PurposeThe development of the short food supply chain (SFSC) is one of the issues of the current agri-food systems. Consumers are re-connecting the food they eat with the farming process and are increasingly asking for fresh, seasonal and traceable food products from known producer source. The purpose of this paper is to analyse consumers' opinions towards the SFSC and willingness to pay (WTP) for local honeys in Mar del Plata, Argentina before and after a hedonic evaluation test.Design/methodology/approachIn an incentive compatible approach, using real purchasing scenarios, two non-hypothetical discrete choice experiments were applied, accounting for the impact of the SFSC understanding and hedonic evaluation on consumers' WTP.FindingsResults showed that consumers' WTP, a premium for local honey products, is conditioned to specific quality cues and the global sensory acceptance. Consumers with high level of agreement with the social and environmental roles of the SFSC were more quality demanding and exhibited higher WTP towards the locally produced honeys. The development of local market by re-connecting producers and consumers, allowing for in-site tasting, has a strong implication for the structure of the honey added-value chain due to the potential role that may play in satisfying consumers' preference and needs.Originality/valueThe authors measured consumers' opinions towards the SFSC and analyse their impact on consumer WTP for honey product by including real purchasing scenarios and hedonic evaluation test, to reduce the hypothetical bias of the traditional surveys. Questionnaires were completed in a controlled laboratory environment for with real product and real money.


Question answering (QA) has become a popular way for humans to access billion-scale knowledge bases. QA systems over knowledge bases produce accurate and concise answers. The key of QA over knowledge bases is to map the question to a certain substructure in the knowledge base. To do this, KBQA (Question Answering over Knowledge Bases) uses a new kind of question representation: templates, learned from a million scale QA corpora. For example, for questions about a city's population, KBQA learns templates such as What's the population of $city?, How many people are there in $city?. It learns overall 1171303 templates for 4690 relations. Based on these templates, KBQA effectively and efficiently supports binary factoid questions or complex questions.


Control of genital chlamydial infection in the Kimberley region of Western Australia Donna B Mak, Graeme H Johnson, Lewis J Marshall, Jacqueline K Mein 45 Positive Q fever skin test after vaccination Neil R Parker 45 Reuse of single-use medical devices: how often does this still occur in Australia? Sandy J Berenger, John K Ferguson 46 Clifford F Hughes 46 The public hospital of the future Bryan G Walpole 47 Jeffrey D Zajac 47 Australian healthcare reform: in need of political courage and champions Ron J Lord 47 Robert A Jones 48 Martin B Van Der Weyden 48


Our experience as occupants of a particular setting begins with the impulse to instantaneously scrutinize everything. This impulse is sustained through an often precisely choreographed threshold. As architect and artist, my goal is to assist the occupant in maintaining their initial ontological wakefulness through staging, often-temporary assemblies within a host space and thereby enhance its topographic fidelity. Each inquiry is part of a process by which the humanity and sensual experience of a particular setting is revealed. The resultant staging yields what Joan Simon calls a socio-graph, a support system for the occupation of an environment. To this end, the act of making observations assists in cultivating place-based knowledge. It is an embodiment of an interdisciplinary agenda that embraces the artist as craftsman, choreographer and scribe in an effort to cultivate the cultural essence of lived space. The space of Iowa has been reinvented in the nineteenth century as a reflection of the modern rationality of capital production. Communities in Iowa continuously adapt to changes in the agricultural production processes. Since its start in the nineteenth century, this production process was lead by family farmers – a form of farming in which labor is supplied primarily by family members. Family farming has become a consolidated social symbol that Iowans are attached to which is based on a form of independence through private farm property and its production process. This form of independence is also translated through social distance whereby farmsteads are equally spaced across the landscape leaving ample fields between farming families. This sense of spatial and symbolic independence has largely defined the quality of life in Iowa. However, this spatial and federally advocated form of independence was associated with economic dependence on market forces, food industries and federal policies. Given that family farms have been consistently mechanizing and increasing production, the demand for more farmland has also been increasing, which resulted in "successful" farmers purchasing production ground from other less successful farmers. This has made the family farmer's space unstable as it is consistently under market competition pressure and trends of federal policies. This economic condition has produced spatial and communal instability because it has caused frequent reconfiguration in the living space. For instance, some farmers have rented their production grounds and continue to live on their farmsteads away from public services and employment opportunities that they have become increasingly dependent on. The impact of farming development has been even more apparent whereby vacant farm sites along the various roads are a common scene. Black's Seed Farm is one such dormant farm site in which a body of work is being developed as part of an ongoing effort to examine the past character and future shape of Iowa's inherited landscape. Current studio projects focus on the act of making and curating a series of research assemblies within a dormant seed-drying facility using ethno-specific logic and perceptual practices as spatial conditioner. This work might best be understood as a site-adjusted set of objects or trace that indicates the presence of, and makes clearly recognizable, its context as referent rather than source or setting.


We provide evidence about the determinants of the wage structures of developing countries by examining the case of Brazil. Our specific question is whether Brazil's dramatic income and wage dierentials can be explained by the division of rents between firms and their employees, unlike in competitive labour markets. Using detailed individual-level matched panel data, covering a large share of manufacturing firms and more than 30 million workers between 1997 and 2002, we consider the endogeneity of profits, by adopting dierent measures of profits and dierent instruments and by controlling for spell fixed eects. Our results, robust to dierent specifications and tests, indicate no evidence of rent sharing. This conclusion contrasts with findings for most developed countries, even those with flexible labour markets. Possible explanations for the lack of rent sharing include the weakness of labour-market institutions, the high levels of worker turnover and the macroeconomic instability faced by the country.


Synopsis High-resolution aeromagnetic data have been acquired over central Ayrshire as part of a multi-component environmental and resource survey. The data were recorded along easterly orientated flight lines at 200 m separation and show a very marked improvement in resolution over the pre-existing aeromagnetic data for the region. The distribution of the extensive volcanic and intrusive igneous rocks in the near sub-surface is defined more accurately, many new features are recognized and features distinguished in the pre-existing aeromagnetic data are now seen to be laterally continuous. Northwesterly trending lineaments are clearly defined and most can be attributed to Palaeogene dykes, the majority of which are reversely magnetized. Depth to source solutions and modelling suggest that even though the dykes have a limited width at outcrop, their widths increase with depth. Permo-Carboniferous easterly trending dykes are not well resolved in the new aeromagnetic data. This is most likely due to a low amplitude resultant magnetic vector that, combined with the easterly-orientated flight lines, results in few large anomalies. One significant northwesterly trending lineament is interpreted as the trace of the Cleveland Dyke across the Midland Valley. These new data should be of value to the extractive and water industries and assist in the planning and sustainable management of these resources.


Many European companies use some type of control-enhancing mechanism, such as dual class shares or a pyramid ownership structure. Such mechanisms cause deviations from the one share–one vote principle, allocating more voting rights than cash flow rights to some shares and, in turn, providing the owners of such shares with more influence than what would be warranted by their investment. However, disproportionate influence may also arise in firms without such mechanisms. In this article, we present a method for disentangling disproportionality, which allows us to more precisely test the effects of deviations from the one share–one vote principle. We argue that previous studies suffer from a measurement problem caused by the use of a simplistic notion of disproportionality, and then we show that the effect of control-enhancing mechanisms on firm value has been overestimated in previous studies.


Artificial neural networks have proven to be an attractive mathematical tool to represent complex relationships in many branches of hydrology. Due to this attractive feature, neural networks are increasingly being applied in subsurface modeling where intricate physical processes and lack of detailed field data prevail. In this paper, a methodology using modular neural networks (MNN) is proposed to simulate the nitrate concentrations in an agriculture-dominated aquifer. The methodology relies on geographic information system (GIS) tools in the preparation and processing of the MNN inputeoutput data. The basic premise followed in developing the MNN inputeoutput response patterns is to designate the optimal radius of a specified circular-buffered zone centered by the nitrate receptor so that the input parameters at the upgradient areas correlate with nitrate concentrations in ground water. A three-step approach that integrates the on-ground nitrogen loadings, soil nitrogen dynamics, and fate and transport in ground water is described and the critical parameters to predict nitrate concentration using MNN are selected. The sensitivity of MNN performance to different MNN architecture is assessed. The applicability of MNN is considered for the Sumas-Blaine aquifer of Washington State using two scenarios corresponding to current land use practices and a proposed protection alternative. The results of MNN are further analyzed and compared to those obtained from a physically-based fate and transport model to evaluate the overall applicability of MNN. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


Plants evolve physical defences, such as spines, against browsing herbivores. However, in some cases, these defences may be anachronistic because the principal consumers of protected parts of the plant are extinct. In such cases, there may be few extant species consuming heavily defended resources. Here we examine the spiny defences of Madagascar's endemic Didiereoideae, and ask whether they may be anachronistic. To accomplish this aim, we reviewed the literature to determine which species consume these plants today, and then used stable isotope biogeochemistry to determine who may have exploited Didiereoideae in the recent past. There are four major groups of browsers that are now extinct in Madagascar: giant lemurs, elephant birds (Aepyornis and Mullerornis: Aepyornithidae), pygmy hippopotamuses (Hippopotamus) and giant tortoises (Aldabrachelys: Testudinidae). Each group was evaluated for isotopic evidence of didiereoid plant consumption. Given the structure of members of this plant clade (especially Alluaudia), we predicted that lemurs would be their most important consumers. Three extant lemur species consume Didiereoideae. Several of the extinct lemurs, particularly Hadropithecus stenognathus, may have relied heavily on these spiny plants. None of the non-lemur megafaunal browsers (elephant birds, hippopotamuses and giant tortoises) were important consumers of Didiereoideae.


