduced use of carbon-based fuels, achieving improvement in fuel consumption. The improved
microfinishing process will provide a reduction in surface friction on bearing surfaces and improve wear resistance of the components. The aim of this experimentation is to reduce the friction on the crank shaft journals using specified parameters and specially designed abrasive tape.
The micro finishing development will focus on a novel polishing process using abrasive tape to
achieve nanometre level surface finish. It was noticed that such a process can dramatically improve component tribological performance, which have great impacts on energy consumption and CO2
emission. It is an urgent requirement to investigate the material removal mechanism of micro finishing process so that the quality of finishing surface can be improved consistently and effectively. Significant challenges include (a) detailed knowledge of nano-material removal, (b) understanding the tribological behaviours in relation to surface topography and surface compound created under micro finishing process, (c) the strategy of selection of micro finishing conditions for optimum surface, (d) the
selection of suitable sensing techniques for process monitoring and control, (e) establishment of relationship between polished surface topography and CO2 emissions.


This thesis seeks to explore the experience of relationships in individuals who define themselves as having Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The diagnosis of DID has been controversial for many years and the existence of the experience of multiple identities questioned. This study is interested in finding out more about the lived experience of those who define themselves as having DID.

The research takes a contextual constructionist epistemology and seeks to explore experience of relationships. Data were collected from seven women, between 30 and 50 years of age, who defined themselves as having DID. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).

Three master themes emerged from the data: 'the self and the diagnosis'; 'the process of relationships' and 'early experiences'. 'The self and the diagnosis' describes how the experience of DID appeared to impact on the way individuals perceived themselves and their diagnosis, as DID being a strength or a deficit. Also discussed within this master theme were difficulties in managing internal relationships; sharing the diagnosis with others; and improvement. 'The process of relationships' master theme described the experiences of being in different roles; good and bad interactions with others; and managing the beginning and the ending of relationships. The master theme of 'early experiences' explored the descriptions of interactions with early caregivers and the impact of these on the perceived development of DID.

These findings are discussed alongside published literature with particular consideration given to the differing ways individuals perceived their self-concept in relation to their experience of DID. Implications for counselling psychologists working with this client group are explored considering how internal experiences; difficulties in understanding others; and managing endings may impact on the process of therapy and the therapeutic relationship.


Whether or not education at the higher level can be integrated with practical experience has preoccupied educationalists in Europe and North America for a considerable time. There are some disciplines in which the existence of laboratory practice or simulated work experience can be used to assist the process of learning-by-doing quite efficiently. In other areas, learning from experience may be best carried out in the employment environment itself. Historically, in the UK this was the pattern for the traditional professions of law, accountancy, medicine and architecture. More recently in the UK, sandwich courses, predominantly a 'new' university contribution to higher education, have been developed to give students a balance between academic theory and practical professional experience. This article attempts a re-evaluation of the sandwich placement model of legal education in law in the light of the skills debate, and the clinical legal education movement.


Since the start of 2020, European countries have been experiencing an unprecedented public health threat with the emergence of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). In order to investigate the effects and implications of this pandemic for drug services in Europe, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction instigated a mixed-method trendspotter study to provide a snapshot of the current situation. This exercise provides a rapid assessment of the state of play in respect to the impact of COVID-19 on service provision and help-seeking behaviour among people who use drugs.


The Hopeman Sandstone is a cross-bedded sandstone of Permo-Triassic age that crops out in coastal exposures in northeastern Scotland. Although the unit has traditionally been interpreted as an aeolian deposit, partly on the assumption of well-sorted, well-rounded quartz sand and lack of micas, no detailed thin-section studies have been published to confirm these conclusions. The following report employs petrographical analysis to quantify the sorting, rounding and mineral composition of the Hopeman Sandstone. Our results indicate that the formation is not as well sorted or well rounded as previously suggested and that it contains significant orthoclase and trace amounts of muscovite, which may suggest that depositional models for at least some facies within the unit need to be revised. This report serves as a preliminary analysis of unusual textural trends across the Hopeman Sandstone and should prompt additional research to further characterize and interpret the sedimentology of the formation.


