The influence of trigonometric cosine, square, sawtooth, and triangular wave types of magnetic-field modulation in nanoliquid within Hele-Shaw cell is studied in this paper utilizing linear/nonlinear explorations. The solvability condition to the third-order solution of the referred model equation has been imposed to get the cubic Ginzburg–Landau equation (GBL-equation) which is utilized to measure the rate of heat (or mass) transfer. In the sequel, the influence of the nondimensional parameters is discussed graphically in detail. It is demonstrated that Prandtl number (Pr)/magnetic Prandtl number (Prm)/Lewis-number (Le)/redefined diffusivity-ratio (NA)/concentration Rayleigh-number (RS1) and magnitude of the magnetic-modulation (δ) destabilize the system, that is, the heat/mass transfer increases. On the other hand, nanoliquid magnetic-number (Q), Hele–Shaw number (Hs), and modulating-frequency (ω) stabilize the system. The outcomes demonstrate that the magnetic-field modulation can be imposed significantly to increase or decrease the heat/mass transfer.


a Includes genotype 1a resistance-associated substitutions at amino acid positions 28, 30, 31, or 93 known to confer antiviral resistance. b This is a 3-tablet coformulation. Please refer to the prescribing information. c The dose of daclatasvir may need to be increased or decreased when used concomitantly with cytochrome P450 3A/4 inducers and inhibitors, respectively. Please refer to the prescribing information and the section on HIV/HCV coinfection for patients on antiretroviral therapy.


PLATEGA: PLAtaforma de TEleformacion de Galicia (Galician Tele-education Platform) is the e-learning system provided by the Education department of the Regional Government of Galicia in north west Spain. This paper presents the main functionality of this platform, outlining the most outstanding characteristics, together with the challenges found during its design and development and some data about its use by real users.


Introduction The poor, children, and individuals with disabilities are the most vulnerable to nature's wrath when hazards such as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and tornado occur. The socioeconomic conditions worsen after the disaster leaving the already impoverished poorer than they were before the natural disaster. The last few years have demonstrated that no place or no one in the world is immune from natural or created disasters. From the tsunami in India, from the devastation caused by hurricanes, fires, flooding, and cyclones in the United States, grave flooding in Europe and Asia, terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe, and wars in Iraq. Millions of people have lost their lives, and experienced devastation in their socio-economic stance due to disasters, natural or man-made. The poor are the most vulnerable and suffer the most under these conditions. During disasters, the level of adequate services and infrastructure further complicates the survival efforts for those most impoverished. Transportation is a major resource and used to evacuate. For the poor, lack of transportation, financial inability to purchase city or public transportation makes evacuation impossible and leaves the poor at greater risk for fatalities during hazards turned disaster. Cities are highly vulnerable to natural crises and disasters. A sudden supply shortage of disaster safety supplies such as shelter, food, water, and medical resources, can leave a city and its citizens with many environmental and social burdens which can quickly lead to more serious medical, mental health, and social protective emergencies. The consequences of such crises are multiplied by poorly coordinated administration and planning. Natural disasters have become more frequent and more severe during the last two decades, affecting a number of large cities (see Figure 1). The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) reports that, between 1980 and 2000, 75 per cent of the world's total population lived in areas affected by a natural disasters. (1) In 1999, there were over 700 major natural disasters, causing more than 100 billion dollars in economic losses and thousands of victims, mostly poor. Further, over 90 per cent of losses in human life from natural disasters around the world occurred in poor countries. Lately, most poverty conditions result from natural disasters due to limited level or preparedness to evacuate and preparedness to recover from a natural hazard turned disaster. The purpose of this study is to examine levels of preparedness and capacity to rebuild after a disaster has occurred. Conditions of Poverty and Defined Poverty There are a number of direct and indirect causes of poverty in the United States. These are mental health and disability conditions, lack of education attainment and skill, substance abuse, domestic abuse, crime, limited job opportunities, and especially, natural or created disasters. Of the poor, most represent a significant subgroup of race and ethnic group, such as African American, Latino, and Hispanics. The salary of low-income families with children are used to measure the economic standards for this statistic which indicate that 21% of all children in the United States live in poverty, but 46% of African American children and 40% of Latino children live in poverty. (2) Compared to other countries, New Mexico presents the highest level of poverty, followed by Slovakia, and the United Kingdom. The United States ranks 5th in levels of poverty compared to other countries (see Figure 1). The poverty rate in the United States is one of the highest among the industrialized developed world (3). However, careful analysis shows that this is due to different measures of poverty in these nations. In 2001 the poverty rate for minors in the United States was the highest in the industrialized world, with 14.8% of all minors and 30% of African American minors living below the poverty standards. …


Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) is a common chronic pain condition that has a profound effect on the individual. Aerobic exercise is important in the management of FMS, however, many are unable to tolerate exercise interventions. A focus group study was designed to investigate the individual and collective experiences of barriers to exercise for people with FMS. Following ethical approval, participants were recruited purposively from patient support groups. Inclusion criteria were: adults who had been formally diagnosed with FMS and who had participated in an exercise intervention for FMS. Focus groups were video and audio recorded, and facilitated by a physiotherapist with experience in qualitative data collection. At the end of the study descriptive summaries were sent to participants for verification, the data were transcribed verbatim and the transcripts were anonymised, coded and analysed for thematic content by three independent evaluators. The interaction (verbal and non-verbal) between the participants was also analysed.Fourteen people participated in the focus groups (women, n = 12; men, n = 2) and data saturation was reached. The over-arching theme to emerge was a lack of understanding of the condition by others (family, friends and health care professionals), and society in general. This was mirrored by the analysis of the verbal and non-verbal interactions between participants. Normal activities of daily living (such as housework) were perceived as exercise and participants reported that the negative and often prolonged effects of exercise or physical activity were not appreciated by others.


The ZEPHYRUS computer model has been developed to calculate sonic boom propagation through a realistic, nonturbulent atmosphere [L. Robinson, Ph. D. thesis, Univ. of Texas at Austin (December 1991)]. A technique is presented to extend this model to include the effects of a turbulent atmospheric ground layer on the shape of sonic boom waveforms. Ray theory is used to model the effects of refraction and subsequent folding of the wave front by an instantaneous realization of the turbulence. The problem of maintaining wave‐front coherence and efficient eigenray identification algorithms are discussed. A Monte Carlo method is used to form a statistical ensemble of predicted sonic boom waveforms. These results are compared with characteristics observed in sonic boom measurements. [Work supported by NASA−Langley.]


We present measurements of photon time-of-flight distributions for a 9-ps, 532-nm laser pulse traveling through Intralipid suspensions and compare the measurements with the results of Monte Carlo simulations that yield the corresponding temporal point-spread function. We show that to obtain satisfactory agreement of experiments and simulation results, one must assume a quadratic dependence of the scattering coefficient on the Intralipid concentration.


Vessel-source marine pollution is one of the main sources of marine pollution in Bangladesh. Due to unfettered operation of vessels, the country has been exposed to massive pollution that is causing a serious imbalance in the marine environment. Against this backdrop, this article seeks to demonstrate that the regulatory system of Bangladesh should be strengthened and made more effective in the light of international instruments to ensure the conservation and sustainable management of its marine environment. With this aim the article examines the present status of implementation of the MARPOL Convention in Bangladesh


Laptops have been around since the 1980s, but the revolution in smaller handheld computing devices has given organisations many opportunities to develop and expand their enterprise information systems while posing a number of new challenges to designers and users. The use of handheld devices removes many of the traditional constraints associated with using corporate information systems through stationary computers. However, this newfound freedom may lead to major and unexpected changes in human behaviour and social interaction amongst handheld users and their clients. This paper reports on some implementation experience in the use of handheld computing devices in a major Australian healthcare provider. The case study shows that the social interaction between system users and between system users and their clients may be impacted significantly by the use of handheld devices. The case study further highlights the importance of understanding the social impact of using handheld devices in situations where the service delivered by the organisation depends on a personal relationship between system users and their clients.


