The Mesozoic LeMay Group accretionary complex of Alexander Island, Antarctica, contains thrust-bound slices of accreted ocean floor, ocean islands and seamounts. They represent fragments of proto-Pacific oceanic crust, of which only a tiny remnant (the Phoenix plate) remains off northern Antarctic Peninsula. They therefore provide an excellent opportunity to sample the ancient oceanic crust that formerly occupied the southern Pacific Ocean. All the basalts experienced sea-floor and subduction/accretion metamorphism ranging from zeolite to transitional blueschist facies. On the basis of rare–arth and other immobile trace element characteristics, the basalts are divided into depleted MORB, N-MORB, E-MORB, and tholeiitic and alkaline OIB. Oceanic basalts occur within two rock associations on Alexander Island, basalt-volcaniclastite-chert and basalt-volcaniclastite-tuff. The basalt-volcaniclastite-chert rock association is dominated by pillow lavas which have light REE-depleted N-MORB geochemical characteristics, and is interpreted as representing ocean floor formed at spreading centres. Locally, sills of tholeiitic OIB intrude the sequence. The basalt-volcaniclastite-tuff rock association exposed in the Lully Foothills was formed in shallow water during the Early Jurassic. It is geochemically varied, consisting of basalts with N-MORB, E-MORB and tholeiitic OIB characteristics. The association is interpreted to have been formed on a large seamount or ocean island.


Systems analysis of a planetary entry (SAPE), descent, and landing (EDL) is a multidisciplinary activity in nature. SAPE improves the performance of the systems analysis team by automating and streamlining the process, and this improvement can reduce the errors that stem from manual data transfer among discipline experts. SAPE is a multidisciplinary tool for systems analysis of planetary EDL for Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Titan. It performs EDL systems analysis for any planet, operates cross-platform (i.e., Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems), uses existing software components and open-source software to avoid software licensing issues, performs low-fidelity systems analysis in one hour on a computer that is comparable to an average laptop, and keeps discipline experts in the analysis loop. SAPE uses Python, a platform-independent, open-source language, for integration and for the user interface. Development has relied heavily on the object-oriented programming capabilities that are available in Python. Modules are provided to interface with commercial and government off-the-shelf software components (e.g., thermal protection systems and finite-element analysis). SAPE currently includes the following analysis modules: geometry, trajectory, aerodynamics, aerothermal, thermal protection system, and interface for structural sizing.


Various statistical hypotheses testing for discrete or categorical or binary data have been extensively discussed in the literature. A comprehensive review is given for the twosample binary or categorical data testing methods on data with or without Stratum Effects. The review includes traditional methods such as Fisher's Exact, Pearson's Chi-Square, McNemar, Bowker, Stuart-Maxwell, Breslow-Day and, Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel, as well as newly developed ones. We also provide the roadmap, in a figure or diagram format to which methods are available in the literature. In addition, the implementation of these methods in popular statistical software packages such as SAS and/or R is also presented. This will be helpful for researchers to determine which (categorical-data) testing method is available to use in various fields of study such as clinical trials, epidemiology, etc., both for the design phase of a study in prospective study, crosssectional or retrospective study analysis.


Panic disorder (PD) causes psychological and functional impairment in the individual's life. The interoceptive exposure (IE) is essential in the treatment of PD since it is aimed at reducing anxiety symptoms of a panic attack (PA), promoting habituation. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze the applicability of EI in reducing anxiety experienced in an AP induced through exercises that cause similar sensations. The study included three patients with a diagnosis of PD and agoraphobia, attending a school service. In three sessions of the EI were evaluated the level of intensity, similarity and anxiety with exercise, punctuated by patients on a scale of 0 to 10. The EI obtained positive results in treating patients, since there was a decrease in anxiety levels in the three patients and there was also correspondence between the level of intensity, similarity and anxiety, in which exercises were classified with the same level.


[1] The Dead Sea water-level has been dropping at an exceedingly increasing rate since 1960, and between 1993 and 2001, the interval of the InSAR data examined in this study, it has dropped at an average rate of 0.88 m per year. Such a water-level change could potentially give rise to a resolvable lithospheric rebound and regional uplift, with spatial extent and amplitude that are controlled by the effective mechanical properties of the crust and upper mantle combined. We measure that deformation for the years 1993 to 2001, using 149 short baseline interferograms made of 31 ERS-1 and ERS-2 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images and continuous GPS data from the Survey of Israel recorded between 1997 and 2011. The uplift rate at the Dead Sea is small (up to 4 mm/year), and the basin topography is almost a mirror of the displacement, introducing a strong trade-off between uplift and stratified atmosphere noise. To overcome this complication, we impose a linearity constraint on the satellite to ground Line Of Sight (LOS) phase changes based on the steady uplift observed by a continuous GPS station in the area of interest, and simultaneously solve for the LOS change rate, Digital Elevation Model (DEM) errors and the elevation-phase correlation. While the LOS rate and DEM errors are solved for each pixel independently, the elevation-phase correlation is solved for each SAR acquisition independently. Using this approach we separated the stratified atmospheric delay from the ground displacement. We observed a regional uplift around the Dead Sea northern basin, with maximum uplift close to the shorelines, and diminishing to zero by the Mediterranean coast. We modeled the effect of water load changes using a homogeneous elastic half-space, and found a good agreement between modeled and observed ground displacements using elastic properties that are compatible with seismic and gravity data down to a depth of 15 km below the Dead Sea basin, suggesting that the response of the crust to the sea level drop is controlled mainly by the elastic properties of the upper-crust immediately below the Dead Sea basin.


Understanding the theory and application of electrical concepts is necessary for a successful career in the electrical field specifically in industrial maintenance and installation, and this newly revised, full color text delivers! Delmar's Standard Textbook of Electricity, Fourth Edition trains aspiring electricians by blending concepts relating to electrical theory with practical 'how to' information that prepares readers for situations commonly encountered on the job. This revision retains all the hallmarks of our market-leading prior editions, but displays enhancements such as more practical application problems. Topics span the major aspects of the electrical field including direct and alternating current circuits, basic theory, transformers, generators, and motors. This new edition has been organized so that all relevant information is located within a given chapter which allows for flexibility to access and cover topics in any order making this text an indispensable resource.


Program failures are often caused by invalid inputs, for instance due to input corruption. To obtain the passing input, one needs to debug the data. In this paper we present a generic technique called ddmax that (1) identifies which parts of the input data prevent processing, and (2) recovers as much of the (valuable) input data as possible. To the best of our knowledge, ddmax is the first approach that fixes faults in the input data without requiring program analysis. In our evaluation, ddmax repaired about 69% of input files and recovered about 78% of data within one minute per input.


Parallel text is the fuel that drives modern machine translation systems. The Web is a comprehensive source of preexisting parallel text, but crawling the entire web is impossible for all but the largest companies. We bring web-scale parallel text to the masses by mining the Common Crawl, a public Web crawl hosted on Amazon's Elastic Cloud. Starting from nothing more than a set of common two-letter language codes, our open-source extension of the STRAND algorithm mined 32 terabytes of the crawl in just under a day, at a cost of about $500. Our large-scale experiment uncovers large amounts of parallel text in dozens of language pairs across a variety of domains and genres, some previously unavailable in curated datasets. Even with minimal cleaning and filtering, the resulting data boosts translation performance across the board for five different language pairs in the news domain, and on open domain test sets we see improvements of up to 5 BLEU. We make our code and data available for other researchers seeking to mine this rich new data resource. 1


The spread of mineral particles over southwestern, western, and central Europe resulting from a strong Saharan dust outbreak in October 2001 was observed at 10 stations of the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network (EARLINET). For the first time, an optically dense desert dust plume over Europe was characterized coherently with high vertical resolution on a continental scale. The main layer was located above the boundary layer (above 1-km height above sea level (asl)) up to 3–5-km height, and traces of dust particles reached heights of 7–8 km. The particle optical depth typically ranged from 0.1 to 0.5 above 1-km height asl at the wavelength of 532 nm, and maximum values close to 0.8 were found over northern Germany. The lidar observations are in qualitative agreement with values of optical depth derived from Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) data. Ten-day backward trajectories clearly indicated the Sahara as the source region of the particles and revealed that the dust layer observed, e.g., over Belsk, Poland, crossed the EARLINET site Aberystwyth, UK, and southern Scandinavia 24–48 hours before. Lidar-derived particle depolarization ratios, backscatter- and extinction-related Angstrom exponents, and extinction-to-backscatter ratios mainly ranged from 15 to 25%, −0.5 to 0.5, and 40–80 sr, respectively, within the lofted dust plumes. A few atmospheric model calculations are presented showing the dust concentration over Europe. The simulations were found to be consistent with the network observations.


