Brenier and Grenier [SIAM J. Numer. Anal., 1998] proved that sticky particle dynamics with a large number of particles allow to approximate the entropy solution to scalar one-dimensional conservation laws with monotonic initial data. In [arXiv:1501.01498], we introduced a multitype version of this dynamics and proved that the associated empirical cumulative distribution functions converge to the viscosity solution, in the sense of Bianchini and Bres-san [Ann. of Math. (2), 2005], of one-dimensional diagonal hyperbolic systems with monotonic initial data of arbitrary finite variation. In the present paper, we analyse the L 1 error of this approximation procedure, by splitting it into the discretisation error of the initial data and the non-entropicity error induced by the evolution of the particle system. We prove that the error at time t is bounded from above by a term of order (1 + t)/n, where n denotes the number of particles, and give an example showing that this rate is optimal. We last analyse the additional error introduced when replacing the multitype sticky particle dynamics by an iterative scheme based on the typewise sticky particle dynamics, and illustrate the convergence of this scheme by numerical simulations.


The National Resistance Movement (NRM) government transited to electoral democracy with promulgation of the 1995 constitution. This constitution provides for a periodic election after every five years. This has given a roadmap for political action to put Uganda on the road of democracy. This study makes an analysis of the 2011 parliamentary election, which attracted a total of 1659 parliamentary candidates both male and female. A content analysis was adopted in this study and the main source of data was the electoral commission results document records. Method of data analysis was based on descriptive statistics to interpret, discuss and analyse the parliamentary election outcome. The findings are that the ruling NRM party won most of the seats; there was decline in the number of seats won by opposition. And female still enjoy affirmative action seats with little inroads to directly elected seats, which are the domain of men among others. But opposition political parties attract little support and register poor performance in election. The conclusion is that given the huge number of seats obtained by NRM, the parliament is likely to turn into a rubber stamping body for the demands from the executive. Therefore, the recommendation is that in order for the citizens to be familiar with multi-polity politics, where electoral system is free and fair, there is need for government to invest in political education right from primary to university level to enhance active and equal participation in election through political parties of their choices.


Technological neutrality in law is, roughly, the idea that law should not pick technological winners and losers, that law should neither help nor hinder particular types of technological artefacts. It has become a pervasive idea in technology law and politics in the West and now forces itself upon the World Trade Organization as a means of preventing China from regulating its territorial Internet. This paper examines the idea of technological neutrality for both its internal coherence and its relationship with the dominant politico-philosophical traditions of our time – the liberal and the Confucian. In doing so, the paper points at how liberalism itself has been transformed in contemporary societies, the role that information and communication technologies play in this transformation and shows how technological neutrality threatens at the same time the developments of contemporary liberalism and liberalism's reconciliation with the Confucian value system. The paper invites us to question technological neutrality through its relations with political neutrality, a doctrine that has lost significant grounds in contemporary liberal philosophy post-communitarian critique and which is fundamentally opposed to the ethico-political traditions of Chinese societies. On an applied level, the paper invites us to abandon ideas of neutrality in technology law and politics in general and, in particular, provides a hopefully compelling argument for China to resist attempts to neutralize its value-system and nation-building project through the system of international trade.


A permutation $\pi$ is said to avoid the permutation $\tau$ if no subsequence in $\pi$ has the same order relations as $\tau$. Two sets of permutations $\Pi_1$ and $\Pi_2$ are Wilf-equivalent if, for all $n$, the number of permutations of length $n$ avoiding all of the permutations in $\Pi_1$ equals the number of permutations of length $n$ avoiding all of the permutations in $\Pi_2$. Using generating trees, we complete the problem of finding all Wilf-equivalences among pairs of permutations of which one has length 3 and the other has length 5 by proving that $\{123,32541\}$ is Wilf-equivalent to $\{123,43251\}$ and that $\{123,42513\}$ is Wilf-equivalent to $\{132, 34215\}$. In addition, we provide generating trees for fourteen other pairs, among which there are two examples of pairs that give rise to isomorphic generating trees.


Section 14 of the Constitution provides for the right to privacy, which includes the right not to have the privacy of communications infringed. The right is also protected at common law a breach of a person's privacy constitutes an iniura. E-mail communications are therefore protected by both, the common law and the Constitution. The question that this work seeks to answer is, whether the Government has the right to intercept and/or monitor private e-mail communications. The right to privacy is not absolute, case law and legislation show that this right can be limited. At common law, a valid defence will negate the unlawfulness of the invasion. In terms of the Constitution, the right to privacy can only be limited in accordance with the limitation clause section 36. For each case, courts will have to balance, the government's interest in combating crime and that of the citizen to the privacy of their e-mail communications. In seeking to answer the question, this work considers the protection afforded by the common law and the Constitution. It also considers statutes which limit the right to privacy, including whether these statutes are applicable to e-mail communications and if they are, whether they constitute a justifiable limitation of the right, for example: the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act and the Criminal Procedure Act which was enacted when the 'cyber-world' was non-existent. All statutes, applicable to e-mail communications, provide for some form of requirements or guidelines before communications can be intercepted or/ and monitored. The right to privacy is also protected in foreign jurisdictions and is not absolute. There is protection only against unreasonable invasions of privacy. In conclusion, both statutory law and common law permit the government, within limitations, to intercept or/ and monitor private e-mail communications. Where there are guidelines, regulating this power, the circumstance under which and when it can be exercised. This will amount to a reasonable and justifiable limitation and therefore the right will not be violated.


Introduction My daughter, as a physician, says that, when a patient visits a general practitioner with a specific concern, there is often a simple solution to be prescribed. In instances where this is not the case, well... you really don't want to hear about the alternative. When environmental education manifests itself in schools, it is usually a simple matter of the insertion of an environment-related activity into the science, or perhaps social studies, curriculum. However, if you find a teacher who has "the ethic," the entire school might be "green." The fact that this ethic is spreading through a relatively well organized and rapidly expanding field of theory and practice, grounded in research and philosophical thought, that challenges many of the taken-for-granted assumptions of the dominant educational discourses, may be a cause for concern in some quarters. Those teachers who are happy in standard practice may not want to hear about "the alternative," the critiques of business-as-usual in the field of education, whether from environmental education or other related areas such as social justice and cultural studies. The purpose of this article is to explore some issues of worth concerning what takes place in schools and in teacher education from this vantage point of environmental education, as a field that challenges the taken-for-granted assumptions of the dominant discourses of schooling. In view of the focus of this special issue on "environment in the curriculum," with teacher education in mind, I argue that the socially critical charter of the field of environmental education has meaningful things to say to mainstream education that, if taken seriously, can provide the means to transform our thinking about some things that really matter in schooling. I begin by providing a number of basic contrast points between mainstream educational goals (initially using science education as the example) and the philosophical position taken up by environmental education largely as a result of UNESCO-based international conferences over several decades. Examination of these founding documents reveals an environmental education that does not advocate insertion of isolated activities into the curriculum. On the contrary, it provides a complex philosophy with particular theoretical groundings that, just as environmental issues do within society, position dominant educational concepts as contested concepts for critical debate in (teacher) education. These distinctive qualities are found in philosophical counter-narratives generated by environmental education debates over more than 40 years as foundation for exploration of notions of structure-agency in teaching. These notions are then applied to education, and particularly to teacher education, as they relate to teacher and student subjectification in the schooling process. Environmental Education in the School Curriculum: A Piece for a Different Puzzle? Decisions about "what counts" in schools are always rooted in assumptions about the nature of education. Embedded within the curriculum and pedagogy of subject areas such as science are messages, often tacit or subtle, about historical theories of culture and society, as well as the nature of educational discourse. Such non-neutral theories have generated interesting debates within teacher education concerning how much of this history and philosophy teachers need to know in order to critically participate in their translation into curriculum and pedagogy. For example, how much more should teachers know than the fact that there is a range of views on these matters, that deeper purposes, interests and values underlie various perspectives? How much should they know about the connections between these perspectives and the forms of inquiry that supposedly sustain them? And, more specific to school subjects such as science and maths, at what depths should they be able to discuss ways of knowing (i. …


This paper provides an update on research being undertaking as part of a Professional Doctorate in Education at UCLan. In particular, it discusses a potential theme that may be emerging from the early phases of data analysis. Primarily, the aim of the research is to explore attitudes towards, and perceptions of learning that players aged 16-18 in a Premier League football club display.  The first phase of the research focussed on players' experiences at high school and an initial thematic analysis of one of four focus groups highlighted the emergence of a potential area of interest. Specifically, there appears to be evidence of strong nostalgic recollections from some of the players based upon their past experiences of school.  Consequently, it is suggested that this may be due to players becoming anxious as a result of being embedded in the notoriously uncertain and ambiguous environment of professional football.  At the time of the focus group the players were waiting on the club to make to a decision about whether they would be offered contract extensions.  It is also inferred that the players' nostalgia could be an attempt to form a shared social identity based upon the machismo stereotypes apparent in elite football.  The potential consequences of such a phenomenon are discussed.