Versatile, safe, shelf-stable, and easy-to-handle fluorinating agents are strongly desired in both academic and industrial arenas, since fluorinated compounds have attracted considerable interest in many areas, such as drug discovery, due to the unique effects of fluorine atoms when incorporated into molecules. This article describes the synthesis, properties, and reactivity of many substituted and thermally stable phenylsulfur trifluorides, in particular, 4-tert-butyl-2,6-dimethylphenylsulfur trifluoride (Fluolead, 1k), as a crystalline solid having surprisingly high stability on contact with water and superior utility as a deoxofluorinating agent compared to current reagents, such as DAST and its analogues. The roles of substituents on 1k in thermal and hydrolytic stability, fluorination reactivity, and the high-yield fluorination mechanism it undergoes have been clarified. In addition to fluorinations of alcohols, aldehydes, and enolizable ketones, 1k smoothly converts non-enolizable carbonyls to CF(2) groups, and carboxylic groups to CF(3) groups, in high yields. 1k also converts C(=S) and CH(3)SC(=S)O groups to CF(2) and CF(3)O groups, respectively, in high yields. In addition, 1k effects highly stereoselective deoxofluoro-arylsulfinylation of diols and amino alcohols to give fluoroalkyl arylsulfinates and arylsulfinamides, with complete inversion of configuration at fluorine and the simultaneous, selective formation of one conformational isomer at the sulfoxide sulfur atom. Considering the unique and diverse properties, relative safety, and ease of handling of 1k in addition to its convenient synthesis, it is expected to find considerable use as a novel fluorinating agent in both academic and industrial arenas.

acs-specific: authorchoice/editors choice usage agreement


The main causes of death in most early childhood mortality are diseases which are preventable and curable. This is the reason why childhood mortality is treated as a development issue rather than a simple health problem. Ethiopia is among the places where the rate of such deaths is high, which is an indication of the poor quality of life that its people have. It is important to study the important factors of childhood mortality and design intervention in order to improve the situation. This study attempts to identify the important factors of childhood deaths by using the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey conducted in 2011. We have fitted an instrumental variable probit model to identify the structural relation between childhood mortality and maternal, child specific and household related variables. Maternal education, maternal age at first birth, total number of children ever born, access to facilities like toilet, safe water, radio and electricity turned out to be inversely related to childhood mortality while boys, multiple births, dirt floor houses and the use of pollutant cooking fuels are related positively. Key words : Child, Under-five, Mortality, Death, IV-probit , Ethiopia


This essay argues that current Equal Protection doctrine fails to recognize an important conceptual distinction between two types of discrimination. Current doctrine is inadequate, according to the author, because it treats all discrimination cases as if they were instances of only one of these types. As a result, the Supreme Court mistreats discrimination cases of the forgotten variety. The author draws a distinction between proxy and non-proxy discrimination. Proxy discrimination uses the classification in the law as a means to reach a set of persons with a different, correlated trait. Non-proxy discrimination, by contrast, aims at the set defined by the classification itself. Because each has a distinct aim, each requires an examination of different moral issues. The author argues that current Equal Protection doctrine is suited for proxy discrimination only. Non-proxy cases are forced into an inappropriate doctrinal scheme with two unfortunate results. First, the Court focuses its attention on irrelevant issues and second, the Court fails to address the real and important issues that cases of non-proxy discrimination present. At the close of the Essay, the author sketches a new theory for non-proxy cases and demonstrates how this theory casts familiar issues like affirmative action and single-sex education in a new light.


We demonstrate that intracavity frequency doubling of Nd:YVO(4) pumped by a laser diode can be stabilized by use of a wavelength-locking system of the laser diode with a transmission-type optical filter in a confocal optical configuration. The wavelength locking of the laser diode to the peak wavelength of the absorption spectrum of Nd:YVO(4) yielded stable green light of 10-mW power for an incident pumping power of 55 mW.


The dissipative dynamics of an expanding massless gas with constant cross section in a spatially flat Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) universe is studied. The mathematical problem of solving the full nonlinear relativistic Boltzmann equation is recast into an infinite set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations for the moments of the one-particle distribution function. Momentum-space resolution is determined by the number of nonhydrodynamic modes included in the moment hierarchy, i.e., by the truncation order. We show that in the FLRW spacetime the nonhydrodynamic modes decouple completely from the hydrodynamic degrees of freedom. This results in the system flowing as an ideal fluid while at the same time producing entropy. The solutions to the nonlinear Boltzmann equation exhibit transient tails of the distribution function with nontrivial momentum dependence. The evolution of this tail is not correctly captured by the relaxation time approximation nor by the linearized Boltzmann equation. However, the latter probes additional high-momentum details unresolved by the relaxation time approximation. While the expansion of the FLRW spacetime is slow enough for the system to move towards (and not away from) local thermal equilibrium, it is not sufficiently slow for the system to actually ever reach complete local equilibrium. Equilibration is fastest in the relaxation time approximation, followed, in turn, by kinetic evolution with a linearized and a fully nonlinear Boltzmann collision term.


This article demonstrates that there are more similarities between peacekeeping and counter-insurgency than often recognized. In today's 'war among the people', the counter-insurgent cannot succeed with offensive military capabilities alone and must seek to apply also non-kinetic and defensive methods; whereas the peacekeeper often is forced to apply 'robust' and kinetic means to implement a mandate. As a result, the two concepts seem to be converging and share some commonalities. The article compares the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations 'capstone doctrine' and the US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual to argue that the two doctrines share similarities in six areas: (1) a focus on civilian solutions; (2) a need for protection of civilians; (3) international coherence; (4) host-nation ownership; (5) use of intelligence in support of operations; (6) limitations on the use of force. The article suggests areas where the two doctrines could mesh with each other.


The reaction kinetics of gasification are important for the design of gasifiers using biomass feedstocks, such as lignin, produced in biorefinery processes. Condensed and uncondensed lignin samples used in the present study were prepared using the SEW (SO2-ethanol-water) fractionation process applied to spruce wood chips: the dissolved lignin is precipitated during the recovery of SO2 and ethanol from the spent fractionation liquor. The gasification of char made from condensed and uncondensed SEW lignin was investigated using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) at atmospheric pressure using either CO2 or steam. The main aim of this study was to quantify the reaction rate during the gasification process, which was found to be best described as zero-order. All experiments were performed at constant temperatures between 700 and 1050 °C to obtain the necessary information for describing the reaction rate equation in an Arrhenius form; the heating rate was 20 °C/min for both samples. The experiments led to almost similar results for both samples. The activation energies of CO2 gasification were approximately 160 kJ/mol and 170 kJ/mol for uncondensed and condensed lignin char, respectively. The activation energies of steam gasification were approximately 90 kJ/mol and 100 kJ/mol for uncondensed and condensed lignin char, respectively.


There are various contexts in which it would be desirable to have an
FTP command that had the effect of the present STOR but rather than
requiring the sender to specify a file name istead caused the
resultant file to have a unique name relative to the current
directory. This RFC proposes an extension to the File Transfer
Protocol for the ARPA-Internet community, and requests discussion and
suggestions for improvements. See RFC-959.


CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY: WHY GERMANY LEADS AND THE UNITED STATES LAGS By Kristin Kesling University of New Hampshire, May 2008 Thesis Director: Professor Aline Kuntz Why is climate change a top priority on the political agenda in Germany and not a top priority on the political agenda in the United States? This study seeks to answer this question by examining the evolution of climate change policy in both countries. Analyzing Germany's and America's environmental movement, the thesis points to several theories which include the European Union and cultural values. However, it is the nations' political structures/institutions and their post WWII foreign policy views that most determine where climate change policy stands on each country's political. agenda. The analysis concludes with a possible outlook on America's environmental leadership.


Natural Language Processing (NLP) is concerned with processing ordinary, unrestricted text. This work takes a new approach to a traditional NLP task, using neural computing methods. A parser which has been successfully implemented is described. It is a hybrid system, in which neural processors operate within a rule based framework. The neural processing components belong to the class of Generalized Single Layer Networks (GSLN). In general, supervised, feed-forward networks need more than one layer to process data. However, in some cases data can be pre-processed with a non-linear transformation, and then presented in a linearly separable form for subsequent processing by a single layer net. Such networks ooer advantages of functional transparency and operational speed. For our parser, the initial stage of processing maps linguistic data onto a higher order representation , which can then be analysed by a single layer network. This transformation is supported by information theoretic analysis. Three diierent algorithms for the neural component were investigated. Single layer nets can be trained by nding weight adjustments based on (a) factors proportional to the input, as in the Perceptron, (b) factors proportional to the existing weights, and (c) an error minimization method. In our experiments generalization ability varies little; method (b) is used for a prototype parser. This is available via telnet.


From ten patients with advanced malignant disease involving the bone marrow, autologous hematopoietic stem cells were collected from the peripheral blood during eight four-hour pheresis procedures and cryopreserved. No manipulations to increase the number of stem cells circulating in the blood were used during the collections. Following marrow ablative chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy, the autologous cells were thawed and infused intravenously (IV). WBCs reappeared in the circulation at a median of eight days (range seven to 11 days) after stem cell infusion. Two patients died early, whereas the other eight reached normal numbers of circulating granulocytes that have persisted for up to greater than 20 months. These eight patients became independent of RBC transfusions (hemoglobin concentration greater than 10 g/dL) at a median of 27 days (range 11 to 58 days) after transplantation. One patient received platelet transfusions for counts less than 50 x 109)/L, one patient developed a clinical picture of idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, and six patients maintained a platelet count greater than 20 x 10(9)/L at a median of 23 days (range 14 to 25 days) following stem cell infusion. This technique allows patients ineligible for autologous bone marrow transplantation due to unacceptable anesthetic risks, prior pelvic irradiation, or bone marrow metastases to receive marrow ablative therapy.


Combining social and political history, The Plebeian Republic challenges well-established interpretations of state making, rural society, and caudillo politics during the early years of Peru's republic. Cecilia Mendez presents the first in-depth reconstruction and analysis of the Huanta rebellion of 1825–28, an uprising of peasants, muleteers, landowners, and Spanish officers from the Huanta province in the department of Ayacucho against the new Peruvian republic. By situating the rebellion within the broader context of early-nineteenth-century Peruvian politics and tracing Huanta peasants' transformation from monarchist rebels to liberal guerrillas, Mendez complicates understandings of what it meant to be a patriot, a citizen, a monarchist, a liberal, and a Peruvian during a foundational moment in the history of South American nation-states.