Abstract Mapping the spatial and temporal changes of peatland in farming systems is crucial to the study of soil quality and productivity and the modeling of the global carbon cycle (in relation to climate change). This study compiles a contemporary map (2010) of peatland coverage (according to Kyoto protocol) across the cultivated wetlands of Denmark and compares this actual map to a historical 1975 peat coverage map using simple indicator kriging. For the contemporary peatland mapping, extensive soil sampling databases consisting of 42,568 points with 32,817 historical samples and 9,751 contemporary samples were used. These databases contain partly categorical information on parent material (organic [peat, gytje] and mineral [sand, silt and clay]) and partly continuous data (soil organic carbon, in %) reclassified into organic and mineral soils (using 12% soil organic carbon as a cutoff value). In the simple indicator kriging procedure, the values 0 and 1 were assigned to the stationary means of the indicator codes to represent two hypotheses, that is, mineral and organic (peat) soils, respectively. The collected and analyzed contemporary unbiased organic samples (measured on different rectangular grid scales of 250, 275, and 500 m) in addition to some transformed historical organic samples (according to certain decision rules) were used to estimate the recent areal coverage of peat (2010) that was equivalent to 70,176 ha, and this estimate corresponds to an indicator kriging probability of 0.35. Results revealed there has been a total areal coverage loss of 35% (37,786 ha) of the Danish organic cultivated wetlands during a period of 35 years (map 1975 had 107,962-ha coverage of peat). The peat depletion is related to peat mining and agricultural drainage/tillage activities, rather than natural geological processes.


The electron field emission (FE) properties of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) cathodes produced by three different reduction methods were assessed and compared. In particular, chemical reduction techniques, using either NaOH or KOH as reducing agents, were compared with thermal reduction (TR) methods. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements revealed that different reduction techniques led to different GO lattice parameters. Furthermore, the work function measured with ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) varied among the samples giving rise to different electron emission characteristics. In particular, the cathodes prepared by the TR method presented the best FE performance, showing a turn-on field of as low as ∼1.8 V μm−1 and a field enhancement factor of ∼1300, which was very close however to that shown by the NaOH-reduced sheets. The worst FE properties were exhibited by the KOH-reduced nanosheets. In light of the above results, the role of the different reduction techniques as well as the final rGO lattice characteristics with regards to the emission performance are evaluated and discussed.


CONTEXT
Editorial management of articles on health economics may benefit from guidelines for peer review and revision.

OBJECTIVE
To assess whether publication (in August 1996) of the BMJ guidelines on peer review of economics submissions made any difference to editorial and peer review processes, quality of submitted manuscripts, and quality of published manuscripts.

DESIGN AND SETTING
Before-after study conducted in the editorial offices of BMJ and The Lancet of the effect of the BMJ guidelines on review and revision of economics submissions, defined as those making explicit comments about resource allocation and/or costs of interventions.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Editorial fate and changes in the quality of submissions.

RESULTS
A total of 2982 manuscripts were submitted to the 2 journals during the before periods, 105 (3.5%) of which were economics submissions. Of these, 27 (24.3%) were full economics evaluations, and 78 (75.7%) were other economics submissions. Overall acceptance rate was 11.6% (12/105). During the after period 2077 manuscripts were submitted to the 2 journals, 87 (4.2%) of which were economics submissions. Eighteen (20.7%) were full economics evaluations, and 69 (79.3%) were other economics submissions. Overall acceptance rate was 6.9% (6/87). Although a number of manuscripts could not be traced to determine whether they were economics submissions, there appeared to be little difference between the 2 journals in numbers or editorial fate of the manuscripts. There was no change in the quality of submitted manuscripts, but BMJ editors found the guidelines and checklists useful and sent fewer economics submissions for external peer review in the after phase.

CONCLUSIONS
Publication of the guidelines helped the BMJ editors improve the efficiency of the editorial process but had no impact on the quality of economics evaluations submitted or published.


In the design of tubular bridges, engineers have found the fatigue performance of the joints to be a critical aspect that may have a significant impact on the economic viability of these structures. In looking for ways of improving this performance, the use of residual stress-based post-weld treatment methods has been suggested. To study this possibility, preliminary laboratory tests were carried out at ICOM, which demonstrated the merits of these methods vis-a-vis their ability to increase the fatigue lives of tubular bridge joints. Although encouraging, a number of concerns with the use of these methods have limited the extent to which findings such as these can be translated into practical guidelines. Firstly, there is some concern in general about the reliability of these methods under realistic, variable amplitude loading conditions. Secondly, in the ICOM tests, it was seen that the benefit of concentrated treatment of the critical crack site, although substantial, was limited by cracking at a less critical, untreated site. On this basis, further analytical study of the post-weld treatment of tubular bridge structures was deemed necessary. Towards this end, the work presented in the current thesis was undertaken with the following main objectives: to develop models for predicting the fatigue behaviour of single (untreated or treated) crack sites and tubular structures with multiple potential crack sites using a probabilistic approach, to predict, using these models, the potential benefit of treating tubular bridge structures, and to assess the suitability of post-weld treatment methods for tubular bridge applications, in view of the results of the work carried out to meet the other thesis objectives. In the first chapters of the thesis, the steps involved in the development of the various models are described. The probabilistic model developed to predict the fatigue behaviour of single crack sites is based on a deterministic linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) model. The model developed to analyze tubular structures with multiple potential crack sites employs a systems reliability approach. Specifically, the tubular structure is represented as a series system with an unknown level of correlation between the system elements. With the resulting models, parametric studies are carried out using the example of a typical highway bridge to determine the effects of treatment intensity, quality (i.e. uniformity), coverage, timing, and depth on the benefit of post-weld treatment. A number of complementary studies are then conducted to address specific concerns not addressed elsewhere. Based on this work, the following conclusions are highlighted: Using the developed probabilistic models, it is shown that significant improvements in fatigue performance can be obtained through the post-weld treatment of tubular bridge structures. For full-scale bridge structures under realistic loading conditions, the benefit of treatment is more sensitive to the treatment intensity than the treatment quality or depth. Based on the comparison of the various levels of treatment coverage, a partial treatment strategy is proposed, which is seen to be just as effective as a strategy of full treatment. Of all the parameters varied in the parametric studies, the effect of treatment timing is seen to be the most significant. Specifically, it is observed that a significant increase in the benefit of treatment can be realized if the treatment is applied in the field as opposed to the shop. A preliminary economic study of needle peening in the shop demonstrates that the economic benefits of this approach may be limited or even non-existent in some cases, but significant in others. More promising results are obtained in a similar study for field treatment.


The teaching of introductory courses in computing has seen several changes over the last decade. These changes not only affected the curricula when the emphasis was shifted from Imperative (also Procedural) to Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) but also reignited debates regarding which is the better programming language. Furthermore, the shift in emphasis also has encountered challenges with the object-oriented pedagogy. More recently, the assessment procedure for how students are learning object-oriented concepts has been given attention. When the programming language Java was adopted to teach object-oriented programming, it was not without difficulties. Various studies cited the development environment for Java, which was designed for professional programmers and its complex syntax structures as the main source of Javas difficulties (Kolling & Rosenberg 2001). The studies were not only limited to identifying the problems of teaching and learning Java but they also identified solutions. One of these included the creation of programming tools and environment to help novice programmers learn object-oriented concepts effectively. Among the integrated development environments created for teaching object-oriented programming using Java is BlueJ. Another programming tool for teaching object-oriented programming is Alice. The technology of animated program visualization keeps the focus on objects while teaching about behaviour and state (Dann et al 2003). The study concerns how the different programming tools help students in learning object-oriented concepts. One is classified as a text-based tool, BlueJ, and the other is graphical-based tool, Alice. There are three main questions for this study: 1. Does the process of learning object-oriented concepts using graphical-based tools differ from using text-based tools? 2. Do graphical-based tools support text-based tools in learning object-oriented concepts? 3. Do graphical-based tools offer more help in understanding object-oriented concepts than text-based tools? To answer the questions, the researcher conducted a survey whereby two sets of questionnaires were distributed to the students of Robert Gordon module entitled Object-Oriented Programming Techniques (CM1011). The student respondents found significant difference in the use of the graphical-based and text-based programming tools in understanding the following object-oriented concepts: Message Passing, Encapsulation and Polymorphism. The data gathered were also indicative that a graphical-based programming tool like Alice is helpful in learning object-oriented concepts with the use of a text-based programming tool like BlueJ. Whether graphical tools like Alice help more in understanding object-oriented concepts than text-based tools like BlueJ was inconclusive. The initial study suggests that there was no significant difference with students confidence in learning the various object-oriented concepts using the programming tools. The student respondents appeared to recognise that both programming tools are useful in learning various object-oriented concepts. However, it seems that they expected Alice to be a more sophisticated animation tool and that the animations produced would be of a cinematic calibre. The study aspires to contribute to the improvement of the object-oriented pedagogy. Specifically, it aims to contribute in the development of teaching methodologies for object-oriented programming and then create learning strategies for object-oriented programming and, not to forget, make the assessment of object-oriented programming more effective and suitable. Alongside the improvement of object-oriented programming pedagogy, the study also tries to make the computing course curricula more appropriate and flexible with the use of the various programming tools. Suggestions on how the study can be made more rigorous have been listed including use of additional data gathering instruments and methodology. Also, recommendations on how else the questions can be written were incorporated.


Four species of olenelloid trilobites characterized by advanced or robust genal spines are described from the lower Cambrian Rabbit Point Formation (Cambrian Series 2, Stage 4) of eastern Devon Island, representing the most diverse assemblage of olenelloids yet described from Arctic Canada. New taxa: Bristolia kurtzi n. sp., Paranephrolenellus cowiei n. sp., Siciliolenellus fritzi n. gen. and n. sp.