This paper examines the repercussions of discrepancies in Internet connectivity for high school students in rural and small-town locations in Michigan. It provides detailed analyses of the interrelations between broadband connectivity, educational outcomes, digital skills, and broader life outcomes. While the disadvantages of insufficient Internet access are well established, existing research has not fully investigated the extent of student performance gaps resulting from varying levels of home connectivity. Our research uses a granular, yet fully de-identified original data set focused on rural broadband access that allows assessing the effects of discrepancies in connectivity on several measures of educational achievement, including grades, standardized test scores, and educational aspirations.

With the help of intermediate school districts and Merit Network, we collected and combined information from three sources: a detailed survey of middle and high school students from 173 classrooms in 15 predominately rural Michigan school districts, SAT/PSAT standardized test scores, and home speed tests. This approach resulted in unique original data set of 3,258 observations. This data includes many households that are either cell phone dependent or cannot get broadband access at home (see Hampton et al., 2020). The paper explores the relations among infrastructure, sociodemographic variables, and student achievement outcomes, using multiple statistical approaches, including hierarchical linear models to address the nested structure of the relationships and path analysis.

We find that students who do not have access to the Internet from home or are dependent on a cell phone only for access, perform lower on a range of metrics, including digital skills, homework completion, and grades. Students lacking home Internet, and those dependent on a cell phone, are also less likely to consider post-secondary education. A deficit in digital skills compounds inequalities in access, contributing to lower standardized test scores and less interest in STEM careers. Consequently, lack of broadband access not only impacts school performance, but also has broader repercussions for career choice, life income, and the ability to adapt to emerging demands of the workforce. We believe the findings are generalizable to rural America.

Our analysis suggests that infrastructure availability and sociodemographic factors affect outcomes. Unlike most sociodemographic factors, access affects outcomes in indirect paths, particularly through its effects on digital skill. Based on these findings we offer policy considerations and practical recommendations for narrowing and eliminating these digital inequalities. Our analysis suggests a multi-pronged, polycentric policy approach. Whereas it is important to mobilize local creativity and initiatives, effective measures require the collaboration of local, state and federal decision-makers across traditional boundaries and jurisdictions.


With thousands of languages in the world, and the increasing speed and quantity of information being distributed across the world, automatic translation between languages by computers, Machine Translation (MT), has become an increasingly important area of research. State-of-the-art MT systems rely not upon hand-crafted translation rules written by human experts, but rather on learned statistical models that translate a source language to a target language. These models are typically generated from large, parallel corpora containing copies of text in both the source and target languages. The co-occurrence of words across languages in parallel corpora allows the creation of translation rules that specify the probability of translating words or phrases from one language to the other. Monolingual corpora, containing text only in one language—primarily the target language—are not used to model the translation process, but are used to better model the structure of the target language. Unlike parallel data, which require expensive human translators to generate, monolingual data are cheap and widely available.
Similar topics and events to those in a source document that is being translated often occur in documents in a comparable monolingual corpus. In much the same way that a human translator would use world knowledge to aid translation, the MT system may be able to use these relevant documents from comparable corpora to guide translation by biasing the translation system to produce output more similar to the relevant documents. This thesis seeks to answer the following questions: (1) Is it possible to improve a modern, state-of-the-art translation system by biasing the MT output to be more similar to relevant passages from comparable monolingual text? (2) What level of similarity is necessary to exploit these techniques? (3) What is the nature of the relevant passages that are needed during the application of these techniques?
To answer these questions, this thesis describes a method for generating new translation rules from monolingual data specifically targeted for the document that is being translated. Rule generation leverages the existing translation system and topical overlap between the foreign source text and the monolingual text, and unlike regular translation rule generation does not require parallel text. For each source document to be translated, potentially comparable documents are selected from the monolingual data using cross-lingual information retrieval. By biasing the MT system towards the selected relevant documents and then measuring the similarity of the biased output to the relevant documents using Translation Edit Rate Plus (Terp), it is possible to identify sub-sentential regions of the source and comparable documents that are possible translations of each other. This process results in the generation of new translation rules, where the source side is taken from the document to be translated and the target side is fluent target language text taken from the monolingual data. The use of these rules results in improvements over a state-of-the-art statistical translation system. These techniques are most effective when there is a high degree of similarity between the source and relevant passages—such as when they report on the same new stories—but some benefit, approximately half, can be achieved when the passages are only historically or topically related.
The discovery of the feasibility of improving MT by using comparable passages to bias MT output provides a basis for future investigation on problems of this type. Ultimately, the goal is to provide a framework within which translation rules may be generated without additional parallel corpora, thus allowing researchers to test longstanding hypotheses about machine translation in the face of scarce parallel resources.


Providing explanations for deep neural networks (DNNs) is essential for their use in domains wherein the interpretability of decisions is a critical prerequisite. Despite the plethora of work on interpreting DNNs, most existing solutions offer interpretability in an ad hoc, one-shot, and static manner, without accounting for the perception, understanding, or response of end-users, resulting in their poor usability in practice.

In this paper, we argue that DNN interpretability should be implemented as the interactions between users and models. We present i-Algebra, a first-of-its-kind interactive framework for interpreting DNNs. At its core is a library of atomic, composable operators, which explain model behaviors at varying input granularity, during different inference stages, and from distinct interpretation perspectives. Leveraging a declarative query language, users are enabled to build various analysis tools (e.g., ``drill-down'', ``comparative'', ``what-if'' analysis) via flexibly composing such operators. We prototype i-Algebra and conduct user studies in a set of representative analysis tasks, including inspecting adversarial inputs, resolving model inconsistency, and cleansing contaminated data, all demonstrating its promising usability.


Network technologies have helped to lower many of the geographical barriers that impede access to information resources, but other obstacles have appeared in their place: one is the heterogeneous use of resource descriptions; another, more serious, is the lack of resource description at all. Resource description varies depending on the structure, type and content of resources; it also varies with the interests of the information keepers responsible for the management of these resources. A further consideration in resource discovery is the cross-domain information needs of users who require access to information about relevant resources irrespective of where they are located, how they have been stored or by whom. With the current enabling technology, the more complex needs of users nowadays can be met: querying more than one domain-specific information system in parallel while information managers seek to have a system that enables access to separately managed collections in-house. Example of initiatives that have been developed to encourage timely dissemination of scholarly information is the Open Archive Initiative (OAI).


. This paper presents an overview of the ImageCLEF 2017 caption tasks on the analysis of images from the biomedical literature. Two subtasks were proposed to the participants: a concept detection task and caption prediction task, both using only images as input. The two subtasks tackle the problem of providing image interpretation by extracting concepts and predicting a caption based on the visual information of an image alone. A dataset of 184,000 figure-caption pairs from the biomedical open access literature (PubMed Central) are provided as a testbed with the majority of them as trainign data and then 10,000 as validation and 10,000 as test data. Across two tasks, 11 participating groups submitted 71 runs. While the domain remains challenging and the data highly heterogeneous, we can note some surprisingly good results of the difficult task with a quality that could be beneficial for health applications by better exploiting the visual content of biomedical figures.


Background 2.6 million neonates die annually; the vast majority of deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The Helping Babies Survive (HBS) programs are commonly used in LMICs to reduce neonatal mortality through education. They are typically disseminated using a train-the-trainer cascade. However, there is little published literature on the extent and cost of dissemination. In 2015, the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and partner organizations implemented a countrywide HBS training cascade for midwives in 169 hospitals. Methods We quantified the extent of HBS dissemination, and characterized barriers that impeded successful hospital-based training by surveying a representative from each of the 169 participant hospitals. This occurred from September 2017 to April 2018. We also assessed the cost of the training cascade. To assess acquisition of knowledge and skill in the training cascade, multiple-choice question examinations (MCQE) and objective structured clinical evaluations (OSCE) were conducted. Results Hospital-based training occurred in 132 participant hospitals (78%). 1,146 midwives, 69% of those employed by participant hospitals, received hospital-based training. Barriers included lack of preparation of hospital-based educators and limited logistical support. The cascade cost an average of 2,105 USD per facility or 197 USD per trainee. Knowledge improved and skills were adequate for regional workshop attendees based on MCQE and OSCE performance. Conclusion The train-the-trainer strategy is an effective and affordable strategy for widespread dissemination of the HBS programs in LMICs. Future studies should assess knowledge and skill acquisition following the variety of pragmatic training approaches that may be employed at the facility-level.


In September 2002, one year after the terrorist calamities in New York and Washington, the IISS convened its first 'Global Strategic Review' in London. For the meeting's concluding panel, three eminent analysts were asked to assess the prospects for forging a Western 'grand strategy' against terrorism and other threats in the new international environment. The panel focused on the nature of US foreign policy and how allies respond to it, and how the US deals with its allies.