In addition to official sources such as trial dossiers, census records, tax rolls, wills, and notary and military records, Mendez uses a wide variety of previously unexplored sources produced by the mostly Quechua-speaking rebels. She reveals the Huanta rebellion as a complex interaction of social, linguistic, economic, and political forces. Rejecting ideas of the Andean rebels as passive and reactionary, she depicts the barely literate insurgents as having had a clear idea of national political struggles and contends that most local leaders of the uprising invoked the monarchy as a source of legitimacy but did not espouse it as a political system. She argues that despite their pronouncements of loyalty to the Spanish crown, the rebels' behavior evinced a political vision that was different from both the colonial regime and the republic that followed it. Eventually, their political practices were subsumed into those of the republican state.


A currently burgeoning literature in planning and policy studies engages with the travel of policy models across countries and sites through novel concepts such as policy translation, policy mobility, and mutations. Increasingly, this literature calls for ethnographic methods to study the travel of policy models. Such methods require various degrees of researcher's participation in the policy process. As a result, ethnographers become entangled in complex webs of relationships during and after their fieldwork, which introduces political and ethical dimensions to ethnographic fieldwork. The literature on policy mobilities and translation, however, has provided few practical guidelines regarding the politics and ethics of conducting ethnographic research. Based on two vignettes from our research experiences in China and Turkey, we discuss the politics and ethics of applying ethnography to policy translation and offer a number of hints for future researchers.


The issue of how best to do a legal education is being approached as if it were an intellectual and pedagogical question. Of course in a conceptual sense it is. But from a political and human perspective (law faculty, deans and lawyers) it is a self-interested situation in terms of how does this affect me? The reality is that for law faculty and deans it is mainly a life style, status, economic benefit and political situation in which the various interests protected by the traditional faculty slot placeholders (as well as the non-traditional practice-oriented teachers) are being masked by self-serving language best described as "high rhetoric". My point is that as some lawyers have told me, "people would kill to have your job." That is disturbingly close to being accurate. And if that is true then it offers a useful insight that "people would probably do almost anything to keep that job" once they have become part of the incredibly comfortable academic system inhabited by the American law professor. If we were critiquing any system other than the one in which we work, law professors (as lawyers) would immediately evaluate that other system based on the effects of the inevitable sense of entitlement, privilege, self-interest, bias and resistance to change that affects any system. A central dynamic operating against real change in legal education is the very high level of individualized self-interest that characterizes the amazing job of the American law professor. This individualized self-interest produces a set of inchoate "work rules" that is at least as powerful as the work rules under which many labor unions operate. The rules allow the law professor unaccountable "space" to do whatever he or she desires in teaching, research, and external activity. This allows too many members of law faculties to treat their lucrative and privileged positions as a part-time job. As I suggest in this brief essay, very few beneficiaries of such a system voluntarily seek to alter its highly favorable terms of operation or are able to fully withstand the seductions of its privileges and perquisites. Most engage in convenient rationalizations that prevent real change because that would require them to lose the privileges and impose greater accountability and responsibility. A result of the intense self-interest in which the American law professor operates is that recommendations that law school be modified to be more "practical", implement clinical programs and incorporate courses such as Trial and Appellate Advocacy, Dispute Resolution, Negotiation, Interviewing and Counseling, Transactional work and so forth will not be accepted as significant across-the-board educational reforms. Arguments aimed at achieving substantial improvements in legal education have been around for four or five decades. It isn't as if the premises of those arguments were obscure and a "great cloud of unknowing" suddenly stripped away. It is amusing to see people "reinventing the wheel" and acting as if they have suddenly achieved an intellectual epiphany that allows them to understand that American law schools are in fact in the business of educating people to become effective practitioners and responsible and principled professionals. But even though there is a strong likelihood that in many instances the new attitudes being trumpeted are little more than cynical or desperate public relations devices rather than actual shifts in pedagogical mission and educational strategies, they may offer hope for significant reform. If so this will be due to the sheer desperation being experienced in many law schools as enrollments plummet, lawyers and recent graduates protest, and parent universities become unwilling to subsidize their law schools.


Tetrahydropapaveroline is a benzyltetrahydroisoquinoline alkaloidderivative of the biogenic amine, dopnmine. Alcohol, by way of its primary metabolite, acetaldehyde, competitively inhibits nicotinamide-adenine Sinucleotide-linked aldehyde dehydrogenase and augments the formation of tetrahydropapaveroline in vitro. The limited capacity of brain to oxidize aldehydes may be of pharmacological importance because it facilitates the production of tetrahydropapaveroline in the presence of drugs which inhibit this enzyme.


Relative to advanced cathode materials, anode materials have become one of the key factors to hamper the performance improvement of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Recently, two-dimensional (2D) transition metal carbides (e.g. MXenes) have drawn great attention due to their high Li storage ability. However, metal-rich 2D transition metal carbides as anodes usually need surface functionalization, leading to a decrease in the rate performances. Here, we propose that increasing the carbon composition in 2D TaxCy is beneficial for not only eliminating surface functionalization but also greatly improving battery performance. First-principles swarm structural searches were used to explore structures and stabilities of 2D TaxCy (x = 1 and y = 1–4, or x = 2 and y = 1). Besides reproducing the reported 2D TaC, TaC2 and Ta2C are found to be stable, and have high thermal stabilities. Metallic TaC2 and Ta2C provide good electronic conductivity. Intriguingly, carbon-rich TaC2 contains carbon dimers exposed on the surface, enabling it to directly adsorb Li atoms. After adsorption of two-layer Li atoms, its structural integrity is well preserved. The resultant specific capacity, diffusion energy barrier, and open-circuit-voltage (OCV) of TaC2 are much better than those of commercial graphite, f-Ti3C2 or the Ti2C monolayer. Compared with TaC2, TaC, and Ta2C as anode materials, the overall performance of carbon-rich TaxCy is better. Our work provides a useful strategy for designing new-type 2D transition metal materials for LIBs.


Congress inserted language into the final 2013 spending bill last week that jeopardizes the future of political science research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The language prohibits NSF from spending any money on political science "except for research projects that the [NSF director] certifies as promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States." Now NSF, which provides 95% of the government9s overall support for academic political science, is in a difficult position. Should it continue with business as usual for the $11 million program and risk antagonizing Congress? Or should it fund only those projects that clearly meet the criteria and disregard many important topics in the field?


As quantum technologies advance, the ability to generate increasingly large quantum states has experienced rapid development. In this context, the verification and estimation of large entangled systems represent one of the main challenges in the employment of such systems for reliable quantum information processing. Though the most complete technique is undoubtedly full tomography, the inherent exponential increase of experimental and post‐processing resources with system size makes this approach infeasible even at moderate scales. For this reason, there is currently an urgent need to develop novel methods that surpass these limitations. This review article presents novel techniques focusing on a fixed number of resources (sampling complexity), and thus prove suitable for systems of arbitrary dimension. Specifically, a probabilistic framework requiring at best only a single copy for entanglement detection is reviewed, together with the concept of selective quantum state tomography, which enables the estimation of arbitrary elements of an unknown state with a number of copies that is low and independent of the system's size. These hyper‐efficient techniques define a dimensional demarcation for partial tomography and open a path for novel applications.


We report observations and measurements of the inscription of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) in two different types of microstructured polymer optical fiber: few-mode and an endlessly single mode. Contrary to the FBG inscription in silica microstructured fiber, where high-energy laser pulses are a prerequisite, we have successfully used a low-power cw laser source operating at 325 nm to produce 1 cm long gratings with a reflection peak at 1570 nm. Peak reflectivities of more than 10% have been observed.


The aim of this study was to determine the relationships between socio-demographic variables, promotion and appropriate leadership style in the hospitality industry in China and Australia. In doing so it responds to the Australian Government's recent review of hospitality training and the industry's recognition of the need for strong, high-calibre leadership in an industry that is a major contributor to GDP. Investigation of leadership styles in China and Australia is particularly relevant in the context of a new free trade agreement between the two countries and the potential for growth in the tourism sector.

The current study is a transnational, cross-cultural investigation of the relationship between leaders' socio-demographic characteristics, leadership style, and their subsequent career progression in the hospitality industry in Australia and China. A quantitative method (i.e. a survey of four- and five-star internationally branded hotels) and positivist approach were taken to collect and analyse the data. A two-part questionnaire utilising the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire was distributed in English in Australia and translated into Chinese for distribution in China. The sample of 1,000 participants consisted of 500 from each country. A suite of differential statistics were employed to identify differences between cohorts based upon; age, level of education, ethnicity, family composition, rank, relationship status and sex. Data filtering was undertaken to quarantine out age, rank and sex differences to further assess three key homogenised cohorts of managers in both Australia and China.

The study, as the first of its kind in a hospitality context, makes numerous contributions to the existing knowledge base. First, it provided a comprehensive and critical analysis of the development of leadership theory and its inadequate application in the hospitality industry. Second, it identified the effect of leaders' socio-demographic attributes on the factors in the Full Range Leadership Model. Third, the impact of leadership style on career outcomes were investigated. Finally, it identified differences, and possible explanations for them, between Chinese and Australian leaders and between male and female leadership styles.

The study concluded that leadership remains a complex issue, and contrary to previous research, contingent reward styles appeared to be preferred as the best approach to leadership in a hospitality setting, in both Australia and China. The transactional element of Contingent Reward showed a very strong correlation with transformational leadership styles reinforcing emerging research and affirming its role as a positive aspect of modern hospitality management.