Lepidopteran stemborers pose a serious constraint to maize (Zea mays L.) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) production in Africa. Despite the achievements made through biological, chemical and cultural control approaches, these methods are specific and result in proliferation of little affected species in the wild habitats. Information on spatial distribution of stemborer species is therefore needed for designing region specific management strategies. This study aimed at assessing the effects of climatic factors and wild host grasses on stemborer species distribution. A total of 357 fields of maize and sorghum randomly distributed across six agroclimatic zones were sampled during the long and short rain growing seasons. In each survey session, 400 stems of maize or sorghum were checked for stemborer infestation and infested stems destructively cut for dissection. 146,157 stems were checked for infestation, and 27,799 infested stems destructively cut and dissected for stemborer larvae identification. An average of 1.4 stemborer larvae were recovered per infested plant. 55.4% of the recovered larvae were identified as Chilo partellus (Swinhoe) (Pyralidae), 39.7% as Busseola fusea (Fuller) (Noctuidae), 4.5% as Sesamia calamistis Hampson (Noctuidae) and 0.8% as Chilo orichalcociliellus (Strand) (Pyralidae). Minor species present include Eldana saccharina Walker (Pyralidae), S. nonagrioides (Lefebvre) (Noctuidae), S. cretica Lederer (Noctuidae), Sesamia sp. novo (Noctuidae), Sciomesa piscator Fletcher (Noctuidae), Busseola sp near phaia (Noctuidae), Chilo sp, Ematheudes sp J (Pyralidae) and Ematheudes sp 2 (Pyralidae). Logistic polynomial regression and spatial interpolation results indicated that the observed spatial distribution and seasonal variation in species composition are products of interactions among climatic parameters. Higher average infestation of30.0 ± 3.3% was recorded in low elevation areas of moist low tropics where C. partellus dominated, while lower infestation of 11.7 ± 2.4% was recorded in cool & dry high tropical zone. Seasonal variation in field infestations was recorded in all zones except in moist high tropics (t67 = 0.04; P > 0.05) and moist mid-altitude (tn = 1.31; p > 0.05) zones. These findings show that stemborer species are distributed within defined ecologically suitable areas under the influence of different environmental factors that vary between species.


Thanks to the development of technology and the emergence of intelligent services smart cities promise to their inhabitants enhanced perception of city life. For example, a live timetable service of public transportation can increase the efficiency of travel planning substantially. However, its implementation in a traditional way requires the deployment of some costly sensing and tracking infrastructure. Mobile crowdsensing is an alternative, when the crowd of passengers and their mobile devices are used to gather data for almost free of charge. In this paper, we put the emphasis on the introduction of our crowdsensing based public transport information service, what we have been developing as a prototype smart city application. The front-end interface of this service is called TrafficInfo. It is a simple and easy-to-use Android application which visualizes real-time public transport information of the given city on Google Maps. The lively updates of transport schedule information relies on the automatic stop event detection of public transport vehicles. TrafficInfo is built upon our Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) based communication framework what we designed to facilitate the development of crowd assisted smart city applications. The paper introduces shortly this framework, than describes TrafficInfo in detail together with the developed stop event detector.


Brazil is entering the age of decommissioning, with aging offshore fields that have been in operation for more than 25 years.
 Brazil has migrated from an operator's monopolistic environment (with the state owned oil company, Petrobras) to a new reality in which many companies, national and international operate in Brazilian waters. As part of this new reality, Brazil has established government organizations whose aim is to coordinate the exploitation of Brazil's natural resources with the intent of optimizing activities while protecting the environment in an ever increasingly complex eco-system management.
 Traditionally, offshore projects follow basic phases such as conceptual, front end engineering and design (FEED), detail design, construction and commissioning. Cost allocation and schedules for these phases are all associated with production estimates and return on investment estimates.
 In many instances, internationally, planning for decommissioning has been deferred to an unforeseen future. Finally that far off horizon has become a reality, and domestic and foreign operators in Brazil are going through a new decommissioning awareness phase.
 It is the author's opinion that operators wish to comply with a well-defined frame of Brazilian and international regulations. In general, this paper aims at examining the existing regulatory environment and make recommendations on a path forward for:Clear-cut requirements so that the permitting process flows with a minimized review cycle;A clear set of rules, defining what abandonment options exist (e.g. complete removal vs. partial removal, on-site abandonment rules for topsides and subsea infrastructure);A clear set of rules defining fines and sanctions for environmental violations
 The objectives of this paper are to 1) Gather basic information on the current status of the Brazilian Rules and Regulations, 2) Help non-government entities work together to accomplish the goals set forth by Brazilian lawmakers and officials, and 3) Develop a roadmap for convergence of the environmental agency and project stakeholders. Laws, rules and regulations, and international treaties of which Brazil is signatory are part of this environment.


Introduction Lung cancer prognosis depends on staging at time of diagnosis and delayed presentation contributes significantly to poor survival rates. The Doncaster public awareness cough campaign resulted in a significant increase in lung cancer diagnoses but not stage at presentation. The effect of early awareness campaigns on treatment rates has not previously been reported. Therefore we evaluated the impact on lung cancer diagnoses at our institution following a similar media based campaign piloted in the Midlands, with particular reference to lung cancer stage, patient fitness and treatment. Method We conducted a case control cohort study comparing patients diagnosed at our institution in the 3 months following the campaign in 2011 to the same time period in 2010. Data on chest X-ray referrals were obtained from local imaging systems. Patient and lung cancer information were obtained from data submitted to the National Lung Cancer Audit. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS. Result are shown in Table 1. Following the campaign, GP chest X-ray referrals increased by 27%, whereas outpatient chest X-ray referrals remained unchanged. The number of lung cancers diagnosed increased by 24%. The proportion of patients with good performance status significantly improved, as did measured lung function. There was a 9% increase in early stage cancer although this did not reach statistical significance. However, the proportion of patients undergoing surgical resection significantly increased from 14% to 31%, p<0.05. Abstract P65 Table 1 Results before and after public awareness campaign 2010 2011 p value GP Chest x-ray 2458 3126 Lung cancers diagnosed 49 61 Good performance status (0–1) 19 39% 35 57% 0.05 Stage I-II 14 29% 23 38% 0.31 FEV1 (L) 1.46 1.89 0.03 FEV1% 65 80 0.02 Surgical resection 7 14% 19 31% 0.04 Conclusions The results suggest that the regional lung cancer public awareness campaign was successful in increasing GP and public awareness with a consequent increase in lung cancer diagnoses at our institution. Furthermore, patients appeared to present with better performance status and preserved lung function which may, together with the trend to earlier stage at diagnosis, explain the significant improvement in surgical resection rates. These results are very promising and wider evaluation of the regional campaign is awaited with interest. References Athey V, Suckling RJ, Tod AM, Walters J & Rogers TK. Early diagnosis of lung cancer: evaluation of a community-based social marketing intervention. Thorax May 2012; 67(5): 412–417.


Research shows that middle school is an important juncture for a student where he or she starts to be conscious about academic achievement and thinks about college attendance. It is already known that access to financial resources, family background, career aspirations and academic ability are indicative of a student's choice to attend college; though these variables are interesting, they do not necessarily give sufficient actionable information to instructors or guidance counselors to intervene for individual students. However, increasing numbers of students are using educational software at this phase of their education, and detectors of specific aspects of student learning and engagement have been developed for these types of learning environments. If these types of models can be used to predict college attendance, it may provide more actionable information than the previous generation of predictive models. In this paper, we predict college attendance from these types of detectors, in the context of 3,747 students using the ASSISTment system in New England, producing detection that is both successful and potentially more actionable than previous approaches; we can distinguish between a student who will attend college and a student who will not attend college 68.6% of the time.


Research reveals that approximately 40% of Year 12 HSC students and 25% of Year 11 HSC students experience symptoms of depression, anxiety and or stress exceeding the normal or expected values. Numerous studies show that female students report higher levels of psychological distress than their male counterparts. Female secondary school students also report poor lifestyle behaviours such as low levels of physical activity participation. This is despite research demonstrating physical activity interventions as an effective means of promoting wellbeing. However, it has not been well documented whether physical activity interventions are considered beneficial by HSC students at this stressful time of their lives. Therefore, the current study explores the experiences among a group of female HSC students (n=6) (mean age = 17 years) regarding their involvement in a once per week, 8 week exercise class program. Each participant reported at least one perceived benefit relating to their involvement in the 8-week exercise class program. A perceived increased level of access to physical activity was identified by the participant group. After taking part in the program, reductions in individual subjective stress, increased social interaction, improved self esteem and improved mood states were all identified by the participants as perceived benefits of exercise class participation. It is recommended that secondary schools in Australia focus on providing supportive environments for health by offering HSC students the chance to take part in conveniently located, free of charge exercise classes.