Human subjects were exposed to tetrachloroethene (perchloroethylene, PER). The duration of exposure ranged from one to 60 minutes and the concentration of PER in inhaled air ranged from 0.02 to 0.40 mmol/m3. Alveolar air was sampled after several residence times (t*) in the lung. Both during and after exposure, the concentration of PER in alveolar air (C Alv) as a function of the residence time was studied to estimate the concentration in the pulmonary artery (C Ven: mixed venous blood) and in the pulmonary vein (C Art: arterial blood). During exposure C Alv decreased as function of t*. At t* = 10 s C Alv was 70-75% of the value presented at t* = 5 s; this decrease approximates an exponential curve. C Alv seemed to stabilise at t* = 10-12 s, whereas it decreased more rapidly at t* greater than 12 s; this decrease continued up to at least t* = 55 s when C Alv was about 40% of the value it represented at t* = 5 s. In the postexposure period C Alv increased as function of t* from 5 to 10 s. Both during and after exposure, no difference was observed between C Alv at t* = 10 s and C Alv in the exhaled part of the expiratory reserve volume. A simple gas exchange model showed that the decrease or increase of C Alv at t* less than 10 s could be explained by either absorption or excretion by mixed venous blood. C Alv at t* = 10-12 s provided a valid estimate of C Ven. To estimate C Art, its fluctuating character due to the discontinuous breathing with a breathing frequency had to be taken into account. It is shown that C Alv during normal breathing (t* = 5 s) provides a reasonable estimate of the time weighted concentration in arterial blood.


Although extralegal enforcement is widely acknowledged, the conventional understanding of written contract provisions, such as the complex and detailed provisions in bond contracts, is that they are drafted to be enforced by law. This framing neglects the value of contracts in shaping extralegal forces, particularly where litigation is unlikely or not possible. Sovereign debt contracts provide an example in which lengthy and detailed contracts play a key role even though the debtor is largely litigation-proof. We examine how contract provisions in sovereign debt contracts improve the efficiency of creditor control outside the realm of legal enforcement.


Distributed applications and web services, such as online stores or social networks, are expected to be scalable, available, responsive, and fault-tolerant. To meet these steep requirements in the face of high round-trip latencies, network partitions, server failures, and load spikes, applications use eventually consistent datastores that allow them to weaken the consistency of some data. However, making this transition is highly error-prone because relaxed consistency models are notoriously difficult to understand and test. In this work, we propose a new programming model for distributed data that makes consistency properties explicit and uses a type system to enforce consistency safety. With the Inconsistent, Performance-bound, Approximate (IPA) storage system, programmers specify performance targets and correctness requirements as constraints on persistent data structures and handle uncertainty about the result of datastore reads using new consistency types. We implement a prototype of this model in Scala on top of an existing datastore, Cassandra, and use it to make performance/correctness tradeoffs in two applications: a ticket sales service and a Twitter clone. Our evaluation shows that IPA prevents consistency-based programming errors and adapts consistency automatically in response to changing network conditions, performing comparably to weak consistency and 2-10× faster than strong consistency.


We report analytic and consensus processes that produced recommendations for neoadjuvant pathologic stage groups (ypTNM) of esophageal and esophagogastric junction cancer for the AJCC/UICC cancer staging manuals, 8th edition. The Worldwide Esophageal Cancer Collaboration provided data for 22,654 patients with epithelial esophageal cancers; 7,773 had pathologic assessment after neoadjuvant therapy. Risk-adjusted survival for each patient was developed. Random forest analysis identified data-driven neoadjuvant pathologic stage groups wherein survival decreased monotonically with increasing group, was distinctive between groups, and homogeneous within groups. An additional analysis produced data-driven anatomic neoadjuvant pathologic stage groups based only on ypT, ypN, and ypM categories. The AJCC Upper GI Task Force, by smoothing, simplifying, expanding, and assessing clinical applicability, produced consensus neoadjuvant pathologic stage groups. Grade and location were much less discriminating for stage grouping ypTNM than pTNM. Data-driven stage grouping without grade and location produced nearly identical groups for squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma. However, ypTNM groups and their associated survival differed from pTNM. The need for consensus process was minimal. The consensus groups, identical for both cell types were as follows: ypStage I comprised ypT0-2N0M0; ypStage II ypT3N0M0; ypStage IIIA ypT0-2N1M0; ypStage IIIB ypT3N1M0, ypT0-3N2, and ypT4aN0M0; ypStage IVA ypT4aN1-2, ypT4bN0-2, and ypTanyN3M0; and ypStage IVB ypTanyNanyM1. Absence of equivalent pathologic (pTNM) categories for the peculiar neoadjuvant pathologic categories ypTisN0-3M0 and ypT0N0-3M0, dissimilar stage group compositions, and markedly different early- and intermediate-stage survival necessitated a unified, unique set of stage grouping for patients of either cell type who receive neoadjuvant therapy.


For continuous-time Markov chains, the model-checking problem with respect to continuous-time stochastic logic (CSL) has been introduced and shown to be decidable by Aziz, Sanwal, Singhal and Brayton in 1996. Their proof can be turned into an approximation algorithm with worse than exponential complexity. In 2000, Baier, Haverkort, Hermanns and Katoen presented an efficient polynomial-time approximation algorithm for the sublogic in which only binary until is allowed. In this paper, we propose such an efficient polynomial-time approximation algorithm for full CSL. The key to our method is the notion of stratified CTMCs with respect to the CSL property to be checked. On a stratified CTMC, the probability to satisfy a CSL path formula can be approximated by a transient analysis in polynomial time (using uniformization). We present a measure-preserving, linear-time and -space transformation of any CTMC into an equivalent, stratified one. This makes the present work the centerpiece of a broadly applicable full CSL model checker. Recently, the decision algorithm by Aziz et al. was shown to work only for stratified CTMCs. As an additional contribution, our measure-preserving transformation can be used to ensure the decidability for general CTMCs.


Little is known about stopover habitat use by neotropical migratory birds in the deserts of North America. We determined distribution, abundance, and habitat associations of neotropical migrants during spring migration in the Sonoran Desert of southwestern Arizona along large washes that supported xeroriparian scrub vegetation. We detected 91 bird species during surveys, 50 (52%) of which were passage neotropical migrants. Although xeroriparian scrub covered less than 55% of the area surveyed, 97% of all detections of passage migrants were from this vegetation type. By calculating habitat breadth for each species, we classified 87% of passage migrants as xeroriparian specialists. Richness of passage migrants was strongly associated with the presence of overstory (> 2.5 m) mesquite and paloverde. The highest species richness of breeding neotropical migrants was associated with width of the xeroriparian corridor. Habitat characteristics we have shown to be important to neotropical migrants can be preserved and managed by protecting xeroriparian areas, particularly those supporting mature (> 2.5 m) paloverde, mesquite, desert willow, and catclaw acacia trees. Additionally, xeroriparian scrub within the creosote-bursage vegetation type may be particularly important to passage neotropical migrants.


Originalism is sometimes criticized as merely a means to justify conservative results. (1) And cases do indeed exist in which the Supreme Court has divided along liberal-conservative lines, and conservatives have played originalism as a purported trump card. Last Term's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, (2) interpreting the Second Amendment as including an individual right to bear arms, is a recent example. When it comes to criminal procedure, however, things are not so simple. This Essay examines two lines of cases: first, those involving the Court's reinvigoration of the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial, and second, those involving the Court's recent reconception of the Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. In both of these areas, the Court has divided sharply across ideological lines. Specifically, in both lines of cases, the Court acted primarily through a core five-member majority: Justices Scalia, Thomas, Stevens, Ginsburg, and Souter. On the other hand, the dissenters initially were Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices O'Connor, Kennedy, and Breyer. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito have stepped quite comfortably into the shoes of Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O'Connor. (3) This debate requires thought. One cannot simply say, "I am conservative, so I think x should win the case." Instead, one must ask whether one really believes in originalism, and, if so, what an originalist approach to the Constitution in general, and to the Sixth Amendment in particular, really entails. To this end, this Essay will advance two brief points. First, it will argue that the Court recently has used originalism to decide both easy cases and hard cases arising under the Sixth Amendment. The easy cases involve modern situations closely paralleling ones with which the Framers were familiar; the hard ones involve modern phenomena and thus require more extrapolation. Second, this Essay will contend that the Court is right to use originalism as an anchor even in the hard cases. Without this anchor, the Court has nothing but its policy preferences to guide it, and the very purpose of the Sixth Amendment is to prevent cases from being decided solely on those terms. I. THE RIGHT TO JURY TRIAL The Supreme Court's internal debate about the scope of the right to jury trial has been going on now for a little over a decade. The debate arose primarily because of a modern innovation by state legislatures and Congress. Historically, when a legislature wanted to punish more severely a particular manner of committing a crime, it simply created an aggravated version of the crime, under which the prosecution would charge and prove the aggravating factor just as any other element of a criminal statute. (4) The prosecution, for example, had to prove that the defendant used a gun in order to convict him of armed robbery instead of robbery. The prosecution had to prove serious bodily injury to convict the defendant of first degree assault instead of a lesser degree of assault. And so on. Juries traditionally passed judgment on allegations that exposed defendants to heightened punishment not only--or even primarily--because juries were necessarily better factfinders than judges. Instead, the common law assigned this duty to juries so that they could engage in what is most accurately described as a limited nullification power--though the Supreme Court has shied away from this term. (5) At the time of the founding, most felonies were punishable by death. Juries recognized that if they convicted defendants of certain crimes, they would subject the defendants to the death penalty. But juries traditionally had, and often exercised, the power to return verdicts on lesser offenses when the jurors thought that a defendant's wrongdoing was not severe enough to warrant the death penalty. Juries thus served as an institution of public consciousness, interposed between the prosecution and the judge, that guaranteed "the people's. …


Méniére disease (MD) is characterized by vertigo attacks, hearing loss, tinnitus, and aural fullness. Although the exact treatment of MD is lacking, several treatment options including conservative, medical, and surgical aim to control symptoms. Recently, an increasingly used treatment method called intratympanic steroid (ITS) treatment is applied to patients suffering from MD. In which step the ITS takes part for MD treatment protocol is not certain. But common wisdom is that ITS can be used in patients with intractable MD to conservative and medical treatment before applying intratympanic gentamicin and surgical treatments.