A practical application of the concept of uncoupling between catabolism and anabolism during microbial metabolism has been studied in the case of a modified activated sludge system, called OSA (Oxic-Settling-Anaerobic). The OSA system consisted of an oxic completely mixed tank, followed by a settling tank and an anaerobic tank, situated in the returned sludge circuit of the OSA system. The periodic passageway of facultative aerobic activated sludge microorganisms through the anaerobic zone created conditions of uncoupled growth, indicated by ATP stock depletion and resulted in a consecutive reduction of activated sludge production.


A concise, easily accessible introduction to descriptive and inferential techniquesStatistical Inference: A Short Course offers a concise presentation of the essentials of basic statistics for readers seeking to acquire a working knowledge of statistical concepts, measures, and procedures.The author conducts tests on the assumption of randomness and normality, provides nonparametric methods when parametric approaches might not work. The book also explores how to determine a confidence interval for a population median while also providing coverage of ratio estimation, randomness, and causality. To ensure a thorough understanding of all key concepts, Statistical Inference provides numerous examples and solutions along with complete and precise answers to many fundamental questions, including:How do we determine that a given dataset is actually a random sample?With what level of precision and reliability can a population sample be estimated?How are probabilities determined and are they the same thing as odds?How can we predict the level of one variable from that of another?What is the strength of the relationship between two variables?The book is organized to present fundamental statistical concepts first, with later chapters exploring more advanced topics and additional statistical tests such as Distributional Hypotheses, Multinomial Chi-Square Statistics, and the Chi-Square Distribution. Each chapter includes appendices and exercises, allowing readers to test their comprehension of the presented material.Statistical Inference: A Short Course is an excellent book for courses on probability, mathematical statistics, and statistical inference at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels. The book also serves as a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners who would like to develop further insights into essential statistical tools.


Risk of cross-contamination with food-borne pathogens such as Salmonella and Campylobacter during poultry processing remains of great concern to the poultry industry. One potential cross-contamination step in processing is chilling. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the efficacy of a chill additive, T-128, at reducing levels of Salmonella and Campylobacter transfer during chilling. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of T-128 alone as well as T-128 plus the addition of 50 ppm chlorine against Salmonella and Campylobacter. Based on the results of microbial reduction and chlorine interaction, pilot scale experiments were done to evaluate if bench-scale trends withheld through scale up. Reduction trends throughout all experiments suggests that immersion chilling using T128 in conjunction with chlorine provides an effective and practical intervention strategy for controlling Salmonella and Campylobacter in poultry processing plants. INDEX WORDS: Chilling, Salmonella, Campylobacter, Chlorine USE OF A CHILL ADDITIVE TO REDUCE LEVELS OF SALMONELLA AND CAMPYLOBACTER DURING POULTRY PROCESSING


When do short lead times warrant a cost premium? Decision makers generally agree that short lead times enhance competitiveness, but have struggled to quantify their benefits. Blackburn (2012) argued that the marginal value of time is low when demand is predictable and salvage values are high. de Treville et al. (2014) used real-options theory to quantify the relationship between mismatch cost and demand volatility, demonstrating that the marginal value of time increases with demand volatility, and with the volatility of demand volatility. We use the de Treville et al. model to explore the marginal value of anufacturing lead time upply-chain mismatch cost unctional products time in three industrial supply chains facing relatively low demand volatility, extending the model to incorporate factors such as tender-loss risk, demand clustering in an order-up-to model, and use of a target fill rate that exceeded the newsvendor profit-maximizing order quantity. Each of these factors substantially increases the marginal value of time. In all of the companies under study, managers had underestimated the mismatch costs arising from lead time, so had underinvested in cutting lead times. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


Aggregation. The operation of uniting two or more terms or propositions, called aggregants, to produce an aggregate term or proposition which is true of everything of which any aggregant is true, and false of everything of which all the aggregants are false. It is opposed to composition, which is the operation of producing from two or more terms or propositions, called the components, a new term or proposition, called their compound, which is true of all of which all the components are true, and false of all of which any are false. Commens |


In this study, 21 skeletons, obtained from rescue excavations conducted in Diyarbakır/Salat Tepe (Salat Hill) flooded by a lake formed by the Ilısu Dam, were examined in terms of paleopathology, paleodemography, morphology and non-metric features. The analysis of archaeological and anthropological findings reveal that the Salat Tepe people dated back to the Middle Bronze Age. Their small socio-economic structure based on agriculture, and the inhabitants lived a modest life in harsh conditions. The evidence of small and local agriculture, rather than being an advanced agricultural society, shows that Diyarbakır/Salat Tepe people share the general characteristics of ancient Anatolian societies of the period.


To the Editor: The article by Flaherty et al. introduces an interesting conceptual model of inpatient care for delirious patients in a makeshift designated delirium room. Acute care of the elderly (ACE) units are an excellent way to give acute care, but to create these new isolated rooms for confused patients may not be in the best interest of patients. My concern is that it may turn out to be a step backward and a move away from current thinking on the subject. Because of dangers of hospitalization in the elderly, it may be best if the healthcare system supports care of these delirious patients outside hospitals. Studies have revealed that patients with delirium stayed for months in hospitals in the past, but now these inpatient days have been reduced to a few because of the effect of federal regulations and changes in the reimbursement for diagnosis-related groups in the United States over the years. Although a few recent research trials have suggested that interventions can prevent delirium, in many instances, the condition may persist for several weeks or months if the precipitating cause is not identified and treated early. The clinical course of delirium has many uncertainties and is unpredictable at times. Unless the cost implications and outcomes of such a model are carefully evaluated in the hospital, it may be premature to recommend delirium rooms for inpatient care. Such rooms may appeal to the hospital staff because they may be a convenient way of keeping the noisy, restless, and agitated delirious patients away so that other patients can be given full attention and care. As mentioned in the article, admissions to these rooms were not all for delirium, and only one-third met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition criteria for delirium; hence, there is a possibility that these may become the intensive care room of the ACE unit. Transferring patients out of these delirium rooms will also raise ethical issues if there is no rapid resolution or if there is only partial recovery from delirium. A better model would be if these delirium rooms, if there is a need to develop one, are housed in hospital emergency rooms for short-term observation rather than ACE units, and after initial evaluation and stabilization, these patients are sent to skilled units in nursing homes. A physician interested in the care of the elderly can sort out most of the usual causes (as mentioned in the DELIRIUMS mnemonic) within 24 hours. This is where regulatory agencies such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) acting with foresight can help the medical profession by supporting the skilled nursing facilities that may be willing to keep delirious patients in the nursing homes and manage them in-house. CMS policy makers can redraw healthcare system problems first by getting rid of the 3-day rule of hospital stay or modifying it for patients with delirium for access to skilled units of nursing homes. There are already models of managed Medicare Choice plan for permanent residents in nursing homes, frail populations at greatest risk, that give incentive to the facilities and physicians using advanced nurse practitioners for in-house management. The CMS rule of a minimum 3-day hospital stay for eligibility for skilled care in nursing homes does not apply to this capitation plan. To prevent hospitalizations, Evercare gives incentive payments to the nursing homes, referred to as Intensive Service days (ISD), for additional nursing care required during acute illness. The Evercare model has been shown to reduce hospitalizations by half mainly by substituting nursing home care for hospital care. It even gives provision for a personal sitter if needed. This may be the most cost-efficient way to manage this sick population but would require considerable effort, and changing a healthcare system may not be easy. Alternatively, strategies for managing these patients at home with home health care may be needed. The emphasis for now should be on prevention until we fully understand neuropathophysiology, heterogeneity of presentation, and the risk factors for delirium, which occurs more easily in patients with dementia. Present emphasis for prevention is on treating infections, correcting fluid and nutrition deficits, reducing or withdrawing medication, improving sleep hygiene, correcting sensory deficit by providing eyeglasses and hearing aids, providing bowel and bladder care, and making efforts toward reorienting confused patients. Nonpharmacological strategies of increasing socialization, counseling, and giving delirious patients a chance to interact with people will help them to a return to normality faster, all of which may not be achievable in these isolated delirium rooms.


In the taxonomy of Coccoidea or scale insects much confusion is due to an insufficient knowledge of the type species of several genera. Especially our knowledge of some of the older genera is very incomplete, as the descriptions of their type species are extremely short and superficial from the modern point of view. The type specimens, on which the original descriptions of the genera were based, are distributed over several museums in all parts of the world; in some cases type material is no longer in existence, and as far as available it is seldom lent to persons in foreign countries. In consequence of this we have often to rely on the original description, as the type material is not available for examination. Signoret (Essai sur les Cochenilles, 1868-1876) was one of the first to describe the microscopical details of the genera and species which he introduced. He boiled his specimens in a solution of caustic potash to make microscopical preparations of the chitinous parts and did not hesitate to prepare even unique specimens ("que nous n'avons pas hesite a sacrifier dans l'interet de la science, tout en conservant les preparations bonnes a consulter, pensant qu'elles seraient ainsi plus utiles qu'une masse informe attachee a un epingle et qui ne peut presenter aucun caractere que l'on puisse enumerer"). In many cases, however, his descriptions are not detailed enough for the needs of present taxonomy. As the number of described species has increased greatly since Signoret's time, it has become necessary to pay attention to several minute details which were formerly of no importance to separate the species then known. In consequence of the superficial descriptions by earlier authors the concepts of several genera are rather vague. Ferris has emphasized that in order


Minimax optimization has been central in addressing various applications in machine learning, game theory, and control theory. Prior literature has thus far mainly focused on studying such problems in the continuous domain, e.g., convex-concave minimax optimization is now understood to a significant extent. Nevertheless, minimax problems extend far beyond the continuous domain to mixed continuous-discrete domains or even fully discrete domains. In this paper, we study mixed continuous-discrete minimax problems where the minimization is over a continuous variable belonging to Euclidean space and the maximization is over subsets of a given ground set. We introduce the class of convex-submodular minimax problems, where the objective is convex with respect to the continuous variable and submodular with respect to the discrete variable. Even though such problems appear frequently in machine learning applications, little is known about how to address them from algorithmic and theoretical perspectives. For such problems, we first show that obtaining saddle points are hard up to any approximation, and thus introduce new notions of (near-) optimality. We then provide several algorithmic procedures for solving convex and monotone-submodular minimax problems and characterize their convergence rates, computational complexity, and quality of the final solution according to our notions of optimally. Our proposed algorithms are iterative and combine tools from both discrete and continuous optimization. Finally, we provide numerical experiments to showcase the effectiveness of our purposed methods.