We consider optimal control problems for gas flow in pipeline networks. The equations of motion are taken to be represented by a first-order system of hyperbolic semilinear equations derived from the fully nonlinear isothermal Euler gas equations. We formulate an optimal control problem on a network and introduce a tailored time discretization thereof. In order to further reduce the complexity, we consider an instantaneous control strategy. The main part of the paper is concerned with a nonoverlapping domain decomposition of the optimal control problem on the graph into local problems on smaller sub-graphs—ultimately on single edges. We prove convergence of the domain decomposition method on networks and study the wellposedness of the corresponding time-discrete optimal control problems. The point of the paper is that we establish virtual control problems on the decomposed subgraphs such that the corresponding optimality systems are in fact equal to the systems obtained via the domain decomposition of the entire optimality system.


ABSTRACT In 2015, the isolated border region of Kokang in Myanmar experienced armed conflict reported around the world. Most of the estimated 100,000 refugees from the conflict crossed the border to China, while hostilities continued for six months. Unlike other ethnic minorities fighting Myanmar's government forces all along the extensive, mountainous border with China, the Kokang is largely of Han Chinese origin with a well established and nurtured relationship with China. Based on 458 questionnaires and interviews, media reports and official government releases, this article explores the varying imaginaries of territory, security and geopolitics of distant Kokang, from refugees now in China, Chinese from adjacent Yunnan and other provinces, as well as analysts viewing the conflict from afar. The study offers a lens for border studies to view the multi-scalar and extended geopolitics of nation states and their peripheral sub-national components. Specifically, the article addresses the changing role of the border under conditions of conflict and security enhancement and the malleable definition of borderlands territory. The study reveals how borders are utilised creatively by territorial inhabitants, their neighbours and their governments, how borders work in remote places, and how cross-border culture operates even in conflict situations to mediate borders. It enlarges our understanding of evolving borders in the space between exception and integration emerging in simultaneous globalisation and localisation.


We ask whether firms hedge optimally by analyzing the impact the NYSE/NASDAQ listing rule changes have had, which exogenously imposed board composition changes on a subset of firms, on financial risk management. Using new proxies for the extent of financial risk management in non-financial firms we find that treated firms reduce their financial hedging, in a difference-in-difference framework. The reduction is concentrated in firms with higher conflicts of interests, such as a high CEO equity ownership level, which exposes them to more idiosyncratic risk, and a higher occurrence of option backdating. We reject the hypothesis that newly majority-independent boards reduce financial hedging due to a lack of knowledge. First, we find no difference in financial hedging for firms where SOX mandated the addition of a financial expert relative to those that already had such expertise. Second, shareholder value increases more during the period of time of the listing rule deliberations for treated firms that hedge prior to the treatment. We conclude that some firms hedge too much reducing shareholder value potentially to the benefit of under-diversified CEOs. We also show that board independence serves to reinforce monitoring which allows boards to cut back on excessive financial hedging.


In this paper, we investigate the throughput capacity in wireless hybrid networks with various network topologies and traffic patterns. Specifically, we consider n randomly distributed nodes, out of which there are n source nodes and nd (0 < d < 1) randomly chosen destination nodes, together with nb (0 < b < 1) base stations in a network area of [0, nw] times [0, n1-w] (0 < w les 1/2 ). We first study the throughput capacity when the base stations are regularly placed and their transmission power is large enough for them to directly transmit to any nodes associated with them. We show that a per-node throughput of max{min{nb-1, nd-1}, min {nw-1/radiclog n, nd-1}} bits/sec is achievable by all nodes. We then investigate the throughput capacity when the base stations are uniformly and randomly placed, and their transmission power is as small as that of the normal nodes. We present that each node can achieve a throughput of max{min{nb-1/log n, nd-1}, min {nw-1/radiclog n, nd-1}} bits/sec. In both settings, we observe that only when d > b and d > w, the maximum achievable throughput can be determined by both the number of base stations and the shape of network area. In all the other cases, the maximum achievable throughput is only constrained by the number of destination nodes. Moreover, the results in these two settings are the same except for the case d > b > w, in which the random placement of base stations will cause a degradation factor of log n on the maximum achievable throughput compared to the regular placement. Finally, we also show that our results actually hold for different power propagation models.


Corporate sustainability and ESG investing are increasingly front and center for U.S. companies as issues such as climate change, health care and inequity have more and more impact on the bottomline. We reviewed 1188 individual Fortune 100 board member credentials to determine whether companies with material ESG risks and opportunities had relevant expertise on their boards. We found that very few sectors and very few companies were adequately prepared at the board level for issues that were already affecting their performance -- for example one property and casualty insurance company has no environmental expertise on the board in a year experiencing $100 billion in damage caused by climate change--heightened extreme weather events. On another issue of growing materiality, cyber/telecom security, just eight directors of 1188 had expertise. We also examine COVID-19 and #blacklives matter as related to board credentials and make recommendations on how to improve board ESG governance.


This paper studies optimal monetary policy in a framework that explicitly accounts for policymakers' uncertainty about the channels of transmission of oil prices into the economy. More speci…cally, I examine the robust response to the real price of oil that US monetary authorities would have been recommended to implement in the period 1970 2009; had they used the approach proposed by Cogley and Sargent (2005b) to incorporate model uncertainty and learning into policy decisions. In this context, I investigate the extent to which regulators'changing beliefs over di¤erent models of the economy play a role in the policy selection process. The main conclusion of this work is that, in the speci…c environment under analysis, one of the underlying models dominates the optimal interest rate response to oil prices. This result persists even when alternative assumptions on the models'priors change the pattern of the relative posterior probabilities, and can thus be attributed to the presence of model uncertainty itself.


We investigate the welfare effects of vertical integration of regional sports networks (RSNs) with programming distributors in U.S. multichannel television markets. Vertical integration can enhance efficiency by reducing double marginalization and increasing carriage of channels, but can also harm welfare due to foreclosure and raising rivals' costs incentives. We estimate a structural model of viewership, subscription, distributor pricing, and affiliate fee bargaining using a rich dataset on the U.S. cable and satellite television industry (2000-2010). We use these estimates to analyze the impact of simulated vertical mergers and de-mergers of RSNs on competition and welfare, and examine the efficacy of regulatory policies introduced by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to address competition concerns in this industry.


transport studies, despite the fact that their ability to access health and educational facilities is crucial to the achievement of many of the Millennium Development Goals. To address this knowledge gap a pioneering collaborative research project led by the University of Durham has gathered evidence of the specific mobility constraints experienced by girl and boy children as they attempt to access the facilities and services that are important to their lives. This innovative research, supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), was conducted across three Sub-Saharan countries: Ghana, Malawi and South Africa. The project explored the travel challenges faced by girl and boy children through their own eyes alongside traditional adult-led research methods. It looked at their access to health, education and other services, at the lack of direct information on how mobility constraints impact on children's current and future livelihood opportunities, and at the lack of available guidelines on how to tackle them. In this issue of Forum News we highlight the key findings of the project, share relevant resources and ask where do we go from here?


A fundamental problem in cognitive neuroscience is how humans make decisions, act, and behave in relation to other humans. Here we adopt the hypothesis that when we are in an interactive social setting, our brains perform Bayesian inference of the intentions and cooperativeness of others using probabilistic representations. We employ the framework of partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) to model human decision making in a social context, focusing specifically on the volunteer's dilemma in a version of the classic Public Goods Game. We show that the POMDP model explains both the behavior of subjects as well as neural activity recorded using fMRI during the game. The decisions of subjects can be modeled across all trials using two interpretable parameters. Furthermore, the expected reward predicted by the model for each subject was correlated with the activation of brain areas related to reward expectation in social interactions. Our results suggest a probabilistic basis for human social decision making within the framework of expected reward maximization.


Membrane computing, which is a computational model based on cell activity, has considerable attention as one of new paradigms of computations. In the general membrane computing, computationally hard problems have been solved in a polynomial number of steps using an exponential number of membranes. However, reduction of the number of membranes must be considered to make P system more realistic model. In the paper, we propose an asynchronous P system using branch and bound, which is a well known optimization technique, to reduce the number of membranes. The proposed P system solves the satisfiability problem (SAT) with n variables and m clauses, and works in O(m2^n) sequential steps or O(mn) parallel steps. The number of membranes used in the proposed P system is evaluated using a computational simulation. The experimental result shows the effectiveness of the proposed P system.


Programmed cell death and apoptosis have been assumed to emerge with multicellularity, and to depend on specific 'death genes' whose sole effects are execution or repression of cell death. In 1996, I proposed the 'original sin' hypothesis, postulating that the origin of self-destruction is as ancient as the origin of the first cells, and predicting that there are no specific 'death genes'. Rather, an ancestral and unavoidable capacity of effectors of cell survival – of cell metabolism, differentiation, cycling – to induce cell death favoured their continuous selection during evolution for both their 'pro-life' and 'pro-death' activities. Diversification of these effectors was accelerated by their recruitment into host/parasite interactions and symbioses, including the one that gave birth to eukaryote cells. The main prediction of the 'original sin' hypothesis is supported by recent findings showing that effectors of cell death indeed have previously undetected roles in cell survival.

Key concepts

Programmed cell death (PCD) is an evolutionary conserved, regulated process of cell suicide crucial in the development and homeostasis of multicellular animals and plants.

Various forms of PCD have also been discovered in unicellular organisms, including bacteria, favouring the survival in adverse environments of a part of the colony at the expense of the premature dismissal of another.

Because PCD appears as an 'altruistic' cell response, the evolutionary origin of PCD has been equated with that of 'altruistic' cell behaviour.