Entity Matching (EM) is a core data cleaning task, aiming to identify different mentions of the same real-world entity. Active learning is one way to address the challenge of scarce labeled data in practice, by dynamically collecting the necessary examples to be labeled by an Oracle and refining the learned model (classifier) upon them. In this paper, we build a unified active learning benchmark framework for EM that allows users to easily combine different learning algorithms with applicable example selection algorithms. The goal of the framework is to enable concrete guidelines for practitioners as to what active learning combinations will work well for EM. Towards this, we perform comprehensive experiments on publicly available EM datasets from product and publication domains to evaluate active learning methods, using a variety of metrics including EM quality, #labels and example selection latencies. Our most surprising result finds that active learning with fewer labels can learn a classifier of comparable quality as supervised learning. In fact, for several of the datasets, we show that there is an active learning combination that beats the state-of-the-art supervised learning result. Our framework also includes novel optimizations that improve the quality of the learned model by roughly 9% in terms of F1-score and reduce example selection latencies by up to 10× without affecting the quality of the model.


This article discusses how agency is emergent from the asymmetrical power interactions of multiple social actors and organizations. Agency, contingent and relational, is creative even when interpreted by people as unsuccessful. I employ ethnographic research from within a local authority sustainability team who were threatened with redundancy because of funding cuts imposed during the implementation of British Prime Minister David Cameron's Big Society project. In order to manage their situation, possible futures had to be re-imagined and appropriately contained through processes of self-assessment and self-management. The ability to enable self-directing action was oft en evident but was frequently interpreted by people as unsuccessful. This stemmed from misrecognition, scarcity and the lack of capacity to bring about full and substantial changes. Both the sustainability team and their work emerge from this process reduced and reformed through the competing tensions of systems of political governance and technologies of the self.


Both the early love letters of Heloise and Abelard, and their later correspondence, are suffused with the biblical text. In these collections, Heloise either refers directly or indirectly to the scriptures in order to sustain her arguments with Abelard, or as in the early love letters particularly, she moves freely in and out of either direct quotation of the scriptural texts or allusion to it, with the ease of any monastic writer of her era. However, it is in the Problemata Heloissae that we find direct evidence of Heloise's approach to the study of Scripture for her community of the Paraclete. The series of forty-two questions raised in the Problemata reflects concerns with which Heloise had been preoccupied all her life and appear consistently within all her correspondence with Abelard. These concerns stressed the ethical interpretation of the Bible and focused on the struggle to maintain a life of inner integrity in the face of sin, and the meaning of love particularly as expressed by the "freedom of the Gospel."


Abstract Sentence-internal capitalization of nouns is a characteristic of written Standard German. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been identified as the crucial period for the development of this graphemic convention. Previous studies have shown that animacy played a major role in the spread of sentence-internal capitalization. On the basis of the transregional SiGS-corpus consisting of 18 protocols of witch trials (hand-)written between 1588 and 1630, we propose word frequency as an additional factor and test for its interaction with animacy. Our data reveal that the proportion of capitalized words denoting humans and animate concepts increases rapidly, while the capitalization of lexemes referring to concrete and abstract concepts remains stable at a lower level. A binomial mixed-effects model shows a highly significant effect of frequency and a significant interaction between frequency and animacy. In sum, our data show how cognitive, pragmatic, and usage factors conspire in the gradual emergence of a graphemic convention. We therefore argue that the previously neglected graphemic dimension can add important insights to an empirically based theory of the language-cognition interface.


Polylactic acid (PLA) was compounded with 30 wt% chalk and 5 wt% of a bio-based plasticiser on a twin screw extruder. Mechanical recycling of the obtained compound was studied by multiple extrusions up to six cycles. The degradation was monitored by mechanical and thermal tests. Tensile and flexural tests did not reveal any major degradation after six cycles of processing. Characterising the material with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) did not detect any significant change of the thermal properties. The material was also characterised by FTIR and, again, no significant change was detected. The material was finally characterised by melt flow index and by proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR). Both tests revealed that some degradation had occurred. The 1H-NMR clearly showed that the chain length had been reduced. Also, the MFI test showed that degradation had occurred. However, the study reveals that PLA filled with chalk can be recycled by repeated extrusion for up to 6 cycles, without severe degradation. This should be of relevance when considering the end-of-life treatment of polymer products made from PLA.


Humans can leverage prior experience and learn novel tasks from a handful of demonstrations. In contrast to offline meta-reinforcement learning, which aims to achieve quick adaptation through better algorithm design, we investigate the effect of architecture inductive bias on the few-shot learning capability. We propose a Prompt-based Decision Transformer (Prompt-DT), which leverages the sequential modeling ability of the Transformer architecture and the prompt framework to achieve few-shot adaptation in offline RL. We design the trajectory prompt, which contains segments of the few-shot demonstrations, and encodes task-specific information to guide policy generation. Our experiments in five MuJoCo control benchmarks show that Prompt-DT is a strong few-shot learner without any extra finetuning on unseen target tasks. Prompt-DT outperforms its variants and strong meta offline RL baselines by a large margin with a trajectory prompt containing only a few timesteps. Prompt-DT is also robust to prompt length changes and can generalize to out-of-distribution (OOD) environments.


This technical note describes the methodological decisions for the estimation of comparable figures of participation rates in formal childcare in Latin America and the Caribbean, through data from available nationally representative household surveys over the past decade. The estimates show that attendance to childcare centers is low, in particular for the younger children. In addition, the proportion of children attending childcare programs is generally much higher among the well-off households and those with more educated parents. Based on the experience of harmonization carried out we propose a module on childcare to be included in future household surveys.


Our world is enormously sophisticated and nature's complexity is literally inexhaustible. As a result, projects to describe and explain natural science can never be completed. This volume explores the nature of complexity and considers its bearing on our world and how we manage our affairs within it. Rescher's overall lesson is that the management of our affairs within a socially, technologically, and cognitively complex environment is plagued with vast management problems and risks of mishap. In primitive societies, failure to understand how things work can endanger a family or, at worst, a clan or tribe. In the modern world, man-made catastrophes on the model of Chernobyl can endanger millions, possibly even risking the totality of human life on our planet. Rescher explains "technological escalation" as a sort of arms race against nature in which scientific progress requires more powerful technology for observation and experimentation, and, conversely, scientific progress requires the continual enhancement of technology. The increasing complexity of science and technology (and, in consequence, of social systems) along with problems growing faster than solutions confront us with major management and decision problems. This study is the first of its kind. There have been many specialized studies of complexity in physics and computation theory, but no overall analysis of the phenomenon. Although Rescher offers a sobering outlook, he also believes that complexity entails mixed blessings: our imperfect knowledge provides a rationale for putting forth our best efforts. Rescher urges us to gear the conduct of life's practical affairs to the demands of a complex world. This highly readable and accessible volume will be of interest to those interested in philosophy, the philosophy of science, science policy studies, and future studies.


Extending the central concept of recurrence times for a point process to recurrent events in space‐time allows us to characterize seismicity as a record breaking process using only spatiotemporal relations among events. Linking record breaking events with edges between nodes in a graph generates a complex dynamical network isolated from any length, time or magnitude scales set by the observer. For Southern California, the network of recurrences reveals new statistical features of seismicity with robust scaling laws. The rupture length and its scaling with magnitude emerges as a generic measure for distance between recurrent events. Further, the relative separations for subsequent records in space (or time) form a hierarchy with unexpected scaling properties.


Modern distributed control systems comprise of a set of processors which are interconnected using a suitable communication network. For use in real-time control environments, such systems must be deterministic and generate specified responses within critical timing constraints. Also, they should be sufficiently robust to survive predictable events such as communication or processor faults. This thesis considers the problem of coordinating and synchronizing a distributed real-time control system under normal and abnormal conditions. Distributed control systems need to periodically coordinate the actions of several autonomous sites. Often the type of coordination required is the all or nothing property of an atomic action. Atomic commit protocols have been used to achieve this atomicity in distributed database systems which are not subject to deadlines. This thesis addresses the problem of applying time constraints to atomic commit protocols so that decisions can be made within a deadline. A modified protocol is proposed which is suitable for real-time applications. The thesis also addresses the problem of ensuring that atomicity is provided even if processor or communication failures occur. Previous work has considered the design of atomic commit protocols for use in non time critical distributed database systems. However, in a distributed real-time control system a fault must not allow stringent timing constraints to be violated. This thesis proposes commit protocols using synchronous communications which can be made resilient to a single processor or communication failure and still satisfy deadlines. Previous formal models used to design commit protocols have had adequate state coverability but have omitted timing properties. They also assumed that sites communicated asynchronously and omitted the communications from the model. Timed Petri nets are used in this thesis to specify and design the proposed protocols which are analysed for consistency and timeliness. Also the communication system is mcxielled within the Petri net specifications so that communication failures can be included in the analysis. Analysis of the Timed Petri net and the associated reachability tree is used to show the proposed protocols always terminate consistently and satisfy timing constraints. Finally the applications of this work are described. Two different types of applications are considered, real-time databases and real-time control systems. It is shown that it may be advantageous to use synchronous communications in distributed database systems, especially if predictable response times are required. Emphasis is given to the application of the developed commit protocols to real-time control systems. Using the same analysis techniques as those used for the design of the protocols it can be shown that the overall system performs as expected both functionally and temporally.