The effect of interferon-tau on in vitro development of bovine embryos was investigated. After in vitro fertilization, embryos developed to the morula stage were cultured for 3 days in TCM-199 or CR1 medium containing BSA or FCS supplemented with or without recombinant IFN-tau produced by a baculovirus expression system. Addition of baculovirus-expressed IFN-tau (100 ng/ml) significantly promoted development to the blastocyst stage in both culture media. Addition of E. coli expressed IFN-tau (2 microg/ml) also significantly promoted the embryonic development. Supplementation of BSA or FCS did not affect the growth-promoting effect of IFN-tau. To determine whether the growth-promoting effect of IFN-tau is related to the interferon type I receptors that bind to type I interferon such as IFN-alpha, embryos were cultured with IFN-alpha. Although IFN-alpha significantly promoted the development, a much higher concentration (25 microg/ml) was required than IFN-tau. A reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction analysis revealed the expression of mRNA encoded type-I IFN receptor subunit from morula to blastocyst stage embryos. The overall results suggest a novel function for IFNs in promoting embryonic development and the effect may be related to type-I IFN receptor expressed in the early stages of preimplantation embryos.


In this paper, we present a quantitative, trajectory-based method for calibrating stochastic motion models of water-floating robots. Our calibration method is based on the Correlated Random Walk (CRW) model, and consists in minimizing the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) distance between the step length and step angle distributions of real and simulated trajectories generated by the robots. First, we validate this method by calibrating a physics-based motion model of a single 3-cm-sized robot floating at a water/air interface under fluidic agitation. Second, we extend the focus of our work to multi-robot systems by performing a sensitivity analysis of our stochastic motion model in the context of Self-Assembly (SA). In particular, we compare in simulation the effect of perturbing the calibrated parameters on the predicted distributions of self-assembled structures. More generally, we show that the SA of water-floating robots is very sensitive to even small variations of the underlying physical parameters, thus requiring real-time tracking of its dynamics.


Through the evolution of digital media technology, social networks and more recently Web 3.0 (e.g. Cloud-based) technologies, culture and memory is being transformed, both in relation to how memories are represented, and how they may be engaged with or re-accessed.

As digital technology alters ways in which knowledge is produced, stored, connected and shared, new terrains, tools and artefacts are formed; new cultural practices alter the ways in which we remember and the ways in which memory is processed, destabilising traditional "historically encoded social habits: religion, authority, morality, traditional values, or political ideology" (Diamantaki 2013).

This doctoral project consists of two parts exploring questions of memory in contemporary time.
The practice work submitted develops various imaginaries and investigates how to enable mnemonic practices so that works function as memory palaces where bodies and 'collective' and 'networked memories' (Hoskins, 2010) can be realised.

The work, briefly summarised, includes communal activities in public spaces (a series of workshops and heritage day events, Rendezvous, centrally social activities organised between Fabrica and various charitable organisations in Brighton). It includes a series of installation works, as a transitional process of memory between body, object, an investigation of ubiquitous technology, are investigated – iremembr (2009-15); Rendezvous (2010-15); Untitled#21 (2012). And it leads to the development of an installation piece, 22.214.171.124 (2013-15), that seeks to offer or extend the possibilities of the act of remembering, of memory, as a post-Internet experience; a complex temporal, social, spatial and material, overlapping and merging human and silicon memory.

In this, the written component of the combined and larger project, questions concerning memory and digital technology, and how to explore them, are taken up in theoretical terms, and the works I have produced returned to and explored in these contexts. A central project here has been to locate new forms of qualities of 'digital' memory in a memory map or topology that builds on adapts, and develops other models. Aspects of zones of memory are explored centrally in each of the later thesis chapters each of which also takes up a particular aspect of my practice.

The intention – and the contribution to the development of critical thinking around the digital – particularly critical thinking that comes through digital media art practice, is to question how digital technology intervenes in the process of memory; how the concept of digital memory is being thought about; leading me to investigate what does this new digital terrain do as it overlaps and re-writes to some extent the older ones? How does it change 'how memory happens'.

Co-funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the University of Sussex


Habitat selection is a multi-level, hierarchical process that should be a key component in the balance between food acquisition and predation risk avoidance (food–predation trade-off). However, to date, studies have not fully elucidated how fine- and broad-scale habitat decisions by individual prey can help balance food versus risk. We studied broad-scale habitat selection by Newfoundland caribou Rangifer tarandus, focusing on trade-offs between predation risk versus access to forage during the calving and post-calving period. We improved traditional measures of habitat availability by incorporating fine-scale movement patterns of caribou into the availability kernel, thus enabling separation of broad and fine scales of selection. Remote sensing and field surveys served to create a spatio-temporal model of forage availability, whereas GPS telemetry locations from 66 black bears Ursus americanus and 59 coyotes Canis latrans provided models of predation risk. We then used GPS telemetry locations from 114 female caribou to assess food–predation trade-offs through the prism of our refined model of caribou habitat availability. We noted that migratory movements of caribou were oriented mainly towards habitats with abundant forage and lower risk of bear and (to a lesser extent) coyote encounter. These findings were generally consistent across caribou herds and would not have been evident had we used traditional methods instead of our refined model when estimating habitat availability. We interpret these findings in the context of stereotypical migratory behaviour observed in Newfoundland caribou, which occurs despite the extirpation of wolves Canis lupus nearly a century ago. We submit that caribou are able to balance food acquisition against predation risk using a complex set of factors involving both finer and broader scale selection. Accordingly, our study provides a strong argument for using refined habitat availability estimates when assessing food–predation trade-offs.


ABSTRACT Infection with the human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) results in a variety of diseases including adult T-cell leukemia (ATL), a fatal malignancy characterized by the uncontrolled proliferation of virally infected CD4+ T cells. The HTLV-1 basic leucine zipper factor (HBZ) is believed to contribute to development and maintenance of ATL. Unlike the other HTLV-1 genes, the hbz gene is encoded on the complementary strand of the provirus and therefore is not under direct control of the promoter within the 5′ long terminal repeat (LTR) of the provirus. This promoter can undergo inactivating genetic or epigenetic changes during the course of ATL that eliminates expression of all viral genes except that of hbz. In contrast, repressive modifications are not known to occur on the hbz promoter located in the 3′ LTR, and hbz expression has been consistently detected in all ATL patient samples. Although Sp1 regulates basal transcription from the HBZ promoter, other factors that activate transcription remain undefined. In this study, we used a proviral reporter construct deleted of the 5′ LTR to show that HBZ upregulates its own expression through cooperation with JunD. Activation of antisense transcription was apparent in serum-deprived cells in which the level of JunD was elevated, and elimination of JunD expression by gene knockout or shRNA-mediated knockdown abrogated this effect. Activation through HBZ and JunD additionally required Sp1 binding at the hbz promoter. These data favor a model in which JunD is recruited to the promoter through Sp1, where it heterodimerizes with HBZ thereby enhancing its activity. Separately, hbz gene expression led to an increase in JunD abundance, and this effect correlated with emergence of features of transformed cells in immortalized fibroblasts. Overall, our results suggest that JunD represents a novel therapeutic target for the treatment of ATL.


The use of papaver somniferum (from the Latin fero ferre = 'tobear/bring' and somnium = 'sleep') as a narcotic, goes backto the 13th century BC. The works of ancient authors such asDioscorides, Celsus, Galen, Theophrastus and Pliny the Elderprovide us with detailed information about the morphology of theplant, its processing and the administration of the drug.1 Theseauthors make it clear that opium was mainly employed as anodyneand narcotic but they also documented its use as a drug inthe treatment of a variety of ailments, either as one of manyingredients in a medicinal recipe or as the main ingredient.Modern botanical and pharmaceutical analysis of the plant and itsactive ingredients provide us with some surprising conclusionsregarding its effectiveness in the treatment of the medical conditionsfor which it was prescribed in the 1st and 2nd century.


This study provides a snapshot of the availability of weapons across eight omnibus or 'High Street' and 12 specialist darknet or illicit cryptomarkets between July and December 2019. Overall, 2,124 weapons were identified, of which 11 percent were found on niche markets. On all markets, weapons for sale included 1,497 handguns, 218 rifles, 41 submachine guns and 34 shotguns. Also available were ammunition (n=79), explosives (n=37) and accessories such as silencers (n=24). Omnibus markets also sold other weapons (n=70) such as tasers, pepper spray and knives, and digital products (n=112), mostly DIY weapon manuals, as well as chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological weapons (n=12). The data allowed for estimates of the cost of weapons and some description of the 215 vendors identified, 18 (8.4%) of whom were active across more than one market.