The findings identified that there were more similarities between males and females than differences. However, Australian males and females were more transformational than their Chinese counterparts.

In light of the findings, Australians have gained a deeper understanding of how Chinese approach leadership. This is of benefit to Australia in terms of becoming more 'China literate' and, therefore, job-mobile – two key areas of focus in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's 'Vision 2025: China strategy'. From a Chinese perspective, the research provides an opportunity for potential migrants and hospitality and tourism investors alike to understand the differences between China and Australia in terms of leadership and how this may affect working relationships.

The research has produced key insights for the academic community, leaders and managers working in hotels and the hospitality industry. For the academic community, it raises questions about the type of training that can best equip graduates to respond to the needs of the industry. For industry, it highlights the determinants of desirable leadership practices in the context of growing convergence of hospitality management education and practice across national boundaries as the operations and standards of transnational corporations become universally accepted.


High-entropy (H-E) alloys, bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) and high-entropy BMGs (HE-BMGs) were statistically analyzed with the help of a database of ternary amorphous alloys. Thermodynamic quantities corresponding to heat of mixing and atomic size differences were calculated as a function of composition of the multicomponent alloys. Actual calculations were performed for configurational entropy (Sconfig.) in defining the H-E alloys and mismatch entropy (Ss) normalized with Boltzmann constant (kB), together with mixing enthalpy (DHmix) based on Miedema's empirical model and Delta parameter (d) as a corresponding parameter to Ss/kB. The comparison between DHmix–d and DHmix– diagrams for the ternary amorphous alloys revealed Ss/kB ~ (d /22)2. The zones S, S′ and B's where H-E alloys with disordered solid solutions, ordered alloys and BMGs are plotted in the DHmix–d diagram are correlated with the areas in the DHmix – Ss /kB diagram. The results provide mutual understandings among H-E alloys, BMGs and HE-BMGs.


Coastal environments are important in many ways: they provide food and energy for coastal communities, have a variety of unique biologic habitats, and influence global climate. These environments can change due to either anthropogenic or natural phenomena over a wide range of time scales. However, the often overlooked long-term (centennial to millennial) processes may be hidden behind short-term fluctuations observed today. The need for a reference baseline of coastal habitats provides a new opportunity for paleontology, which is ideally equipped to document the long-term trends and reconstruct historical and ancient environments and communities. However due to taphonomic processes such as decay and diagenesis, there will always be some bias inherent to the fossil record. This bias has been often viewed as a negative aspect, undermining the utility of paleontological data for retrieving ecological and environmental records. Yet, fossils are still one of the best sources of direct data about the past faunas and their ecosystems. To overcome the biases introduced by the fossilization process, researchers have used observations and experiments in modern systems as models to compare fossil deposits, a method called actualistic paleontology. Over recent years, such actuopaleontological approaches have been used increasingly to exploit distinct signatures of fossil deposits in environmental reconstructions, quantify effects of anthropogenic processes on invertebrate faunas and regional ecosystems, and even augment archaeological studies Three studied included in this dissertation exploit different aspects of paleontological techniques to study coastal systems, including both Recent and fossil settings. Two of the studies use modern environments to serve as models for investigating preservation potential and potential biases that affect subfossil and fossil assemblages forming in intertidal environments, from whether certain fauna will be preserved to the biases inherent in a shell deposit. The final study, conducted at a fine geologic resolution, focuses on the morphology of a fossil ancestor of an extant mactrid bivalve that is ecologically important in many present-day coastal habitats and well-studied by ecologists and malacologists. The study attempts to quantify morphological effects of environmental changes that occur over geological time scales.


Abstract. We present comprehensive results on continuous atmospheric cluster and particle measurements in the size range ~1–42 nm within the European Integrated project on Aerosol Cloud Climate and Air Quality interactions (EUCAARI) project. We focused on characterizing the spatial and temporal variation of new particle formation events and relevant particle formation parameters across Europe. Different types of air ion and cluster mobility spectrometers were deployed at 12 field sites across Europe from March 2008 to May 2009. The measurements were conducted in a wide variety of environments, including coastal and continental locations as well as sites at different altitudes (both in the boundary layer and the free troposphere). New particle formation events were detected at all of the 12 field sites during the year-long measurement period. From the data, nucleation and growth rates of newly formed particles were determined for each environment. In a case of parallel ion and neutral cluster measurements, we could also estimate the relative contribution of ion-induced and neutral nucleation to the total particle formation. The formation rates of charged particles at 2 nm accounted for 1–30% of the corresponding total particle formation rates. As a significant new result, we found out that the total particle formation rate varied much more between the different sites than the formation rate of charged particles. This work presents, so far, the most comprehensive effort to experimentally characterize nucleation and growth of atmospheric molecular clusters and nanoparticles at ground-based observation sites on a continental scale.


Lead-Acid battery was the earliest secondary battery to be developed. It is the battery that is most widely used in applications ranging from automotive to industrial storage. Nowadays it is often used to store energy from renewable energy sources. There is a growing interest to continue using Lead-Acid batteries in the energy systems due to the recyclability and the manufacturing infrastructure which is already in place. Due to this rising interest, there is also a need to improve the efficiency and extend the life cycle of Lead-Acid batteries. To achieve these objectives, it is necessary to gain a better understanding of the physics taking place within individual batteries. A physics based computational model can be used to simulate the mechanisms of the battery accurately and describe all the processes that are happening inside; including the interactions between the battery elements, based upon the physical processes that the model takes into account.In the present paper, we present a discharge/charge experimental study that has been carried out with small Lead-Acid batteries (with a capacity of 7 Ah). The experiments were performed with a constant current rate of 0.1C [A]1 for two different battery arrangements.An in-house zero dimensional model was developed to perform simulations of Lead-Acid batteries under different operating conditions. A validation analysis of the model was executed to confirm the accuracy of the results obtained by the model compared to the aforementioned experiments. Additional simulations of the battery were carried out under different current rates and geometry modifications in order to study how the performance of the battery may change under these conditions.Copyright © 2016 by ASME


After Norway's entry into the Leauge of Nations in 1920, Norway approached Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia, the four powers which had guranteed the integrity of Norway in 1907, with a proposal to abrogate the integrity treaty. thenegotiations proved far more complex than had been expected. Largely owing to Soviet objections no solution could be reached until 1924, andthe treaty did not finally lapse until 1928.

This study shows how Norwegian diplomacy drew the country unwittingly into the ideological antagonism between its two powerful neighbours, Great Britain and Soviet Russia. Through the use of British and Soviet sources it also reveals much about the political and strategic preoccupations of the two great powers in the early 1920s, and suggests taht there was a continuity in Soviet attitudes towards Norway extending wll into the Cold War period.


For more than a century, skin lighteners have been a ubiquitous feature of global popular culture—embraced by consumers even as they were ercely opposed by medical professionals, consumer health advocates, and antiracist thinkers and activists. In Beneath the Surface, Lynn M. Thomas constructs a transnational history of skin lighteners in South Africa and beyond. Analyzing a wide range of archival, popular culture, and oral history sources, Thomas traces the changing meanings of skin color from precolonial times to the postcolonial present. From indigenous skin-brightening practices and the rapid spread of lighteners in South African consumer culture during the 1940s and 1950s to the growth of a billion-dollar global lightener industry, Thomas shows how the use of skin lighteners and experiences of skin color have been shaped by slavery, colonialism, and segregation as well as by consumer capitalism, visual media, notions of beauty, and protest politics. In teasing out lighteners' layered history, Thomas theorizes skin as a site for antiracist struggle and lighteners as a technology of visibility that both challenges and entrenches racial and gender hierarchies.


Abstract A summary of the 1976 season is presented. Included are seasonal statistics, storm tracks and comparisons with activity in recent years.


Background and Purpose: Spirituality is one of the important aspects of well-being and is an effective factor for human adaptation with chronic diseases. The present study aimed to evaluate spiritual well-being status and investigate its relationship with demographic characteristics of hemodialysis patients. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted in 56 patients (age range: 35-91 years) undergoing hemodialysis in the dialysis center of Ilam, Iran, during 2014. Spiritual well-being was evaluated using Spiritual Well-Being Scale, which is proved to be a reliable and valid instrument. Results: Findings of this study showed that 10.7% of the patients had high level of spiritual well-being, while 42.9% had low level of spiritual well-being. In addition, mean score of spiritual well-being was higher in patients with university education, employees, and those with high levels of knowledge, income, and family support (P<0.05). Conclusion: In the process of health care provision, taking personal characteristics and spiritual aspect of patients into account can help patients to adapt to different stages of their disease and might improve patient compliance to treatment. Spirituality plays an important role in patients' adaptation to chronic diseases. Therefore, it is mandatory to focus more attention on spiritual health status of patients and empowering health care professionals to enhance patients' spiritual well-being.