Background : Helicobacter pylori infection is associated with mixed inflammatory cell infiltrate consisting of neutrophils, eosinophils, lymphocytes and plasma cells. Helicobacter pylori lead to mast cell degranulation and release of active chemical compounds in in-vitro conditions. The objective of this study was to find out the association of mast cell density and Helicobacter pylori in the antral mucosa of the stomach. Materials and Methods : A total of 150 endoscopic biopsies were included in the study. In addition to routine Hematoxylin and Eosin stained slides, Giemsa stain was done in each case for the evaluation of Helicobacter pylori and mast cell density in the gastric mucosa. Results : Out of 150 gastric biopsies with histopathological diagnosis of chronic gastritis, 36 cases (24%) were positive for Helicobacter pylori. In the antral mucosa, mast cell density was significantly higher in the Helicobacter pylori-positive group than in the Helicobacter pylori-negative group (P<0.01). Conclusion : Mast cells may play a role in the development of Helicobacter pylori gastritis. Keywords: Gastritis; Mast Cell; Helicobacter pylori DOI: 10.3126/jpn.v1i1.4448 Journal of Pathology of Nepal (2011) Vol.1, 34-36


In the present study, the steady mixed convection boundary layer flow about a solid sphere with a constant surface temperature and embedded in a porous medium saturated by a nanofluid has been investigated via the Brinkman model for both the assisting and opposing flow cases. The resulting system of nonlinear boundary layer equations in the form of partial differential equations is solved numerically using an implicit finite-difference scheme known as the Keller-box method. Numerical results are obtained and discussed for the skin friction coefficient, local Nusselt number, local Sherwood number, velocity profiles, temperature profiles and nanoparticle volume fraction profiles. These results are presented for different values of the governing parameters, namely the mixed convection parameter and the Darcy- Brinkman parameter. It is found that the boundary layer separates from the sphere for some negative values of the mixed convection parameter (opposing flow). Increasing the mixed convection parameter delays the boundary layer separation and the separation can be completely suppressed for sufficiently large values of the mixed convection parameter.


Calonectria crotalariae enhanced root penetration of Lee 74 (susceptible) and Centennial (resistant) soybeans by juveniles of race 3 of Heterodera glycines. The presence of the fungus resulted in greater numbers of females and both soil and root cysts on Lee 74 during the first 30 days. Greater numbers of soil cysts were recovered from Lee 74 at 80 and 120 days and from Centennial at 120 days after inoculation with both pathogens. Root colonization by the fungus increased from 19% to 57% at 40 days on Lee 74 and from 5870 to 86% on Centennial at 120 days in the presence of the nematode. Root injury ratings increased significantly when both organisms were present suggesting a synergistic nematode x fungus interaction on Lee 74 at 40 days. An inoculation timing study in which Lee 74 was infested with the nematode and fungus individually, sequentially, and in combination at days 0 and 35 indicated that enhanced nematode reproduction was related more to early plant-fungus interactions than early plant fungus-nematode interactions. Inoculum density studies with eggs of the nematode revealed augmented nematode reproduction in coinoculated plants from a 10,000 egg/pot inoculum level but not from either 100 or 1,000 egg/pot levels. Enhanced nematode reproduction paralleled increases in microsclerotia densities from 500 to 5,000 per pot, but not at a 50,000 microsclerotia per pot density. The effects of H. glycines and C. crotalariae on 60 day root injury were antagonistic; the sum of the root weight reductions caused by coinoculation with both pathogens was less than the sura of that caused by each alone.


This paper is concerned with the question of how to online combine an ensemble of active learners so as to expedite the learning progress during a pool-based active learning session. We develop a powerful active learning master algorithm, based a known competitive algorithm for the multi-armed bandit problem and a novel semi-supervised performance evaluation statistic. Taking an ensemble containing two of the best known active learning algorithms and a new algorithm, the resulting new active learning master algorithm is empirically shown to consistently perform almost as well as and sometimes outperform the best algorithm in the ensemble on a range of classification problems.


On February 12, 2012, thousands of young people watched the Grammys in anticipation of who would win the year's most coveted awards, such as Best Artist and Best Album of the year. The Grammy telecast encouraged Tweeters to participate in a parallel awarding process based on snap judgments of all the performances and awards, grounded in personal taste. One commentator wrote, "Twitter, after all, is like a T-shirt whose slogan you can keep changing: every new tap of he keyboard trumpets your tastes." When Chris Brown accepted the award for Best R&B Album for his latest record "F.A.M.E" there was a surge of tweets across the "twitterverse" both in celebration and disgust. Brown's assault on his ex-girlfriend, Rihanna, after a pre-Grammy party back in 2009 had made him the most Contentious character of this year's awards. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Youth across the world hurled various responses all over Twitter and Facebook, some in disgust at every mention and sight of Brown. Others shouted overwhelming support for the award. Perhaps the most upsetting to witness were the women who made his history of abuse light and trivial by stating their willingness to allow him to beat them. Their rawness and insensitivity prompted several bloggers and activists to write about the incident. This surge in dialogue in the twitterverse was indicative of several issues, the most important being how complex and nuanced gender-based violence actually is, and how far we still have to go as a movement to end it. Shortly after this episode, BET.com temporarily dropped Dream Hampton's "The Trouble with Chris Brown," which discussed the origins of Brown's man-childish behavior and his rash attempt to replace critically needed therapy with a small team of tweeters using the hashtag #teambreezyto show he still had support. "Team-Breezy" is simply a group of Chris Brown supporters. It is often referred to as a digital team of fans, whose primary goal is to tell everyone about their position, and share their passion both on-and offline as much as possible. BET's permissiveness, the slew of young women and girls who made up #teambreezy, female bloggers (and commenters on blogs), and twitter followers who unwaveringly stood by Chris Brown amidst domestic violence charges and uncontrolled violent outbursts are very telling of some of the issues youth will face, and how they will address it in the future. Nearly 10 million @chrisbrown followers drove his album "F.A.M.E" to the number one spot, but failed to hold him accountable, relentlessly displacing responsibility for his actions onto others. In this paper, I will attempt to unpack the parameters of what social media and connective technologies do for youth and youth activists. As a practitioner who has seen a diverse range of uses of connective technologies against human rights violations and gender-based violence, it is clear that social media has been important in recent social movements. Numerous cases show that opportunities for participation by youth and members of the public are greatly expanding through social media. However, the "youth" cannot be described as a homogenous category, and the use of connective technology among them is diverse and heavily contingent on context and level of access. I will explain how social media is creating new possibilities and practices among youth and its role in promoting and prompting progressive social change. With regular access to social media, the youth are influential "enablers" and have the greatest potential of spun ring change. I will also outline the limited functionality of social media, the need for associated offline action and clear targets, and cases of success and failure in which technology is involved. Gender-based violence both in the developed and developing world are a complex blend of structural and cultural challenges, many of which are enhanced and enabled by communicative technology. …


Though polarity classification has been extensively explored at document level, there has been little work investigating feature design at sentence level. Due to the small number of words within a sentence, polarity classification at sentence level differs substantially from document-level classification in that resulting bag-of-words feature vectors tend to be very sparse resulting in a lower classification accuracy.

In this paper, we show that performance can be improved by adding features specifically designed for sentence-level polarity classification. We consider both explicit polarity information and various linguistic features. A great proportion of the improvement that can be obtained by using polarity information can also be achieved by using a set of simple domain-independent linguistic features.


In this paper we present results on the use of a multilayered a-SiC:H heterostructure as a wavelength-division demultiplexing device (WDM) for the visible light spectrum. The WDM device is a glass/ITO/a-SiC:H (p-i-n)/ a-SiC:H(-p) /Si:H(-i)/SiC:H (-n)/ITO heterostructure in which the generated photocurrent at different values of the applied bias can be assigned to the different optical signals. The device was characterized through spectral response measurements, under different electrical bias. Demonstration of the device functionality for WDM applications was done with three different input channels covering wavelengths within the visible range. The recovery of the input channels is explained using the photocurrent spectral dependence on the applied voltage. The influence of the optical power density was also analysed.