The 'original sin' hypothesis postulates that the origin of PCD is as ancient as the origin of the first cell, resulting from an unavoidable capacity of most molecular effectors of cell survival (metabolism, differentiation and cell cycle) to induce stochastic self-destruction, when their activity is not regulated by other cell survival effectors acting as partial antagonists.

The 'original sin' hypothesis predicts that there are no specific 'death genes'; rather, the ancestral capacity of most effectors of cell survival to also induce cell suicide allowed their continuous selection during evolution for both their 'pro-life' and 'pro-death' activities.

Some of the pleiotropic 'pro-life' and 'pro-death' effectors diversified and propagated in bacteria as toxin/antidote 'addiction modules', achieving a form of enforced symbiosis, because their dismissal results in the self-destruction of the cell in which they reside.

Host/parasite conflicts, lateral gene transfers and enforced symbioses – between bacteria and their 'addiction modules' of plasmid origin, and later between eukaryote cells and their mitochondria endosymbionts of bacterial origin – played a crucial role in the subsequent diversification and propagation of PCD.

The seminal studies of the genetic control of PCD in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans implied that executioners and repressors of PCD had no other possible effect than execution or repression of cell death; however, a series of recent findings indicates that executioners and repressors of PCD exert other previously undetected vital effects in both multicellular and unicellular organisms.

Keywords:

evolution;
programmed cell death;
apoptosis;
unicellular organisms;
bacteria;
ageing


The aluminium alloy 2014A-T6 is used as an aerospace alloy due to its strength and
rigidity. The disadvantage of this alloy is that it is susceptible to galvanic corrosion,
this occurs due to the fact that the main alloying element, copper, forms discreet
precipitates principally of CuAl2 which are noble to the main aluminium matrix. One
of the main ways in protecting the alloy from corrosion is by the application of a
passive chromate conversion coating. Due to legislation, chromates are being
outlawed, so replacements are being sought
Investigations into sodium
orthovanadate as an alternative conversion coa ing, showed that it provided a degree
of protection against chloride ion attack from both salt spray testing and immersion in
3.5% sodium chloride. Tests were carried out to see if coating of the copper
intermetallic could reduce the amount of galvanic attack the 2014A-T6 Al alloy was
subjected to. Investigations were carried out in to the inhibition the copper surface by
the use of sulphur-based compounds. The results showed that inhibition did not occur.
However, further investigations into organic acids such as sebacic acid showed that
when added to the sodium orthovanadate solution they promoted greater corrosion
protection by reacting with the alkaline sodium orthovanadate solution to form
sodium sebacate. The sodium sebacate was able to block cracks on the coating surface
thereby inhibiting ingress of chloride ions to the surface of the 2014A-T6 Al alloy.
This was proved by the use of scanning electron microscopy, which showed the
presence of fine needle like features of precipitated sodium sebacate. X-ray
photoelectron spectroscopy results showed that there was a high possibility that
sodium sebacate was present on the surface due to the presence of both carbon and
sodium which were not present when the alloy was treated from a solution containing
just sodium orthovanadate. A variety of coatings were analysed using D. C.
electrochemical polarisation, it was found that the sodium orthovanadate treatment,
containing the sebacic acid, gave a considerable increase in the corrosion resistance in
3.5% NaCl compared to all other coatings except chromate. However, the sodium
orthovanadate coating containing sebacic acid showed a reasonably close corrosion. resistance to the Alochrom 1200 chromate coating when subjected to salt spray
corrosion tests.
Simulated samples of 2014A-T6 Al alloy were produced by coupling laboratory
produced CuAl2 and commercially produced aluminium. The results obtained using
D. C. electrochemical polarisation gave similar trends to that obtained by a
commercial sample of 2014A-T6 Al alloy showing that the sodium
orthovanadate/sebacic acid coating solution was highly effective. This was backed up
by the use of zero resistance ammetery which showed that the sodium
orthovanadate/sebacic acid at 60 seconds at 60°C showed broadly comparable results
with chromates up until 190 hours, when the coated couples were immersed in 3.5%
NaCl at 25°C.


Different remote sensing technologies, including photogrammetry and LIDAR (light detection and ranging), allow collecting three-dimensional (3D) data sets that can be used to create 3D digital representations of outcrop surfaces, called digital outcrop models (DOM). The main advantages of photogrammetry over LIDAR are represented by the very simple and lightweight field equipment (a digital camera), and by the arbitrary spatial resolution, that can be increased simply getting closer to the outcrop or by using a different lens. The quality of photogrammetric data sets obtained with structure from motion (SFM) techniques has shown a tremendous improvement over the past few years, and this is becoming one of the more effective ways to collect DOM data sets. The Vajont Gorge (Belluno Dolomites, Italy) provides spectacular outcrops of jurassic limestones (Vajont Limestone Formation) in which mesozoic faults and fracture corridors are continuously exposed. Some of these faults acted as conduits for fluids, resulting in structurally controlled dolomitization. A 3D DOM study, based on a photogrammetric SFM data set, was carried out, aimed at enabling interdisciplinary characterization and reconstruction of coupled brittle deformation and fluid flow processes. For this study we used a DOM (730 m × 360 m × 270 m) consisting of continuous triangulated surfaces representing the outcrop, textured with high-resolution images. Interpretation and modeling performed on this data set include (1) georeferencing of structural measurements and sampling stations; (2) tracing of stratigraphic boundaries, structural surfaces, and dolomitization fronts (ground-truthed); (3) correlation and extrapolation of realistic 3D surfaces from these traces; and (4) development of a 3D geological model at the scale of the Vajont Gorge, including stratigraphy, faults, dolomitization fronts, and volumetric meshes suitable for the statistical analysis of structural, diagenetic, and geochemical parameters. The DOM study highlighted the close relationship between faults and dolostone geobodies, demonstrating that dolomitization was guided by fluid infiltration along Mesozoic normal faults. In order to explore the uncertainty associated with the 3D model of irregularly shaped dolostone bodies, three different 3D dolostone geobody realizations have been modeled, providing a minimum, intermediate, and maximum estimate of the dolostone/limestone volumetric facies ratio, while honoring the field constraints.


This is one of Shaw's most unusual and enduringly popular plays. With "Saint Joan" (1923) Shaw reached the height of his fame and Joan is one of his finest creations; forceful, vital, and rebelling against the values that surround her. The play distils Shaw's views on the subjects of politics, religion and creative evolution.


Future primary school teachers can feel their subjectivity and dive into the culture of learning activity as a basis for developing the main features of learning and professional subjectivity starting from the first classes in higher pedagogical educational institutions. The paper aims to scientifically and theoretically justify and experimentally verify some pedagogical conditions and methodologies for developing professional subjectivity in future primary school teachers, taking into account a neuropedagogical approach. Also, it substantiates the main pedagogical condition, that is, professional training should imply mastering the psychological structure of pedagogical activity in primary school and cultivating creative personality as the subject of this activity. It requires full compliance with certain pedagogical conditions. The latter should comply with neurophysiological characteristics of the participants in the educational process. The paper proves the effectiveness of these pedagogical conditions based on the questionnaire aimed at determining the effectiveness criteria for professional self-determination in higher education institutions, the diagnostic-related professional readiness methodology, the motivation towards higher education study methodology, the diagnostic of the structure of work motives methodology. The paper experimentally proves that their educational subjectivity is a manifestation of one's capacity for subjective self-transformation in the learning activity, and pedagogical subjectivity represents the final stage of professional training and completion of pedagogical education, which acts as both synthesis and transformation of many invariant and variant subjective personality traits of students in the professionally important quality of the teacher, among which professional subjectivity is an integral one. EG respondents have shown better results in terms of levels of subjective qualities than CG respondents.