Cosmological simulations, as well as mounting evidence from observations, have shown that supermassive black holes play a fundamental role in regulating the formation of stars throughout cosmic time. This has been clearly demonstrated in the case of galaxy clusters in which powerful feedback from the central black hole is preventing the hot intracluster gas from cooling catastrophically, thus reducing the expected star formation rates by orders of magnitude. These conclusions, however, have been almost entirely based on nearby clusters. Based on new Chandra X-ray observations, we present the first observational evidence for massive, runaway cooling occurring in the absence of supermassive black hole feedback in the high-redshift galaxy cluster SpARCS104922.6 + 564032.5 (z = 1.709). The hot intracluster gas appears to be fueling a massive burst of star formation (≈900 M⊙ yr−1) that is offset by dozens of kpc from the central galaxy. The burst is co-spatial with the coolest intracluster gas but not associated with any galaxy in the cluster. In less than 100 million years, such runaway cooling can form the same amount of stars as in the Milky Way. Therefore, intracluster stars are not only produced by tidal stripping and the disruption of cluster galaxies, but can also be produced by runaway cooling of hot intracluster gas at early times. Overall, these observations show the dramatic impact when supermassive black hole feedback fails to operate in clusters. They indicate that in the highest overdensities, such as clusters and protoclusters, runaway cooling may be a new and important mechanism for fueling massive bursts of star formation in the early universe.


Abstract

Objective: the aim was to identify in 511 outpatients, with diagnoses of schizophrenia, major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar disorders (BD), and borderline personality disorder (BPD), what clinical variables predict the improvement of real-world functioning during 12 months of usual treatment.

Methods: sociodemographic variables were evaluated. Patients were assessed at baseline and endpoint with: Clinical Global Impression Scale - Severity (CGI-S); Satisfaction Profile (SAT-P), Drug Attitude Inventory-10 (DAI-10), and Personal and Social Performance (PSP). Statistical analysis was performed with Chi-square test and Pearson's correlation. Significant variables were included in a multiple regression analysis. Dependent variable was the difference of PSP after one year (ΔPSP). P ≤ 0.05 was significant.

Results: in the total sample, ΔPSP was related to age of onset, SAT-P and psychotherapy and inversely related to suicide attempts and CGI-S. In schizophrenia, ΔPSP was related to SAT-P and DAI-10 and inversely related to CGI-S. In MDD, ΔPSP was related to SAT-P and psychotherapy and inversely related to suicide attempts and CGI-S. In BD, ΔPSP was related to SAT-P and inversely related to CGI-S. In BPD, only psychotherapy was related to ΔPSP.

Conclusion: Symptoms severity predicted a worse community functioning in the total sample and in each group, except for BPD. Suicide attempts were inversely associated to functional improvement in the total sample and depression. Quality of life was related to the change of functioning in each group, except for BPD. Patients with MMD and BPD receiving psychotherapy gained a better functional improvement. Attitude to pharmacotherapy was related to functional improvement only in schizophrenia.


Water plays a key role in addressing the most pressing global challenges of our time, including climate change adaptation, food and energy security, environmental sustainability and the promotion of peace and stability. This comprehensive handbook explores the pivotal place of law and policy in efforts to ensure that water enables positive responses to these challenges and provides a basis for sound governance. The book reveals that significant progress has been made in recent decades to strengthen the governance of water resource management at different scales, including helping to address international and sub-national conflicts over transboundary water resources. It demonstrates that 'effective' laws and policies are fundamental drivers for the safe, equitable and sustainable utilization of water. However, it is also shown that what might constitute an effective law or policy related to water resources management is still hotly debated. As such, the handbook provides an important and definitive reference text for all studying water governance and management.


To examine whether personality traits related to psychopathy predict specific forms of sexual aggression in college men, a sample of 378 men completed the Sexual Experiences Survey (SES), the Socialization Scale, and the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Psychopathy Checklist ratings were also available for 63 of these men based on a brief interview. The SES is a self-report measure designed to assess a spectrum of sexually aggressive behavior, ranging from use of argument or a position of power to impel participation in sexual activity, through manipulative intoxication and exploitation of intoxicated persons, to threatening and/or using force. Regression analyses indicated that measures of both dimensions of psychopathy identified in previous research accounted for variance in self-reports of sexual aggression. Moreover, although moderately correlated, the two dimensions predicted different forms of sexual aggression. Implications for studying psychopathic traits in college samples are discussed.


Affinity precipitation is a recent technique for the purification of enzyme. The
precipitation is based upon the interaction between a target enzyme and ligand which
binds to the enzyme in a specific manner. Primary-effect affinity precipitation, in
which precipitation is a direct result of ligand-enzyme binding, has been the focus of
this research.
The n-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM) monomer was synthesized using two methods,
chemical and irradiation grafted process polymerization. The various amount of
mercaptopropionic acid (MPA) to monomer preparation used resulted in hydrophobic
modification of carboxylated poly (NIPAM). Both methods did not have big impact
on the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of polymer but resulted in
conjugation of ligand indicating significant difference in synthesized process A ligand-enzyme system used in this study was p-aminobenzamidine-trypsin
(PABA-trypsin). Initial studies with the PABA-trypsin system succeed to produce
precipitation due to complications with the use of p-aminobenzamidine (PABA) as a
ligand. An affinity precipitant for ligand-polymer was then successfully synthesized
by conjugation of PABA to thermo-sensitive poly (NIPAM). The effect of molecular
weight, reaction time, ligand PABA load, pH condition and addition of NHS on
conjugated PABA-poly (NIPAM) were examined including the amount of ligand
conjugated and dried weight precipitate of polymer. Trypsin as single enzyme was
replaced by enzyme mixture of trypsin and chymotrypsin to evaluate the effect of the
specific interaction ligand-enzyme during affinity precipitation. Both methods of
preparation polymer chemical and irradiation grafted process successfully were used
in the evaluation the reversibility of the precipitation and recovery of the selected
enzyme after precipitation.
PABA conjugated with thermo-sensitive poly (NIPAM) was used in the affinity
precipitation of trypsin. Polymer and ligand concentrations used in conjugate
preparation showed remarkable effect on the trypsin recovery. Trypsin precipitation
efficiency amounted to 97% and recovery was 81% using prepared polymer by
chemical process, and synthesized conjugated poly (NIPAM polymers by irradiation
grafted process show the trypsin precipitation efficiency amounted to 95% and
recovery was 83%.


Abstract. We present a kinetic double-layer surface model (K2-SURF) that describes the degradation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on aerosol particles exposed to ozone, nitrogen dioxide, water vapor, hydroxyl and nitrate radicals. The model is based on multiple experimental studies of PAH degradation and on the PRA framework (Poschl-Rudich-Ammann, 2007) for aerosol and cloud surface chemistry and gas-particle interactions. For a wide range of substrates, including solid and liquid organic and inorganic substances (soot, silica, sodium chloride, octanol/decanol, organic acids, etc.), the concentration- and time-dependence of the heterogeneous reaction between PAHs and O3 can be efficiently described with a Langmuir-Hinshelwood-type mechanism. Depending on the substrate material, the Langmuir adsorption constants for O3 vary over three orders of magnitude (Kads,O3 ≈ 10−15–10−13 cm3), and the second-order rate coefficients for the surface layer reaction of O3 with different PAH vary over two orders of magnitude (kSLR,PAH,O3 ≈ 10−18–10−17 cm2 s−1). The available data indicate that the Langmuir adsorption constants for NO2 are similar to those of O3, while those of H2O are several orders of magnitude smaller (Kads,H2O ≈ 10−18–10−17 cm3). The desorption lifetimes and adsorption enthalpies inferred from the Langmuir adsorption constants suggest chemisorption of NO2 and O3 and physisorption of H2O. Note, however, that the exact reaction mechanisms, rate limiting steps and possible intermediates still remain to be resolved (e.g., surface diffusion and formation of O atoms or O3− ions at the surface). The K2-SURF model enables the calculation of ozone uptake coefficients, γO3, and of PAH concentrations in the quasi-static particle surface layer. Competitive adsorption and chemical transformation of the surface (aging) lead to a strong non-linear dependence of γO3 on time and gas phase composition, with different characteristics under dilute atmospheric and concentrated laboratory conditions. Under typical ambient conditions, γO3 of PAH-coated aerosol particles are expected to be in the range of 10−6–10−5. At ambient temperatures, NO2 alone does not efficiently degrade PAHs, but it was found to accelerate the degradation of PAHs exposed to O3. The accelerating effect can be attributed to highly reactive NO3 radicals formed in the gas phase or on the surface. Estimated second-order rate coefficients for O3-NO2 and PAH-NO3 surface layer reactions are in the range of 10−17–10−16 cm2 s−1 and 10−15–10−12 cm2 s−1, respectively. The chemical half-life of PAHs is expected to range from a few minutes on the surface of soot to multiple hours on organic and inorganic solid particles and days on liquid particles. On soot, the degradation of particle-bound PAHs in the atmosphere appears to be dominated by a surface layer reaction with adsorbed ozone. On other substrates, it is likely dominated by gas-surface reactions with OH or NO3 radicals (Eley-Rideal-type mechanism). To our knowledge, K2-SURF is the first atmospheric process model describing multiple types of parallel and sequential surface reactions between multiple gaseous and particle-bound chemical species. It illustrates how the general equations of the PRA framework can be simplified and adapted for specific reaction systems, and we suggest that it may serve as a basis for the development of a general master mechanism of aerosol and cloud surface chemistry.