While wireless sensor networks are proving to be a versatile tool, many of the applications in which they are implemented have sensitive data. In other words, security is crucial in many of these applications. Once a sensor node has been compromised, the security of the network degrades quickly if there are not measures taken to deal with this event. There have been many approaches researched to tackle the issue. In this paper, we look into an anomaly-based intrusion detection system to detect compromised nodes in wireless sensor networks. An algorithm to detect the compromised sensor nodes has been developed. Simulations are conducted to verify the design.


Research in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) has identified a gap – the, so called, social-technical gap – between the wide range of human social interactions that CSCW ideally should support and what current technology actually does support. At the same time recent work in cognitive science and CSCW has begun to elucidate the multifarious roles that the body plays in cognitive processes as well as many forms of social interaction, e.g. gestures, pointing, eye-contact and bodily mimicry. The aim of this dissertation has been to analyse to what degree different aspects of embodied social interaction are supported by different types of synchronous, remote location CSCW technology, and to develop recommendations for future development concerning aspects of embodiment. For this purpose, a number of crucial aspects of embodied social interaction have been identified and about twenty CSCW systems – both research prototypes and commercial systems – have been analysed with respects to how well they support these different aspects. The analysis shows that most CSCW systems only support a very limited range of aspects of embodied social


Tropical beaches provide coastal flood protection, income from tourism, and habitat for flagship species. They urgently need protection from erosion, which is being exacerbated by changing climate and coastal development. Traditional coastal engineering solutions are expensive, provide unstable temporary solutions, and often disrupt natural sediment transport. Instead, natural foreshore stabilization and nourishment may provide a sustainable and resilient long-term solution. Field flume and ecosystem process measurements, along with data from the literature, show that sediment stabilization by seagrass in combination with sediment-producing calcifying algae in the foreshore form an effective mechanism for maintaining tropical beaches worldwide. The long-term efficacy of this type of nature-based beach management is shown at a large scale by comparing vegetated and unvegetated coastal profiles. We argue that preserving and restoring vegetated beach foreshore ecosystems offers a viable, self-sustaining alternative to traditional engineering solutions, increasing the resilience of coastal areas to climate change.


Repeated exposure to the stimulant drug, amphetamine, results in long-lasting increases in its effects on locomotor activity, reward and dopaminergic function. The precise mechanisms responsible for this persistent drug-induced sensitization are unknown, but evidence suggests that neuroadaptations initiated in the cell body region of midbrain dopaminergic neurons and dependent on glutamatergic transmission underlie its development. In this thesis, the hypothesis that basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), a neurotrophic factor produced by astrocytes, plays a crucial role in the development of sensitization was tested. A series of experiments was conducted to assess whether bFGF expression in cell body regions of dopaminergic neurons is altered by repeated administration of amphetamine, whether this effect is dependent on glutamatergic activation, and whether blockade of bFGF actions in midbrain dopaminergic cell body regions prevents the development of sensitization. It was found that repeated administration of amphetamine induces prolonged increases in the expression of astrocytic bFGF in midbrain dopaminergic cell body regions and that this effect depends on glutamatergic activation. Furthermore, it was shown that, in animals that exhibit behavioral sensitization, bFGF expression in midbrain dopaminergic cell body regions is strongly and positively correlated with the magnitude of sensitization that develops. In a final experiment it was found that when amphetamine injections are preceded by infusions of a neutralizing antibody to bFGF into the cell body region of dopaminergic cells, the development of behavioral sensitization is prevented indicating that bFGF plays a critical role in the development of sensitization to amphetamine. It is argued that repeated exposure to stimulant drugs increases the demands on dopaminergic cell functioning and, thus, stimulates the recruitment of neurotrophic and neuroprotective substances, such as bFGF. The actions of bFGF, in turn, give rise either directly or indirectly to enduring neuronal changes that underlie sensitized responding to further drug exposure. Although, the mechanisms whereby bFGF exerts its effects to induce the kinds of long-lasting neuroadaptations underlying sensitization to the effects of amphetamine remain to be unraveled, the findings from this thesis provide the first evidence that the neurotrophic factor bFGF is critically involved.


This Article begins by taking a closer look at the two Security Council resolutions at the center of this debate: Resolution 1373 and Resolution 1540. It argues that they make pragmatic sense as necessary responses by the Security Council to address urgent, global threats. Further, it explains how they serve to fill the existing gaps in international law, which, if not addressed, would hinder the international community's ability to tackle these twenty-first century threats. Part II, after providing a brief summary of the Council's powers under the U.N. Charter, focuses on whether this activity falls within the Security Council's mandate. In doing so, Part II describes the breadth of the Council's powers under Chapter VII, which are subject to few express limitations. Many commentators cite the limitation that the Council may only address a particular situation, with a time-limited, case-based reaction, to support their conclusion that while the Council may have the authority to legislate in response to a specific situation, it lacks the authority to do so on a global basis. Part II concludes, however, that this limitation, which does not actually appear in the text of the Charter itself, is in fact not sufficient to circumscribe the Council's activity in this area. To continue to read such a limitation into the Charter at a time when the most urgent threats to international peace and security are neither time nor geographically limited would prevent the Council from being able to fulfill its responsibility under the Charter to maintain international peace and security through "prompt and effective action." Part III of this Article looks at previous Council actions that have imposed binding obligations on all States, albeit not in response to a global (vice specific) threat. It explains that the adoption of Resolutions 1373 and 1540 constitutes a qualitatively different exercise of the Council's Chapter VII power, which is manifested in a number of ways. Part III concludes, however, that this difference serves to highlight the innovative nature of the Council's activity rather than make it ultra vires. Despite the unique nature of Resolutions 1373 and 1540, the discretion given to the Council under the Charter, both in terms of determining the existence of threats to the peace and the appropriate enforcement measures to address such threats, appears broad enough to allow for this innovative activity. Part IV addresses the impact that this Security Council activity, which essentially excludes the 176 U.N. Members that are not on the Council from the decision-making process, will have on the traditional consent-based international law-making process. It highlights some of the limitations of this process, which become more pronounced when the United Nations is confronted with the pressing need to fill a legal gap. Part IV concludes that in these circumstances the innovative use of Council powers, while circumventing the cumbersome multilateral treaty-making approach, is nevertheless justified. Recognizing that the U.N. Charter has evolved to allow the Council to act as a "global legislator" under certain circumstances, Part V argues that there are some safeguards the Council should implement each time it uses this authority. Such safeguards are needed to maintain the Council's institutional "legitimacy," ensuring that the Council exercise this broad power in ways that most States deem appropriate and within its competence. This will induce the broad cooperation from States that is needed to assure the most effective use of this authority. As this Article concludes, the Council needs the ability to use this tool to address, within the State-centered U.N. Charter system in which it operates, the threats posed by non-State terrorists and terrorist groups.


The aim of this paper is to outline the objectives and the main features of two initiatives in favour of libraries, developed by the European Commission and the Council of Europe in the last decade of the 20th century. The EU 'Telematics for libraries' programme formally started in 1990 within the Third Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development and was followed by a similar initiative in the Fourth FP. Libraries at that time enjoyed unprecedented attention from the European Commission.

The programme was developed within what was then EU Directorate General XIII, in charge of the development of information technologies and markets in Europe. Never before had libraries in Europe received a comparable level of funding for transnational, technology-based joint projects. National bibliographies, information literacy and –practically- all library services and operations were drawn into the technological revolution.

Different in nature was the project developed by the Council of Europe, mainly addressed to the so-called 'new democracies', i.e. former communist states in Central and Eastern Europe. As these countries were in the process of joining the Council of Europe, they needed to reform their book and library regulations. The initiative culminated in the Council of Europe-EBLIDA Guidelines on library legislations, issued by the Council of Cultural Cooperation in 2000.

The two programmes were totally different in their nature, objectives and, especially, with regard to the level of funding received. It is impossible to summarize in detail the vast array of initiatives and projects funded by the European Commission from 1990 to 1998, after which libraries ceased to be sole and direct beneficiaries of EU funding. The priority of the subsequent Fifth FP was to build up a knowledge-based society: although libraries were, and still are, part of this, they were considered eligible only as partners in joint projects mainly emanating from the private sector and / or research institutions.

My paper is based on official EU and Council of Europe sources, but also drawn from personal experience, as I worked for both the EU 'Telematics for Libraries' programme and the Council of Europe. Information on the two initiatives, disseminated on institutional websites, will be reconstructed in a narrative that takes into account the impassioned climate of that period, when the European ideal was triumphant and libraries were seen as harbingers of fundamental European values – democracy, access to knowledge and information literacy for all. I will also outline how democratic values were in conflict with the technological hype and the 'eurocratic' constraints, and what legacy the two projects left to libraries at the start of the new Millennium.