The principal agents of Fusarium head blight in the main cropping area of Argentina were investigated in heavily infected samples. The ability of the isolates to produce trichothecenes was determined by GC and HPLC. Fusarium graminearum was the predominant species and of 33 isolates, 10 produced deoxinivalenol (DON) (0.1- 29 mg kg-1), 13 produced both deoxinivalenol (1.0- 708 mg kg-1) and nivalenol (0.1- 6.2mg kg-1), 12 produced 3-acetyldeoxinivalenol (0.1- 14 mg kg-1), 13 produced 15-acetyldeoxinivalenol (0.1- 1.9 mg kg-1), 10 produced Fusarenone X (0.1- 2.4 mg kg-1) and 7 produced zearalenone (0.1- 0.6 mg kg-1). These results suggest that F. graminearum strains isolated from the wheat growing regions in Argentina belong to DON chemotype. Although some strains produced both deoxinivalenol and nivalenol, nivalenol was produced in lower levels. The natural occurrence of nivalenol in wheat affected by head-blight collected in the main production area during two years (2001-2002) was also determined. From 19 samples 13 were contaminated with deoxinivalenol in a range of 0.3 to 70 mg kg-1and 2 samples with both deoxinivalenol (7.5 and 6.7 mg kg-1) and nivalenol (0.05 and 0.1 mg kg-1), respectively. This is the first report of natural occurrence of nivalenol in wheat cultivate in Argentina.


Abstract It is estimated that there is a total of approximately 100,000 species in Korea. However, the number is currently about 30,000 and only 16,027 species are listed in the 'Species Korea' (as of December, 2014). Of the listed species, 51 species are designated as the Endangered Species Class I while 195 species are in the Class II, totaling 246 endangered species including 20 mammals. Under the circumstances that development (e.g., roads) is increasingly threatening the persistence of endangered mammals, it is significant to identify and preserve suitable habitats for them. In this context, evaluating the values of the suitable habitat environment would serve as essential information for development decision making. This study estimated the values of endangered mammals' forest habitats through spatialization of habitat services. In doing so, a species distribution model, Maximum Entropy Model (MaxEnt) was utilized for a group of endangered mammals including, mountain goat, wildcat, marten cat, and flying squirrel. To calculate the values per unit area, a benefit transfer method was used based on the point-estimate technique with the best available values estimated previously. The range of discount rate of 3.0 to 5.5 percent was applied taking the notion of social discount rate into account. As a result, the province with the highest values for endangered mammal habitats appeared to be Gangwon, followed by Gyeongbuk and Gyeongnam. The monetary values of the endangered mammal habitats were estimated to be 330 billion to 421 billion won per year.Key Words: endangered mammals, habitat, values per unit area, benefit transfer method, social discount rate


There is increasing evidence for successful management of end-stage heart failure with continuous-flow left ventricular assist device (CF-LVAD) technology. However, passive flow adjustment at fixed CF-LVAD speed is susceptible to flow balancing issues as well as adverse hemodynamic effects relating to the diminished arterial pulse pressure and flow. With current therapy, flow cannot be adjusted with changes in venous return, which can vary significantly with volume status. This limits the performance and safety of CF-LVAD. Active flow adjustment strategies have been proposed to improve the synchrony between the pump and the native cardiovascular system, mimicking the Frank–Starling mechanism of the heart. These flow adjustment strategies include modulation by CF-LVAD pump speed by synchrony and maintenance of constant flow or constant pressure head, or a combination of these variables. However, none of these adjustment strategies have evolved sufficiently to gain widespread attention. Herein we review the current challenges and future directions of CF-LVAD therapy and sensor technology focusing on the development of a physiologic, long-term active flow adjustment strategy for CF-LVADs.


Faculty of Science Department of Computer Science Doctor of Philosophy by Imran Achmed Supervisor: I. M. Venter Co-supervisor: P. Eisert Hand motion provides a natural way of interaction that allows humans to interact not only with the environment, but also with each other. The effectiveness and accuracy of hand-tracking is fundamental to the recognition of sign language. Any inconsistencies in hand-tracking result in a breakdown in sign language communication. Hands are articulated objects, which complicates the tracking thereof. In sign language communication the tracking of hands is often challenged by the occlusion of the other hand, other body parts and the environment in which they are being tracked. The thesis investigates whether a single framework can be developed to track the hands independently of an individual from a single 2D camera in constrained and unconstrained environments without the need for any special device. The framework consists of a three-phase strategy, namely, detection, tracking and learning phases. The detection phase validates whether the object being tracked is a hand, using extended local binary patterns and random forests. The tracking phase tracks the hands independently by extending a novel data-association technique. The learning phase exploits contextual features, using the scale-invariant features transform (SIFT) algorithm and the fast library for approximate nearest neighbours (FLANN) algorithm to assist tracking and the recovering of hands from any form of tracking failure. The framework was evaluated on South African sign language phrases that use a single hand, both hands without occlusion, and both hands with occlusion. These phrases were performed by 20 individuals in constrained and unconstrained environments. The experiments revealed that integrating all three phases to form a single framework is suitable for tracking hands in both constrained and unconstrained environments, where a high average accuracy of 82,08% and 79,83% was achieved respectively.


The objective of neoliberal globalization, as noted by various observers, is not the improvement of global health and wellbeing but the expansion of deregulated markets in international trade and investment, a characteristic affirmed and illustrated in this article through an examination of the global commoditization of turkey tails and the role of world trade institutions and policies in this process. The article, a contribution to the political ecology of health, assesses the deleterious factors that stem from trade in this fatty commodity as it flows from poultry farms in the U.S. into the indigenized diets and changing bodies of people in several developing nations in the Pacific, Ghana, and beyond. Key words: Neoliberal trade, global food commodities, food culture, political ecology of health, Pacific islands.


In this paper I test the predictions of a conjecture formulated in Belletti (2008), according to which the distinction between subject and non-subject clefts as answering strategies should not hold in languages in which information focus and contrastive focus are both realized in the left periphery of the sentence. I discuss the results of an experiment on Sicilian, specifically designed to test the acceptability of the cleft construction in relation to fronting. The analysis of the results confirms an interesting correlation between fronting and clefting, whereby languages resorting to FF as a generalized focus strategy only marginally admit clefts. At the same time, it endorses the necessity, at the basis of Belletti's analysis, of distinguishing between subject and non-subject clefts.


We propose an effective protocol for preparation of four-photon polarization-entangled decoherence-free states with quantum nondemolition detectors. The protocol is based on optical elements, single polarization photons, and cross-Kerr nonlinearity, which are feasible with existing experimental technology. Compared with previous protocols, the present one is to replace the entangled-state resources with much simpler single-photon resources and has a higher success probability. All these advantages make this protocol more efficient and more convenient than others in the applications in quantum communication.


William Albright's Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano amply demonstrates the stylistic eclecticism for which he is famous. The four movements exhibit distinct characters and musical languages, including references to compositional practices of the past, as in the two-part invention of the first movement and the follia of the second, and allusions to American popular music, as in the bebop sections of the finale. This polystylistic compositional approach also invites a variety of analytical techniques, including investigation into form, motivic development, register, texture, and pitch usage. This study, the first of its kind on Albright's sonata, examines these characteristics in each movement and across the entire work, and offers suggestions for the performers based on the analysis.


Clustering is an exploratory method that is widely used for analyzing similarity of data objects. Clustering helps biologist in identifying functional similarity of genes. Most of the techniques employed for clustering genes need prior knowledge of the number of feasible clusters. Here we propose a novel hybrid approach towards gene clustering, which implements Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique to find out closely related clusters by exploring the domain knowledge from gene ontology. The proposed approach is validated using the benchmark dataset and compared the performance with standard community detection algorithms. The results are promising and able to derive meaningful clusters from the dataset.


We consider a methodology to optimally obtain reconfigurations of spacecraft formations. It is based on the discretization of the time interval in subintervals (called the mesh) and the obtainment of local solutions on them as a result of a variational method. Applied to a libration point orbit scenario, in this work we focus on how to find optimal meshes using an adaptive remeshing procedure and on the determination of the parameter that governs it.


This paper presents an empirical assessment of the endogenous optimum currency area theory. This study relies on the original intuition developed by Mundell in 1973. The gravity model is used to empirically assess the effectiveness of the convergence criteria by examining location specific advantages that guide multinational investment within the European Union. A fixed effects model based on a panel data of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows within the EU-15 shows that horizontal investment promotes the diffusion of the production process across the national border. Specifically, the examined Maastricht criteria suggest convergence in interest rate, government fiscal policy, and debt play a significant role in attracting multinational investment.


Notice of NIH Policy to All Applicants: Meeting rosters are provided for information purposes only. Applicant investigators and institutional officials must not communicate directly with study section members about an application before or after the review. Failure to observe this policy will create a serious breach of integrity in the peer review process, and may lead to actions outlined in NOT-OD-14-073 and NOT-OD-15-106, including removal of the application from immediate review.


Confinement of light in nano-scale region of three silver nanocylinder pairs is studied by finite-difference time-domain simulations. Light is confined in gaps between nanocylinders due to localized plasmon excitation and the strongest local-field enhancement exhibits in the gap of the second pair. The surface plasmon resonance has red-shift for nanocylinders of larger radius. The resonance wavelength and local-field enhancement are nearly proportional to the radius of nanocylinders in visible light region, i.e., the plasmon resonance of nanocylinder pairs is predictable and controllable. An open cavity model is proposed to understand the linear relation between the resonant wavelength and the radius of nanocylinders.