Abstract This article presents a general framework for high-dimensional nonlinear variable selection using deep neural networks under the framework of supervised learning. The network architecture includes both a selection layer and approximation layers. The problem can be cast as a sparsity-constrained optimization with a sparse parameter in the selection layer and other parameters in the approximation layers. This problem is challenging due to the sparse constraint and the nonconvex optimization. We propose a novel algorithm, called deep feature selection, to estimate both the sparse parameter and the other parameters. Theoretically, we establish the algorithm convergence and the selection consistency when the objective function has a generalized stable restricted Hessian. This result provides theoretical justifications of our method and generalizes known results for high-dimensional linear variable selection. Simulations and real data analysis are conducted to demonstrate the superior performance of our method. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.


I begin this chapter with an historical overview of the status of the child in education, charting how this has changed over time. From this platform, I turn to the status of the child within educational research and how our efforts to understand children's educational experiences have evolved. The heart of the chapter is devoted to an illumination of these educational experiences through what we know from both adult-led and child-led research and how this impacts on classroom practice and educational theory. The latter part of the chapter addresses some of the difficulties and dilemmas posed by the empowerment of children as researchers. This necessarily explores concepts of voice, participation and power issues. I make a case that we cannot access the reality of children's experiences until we can give them a voice that transcends the unequal power relations of school contexts. One way of addressing this is to empower them as researchers so that they can identify and explore issues that are of interest or concern to them. Children frequently choose to investigate aspects of their school experience and this generates a valuable body of knowledge. I do not wish to suggest that children's own research should supplant or supersede adult research but rather that it complements existing bodies of knowledge. There are many adult studies which genuinely seek children's perspectives and address voice, power and context issues in their methodologies. Such studies openly acknowledge the challenges and difficulties of adults interviewing children (Westcott and Littleton, 2000). Examples of adult research that privilege child perspectives through appropriate methodological design are drawn on alongside illustrative examples of children's own original research studies. The chapter concludes with a look at possible future directions for children as researchers in the classroom


Distance rationalizability is an intuitive paradigm for developing and studying voting rules: given a notion of consensus and a distance function on preference profiles, a rationalizable voting rule selects an alternative that is closest to being a consensus winner. Despite its appeal, distance rationalizability faces the challenge of connecting the chosen distance measure and consensus notion to an operational measure of social desirability. We tackle this issue via the decision-theoretic framework of dynamic social choice, in which a social choice Markov decision process (MDP) models the dynamics of voter preferences in response to winner selection. We show that, for a prominent class of distance functions, one can construct a social choice MDP, with natural preference dynamics and rewards, such that a voting rule is (votewise) rationalizable with respect to the unanimity consensus for a given distance function iff it is a (deterministic) optimal policy in the MDP. This provides an alternative rationale for distance rationalizability, demonstrating the equivalence of rationalizable voting rules in a static sense and winner selection to maximize societal utility in a dynamic process.


My journey of awareness which is an exploration of my identity through design has resulted in a body of artefacts presenting as sculptures and various pieces of jewellery and a written dissertation. The sculptures include bronze castings as well as stoneware ceramic pieces. I produced silver jewellery and vitreous enamelled pieces which include some gold and glass bead detail. Although my sculptures could be considered as fairly small, working on this scale was a new experience to me as a jewellery designer who is used to working on an even smaller scale. I found it challenging to express the necessary emotion and meaning in my work while creating on such a relatively small scale. The body of artefacts is a concrete manifestation of my exploration of identity and was produced as an intuitive expression of memories and emotion. My memories are of personal experiences within a specific cultural and historical context, and the exploration forms part of a critical transformative inquiry. The motivation for this transformative inquiry forms part of a holistic de-fragmentation of my personal and cultural identity in an attempt to construct meaning and authenticity through design. The artefacts were produced in holistic cycles presenting in two distinct phases which are discussed chronologically. I recorded the process and my thoughts and feelings in a reflective journal which included a visual journal in my studio and served as a reference for my discussion of the cycles. I experienced the process of making as a ritualistic enactment of healing and the construction of meaning. In the written and illustrated submission for the award of this degree, I have endeavoured to offer an explanation of my professional and emotional development that formed part of the transformative process. I have chosen not to separate my explanation of my development as a designer and my personal development as it occurred concurrently. Digital imagery of my body of artefacts forms a record of my work offered for exhibition purposes and is included with the written dissertation.


ABSTRACT Objectives: To examine factors that influence decision-making, preferences, and plans related to advance care planning (ACP) and end-of-life care among persons with dementia and their caregivers, and examine how these may differ by race. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Setting: 13 geographically dispersed Alzheimer's Disease Centers across the United States. Participants: 431 racially diverse caregivers of persons with dementia. Measurements: Survey on "Care Planning for Individuals with Dementia." Results: The respondents were knowledgeable about dementia and hospice care, indicated the person with dementia would want comfort care at the end stage of illness, and reported high levels of both legal ACP (e.g., living will; 87%) and informal ACP discussions (79%) for the person with dementia. However, notable racial differences were present. Relative to white persons with dementia, African American persons with dementia were reported to have a lower preference for comfort care (81% vs. 58%) and lower rates of completion of legal ACP (89% vs. 73%). Racial differences in ACP and care preferences were also reflected in geographic differences. Additionally, African American study partners had a lower level of knowledge about dementia and reported a greater influence of religious/spiritual beliefs on the desired types of medical treatments. Notably, all respondents indicated that more information about the stages of dementia and end-of-life health care options would be helpful. Conclusions: Educational programs may be useful in reducing racial differences in attitudes towards ACP. These programs could focus on the clinical course of dementia and issues related to end-of-life care, including the importance of ACP.


Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) has been shown to be a powerful framework for data-efficiently learning control of continuous tasks. Recent work in MBRL has mostly focused on using more advanced function approximators and planning schemes, leaving the general framework virtually unchanged since its conception. In this paper, we identify a fundamental issue of the standard MBRL framework – what we call the objective mismatch issue. Objective mismatch arises when one objective is optimized in the hope that a second, often uncorrelated, metric will also be optimized. In the context of MBRL, we characterize the objective mismatch between training the forward dynamics model w.r.t. the likelihood of the one-step ahead prediction, and the overall goal of improving performance on a downstream control task. For example, this issue can emerge with the realization that dynamics models effective for a specific task do not necessarily need to be globally accurate, and vice versa globally accurate models might not be sufficiently accurate locally to obtain good control performance on a specific task. In our experiments, we study this objective mismatch issue and demonstrate that the likelihood of the one-step ahead prediction is not always correlated with downstream control performance. This observation highlights a critical flaw in the current MBRL framework which will require further research to be fully understood and addressed. We propose an initial method to mitigate the mismatch issue by reweighting dynamics model training. Building on it, we conclude with a discussion about other potential directions of future research for addressing this issue.


Abstract Severe plastic deformation (SPD) techniques are prospective ones having ability for desirable high mechanical properties to be achieved without any chemical change in metals. Equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP), one of SPD techniques, was used to obtain ultra-high mechanical compressive response of stainless steel pyramidal lattice core. For this purpose, the stainless steel 304 L samples were processed by ECAP at 500 °C. Then, it was sliced into struts and built lattice core after bending processes. At the compression tests, the ECAP lattice core has huge mechanical properties, at nearly two times collapse load and energy absorption values.


[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE WAY THEY SEE IT IN MISSISSIPPI, it's an if-life gives-you-lemons-make, lemonade solution. The computer technology that has transformed K-12 classrooms through-out the Magnolia State over the past decade and a half hasn't come with the benefit of any professional tech support, Providing that support is too expensive a proposition--staggeringly so, if you do it right--so budget-strapped districts from Tupelo to Greenville, and from Hattiesburg to Columbia, are enlisting students to fill the gaps. But this is no ad-hoc geek grab; the districts are participating in a state-sponsored initiative called Challenging Regional Educators to Advance Technology in Education (CREATE) for Mississippi. Launched in 2001 under the auspices of the Center for Educational and Training Technology (CETT) at Mississippi State University, the initiative provides, among other things, skills-development pro, grams for cadres of computer-savvy middle and high school students, who troubleshoot the IT in 32 districts across the state. CREATE's Student Tech Team program is a disciplined example of a generally less formal phenomenon with which most K-12 schools are very familiar. In fact, in 2002 the National School Boards Association reported that students were providing IT support in more than half the country's school districts. Groups of specially trained or simply specially inclined students have been helping teachers with their electronic equipment since the AV club began rolling 35-millimeter projector carts into 1960s classrooms on film day. Of course, there's a big difference between untangling a strip of perforated celluloid and sorting out computer glitches--hence the emergence of focused programs such as CREATE. Through CREATE, full-time technology facilitators stationed on-site at the school level train and supervise the Student Tech Teams. The TFs also provide ongoing "just-in-time" technical and instructional support on a daily basis to teachers as they integrate technology into curricula. The TFs train Tech Team members, selected by the school after an application process, to handle a range of tasks, from updating antivirus software to installing computer hardware and troubleshooting malfunctioning gear. The students sort out printer and projector problems, burn CDs and DVDs, and even create instructional PowerPoint presentations designed by teachers. They also mentor their classmates to help them develop their own technology skills. The average size of a CREATE Tech Team for a school with 200 to 300 students ranges between 12 and 16 kids, says CETT Project Manager Betty Latimer. "Sometimes they meet during a particular class period and pick up assignments there," she explains. "In some schools, they come in during their free periods and see what's needed, work on computers with the teachers, or go out into the classroom. It depends on the school." Enlisting trained students to provide technical and instructional support in Mississippi classrooms has provided unique learning opportunities for students, and given many teachers the in-the-trenches support they need to fully embrace the technology, says Latimer. "It's a win-win for the schools and the students," she says. "The program bridges that tech-support gap while giving the kids a chance to develop important skills, take on some real job responsibility, and even learn to deal with the accountability that goes with that responsibility." The CREATE Tech Teams have also reduced equipment downtime in the classroom, says Dan Brook, CETT's project director, which has helped to improve the integration of technology in those very classrooms. "Something as simple as the teacher's not being able to get the projector to run, or the resolution being wrong, can hold up the class in ways that cause the teacher to say, 'Forget it, this doesn't work for me,'" he says. "If teachers have problems with technology, they'll drop it instantly and go on teaching the lesson without it. …