Homology computations form an important step in topological data analysis that helps to identify connected components, holes, and voids in multi-dimensional data. Our work focuses on algorithms for homology computations of large simplicial complexes on multicore machines and on GPUs. This paper presents two parallel algorithms to compute homology. A core component of both algorithms is the algebraic reduction of a cell with respect to one of its faces while preserving the homology of the original simplicial complex. The first algorithm is a parallel version of an existing sequential implementation using OpenMP. The algorithm processes and reduces cells within each partition of the complex in parallel while minimizing sequential reductions on the partition boundaries. Cache misses are reduced by ensuring data locality for data in the same partition. We observe a linear speedup on algebraic reductions and an overall speedup of up to 4.9× with 16 cores over sequential reductions. The second algorithm is based on a novel approach for homology computations on manycore/GPU architectures. This GPU algorithm is memory efficient and capable of extremely fast computation of homology for simplicial complexes with millions of simplices. We observe up to 40× speedup in runtime over sequential reductions and up to 4.5× speedup over REDHOM library, which includes the sequential algebraic reductions together with other advanced homology engines supported in the software.


One of the important tasks of geodesy is to investigate the deformations that occur in the earth's crust and structures. Control measurements are made especially in engineering structures both during and after construction. The measurements are evaluated for investigating whether there is a threat or not. Different methods of analysis are used in the evaluation of the measurements. In this study, Relative Confidence Ellipses Method, which is one of the static evaluation methods used in the determination of deformations in the horizontal direction, is theoretically examined, using direction observations and ranging data measured in Ermenek Dam for two periods and deformation measurements were conducted by analytical and graphical methods. Geodetic network consists of 13 reference points and 10 object points which were located on the crest. Evaluation was made separately both for direction observations and for direction observation + ranging data. With 95% statistical confidence, any deformation was not observed on 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13 reference points and 104, 501 object points in the evaluation according to direction observations and on 6, 12, 13 reference points in the evaluation according to direction observation + ranging data At the points subjected to deformation, deformations between 1.91 mm- 7.35 mm based on only direction observation and deformations between 1.46 mm- 6.60 mm based on both direction observations and ranging data were determined.


The utilisation of urban resources by the Herring Gull was studied between 1973 and 1976 in Northeast England. This involved a study of refuse tips as a winter food supply, and the use of inhabited buildings as nesting sites. The local breeding population is small, and there is an influx of gulls from east Scottish and Norwegian colonies into Northeast England during the winter months. Herring Gulls caught during winter could be sexed by bill depth alone; wing length was used as an indicator of geographical origin. Gulls fed at refuse tips in the study area throughout the winter months. There was a predominance of adults over immatures at refuse tips in winter, while immatures predominated over adults around inshore fishing vessels in the same area. There was considerable fluctuation in the number of gulls present at tips on different days, related to weather factors and feeding conditions elsewhere. Immature Herring Gulls were less constant to a particular feeding area than adults, and adult females less so than adult males. Individual Herring Gulls did not feed at refuse tips every day, and refuse did not constitute the major or necessarily the only food source for these birds in winter. There were two different feeding areas used by gulls on the refuse tips which differed in the abundance and availability of food: individual birds consistently used one or other area, and proportionally more adult females than males used the secondary area. The number of nesting pairs/ pairs and nest sites used by Herring Gulls nesting on buildings in Sunderland and South Shields were monitored. Their breeding success was higher than in more "natural" colonies, possibly due to the nature of the nesting sites. A national census of gulls nesting on buildings in Britain and Ireland was organised in 1976, to measure the growth and spread of rooftop nesting: the number of Herring Gulls nesting on buildings was found to be doubling within 5 years, and the number of Lesser Black-backs within 3 years. The potential public health hazard presented by gulls nesting on buildings was reviewed.


Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) is an important source of nutrients and metals to the coastal ocean, affects coastal ecosystems, and is gaining recognition as a relevant water resource. SGD is usually quantified using geochemical tracers such as radon or radium. However, a few studies have also used dissolved silicon (DSi) as a tracer for SGD, as DSi is usually enriched in groundwater when compared to surface waters. In this study, we discuss the potential of DSi as a tracer in SGD studies based on a literature review and two case studies from contrasting environments. In the first case study, DSi is used to calculate SGD fluxes in a tropical volcanic-carbonate karstic region (southern Java, Indonesia), where SGD is dominated by terrestrial groundwater discharge. The second case study discusses DSi as a tracer for marine SGD (i.e. recirculated seawater) in the tidal flat area of Spiekeroog (southern North Sea), where SGD is dominantly driven by tidal pumping through beach sands. Our results indicate that DSi is a useful tracer for SGD in various lithologies (e.g. karstic, volcanic, complex) to quantify terrestrial and marine SGD fluxes. DSi can also be used to trace groundwater transport processes in the sediment and the coastal aquifer. Care has to be taken that all sources and sinks of DSi are known and can be quantified or neglected. One major limitation is that DSi is used by siliceous phytoplankton and therefore limits its applicability to times of the year when primary production of siliceous phytoplankton is low. In general, DSi is a powerful tracer for SGD in many environments. We recommend that DSi should be used to complement other conventionally used tracers, such as radon or radium, to help account for their own shortcomings.


The thesis takes an insight look into two different models(two-zone and three-zone models)for describe the deformation and fracture behaviour of the tearing ligament.By earlier works,these two different models based on Essential Work of Fracture approach was proved to be capable for predicting the specific total work of fracture along the tear path across all plastic zones. A comparison of these two models was made based on the results from an early experiment. The investigation was based on two-leg trousers tear specimen with constant pre-crack length. The materials used in this work were PET and a laminate composed of PETG/PET. And a finite element simulation will be presented also to show the stress around the crack tip and the deformation of the tear specimen. The commercial software of ABAQUS will be selected to performance the simulation.


C.S. Lewis - the brilliant writer, the academic, the Christian - is known worldwide for his contribution to thought and to literature. But the man himself has never been more fully revealed than in this memoir by his stepson. Douglas Gresham's mother, Joy Davidman, was to become the wife of C.S. Lewis. Here we learn the moving story of their relationship, seen through the child's eyes. With the growing boy we gain fresh insights into life at The Kilns, the Oxfordshire home which C.S. Lewis shared with his brother Warnie and his newly acquired family. Douglas records the ways and talks of the famous stepfather for whom he felt respect and ever increasing affection; he tells of the love which united "Jack" and his beloved mother, but tragedy was close at hand, for Joy was dying, and soon the boys, bereft of their mother, were to lose their new father as well. Here, movingly told, is the story of C.S. Lewis the husband and father - and of the young Douglas himslf, as he stepped out of the shadows of his parents' death and into maturity and happiness.


Axiomatic quantum field theory is one approach to the project of merging the special theory of relativity with that of ordinary quantum mechanics. The project begins with the postulation of a set of axioms. Axioms should be motivated by reasonable physical principles in a way that illustrates how a given axiom is true. Motivations are often grounded in the principles of the parent theories: ordinary quantum mechanics or the theory of special relativity. Amongst the set of axioms first proposed by Haag and Kastler in 1963 is the axiom of microcausality. Microcausality requires the observables of regions at space-like separation to commute. This thesis seeks to answer the question'What principles from the special theory of relativity or ordinary quantum mechanics motivate, or justify, accepting microcausality as an axiom?' The first chapter will provide the necessary background to investigate this question and the second chapter will undertake that investigation. In conclusion, microcausality cannot be well-motivated by individual principles rooted in the special theory of relativity or ordinary quantum mechanics.


The distance-number of a graph $G$ is the minimum number of distinct edge-lengths over all straight-line drawings of $G$ in the plane. This definition generalises many well-known concepts in combinatorial geometry. We consider the distance-number of trees, graphs with no $K^-_4$-minor, complete bipartite graphs, complete graphs, and cartesian products. Our main results concern the distance-number of graphs with bounded degree. We prove that $n$-vertex graphs with bounded maximum degree and bounded treewidth have distance-number in ${\cal O}(\log n)$. To conclude such a logarithmic upper bound, both the degree and the treewidth need to be bounded. In particular, we construct graphs with treewidth $2$ and polynomial distance-number. Similarly, we prove that there exist graphs with maximum degree $5$ and arbitrarily large distance-number. Moreover, as $\Delta$ increases the existential lower bound on the distance-number of $\Delta$-regular graphs tends to $\Omega(n^{0.864138})$.


Self-levelling flooring compounds (SLC) are applied in thin layers (less than 1cm) to level floors before further finishing cover such as parquet or plastic cover. They are composed of a ternary binder system based on Portland cement (PC), calcium aluminate cement (CAC) and calcium sulfate to provide fast set. This mixed binder is modified by additives in order to obtain specific properties such as flow properties or defoaming. In total, more than 10 components make up the formulations of SLCs. SLCs are one of the most complex systems in the field of cementitious materials. It is known that ettringite is the main hydration product of mixed binder systems but the hydration development at early ages is little known. The main objective of this work is thus to clarify the mechanisms of the development of the hydration at early ages of ternary binder systems modified by additives. Two formulations were studied: a system in which the mixed binder system is dominated by PC and one in which it is dominated by CAC. Both systems exhibit the formation of ettringite, but the formation of this phase is mainly due to the hydration of monocalcium aluminate CA from the CAC. Thus, the PC formulation is not robust. Parameters such as the minor phases of the PC and the type of the calcium sulfate have a major impact on the hydration development. As CA is a minor constituent of this mixed binder system, the amount of ettringite formed is low. Thus, the PC dominated formulation reacts relatively slowly. The CAC dominated formulations react faster because the CA content is higher. The porosity is lower and internal and external parameters such as the minor phases of the PC and evaporation affect much less the development of hydration. As the CAC dominated system forms more ettringite, the chemical shrinkage is higher but the autogenous expansion measured is lower than that observed for the PC dominated formulations. Calcite is also added in the formulation in large amount as a filler to fill the porosity. The formation of monocarboaluminate from the reaction of calcite is also observed.