We develop a model of oligopolistic competition under imperfect monitoring and dynamic observable demand. Efficient symmetric equilibria feature disciplined cooperative regimes interrupted by rare but severe price wars. The model predicts that the frequency, duration, and supply schedule associated with each regime may persistently deviate from average behavior. We find evidence for the theoretical predictions of our model in historical Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) output using a Markov-switching Bayesian vector autoregressive model of the global oil market. The evidence suggests that conventional models without regime-switching of oil supply underestimates the linkages between quantities supplied and oil prices. JEL codes: Q31, C34, C73


This section of the journal comprises two core sets of reports linked to work in 2017: finds and analyses relating to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and site-specific discoveries and reports in medieval Britain and Ireland (MB&I), with a selection of highlighted projects. For the PAS report, reviews on coin and non-coin finds and on specific research angles are presented. For MB&I, the Society is most grateful to all contributors (of field units, museums, universities, developers, specialist groups and individuals) who have provided reports on finds, excavations, field-surveys and building analyses for 2017. For MB&I, see below for the format and content of the Fieldwork Highlights section and for contact details of the compilers. Annual Specialist Groups Reports appear in the Society's Newsletter.


AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The aim was to explore and describe from a triple perspective--that of the ill parent, the healthy parent and the children--experienced issues that are important to acknowledge and act upon to make it easier for a child to cope when a parent is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

BACKGROUND
A chronic disease affects the whole family and has a substantial impact on the children. Traditionally, the focus is on the patient, and communication with other family members is not generally integrated into health care. Health care professionals need to be aware of a child's needs when a parent is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

DESIGN
A qualitative design using content analysis with an inductive approach was used.

METHODS
Nine focus group interviews were conducted with the ill parents, the healthy parents and the children separately.

RESULTS
Participants jointly indicated that family members need to be recognised, both initially and onwards in their everyday lives. Seven categories were defined: Prerequisites within the families, Initial reactions, Trying to adapt and manage, Developing strategies, Everyday life, Thoughts about the future and Support from health care providers. Together they constituted the theme that multiple sclerosis is a family matter. Both ill and healthy parents wished for support from health care professionals in addressing their children's needs.

CONCLUSIONS
Health care professionals need to pay attention to children as a parent's illness affects them. Not only the children would benefit, but so would their parents, as their worries for their children would be reduced.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE
Staff can be advised to pay attention to the parenting role, how the parenting role and parent-child relationship may change as a result of a chronic disease. Parents may need reassurance and benefit from advice about how to talk to their children about their condition and its impact.


A book on human communication that is worthy of its subject must introduce the reader to the dynamic interaction of a number of diverse fields. Colin Cherry's book, over successive editions, has served for twenty years as perhaps the most literate and readable introduction to this interaction available. Readers have consistently found that fields within their specialty are covered with authority; that fields far removed are covered with clarity; and that the connections among them are shown to be close and natural.This third edition includes a new chapter, "Feeling, Knowledge, and Understanding," that extends the book's reach into philosophy, and in particular communicates some existential points-of-view. In it the author undertakes to demonstrate that "The language of physical science is inadequate for discussion of what is essentially human about human communication." In addition, numerous changes have been introduced throughout the text, and the bibliography has been expanded and updated.


This paper proposes to promote autonomy in digital ecosystems so that it provides agents with information to improve the behavior of the digital ecosystem in terms of stability. This work proposes that, in digital ecosystems, autonomous agents can provide fundamental services and information. The final goal is to run the ecosystem, generate novel conditions and let agents exploit them. A set of evaluation measures must be defined as well. We want to provide an outline of some global indicators, such as heterogeneity and diversity, and establish relationships between agent behavior and these global indicators to fully understand interactions between agents, and to understand the dependence and autonomy relations that emerge between the interacting agents. Individual variations, interaction dependencies, and environmental factors are determinants of autonomy that would be considered. The paper concludes with a discussion of situations when autonomy is a milestone.


Calculations have been made regarding the strong electron-withdrawing cyano (-CN) group, which was introduced onto the backbone of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT), as an effective way to improve the parameters essential for the photovoltaic performance of organic solar cells (OSCs). The substitution effect on the optical and photovoltaic properties of various CN-substituted P3HT are comprehensively investigated by means of density functional theory and molecular dynamics simulation. The results of theoretical modeling indicate that the direct introduction of strong electron-withdrawing group -CN onto the backbone of P3HT, can not only significantly reduce the HOMO level of polymer which leads to increased open circuit voltage (V-OC) in solar cells, but also exhibit red-shifted absorption spectra and increased hole mobility, which might lead to the enhancement of the short circuit current (J(SC)) and the fill factor (FF) in comparison to pristine P3HT and fluorine (F)-substituted P3HT. These results provide a fundamental understanding of how different electron-withdrawing groups influence the photophysical, electrochemical, and optoelectronic properties of conjugated polymers and potentially provide useful information for better design strategy for OSCs.