December 4-7, 1995, Portland, Oregon The International Logic Programming Symposium is one of two major international conferences sponsored by the Association of Logic Programming. It is held annually in North America. The theme for the 1995 conference is "Declarative Systems," particularly the integration of the logic programming, functional programming, and object-oriented programming paradigms.Logic Programming series, Research Reports and Notes


How is a right to specific performance of a contract used by parties? Despite longstanding scholarly interest in the topic, this question has been largely left unexplored. This Article presents a qualitative study of parties and attorneys involved in specific performance litigation. It investigates how parties choose between remedies, whether they negotiate after judgment for specific performance, if specific performance is implemented, and the difficulties involved in its implementation.The findings reveal important theoretical oversights and challenges to prevailing law. In practice, many plaintiffs opt out of specific performance. This is puzzling as expectation damages are notoriously under compensatory relative to performance. A primary explanation is that it is harder to execute specific relief than a money judgment. Focusing attention on execution provides a valuable lesson: in exactly these circumstances where U.S. law grants specific performance — unique goods — it is least valuable due to a lack of clear standards by which to evaluate performance. Another explanation is lawyer's bias: attorneys will often advise clients to sue money damages to ensure easy collection of their own fees.Another set of findings reveal that parties think about specific performance in ways that are inconsistent with both economic and rights-based theories. Sometimes plaintiffs will not negotiate a judgment as they will be reluctant to commodify it, in contrast to economic theories, and other times they will treat specific performance instrumentally, to achieve other ends but performance of the contractual promise, which is in tension with rights-based theories. The Article concludes by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of these findings, and highlights the ways in which qualitative research could enrich, challenge, and contextualize contract theory.


Membrane based linear gas sensors and fiber optical sensors feature similar geometries and complement each other in quantities to be measured. To the author's best knowledge, it is the first time that these sensors are combined to a multifunctional sensor for distributed measuring of gas concentrations, temperature, and strain. Objective is a comprehensive monitoring of underground gas storage areas. In the presented project a 400 m2 test site and a corresponding laboratory system were just built up to characterize, validate, and optimize the combined sensor. Application of the sensor lines in a grid structure should enable spatial resolution of the measurement data and early detection of relevant events, as gas leakage, temperature change, or mechanical impact. A Calibration routine was developed which can be applied subsequent to underground installation. First measurement results indicate the potential of the method, with regard to highly topical energy transport and storage issues.


Abstract East Timor gained formal independence in 2002. Its extended history of internal displacement through colonial territorialisation strategies and conflict has produced an array of contesting land claims, informal land use and occupation, and socio-political conflict. Correspondingly, the Timor-Leste (or East Timor) government has looked to formal land registration and titling to resolve historical and contemporary tensions over land. The proposed national land laws concentrate on land ownership, which overlooks the social relations at work to shape local land access and livelihoods. A case study of a rural village, Mulia, forcibly resettled during the Indonesian occupation, demonstrates how settlers negotiate access to customary land for livelihoods despite ongoing land conflicts with the customary landowners. Settlers have continually adapted to broader economic and political constraints to create diverse and multi-local livelihoods, and established a moral economy between themselves, landowners and the local spirit realm. This paper argues that formal land titles are unlikely to resolve the ambiguities and complexities of diverse forms of access to and ownership of land.


Although the new architecture of experimentalist governance has been influential in academic scholarship as well as in policy debates over the last two decades, its actual impact on policymaking is still largely unclear. Specifically, questions about whether, under what conditions and how it influences policymaking processes remain largely unsolved. Without an adequate analysis of experimentalist policymaking, the current scholarship confines our understanding to the diffusion of experimentalist architectures, ultimately resulting in a poor understanding of their effects on policymaking processes. Thus, this thesis seeks to contribute to closing the knowledge gap by identifying conditions in which the Commission engages in experimentalist policymaking. To this end, it makes a number of inductive claims by further developing arguments found in experimentalist and shadow of hierarchy theories and using empirical analysis to follow them through. It studies the case of European Union energy regulation from the beginning of its liberalization and re-regulation in the late 1990s to the present day. The central argument of the thesis is that, when the Commission finds itself in conditions of greater uncertainty, even though the shadow of hierarchy is weaker or the distribution of power is less polyarchic, it engages in experimentalist policymaking by granting discretion to Member States and/or regulated companies to pursue common goals through distinct means, stimulating the comparison of their approaches and providing a basis for agreements on reforms to be developed with high stakeholder participation. Besides extending empirical research on EU energy regulation and contributing to the literature on modes of regulation, this thesis contributes to advancing the study of experimentalist governance in a number of respects. First, it clearly distinguishes experimentalist and hierarchical institutional architectures from policymaking processes by developing a set of indicators which are widely applicable. Second, by identifying patterns of policymaking that are not based on polyarchy, shadow of hierarchy, time or sector, but rather, are consistent with uncertainty, it suggests that uncertainty is an individually sufficient condition for experimentalist policymaking. More broadly, by identifying patterns of policymaking that are not based on specific institutional architectures, it shows that the type of policymaking can vary even if institutional architectures do not change, and hence warns scholars of the need to look beyond institutional design to the ways in which decision-making actually occurs.


Cell killing, oxygen consumption, and hydroperoxide formation were determined in rat hepatocytes after glycolytic and respiratory inhibition. These conditions model the ATP depletion and reductive stress of anoxia ("chemical hypoxia"). Glycolysis was inhibited with iodoacetate, and mitochondrial electron transfer was blocked with sodium azide, cyanide, or myxothiazol. Cell killing, hydroperoxide formation, and inhibitor-insensitive oxygen consumption were greater after azide than after myxothiazol or cyanide. Desferrioxamine, an inhibitor of iron-catalyzed hydroxyl radical formation, delayed cell killing after each of the respiratory inhibitors. Anoxia also delayed cell killing during chemical hypoxia. However, during anoxic incubations, desferrioxamine did not delay the onset of cell death. These findings indicate that reactive oxygen species participate in lethal cell injury during chemical hypoxia. In isolated mitochondria, previous studies have shown that myxothiazol inhibits Q cycle-mediated ubisemiquinone formation in complex III (ubiquinol-cytochrome c oxidoreductase) and that ubisemiquinone can react with molecular oxygen to form superoxide. Decreased killing of hepatocytes with myxothiazol compared with azide suggests, therefore, that mitochondrial oxygen radical formation by complex III is involved in cell killing during reductive stress. In support of this hypothesis, myxothiazol reduced rates of cell killing and hydroperoxide formation in hepatocytes incubated with azide or cyanide. This mitochondrial mechanism for oxygen radical formation may be important in relative but not absolute hypoxia.


This essay offers an economic-history perspective of the long struggle towards macroeconomic stability. The paper is a broad analytical overview of major exogenous shocks and shifts in macroeconomic policy and institutions in Israel since the 1977-1985 great inflation through the global financial crisis and the effects of those shifts on long term growth, inflation, the business cycle, the Phillips curve and related economic developments. The paper will discuss three main issues. The first one on the inflation crisis focuses on the 1985 stabilization and on its impact on subsequent reform of monetary institutions. The second discusses the impact of globalization on growth, inflation and the Phillips curve. The third contains a discussion of the reasons for the relatively good performance of Israel during the 2008 global crisis, including foreign exchange market intervention. Henceforth we highlight: (1) the role of macro-populism in generating hyperinflation; (2) the role of seigniorage revenue in generating the hyperinflation; (3) distributive effects of inflation stabilization, which are political driving forces behind the need for across-the-broad-coalition for a successful stabilization policy; (4) the effects of globalization on the Philips Curve and thereby on domestic inflation-- means of transforming an inflation regime to a one with price stability; (5) the role of financial prudence regulatory institutions, which serve to explain the Israeli macroeconomic robustness in the face of the 2008 external depression-deflation global forces; and, (6) Israel's government-deficit and money-creation experience, which help evaluate recent theory—the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).