A B S T R A C T Insights into the human mitochondrial phylogeny have been primarily achieved by sequencing full mitochondrial genomes (mtGenomes). In forensic genetics (partial) mtGenome information can be used to assign haplotypes to their phylogenetic backgrounds, which may, in turn, have characteristic geographic distributions that would offer useful information in a forensic case. In addition and perhaps even more relevant in the forensic context, haplogroup-specific patterns of mutations form the basis for quality control of mtDNA sequences. The current method for establishing (partial) mtDNA haplotypes is Sanger-type sequencing (STS), which is laborious, time-consuming, and expensive. With the emergence of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies, the body of available mtDNA data can potentially be extended much more quickly and cost-efficiently. Customized chemistries, laboratory workflows and data analysis packages could support the community and increase the utility of mtDNA analysis in forensics. We have evaluated the performance of mtGenome sequencing using the Personal Genome Machine (PGM) and compared the resulting haplotypes directly with conventional Sanger-type sequencing. A total of 64 mtGenomes (>1 million bases) were established that yielded high concordance with the corresponding STS haplotypes (<0.02% differences). About two-thirds of the differences were observed in or around homopolymeric sequence stretches. In addition, the sequence alignment algorithm employed to align NGS reads played a significant role in the analysis of the data and the resulting mtDNA haplotypes. Further development of alignment software would be desirable to facilitate the application of NGS in mtDNA forensic genetics.


We review progress in quasi-phase-matched optical parametric oscillators in bulk periodically poled LiNbO3. Using the electric-field poling process, we can reliably fabricate 0.5-mm-thick crystals with uniform domain structures over a 15-mm length. Periodically poled material retains the low-loss and bulk power handling properties of single-domain LiNbO3, and quasi phase matching permits noncritical phase matching with d33, the highest-valued nonlinear coefficient. Optical parametric oscillators pumped by 1.064-μm pulsed Nd:YAG lasers have been operated over the wavelength range 1.4–4 μm with tuning by temperature or by quasi-phase-matched period. We have shown an oscillation threshold as low as 0.012 mJ with a Q-switched pump laser and pumping at greater than ten times threshold without damage. We have also demonstrated a cw doubly resonant oscillator near 1.96 μm pumped directly with a commercial cw diode laser at 978 nm.


Based on a summary and discussion of our previous studies of media portrayals of gender and alcohol in relation to the general, societal discourses of risk and pleasure, we aim to develop the gender theoretical understanding of alcohol as a health issue. We argue that even though the media provide various implicit or explicit instructions for women on how to act, both warnings and encouragements to drink are framed within basic gendered assumptions that concern women's dealing with alcohol. Because of this, the discourses that construct women's drinking as either risky or pleasurable are in fact not separate, but rather two sides of the same coin. Drawing on this analysis, we argue that much of the research on alcohol consumption and sex difference – and in particular on women's drinking – lacks in its understanding of the gendered ideas and assumptions that frame and influence these practices.


The Frequency Sweep Method for the evaluation of structures by dynamic load testing was developed by the senior author. It is a non-destructive testing (NDT) method that was originally developed for testing of airport pavements. The application has been expanded so that bridge structures and piles can also be satisfactorily tested. It is an in-depth inspection technique that can be used to determine the actual capacities of structures and their component members for costs comparable to visual, judgmental type inspections. After a brief discussion of the historical background, the basic theory for the procedure is presented and the equipment used described. Examples are given of applications which cover pavements, several types of bridge structures and piles. In conclusion, the advantages of the method are summarized and additional applications suggested.


Football match-fixing in Greece has a relatively long history, however, from the late 1990s it has been considered as a serious problem for the sport in the country. Despite the history of the phenomenon in the country, Greece has only relatively recently been identified as one of the hotspots for football match-fixing on an international level. Following the recent scandal exposure of fixed matches in Greece in 2011, also known as Koriopolis (a pun name on the Italian scandal Calciopolis and the Greek word 'korios' or phone-tap), detailed information about numerous matches played in the 2008/09, 2009/10 and 2010/11 seasons that attracted UEFA's attention were brought into the public eye. Soon after, legal action was taken against individuals involved in the process, with a number of club officials facing lifelong bans from any footballrelated activity, and football clubs either relegated or excluded from European competitions and the Super League itself for their involvement in the scandal. In May 2013, the number of people facing charges exceeded 200, with some of them having already been imprisoned for their involvement in the scandal. Following the aforementioned scandal exposure, a vast amount of information regarding football match-fixing was made available to the public. The aim of the current article is to provide an account of the social organisation of football match-fixing in Greece. Our account is based on three main sources of data: the telephone conversations that were the result of wiretapping by the National Intelligence Agency in relation to the latest football match-fixing scandal (of 2011), published media sources, and interviews with informed actors from the realm of Greek football.


PSpice for Circuit Theory and Electronic Devices is one of a series of five PSpice books and introduces the latest Cadence Orcad PSpice version 10.5 by simulating a range of DC and AC exercises. It is aimed primarily at those wishing to get up to speed with this version but will be of use to high school students, undergraduate students, and of course, lecturers. Circuit theorems are applied to a range of circuits and the calculations by hand after analysis are then compared to the simulated results. The Laplace transform and the s-plane are used to analyze CR and LR circuits where transient signals are involved. Here, the Probe output graphs demonstrate what a great learning tool PSpice is by providing the reader with a visual verification of any theoretical calculations. Series and parallel-tuned resonant circuits are investigated where the difficult concepts of dynamic impedance and selectivity are best understood by sweeping different circuit parameters through a range of values. Obtaining semiconductor device characteristics as a laboratory exercise has fallen out of favour of late, but nevertheless, is still a useful exercise for understanding or modelling semiconductor devices. Inverting and non-inverting operational amplifiers characteristics such as gain-bandwidth are investigated and we will see the dependency of bandwidth on the gain using the performance analysis facility. Power amplifiers are examined where PSpice/Probe demonstrates very nicely the problems of cross-over distortion and other problems associated with power transistors. We examine power supplies and the problems of regulation, ground bounce, and power factor correction. Lastly, we look at MOSFET device characteristics and show how these devices are used to form basic CMOS logic gates such as NAND and NOR gates.


Low-resolution face analysis suffers more significantly from quality degradations than high-resolution analysis. In this work, we will investigate how several face analysis steps are influenced by low image quality and how this relates to the low resolution. In the first step, a simulation of different effects on image quality, namely low resolution, compression artifacts, motion blur and noise is performed and the impact on face detection, registration and recognition is analyzed. Depending on the situation, it becomes obvious that the low resolution is sometimes a minor degrading effect, outmatched by a single one or a combination of the further effects. When addressing real-world face recognition from surveillance data, the combination of the challenging effects is the biggest problem because typical counter measures are individual to one single effect.


At the close of the twentieth century, U.S. corporate scholarship was dominated by a principal-agent paradigm that assumed that shareholders were the principals or sole residual claimants in public corporations, and also assumed that corporate directors were the shareholders' agents. This approach led many corporate scholars to assume that the proper purpose of the corporation was to maximize shareholder wealth and that the chief economic problem of interest in corporate law was the "agency cost" problem of getting corporate directors to focus on this goal.There are basic aspects of U.S. corporate law, however, that the principal-agent model cannot explain. These include directors' extensive and sui generis legal powers; the fact that directors control dividends; the device of legal personality; and the open-ended rules of corporate purpose. These corporate law "anomalies" have prompted contemporary economic and legal scholars to begin to move beyond a focus on agency costs and to pay attention to a second economic problem that arises in public corporations: the problem of protecting specific investment. When corporate production requires more than one individual or group to make specific investments, problems of intrafirm opportunism arise if shareholders try to exploit each other's specific investments or try to exploit the specific investments of creditors, employees, customers, and other groups. Board governance, while worsening agency costs, may provide a second-best solution to such intrafirm rent-seeking. This perspective explains many important corporate law "anomalies" that cannot be explained by the principal-agent model.It also suggests a pressing need to revisit conventional notions of corporate purpose. Focusing on the problem of specific investment suggests that the proper purpose of the public corporation is not maximizing shareholder wealth, but promoting long-term, value-creating economic production under conditions of complexity and uncertainty, in a fashion that provides surplus benefits not only to shareholders but to other groups that make specific investments in corporations as well. This corporate objective is difficult to measure, much less maximize. Nevertheless, it may provide a better gauge of good corporate governance than the simplistic rubric of shareholder wealth.


Documentary film has played a significant role in the social construction of disability and this paper aims to make an explicit connection between these two fields in order to understand better how the tools of documentary studies and disability studies can be brought to bear in understanding the past and the current potential of documentary in the socio-cultural construction and awareness of disability.
Content:
The paper discusses the academic underpinnings of my forthcoming edited book "Documentary and Disability" (Palgrave, 2017; co-edited with Helen Hughes). In the process of bringing the volume together we have come to understand it as a 'bricolage', a term that chimes with our aim to demonstrate that a cross-disciplinary merger between documentary and disability is both a creative and a critical way to shed light on two concepts that are in a constant process of change. Derrida has explained the pertinence of the term bricolage for theoretical discourse, arguing that the process of taking on and adapting existing terms in a trial-and-error manner from heterogeneous contexts amounts to a critique of the very discourse and the language it uses (p. 360, 1967/1978). Thus, the paper will illuminate the topic not only from an academic perspective, but will also offer a practice-focussed viewpoint from a practice-led researcher.