This paper introduces an extension of collocational analysis that takes into account grammatical structure and is specifically geared to investigating the interaction of lexemes and the grammatical constructions associated with them. The method is framed in a construction-based approach to language, i.e. it assumes that grammar consists of signs (form-meaning pairs) and is thus not fundamentally different from the lexicon. The method is applied to linguistic expressions at various levels of abstraction (words, semi-fixed phrases, argument structures, tense, aspect and mood). The method has two main applications: first, to increase the adequacy of grammatical description by providing an objective way of identifying the meaning of a grammatical construction and determining the degree to which particular slots in it prefer or are restricted to a particular set of lexemes; second, to provide data for linguistic theory-building.


This study examines physical education pre-service teachers' (PTs) self-efficacy and practicum experiences as self-efficacy sources through a mixed-method approach. For the quantitative phase, a self-efficacy questionnaire was applied to 141 PTs. Results showed a stronger self-efficacy in the relationship with students and discipline promotion. Lower self-efficacy was linked to instructional strategies. Concerning the qualitative phase, eight PTs were interviewed. PTs with higher self-efficacy reported professional experiences before practicum as mastery experiences. During the practicum they highlighted as mastery experiences: classes' characteristics, planning and teaching practice; lesson observation as vicarious experiences; and post-lesson conversations as verbal persuasion. PTs with lower self-efficacy reported classes' characteristics and teaching practice as failure experiences. Lesson observation was linked to negative vicarious experiences and post-lesson conversations were associated to negative emotions and the absence of verbal persuasion. This study's results have implications inasmuch as they confirm the role of the practicum in teacher education programmes and the importance of training supervisors in the implementation and management of the training experience, thus contributing to PTs' self-efficacy development.


There is an urgent need for studying the development of biodiversity in the (recent) past. It is one of the biggest threats to the sustainable future of mankind, and the process is largely driven by economic and demographic changes. However, it has however not received much attention by economic historians. Several (historical) socio-economic drivers of biodiversity have been recognized, however, the extent, rate and precise causes of current decline remains unknown. A historical perspective on biodiversity and the network of socio-economic factors causing it, will lead to a more inclusive understanding of the complex human-nature relations resulting in biodiversity decline. The models currently used to simulate these processes, and theoretical notions about it, have not been sufficiently tested against the historical record. To that end, it is proposed to study biodiversity on the basis of historical records and data. Moreover, a research framework is presented that may be the starting point for the new research agenda. The framework gives a schematic overview of the interconnected natural and socio-economic systems across different temporal, spatial and biological scales. This is then applied to the case of the Netherlands in the 20th century, and the causes of the decline and recent rise of biodiversity are analyzed.


Aerial surveys can be used to estimate animal abundance, but animals unavailable for detection for portions of the survey can cause biased abundance estimates. Moreover, these biases may be variable owing to changes in behavior. We conducted focal follows to obtain surface and dive times of North Atlantic right whales Eubalaena glacialis in Cape Cod Bay (CCB) and measured the aircraft field of view; these metrics were combined to estimate availability and correct monthly abundance estimates from 1998 to 2017 generated via distance sampling methodology. We used a general least squares model to test for trends in abundance. Availability varied with month (0.27−0.85), likely linked to changes in the depth of copepod food resources. Detection probability varied across the years (0.43−0.87). Sightings per unit effort and counts of whales were significant, but downward-biased indicators of abundance and availability caused changes in bias over the season. Estimated abundance in CCB increased during the study period (4.9 whales yr−1), and estimated abundance in peak months increased at a faster rate (10% yr−1 for 1998−2017) than for the overall population (2.8% yr−1 for 1990−2010). Accurate abundance estimates are necessary to monitor long-term changes in abundance of right whales in CCB, to understand the importance of CCB relative to other areas, and improve management strategies to protect this endangered species from entanglements in fishing gear and ship-strikes. Failing to correct for seasonal variation in availability results in substantial and variable underestimation of abundance.


ABSTRACT
Insight into nociceptive circuits will ultimately build our understanding of pain processing and aid the development of analgesic strategies. Neural circuit analysis has been advanced greatly by the development of optogenetic and chemogenetic tools, which have allowed function to be ascribed to discrete neuronal populations. Neurons of the dorsal root ganglion, which include nociceptors, have proved challenging targets for chemogenetic manipulation given specific confounds with commonly used DREADD technology. We have developed a cre/lox dependant version of the engineered glutamate-gated chloride channel (GluCl) to restrict and direct its expression to molecularly defined neuronal populations. We have generated GluCl.CreON that selectively renders neurons expressing cre-recombinase susceptible to agonist-induced silencing. We have functionally validated our tool in multiple systems in vitro, and subsequently generated viral vectors and tested its applicability in vivo. Using Nav1.8Cre mice to restrict AAV-GluCl.CreON to nociceptors, we demonstrate effective silencing of electrical activity in vivo and concomitant hyposensitivity to noxious thermal and noxious mechanical pain, whereas light touch and motor function remained intact. We also demonstrated that our strategy can effectively silence inflammatory-like pain in a chemical pain model. Collectively, we have generated a novel tool that can be used to selectively silence defined neuronal circuits in vitro and in vivo. We believe that this addition to the chemogenetic tool box will facilitate further understanding of pain circuits and guide future therapeutic development.


Climate change is leading to an increased frequency and severity of heat waves. Spells of several consecutive days of unusually high temperatures have led to increased mortality rates for the more vulnerable in the community. The problem is compounded by the escalating energy costs and increasing peak electrical demand as people become more reliant on air conditioning. Domestic air conditioning is the primary determinant of peak power demand which has been a major driver of higher electricity costs. This report presents the findings of multidisciplinary research which develops a national framework to evaluate the potential impacts of heat waves. It presents a technical, social and economic approach to adapt Australian residential buildings to ameliorate the impact of heat waves in the community and reduce the risk of its adverse outcomes. Through the development of a methodology for estimating the impact of global warming on key weather parameters in 2030 and 2050, it is possible to re-evaluate the size and anticipated energy consumption of air conditioners in future years for various climate zones in Australia. Over the coming decades it is likely that mainland Australia will require more cooling than heating. While in some parts the total electricity usage for heating and cooling may remain unchanged, there is an overall significant increase in peak electricity demand, likely to further drive electricity prices. Through monitoring groups of households in South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland, the impact of heat waves on both thermal comfort sensation and energy consumption for air conditioning has been evaluated. The results show that households are likely to be able to tolerate slightly increased temperature levels indoors during periods of high outside temperatures. The research identified that household electricity costs are likely to rise above what is currently projected due to the impact of climate change. Through a number of regulatory changes to both household design and air conditioners, this impact can be minimised. A number of proposed retrofit and design measures are provided, which can readily reduce electricity usage for cooling at minimal cost to the household. Using a number of social research instruments, it is evident that households are willing to change behaviour rather than to spend money. Those on lower income and elderly individuals are the least able to afford the use of air conditioning and should be a priority for interventions and assistance. Increasing community awareness of cost effective strategies to manage comfort and health during heat waves is a high priority recommended action. Overall, the research showed that a combined approach including behaviour change, dwelling modification and improved air conditioner selection can readily adapt Australian households to the impact of heat waves, reducing the risk of heat related deaths and household energy costs.


This paper examines the prospect of realizing regional economic integration via the mechanism of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). The FTAAP initiative represents a politically ambitious, high potential benefit option for achieving Asian regional integration. Among its desirable attributes, the FTAAP initiative could help revive and promote a successful conclusion of the Doha Round negotiations; constitute a "Plan B†hedge if Doha fails; short-circuit the further proliferation of bilateral and sub-regional preferential agreements that create substantial new discrimination and discord within the Asia-Pacific region; defuse the renewed risk of "drawing a line down the middle of the Pacific†as East Asian, and perhaps the Western Hemisphere, initiatives produce disintegration of the Asia-Pacific region rather than the integration of that broader region that the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum was created to foster; channel the People's Republic of China (PRC)-United States economic conflict into a more constructive and less confrontational context; and revitalize APEC, which is of enhanced importance because of the prospects for Asia-Pacific and especially the PRC-US fissures. An incremental approach to the FTAAP, explicitly embodying enforceable reciprocal commitments, offers the best hope delivering on the concept's abundant benefits.


This paper provides simulation practitioners and consumers with a grounding in how discrete-event simulation software works. Topics include discrete-event systems; entities, resources, control elements and operations; simulation runs; entity states; entity lists; and their management. The implementations of these generic ideas in AutoMod, SLX, ExtendSim, and Simio are described. The paper concludes with several examples of "why it matters" for modelers to know how their simulation software works, including discussion of AutoMod, SLX, ExtendSim, Simio, Arena, ProModel, and GPSS/H.