Most histories of 20th century design cite Peter Behrens's seminal influence on three of his former proteges - Gropius, Mies, and Le Corbusier - and mention the turbine factory and arc-lamp he designed for the German electric company, the AEG. Now the full story of the extraordinary collaboration between Peter Behrens and the AEG is disclosed in this extensive account of his industrial, graphic, and architectural designs. Illustrated with 600 halftones, 31 line drawings, and 53 fourcolor plates, and augmented by substantial essays, it is one of the most complete documentations of any designers contribution to industry that has been assembled in the modern period. During the years that Behrens worked as artistic director for the AEG, he exercised complete control over the company's image. The resulting "industriekultur" was expressed in everything from factory buildings and worker housing to electric appliances and railroad cars, from graphic communications like signatge and trademarks to letterheads and mailing labels. Behrens's idea that. a company can promote its identity through a consistent design program had repercussions far beyond Germany. Many of today's corporate giants consider design an integral part of their management policies; in Behrens's time, it was still considered a bold and controversial experiment. In addition to the vast array of visual material from the AEG's archives, the book contains essays by Tilmann Buddensieg, Henning Rogge, Fritz Neumeyer, Karin Wilhelm, Gabriele Heidecker, and Sabine Bohle on Behrens's relationship with the AEG's management, his predecessors and successors, the AEG's rise to dominance in the electric industry, and Behrens's design ofexhibitions, graphics, and public utilities. There are also pieces by several of Behrens's contemporaries and a selection of Behrens's own writings appearing for the first time in English. A fully-illustrated appendix with biographical details of the AEG principals, and a comprehensive bibliography and index conclude this rich account. Tilmann Buddensieg is Director of the Art History Program at the University of Bonn, and has been Visiting Professor at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of California, Berkeley.


We propose and describe a physical model of polarization-dependent principal modes (PDPMs) in a given setting of dual-LP11 mode and dual-polarization transmission over weakly guiding few-mode fibers (FMFs). Proof-of-concept numerical simulations illustrate that the PDPMs do not suffer from both mode dispersion and polarization mode dispersion to first order of frequency variation, even in the presence of random spatial- and polarization-mode coupling. The proposed PDPM model can be a basic formalism for analyzing and controlling of mode coupling/dispersion-induced distortion, in the given optical multiple-input multiple-output scheme of dual-LP11 mode and dual-polarization transmission over FMFs.


The surface renewal (SR) method for estimating sensible heat flux density (H) has been shown to give good estimates of evapotranspiratiou (ET) when used in an energy balance equation with net radiation (Rn) and soil heat flux density (G). Measurements have been recorded over grass, wheat, grapevines, and avocado trees. In all cases, good relationships were observed between H estimated using the SR method and determined with a sonic anemometer. For example, the standard error of the estimate (SEE) comparing SR with sonic values for H was approximately 15-20 W m for measurement heights between 0.3 and 1.0 m height over 0.1 m tall grass. The SR analysis is a highly accurate and inexpensive method for estimating H and ET. Only high frequency temperature data are required to estimate H.


A digital delay locked loop (DLL) for 1.2 Gb/s/pin double data rate (DDR) SDRAM is described, which incorporates duty cycle correction (DCC). The DCC locking information is also stored as a digital code for fast wake-up from power-down mode and DCC control is done in an open-loop, enabling fast locking of the DCC loop with minimum additional power consumption. The DLL, implemented in a 0.35 /spl mu/m CMOS technology, provides an output clock with 64 ps peak-to-peak jitter and the accuracy of the DCC is /spl plusmn/0.7% for /spl plusmn/10% input duty error from 250 MHz to 600 MHz clock frequency. The digital DLL, excluding I/O buffers, dissipates 10 mW from a 2.5 V power supply.


OBJECTIVES
The objective of this study was to describe demographic and clinical characteristics including features that were consistent with subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), use of diagnostic tests, emergency department (ED) discharge diagnoses, and disposition of adult patients presenting with an acute headache to EDs statewide across Queensland, Australia. In addition, potential variations in the presentation and diagnostic workup between principal-referral and city-regional hospitals were examined.

METHODS
A prospective cross-sectional study was conducted over 4 weeks in September 2014. All patients ≥ 18 years presenting to one of 29 public and five private hospital EDs across the state with an acute headache were included. The headache had to be the principal presenting complaint and nontraumatic. The 34 study sites attend to about 90% of all ED presentations statewide. The treating doctor collected clinical information at the time of the ED visit including the characteristics of the headache and investigations performed. A study coordinator retrieved results of investigations, ED discharge diagnoses, and disposition from state databases. Variations in presentation, investigations, and diagnosis between city-regional and principal-referral hospitals were examined.

RESULTS
There were 847 headache presentations. Median (range) age was 39 (18-92) years, 62% were female, and 31% arrived by ambulance. Headache peaked instantly in 18% and ≤ 1 hour in 44%. It was "worst ever" in 37%, 10/10 in severity in 23%, and associated with physical activity in 7.4%. Glasgow Coma Scale score was < 15 in 4.1%. Neck stiffness was noted on examination in 4.8%. Neurologic deficit persisting in the ED was found in 6.5%. A computed tomography (CT) head scan was performed in 38% (318/841, 95% CI = 35% to 41%) and an lumbar puncture in 4.7% (39/832, 95% CI = 3.4% to 6.3%). There were 18 SAH, six intraparenchymal hemorrhages, one subdural hematoma, one newly diagnosed brain metastasis, and two bacterial meningitis. Migraine was diagnosed in 23% and "primary headache not further specified" in 45%. CT head scans were more likely to be performed in principal-referral hospitals (41%) compared to city-regional hospitals (33%). The headache in patients presenting to the latter was less likely to be instantly peaking or associated with activity, but was no less severe in intensity and was more frequently accompanied by nausea and vomiting. Their diagnosis was more likely to be a benign primary headache. Variations in CT scanning could thus be due to differences in the case mix. The median (interquartile range) ED length of stay was 3.1 (2.2 to 4.5) hours. Patients was discharged from the ED or admitted to the ED short-stay unit prior to discharge in 57 and 23% of cases, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
The majority of patients had a benign diagnosis, with intracranial hemorrhage and bacterial meningitis accounting for only 3% of the diagnoses. There are variations in the proportion of patients receiving CT head scans between city-regional and principal-referral hospitals. As 38% of headache presentations overall underwent CT scanning, there is scope to rationalize diagnostic testing to rule out life-threatening conditions.


While boards of directors are usually recognized as having the potential to affect strategic change in organizations, there is considerable debate as to whether such potential is typically realized. We seek to reconcile the debate on whether boards are typically passive vs. active players in the strategy realm by developing a model that specifies when boards are likely to influence organizational strategy and whether such an influence is likely to impel vs. impede change. Specifically, we develop arguments as to when certain demographic and processual features of boards imply a greater inclination for strategic change, when these features imply a greater preference for the status quo, and how differences in such inclinations will influence strategic change. We then also propose that a board's inclination for strategic change interacts with a board's power to affect change, generating a multiplicative effect on strategic change. These ideas are tested using survey and archival data from a national sample of over 3000 hospitals. The supportive findings suggest that strategic change is significantly affected by board demography and board processes, and that these governance effects manifest themselves most strongly in situations where boards are more powerful. We discuss these findings in terms of their relevance for theories of demography, agency, and power. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This book by Roger W. Shuy, the senior figure in forensic linguistics, is the first to explain in an accessible way the vital role that linguistic evidence and its proper analysis play in criminal investigations. Shuy provides compelling case studies of how language functions in investigations involving, among others, wired undercover operatives, and the interrogation of suspects. He makes the point that language evidence can be as important as physical evidence, but yet does not enjoy the same degree of scrutiny by investigators, attorneys, and the courts. Beyond this, however, his more controversial thesis is that police frequently misuse or manipulate language, using various powerful controversial strategies, in order to intentionally create an impression of the targets' guilt or even to get them to confess. attorneys, law enforcement officers, judges, and juries This book makes its case by analyzing a dozen criminal cases involving a variety of crimes, such as fraud, bribery, stolen property, murder, and others. About half involve co-operating witnesses who do the tape recording, and the other half undercover police officers. These cases demonstrate how undercover operatives use different conversational strategies, such as overlapping conversation, ambiguity, interruption, refusing to take "no" for an answer, and others to create a negative impression of the targets on later listeners. Creating Language Crimes provides a fascinating window into a little-known and discussed facet of law enforcement. It will appeal to anyone concerned with language (particularly sociolinguists and discourse analysts), as well as to those involved in law enforcement and criminal cases. the appearance of such crime is created, law enforcement has not reached its evidentiary goal. Eleven conversational strategies were used in the twelve actual criminal cases described in this book.


As container transport volumes continue to grow, the sea flow generates almost proportional inland flow; the links with hinterland will become critical factors for the seaports functionality. Intermodal transport with dry ports could be a potential solution for seaport terminal congestion as well as for better seaport inland access that might be based on short haul rail. Intermodal transport is generally considered to be viable on markets with larger flows or longer distances; however, due to cost of congestion, growing environmental constraints, but also due to competition between seaports, the break-even distance for inland intermodal transport could be very market dependent. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to analyse effects of directional development of dry ports on sustainability of intermodal transport based on a short haul rail. Some of the studied ports in Australia and New Zealand, with their close intermodal terminals based on Outside-In model; show feasibility of intermodal transport with shorter break-even distances.


Abstract: It is essential for law students to acquire knowledge about the applicable general rules of law. A major source of applicable rules within the Dutch legal system is, next to statutes, the category of decisions by judges. Law students experience difficulties with finding, reading and comprehending these decisions. CASE (Case Analysis and Structuring Environment) is an instructional environment developed to support students in finding, reading, structuring and analyzing decisions by judges. CASE presents the student an environment in which she can practice with finding, reading, structuring and analyzing a decision in order to determine in what way this decision adds to the body of applicable legal rules. CASE can be used by law teachers to store selected decisions by judges and to add key words and by law students to search, structure and analyze decisions by judges.