In this paper socioeconomics is regarded both as an interdisciplinary paradigm developed by SASE (International Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics) and economic science which should solve a number of practical tasks dealing with the economic assessment of bilateral bonds between economy and society (under social context). Further socioeconomics is also discussed as a new discipline for Russian universities which includes both versions of socioeconomics (advanced interdisciplinary and economic). The experience of its integration in learning process is analyzed and the concept and program of the learning course in State University – Higher School of Economics are put forward. Supporting the importance of developing socioeconomics as an interdisciplinary paradigm the author aims to show, that the SASE-version of socioeconomics does not use up its full interpreting potential. It can be substantially extended with the use of "particular" sciences within interdisciplinary paradigm and developing another version of socioeconomics as an economic science. This version aims at solving practical tasks inherent in advanced stable socio-economic systems as well as in many of the transforming economies and societies. The basics of socioeconomics as an interdisciplinary paradigm are well described by the well-known "minimum-platform" SASE (1991) and have been recently made more precise by its author A. Etzioni (2003). While this paradigm is still under development and being discussed by scientific association (Piore, Wrong, Streeck, Hollingsworth, Abell, Swedberg), the author also identifies those features of the socioeconomic paradigm of SASE, which reduce its expository and predicting power but have not yet become subject to discussions: 1. Reverse influence of economic values on the non-economic ones is not taken into account (the dependent value is always an economic one), which reduces the possibility of learning real interactions and patterns of economic and social development within different levels of social reality – macro-, meso- and micro. 2. The range of independent variables gradually shortens due to the exclusion (more often a forced one) of economic variables. Presently it is accepted, that a dependent variable is an economic one, while all of the independent variables are non-economic. No doubt, that to emphasize, that there should be at least one non-economic variable among the independent ones, is somewhat unconvincing. Basically it is correct to retreat from such claims, because interdisciplinary approach underlies its methodological principles. But it is as well unconvincing to reduce the independent variables to purely non-economic ones. 3. The socioeconomic paradigm of SASE fairly signifies moral obligations, social expectations and power relations which influence the behavior of economic actors. A lot is said about the role of morality and collectivity ("we"), density of social bonds between individuals, group norms on individual behavior. It is not often, but mentioned that the state and big corporations have a greater (with respect to other market participants) influence on economic behavior of the ordinary actors. Meanwhile it is necessary to accentuate, that different economic actors differ not only by their value orientations, but also by the scale and structure of the resources they possess. As far as individual actions are multisided the individual's behavior is influenced not only by economic or cultural and professional resources, but other different resources: political, managerial, power, social (including status), etc. The level of the individuals' social status defines the scales of both their constructive and destructive influence on the functioning of the economic system. We can compare, for example, the pilfering of the people which lie at the lowest level of social hierarchy (as a means for their physical survival) and the financial fraud of the higher state officers (as a means for their personal enrichment at the cost of the rest of society). The resource potential differs significantly between rural residents and capital citizens, residents of labor-abundant and labor-lacking regions, men and women, young and old, well-educated and low-educated, etc. Thus today socioeconomics of SASE doesn't use up the potential of "particular" sciences. Their integration under SASE usually applies within economic sociology and economic psychology. The weaker role of other sciences doesn't allow us to use the full potential of the interdisciplinary approach. And even, perhaps, economics belongs to that list, though theorists of SASE call upon its further integration with social sciences. The author stresses her attention on the negative outcomes of the economists unwillingness to integrate with SASE. One of the most important extensions of socioeconomic paradigm of SASE (and by no means the only one) is to develop its new version – socioeconomics as an economic science. Its development can become that very "bridge" which would facilitate the integration of economic science into interdisciplinary version of the SASE-socioeconomics. But what is it exactly, this version of socioeconomics? Under the constant meshing of social and economic life, acceleration of changes, increasing losses from unconsidered interactions between social and economic aspects of the functioning of macro-, meso- and microsystem (both, social and economic) there emerges a greater necessity in a special science which could assess the interaction between the economy and the society (social context) in terms of measuring and comparing costs and outcomes. Socioeconomics (in its economic version) studies bilateral bonds between economic and social aspects of social reproduction at different levels of social reality (macro-, meso- and micro) and attempts to assess these bonds economically through comparing widely understood costs and outcomes under definite social constraints. The fact, that a wide range of social phenomena, institutions and processes greatly influences the economy, is a major thesis of SASE-socioeconomics. But with such application its influence has no economic assessment (in perfection, a monetary one), i. e. it is not considered in terms of gains and losses of economic actors and systems at different levels. Economic version of socioeconomics extends the approach of SASE in studying the influence of the social context on the economy (it is primarily a contribution of economic sociology and economic psychology) with economic assessment of this influence. What are, for example, economic losses from growing alcoholism and drug addiction among the youth in rural towns and villages? Where, say, economic sociology ends with uncovering of dominating strategies of saving behavior, its factors and restrictions, socioeconomics would use it only as a foundation for further research attempting to measure its economic gains/losses (of banks, individuals, economic system as a whole). Another major distinction of the proposed version of socioeconomics from its SASE-version is the idea that it has to study reverse effects from the economy's influence on the society and provide it, again, with economic assessment. In other words, economic version of socioeconomics proceeds from the assumption, that social domain (as an entity of social relations and institutions) as well as other social processes do not only influence the economy, but are also "submerged" in it, depend on it. No doubt, every human life is priceless. But with financing public health under 3% of GDP it becomes necessary to anticipate the economic loss, to which such "saving" would bring in future. The author also shows that in developing the economic version of socioeconomics in modern Russia there is a clear practical necessity. It can facilitate the search for more effective solutions to a wide range of practical problems, which are faced by the actors at different levels. In particular, the important analytical and expert part of socioeconomics in modern Russia lies in complex valuation of consequences of introduction of chargeable services in a number of public branches, as well as in measuring the effectiveness of government expenditure on free public services. At firms' level there also emerges a number of tasks: measuring the effectiveness of human capital investment, intangible assets, different elements of the intellectual capital (human, structural, market (goodwill, consumer relations, insiders, etc.)). Without thorough assessment of such close interconnection between economic and social aspects it is barely possible to avoid unfavorable consequences at most of levels of social reality.


Development in the post/colonial world is premised on the twin logics of modernization and nation-building, of which the latter has received little attention in post-development studies, and relatedly Management and Organisation Studies (MOS). This thesis interrogates – historically and critically – the imaginaries of modernity and nationalism, and later nation-building, that have animated development in post/colonial India. It draws on the history of philanthropy of the Tata Group, one of India's leading global business group. In Part I of the thesis, the shifts in these imaginaries are mapped and explained; the history of organisation and management of development is presented in Part II; and the purposive organisation of history and historiography is presented in Part III. The thesis makes the following contributions: empirically, this research revises critically and updates the history of the Tatas' philanthropy. It makes a methodological contribution by drawing attention to the constructed nature of history and historiography, which is used purposively towards maintaining the Group's identity. Conceptually, this is 'a' history of development in post/colonial India; which it is argued can be interrogated substantively though Chatterjee's reconceptualisation of civil society, political society, and population. It draws attention to the 'pedagogic reflex' of the elite and the crucial role of corporate philanthropy in the constitution of the 'population' as part of development. Departing from Chatterjee's demarcation of civil and political societies as empirically distinct, the thesis makes a case for using these as conceptual apparatuses. The thesis provides a corrective to post-development studies and related work in MOS, by instantiating the national question at the centre of development in post/colonial India. Displacing 'Third Worldism', it traces the origin and history of development-management in another place and time, outside postWorld War II and Cold War geo-politics. The thesis makes a modest but generative theoretical contribution by drawing attention to Chatterjee's remarkable work and provides an alternate set of conceptual resources, hitherto little used in MOS.


Recent advances in processing and storing information has led to an explosion of data collection. Many organizations like the Census, hospitals and even search engine companies collect, analyze and distribute personal information in return for useful services. However, the collected data track entire public and private lives of individuals, thus resulting in an immense privacy risk of unauthorized disclosure. This dissertation presents novel conceptual and practical tools to ensure privacy of individuals while enabling the dissemination of valuable data about humans to improve their lives. Our contributions include novel formal definitions of the privacy risk arising from unauthorized disclosure, and practical algorithms for enforcing these definitions of privacy.
We consider two distinct settings of data dissemination that require different notions of privacy. In the first part of this dissertation, we consider a setting where no sensitive information should be disclosed. We consider the problem of deciding whether answering a query on a relational database leads to any disclosure of sensitive information. This problem was shown to be intractable; we propose practical algorithms for a reasonably large set of query classes.
In the second part of the dissertation, we consider the problem of publishing "anonymous" aggregate information about populations of individuals while preserving the privacy of individual-specific information. We present a novel framework for reasoning about the privacy risk in this setting. We also propose the first formal privacy definition and practical algorithms for publishing "anonymous" data that provably guarantees privacy of the individuals contributing to the data while releasing useful aggregate information. We also present a case study of applying formal privacy definitions to a real Census data publishing application.


Though published more than ten years apart, it is timely to review these volumes together. Both books adopt an historical perspective on women under men ' s laws, with a strong message for the contemporary world. Because of Sex traces developments constituting, and bringing about, advances in how the law addresses women ' s work and roles, and consequent change in society. A Law of Her Own proposes how the law should adopt a revised approach, substituting the 'reasonable woman' standard for the existing - generally ubiquitous – 'reasonable man' or 'reasonable person' standard – which Because of Sex indicates has at least to some degree, in some instances, occurred.


The evaluation of the contaminant transport is dictated by the Federal Soil Protection Regulation (BBodSchV, 1999) for sites that are suspected to endanger the groundwater. Vulnerability maps are often used for this evaluation. However, vulnerability maps consider the intrinsic vulnerability according to different methods taking some soil properties into account. Such qualitative method is not accurate when it comes to calculate the contaminant transport and looking at the specific vulnerability. Within the framework of a research project, a new investigation concept for the prediction of contaminants input into the groundwater was developed. This concept considers the estimation of the emission (E) of the contaminants, i.e., the time dependent amount and concentration of the leachate of the contamination source. The amount of leachate can be estimated by the infiltration of the groundwater recharge for every hydrological year using hydrological parameters. The expected concentration can be obtained from elution tests. In a second step, the transmission (T), i.e., the pollutant transport through the unsaturated zone into the groundwater is evaluated. This evaluation considers the transport mechanisms advection, diffusion and the retardation potential of the transmission zone. As a result, the immission (I) into the groundwater, the amount and concentration of the contaminants input can be estimated. Finally, it is important to evaluate the sensitivity of the system by classifying the groundwater according to the source value. This evaluation technique comprises a characterization of the site and an estimation of the contamination potential by conducting laboratory and in-situ tests and a numerical simulation modelling involving iteration for a contaminant mass balance. In this paper, a new testing method in a diffusion cell for the determination of the characteristic parameters for the transport mechanisms including the retardation potential is described and an evaluation concept for the contaminant transport based on the testing results is presented and discussed.