This cruise report is a summary of a field survey conducted within the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve (SINERR), located on the Georgia coastline, June 7 – June 13, 2009. Multiple indicators of ecological condition and human dimensions were sampled synoptically at each of 30 stations throughout SINERR using a random probabilistic sampling design. Samples were collected for the analysis of benthic community structure and composition; concentrations of chemical contaminants (metals, pesticides, PAHs, PCBs, PBDEs) in sediments and target demersal biota; nutrient and chlorophyll levels in the water column; bacterial contaminants in the water column; and other basic habitat characteristics such as depth, salinity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, total suspended solids, pH, sediment grain size, and organic carbon content. In addition to the fish samples that were collected for analysis of chemical contaminants relative to human-health consumption limits, other human-dimension indicators were sampled as well including presence or absence of fishing gear, vessels, surface trash, and noxious sediment odors. The overall purpose of the survey was to collect data to assess the status of ecosystem condition and potential stressor impacts throughout SINERR, based on these various indicators and corresponding management thresholds, and to provide this information as a baseline for determining how such conditions may be changing with time. While sample analysis is still ongoing a few preliminary results and observations are reported here. A final report will be completed once all data have been processed. The results will provide a comprehensive weight-of-evidence basis for evaluating current condition (aka a "state-of-the-SINEER environmental report") and serve as a quantitative benchmark for tracking any future changes due to either natural or human disturbances. Another goal of the study is to demonstrate its utility as a possible model for assessing the status of condition at other NEERS sites using similar and consistent methods to promote system-wide regional and national comparisons.


Human ageing is characterized by a gradual decline in cognitive and physical performance strongly determining someone's functional abilities and quality of life. In this thesis, insights into these age-related changes and most importantly their interactions are given, which might be suggestive for potential causal mechanisms and is required for the development of preventive and therapeutic paradigms. We focused on global and domain specific measures of cognitive and physical performance and assessed the interactions across different populations of calendar and biological age (range 45 to 90 years). For the assessment of physical performance, instrumented measures were introduced to assess their additional value. Across the entire age range, interactions between cognitive and physical performance were consistently found. The temporal relationship differed across age and domains, suggesting a specific rather than a general relationship. Because age-related changes were already observed from middle age, these results encourage the early and repeated assessment of cognitive and physical performance across different domains and development of age and domain specific interventions. Instrumented measures can be used for the identification of age-related changes and show promising results in providing additional insights into potential underlying determinants. This will enable the development of even more refined and patient specific interventions.


In this paper we model the relationship between a controlling shareholder and outside investors when the presence of the controlling shareholder generates valuable self-dealing investment opportunities. These self-dealing operations generate private benefits for the controller but they may also be profitable for the outside investors. Our analysis proves that regulation of self-dealing opportunities is necessary to facilitate access to funding when self-dealing is not verifiable, and explains why current regulation does not simply ban all self-dealing operations. We then analyze the two alternative existing enforcement mechanisms, which are based on disclosure and approval rules (Rules-based regime) and/or on litigation rules (Standard-based regime). While both prove effective at facilitating access to funding, we show that an alternative penalty default regulation could improve overall efficiency by providing incentives for the controller and the outside investors to opt-out and implement the first-best contract.


Abstract Basin-scale stratigraphic correlation is the fundamental base for successful reservoir exploration, and especially when dealing with cross-border areas. Differences in lithostratigraphic and chronostratigraphic nomenclature between sub-basins and countries often result in problematic estimations of reservoir geometries and potential. This study combines available biostratigraphic, biofaunal and lithofacies data, together with sequence-stratigraphical correlations of the Lower Jurassic from the Central European Basin (CEB), to propose a genetic-based framework of transgressive and regressive depositional units. The determination of four major biofacies environments, composed of (I) polyhaline open-marine/offshore environments, (II) upper mesohaline marine–brackish environments, (III) lower mesohaline brackish environments and (IV) low oligohaline to freshwater continental environments comprising very rare marine phytoplankton and terrestrial spores and pollens, were translated into 12 biofacies reconstructions of ammonite (sub-) chronozone levels. Variations of biofacies reconstructions in time and space were supplemented by biostratigraphically constrained large-scale progradational and retrogradational sedimentary architecture. Retrogradation is accompanied by increasing polyhaline environments and pinpoint basinwide third-order flooding events, whereas progradation is accompanied by decreasing polyhaline environments pointing to third-order regressions. The outcomes of this study support exploration of Lower Jurassic deep geothermal reservoirs or CO2 storage sites in the eastern CEB (especially Germany and Poland).


The practice of dynamical modeling of perception-action behavior has lagged behind the proliferation of the dynamical perspective. Two methodological roadblocks to dynamical modeling are discussed. First, parameter selection is difficult with current tools. Second, it is unclear what role models have in the larger scientific project beyond their use as descriptions or proofs of concept. In this dissertation, a new parameter selection method is developed to address these issues, Multi-Level Dynamical Parameter Estimation (MLDPE). Like its precursor DPE, MLDPE uses an extended Luenberger observer to stabilize the synchronization manifold in combined model-data space. MLDPE also embeds a regression model into the parameter-selection process, allowing for parameter values to vary systematically as a function of both fixed and random effects. In this way, it allows for parameter dynamics to be used as dependent variables in experimental research. The method is tested with three experiments. In Experiment 1, a model of steering dynamics was fit to data while allowing preferred walking speed to vary by participant. In this case, the limitations of local search were encountered due to non-smooth functions in the model equations. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated the use of fixed effects in MLDPE, using data collected in a driving simulator with a braking task. Experiment 2 showed that changing the context of the task Henry S. Harrison — University of Connecticut, 2017 from a race to a safety test produced predictable changes in parameter values. Experiment 3 tested the effects of distraction on braking, replicating previous results and describing them in terms of parameter dynamics. Thus, MLDPE is able to select parameters using multiple observations of a system, unlike previous methods. Additionally, it is able to detect changes in dynamics across these observations. This method allows dynamical models to be used in a traditional experimental research program. Possible applications and limitations of the method are discussed. Multi-level Dynamical Parameter Estimation: Hypothesis Testing with Dynamical Systems


Although recent advances in voice conversion have shown significant improvement, there still remains a gap between the converted voice and target voice. A key factor that maintains this gap is the insufficient decomposition of content and voice style from the source speech. This insufficiency leads to the converted speech containing source speech style or losing source speech content. In this paper, we present VoiceMixer which can effectively decompose and transfer voice style through a novel information bottleneck and adversarial feedback. With self-supervised representation learning, the proposed information bottleneck can decompose the content and style with only a small loss of content information. Also, for adversarial feedback of each information, the discriminator is decomposed into content and style discriminator with self-supervision, which enable our model to achieve better generalization to the voice style of the converted speech. The experimental results show the superiority of our model in disentanglement and transfer performance, and improve audio quality by preserving content information.


The Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision in State v. Oakley, in which the court upheld a probation order prohibiting Mr. Oakley from fathering additional children until he could support them, is a compelling example of a troubling flaw in our constitutional jurisprudence. Absent the countervailing check perhaps provided by the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions, each path of doctrinal analysis, considered separately, arguably leads to the conclusion that the probation order is valid. This is so even though a number of institutional, structural, and process-based considerations converge to render the order's constitutionality highly suspect. The prevailing doctrinal approach is to disaggregate the case into distinct lines of argument. Do the poor constitute a "discrete and insular minority"? The articles by Professors Richard Cole, David Papke, and Bruce Miller take up the challenge of considering historical, legal, and cultural approaches to poverty. Are probation conditions subject to heightened scrutiny? Professor Jennifer Levi argues, in part, that even a radical change in the standard of review would not change the outcome of either the majority or dissenting opinions. Is this a case involving discrimination based on sex? Professor Jennifer Martin considers the impact that the Oakley decision may have on women, especially those subject to domestic violence.


Background: Clinical features associated with infective colitis and flare up of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) are very similar and presents a challenge to gastroenterologists to distinguish the two. This is especially difficult in patients with established IBD disease in whom the incidence of bacterial infections is comparable to the general population. Methods: This was a retrospective analytical cohort study conducted at Leeds Teaching Hospitals (LTHT), UK. Subjects included were those with diarrhoeal symptoms, referred by the emergency department or primary care physicians to the Gastroenterology unit of LTHT, over an eight-year period between 2004-2012, with a positive stool culture for Campylobacter, Salmonella, Shigella or E.Coli O157. Results: We analysed 102 consecutive cases. Median duration of symptoms was 4 days (IQR 2 – 7). The most common reported symptom was abdominal pain 91 patients (91%), followed by rectal bleeding 53 patients (52%) and vomiting 44 patients (43%). Blood tests revealed that 98% patients had a substantially elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) concentration [median 95 mg/L (IQR 44-143)]. Thirteen patients had pre-existing IBD, who when compared to non-IBD patients, showed no difference in clinical presentation. In the IBD group, however, median platelet count was significantly higher [282 (IQR 225-415) vs 237 (IQR 194-281) p=0.03) and haemoglobin concentration lower [12.1 (IQR 11-14) v 14.3 (IQR 13-15) p=0.01). Conclusions: In patients where infective diarrhoea is suspected a short duration of symptoms, abdominal pain and elevated CRP concentration are pointers that can support the diagnosis, whereas low Haemoglobin and high Platelet count favours a background of IBD.