Current forests no longer resemble historical open forest ecosystems in the eastern United States. In the absence of representative forest ecosystems under a continuous surface fire regime at a large scale, reconstruction of historical landscapes can provide a reference for restoration efforts. For initial expert-assigned vegetation phases ranging from prairie to forest across the Missouri Ozarks landscape, we reconstructed historical (1815 to 1850) forest densities, basal area, percent stocking or growing space, and canopy cover. After examination of structural means and ranges by initial expected vegetation phases, we classified vegetation phases based on percent stocking boundaries of 30–55% for open woodlands and 55–75% for closed woodlands (diameters ≥ 12.7 cm). We suggest that a percent stocking boundary of 10% may separate prairie and savannas, but we did not identify any large scale prairies in Missouri. We provided structure of each vegetation phase for restoration targets; mean historical densities of vegetation phases ranged from 81 trees/ha in savannas to 285 trees/ha in non-oak/non-pine forests (diameters ≥ 12.7 cm). Due to greater densities than expected and larger diameter trees than current forests, historical forests may have been primarily (about 65%) woodlands with nearly closed canopies, unlike the open canopies presumed during settlement in the Missouri Ozarks. However, a closed yet single canopy layer can transmit enough light to sustain an herbaceous ground cover, given an open midstory due to frequent surface fires. Restoration of open woodlands across all public lands is not practical, but restoration of lower density forests composed of drought-tolerant tree species should translate to management for changing climate.


Directive 2009/28/EC established a common framework for the use, production and promotion of energy from renewable sources. Subsequently, each European Union Member State was required to prepare a national Renewable Energy Action Plan (REAP) which specifies the share of energy from renewable sources to be consumed in transport, as well as in the production of electricity and heating, in 2020. The Hungarian REAP was published in December 2010. In order to identify what further steps are required to meet the targets set by the REAP, in this article we review the current situation and the potential in Hungary for the production and use of biomass, biogas and biofuel. We conclude that the annual quantity of required biomass is already available and it should be possible to meet the demand for solid biomass for direct combustion without the need for significant areas dedicated to energy crops. The establishment of biogas power plants is determined both by electricity generation and by waste management considerations. Targeted financial support and new regulations are required to promote the injection of upgraded biogas into the natural gas grid. Hungary has great potential to produce first generation biofuels, particularly ethanol, not only for domestic needs but also for export.


In June 2016, the United Kingdom held an in/out referendum on membership in the European Union resulting in a narrow victory for Euroskeptics. Historically, Britain has been notably a Euroskeptic nation, and the following analysis of Britain's relationship with the European Union will explore the implications of Brexit in context with Euroskepticism. This analysis is a result of previous research on the British vote to the leave the European Union and draws substantially on research in the fields of voting patterns, behavior and social identity, and Britain's unique characteristics which culminated in the vote to leave the EU. As a result, this paper intends to rely heavily on historical implications of Euroskepticism as well as recent literature on the theories of Euroskeptic voting, demographics, and the history of the relationship between the UK and the EU. The conclusions of the paper wrap up the overall analysis of Euroskepticism, arriving at the conclusion that populist and anti-globalist sentiments driven by political parties such as United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) mobilized Euroskepticism, allowing for a philosophy to transform into effective policy change. Furthermore, this analysis concludes with an understanding of the main driving factors in Britain's unique position in leaving the European Union being economic and social. This conclusion is substantiated by a constituency-based analysis which utilized materials such as demographic data, voter turnout and result data in order to quantify Euroskepticism and its impact on the top constituencies which voted to leave the EU.


Search space splitting and portfolio are the two main approaches used in parallel SAT solving. Each of them has its strengths but also, its weaknesses. Decomposition in search space splitting can help improve speedup on satisfiable instances while competition in portfolio increases robustness. Many parallel hybrid approaches have been proposed in the literature but most of them still cope with load balancing issues that are the cause of a non-negligible overhead. In this paper, we describe a new parallel hybridization scheme based on both search space splitting and portfolio that does not require the use of load balancing mechanisms (such as dynamic work stealing).


Routes of migration and exchange are important factors in the debate about how the Neolithic transition spread into Europe. Studying the genetic diversity of livestock can help in tracing back some of these past events. Notably, domestic goat (Capra hircus) did not have any wild progenitors (Capra aegagrus) in Europe before their arrival from the Near East. Studies of mitochondrial DNA have shown that the diversity in European domesticated goats is a subset of that in the wild, underlining the ancestral relationship between both populations. Additionally, an ancient DNA study on Neolithic goat remains has indicated that a high level of genetic diversity was already present early in the Neolithic in northwestern Mediterranean sites. We used coalescent simulations and approximate Bayesian computation, conditioned on patterns of modern and ancient mitochondrial DNA diversity in domesticated and wild goats, to test a series of simplified models of the goat domestication process. Specifically, we ask if domestic goats descend from populations that were distinct prior to domestication. Although the models we present require further analyses, preliminary results indicate that wild and domestic goats are more likely to descend from a single ancestral wild population that was managed 11,500 years before present, and that serial founding events characterise the spread of Capra hircus into Europe.


Using the mTAIL-PCR method, we have isolated the two CYC-like genes, SiCYC1A and SiCYC1B, from zygomorphic and actinomorphic cultivars of Saintpaulia ionantha respectively in Gesneriaceae. The two genes, SiCYC1A and SiCYC1B, from the zygomorphic cultivar both contain the whole regulation domain, i.e. TCP and R domains. Therefore, they should be functional in the floral symmetry establishment, homologous with CYC in Antirrhinum majus. Unexpectedly, the two genes from the actinomorphic cultivar are identical to those from the zygomorphic in DNA sequence, respectively. Based on comparative analysis of the molecular alteration at CYC-like genes, which are responsible for the morphological transformation from zygomorphy to actinomorphy, we suggest that the two closely related genes SiCYC1A and SiCYC1B might be regulated by a common upstream regulator, whose change would result in silence of both SiCYC1A and SiCYC1B in controlling the development of the adaxial and lateral organs in a flower. In addition, an mTAIL-PCR method was shown to have the technological advantages of the unknown sequence for isolation.


The main aim of the report is to give a general picture of the present condition of welfare in Italy, also extended to its relationship with the economic recession.
However, he analysis is focused on several sectors, even though really important, which are health, social assistance, social housing. It is also focused on specific cases regarding some policies in the field of education, work and social security (i.e. aid for students with disabilities and family benefits). This choice is due primarily to the will to leave out of the study most of the education and work sector (including social security, strictly related to the work policies), which are generally regulated and managed on the basis of their own particular needs.
The final goal of the report is to try to answer the following questions arising from the existing legal framework:
- is there a general trend to reduce social welfare entitlements? If so, is such a trend conditioned, to any extent, by ex ante planning (policies) or it is only driven by emergency reasons? What is the role played by fiscal federalism and the constitutional reform regarding the budget balance?
- Are public authorities reducing their participation in granting social services and rights?
- What is the relationship between the above mentioned trend and the economic recession? Did such a trend start before the financial crisis?
- What are the role and limits of the administrative discretion in distributing benefits and/or services with the aim of granting social rights? What is the relationship between this discretion and the bureaucratic rules in the implementation of the welfare policies? Are the two models opposed to each other? What is, if existing, the extent and quality of citizens participation in the administrative decision-making process about their entitlements? Can the above mentioned models and participation affect the approach of the courts when considering the challengers of rights bearers?
- Why in Italy is there not a general Welfare Agenda such as that existing in the UK?


Humanity is racing to find designed solutions to our
environmental crisis. But what if designing itself
was the cause of the crisis? This book argues that
design, including 'sustainable' design, is at
the heart of our crisis of unsustainability. Only
when design's complicity in this crisis is
understood, can sustainable human environments be
conceived. Using the work of the controversial
philosopher Martin Heidegger, this book constructs a
radically different understanding of the design
process. With this understanding, design in modernity
is shown to be the engine of consumption of the
Earth. Ironically, the conviction that that we can
find designed solutions to our crisis of
unsustainability may be the real danger facing the
Earth. For those interested in design and design
theory, this book offers a fundamentally different
account of the design process. For those interested
in Heideggerian thought, this book uses design
to explore the 'positive role' of consciousness
hinted at, but rarely investigated, in Heidegger's
work. For those concerned about our crisis of
unsustainability, this book offers a new way to
conceive the forces accelerating the crisis.


Latin America's bold fiscal policy reaction to the global financial crisis was hailed as a sign that the region had finally overcome its procyclical fiscal past. However, most countries of the region have not yet rebuilt their fiscal space, despite buoyant commodity revenues and relatively strong growth in the aftermath of the crisis. Using the experience of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay, this paper examines the lessons and legacies of the crisis by addressing the following questions, among others: How much did the 2009 fiscal stimulus help growth? What shortcomings were revealed in the fiscal policy frameworks? What institutional reforms are now needed to provide enduring anchors for fiscal policy? How much rebuilding of buffers is needed going forward?


Findings about consumer decision-making process regarding GM food purchase remain mixed and are inconclusive. This paper offers a model which classifies willingness to purchase GM food, using data from 399 surveys in Southern Spain. Willingness to purchase has been measured using three dichotomous questions and classification, based on attitudinal, cognitive and socio-demographic factors, has been made by an artificial neural network model. The results show 74% accuracy to forecast the willingness to purchase. The highest relative contributions lie in the variables related to beliefs, especially those link to perceived risks; while the variables with the least relative contribution are age and knowledge on GMO.