Faces are a class of visual stimuli with unique significance, for a variety of reasons. They are ubiquitous throughout the course of a person's life, and face recognition is crucial for daily social interaction. Faces are also unlike any other stimulus class in terms of certain physical stimulus characteristics. Furthermore, faces have been empirically found to elicit certain characteristic behavioral phenomena, which are widely held to be evidence of "holistic" processing of faces. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying such holistic face processing. In other words, for the processing of faces by the primate visual system, the input and output characteristics are relatively well known, but the internal neural computations are not. The main aim of this work is to further the fundamental understanding of what causes the visual processing of faces to be different from that of objects. In this computational modeling work, we show that a single factor - "neural tuning size" - is able to account for three key phenomena that are characteristic of face processing, namely the Composite Face Effect (CFE), Face Inversion Effect (FIE) and Whole-Part Effect (WPE). Our computational proof-of-principle provides specific neural tuning properties that correspond to the poorly-understood notion of holistic face processing, and connects these neural properties to psychophysical behavior. Overall, our work provides a unified and parsimonious theoretical account for the disparate empirical data on face-specific processing, deepening the fundamental understanding of face processing.


Purpose
The purpose of this study is to systematically review the existing literature on Islamic marketing and its major impacts on consumer behaviours. In addition, this study seeks to shed light on global trends and dynamics beyond Islamic marketing and how Islam, as one of the most prominent religions worldwide, affects the consumption and purchasing choices of Muslim consumers.

Design/methodology/approach
A systematic literature review of published peer-reviewed articles on Islamic marketing was conducted. A comprehensive search strategy was applied on different databases, including Google Scholar, JSTOR, ScienceDirect, MUSE and Directory of Open Access Journals, and the retrieved articles were then selected from 14 leading journals published between 2010 and 2018.

Findings
Islam as a religion has been found to impact the ethical beliefs and behaviours of Muslim consumers from different countries, as well as consumers' choice of services and some taboo products on the basis of Islamic Shariah law. The results show that Islamic marketing has a significant impact on the characteristics of Muslim consumers and therefore affects their key choices about certain products and services.

Research limitations/implications
The studies included in this review are extensively based on peer-reviewed articles published in high-ranked marketing journals (A* and A in the Australian Business Deans Council list), which may be perceived as a limitation in the present study. Another limitation is that this study only took into account peer-reviewed articles written in English.

Practical implications
The important relationship between Islam and the heterogeneous Muslim consumer will have a considerable practical implication for companies that explore the marketing supply capacity in the Islamic world. The authors hereby expect the current review to significantly impact the identification of methodologies for the main trends in the academic analysis of Islamic marketing and Islamic consumer behaviour.

Originality/value
This review provides a strong contribution to Islamic marketing literature by recommending the need to integrate the Islamic practices related to consumer consumption of goods and services in studies focused on consumer behaviour analysis.


A new method for beneficiating unfilled as well as filled polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) waste has been developed. This process does not use any carrier gas while forming the depolymerization products. It enables polymer manufacturers and end-users to reuse and adds value to filled fluorocarbon polymer waste. The filler material was qualified by means of scanning electron microscopy and thermogravimetric analysis and the success of the depolymerization process inside a rotating kiln was proved by visual observation. The PTFE was depolymerized inside a kiln-type reactor declined at a 5° angle, with a central rotating paddle screw to scrape the inner wall of the reactor, which was able to operate within the temperature range of 600–800°C and pressure range of 10–90 kPa. Different ratios of the useful products tetrafluoroethylene (TFE), hexafluoropropylene (HFP), and octafluorocyclobutane (OFCB) were produced. The optimum conditions for TFE production are 600°C and 10–30 kPa, for HFP production it was 800°C and 10 kPa, and for OFCB production 600°C and 90 kPa. Temperatures of 700°C should be avoided as this leads to considerable amounts of undesirable HFE and OFP as well as the very toxic PFIB. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008