[1] A semianalytical algorithm for the retrieval of ice cloud properties from satellite data is presented. The new method is based on the semianalytical cloud retrieval algorithm and uses solutions of the asymptotic radiative transfer theory applicable for optically thick media. Therefore the new method is much less computer time expensive than the commonly used lookup table approaches. Usually, the cloud optical thickness and cloud effective droplet radius are reported for water and ice clouds even though both parameters are dependent on the actual crystal shape assumed in the retrieval procedures. Thus the authors propose to use the reduced optical thickness (ROT) and the particle absorption length (PAL) for the characterization of ice clouds. This implies that no a priori or climatological estimates of the particle shape/size distribution are necessary and increases the comparability of different cloud retrieval algorithms, which are built on many different distribution functions. If still necessary, the retrieved ROT and PAL can easily be transferred to values of the optical thickness and the cloud effective droplet radius by assuming any of those size distribution functions. The developed technique has been applied to data from the NASA EOS Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer sensor. The scene shows Hurricane Jeanne just before its landfall near the coast of Florida in September 2004. Both the reduced cloud optical thickness and the particle absorption length have been derived for the eye wall region.


How to identify customary international law is an important question of international law. The International Law Commission has in 2018 adopted a set of sixteen conclusions, together with commentaries, on this topic. The paper consists of three parts: First, the reasons are discussed why the Commission came to work on the topic "Identification of customary international law". Then, some of its conclusions are highlighted. Finally, the outcome of the work of the Commission is placed in a general context, before concluding.


| 7 Abstract In September 2009 the European Union adopted Regulation 1007/2009 on trade in seal products (Basic Regulation) due to concerns over the welfare of seals in the non-indigenous commercial seal hunts, particularly in Canada. Throughout the policy-making process these moral concerns were a crucial element of the political will to bar seal products from the EU market. Also research carried out as part of the preparatory works leading to the Basic Regulation appeared to support the claim that the seal hunt, unless conducted by indigenous communities, is cruel and unnecessary, calling for a legislative response in the European Union. This dissertation screens the legislative process of the EU seal regime and considers in how far problem identification, goal setting and goal attainment are streamlined. Throughout this thesis it becomes obvious that also the claim of a European 'moral concern' is ambiguous although the Union successfully defended the regime under the 'moral exception' clause in international trade law. Even though animal welfare in general can be regarded as a Community value, the EU seal regime cannot be linked to other EU animal welfare laws as the regime does not have an impact on animal welfare in the seal hunts. Instead, the dissertation shows that, although the seal regime appears to be based on 'objective' scientific knowledge, it is based on an inherently biased approach towards the non-indigenous seal hunts. Indicative for the neglect of remote coastal communities in which the seal hunt is carried out is the lack of recognition of its socio-economic and cultural value for the people involved in it. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a seal hunting community and in the processing industry this dissertation shows how closely interlinked the seal hunt at sea is with the social fabric on land. Indeed, a lack of knowledge on conditions in the sealing industry existed prior to the seal regime's adoption although its impacts were expected to be drastic. In spite of this gap in knowledge the regime was adopted.


The deep marine subsurface is a heterogeneous environment in which the assembly of microbial communities is thought to be controlled by a combination of organic matter deposition, electron acceptor availability, and sedimentology. However, the relative importance of these factors in structuring microbial communities in marine sediments remains unclear. The South China Sea (SCS) experiences significant variability in sedimentation across the basin and features discrete changes in sedimentology as a result of episodic deposition of turbidites and volcanic ashes within lithogenic clays and siliceous or calcareous ooze deposits throughout the basin's history. Deep subsurface microbial communities were recently sampled by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) at three locations in the SCS with sedimentation rates of 5, 12, and 20 cm per thousand years. Here, we used Illumina sequencing of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene to characterize deep subsurface microbial communities from distinct sediment types at these sites. Communities across all sites were dominated by several poorly characterized taxa implicated in organic matter degradation, including Atribacteria, Dehalococcoidia, and Aerophobetes. Sulfate-reducing bacteria comprised only 4% of the community across sulfate-bearing sediments from multiple cores and did not change in abundance in sediments from the methanogenic zone at the site with the lowest sedimentation rate. Microbial communities were significantly structured by sediment age and the availability of sulfate as an electron acceptor in pore waters. However, microbial communities demonstrated no partitioning based on the sediment type they inhabited. These results indicate that microbial communities in the SCS are structured by the availability of electron donors and acceptors rather than sedimentological characteristics.


We consider the problem of generating a triangulation of provable quality for two and three dimensional polyhedral regions. That is, we seek a triangulation, allowing additional vertices called Steiner points, such that the triangular or tetrahedral elements have a bound on their shape. In three dimensions we also seek an upper bound on the number of tetrahedra in the triangulation. These triangulation algorithms find application in mesh generation for finite element methods. The polyhedral region must be bounded and well defined, but may have holes of arbitrary complexity.
In three dimensions, we assume there are no restrictions on where we may place Steiner points. Our triangulation is optimal in the following two senses. First, our triangulation achieves the best possible aspect ratio up to a constant factor, which is our bound on element shape. Second, for any other triangulation of the same region into m triangles with bounded aspect ratio, our triangulation has size n = O(m). Such a triangulation is desired as an initial mesh for a finite element mesh refinement algorithm. Previous three dimensional triangulation schemes either worked only on a restricted class of input, or did not guarantee well-shaped tetrahedra, or were not able to bound the output size. We build on some of the ideas presented in previous work by Bern, Eppstein, and Gilbert, who have shown how to triangulate a two dimensional polyhedral region with holes, with similar quality and optimality bounds.
In two dimensions, we assume the restriction that we may introduce Steiner points on the polygon's interior, but not on its boundary. Of all triangulations satisfying this restriction, our triangulation has the maximum minimum angle, up to a constant factor. This is the first known algorithm for this problem with provably optimal element shape. The algorithm solves several subproblems of mesh generation.


It is not often that one receives a book for reviewing that one cannot put down once you have started reading it. The story of the world-famous Jurgen Moltmann's life is one of those books. It is one of the most interesting books I have ever read. Anyone who is interested in Moltmann as a theologian and as a human being should read this book. Likewise, those with an interest in German history, the German academic world, famous German theologians and the ecumenical world should also read it. This autobiography is not only fascinating, but is inspiring too. It serves as motivation for all lesser theologians to aspire to academic excellence.


Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are an essential part of the infrastructure to run and support a company?s business processes. These systems have to be updated frequently to satisfy law regulations, needed functionality and sustain stability within a changing technical environment. Having these needs for change in mind the impact of related updates is often not transparent to the operator and may cause unwanted side-effects. The way to prevent update problems is running a shadow system and deploy changes there first. However this is not always feasible due to monetary or other reasons. One proper approach might be the simulation of ERP systems. Therefore this workshop paper shows a process how a simulation model for complex ERP systems might be developed. The paper focuses on the development of an adequate structure to represent complex ERP system architectures. For the development of this structure it utilizes the idea of the Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm and an extended 3 tier architecture reference model. The basic approach focuses on a so called multi-layer service map, which contains all services inside an ERP system and interdependencies between these services. This multi-layer service map can be used as data basis to create a simulation model of the analysed ERP system later on.


Electrospinning, a low cost production method for large area nanofibrous films, is employed to fabricate organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells based on poly(3-hexylthiophene) and TiO2 nanofibers. The performance of the hybrid solar cells is optimized by modifying the surface of TiO2 nanofibers with ruthenium dye (N719) and 3-phenylpropionic acid, which results in the average power conversion efficiency of about 1.1% under AM 1.5G simulated illumination (100 mW cm−2). It is found that the co-modification of N719 and 3-phenylpropionic acid on TiO2 can induce more ordered backbone packing of poly(3-hexylthiophene) layer, lower density of trap states on the surface of TiO2 and longer lifetime of carriers in the active layer due to retarded recombination process by the modifier. Therefore the interface modification can dramatically enhance the photovoltaic performance.


The rule of law promises protection and recourse against the arbitrary exercise of power. The guiding aim of the rule of law ideal is served when law's rule extends to all forms of power in the polity, social as well as political. This chapter defends the centrality to the rule of law of the task of protecting individuals from power wielded by non-governmental entities and individuals. It also argues that the rule of law is realized when law is planted firmly in a commonwealth of mutual faithfulness to the differentiated and interconnected responsibilities of fidelity to law. Law rules not only when government officials are held accountable for the discharge of their duties under law, but also when ordinary citizens structure their relationships by law and hold each other accountable to the common, public terms that the law provides.


This paper introduces the notion of policy as a basis for interaction for decision-support systems, and describes how policy was applied as the foundation of a decision-support tool to aid in diversion management in airline operations. A policy is an abstract, general, a priori statement of expressing a goal and an associated priority. Diversion management is the process of deciding which incoming flights to divert and to which airport they will be diverted. The consequences of diversions can be complex due to the interdependent nature of resources and schedules, and the multiple stakeholders that are impacted by the decision. In current practice there is little consideration of how diversion decision will impact airline operations due to the difficulty of acquiring and analyzing the relevant data. Policy is used to capture the goals and priorities of all stakeholders and when used as the basis of a critiquing decision-support system, thereby ensures inclusion of their interests into the decision making process.