The majority of the dairy products imported by the United States are intermediate products used in food processing. As such, they are demanded for their components such as milk fat and protein. The implications of the U.S. tariff structure for import demand must be viewed in terms of the tariff's effects upon the relative prices of imported milk components. In this article we examine the implications of the current tariff structure and proposed changes under the Doha Round of international trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization. We show that implicit ad valorem equivalent tariffs (AVEs) on components vary substantially under the current tariff schedule. Proposed changes under the Doha Round would lead to not only a reduction in the level of implied tariffs on components, but also a reduction in dispersion. This would help to reduce the possibility of distortions due to significant differences in component prices across intermediate dairy products.


Differences that Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada. Dan Zuberi. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. During most of the 1980s and 1990s, the future of social assistance-better known as welfare-dominated North American policy debates more than poverty and social inclusion. More recently, scholars and policy-makers have increasingly debated the status of the working poor, which is largely distinct from the issue of social assistance. In Differences That Matter, University of British Columbia sociologist Dan Zuberi assesses the impact of social and labour policy on the fate of the working poor in Canada and the United States. More specifically, he explores the life and working conditions of hotel workers in Seattle and Vancouver, two cities with a lot in common. The two pairs of hotels studied also belong to the same chain, which reduces the organizational differences between them. This is a crucial issue, as Zuberi stresses the role of broad social policy structures affecting the lives of hotel workers and their families in each country. Because these workers operate in a similar organizational and economic environment, it is easier to identify how cross-national differences in labour and social policy impact the working poor. Derived from a Ph.D. dissertation defended at Harvard University, Differences that Matter is based on the seventy-seven interviews Zuberi conducted. These interviews with Vancouver and Seattle's hotel workers generated evidence about the positive role of Canada's more progressive social and labour policies, which include work training programs, universal public health insurance, comprehensive unemployment benefits, and pro-union labour regulations. According to Zuberi, hotel workers in Vancouver are better off on average than their Seattle counterparts, who have more limited access to social policy resources like health insurance and unemployment benefits. Furthermore, Zuberi points to the positive impact of urban infrastructures like parks and community centres on the lives of hotel workers and their families. After comparing the impact of labour, social policy, and urban policies on the lives of hotel workers in Vancouver and Seattle, Zuberi offers a set of broad policy recommendations aimed at improving the fate of the working poor in Canada and in the United States. Differences That Matter confirms the traditional progressive belief that comprehensive public policies can make a positive difference in citizens' lives, especially the most vulnerable ones. Considering this, it is not surprising that Zuberi formulates policy recommendations that support progressive taxation, welfare state expansion, and the liberalization of restrictive unionization regulations in the United States. Praising more generous Canadian social and labour policies, he would like the United States to develop a more comprehensive welfare state, among other things. Overall, Differences That Matter is a well-researched, stimulating book offering a unique look at the relationship between social policy and urban poverty in North America. Although it does not feature an extensive discussion of ethnic relations, the book stresses the positive role of particular labour, social, and urban programs in the social and economic inclusion of immigrants. …


We present a study of bounded deferral, notification policies that defer incoming alerts for a bounded time if a user is busy when alerts arrive. We first review empirical studies that highlight the value of pursuing a deeper understanding of bounded-deferral policies. Then, we present a general decision-theoretic formulation of bounded deferral. We introduce families of functions that are expressive yet enable optimization of deferral times based on the outcome of simple tests.


The Damned (1963) is the most intriguing of director Joseph Losey's British "journeyman" films. A sci-fi film by a director who hated sci-fi; a Hammer production that sat on the shelf for over two years before being released with almost no publicity as the second half of a double bill. Losey was a director vocal in his dislike of depictions of physical violence, but he often made films that radiate an energy produced by a violent clash of elements. The Damned catches a series of collisions — some of them inadvertent — and traps them as if in amber. Its volatile elements include Losey, the blacklisted director; Hammer, the erratic British studio, Oliver Reed, the 'dangerous' young actor, and radioactive children. This book concentrates on historical and cultural context, place, genre, and other themes in order to try to make sense of a fascinating, underappreciated film.


We present a simple method of frequency stabilization of a laser with two orthogonal modes that uses the effects of anomalous dispersion at the active line. The result of this effect is that the frequency difference between oscillation modes varies during the frequency tuning along the Doppler line of the transition and has its minimum or maximum when the modes are symmetrically placed around the central part of the gain curve. We applied the semiclassical approach to describe the laser, and we established the rules for laser parameters to obtain the most convenient conditions for stabilization. We stabilized the thermally compensated experimental laser tube and reached frequency stabilities of 3 × 10(-9) and 3 × 10(-10) for integrating times of 1 and 134 s, respectively.


Distribution, complexity, heterogeneity of resources, software, and hardware are challenges in distributed applications. Intelligent mobile agent is used to handles distributed data, control, expertise, and resources in distributed applications. It is an executing program that is capable of flexible autonomous action, migrates during execution from host to host, reason with uncertain, incomplete, and contradictory information. Belief-Desire-Intention-Joint-Mobile UNITY (BDI-MU) kit is introduced to construct intelligent mobile agent. It is designed using BDI-MU architecture. BDI-MU architecture is an open architecture based on autonomous practical reasoning and social ability through messages. It consists of system package and user-defined package. The system package provides components that can be extended and imported to develop an agent, its server and domain. The user-defined package is a pluggable component which consists of user applications, agents and databases. The BDI-MU agent constructed by BDI-MU kit is composed by intra agent structure and inter agent structure. The intra agent structure provides belief, intention, capability, and goal for reasoning. Autonomy and BDI architecture is used to construct the intra agent structure. The inter agent structure provides functionality for communicating with other individuals, coordinating with agencies, accessing resources, and mobility within the network. Message and Mobile UNITY is used to construct the inter agent structure. Ambients hierarchy and holonic organization framework is integrated to develop a component and organizational based intelligent mobile agent. To ensure a systematic BDI-MU agent based system development process, a BDI-MU methodology and BDI-MU modeling technique are proposed as a modeling language, rules, and practices. The experimental results show that the BDI-MU agent produced by the BDI-MU kit performed efficiently.


Certain tiger moths emit high-frequency clicks to an attacking bat, causing it to break off its pursuit. The sounds may either orient the bat by providing it with information that it uses to make an attack decision (aposematism) or they may disorient the bat by interrupting the normal flow of echo information required to complete a successful capture (startle, jamming). At what point during a bat's attack does an arctiid emit its clicks? If the sounds are aposematic, the moth should emit them early in the attack echolocation sequence in order to allow the bat time to understand their meaning. If, however, the sounds disrupt the bat's echo-processing behaviour, one would expect them to be emitted later in the attack to maximize their confusion effects. To test this, we exposed dogbane tiger moths (Cycnia tenera) to a recording of the echolocation sequence emitted by a big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus) as it attacked a stationary target. Our results demonstrate that, at normal echolocation intensities, C. tenera does not respond to approach calls but waits until the terminal phase of the attack before emitting its clicks. This timing is evident whether the moth is stationary or flying and is largely independent of the intensity of the echolocation calls. These results support the hypothesis of a jamming effect (e.g. 'phantom echoes') and suggest that, to determine experimentally the effects of arctiid clicks on bats, it is important that the bats be tested under conditions that simulate the natural context in which this defence operates.


Theoretical constructs are developed for discussing diffusivity and conductivity in polymer ionic materials. Such materials are characterized by extensive disorder, either static (lack of long-range order) or static and dynamic (lack of long-range order with short-range order evolving with time). Beginning with a dynamic percolation model, we show that, in general, so long as the mean-square displacement of the charged particle obeys a certain growth law, the observed charged-particle motion will be diffusive, both in the ballistic regime, corresponding to electronic motion with strong scattering, and in the ionic-hopping regime, corresponding to dynamic disorder renewal of the hopping situation. Some general behaviour for transport under these conditions is predicted, including definite statements about the frequency dependence of the conduction, the relationship between the growth law in a single interval and the growth law for observation times long compared to scattering or renewal times, and the behaviour in the neighbourhood of the percolation threshold for the static problem. Interpretations are suggested both for ion and electron-hopping situations.A statistical thermodynamic model is developed for analysis of contact ion pair formation and its effect on conductivity in ion-conducting polymer systems. In this model, the energy (due to solvation and polarization) favouring formation of a homogeneous complex in which the cations are solvated by the polymer host, competes with an entropic term favouring the separated structures (free polymer and contact ion pairs). We derive general conditions for this phase separation, and an expression for the number of polymer-bound, homogeneously solvated ions. We show that this number will, in general, decrease monotonically with increase in temperature, due to entropic favouring of the phase-separated material, this is reminiscent of the lower consolute temperature phenomenon in liquid mixtures.


The eunuch characters, representing a classic type of villain, usually feature strongly in Chinese audiences' memories about Hong Kong cinema, especially the wuxia genre during its glorious days in the twentieth century. They were created and stereotyped in Hong Kong cinema, developing with every rise and fall of Hong Kong wuxia genre, and varying at every crucial moment of the modern history of Hong Kong.
In the light of not only western gender and culture theories in regard to the concepts of masculine and feminine, but also Chinese philosophies in terms of yin and yang in particular, this thesis sets out to explore the evolution of the gender and cultural presentation of eunuch images in Hong Kong wuxia films from the 1960s to the early 2010s. With the aid of Jean Baudrillard and Judith Butler's theories, the two terms masculine and feminine will be argued as being not simply effective in gender representation, but also valid in outlining the logical mechanism which governs the organisation of the cultural phenomena. Meantime, Michel Foucault and Laura Mulvey's findings about the relationship between power and gaze will be employed to anatomise the specific case of culture construction.
The exploration of eunuch images will be intertwined with the examination of the Hong Kong cultural identity not only in the interactive triangle relationship between Hong Kong, Britain and China before 1997, but also in an interdependent Hong Kong-mainland connection in the post-colonial situation. Hong Kong filmmakers, in different circumstances with different cultural identities, proceeded to project different social expectations onto their cultural construction in Hong Kong cinema. The construction of the eunuch images, which includes the portrayal of their gender characteristics, power and social status, will be argued as deriving from these social expectations.
By these means, this thesis aims at providing an insight into the shift in the cultural pattern of Hong Kong cinema between the pursuit of a dualistic certainty and the advocacy of a pluralistic uncertainty. Based on a review of eunuch images in the history of Hong Kong films, this study represents a nostalgic account of the past glory of Hong Kong cinema, while also conveying an aspiration for a better tomorrow.


Various definitions of the envelope of a random response process are discussed. The statistical properties of the random envelope process based on these definitions are then derived and compared with one another. Among these properties, the expected envelope crossing rate is directly related to the reliability of the random response against the first passage failure. The reliabilities of five stationary narrow-band random processes are studied from empirical formulas based on various envelope definitions as well as from numerical simulations. It is concluded that an envelope defined by S.H. Crandall and W.D. Mark associated with the assumption that envelope crossings occur according to a Poisson process usually results in rather accurate and conservative approximations for the reliabilities against the double-sided first passage failure of narrow-band random processes.


This paper examines whether auditors bear any negative consequence of the failures of finance companies in New Zealand. More than 60 finance companies failed since 2006 and these failures imposed massive financial loss on the investors. There is a wide perception of audit failure in the case of these failed finance companies. Therefore, it is important to examine whether there is evidence of poor audit quality in the case of failed finance companies. It is also important to investigate, from the perspective of audit theory and public policy, whether the auditors of these failed finance companies were punished after the failures. The study examines two consequences for the auditors – disciplinary actions against the auditors by Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CAANZ) and client loss. The paper also examines whether the auditor has been sued after the failure of any finance company. The sample is comprised of 37 failed finance companies for which annual reports were available on the website of Companies Office New Zealand. The study finds that auditors who gave unmodified audit opinions are not more likely to face disciplinary actions than those who gave unmodified audit opinions with going concern explanation paragraphs and modified audit opinions. Furthermore, the study utilizes auditor turnover of public listed companies in New Zealand to test another consequence of finance company failures for the auditors – client loss. While there is no significant relationship between disciplinary actions and auditor turnover, a statistically significant relationship is observed between finance company failure and auditor turnover. The study also analyses litigation effect on auditors who involved with finance company failures. Under the primary liability rule – joint and several liability – in New Zealand, auditor is held liable for the loss of the client. The results of this study will be of interest to practitioners, standard setters and law makers, and will fill the literature gap on the impacts of corporate failures on auditors. Table of


Reaping the optimal rewards from any quality improvement project mandates sustainability after the initial implementation. In Part III of this three-part ATS Seminars series, we discuss strategies to create a culture for change, improve cooperation and interaction between multidisciplinary teams of clinicians, and position the intensive care unit (ICU) optimally within the hospital environment. Coaches are used throughout other industries to help professionals assess and continually improve upon their practice; use of this strategy is as of yet infrequent in health care, but would be easily transferable and potentially beneficial to ICU managers and clinicians alike. Similarly, activities focused on improving teamwork are commonplace outside of health care. Simulation training and classroom education about key components of successful team functioning are known to result in improvements. In addition to creating an ICU environment in which individuals and teams of clinicians perform well, ICU managers must position the ICU to function well within the hospital system. It is important to move away from the notion of a standalone ("siloed") ICU to one that is well integrated into the rest of the institution. Creating a "pull-system" (in which participants are active in searching out needed resources and admitting patients) can help ICU managers both provide better care for the critically ill and strengthen relationships with non-ICU staff. Although not necessary, there is potential upside to creating a unified critical care service to assist with achieving these ends.


An interview conducted circa 1990 with Adele Bernstein. Part of a series carried out at Grahamstown University and held at the UWC/Robben Island Mayibuye Archive.


Locomotor muscle fatigue develops during endurance events and it is
traditionally thought to limit performance despite no direct
experimental evidence in favour of this hypothesis. Similarly, muscle
damage is known to limiting strength and power performance, but
there was no evidence that it can reduce endurance exercise
performance. The aims of this thesis are to investigate the effects of
locomotor muscle fatigue and damage on endurance performance and
the physiological and perceptual response to exercise.
In the first study, we tested the hypothesis that exercise-induced
muscle damage can decrease performance during a 30 min running
time trial. A significant relative 4%decrease in running performance
was showed in subjects with exercise-induced muscle damage.
In the second study locomotor muscle fatigue was induced with an
eccentric exercise protocol to test its detrimental effect on time to
exhaustion during high-intensity constant-power cycling
independently of metabolic stress. A significant 15% drop in lower
limb strength (compared to baseline) determined a shortening of the
time to exhaustion from 750 ± 281 s to 636 ± 278 s.
The third study provides a more in depth analysis of the effects of
reduced locomotor muscle force per se on the physiological and
perceptual response to high intensity endurance exercise. Locomotor
muscle fatigue entailed an increase in heart rate, breathing frequency,
and perceived exertion despite no change in the metabolic
requirements.
The same exercise protocol was used in the fourth study to investigate
effects of locomotor muscle fatigue on incremental exercise
performance and physiological/perceptual responses during cycling at
di fferent intensities. Although no changes occurred in the
physiological responses to incremental exercise, the 13% decrease in
locomotor muscle force determined a 2% decrease in the peak power
output (an overall difference of 21 W ) and a significant increase in
the perceived leg effort.
Overall, our findings show that both locomotor muscle fatigue and
damage significantly and reliably impair endurance exercise
performance between 10 and 30 minutes. However, the effects of
increased central motor command to weaker locomotor muscles on
cardiorespiratory responses seem to be dependent upon the degree of
strength loss and the intensity of exercise. Finally, perception of
effort is augmented by locomotor muscle fatigue and damage, and
provides the most plausible explanation for the curtailment of
endurance performance.


When modern humans met and mated with Neandertals about 50,000 years ago, they picked up genes that are shaping health and well-being today. In a new study on p. 737, researchers use a powerful new method for scanning the electronic health records of 28,000 Americans to show that some Neandertal gene variants today may boost the risk of depression, skin lesions, blood clots, and other disorders. The work reveals a dozen Neandertal genes likely to cause significant risk of disease today. Neandertal genes aren't all bad. Two other new studies identified three archaic genes that boost immune response. And most archaic genes that persist in humans were likely beneficial in prehistoric times. But some now cause disease because modern lifestyles and environments are so different. For example, a gene variant that makes blood clot faster might have been life-saving in prehistory, when people hunted dangerous animals and mostly died young. But today that variant boosts the risk of stroke.


RÉSUMÉ Patersonia neocaledonica sp. nov., a new endemic species from New Caledonia of this predominantly Australian genus, is the first record of Iridaceae as native from this southwestern Pacific island. Eighteen species of Patersonia occur in Australia, and one or several more (depending on taxonomy) occur in Malesia, including New Guinea, where they grow in temperate highland areas. Patersonia neocaledonica sp. nov. is distinguished by the fan of relatively broad, sword-shaped to subfalcate leaves with woolly margins, large, brown inflorescence spathes 35 mm long, particularly large white flowers and woolly tomenrose ovary, bract margins and septa of the capsules. Known from a single population subjected to fire and impacts from human visitors, P. neocaledonica sp. nov. is assigned a preliminary threat assessment of Critically Endangered.


EIRO's annual analysis of collectively agreed pay for 2012 finds that although average nominal agreed increases were slightly greater than in 2011 in many countries, the rise in prices diminished people's purchasing power. In real terms, only a handful of countries had positive collective pay increases on average – and, if so, then very modest. In 2012, these were Sweden (+1.7%), Austria (+0.8%), Germany (+0.6%), France (+0.4%) and Belgium (+0.4%, already including indexation). In the case of Austria, this was a return to positive figures after two years of real decline on average. In countries where some form of pay indexation mechanisms are in place, the increases set via these mechanisms did – by and large (with the exception of Italy) – compensate for the rise in prices in 2012, while they had failed to do so in 2011. The report also examines collectively agreed pay increases in three selected sectors (metal, banking and local government) and developments in statutory minimum wages.